In recent months I've had occasion to offend three different groups--labor organizers, tea-party'ers, and psychoanalysts--by interpreting an aspect of their behavior. I suggested to organizers that traditional forms of union representation failed to engage members because it was too narrow and instrumental and failed to address the full range of human needs. I wrote about the ways that the tea party folks defend against legitimate feelings of helplessness by mistakenly scapegoating government. And I critiqued the ambivalent traditions within psychoanalysis about the centrality of therapeutic aims, as well as identifying a solipsistic turn toward post-modern philosophy and countertransference theory that I argued further distracted analysts from the project of offering more direct symptom relief.
In each case, I was roundly criticized by many of the folks most directly involved. In some cases, the "problem" was that my presentations were polemical, in others that I over-generalized, and in still others that my interpretations were just plain idiotic. But in all cases I encountered from my critics a profound sense of being misunderstood.
I'm used to political debate and conflict. And I'm open to being wrong. But I am again reminded of another (perhaps obvious) issue--namely, that no one likes being categorized, no one appreciates being talked about as part of a "tendency" in a field, and few people experience their unique and very particular lives as mere instances of historical trends.
In the course of my own education and intellectual training, I was simultaneously drawn to both social theory and psychoanalysis. For psychoanalysts, the only legitimate object of study is the individual. For social theory, however, broad cultural and political phenomena are studied and the interpretations offered are correspondingly broad. Consider important thinkers like Karl Marx (the fetishism of commodities), David Riesman (inner- vs. outer-directed man), Betty Friedan ("the problem with no name"), Nancy Chodorow (gender differences in separation from the mother), Christopher Lasch (the culture of narcissism), Michael Lerner (the politics of meaning), Robert Putnam (the disappearance of communities such as bowling leagues), and many others. They wrote about what they saw as ideological shifts in professions, changes in social practices, and afflictions affecting whole categories of people.
Of necessity the conversations and interpretations were about similarities, not particularity, what's common, not what's unique, and what is operating behind the backs of individuals, not what individuals consciously believe they're doing.
Social theorists aren't, by and large, interested in exceptions to the rule. Lots of women in the 1950s would have objected to Friedan's description of their "problem." My uncle (as against Putman) still belongs to a bowling league and his nephew is married to a man who is the primary caretaker (as against Chodorow's original model) of their son. There are union organizers who relate to members as whole people, tea-partiers who don't hate all government, and psychoanalysts who are dedicated to their patients' short- and long-term therapeutic welfare. Therefore, it's understandable that individuals in each group, would feel that any critical cultural analysis that generalized or that spoke from 20,000 feet about historical trends and tendencies would feel like it stripped them of agency.
Still, there is obvious value in raising issues that are social in nature, even if raised as broad polemical generalizations. First, such a level of analysis can reveal something hidden that might otherwise resist a needed change. For example, talking to union organizers about what their members really need gave some of them the confidence that the change they wanted to make in their organizing practices had solid scientific footing. Second, deconstructing the social psychology of the right-wing aimed to help progressives understand the enemy in order to better fight it. It didn't matter if right-wingers liked or hated the piece; it wasn't intended for them. And, third, interpreting an anti-therapeutic bias in psychoanalysis could potentially support the work of people within the field trying to reform it as well as validate the discontent of others who feel frustrated with it.
