We’re Living in a Society: Ideology and the Social Object

Abstract

This paper considers the developmental implications of being subjected to macro social, cultural, political, and economic systems. Drawing from social and critical theory, the author proposes an object tie to the broader social dimension. When this tie is threatened by harsh social realities, there is an attempt to protect it through the activation of internalized ideological schema. Clinical examples are provided to demonstrate how patients and therapists bring ideology into the treatment room, and how the application of an “ideological lens” may move beyond interpersonal transference dynamics to facilitate the reorganization of “social object” relationships.

Keywords:

• critical theory
• Fairbairn
• ideology
• object relations
• social psychoanalysis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Why this particular iteration of the character and unraveling the threads of graphic novel canon from which it was assembled—most notably Moore (1988) Batman: The Killing Joke—would be deserving of its own essay.

² When referring to “primary” objects throughout this paper, I am referring to the realm of developmentally significant interpersonal relations with family, friends, and others in the immediate social environment, in contrast to the much larger, amorphous, and collective realm of the “social.”

³ Even language, necessary for cognitive processing and articulating self-experience, is itself a living social construct.

⁴ There are similarities to Layton’s (2006) concept of normative unconscious processes. Whereas the normative unconscious is unconscious because it is normative (and therefore unremarkable), ideology plays a more active role in shaping what becomes normative. “Ideological fantasy structures reality itself…an ‘illusion’ which structures our effective, real social relations and thereby masks some insupportable, real, impossible kernel…a traumatic social division which cannot be symbolized” (Žižek, 1989).

⁵ Or is lobotomized into the fetishistic mythology we are taught as children.

⁶ Though it may still be valuable to develop the capacity to imagine such alternatives, which is not always as easy as it might sound. To paraphrase Žižek, via Fisher (2009): “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

⁷ Though this “modesty” may itself be considered a concession to ideological demands.

⁸ Bottom text.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eric Schwartz

Eric Schwartz, LCSW, is a New York City-based psychoanalyst. He completed his analytic training at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) in 2022.