Encountering the unconscious in international politics: Psychoanalysis as method and theory

The psychoanalytic literature in International Relations (IR) is flourishing, from Kleinian to Lacanian and Freudian approaches to the production of meaning in international politics. This literature has compellingly examined the affective resonance of certain discourses, the role of desire in structuring subjectivity, and actors’ pursuit of various fantasies of ontological security. Yet while psychoanalytic theory developed from clinical practice and was conceived as a specific, rigorous methodology with which to access and analyse the unconscious, the IR literature has yet to engage with the potential of clinical psychoanalytic tools as a corresponding research method. Following scholarship in social work, public health, and criminology, I argue that psychoanalytic methods can be deployed beyond individual therapeutic ends and hold significant promise as a means for scholars of international studies to access the unconscious or partly conscious aspects of socially produced discourse and meaning. Concretely, using vignettes from my work on European peacebuilding staff in West Africa, I demonstrate the value of three concepts from psychoanalytic practice – transference, free association and evenly hovering attention – to interpretive interviewing. These concepts can be used fruitfully as tools to access unconscious aspects of meaning-making, to better understand how the unconscious surfaces and impacts how subjects navigate international politics.