Psychoanalytic political theorization

Fostered by scholars like Laclau and Žižek, the psychoanalytic turn has had an important impact on populism studies. It actualizes a long tradition of psychoanalytic political theory that finds its roots at least as early as Freud’s reflections on mass formation. Current developments not only provide fruitful tools for understanding the force of populist phenomena, but also have normative implications, contributing to our reflection on democratic collective identities. To present the advances in the use of psychoanalysis to study populism, the chapter is divided into three parts. First, it places populism studies within a long lineage of mass psychology literature. Second, it briefly introduces key psychoanalytic concepts such as drive, desire, fantasy and enjoyment, to highlight how psychoanalysis could illuminate the strength and salience of populist discourses. Third, it analyses two psychoanalytic metaphors - symptom and sublimation - that have been used to account for populism, and explains how they can be applied to differentiate between undemocratic and radical democratic expressions of populism, respectively.