Theorizing Goffman And Freud: Goffman's Interaction Order As A Social-Structural Underpinning For Freud's Psychoanalytic Self

A dialectical reading of Goffman and Freud connects the Interaction Order to the psychoanalytic conception of the self and thereby open up new possibilities of interpretation and transformation. Goffman's concept of the Interaction Order enables us to understand more clearly the Freudian concepts of superego, ego-ideal, and the introjected Father. Next, we draw out the dramaturgical approach of both Goffman and Freud in terms of performing self and performing illness and discuss how the psychoanalytic reading of Goffman's work sheds light on the formation of neuroses and the neurotic symptoms which Freud characterized as a type of performance. Here we link Freud's 'symptoms' to Goffman's modes of disordered or flawed modes of interaction, specifically hysteria connected to havoc and obsessive compulsive disorder connected to hyperritualization. This dialectical reading allows us to rethink notions of sociality and thereby opens new possibilities for constituting the relation between the self and the social. Keywords: Ego-Ideal, Freud, Goffman, Havoc, Hyper-Ritualization, Interaction Order, Neurosis, Psychoanalysis, Self, Super Ego. Cette lecture dialectique de Goffman et de Freud met en rapport 'Interaction Order' et la conception psychanalytique du soi, ouvrant ainsi la voie a de nouvelles possibilites d'interpretation et de transformation. Le concept d' 'Interaction Order' de Goffman nous permet de comprendre plus clairement les concepts freudiens de surmoi, d'ego-ideal, et de pere introjecte (ou incorpore). Dans un deuxieme temps, nous examinons l'approche dramaturgique de Goffman et de Freud quant a la question de la performance du soi et a celle de la maladie, nous demontrons qu'une lecture psychanalytique de l'oeuvre de Goffman permet de faire la lumiere sur la formation des neuroses et les symptomes neurotiques caracterises par Freud comme un type de performance. A ce point de notre analyse, nous comparons les symptomes freudiens aux modes d'interaction desordonnee et mal formee, et tout particulierement l'hysterie telle qu'elle est reliee au desordre obsessionnel et compulsif, lui-meme relie a l'hyperritualization. Cette lecture dialectique nous permet de repenser les notions de sociabilite et ouvre donc la voie a de nouvelles possibilites pour construire les rapports entre le soi et le social. Mots cles: Ego-Ideal, Freud, Goffman, hyper-ritualisation, 'interaction order', Neurose, Psychanalyse, Surmoi
Introduction Often misread as a straightforward critic of psychiatry, as his work Asylums has too often been misinterpreted, or as a sociologist of emotions, Erving Goffman demonstrated genuine and profound [...]