ABSTRACT
Layton begins this chapter with Fromm's assertion of a ‘social unconscious’ and vignettes from the 1950s and 1960s that illustrate how clinical interpretations can contribute to reproducing a sexist status quo, demonstrating how unconscious psychosocial processes permeate identity formation and clinical work. Examples of racist, sexist, and classist enactments in the clinic demonstrate the workings of normative unconscious processes that sustain cultural and power inequalities. Such enactments are not considered ‘mistakes,’ but rather demonstrate the way identities of both patients and therapists are formed by cultural demands to split off and project ways of being human deemed not ‘proper’ to occupying their given social position. The chapter concludes with thoughts about contemporary social forces that contribute to white middle-class subject formation and white middle-class symptoms, focusing again on unconscious collusions that stem from both culture and clinic. Rothe contrasts Layton’s concept of the normative unconscious with essential aspects of Freud’s unconscious highlighting what the latter offers to the discussion.
