Lene Auestad, 'Violence and the Social Unconscious: Overcoming or not Overcoming the Individual/Social Distinction

It has been argued that psychosocial studies refutes the separation of the psychic and social and rejects the idea that inner and outer worlds are empirically or theoretically separable. By contrast, critical theory emphasises how false theoretical standards are true in the sense of reflecting social reality: 'False consciousness is also true: inner and outer life are torn apart' (Adorno 1967). Thus false beliefs are materially realised in a wrong reality. This paper questions how the claim of a non-separation of psychic and social reality is to be understood and how it may be reconciled with a critique of violence, a project that appears to demand that these concepts must be and cannot be held together. I shall outline some premises for an asymmetrical understanding of the social unconscious.