Contribution short abstract:

In this co-authored paper we develop a conversation about “psychic life” as an analytical and pedagogical site to engage with the contemporary condition.

Contribution long abstract:

In this co-authored paper we develop a conversation about “psychic life” as an analytical and pedagogical site to engage with the contemporary condition. As opposed to terms like “mental health,” the concept of psychic life provides us with a language with which to speak about a range of phenomena across multiple traditions, epistemologies, and histories, without prioritizing any one conceptualization over another or locating the psyche within the boundaries of an individual mind, as distinct from the body and the world. Drawing from our fieldwork in Nepal and Argentina, we explore the ethical and political implications of approaching psychological anthropology through the lens of psychic life. Inspired by his work in Argentina with visual technologies and systemic couple’s therapy, Collu considers today’s digital media as an “extimate” psychic infrastructure, which can be addressed through collective forms of psycho-political therapy. In contrast, Seale-Feldman draws her fieldwork on adolescent “mass hysteria” in Nepal to reflect on the limits of subjectivity and the politics of translation between Euro-American and Nepali theories of affliction. In addition to our individual research, together we explore how thinking about psychic life in our pedagogical projects has pushed us to experiment with imaginative practices that can lay the ground for psycho-political elsewhere. In doing so, we discuss why (re)considering the boundaries of the psyche has both therapeutic and pedagogical implications.