A Psychoanalytic Study of Sport: What It Means and How We Can Use It [abstract only]

The recently launched Sport and Psychoanalysis journal (Cogent Social Sciences) presents a timely and unique platform for exploring the critical relevance of psychoanalytic approaches to sport. Emphasising how sport is shaped by the dynamics of the unconscious, as well as desire, fantasy, contradiction, and enjoyment, this presentation will make the claim for a psychoanalytic reading of sport. Drawing from my research, and elaborating on key concepts and arguments, it will be noted how sport operates as a privileged site for unconscious expressions, where failure, repetition, and disavowal shed light on the subject’s constitutive division, including its entanglement with social and political life. Ultimately, by theorising the psychic investments underpinning sport, psychoanalysis can open new avenues for understanding why sport matters—often despite, or even because of, its irrationality.