The Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society (APCS) is an international and interdisciplinary non-profit organization incorporated in 1994 for the purpose of promoting the development of new, more socially beneficial applications of psychoanalysis to important social and cultural issues.
Mission Statement
The mission of APCS is to promote the use of psychoanalysis for the solution of social problems. The most serious of these problems, including interpersonal, international, institutional, and structural violence, as well as drug abuse, irresponsible sexuality, and intolerance in its various forms, will be extremely difficult if not impossible to solve unless we address the psychological roots that are the immediate causes of these destructive behaviors. Psychoanalysis offers the best model we have for understanding how the most basic and powerful psychological forces--love, hate, knowledge, belief, meaning, identity, desire, enjoyment, fantasy, and so on function as both causes and effects of social and cultural phenomena. The psychoanalytic investigation of culture and society thus constitutes a unique and arguably indispensible means of understanding and intervening in the psychological roots of our most serious social problems, as well as understanding and promoting the psychological and social benefits that various social formations and cultural phenomena offer.
To request additional information, contact:
Marshall Alcorn