In her presentation, Kareen critiqued therapeutic intentions and offered alternatives, namely finding ethics that don’t resign to the discourse of a master.  She began by discussing her sabbatical experience at Georgia Tech this semester, where she has been teaching a English course on Cultural Studies of Psychology: “I’m learning things that make me feel stupid.”  She then proceeded with two quotations, one by and the other regarding Jacques Lacan:

“Whether it sees itself as an instrument of healing, of training, or exploration in depth, psychoanalysis has only one medium: the patient’s speech.  That this is so self-evident is no excuse for our ignoring it.”

“[Lacan] says that jouissance goes from tickling to grilling.  Today it goes from tickling to suicide bomber.  Jouissance is caught up between masochistic affectations . . . and the horrors of war.  [Westerners] find [themselves] in a land of homeostasis.  It is so cozy that when you are involved with education, you have only one question, what is going to traumatize them?  [We are] clinging to pleasure.  And there are countries where everything is blowing up all over.”

“Psychoanalysis was the Vienna invasion,” says Kareen, “It became a pastime - a misunderstood but commonly used term.  America’s welcome of it became the end of it.”  She discussed the cultural effects of psychoanalysis and social evolution in the U.S., including a shift in family structure from the extended family to “nuclear units of emotion,” and its taking up the question of soul.  Moreover, “the romanticization of the primitive came into play,” referring to race issues during the 1920’s and ‘30’s.  “Psychoanalysis required an era,” Kareen explains, “It was historically dependent . . . and discovered nothing.”

Kareen went on to relate her thoughts on the social contextualization of psychology in subsequent decades.  For example, during WWII, it was used for purposes of military and government control.  It was discovered that men did not understand what it was they were fighting (contrary to the way that films have made it appear!), and that a very vulnerable America could be manipulated by propaganda.  “Since there was not enough time for healing,” says Kareen, “they decided to get people even more anxious!”  It thus became a medium for social engineering - for example, Skinner’s notion that a “good society” could be managed by psychology and other social sciences.  “Today,” Kareen explains, “this is called advertising!”

She then spoke on the idea of individuals as self-determining and how it can be integrated with democracy, citing Gordon Allport’s sentiments that people are “easily manipulated and want to be ordered” and that psychology can create an image of man perfect for democracy.  “Psychotherapy lifted the veil for self-determination,” she says.  Humanistic psychology (HP)’s positing a self full of potential helped solve the problem by marrying itself to the concern of power.  But “social ideals were still posed,” Kareen says, “such as Maslow’s self-actualizing tendencies.  These were impossible, but they were what was needed at the time.”  She went on to note that we must account for what makes this “elite of self-actualizers” as such . . . “Why don’t we?”

“It’s the problem of democracy,” Kareen offers, “and its reproductive engineering of the masses.”  In our import of social ideals (of a “peak person,” per se), we create new questions and anxieties.  “This correlates with masculinity,” says Kareen, “It may not have been Maslow’s intent, but it happened.”

Kareen then discussed the limitations of language.  “Words can relate to a set of meanings, but not objects,” she says, “And they are forms of address - implying performative actions as well as descriptives.  For example, take the phrase ‘This meeting is over.’”  Therefore, a double bind is involved in HP.  “If you are acting ‘spontaneous,’” argues Kareen, “you are being commanded, not really spontaneous.  To ‘be yourself’ is an impossibility if it is an imperative.”

So how do we get out of this impasse, this “prison of speech”?  HP followed phenomenology in its move from the mind to the body - feeling - in which there are no norms.  “You are thus a poet, not a mechanic,” Kareen says.  This turns to understanding a problem, and a solution derives from experience.

However, the solution can also turn political, Kareen warns, noting the impasse between democracy and freedom and its influence, in which pleasure and experience are viewed as emancipation.  For example, she notes the humanistic maneuvers in advertising, “pedaling social control” - experience preoccupies us, and ecstasy is confused with pleasure.  “Just look at any SUV ad,” she says.  With this in mind, we must “take seriously the emancipatory and authentication, as well as cultural embeddedness,” and “bridge uniqueness with freedom.”

Kareen continued with a discussion of justice and how it is established.  “There is a subjective side of justice,” she says, “Rights are created for some so that others don’t have them - meanwhile the notion of rights covers up the injustice.”  There is a pleasure involved in injustice which does not occur in justice - because the fantasy that the world can be perfect is based on one’s individual pleasure-bound standards.  “The subject is either annihilated or full of itself,” says Kareen, “The fantasy of organizing fullness entails an experiential payoff.”

Back to the first Lacan quotation, ticking is just right (“Goldilocks meets Freud”), but we must recognize when others became slaves to our narcissistic fantasy of fullness.  Also, the death drive fuels our obsessions - “the orchestration of our own dissatisfaction is where we face the sacrifice we will make in order to avoid seeing.”  Thus, in our fantasy of loss, we lose everything.  This dark night of the soul is the kernel of subjectivity.  “It is only failure, not affect, that will help,” remarks Kareen, who claims to be terrified of being an American because “Americans will not fail until it is too late.”

She then further described the notion of jouissance - “the right to enjoy.”  For example, the parent has jouissance of the child, one has jouissance of the park through which he walks.  “It is that which we will die for, but not see,” Kareen states, “At a moment of trauma, we don’t experience it, because trauma comes later.  At that moment, it is jouissance which radically shapes experience.”  Kareen concluded by declaring that “curing people is not always sufficient.  Sometimes we don’t need psychology but rather money or other resources.  We must learn to separate the two.”