“Cultural Psychodynamics” refers to several recent efforts to theorize and legitimize a psychoanalytic dimension in psychological anthropology and cultural psychology, two fields that foreground the entanglement of cultural, social, and psychological processes. This presentation focuses on central features of Groark ‘s (2019) and Mageo’s (2015) Cultural Psychodynamics (see also Hollan, 2022), and it compares and contrasts them to Kirschner’s Sociocultural Psychodynamics (2020, 2025). First, it considers all of these approaches in terms of assumptions, commitments, and goals that they share. (It also briefly differentiates them from Psychosocial Studies). Then it focuses on a tension inherent in Cultural Psychodynamics, as well as between that approach and Sociocultural Psychodynamics. This is a tension between the emphasis on cultural particularity that these approaches highlight and claim to favor, and the intimations of psychological universality that are also present in their frameworks.

Cultural Psychodynamics is a term used by several psychological anthropologists during the past 15 years. Psychoanalytic approaches have always been present in psychological anthropology, but there has also been ambivalence. This is due, in part, to concerns about how psychoanalytic theories have been applied to “other” cultures in reductionist, quasi-evolutionist, and pathologizing (or sometimes idealizing) ways. Since the 1970s, and especially in recent decades, some anthropologists (several of whom have received psychoanalytic training) have broadened and revised the nature and methodologies of psychodynamic interpretation in anthropology. These theorists assert that a psychoanalytic dimension is necessary in psychological anthropology, because the often-dominant “cultural models” and cultural phenomenology approaches lack a dynamic dimension that only a psychoanalytic perspective can provide. That dimension includes a model of the mind as comprised of forces in conflict with each other, as well as a need to attend to motives and feelings that are “not known” (typically called “unconscious,” but conceived here as being on a continuum with consciousness) by virtue of repression, disavowal, or other defenses. Distancing themselves from Freudian drive theory, and capitalizing on pervasive, post-Freudian directions in theory and practice, these theories draw heavily on object relations, relational, intersubjective, and sometimes Kleinian or Lacanian theories. An important goal of these approaches is to redress the ethnocentrism, “coloniality of knowledge,” and epistemic violence enacted or abetted by psychoanalytic perspectives and practices.

Sociocultural Psychodynamics (Kirschner, 2020, 2025) shares the same goals, and draws on some of the same sources, as Cultural Psychodynamics. It is strongly influenced by the work of the original “person-centered” anthropologists LeVine, Levy, and Hollan. But Sociocultural Psychodynamics also bears the influence by some sociological theorists such as Dennis Wrong and late-career Durkheim, and by affective neuroscientists who theorize core, universal emotions, such as Panksepp. As a psychologist, Kirschner’s immediate target is “the sociocultural turn,” including discursive and hermeneutic psychologies. These approaches are deemed incomplete for reasons similar to those voiced by psychodynamic anthropologists regarding what cultural models and phenomenological approaches lack. (Kirschner also makes related criticisms of hegemonic, empiricist cultural psychologies such as those of Grossmann, Heinrich, and Kitayama.)

After a brief summary of the assumptions and commitments shared by all of these approaches, the main focus of the talk is on a tension that is present both within Cultural Psychodynamics and between it and Sociocultural Psychodynamics. This tension exists because psychoanalytic approaches, almost by definition, assume that there are ubiquitous structural and substantive elements of psychic and social life. Yet the approaches discussed here also take seriously the view these that all psychological theories must begin with cultural particularities so as not to impose ethnocentric and colonialist theories and practices. To explore this tension, the rhetoric of both Cultural and Sociocultural Psychodynamics will be examined and contrasted. This is done in order to explore whether their apparently differing ways of negotiating this tension are primarily a matter of emphasis, or signal more substantive differences involving their ontological, epistemological, and philosophy-of-mind assumptions. This issue is also interesting because it parallels a broader set of questions regarding the tension between emancipatory theories’ commitments to universalist philosophies (e.g., Kantianism, critical theory, communicative rationality), on one hand, and calls for decolonization, indigeneity, or radical versions of the ontological turn, on the other.

The final section of the talk will consider these psychodynamic theories’ implications for critical praxis and sociopolitical engagement. Might they not suggest limitations when it comes to implementing some of our hopes for amelioration of these dark times? It will be argued that (even though they are decidedly anti-utopian) they might prove quite helpful for illuminating and addressing some aspects of our present situation(s), including polarization, resentment, the erosion of liberal-democratic institutions, and increasing inequities.

Jacques Lacan’s reformulation of the Oedipus complex shaped contemporary psychoanalysis. Using schemas, he illustrated both identity formation and its underlying structure. By analyzing mother and father as functions, Lacan identified how the subject’s “I” emerges in imaginary, and symbolic dimensions. The maternal function operates through the mirror stage, while the paternal function introduces the subject into the Symbolic order. These functions are universal, since every subject must undergo their alienating effects to become, yet they are actualized throughout lived experience. Therefore, the complexes are simultaneously universal in form and contingent in expression. This universal-contingent tension provides a template for interpreting other concepts, including ideological formations. Building on it, I propose a third sibling function, derived from Lacan’s early reflections on the intrusion complex, which mediates identity development. Siblings act as counterparts for identification but also provoke rivalry and jealousy by competing for the object ‘a’ and parental gaze. This dynamic frequently pushes the subject toward the symbolic order, where identification with the Law offers the illusion of stability. By unconsciously selecting different aspects of the Other, siblings maintain familial equilibrium and secure parental attention, revealing their mediating role. Using a structural approach in the dialectic of reading, I argue that the sibling function illuminates the formation and appeal of ideologies. Its contingent dimension can be seen in diverse sibling relations and ideological positions as specific modes of identification with the Other. Simultaneously, the persistent human need for ideology reflects a universal mediating function analogous to the sibling’s role, suggesting that ideologies may also be grounded in a universal sibling-like mediating structure.

This work reinterprets Jacques Lacan’s notion of the subject supposed to know, taking into account the dominant ideological context in the West. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, this concept is closely related to transference in analysis: the subject of analysis projects knowledge onto the analyst, presupposing that the analyst has access to the [patient’s] unconscious. This presumption is tied to an imaginary (paranoid) form of knowledge, that is, an illusory one. Relying on these ideas, and on the phenomenology of everyday life in our current political reality, we conceptually transfer this notion from the field of intersubjectivity to the intrasubjective domain, treating it as an internalized model of subjectivity. In this way, we conceptualize a specific organization of subjectivity, prominently present in our ideological context (cultural, academic, etc.): the neoliberal subject supposed to know. Developed on the basis of (hyper)individualism, especially its imperative of epistemological superiority and autonomy, this model appears as a configuration composed of specific phantasies, ideas, and narratives that support the subject’s archaic omniscience – the early developmental phantasm of the all-knowing subject. Through a process of narcissistic identification, the neoliberal knowing subject internalizes this model and consequently perceives themself as a universal expert, an all-knowing individual. We explore the implications of this hypothesized identification, particularly the possible constitution of a "politically impotent subject", where impotence is rooted in the imaginary position the neoliberal subject occupies, as opposed to the symbolic. We also discuss how political crises amplify these processes and possible paths toward emancipation.