Sweeping unconscious drives are wrong—particularity is key
Lichtenstein, 18—on the faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and is a Clinical Supervisor at the Graduate Program in Clinical Psychology, CUNY (David, “Commentary on Nikolay Mintchev’s “ObjectRelations and Cultural Narratives in the Analysis of Racism”,” Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 28:2, 250-256, dml)
The argument that any clinical psychoanalytic practice must have a profound regard for the importance of the actual social link should not be taken lightly. The clinical question from the Kleinian perspective is how the analyst can effectively call attention to the operation of unconscious phantasy in the present interactions between analysand and analyst, not simply call attention to it as a timeless given underlying all psychic life. The latter is purely academic. The former is the work of clinical psychoanalysis. Something similar is necessary if Kleinian theory were to be successfully deployed in an account of social expressions of racism. The general presence of certain unconscious mechanisms would be purely academic. The historically specific expressions of those mechanisms in their unique cultural moment would be the only effective way to conduct a cultural analysis that respects the rigor of clinical practice. The moment in its specificity is all. This would include the analysis of racism. There is not one racism to be considered, but the particular racisms of the historical moment and their particular psychic functions.