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Ian Parker | |
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| Born | Ian Andrew Parker 1956 United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Critical psychology Theoretical psychology Discourse analysis Deconstruction Psychoanalytic social theory Marxist psychology Qualitative psychology |
| Institutions | University of Leicester |
Ian Parker (born 1956) is a British psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is Emeritus Professor of Management in the School of Business at the University of Leicester. [1]
Parker went to Ravens Wood School in Keston, Bromley, UK, studied psychology at Plymouth Polytechnic and the University of Southampton, lectured at Manchester Polytechnic from 1985, was appointed Professor of Psychology at Bolton Institute in 1996, and returned to Manchester as Professor of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2000. [2] In 2012 he was suspended for questioning, in his capacity as departmental union representative for the University and College Union, work-load and appointment procedures. [3] There was an international campaign for his reinstatement, [4] and an online petition which claimed 'victory' with 3772 signatures. In 2013 he resigned his post, [5] and moved to the University of Leicester, and also took up visiting professorial positions at Ghent University, Belgium, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brasil, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, Birkbeck University of London, UK, University of Roehampton, UK and University of Manchester, UK. [2]
He is an analyst member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, and Honorary Secretary of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. [6]
Parker has worked in three traditions of critical psychology: discursive analysis, Marxist psychology, and psychoanalysis, with a focus on questions of ideology and power.
Discursive analysis appears in his earliest writing, which is focused on the 'crisis' in laboratory-experimental social psychology during the 1960s through to the 1980s. In his first book, The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology, and How to End It (1989), Parker uses structuralist and post-structuralist theories to disrupt the claims that psychologists make to speak a professional expert 'truth' about human psychology. Toward the end of the book he moves beyond the 'turn to language' in social psychology to a 'turn to discourse', and this, he argues, will enable critical researchers to treat psychology itself as a set of discourses or stories about people rather than as things that are universally true. Analyses of 'psychologisation' are then necessary to critical discursive work.
This argument is taken forward in Discourse Dynamics: Critical Analysis for Social and Individual Psychology (1992), but now there is a discussion of the relationship between discourse and reality, and at this point Parker seems to think that ‘critical realism' might be helpful to avoid problems with 'relativism' in the social sciences. He returns to these issues ten years later in Critical Discursive Psychology (2002), but by this time he is pessimistic about the critical potential of a purely discursive approach. He prefers the term 'discursive practice'. His book on methodology, Qualitative Psychology: Introducing Radical Research (2005) includes a new version of discourse analysis that attempts to break down the divisions between the researcher and those they study.
Critical responses and commentaries on the impact of Ian Parker’s work on discourse analysis have often focused on what is seen as a reification of ‘discourse’: his conceptual work on discourse has been criticised on this basis from a traditional social psychological position (e.g., Abrams and Hogg, 1990 [7] ) and from a 'discursive' position (e.g., Potter et al., 1990; [8] Potter & Edwards, 1999 [9] ). Critical commentaries on his work on discourse analysis were included in his book Critical Discursive Psychology in 2002, and in the second edition of that book in 2015.
Parker employed Marxist arguments in his first book, and that book on the 'crisis' ends with a discussion of 'transitional demands' that borrow from Trotskyist politics (and these demands are designed to start from what it is reasonable to ask for but in such a way as to lead to a questioning of oppression). A co-edited book, Psychology and Society: Contradiction and Coexistence (1996) is explicitly concerned with Marxist approaches to psychology, and a note indicates that the original title was to be Psychology and Marxism. All the contributors to this book are Marxists, but using a variety of different psychological theories (and Parker’s chapter is on Trotsky and psychoanalysis).
Discussion of Marxist psychology is scattered throughout Parker’s work, and he defines himself as a Marxist, [10] and supporter of the Fourth International. [11] There is a reflection on this in the opening chapter by him of Critical Discursive Psychology, and Marxist ideas are outlined (alongside psychoanalysis, post-structuralism and feminism) in a paper 'Discursive resources in the Discourse Unit' written for the Discourse Unit, a research group which he founded with Erica Burman. [12] Recent interviews [10] indicate that feminist arguments have become more important to Parker, and that Marxism itself may not provide a complete true theory (or alternative to psychology). The discipline of psychology is now treated as an ongoing process of 'psychologisation' operating within institutions suffused with the power to define and manage individual behaviour and experience. This argument is outlined in the book Revolution in Psychology (2007).
Marxist responses to Ian Parker's work have come from Vygotskian developmental psychologists using his work in the political domain (e.g., Holzman, 1995; Newman and Holzman, 2000), and from mainstream experimental psychologists (e.g., Jost and Hardin, 1996).
Psychoanalysis is discussed at length in Psychoanalytic Culture: Psychoanalytic Discourse in Western Society (1997), and traditions of theory from British, German and French psychoanalysis are examined critically. These ideas are complemented in the book by original empirical research. The book is a curious mixture of explication and analysis; Parker oscillates between a description of a psychoanalytic theory and a critical account of how it has come to seem to be true to people in Western culture. The most important conceptual contribution by him in the book is that of the 'discursive complex' to explicate how psychoanalysis operates as a social construction and in lived experience. He trained as a Lacanian psychoanalyst with the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research in London toward the end of the 1990s, [13] and has written on psychoanalytic social theory, in his book Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction (2004).
Parker’s discussion of psychoanalysis sometimes appears to be situated within a discursive or Marxist theoretical framework, but he then seems to use psychoanalytic theory as a framework to understand pathology in contemporary society. The original research in his 1997 book Psychoanalytic CultureHand 2009 book Psychoanalytic Mythologies is critical also of psychoanalysis itself. His argument is that psychoanalysis and a form of 'psychoanalytic subjectivity' has developed under capitalism, and so it is necessary to take it seriously to change society and enable individuals to change. [10] It is not clear how this use of psychoanalysis fits with his radical work on mental health, which is contained in his co-authored book Deconstructing Psychopathology (1995), which draws on action research described by him in that book, and in his edited book Deconstructing Psychotherapy (1999). (Those books draw heavily on the works of the postmodern philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida rather than the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.) Parker was author of Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Revolutions in Subjectivity in 2011, and co-editor (with David Pavon-Cuellar) of Lacan, Discourse, Event: New Psychoanalytic Approaches to Textual Indeterminacy in 2014, a book which connects psychoanalysis with discourse analysis. He edits the 'Lines of the Symbolic in Psychoanalysis' series as Secretary of Manchester Psychoanalytic Matrix [14] for Routledge. [15]
Parker is author or co-author of 25 books, and editor or co-editor of 15 books. His books and articles have been published in 17 languages. [11] Parker edited a four-volume 'major work' Critical Psychology for Routledge in 2011, and a Handbook of Critical Psychology in 2015. A collection of published and previously unpublished work appeared in six books published by Routledge in the series 'Psychology After Critique'. He edits the 'Concepts for Critical Psychology' series for Routledge, and is managing editor of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology. [16] Psychoanalysis and Revolution: Critical Psychology for Liberation Movements, co-authored with David Pavón-Cuéllar was first published in Russian, and then in Italian and English in 2021, and then in Spanish, Bahasa Indonesian and Portuguese in 2022. [17]
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book Écrits. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself.
Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedia article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Sándor Ferenczi was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud.
Psychoanalytic film theory is a school of academic thought that evokes the concepts of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. The theory is closely tied to Critical theory, Marxist film theory, and Apparatus theory. The theory is separated into two waves. The first wave occurred in the 1960s and 70s. The second wave became popular in the 1980s and 90s.
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work. The psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence in the last third of the twentieth century as part of the flow of critical discourse regarding psychological treatments after the 1960s, long after Freud's death in 1939. Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the psyche, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics. Starting with his publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, his theories began to gain prominence.
Ernesto Laclau was an Argentine political theorist and philosopher. He is often described as an 'inventor' of post-Marxist political theory. He is well known for his collaborations with his long-term partner, Chantal Mouffe.
Juliet Mitchell, Lady Goody is a British psychoanalyst, socialist feminist, research professor and author.
Four discourses is a concept developed by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He argued that there were four fundamental types of discourse. He defined four discourses, which he called Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst, and suggested that these relate dynamically to one another.
Freudo-Marxism is a loose designation for philosophical perspectives informed by both the Marxist philosophy of Karl Marx and the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. It has a rich history within continental philosophy, beginning in the 1920s and 1930s and running since through critical theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism.
Andrew Samuels is a British psychotherapist and writer on political and social themes from a psychological viewpoint. He has worked with politicians, political organisations, activist groups and members of the public in Europe, US, Brazil, Israel, Japan, Russia and South Africa as a political and organisational consultant. Clinically, Samuels has developed a blend of Jungian and post-Jungian, relational psychoanalytic and humanistic approaches.
Otto Fenichel was a psychoanalyst of the so-called "second generation".
The Discourse Unit is an international research group that currently has its main base at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. It has been one of the most important focal points for the development of critical work in psychology and in other social sciences concerned with questions of subjectivity and politics. The term "discourse" is used as a cover-all term for political studies of individual subjectivity that draw on feminism, Marxism, post-structuralism and psychoanalysis. In 2003, Ian Parker produced a document for the Discourse Unit that outlines the way that researchers in the group draw on these four theoretical resources. There is disagreement within the research group over the accuracy of this document.
Erica Burman is a critical development psychologist based in the United Kingdom. While little known in the developmental psychology research community, her work has been a conceptual resource for critiques of the field, notably feminist perspectives on the connections between different forms of oppression, and methodological debates in psychology.
The notion of the 'discursive complex' was developed by Ian Parker to tackle the twofold nature of psychoanalysis in Western culture. In his 1997 book Psychoanalytic Culture, Parker defines the 'discursive complex' as a 'methodological device. The term 'complex' is used quite deliberately to evoke the peculiarly Freudian and post-Freudian nature of the subjectivity people in the West live so much of the time. On the one hand the concepts that psychoanalytic texts employ are relayed through culture as components of a discourse, as objects that are circumscribed by definitions in academic and professional writing and used in advertising. In this sense, the discourse constitutes places for subjects to come to be, whether as a child with problems separating from the mother, as a teenager filled with frustration and resentment at authority, or as an older adult reflecting on an unfulfilled life and needs. The discourse thus positions the subject who is addressed by or who is employing the discourse to understand themselves or their troubling relationships. On the other hand, the discourse touches an already existing shape of subjectivity for those who write and speak about themselves and others, whether that is in the form of autobiography or in an advice column, in a television interview or on the couch with a therapist. It chimes with a theory of self that the subject has been invited to elaborate for themselves in this culture, and so it reconfigures each time some of the emotions that are available to them.
Néstor Alberto Braunstein was an Argentine-Mexican physician, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.
Metapsychology is that aspect of any psychological theory which refers to the structure of the theory itself rather than to the entity it describes. The psychology is about the psyche; the metapsychology is about the psychology. The term is used mostly in discourse about psychoanalysis, the psychology developed by Sigmund Freud, which was at its time regarded as a branch of science, or, more recently, as a hermeneutics of understanding. Interest on the possible scientific status of psychoanalysis has been renewed in the emerging discipline of neuropsychoanalysis, whose major exemplar is Mark Solms. The hermeneutic vision of psychoanalysis is the focus of influential works by Donna Orange.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism is a 1933 psychology book written by the Austrian psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in which the author attempts to explain how fascists and authoritarians come into power through their political and ideologically-oriented sexual repression on the popular masses.
Psychoanalytic sociology is the research field that analyzes society using the same methods that psychoanalysis applies to analyze an individual.
Lacanianism or Lacanian psychoanalysis is a theoretical system that explains the mind, behaviour, and culture through a structuralist and post-structuralist extension of classical psychoanalysis, initiated by the work of Jacques Lacan from the 1950s to the 1980s. Lacanian perspectives contend that the world of language, the Symbolic, structures the human mind, and stress the importance of desire, which is conceived of as perpetual and impossible to satisfy. Contemporary Lacanianism is characterised by a broad range of thought and extensive debate between Lacanians.
Parveen Adams is a British psychoanalytic theorist and feminist. She was a cofounder, editor and contributor to the British socialist feminist journal m/f. Since then she has moved to apply psychoanalytic notions to art criticism.
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