Yes, there is a strong argument to be made for the exhaustion of psychoanalysis, in a way that parallels the exhaustion of philosophy that Laruelle critiques. Psychoanalysis, as a discipline, has undergone various crises - theoretical exhaustion, institutional stagnation, cultural irrelevance, and co-optation by other fields - which suggest that its original radical impulse may have run its course. However, just as non-philosophy seeks to suspend philosophy rather than end it, one could imagine a non-psychoanalysis that moves beyond the limitations of classical psychoanalysis while preserving its radical potential.
1. Theoretical Exhaustion: Repeating the Same Structures
Just as Laruelle argues that philosophy is trapped in self-referential structures, psychoanalysis could be seen as similarly bound by its own conceptual system, which it endlessly refines but never truly escapes.
Freud’s framework (Oedipus complex, unconscious drives, repression, etc.) remains the foundation of psychoanalysis, despite repeated critiques from within and outside the field.
Lacan’s structuralist and later topological models sought to rejuvenate psychoanalysis, but his followers often engage in hermetic elaborations rather than new conceptual breakthroughs.
The Kleinian and Object-Relations traditions expanded Freud’s ideas, but often remain within the same fundamental logic of early childhood development and unconscious fantasy.
Zizekian psychoanalysis revives Freud through Hegel and Marx, but primarily as a philosophical tool, not as a new development in clinical practice.
Psychoanalysis has largely become a commentary on itself, rather than a discipline capable of radically transforming human understanding.
This self-referential loop is what leads to theoretical exhaustion.
2. Institutional Exhaustion: The Decline of Psychoanalytic Influence
Psychoanalysis once shaped literature, philosophy, film, cultural studies, and psychiatry. However, in recent decades, its institutional power has declined:
Displacement by Cognitive and Neuroscientific Models
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and neuroscience-based psychiatry have largely displaced psychoanalysis in clinical psychology, as they offer more empirically measurable results.
Psychoanalysis is now often seen as inefficient, too slow, and lacking empirical validation in a world dominated by scientific metrics.
Fragmentation and Scholasticism
Psychoanalytic schools have become highly fragmented, with various factions (Freudians, Lacanians, Kleinians, Winnicottians) spending more time arguing among themselves than engaging with the world.
Just as philosophy in academia has become hyper-specialized and disconnected from real-world problems, psychoanalysis risks becoming a closed, scholastic discourse.
Therapeutic Professionalization vs. Radical Potential
Early psychoanalysis had a radical, exploratory energy - Freud was mapping unknown terrain, and figures like Reich, Lacan, and Guattari sought to revolutionize the field.
Today, psychoanalysis has largely become a professionalized therapy, often indistinguishable from elite bourgeois self-improvement techniques.
Instead of being a tool for radical critique, it is now a disciplinary institution, regulated by professional bodies with rigid protocols.
This institutional stagnation mirrors philosophy’s exhaustion as an academic discipline, where debates become insular rather than world-transforming.
3. Cultural Exhaustion: The Loss of Psychoanalysis as a Revolutionary Force
Psychoanalysis once functioned as a countercultural force - challenging Victorian repression, bourgeois morality, and traditional family structures. However, it has lost much of this radical energy:
Capitalist Appropriation
Psychoanalytic concepts have been co-opted by late capitalism, turning its radical critique of desire into tools for marketing and consumer manipulation.
Freud’s theory of unconscious desire has been repurposed to fuel advertising and social media algorithms that manipulate consumption.
The Lacanian “desire of the Other” has been weaponized by capitalism to create infinite dissatisfaction, driving perpetual consumerism.
The Therapeutic Turn: From Emancipation to Adaptation
Freud originally saw psychoanalysis as a way to free people from repression, allowing them to confront their unconscious conflicts.
Today, psychoanalysis (where it still exists) often functions as a means of adaptation, helping individuals manage their anxieties without challenging the broader social structures that produce them.
Therapeutic culture absorbs psychoanalysis into the logic of self-care, resilience, and productivity, rather than radical questioning.
Failure to Address New Forms of Subjectivity
Classical psychoanalysis was developed in a bourgeois, patriarchal, European context and often struggles to account for new forms of subjectivity, including postcolonial, queer, trans, and non-Western experiences.
This has led to calls for a decolonial, feminist, and non-Western psychoanalysis, but so far, psychoanalysis has not fully adapted to these demands.
Psychoanalysis, like traditional philosophy, risks becoming historically obsolete - a once-revolutionary field that can no longer respond to contemporary realities.
4. Is a Non-Psychoanalysis Possible?
Just as Laruelle proposes non-philosophy as a way out of philosophy’s exhaustion, can we imagine a non-psychoanalysis that escapes these traps?
1. Suspending Psychoanalysis’ “Decision”
Just as Laruelle suspends philosophy’s decision to divide thought into dualisms, a non-psychoanalysis would suspend psychoanalysis decision to interpret everything through the lens of unconscious drives and Oedipal structures.
Instead of treating the unconscious as something that must always be analyzed, perhaps it could be seen as one mode of experience among others, not an all-encompassing reality.
2. Moving Beyond the Clinic and Into the World
Classical psychoanalysis focuses on the individual patient in the consulting room.
Non-psychoanalysis might engage with collective, political, and ecological dimensions of the unconscious, much like Guattari’s concept of ecosophy.
3. A Radical New Theory of Subjectivity
Instead of repeating Freud or Lacan, a non-psychoanalysis could start from contemporary experiences - how do AI, social media, capitalism, climate anxiety, and posthuman conditions shape subjectivity today?
It could explore new technological, materialist, or mystical conceptions of the unconscious, rather than relying on the classical Freudian model.
4. A New Relationship to Desire
Instead of treating desire as lack (Lacan) or repressed instinct (Freud), could we conceive of desire in a more affirmative, generative way?
How do different cultural, historical, and non-Western traditions think about unconscious life, and can they offer alternatives?
Conclusion: From Exhaustion to Renewal
Psychoanalysis, like philosophy, faces an exhaustion that comes from its own success - it has mapped its terrain so thoroughly that it now risks circling endlessly within itself, disconnected from the contemporary world.
The challenge is whether psychoanalysis can reinvent itself or whether it will remain a historical relic. If Laruelle’s non-philosophy suspends philosophy’s exhausted categories, then perhaps a non-psychoanalysis could suspend the old psychoanalytic categories and open new possibilities for thinking about the psyche, desire, and the unconscious in ways that are yet to be imagined.