Psychic Suffering as a Criterion for Social Critique: Foundations of Psychoanalytic Psychology in the Light Alfred Lorenzer’s Theory

Engaging with psychic suffering has become commonplace in everyday life, science, and public discourse. Numerous studies investigate potential causal relationships and debate the connection between psychic suffering and social conditions and dynamics. In this book, Simon Heyny takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining whether, and to what extent, psychic suffering can serve as a meaningful criterion for social critique. At a foundational theoretical level, and particularly through engagement with the work of Alfred Lorenzer, the book analyzes the relationships between psychic suffering, social conditions and dynamics, as well as different approaches to the normative justification of social critique. In addition to established topics such as family and work, migration-specific aspects are explicitly incorporated and used to illustrate theoretical perspectives. The result is the development of an integrative analytical perspective, which is then employed to advance a formal ethics of socially avoidable suffering. In this way, the book opens up a perspective on the interferences, internal dynamics, and transformative potentials of the psychic and the social.