Lynne Layton - The Social Unconscious and Character Formation in Neoliberal Culture

Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Mad in America

Mental Health, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 212 Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lynne Layton is a psychoanalyst in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and part-time assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. Holding a Ph.D. in clinical psychology as well as comparative literature, she has taught courses on gender, popular culture, and psychoanalysis for Harvard's Committee on Degrees in Women's Studies and Social Studies. Currently, she teaches and supervises at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.

She recently published a book called Towards a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes and is the author of Who's That Girl? Who's That Boy? Clinical Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory(2004). She was also the co-editor of the books Narcissism and the Text: Studies in Literature and the Psychology of Self, Bringing the Plague: Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis, and Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical Setting. Her involvement in editing peer-reviewed journals includes being the associate editor of the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues and the former co-editor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.

She is the past president of Section IX, Division 39 of the American Psychological Association, Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility, and co-founder of the Boston Psychosocial Work Group and Reflective Spaces/Material Places-Boston, a group of psychodynamic therapists committed to community mental health and social justice. She is also on the organizing committee for Grassroots Reparations Campaign, an organization working towards building a culture of repair.

In this interview, Layton discusses social psychoanalysis. She explores how her construct of "normative unconscious processes" can illuminate how oppressive systems are continually internalized and reproduced, both inside and outside the clinic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.
0:13.4	Hello and welcome to the Madden America podcast. I'm Javier Rezo, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston,
0:22.4	and a science newswriter for the Madden America website. I'm here with Lynn Layton today.
0:27.9	Lynn is a psychoanalyst, an assistant clinical professor of psychology part-time at Harvard Medical
0:33.6	School. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology as well as comparative literature and has taught
0:40.0	courses on gender, popular culture, and on culture and psychoanalysis for Harvard's committee on
0:45.7	degrees in women's studies and in social studies. Currently, she teaches and supervises at the
0:51.6	Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. She recently published
0:55.7	a book called Towards a Social Psychoanalysis, Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes
1:01.6	as available currently. She is the author of Who's That Girl, Who's That Boy, Clinical
1:07.1	Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory, and was the co-editor for narcissism in the text,
1:13.5	studies in literature and the psychology of self, and bringing the plague towards a post-modern psychoanalysis,
1:20.8	as well as the book psychoanalysis, class, and politics encounters in a clinical setting.
1:29.1	She was also the co-editor for psychoanalysis culture and society from 2004 to 2018 and is currently an associate editor of
1:35.6	psychoanalytic dialogues. She is past president of Section 9, Division 39 of APA, psychoanalysis for
1:43.6	social responsibility, and the co-founder of reflective
1:47.1	spaces, material places in Boston, a group of psychodynamic therapists committed to community,
1:52.4	mental health, and social justice. She's on the organizing committee of the grassroots reparations
1:57.6	campaign, which works towards building a culture of repair.
2:05.3	And we'll go ahead and turn it away. So thank you for coming and talking with us today, Lynn.
2:06.7	Pleasure to be here.
2:13.5	Great. So I was just hoping you could tell us a little bit more about your journey to psychoanalysis and specifically social psychoanalysis.
	...

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