Weaving
subjective musings with theoretical speculation and taking
the consulting room as a point of departure, this paper
explores various themes on the question of identity. Its aim
is to open questions and lines of inquiry, rather than to
articulate a comprehensive theory. I consider identity as
identification with a social location, where that social
location is a function of groups. As such, identity is
inherently contingent, a relational affair, a soft assembly.
Identity may not be a particularly psychoanalytic concept,
but it is currently being tasked to do considerable work in
psychoanalysis: specifically, as a hinge between the dual
registers of the personal and social unconscious. Like any
symptom, the term identity both obscures and indexes,
signaling the urgent need for a radical revision of
psychoanalytic theory. The more we can use
the contingency of identity — the way we find
ourselves identified (by others as much as by ourselves) in
this place and time, whatever these might be — rather than
as a fixed category thought to transcend place and time, the
more that the concept of identity can be used in a
specifically psychoanalytic way to help us explore the
terrain of the political, which I distinguish from the
terrain of politics proper. These ideas are employed to
consider the current moment in psychoanalytic organizational
life, which takes place under the sign of a fundamental
paradigm shift (that is to say: catastrophic change).