38: Psychoanalysis and Revolution with Ian Parker

Ian Parker is a practising psychoanalyst, an academic and a
revolutionary activist.  Ian discusses the radical roots of
psychoanalysis and how these have changed overtime, to make
psychoanalysis fit with contemporary capitalist society.  
Ian believes that psychoanalysis should be a radical practice
than impacts on individuals and society, rather than an elite
practice that adapts individuals to conform to social norms. He
writes “Our task is to connect social struggle with the kind of
unavoidable internal struggle described by psychoanalytic
theory.”  Ian challenges the standard idea of the
unconscious being like an ice-berg where beneath our conscious
surface lies a dark abyss of uncivilised, biological and
instinctual drives.   He works with a Lacanian approach that
addresses the unconscious as a social and external phenomena, one
that we individually relate to.  He is critical of  the
‘Psy’ professions such as psychology and psychotherapy as being
instrumental to keeping things as they are, rather than offering
a past to individual and social transformation.   Ian is
working towards developing a psychoanalytic practice that has a
liberation ethic 


Enjoy listening to this fascinating and edgy podcast! 


BIO 


 Ian Parker is a psychoanalyst and a member of the new
revolutionary organisation Anti-Capitalist Resistance, and of the
Fourth International. His academic work has always been critical
of psychology and psychiatry. His most recent book, co-authored
with his Mexican comrade David Pavón-Cuéllar, is Psychoanalysis
and Revolution: Critical Psychology for Liberation
Movements  https://psychoanalysisrevolution.com/.   Ian
is Emeritus Professor at Leicester University and his academic
writing is widely published and cited.