Sport and Psychoanalysis - What Sport Reveals About Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears

Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears explores the intersection of sport and psychoanalysis, emphasizing the often-overlooked psycho-social dimensions underpinning the experience of sport. By challenging the idea that sport offers an "escape" from reality-a realm separate to the politics of everyday life-each chapter critically considers the unconscious desires, fantasies, and fears that underpin the sporting spectacle for both participants and spectators. Indeed, beyond simply applying psychoanalysis to sport, this book proposes how sport can be used to pose questions to psychoanalysis, thus using sport as a medium to elucidate key psychoanalytic ideas and concepts. This volume addresses a diverse range of theorists, including Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Lou Andreas-Salome¿, Norman O. Brown, and Frantz Fanon, and applies them across a variety of topics and sports, including NFL coaching, Manny Pacquiao, play, football, basketball, baseball, poker, and the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, therefore providing a unique understanding of the cultural, social, and psychic significance of sports. A timely and relevant collection, this book will appeal to scholars and practitioners interested in understanding sport from both the cultural and clinical application of psychoanalytic theory as well as academics and practitioners in sport studies, psychology, sociology, education, and cultural studies.

List of contents

Introduction: Sport: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry by Jack Black and Joseph S. Reynoso
Part I: The Athletic Body
Chapter 1: Sport and the Erotic by David W. McIvor
Chapter 2: The Athletic Body: A Lacanian Perspective by Hub Zwart
Part II: Coaching
Chapter 3: The Racial Melancholia of Aspiring Black NFL Head Coaches by Bradley A. Thomas
Chapter 4: Psychoanalysis, Mental Coaching, and Sports by Robert Samuels
Part III: Fandom
Chapter 5: Are we the champions? Sports Fandom through the Lens of Pretend Play and Intersubjectivity by Benjamin Bernstein
Chapter 6: The Psychoanalysis of Basketball by David Cushman
Chapter 7: Cheering on Solid Ground: Plotting a Developmental Arc toward ethical Fandom by Monique S. Bowen
Part IV: Identity
Chapter 8: To Know of Manny Pacquiao: The Limits of Identity under Empire by Joseph S. Reynoso
Chapter 9: Homosexual Football: Perspectives from Lou Andreas-Salome¿ by Rayyan Dabbous
Part V: Play
Chapter 10: Turning Two: Psychoanalysis and the Poetics of Pivoting; Or, Initial Thoughts for a Topology by Patrick Scanlon
Chapter 11: Becoming-ball: A Schizo-soma Ball Movement by Shani Samai-Moskovich
Chapter 12: Play, Sport, and the Creativity of Sublimation: Understanding the Importance of Unimportant Activities by Jack Black

About the author

Jack Black is associate professor of culture, media, and sport at Sheffield Hallam University.
Joseph S. Reynoso is a psychoanalytic clinical psychologist in New York City.

Product details

• Authors: Jack Black Black, Jack Reynoso Black
• Assisted by: Jack Black (Editor), Joseph S Reynoso (Editor), Joseph S. Reynoso (Editor)
• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 15.07.2024
• EAN: 9781666938425
• ISBN: 978-1-66693-842-5
• No. of pages: 286
• Series: Psychoanalytic Studies: Clinical, Social, and Cultural Contexts; Psychoanalytic Studies: Clinical, Social, and Cultural Conte
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Psychology > Psychoanalysis; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); SPORTS & RECREATION / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, Society & culture: general, Sports & outdoor recreation, Sport: general, Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology, Society and culture: general, Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology), PSYCHOLOGY / Psychotherapy / Psychoanalysis