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Case Study

The Psychoanalysis of Soccer

Stephen Longstaffe forwards an analysis by Marcel Sturrock, Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies at Watt University College (motto: “Watt U.C. is what you get!”), and the author of This Game Which Is Not One Half, Trevor.

Psychoanalysis’ scientific status has recently has been questioned by scholars working in the so-called ‘hard sciences’. Their claims have been convincingly refuted elsewhere, and it is to be hoped that they soon accept the truth that psychoanalysis is not only a science, but is itself a hard science. Is not one of the most common reactions to classic Lacanian formulations that they are ‘impossibly’ hard? But psychoanalysis can also easily be demonstrated to have an empirical foundation, as confirmed by my recent researches into one particular area, football (‘soccer’, for readers unfamiliar with European critical terminology).

There are more than twenty-two agents at play on this particular discursive field. Psychoanalytic terminology describes their activity so well that one might almost imagine it had been thought of whilst watching the sport, instead of through the rigorous clinical analysis of terribly serious cases.

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