Social Justice Activism as Interpretation in a Loewaldian World

At a time when many questions are arising about the nexus between psychoanalysis and social justice, the writings of Hans Loewald open an avenue for broadened conceptualizations of psychoanalytic activity and the role of interpretation within it. The pursuit of social justice, it is argued, is integral to psychoanalytic ethics, and the relation between activists and society can be formulated in Loewaldian terms. Using Loewald, and considering case examples from social justice informed advocacy, direct action, and protest speech in AIDS activism, social justice activism can be understood as a spontaneously emergent psychoanalytic interpretation delivered by activists to their social surround, effectively accomplishing multiple forms of therapeutic action. The therapeutic action includes a working through in two phases of the negative social transference, a concept proposed here to elaborate a mechanism for the transformation, through the interpretive aspects of activism, of psychic material directed toward marginalized subjects and those expressing marginalized subjective positions. Resistance to social justice activism is examined using the forms of resistance identified by Freud.