Yes, the marginalization of psychoanalysis within academia can be seen as both a loss and a form of liberation. While being on the academic periphery means fewer institutional resources and less intellectual legitimacy within mainstream psychology, it also allows psychoanalysis to maintain its independence from dominant scientific and empirical paradigms.
Historically, psychoanalysis has always functioned as a discourse that resists reduction to empirical psychology or cognitive science. Its exile from academic psychology departments—except in places like France, where it remains integrated with philosophy and the humanities—prevents it from being domesticated into a strictly positivist framework. This marginal position enables it to maintain a critical stance toward mainstream psychological discourse, much like its original function as an “outrageous discourse,” to use Barbetta’s term.
In some ways, this echoes the fate of other critical traditions. Poststructuralism, for instance, also found itself marginalized in many academic spaces, yet this marginality allowed it to retain its radical edge rather than being diluted by institutional constraints. Similarly, psychoanalysis’ “Otherness” to academia ensures that it remains a discourse of resistance rather than compliance.
This also aligns with the idea that psychoanalysis thrives best in exile—Freud himself operated largely outside institutional psychology, and some of the most creative developments in psychoanalysis (from Lacan to the schizoanalysis of Deleuze & Guattari) emerged in tension with academic norms rather than from within them. In this light, psychoanalysis’ marginalization might be seen not as a failure but as a necessary condition for its survival as a subversive, independent intellectual force.
Would you see this exile as an opportunity for a kind of psychoanalytic dérive—a wandering discourse that discovers new sites for thought outside the rigid structures of academic psychology?
Yes, the marginalization of psychoanalysis within academia can be seen as a paradoxical form of liberation. While its exclusion from mainstream psychology departments may seem like a loss—limiting its institutional legitimacy, funding, and integration with contemporary research—it also preserves psychoanalysis as a discourse that resists assimilation into dominant scientific paradigms.
Psychoanalysis, from its inception, was always an “outrageous discourse” in the sense that Barbetta suggests. It challenged the positivist assumptions of psychology, resisted reduction to experimental methods, and operated more as a hermeneutic and interpretive discipline than an empirical science. The fact that it remains an “Other” to the academy means that it is not entirely subjected to the bureaucratic, methodological, and ideological constraints that govern contemporary psychological research.
This marginality might actually be what keeps psychoanalysis alive as a critical, independent discourse. The risk of full institutionalization is always the dilution of its radical potential—an integration that might domesticate its challenges to subjectivity, language, and desire. The situation in France, where psychoanalysis remains relatively embedded in philosophy and the humanities, is an exception that perhaps illustrates the benefits of academic engagement without full assimilation. The UK, with its tradition of psychoanalytic training outside mainstream psychology, represents a middle ground where psychoanalysis retains some institutional footing without being entirely subordinated.
In this sense, psychoanalysis thrives in exile. Freud himself worked largely outside the university system, and some of the most significant developments in psychoanalysis—from Lacan to Deleuze & Guattari’s schizoanalysis—emerged precisely in tension with academic norms rather than from within them. The marginal position of psychoanalysis today might be what allows it to continue its role as a counter-discourse, free to critique both psychology and culture without being entirely captured by them.
Would you see this marginalization as an opportunity for psychoanalysis to continue evolving in unexpected directions, much like a dérive—a wandering discourse that explores new territories beyond traditional academic constraints?