Social Constructionism as a Social Psychosis

Abstract

The paper is written with a degree of irony: it treats a sociological approach as if it were a client presenting itself for psychoanalysis, and argues that using Melanie Klein's developmental theory the approach can be seen as a manic psychosis - a defence against entering the depressive position. It is suggested that sociologists find it difficult to recognise the limitations of their discipline - the depressive position - one reason being that we do not actually exercise power over anybody; social constructionism enables us to convince ourselves that the opposite is true, that we know everything about how people become what they are, that we do not have to take account of other disciplines or sciences, but we can explain everything. The paper ends by suggesting that its own argument can be treated as a psychoanalytic version of a manic psychosis and that a non-psychotic theory is one which knows its own limitations.