Towards a Lacanian Group Psychology: The Prisoner's Dilemma and the Trans‐subjective

Abstract

Revisiting Lacan's discussion of the puzzle of the prisoner's dilemma provides a means of elaborating a theory of the trans-subjective. An illustration of this dilemma provides the basis for two important arguments. Firstly, that we need to grasp a logical succession of modes of subjectivity: from subjectivity to inter-subjectivity, and from inter-subjectivity to a form of trans-subjective social logic. The trans-subjective, thus conceptualized, enables forms of social objectivity that transcend the level of (inter)subjectivity, and which play a crucial role in consolidating given societal groupings. The paper advances, secondly, that various declarative and symbolic activities are important non-psychological bases -trans-subjective foundations -for psychological identifications of an inter-subjective sort. These assertions link interesting to recent developments in the contemporary social psychology of interobjectivity, which likewise emphasize a type of objectivity that plays an indispensible part in co-ordinating human relations and understanding.Keywords: Psychoanalysis, identification, inter-objectivity, inter-subjectivity, trans-subjective. Towards a Lacanian group psychology: The prisoner's dilemma and the trans-subjectiveThis paper explores the well-known logical puzzle of the prisoner's dilemma and does so via the work of Jacques Lacan (2006b), who utilizes it as a means of grounding what we might term a theory of the trans-subjective. My hope in this respect is to make a contribution to a series of recent developments in the contemporary social psychology of interobjectivity, and to do so by means of the 'extra-disciplinary' source of psychoanalytic theory. More specifically, I would like to use the prisoner's dilemma, and Lacan's associated 3-fold schema of logical time, to make two general arguments. I want to assert, firstly, that we need to grasp a logical succession of modes of subjectivity -from subjectivity to inter-subjectivity, and from inter-subjectivity to a form of transsubjective social logic -if we are to understand the subject-to-society relation. This sequence of modalities of subjectivity and, more particularly, the distinction between the inter-subjective and the trans-subjective, will be crucial in appreciating the difference between what are sometimes referred to as symbolic and imaginary forms of identification (Lacan, 1988a(Lacan, , 1988bŽižek, 1996).My second key objective in the paper is to advance that various declarative, institutional and symbolic activities are important nonpsychological bases for imaginary (or what we might loosely call 'psychological') identifications. In other words, I am making an argument about the importance of certain symbolic constituents as conditions of possibility for the existence of psychological identifications. This second objective links back to the first, inasmuch as symbolic identifications always entail the dimension of the trans-subjective, whereas what I am calling imaginary identifications do not. Importantly, although Lacan ...

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