A Call to Action for Psychoanalysis.

Abstract

Honored by having been invited to write a commentary on the positional paper launching a new interdisciplinary journal “Subject, Action, & Society: Psychoanalytical Studies and Practices”, this critical essay enters into the essential points and many aspects and angles of what the authors’ refer to as a global crisis in the “affectivization of the public sphere”. This general deterioration in objective cogitation and rational dialogue are addressed as a break down in semiotic organization and communication precipitated in good part by the surge in rapid code-like digital/screen-mediated interactions and “image” obsession. Also addressed are various underlying core therapeutic principles that psychoanalysis could bring to bear to impact widespread societal change. This author’s revised psychoanalytic general model of mind and communication (Aragno 1997/2016, 2008/2016), based on semiotic developmental processes, is proposed as providing a new updated and modernized metatheoretical backbone in support of their papers’ thesis.