Submission Information
We welcome the following article types:
Original Articles
Section Editors: Michael O’Loughlin and Angie Voela
We welcome academic articles from a variety of psychoanalytic traditions that interrogate intersectionality. We are particularly interested in how psychoanalytic modes of thought may be brought to bear on contemporary social and political issues, as well as on how we understand the effects of genealogical lineages and the legacies of social movements such as colonialism and the expansion of capitalism and trade on the evolution of contemporary political and economic movements such as, for example, neoliberalism. We invite interrogation of the foundations of psychoanalysis itself, as well as explorations of the sociohistorical and sociopolitical constitutedness of subjectivity. We are also interested in how our world has historically understood difference and the implications for contemporary subjectivities from gender, class, race, migratory, and ecological perspectives. We are interested in ways in which a critical psychoanalysis may be brought to bear in understanding war, totalitarianism, and other obstacles to freedom. Finally, our journal also welcome articles on the clinic, and particularly on ways in which the clinical encounter can be understood in relation to the larger sociopolitical and sociohistorical conversation around subject formation enumerated above.
Original Articles should not exceed 8,000 words in length, including references and, where they are used, endnotes.
Lamella: Perspectives on psycho-ecological (non)relations
Section Editors: Hilda Fernandez-Alvarez and Lucas Pohl
Lamella focuses on psych-ecological critiques, on the relationship between psyche and ecology and its sociopolitical, cultural and economic implications. We invite original contributions that address this relationship through theoretical, practical, or experienced psychoanalysis. Named after Jacques Lacan’s infamous “myth of the lamella” (1964/1998), the section aims at strengthening the inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary dialogue between psychoanalysis and the rich realm of life sciences. Lamella is a liminal concept, the thinnest layer that separates a body’s surface from another. This interstitial notion can account for relationships and non-relationships between human beings and other-than-human entities and highlights both its inseparability but also its impossibility. Lamella concerns the subject of the unconscious because it inquires into the insistence of conflicts, excesses, and lacks, as much as spectral objects that drive the immortal tension of life and death. Lamella is also an aesthetic that questions the experience of the subject and their environment, which can be exuberantly beautiful or ominously morbid.
Stemming from this, Lamella considers psychoanalysis as a “worldly” approach that has an intrinsically social and critical dimension as it helps us understand what makes the world work and, more importantly, what does not work in it. Lamella sets out to become an avenue for submissions from clinical and non-clinical perspectives on ecological (un)sustainability, as well as works that link psychoanalytic approaches with other fields, from environmental philosophy, ecopsychology, and human geography to political ecology, ecofeminism, or posthumanism, as well as artistic approaches, such as landscape painting, nature documentaries, or popular culture. Lamella encourages authors to engage psychoanalytic concepts and methods to examine issues related to human-environment relations in the broadest possible sense, but also invites works that ground their research in intellectual and political debates around topics such as sustainable development, “green” capitalism, climate crisis, animal studies, traditional ecological knowledge, indigenous studies and conservation. In this way, we hope to provide a place for further engagement with environmental issues concerning the relationship between psychoanalysis, culture, and society.
- All submissions must address the intersection of psychoanalysis, culture and society.
- All submissions will be peer-reviewed.
- Typical submissions will be up to 8,000 words.
- Please consult the editors lamellaPCS@gmail.com if you would like to submit shorter pieces between 3,000-5,000 words, related book reviews, or if you wish to propose a special issue topic.
Counterspace
Jacob Johanssen, Lara Sheehi, and Nick Malherbe
Counterspace invites contributions that creatively take up the relationship between psyche and society, with special attention to theoretical, practical, or applied psychoanalysis. More specifically, Counterspace is imagined as an avenue for psychoanalytic submissions that may counter hegemonic narratives within in the field through exploration of psychoanalysis as a theory, research methodology, clinical practice, or system for thinking about culture, society, the body, political economy, social movements, institutions and power. We encourage voices often marginalized or suppressed along lines of race, gender, sexuality, gender identity, class, ability, or immigration status, in and outside of academia. We are especially interested in work that works against the split of clinic and the sociopolitical, but instead examines or challenges the intersections between multiple dimensions of identity, interlocking systems of oppression, and novel approaches to research, solidarity and coalition building.
We invite submissions that are inter-disciplinary or cross-disciplinary in focus and engage in locating the authors, the work, and the theory discussed. Special attention will be given to field reports on social movements and socio-cultural phenomena from a psychoanalytic point of view. Counterspace encourages non-traditional forms of psychoanalytic writing to include:
- Exploratory or performative writing;
- Field report and reflection on active protest and social movements;
- Qualitative, participatory-action or other critical narrative approaches to research inquiry;
- Critical reviews of cultural events films, plays or exhibitions;
- Debates, dialogues or interviews;
- Clinical practice.
Counterspace word count: 3,000–5,000 words
PCSReview
Section Editors: Jessica Datema, Carol Owens and Stephanei Swales.
The newly expanded PCSreview welcomes reviews of books (academic and fiction), films, documentary work, and art exhibits that address the journal mission. As well as the more traditional single-authored review of a single book, other various types of review are invited: joint or multiple-authored combined reviews of multiple works, articles in which several reviewers give different viewpoints on the same work, and single-authored reviews which cover more than one text or item. We will also consider proposals for commentaries and interviews with authors, curators, or directors. Works to be reviewed should be recently released or exhibited, and we recommend that prospective authors contact the editors for approval of the scope and intent of the work before preparing a submission. Typical expected length should be 1,500-3,500 words, but longer pieces will be considered, especially if they fall outside the frame of single book/item-single author.
Please address all inquiries about prospective works to be reviewed to the editorial team at:
- All submissions must address the intersection of psychoanalysis, culture and society.
- Typical submissions will be 1,500-3,500 words, though occasionally submissions that are longer will be considered.
- All submissions will be peer-reviewed.
- The PCS Review
- Section Editors: Jessica Datema, Carol Owens & Stephanie Swales
Submission
All manuscripts intended for possible publication in the Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society should be submitted through the online submission system, Editorial Manager.
“Work-in-Progress” (WiP)
The intent of the “Work-in-Progress” (WiP) section is threefold:
- To provide a space for emerging scholars to receive mentorship in writing and editing so that they can contribute to the psychoanalytic scholarly community.
- To provide a space where psychoanalytic programs and institutes can showcase their work and concerns through the unique research and scholarship of their members.
- To provide a haven where critical psychoanalysis can continue to thrive and grow, through the interrogation of its own works in progress. In common with the whole of PCS, we particularly invite work at the intersection of psychoanalysis and sociocultural critique.
The “Work-in-Progress” section invites the following contributions:
- Ongoing work especially by early-career scholars, PhD candidates, and postdoctoral researchers; also a broader range of authors working with psychoanalytic ideas in institutes, programmes, the clinical domain and beyond (for instance, film, media and cultural studies, creative writing classes, activist groups, etc.).
- Work on a broad range of themes and issues which touch upon, use, expand and challenge psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thinking.
- Work that is radical and innovative and may be challenging to articulate or incubationary.
- Texts whose function is to assist more communal and collaborative scholarly work in the field of psychosocial and psychoanalytic studies.
- Work by scholars that do not usually work in a psychoanalytic idiom, but whose current work has an affinity to it and might be unfolded here. (These works are invited to interpret psychoanalytic theory or show how authors use psychoanalysis by drawing from and connecting with other theoretical traditions).
(While we expect authors to submit polished drafts, we highly encourage and invite works that explore ideas in their earlier stages of development. Although dissertation chapters or seminar papers may serve as inspiration, a successful submission will be tailored to the journal's diverse psychoanalytic readership and state its relevance. We cannot accept literature reviews.)
What forms should submission ideally take?
- Individual shorter articles
- idea/think pieces that have a freer, more essayistic form
- problem maps
- i.e., mapping of a phenomenon and its potential theoretical framing
- i.e., pieces that are putting forth more questions, problematise and open up further the issue under consideration
- reflections on one’s psychoanalytic practice of sociocultural analysis
- suggestions for guest-edited special sections
- suggestions for guest-edited special issues
- special sections and issues can be thematic or issue-based, but also based on the work of a programme or institute and the like
All papers/submissions:
- should be between 3.000 and 5.000 words.
- will be peer reviewed with two rounds of review feedback; first round will come from the editorial committee and the second round will come from a blind peer reviewer.
Submit here
Please note that only manuscripts sent through the submission system will be considered.
