Abstract
We live in a post-Freudian world. The basic tenets of psychoanalytic theory form part of our common sense. Even if we do not visit a clinical psychoanalyst for therapy, we encounter psychoanalytic concepts throughout our everyday lives. A Freudian slip, the unconscious, narcissism, repression, fetishism, projection and displacement are terms defined and developed by Freud, which are still in regular usage. Indeed, it is easy to forget that Freud’s basic idea – that, in addition to the conscious mental material and mental processes we engage in, there are thoughts and ways of thinking that are not available to us but are key in explaining why we do what we do – was ever controversial at all.
Marketing scholars will probably be most aware of psychoanalysis through the recent surge of retrospective analyses of Ernest Dichter’s contribution to marketing in the 1950s (such as Fullerton and Stern, 1990; Schwarzkopf and Gries, 2010; Tadajewski, 2006). Such research has illustrated Dichter’s role in the history of interpretative consumer research, explored his methods and exposed his brilliance as a self-publicist. But it may be his application of psychoanalytic theory to markets that remains Dichter’s most influential contribution. Recently Rory Sutherland (2013), former president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, explicitly called for a return to psychological models of the human actor that are informed by psychoanalysis. He noted that many of our most enduring brands and successful advertising campaigns were built on a psychoanalytic model of consumer behaviour promoted by Dichter and others. We hope that this special issue, which we are privileged to present to you, provides a bridge from this past to future paths for psychoanalysis.
What of psychoanalysis away from the domain of marketing practice? It is currently encountering something of a renaissance in the academy as it moves back from the humanities into the social and life sciences. Within the neurosciences, for instance, we see the return to Freud’s initial project for a scientific psychoanalysis as means to explain empirical findings that cannot be accounted for by any other theory (Turnball and Solms, 2007). In psychology, it is argued that psychoanalysis offers a necessary alternative explanation to reductive accounts of human behaviour based ultimately on the human genome (Fonagy and Target, 1998). There has been a resurgence of interest too in cognate disciplines such as organization studies and the social study of finance, where authors regularly turn to the work of Freud, Klein, Winnicott, Lacan and Zizek to make sense of seemingly irrational economic activity. Indeed, having been more or less dismissed from marketing scholarship for almost 50 years, the topic of the unconscious is now back on the agenda for consumer research, lent an aura of respectability by social psychologist John Bargh (2002) who is quick to acknowledge his debt to Freud and psychoanalysis (Bargh and Morsella, 2008).
We believe, though, that psychoanalysis is not just a theory marketing scholars can borrow from. It is also a theory we can give to. Empirically, marketing and consumer research (outside the academy at least) stands as one of the most sustained engagements with psychoanalytic theory in its history. Compare, for instance, the number of people who have attended the kinds of psychoanalytic therapy that both Levy and Holbrook describe in this issue with the number of people who have taken part in focus groups or motivation research studies or read an advert designed to appeal to their unconscious desires and instincts. As Sutherland (2013) reminds us, psychoanalytic ideas represent a significant part of the working knowledge of brand managers and advertisers. We could and we should be making real contributions to this body of research.
To this end, in 2013, we organized a track for the macromarketing conference on psychoanalysis and marketing – the first in at least one generation. To our delight and surprise, we hosted contributions from academics around the world and were fortunate to have some excellent and diverse paper presentations. In addition to research articles, we used the track as a means to put marketing ‘on the couch’ through an open discussion among the conference attendees. This highlighted anxieties, fears and outright hostility to psychoanalytic ideas – which several believed to be obscure, opaque, manipulative and ethically questionable; in short, more akin to an esoteric religion than to science. But we also found interest and a curiosity to learn more. We hope that this special issue goes some way towards sparking further interest and curiosity. It demonstrates the rich theoretical arsenal psychoanalysis offers us, the methodological innovations and adaptability of psychoanalytic theory and the diverse range of researchers who are turning once more to psychoanalysis to make sense of markets, marketing and consumption.
Given the chequered history of psychoanalysis in marketing, we thought it a good idea to provide context to the special issue by inviting leading researchers, whose work has engaged with psychoanalytic theory, to offer short commentaries on their experiences with psychoanalysis as researchers, students and people. Fortunately, nearly everyone we asked was only too happy to offer some thoughts and we are delighted to present commentaries from luminaries in the marketing field including Sidney Levy, Maurice Holbrook, Russell Belk and John O’Shaughnessy. Alongside these we present two commentaries from outside of the marketing academy – one from Yiannis Gabriel, who has written extensively about psychoanalysis in organization studies, and another from Rik Loose, who is a practicing Lacanian analyst. We did not want to give the invited commentators too much direction. What follows is, therefore, very much a panoramic set of opinions. However, there are a number of regularities that warrant some elaboration. The contributions by Sidney Levy and Maurice Holbrook represent the idiographic strengths of analysis, being personal and partly biographical, describing how psychoanalysis came to be woven into their daily lives. Levy expresses his ambivalence by telling us how, on the one hand, analysis changed his life and continues to enable him to understand himself and his dreams, whilst also constituting a target for his satire. Holbrook relates how he embarked on a Freudian analysis and describes how this helped him question the hyper-rationalist model of the consumer that prevailed in the 1960s. He tells us that he values its ability to transport understanding beyond the shallow waters of scienticism. Intriguingly, he describes an intensive but unpublished idiographic case he embarked on with Dennis Rook, which, he explains, had to be abandoned for ethical reasons. This, he argues, is what led him to develop his method of subjective personal introspection, which allows one ‘to investigate a phenomenon to its fullest extent without the fear of invading other people’s privacy’.
Two of our competitive articles, from Stefan Schwarzkopf and Paul Albanese, strengthen the bridge to the past constructed by Levy and Holbrook. Stefan Schwarzkopf provides a useful supplement to his edited collection on Dichter (Schwarzkopf and Gries, 2010), advocating the view that the widespread circulation of Dichter’s ideas effectively granted absolution to American consumers to go against the values of prudential values associated with Horatio Alger. He illustrates how some of Dichter’s ideas (although not his views on religion) were enthusiastically received by his industrial clients and by a mass media who popularized his work so extensively that these ideas took on a performative aspect to the extent that people began to understand themselves and to behave in accordance with the predictions of Dichter’s theory. Importantly, Schwarzkopf is not arguing that dumb consumers were manipulated by wily marketers. As he explained to us in the peer review of his article: To use Freudian theory as an example: being told that dreams are meaningful and symbolic led people to self-analyze their dreams in the first place. Once you analyze your own dreams, you start ‘seeing’ things in them and they ‘become’ meaningful through the act of being rendered meaningful by a theorist, i.e. Sigmund Freud. This contrasts with the hypodermic needle explanation whereby; ‘I tell you to dream of a luxury brand car, and then you will dream of it’.
Andreas Chatzidakis pushes this argument to its limits, by drawing on the work of Melanie Klein whose theory was enormously influential in developing the field of object relations in Britain. Based on these ideas, in a twist from the notion that people think before they act, Chatzidakis reverses the causal sequence to argue provocatively that one can feel unconscious guilt and then act on the basis of that guilt. In short, he suggests, in some cases we consume because we feel guilty not the other way around.
Depending on the view one takes, Chatzidakis exemplifies what is best and worst about psychoanalysis. Advocates enthuse about its putative contribution to the realm of ideas by developing insights that otherwise appear counter-intuitive, whereas detractors argue against its bizarre unproven assumptions. John O’Shaughnessy focuses on such questions in his commentary piece where he highlights the importance of maintaining a scientific image for many marketing academics. He argues that if it is to be admitted to marketing scholarship, psychoanalysis must be taken seriously as a science and, for this to be so, major criticisms of psychoanalysis need to be addressed. He lists among these difficulties in separating out an unconscious cause from the behaviour that springs from it, that is, the unfalsifiability of psychoanalytic concepts, and that its concepts are sufficiently vaguely defined so as to enable a range of explanations. Whilst we cannot mount a defence of psychoanalysis as a science here, we should mention that behavioural economists have since contrived ingenious experiments to explore the intricacies of unconscious processes, that most theories are unfalsifiable and that, as Holbrook acknowledges in his piece, psychoanalytic concepts have withstood the test of time. Having said that, O’Shaughnessy’s point about vagueness is well made, being shared by prominent psychoanalysts such as Peter Fonagy (Fonagy and Target, 1998).
O’Shaughnessy argues that, from a psychoanalytic understanding, marketers’ belief in choices made by conscious agents is simply wrong. But while marketing academics accept that consumers may often be on ‘automatic pilot’, they shy away from the psychoanalytic view of the unconscious. Yiannis Gabriel’s discussion of consumer choice moves in a different direction. He links choice to self-control and suggests it acts as a defence against the almost unbearable notion of sameness that is expressed in the desire for uniqueness and of being special. In so doing, the idea, or myth, of choice displaces attention from the determination of identity by culture and biology. If, in contrast, we remove identity from the equation, then choice becomes empty; while if we remove choice, identity is reduced to destiny. Gabriel reflects that our belief that we have choice is similar to that by which we believe ourselves to be special, with each acting to bolster our identity, which acts as an invisible shield to keep us out of harm’s way. Gabriel ends his piece with a question, ‘Could it be that identity is not something deep and primary but something superficial and derivative on which consumer culture has built its edifice?’ It is interesting, given that Gabriel’s work seems inspired mainly by Freud, that he ends with a question that is very similar to that considered by Lacan in his early seminars. Here Lacan reflected on identity and developed the concept of the mirror stage as the basis for imaginary identification. We might surmise that Lacan would have answered Gabriel’s question in the affirmative that identity emerges from an imaginary hall of mirrors.
The mention of Lacan raises questions of who and who not to read? Many agree that Freud was wrong on some points but few can agree which. Yet Maurice Holbrook argues that marketing scholars should steer clear of Lacan, whose work he finds impenetrable and inscrutable, and instead stick with the clarity of Freud. Bruce Fink (1995), who translated five of Lacan’s works agrees that to read Lacan is an infuriating experience as one cannot make sense of Lacan’s writings without knowing, at the start, what he means. However, Fink suggests that one of the reasons for the animosity shown towards Lacan, particularly in the United States, is because his work was initially poorly translated. Another reason is that given the lack of practitioners there, the crucial element of praxis which can enliven Lacan's dense texts is missing (Fink, 1995). Those who seek to learn more must read and reread his work until they contrive their own understanding, which, as Fink notes, runs counter not only to the ‘publish or perish’ mentality of most academics but also to a ‘certain American pragmatism and independence’ (Fink, 1995: 150). Having said that, authors in the sister discipline of organizational studies, who have been productively citing Lacan for years, might wonder what all the fuss is about.
It is against this background that we invited Rik Loose, a practicing Lacanian analyst who specializes in addiction, to write a reflective piece on marketing. Although he was unaware of the other contributions for this special issue, there are several points of resonance between his piece and those from marketing scholars. Loose shares Russell Belk’s interest in representation and addiction. His contribution thus constitutes an ideal opportunity for us to do what Fink suggests by learning the lore of Lacan from a practitioner. Where O’Shaughnessy focuses on science, Loose takes art as his subject. Indeed, Loose makes it clear from his perspective that the scientific drive creates its own problems. By focusing on art, Loose acknowledges the debt owed by psychoanalysis to philosophy, art and great literature.
At this point, we should acknowledge that despite the work of researchers such as Barbara Stern and the welcome addition of Arts Marketing: An International Journal, the development of a humanities or arts perspective on marketing has a long way to go. Psychoanalysis has developed concepts to enquire into this domain (see Oswald, 2010). Loose’s thesis, in particular, contrasts the ready-mades of Duchamp from those constructed by marketers. He argues that the former operate as art and seek to disorient the imaginary of the viewer, thus bringing them close to the real. Those crafted by marketers offer palliatives to imaginary closure. They provide one more fix for us consumers to administer the real when we are all alone and ‘bolted to the screen’. Fleshing out this argument somewhat, Belk discusses the imaginary in relation to the avatar, which, he argues, constitutes a movement beyond the mirror image and so provides an opportunity and a challenge to psychoanalytic thought. To the extent that we align our behaviour to conform to that of the ideal-I represented by the avatar, we might ask, do we not remain captivated by the mirror and thus dance to its tune? Interesting research have been conducted with schizophrenics who have responded positively to avatars that mimic their voices. There are resonances between Belk’s discussion of addiction in new media and Loose’s discussion of the administration jouissance that bear further reflection.
Reyes, Dholakia and Bonoff deploy Lacan’s concepts of the look and the gaze to explore the use of mobile technology in spaces of consumption. Although the article uses an empirical study, the authors make a notable theoretical contribution. They offer a clear definition of the look and the gaze that differentiates their position from screen theory by explaining that they are not so much concerned with the domineering look of the subject (Oswald, 2010) as with the troubling and anxiety-provoking gaze of the object that places the subject in question. They gather under the concept of ‘the look’ those postural, ideologically inflected identity-enhancing manoeuvres essential to being seen and under that of ‘the gaze’ those nameless anxieties, which acts as an anamorphic stain to unsettle our complacency and stable identities.
While Reyes et al. focus on troubling nature of the gaze and Loose uses art as a way to rub our noses into the ordure of human desire, Holbrook argues that Freud was abjured partly because he ‘aroused the shocked indignation and righteous ire of ordinary folks who did not like to be told that their son unconsciously lusted for his mother or that their daughter harboured repressed desires to sleep with her father’. At several points in his commentary Sidney Levy also draws attention to the psychoanalytic tendency to focus on the cloud and ignore the silver lining, most notably in the quoted riposte of his classmate to Bruno Bettelheim’s comment that knitting is symbolic masturbation, ‘Professor Bettelheim, when I knit, I knit and when I masturbate, I masturbate!’ The humour in this appeals to our common sense, but it also alerts us to the problem of privileging or disregarding the meaning attributed to the behaviour by the person engaging in it. Freud himself is once thought to have said that ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’. But one can question whether, when left to its own devices, a cigar is indeed ever just a cigar. Given that humans are symbolic creatures enmeshed in a cultural symbol system that is dense with meaning, being organized according to patterns of hidden substitutions and correspondences within which cigars relay specific meanings, on entering this system, even the cigar mentioned by Freud must necessarily abandon its purported innocence – as Freud and Lacan knew all too well in their ostentatious displays of cigars. Bettelheim was not wrong. But accepting this means challenging a fundamental tenet of marketing thought pertaining to the assumption of the self-identity and self-awareness of the human subject as revealed in self-reports.
Given the tendency mentioned above, for psychoanalysis to look for the canker hidden in the rose, it may come as something of a surprise that Miles returns to the utopian aim of reimagining marketing communications in line with the therapeutic approach of tale-telling envisaged by Erickson. Miles pictures the marketing communicator as creating the scene for dialogue through rapport. That Erickson is no Freudian is apparent in his stress on the unconscious as source of creative solutions rather than repressed desire. In light of this, from a Freudian perspective, the idea of an authentic dialogue remains problematic for all sorts of reasons, not least of which are transference effects. Miles seeks to counter this suggestion with the idea that consumer and brand can somehow speak to the unconscious desire of the other, although he is vague about how this is to occur and one of us remains to be convinced by his argument. Given the reviewers were very positive about this well-crafted piece, I (John) will leave aside my cantankerousness and say that I am content to see the article included in this issue, if only as a warning that some will always be tempted to see the rosy surface of the apple and consequently will seek to bury the unpleasant insights offered by psychoanalysis.
Finally, we include Robert Grafton-Small’s short article as an end piece because his use of a dense alliterative style enacts rather than describes psychoanalysis. He constructs a rebus that at first seems impermeable, akin to Finnegan’s Wake and demands a form of reading alive to the play of similarity and substitution characteristic of the operation of the unconscious. When asked if he wanted to provide some notes to guide the reader, he declined saying, ‘this is the equivalent of sitting on a train and asking, “Where are we now – are we there yet?”’
All of which leads us to an important questions: where are we going? Practicing analysts since Freud have had to deal with the issue of when psychoanalysis ends. We hope that the issue presents the diversity of psychoanalysis as a theory of consumer behaviour, marketing practice and marketing research. As such, we hope that this special issue marks a milestone in the road and not the end point. For us, psychoanalysis is not a dangerous stranger intruding into marketing theory. Among other things, it is a theory that helps us to make sense of marketplace behaviours; it is a method of analysis that encourages us to look at the unconscious motivations within markets through a range of conventional and unconventional techniques; and a cathartic tool helping us to come to terms with our own marketplace discontents. We do hope that readers can agree that there is a place for this.