THE VALUE OF PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY AS A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

It is important to mention at the outset again that the use of psychoanalytic theory as a theoretical framework is not aimed at ‗psychoanalyzing‘ or ‗pathologizing‘ the research participants, but at understanding some of the psychic processes involved in negotiating conflicting versions of masculinity. Based on the work of Stephen Frosh (1994), it has been demonstrated that psychoanalytic theory is a useful theoretical tool of analysis in identifying contradictory desires, conflicts and emotional comprises in the negotiation of both hegemonic and subordinated forms of masculinity. The current research project has been influenced by Frosh‘s work and his demonstration that psychoanalysis can be a useful psychosocial framework for understanding gender and sexual identities. He asserted:

―If psychoanalysis can be thought of as characterized by any particular ‗project‘, it is to produce a certain kind of knowledge, providing explanations of human conduct and experience by revealing the mental forces that underlie them and that are not dealt with by any other intellectual discipline‖ (Frosh, 1999, p. 19).

In this quotation, Frosh stresses the power and the importance of psychoanalysis in exploring aspects of human experience which may not be accessible from other perspectives or disciplines. He argues that psychoanalysis is able to reveal ―meaningful motivations and conflicts at the base of apparently and meaningless material‖ (Frosh, 1999, p. 19). Based on Frosh‘s work, it is anticipated that psychoanalytic theory will help the researcher in the current

research project to understand aspects of how young masculine subjectivities are created, constructed and deconstructed and how the lived experience of being male, and masculine, is conveyed by boys from the township of Alexandra.

Although the study is interested in aspects of individual experience, it is also interested in understanding a particular set of versions of masculinity, that of a group of boys from Alexandra, an urban township in contemporary South Africa. Psychoanalytic theory is employed to study both personal and social aspects of masculine identities. At the same time, the researcher is mindful of the criticism that psychoanalytic theory may be limited in some respects in formulating the impact of social processes on identity formation (Frosh, 1999, 2010). Furthermore, the emphasis on social processes is important given that the researcher is interested in aspects of the meanings of masculinity that appear to be socially constructed in the particular context of Alexandra Township and contemporary South Africa. Conversely, the focus on social and political elements is aided by the introduction of the complexity associated with psychoanalytic accounts (Hollway, 1989). In the study, particular attention is paid to the strategies that boys appear to use and employ to ‗position‘ themselves in relation to hegemonic standards of performance of masculinity, how these are subjectively experienced, and how these may vary by space, time, age, class, norms, family life and context. This positioning can be understood both in terms of social-contructionism and psychoanalytic theory (Burr, 1995; Butler, 1990; Frosh, 1994).

It is evident thus far that psychoanalytic theory offers a means of understanding how the world can be revealed and expressed in the experience of every individual, although its main focus is on the internal mechanisms by which individuals distort or deny reality (Frosh, 1999). Frosh insists that psychoanalytic theory has political and social significance. He rejects some of the criticisms that ―it reduces what is social to individual processes rather than institutions that support certain discourses‖ (Frosh, 1999, p. 311). Frosh (1999) argues that in a complex manner, ―psychoanalytic theory interweaves what is external to the individual with what is experienced as most deeply private and personally formative‖ (p. 312). On this point, he argues that ―the society introduces into each individual its own ideological axes, which then become the generative kernel of emotions, attitudes and modes of relating to others‖ (Frosh, 1999,

p.312). The literature discussed so far suggests that there are complex emotional issues that operate at the heart of masculinity, making it a fertile area in which to apply psychoanalytic thinking. Applied psychoanalytic theory insists that we take a critical stance towards taken-for- granted ways of understanding the world (including the concept of masculinity) and analyze fantasies and feelings involved in negotiating this identity. The value of using psychoanalytic theory in this research is that it supplies the researcher with rich language and concepts to interpret some of the psychological processes that underpin the formation of masculinity.

It is important to bear in mind that power and struggle are central to the experience of masculine identities and that the costs of pursuing an appropriate masculine identity can be heavy. As a result, boys often shift from one position to another in order to manage expectations of being a ‗real man‘. Taking up certain subjective positions and foregoing others may evoke feelings of anxiety, loss and sadness (Frosh & Baraitser, 2008; Hollway & Jefferson, 2000). One of the central questions in the current project is why adolescent boys emotionally invest in certain subject and subjective positions. What are the conscious or unconscious reasons behind taking up certain discursive positions? What are the emotional costs involved in this process? It is arguably only through drawing upon psychoanalytic theory that the researcher will able to explore these kinds of questions about the adolescent boys from Alexandra Township whose experiences the thesis is centered around. In discussing the value of using psychoanalysis to analyze research material, Frosh and Baraitser (2008, p. 6) argue

―That this approach can add something to the psychosocial…from the sophistication of its ideas about emotional investment and fantasy, which can offer a ‗thickening‘ or enrichment of interpretative understanding brought to bear on personal narratives, especially those arising out of interview situations. Psychoanalytic interpretative strategies may be able to throw light on the psychological processes or perhaps the conscious or unconscious ―reasons‖ behind a specific individual investment in any rhetorical or discursive position. This may offer a more complete (because more individualized as well as emotion-inflected) interpretive re-description of interview material with helpful links to clinical perceptions and practices‖.

Using psychoanalysis as reflected in the just cited quotation, the researcher will also able to theorise the male subject‘s relation to the self, others and the society as a whole. This is because psychoanalysis, as a psychosocial theory, offers opportunities to explore these

intertwined elements by emphasizing the ways that we mediate individual lived realities through cultural and social meanings that are in turn overridden with anxieties and desires belonging to the intra-psychic realm. In this way, psychoanalysis as a social and critical theory seeks to move beyond a conceptualization of male subjectivity as either the exclusive effect of discursive production or of the intra-psychic. It sees lived experiences and identities as the ―products of a unique biography of anxiety and desire-provoking life events and the manner in which their meanings are affected by discourses and also because the unconscious defences that we describe are intersubjective processes (that is, they affect and are affected by others)‖ (Hollway & Jefferson (2000, p. 24). According to Elliot (2001) the relationship between self and society is one of conflict, tension and ambivalence, and the power of the self lies in the ability to negotiate all these tensions as part of achieving some sense of a personal identity.

In the section below, the researcher briefly discusses the work of three major psychoanalytic theorists, namely, Freud, Chodorow and Lacan, as part of theorizing male subjectivity. The researcher is aware that there are many theorists within psychoanalysis (including many that have written about aspects of gender and masculinity) and that it is not possible to cover all of them in the current research project. These three theorists are selected for discussion because of their relevance in framing responses to certain research questions in the study. It must be mentioned that there are major philosophical differences between these three theorists, but despite this they still provide a useful framework in theorizing masculine subjectivity.