Carrol, this is an absolute bungle of contraditions.
> one necessarily uses what might be called "folk psychology"
> I have also said that formal psychology can and does collect useful empirical
data that can be used by the social theorist or the neuroscientist.
> I have consistently denied that psychology can *explain* anything.
I suppose the data speaks for itself? And what gives a non-psychologist insight to explain something over the psychologist (other than saying that all psychologists are mad)? You are opting for a "rational" and "economic" explanation of the human mind - but the human mind doesn't experience it this way. Obviously the labour structure determines certain aspects of how we think, what we think and how we relate to things - but it doesn't 'personalize' it - in other words - such an explanation doesn't actually say anything about actual people (dare I say individuals). In other words you've eliminated the key insights of any psychological framework - which is to say that society is mediated, produced and reproduced by actual human beings - the life of the mind. If 250 million people have "symptoms" of paranoia or narcissism, why isn't it fair to say there is something at work, in society, that cultivates this - a "pathological cultural logic." Likewise, this cuts both ways - insights into how the economy functions illuminates how the psyche works as well.
> I absolutely deny that what is called psychology can explain that fact -- it
can only give labels which, as Marx said of "Providence," are only a sort
of paraphrase of the facts, not an explanation.
So there is a hierarchy here: the fact (description) and meaning (explanation)? The separation of the two, in dialectical circles, is incoherent.
> Freud's *Psychopathology of Everyday Life* and *Interpretation of
Dreams* are fine late-Romantic novels
> these works of Freud let us see, raised to the highest level of theory, what
it feels like, while living in a world of abstract individuals existing
prior to and autonomously of social relations, to imagine those individuals as
though they were concrete and existing.
Where does imagination come from? How does it work? To answer this you *need* some sort of psychology, or at least a philosophy of consciousness.
> More importantly, they let us see how the most rational and conscious -- even
highly self-conscious -- thinking can generate the most bizarre and irrational
results. Could any sane man, the reader cannot but ask, propose such fantasies?
"Sane man" - again, you are relying on Freud here, or at least the people that came before him. Conscious - a concept that doesn't make any sense at all without the unconscious or subconscious.
> But just as we must admit the rationality (when seen from "inside") of the
voices that speak to the sufferer from schizophrenia, so to make sense of
Freud's fantasies...
Schizophrenia - again - we're back into psychoanalysis. How does schizophrenia manifest in an individual and why? If we understand the why, then we have a social explanation.
> Within that framework his arguments are entirely rational and entirely
conscious.
> He was not mad but only trapped in a history that activated an overwhelming
desire to explain what cannot be explained because wholly contingent.
> Please note that all attempts to use Lacan or Freud for purposes
of social explanation are merely disguised pleas that someone else successfully
use a method that has never been used in such a way without producing twiddling
fantasy.
Carrol, this is drivel. It is easy for me to understand why one might be resistant to using psychoanalytic concepts within social theory, I disagree, but at least I can understand this. However, your attack here, and I can think of no other word for it, is an attack on the the human psyche as such - and all methods of examining it. There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that that categories involved in psychoanalysis are helpful. By examining the "symptoms" of a sons and daughters living in patriarchal households - and the dynamics therein, we can also detect social patterns between the economic and legal construction of the household by the way this manifests in individuals. In other words, psychoanalysis can provide a "map" of the political / psychical economy of a patriarchal liberal capitalist society. Why is this such a problem?
You've noted that psychoanalysis can collect data, but not explain it. Why the hell not? If we're talking about clinical psychoanalysis, how do you explain "the talking cure" - the actual success of clinical work *through language* based on explanatory theories. I don't see how you can explain "leadership" or "narcissism" or "consumerism" without figuring out how individuals relate to this reality. Psychoanalysis takes on a narrative structure - because scientific procedures are too limited to address any of the clinical issues involved. Your assault here is frustrating because it cuts off, for no apparent reason, valuable insight into the psychic life of power (and I'm not talking about Butler here). The imaginary institution of society produces individuals, subjects. If we understand the dynamics of this subjectivity, we will, de facto, understand how social / political and economic mechanisms work. And this isn't a leveling of the individual to the society or the society to the individual - its a dialectical analysis - that the two mutual illuminate and constitute one another.
Economists use stats. Psychoanalysts the psyche. Both tell us something about society (given that descriptions and explanation are not two separate things). We can disagree with the conclusions and the methods, but there is no good reason to dismiss either ex cathedra.
ken