Lacanian psychoanalysis and the social sciences

Document Type

Article

Department

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Abstract

Abstract

This essay offers some coordinates for situating the Lacanian psychoanalytic orientation within qualitative social science research. It explores two phases of Lacan’s teaching on the relationship between psychoanalysis and science: the 1960s and the 1970s. During the first phase (the 1960s), there seemed to exist a “narrow doorway” through which “psychoanalytic science” might be established. It was for this reason that Lacan marked a distinction between the “exact sciences” and the “conjectural sciences.” However, this position was apparently overturned by Lacan during a second phase (the 1970s), when he claimed that psychoanalysis is not a science. Insights from these two periods are used to interrogate central topics within the field of qualitative social science methodologies. If Lacanian psychoanalysis is to secure a place for itself within social scientific research, it will require an extensive interrogation of the fundamental values and presuppositions of qualitative research (such as transferability/generalizability, sampling strategies and the idea of a “sample,” and validity/triangulation).

Comments

DOI is not provided by the author/publisher. This work was published before the author joined Aga Khan University.

Publication (Name of Journal)

Psychoanalytic discourse

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