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Psychoanalysis and Structuration Theory: The Social Logic of Identity
Psychoanalysis and Structuration Theory: The Social Logic of Identity
Sociology
Copyright 2002
BSA Publications Ltd
Volume 36(3): 559576
[0038-0385(200208)36:3;559576;025046]
SAGE Publications
London,Thousand Oaks,
New Delhi
AB ST RAC T
This article examines the sociological appropriation of psychoanalysis in the work
of Anthony Giddens. It describes how Giddens uses psychoanalysis as a theoreti-
cal and strategic resource for the sociology of identity. The paper comprises an
outline of the axes and problematizations of subjective identity in structuration
theory. On the one hand, the three axes of cognition, competence and biography;
on the other hand, the four problems of trust (how to believe in the world);
knowledge (how to appropriate our belief in the world); anxiety (how to defend
our sense of the world); and morals (how best to manage ourselves in the world).
From this I draw three main conclusions: (1) Giddens includes trust as well as
knowledge along the axis of cognition; (2) he views operations of defence as
achievements of competent subjects; and (3) he understands the narrative of self-
identity as a type of defence mechanism. If these conclusions are correct, then
structuration theory will continue to treat affectivity as a problem of representa-
tion.
K E Y WORDS
affect / psychoanalysis / security / self-identity / structuration theory / subjectivity
Introduction
T
he use of psychoanalysis in postwar social theory is an important baro-
meter of our capacity to make sense of ourselves. This article explores
the extent to which the contemporary sociological appropriation of
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The aim of this article, then, is to show how Giddens draws on psycho-
analysis as a theoretical and strategic resource for the sociology of identity. In
more detail, I will consider the sociological appropriation of the psychology of
trust (section one); the achievement of knowledge in the form of practical con-
sciousness (section two); the social management of anxiety (section three); and
finally, the remoralization of the social on the biographical model of the thera-
peutic self (section four).
Cognition is the first of the three axes along which Giddens elaborates the logic
of identity and the concomitant schema of security. The emphasis here is on the
combined emotive-cognitive orientation towards others, the object-world, and
self-identity (Giddens, 1991: 38). Giddens details the affectivecognitive
couple along the lines of trust (how to believe in the world) and knowledge
(how to appropriate our belief in the world). We will consider the two in turn,
but first it is important to grasp their essential interdependence in structuration
theory. Giddens is not suggesting that trust itself is a cognitive phenomenon. On
the contrary, he accepts that trust is at once a matter of being and an emo-
tional phenomenon (Giddens, 1990: 92). However, his account of ontological
security is presented in terms of the combined orientation of trust and know-
ledge. The inclusion of the problem of trust along the axis of cognition is a
defining characteristic of the logic of identity in structuration theory. At best,
Giddens blurs the distinction between conditions and attributes by claiming
that the substratum of trust is the condition and the outcome of everyday
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constitutes the infants first social achievement (Erikson, 1995: 222). For
Giddens, social achievement is invariably an expression of practical con-
sciousness coupled with feelings of security. In this case, so long as the infant is
able to sort out good and bad feelings, to introject the former and to project the
latter, according to Erikson he or she will be in a position to let the mother out
of sight without undue anxiety. The outside world may be threatening, but
with a basic sense of inner certainty based on feelings of inner goodness, the
infant is able to tolerate the mothers absence, to let her go without feeling
abandoned. The break with Freud is immediately clear: for Freud, conflict exists
from the beginning between instinctual gratification and social restraint,
between desire and prohibition; subjectivity is invariably besieged by the exci-
tations arising out of the component instincts of sexual life (1940: 186). For
Erikson, the tension which arises in the motherchild relation is routinely
resolvable through socially-learned meaning; the problem of the self is essen-
tially interpersonal, even as it leads back into history at large.
The second stage (the second and third years) consists of the conflict
between autonomy and shame. Freud (1913: 321) described this as the anal
stage, a pre-genital organisation where anal-erotic and sadistic instincts pre-
dominate. Holding on and letting go are the behaviourial correlates of the
underlying tension characteristic of this stage. As with basic trust, the tension
here can be resolved in a relatively benign or more disruptive way. Erikson
describes two simultaneous sets of social modalities: (1) holding on can be an
expression of care or of primitive greed; (2) letting go can be a peaceful, relaxed
feeling of letting things pass or the unleashing of aggressive, destructive
impulses. When Giddens (1984: 55) notes that the second stage can stand in a
relation of generalised tension to the first, essentially, he is making Eriksons
point that basic trust must not be jeopardized by the infants ability to hoard or
spend without reserve. Learning to hold on and let go with care, the infant has
to be properly managed and contained; it is only in this way, according to
Erikson, that he or she will be protected against meaningless and arbitrary
experiences of shame and of early doubt (Erikson, 1995: 226). These are expe-
riences which are at the forefront in Giddenss (1992: 1756) account of the
transformation of intimacy, that is as the negative ideal of competency.
The third stage (between about three and six years) adds to autonomy the
quality of initiative, namely, undertaking, planning and attacking a task for
the sake of being active and on the move (Erikson, 1995: 229). The child
becomes even more integrated at this stage, according to Erikson, in so far as
the force of self-will is turned neither to defiance nor to protested independence,
but to the power of action itself. The pleasure which comes not from instinc-
tual satisfaction but from the realization of capacity, is active from this early
stage for Erikson. This is equivalent to Freuds (1905: 199) genital stage.
However, unlike Freud, Erikson does not concentrate primarily on the sexual
conflict in the phase of oedipal transition. Instead, he maps a general economy
of action divided between the desire to do things spontaneously (initiative) and
the internalized parental prohibitions (guilt). The division goes to the heart of
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rather than the vicissitudes of the drive. The evasion of the schism in the self,
including the multiple part-objects of the libidinal body, in favour of a stable
self-identity consolidates the cognitive bias of structuration theory.1 Giddens
sustains this prejudice on two counts: first, in terms of the compatibility of self-
identity and the unconscious, the idea that the reflexive monitoring of encoun-
ters in circumstances of co-presence ordinarily co-ordinates with unconscious
components of personality (1984: 41); secondly, with respect to the combina-
tion of security and competence, the intersection of basic trust with emergent
social capabilities in motherinfant relations (1990: 97).
description (Wittgenstein, 1978a: 55); and that every action according to the
rule is an interpretation (Wittgenstein, 1978b: 81). The non-discursive concep-
tion of knowledge in the form of practical consciousness derives from the
Wittgensteinian notion of convention as the ground of intelligible action
(Giddens, 1976: 51). The idea of knowledge grounded in what actors know
how to do, combined with the notion of a basic security system, renders the
problem of subjectivity twofold, not only how to believe in the object-world
(the Humean problem of subjectivity), but how to appropriate ones belief (the
Wittgensteinian problem of meaning). Knowledge and practice represent dis-
tinct orders of analysis; but in so far as competent actors know how to apply
rules, questions concerning subjectivity and meaning arise in conjunction with
the role of recurrent social practices in systems of social interaction.
Whereas Giddens sees Erikson as a source for the problem of trust, he turns
to Winnicott for the combination of trust and knowledge. As Giddens (1990:
96) points out, Winnicotts ideas are comparable to Eriksons with respect to
the structure of subjectivity as an accumulation of introjected reliability
(Winnicott, 1989a: 196). For Winnicott, we have faith in things in so far as we
learn to trust, by way of a silent communication, the environmental provision
that enables the ongoing continuity of being (Winnicott, 1986: 147). Winnicott
thus addresses the problem of trust in terms of a belief in the environmental reli-
ability which, for the infant, arises in relation to the mothers capacity to meet
its developing needs. Winnicott emphasizes above all the mothers holding and
handling of the infant, indeed, the whole routine of care throughout the day
and night (Winnicott, 1985: 49; emphasis added). Accordingly, belief in the
world is defined in terms of the interplay of trust and risk characteristic of
motherinfant relations (Winnicott, 1989b: 260).
Does the continuity of our going on being presuppose a knowing as well as
a believing subject? Does the feeling of security, in other words, belong to a cog-
nitive subject? Winnicott and Giddens come to different conclusions. Winnicott
(1987: 15) differentiates between two types of knowledge: first, what we know
and do by virtue of the fact of who we are; and secondly, what we know by
learning. He maintains a distinction between primitive sensibility, or the kind
of knowledge that comes naturally, and cognitive representation (types of
useful knowledge). Winnicotts concept of environment, which is based on
holding, handling and object presenting, presupposes a link between primary
affective development and object-relations; but is nonetheless irreducible to the
order of cognition and representation. Therefore, belief and knowledge are pre-
sented as separate, albeit related modes of relation.
On the other hand, Giddens maps a combined orientation of trust in the
world and knowledge of the world across the threefold division of security,
practical and discursive consciousness (1984: 41). The connections set out here
on the stratification model of subjectivity account neither for the existence of
unconscious affects (the impersonal force relations that precede our identifica-
tions with a given social order); nor for the type of intuitive experience charac-
teristic of the noeticnoematic structure of mental processes in the
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Further to the questions of trust and knowledge, Giddens addresses the prob-
lem of subjectivity with respect to the way in which anxiety is socially
managed (1991: 46). The efficient or competent management of anxiety is the
second of the three main axes along which Giddens elaborates the logic of iden-
tity. The problem now is how to defend our sense of the world. Giddens sees
anxiety as a psychological problem, but also as a problem of being; he defines
it as a state of mind, but also as a form of existential angst or dread (1990:
100; emphasis in original). In the following section, then, I shall include some
preliminary remarks on Freud, but concentrate for the most part on the differ-
ent conceptions of anxiety in Giddens and Heidegger.
There are two ways in which Giddens can be seen to respond to Freuds
views on anxiety, as well as his later attempts to account for repetition, ambiva-
lence and hatred in terms of the death drive (Todestriebe). First, Giddens
generalizes the Freudian repetition compulsion (Wiederholungszwang) in terms
of the compulsive character of modernity (Giddens, 1994: 90). The same holds
for Giddens as for Freud: the compulsion to repeat is a problem of anxiety. But
whereas Freud sees compulsion as an unmanageable process originating in the
unconscious; Giddens (1994: 701) sees it as a social formation characteristic
of late modernity, a negative index of the very process of the detraditional-
ising of society, and therefore as a problem of social management.
Secondly, Giddens (1991: 44) accepts the general distinction Freud
(191617: 395) makes between anxiety (Angst) and fear (Furcht), the idea
that anxiety has no definite object, but is a diffuse, free-floating phenomenon.
However, there is no discussion of the fact that Freud presents a new theory of
anxiety in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926), together with the second
topography. Initially, Freud (1985: 82) maintained that neurotic anxiety
(Angstneurose), as opposed to realistic anxiety, was the result of the accumula-
tion of sexual tension or unsuccessful repression. Anxiety appears therefore
only in so far as repression fails. After 1926, Freud abandoned the idea that
psychical libido can be transformed into anxiety. In the later theory anxiety
precedes repression, and is thus the motive for repression. At the same time, the
causal distinction between real fear and neurotic anxiety is put into question.
The idea that anxiety is antecedent to subjectivity is incommensurable with the
basic assumptions of structuration theory. Giddens insists rather that anxiety
attacks the core of the self once a basic security system is set up (1991: 45).
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(1998: 65) points out, Giddens reduces the unitary view of time-space (Zeit-
Raum), which is already implicit in Being and Time, to a social organization of
time and space: measurable time-space is derived that is, imposed on time-
space relations in Western culture and should not be confused with the nature
of time-space as such (Giddens, 1981: 33). The idea of the ecstatic temporality
of the spatiality of Dasein; the idea that it is possible for Dasein to break into
space, as Heidegger (1962: 421) puts it, only on the basis of ecstatic and
horizonal temporality; is reduced to a conception of time-space relations as
constitutive of social systems. The argument is functional, rather than
phenomenological.
The environmental schema of security consolidates this elimination of
complexity, where happiness means more than anxiety in a sociological theory
of the emotions that stresses the pleasure in handling oneself and doing things
well. In so far as sociology remains preoccupied with skills and capacities,
anxiety is seen merely as a threat to our well-being. So long as one conducts
oneself in accordance with ones capability as a competent actor, the implica-
tion is that one remains free from the burden of anxiety. The ethic of reflexive
modernity is clear: we are happy doing what we do, rather than anxious being
who we are. The idea that one manages anxiety, not as a fundamental mode of
being in the world, but as a risk to oneself, is in all respects inimical to the con-
clusions of Fundamentalontolgie.
Heidegger allows for our precariousness, but not as a social problem.
Rather, for Heidegger the threat to the being-at-home of publicness . . . can go
together factically with complete security and self-sufficiency in ones everyday
concern (1962: 234). The point is that one does not have to cope with anxiety,
which factically goes along with the everyday way of taking care.6 Giddens
views the matter differently: so long as anxiety is understood according to the
logic of self-identity, the threat which it presents to our belonging to the home
(heimisch), the feeling it gives us of not being at home (Nicht-zuhause-sein),
becomes instead a twofold problem of integration and stability. Giddens (1984:
345) presents the problem of order as the fundamental question of social
theory, accordingly, in terms of our coping with the continuity of conduct
across time-space. The feeling of anxiety that Heidegger (1982: 248) describes,
the very homelessness [Heimatlosigkeit] of historical man within beings as a
whole which drives us towards our homecoming (Heimkehr); becomes for
Giddens a problem of social security: how to apply insurance principles in rela-
tion to risk-taking and what role government should have in that (Giddens and
Pierson, 1998: 165).
We can summarize the incommensurable accounts of anxiety in Giddens
and Heidegger as follows. First, for Giddens it is not the self in its basic mood
(Stimmung) that is threatened so much as the awareness of self-identity. The
theory of structuration brings the cognitive content of affectivity to the fore
through the representation of anxiety. There is nothing left of the nothing (das
Nichts) in Giddenss social psychology of separation anxiety; even the most
violent attack, or the most disastrous event, attaches itself to the core of the
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Biography is the third and final axis along which Giddens elaborates the logic
of identity. In Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), but also in The
Transformation of Intimacy (1992), Giddens articulates the problems of secu-
rity and self-representation with respect to behaviour and narrative, the
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Notes
1 Cf. Deleuze (1994: 56) for the logic of the multiple as a veritable theatre of
metamorphoses and permutations.
2 Deleuze indicates the extent to which relation and passion, understood in
Hume as kinds of affections, function in relation to one another: association
links ideas in the imagination; the passions give a sense to these relations
(1991: 63).
3 Husserl (1983, ss.8796) presents noesis (the act of giving meaning) and noema
(the meaning and object intended) as correlative parts of the structure of the
mental process.
4 The striving [conatus] by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is
nothing but the actual essence of the thing, Spinoza (1677/1985), pt.3, propo-
sition 7, 20. Spinoza defines affect as the sensation of whatever increases
(intensive affect) or diminishes (depressive affect) the power of action.
5 Freud formulated two topographical conceptions of the psychical apparatus:
the first involves the differentiation of the psyche in terms of unconscious,
preconscious, and conscious; the second differentiates the three agencies of
id, ego and superego.
6 Anticipating the phenomenological analysis of factical Dasein in Being and
Time (1927), factical life (faktisches Leben) is already equated with Dasein in
Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizitt, 1988), the Freiburg lectures (summer
semester) of 1923. In Being and Time, existentiality, facticity and falling are
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References
Steven Groarke