Re: Psychoanalysis and marxism

[Scott Mobley <mobs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>2. I think with each decade the concepts of projection and introjection
>emerge more powerfully as core concepts of human interaction not only at
>the individual level but at the social level. We are like chemical
>elements with valencies that immediately get almost hopelessly stuck on
>one another by some strange unconscious process, until we are disloged by
>another element coming along. We powerfully see part objects of ourselves
>in others.

(amd much more good stuff)

>Chris Burford, London.
>
>

I quite agree with and appreciate these formulations. And I would add that
not only might projection and introjection be usefully understood as
concepts of human interaction at the social as well as at the individual
level, but also as concepts of mediation between the individual and the
social. These apparently mutually exclusive levels of analysis can then be
viewed as *moments* in a process of production, one of whose mechanisms is
introjection/projection.

But in noting the crucial role psychic processes play in production and in
the reproduction of the relations of production, we are getting close to
the Althusserian notion of interpellation. Thinking through the Althusser
ISA essay armed with the concepts of projection/introjection could lead
beyond the structure/agency problem which sometimes bedevils those
attempting to theorize ideoogy via the Althusserian schema.

--Scott Mobley






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