Lacan and Althusser on psychology: The political ethos of serving ideals and justifying ideology

Abstract

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan denounced psychology as a procedure of objectification that serves particular ideals in society and fulfils the social functions of ideologisation, adaptation and exploitation. Likewise, almost at the same time and also in France, the Marxist theoretician Louis Althusser stated his disapproval of psychological theories because they justified ideology either by assuming the existence of natural-individual tendencies as its foundation or by pathologising everything that contradicts it in the individual realm. After reviewing these critical approaches to psychology, this article will defend the idea that any theoretical or practical psychological work is not completely free to determine its guiding values, principles, rules and norms, as it must adhere to the predetermined functions that have been imposed on psychology and are clearly explained by Lacan and Althusser. The social-ideological functions of psychology logically restrict, orientate and underlie its ethos, which consequently includes the inescapable political imperatives that govern psychological theory and practice. For instance, the basic theoretical dualist operation that constitutes psychology—the one that distinguishes the psyche from the body and the world—is a political gesture that cannot be abstracted from class society, from its division of labour and its classist ideology, as was demonstrated by Marx and Engels.