Article

ON THE P OV ERTY OF THEORY

J o h n B i rd
University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
Correspondence: John Bird, Centre for Psycho-Social Studies, University of the West of England,
Bristol BS6 6AX, UK
E-mail: john.bird@uwe.ac.uk or birdreader@tiscali.co.uk

A b s t ra c t
This paper seeks to show that we have a psychodynamic attachment to both the theories we
espouse and the methods of research that we use, which are driven by anxieties that relate to
us as persons and as social beings. In particular, the paper seeks to relate our attachment to
theory to the positions we occupy in the academy and in the political world beyond the
academy.

Ke y wo rds
psychic retreats; false self; obsessional hysterical and narcissistic character
structures; intellectuals; anxiety; engagement and disengagement
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2006) 11, 251264.
doi:10.1057/palgrave.pcs.2100097

B a c k gr o u n d

n common with many papers, this paper has developed out of an

irritation, something that troubled and annoyed me. In this case it was
to do with what seems to be a change in the role of theory in the social
sciences and humanities, change that has facilitated greater disengagement
from the world of real social and political conflicts at the very moment when
we might hope for greater engagement. There were two referents for this
irritation. First, my experience as a reviewer for a number of academic
journals, which increasingly involved reading articles that seemed to have an
immense weight of theory that rarely added to my understanding of the issue
at hand. Second, my attendance at the 2005 conference of the Association

c 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1088-0763/06 $30.00

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 2006, 11, (251264)
www.palgrave-journals.com/pcs

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for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society. The conference theme was
psychoanalysis and community, and its purpose was to explore ways that
psychoanalytic theory and practice can enhance our links with communities.
What was noticeable was that a sizeable proportion of papers around 2025%
focused on texts, for example, on community in film and literature. These
were frequently weighted with a great amount of theory, as if to suggest that
theorizing the text will provide us with a method of engagement with
communities. What was best about the conference not only I but many
others felt was when people working in communities together with
psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic thinkers spoke of their work, for example,
in getting young people off drugs and into education and employment.
The irritation led me to think about what theory is for and the extent to
which we seem to have attachments to particular theoretical frameworks. Some
questions began to emerge is there something psychodynamic in our
attachment, for example, to Foucault or Lacan or Zizek? Is our attachment
to theory symptomatic of something and, if so, what? How far are our
attachments to theory primarily defensive and, if so, what are they part of a
defence against? How can we develop more positive relationships to theory? In
attempting to write about some of these issues, the intention is not to reject
theory in general or even to reject particular theories, but simply to try and
make us aware that there is more to the theories we use than their heuristic
value, that is, their role in explaining social and political events as these impinge
on us as individuals and as members of social groups.

I nt r o d u ct i o n
The title of this paper is a direct reference to EP Thompsons The Poverty of
Theory, published in 1978, which included a savage attack on the works of
Louis Althusser on the grounds that what became known as theoretical practice
was pointless and illusory and involved a complete withdrawal from real social
and political engagement with the world. This paper seeks to take Thompsons
argument forward in order to discuss how we currently come to use theory, and,
in particular, to develop an approach to the psychodynamics of theory.
To begin this argument I cite David Sibley, who discusses his move from
engagement with the world of empirical and politically grounded activity with
Travellers to an engagement with theory for its own sake. Sibley says:
ymy own movement from direct involvement to text is also a kind of
splitting. (Sibley, 2004, no page)

Although Sibley does not discuss the psychodynamics of this process of splitting
in any detail, his work does provide us with a microscosm of what currently
seems to face many intellectuals in the UK and the USA, and indicates how we
are faced with at least two difficulties in defining our social role. First, contained
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within the UK Labour governments idea of the Third Way is the idea that
ideological dispute is at an end, which implies that there is political agreement
beneath the superficial differences of political parties. Second, in the USA, and
perhaps beginning to emerge in the UK in response to 9/11, is the idea that there
is one truth, structured around the need for worldwide democracy successfully
to fight the war on terror. In the first case, the intellectual has nothing to fight
against and, indeed, any fight against the end of ideology and political
disagreements only goes to show how out of touch and/or politically dangerous
the intellectual is. In the second case, there is also only one way to be right and
to be politically engaged and that is on the side of the so-called democratic route
to winning the so-called war on terror. The UK Labour Governments position
on the war in Iraq provides an example of our dilemma(s) in that it suggests you
are either with us the war was justified or against us and if you are against
us then that must imply that you are opposed to democracy. In addition, if you
are against us you are unintentionally supporting those very terrorists that we
are fighting against and form, as it were, a fifth column, an enemy within.
Faced with these dilemmas, intellectuals can respond in a number of ways,
but typically they exhibit two distinct responses. On the one hand, there is
helplessness and anxiety about what is to be done and, on the other hand, anger
and resentment at the betrayal of the intellectual by governments. Whatever the
reaction, the free-floating intellectual beloved of Mannheim (1976), that is, the
intellectual who can develop some kind of perspectival synthesis from the
multiplicity of different views of the world, is now rendered nugatory. It is this
anxiety over the role of the intellectual that I want to explore psychosocially,
and to argue that this anxiety produces a particular set of relationships to
theory. Intellectuals become emotionally attached to theories as ways of
avoiding reality, and, in so doing, they handle their anxieties over their role
either in a paranoid-schizoid or a depressive fashion. Attachment to theory thus
becomes predominantly defensive, in part as a result of our changing social role
as intellectuals. As I will suggest below, the spaces in which to develop forms of
non-defensive attachment to theory become more limited as we are more and
more driven to user engagement, where the users of our knowledge increasingly
hold the purse strings and dictate what we do.
We can start our discussion of attachments to theory by asking a simple but
important question: What is theory for? I ask this question because there is
probably insufficient discussion about the role of theory, about what theory is
for. We seem to take it for granted that theory is a good thing and that as both
academics and practitioners we need theory. Debates about the role of theory
were, in the recent past, dear to the hearts of many Marxists, who took Marxs
arguments about theory seriously. As Marx argued, the philosophers have only
interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it (Marx, 1886/
1969, p 15). In essence, for Marx, theory was about engagement with the
world, with the world of real, material interests and their conflicts. This idea of
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theory being for something practical was subsequently taken up, for example,
by Foucault in discussing the roles of the specific intellectual and in defining
theories as toolkits (1977, 1988). This is how Foucault put it:
I would like my books to be a kind of tool-kit which others can rummage
through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own
areay . I would like [my work] to be useful to an educator, a warden, a
magistrate, a conscientious objector. I dont write for an audience, I write for
users, not readers. (Foucault, 1977a, p 34)
ythe theory to be constructed is not a system but an instrument, a logic of
the specificity of power relations and the struggles around them. (Foucault,
1977b, p 145)

As theoreticians we are engaged, whether we know it/intend it or not, and our

theories are themselves part of the power relations in which we are enmeshed.
Intellectuals, for Foucault, do not provide theory for social groups in his case,
those who are socially and politically marginalized but merely facilitate the
development of theories usable in specific and strategic locations by those in
those social locations. So when Foucault was involved with the Le Group
dinformation sur les prisons (GIP) in France, he saw his role as providing some
form of theoretical scaffolding that GIP might use even though Foucault would
have no direct involvement with that engagement (see Artieres et al., 2003).
This is the whole point of the idea that his theory is for users who are not
predominantly, or even marginally, other theorists. In essence, the issue is as
much who is theory for as what is theory for.
The aim of this paper is simple: to explore what seems to be a retreat into
theory such that theory becomes almost an end-in-itself, a process in which
theories interrogate theories and/or interrogate texts and discourses. This is not
an argument in favour of rejecting theory, but simply an argument that theory is
for something other than an aspect of professional dominance, one-uppersonship or simple play. If there is a game of theory then part of that game
is some engagement with the real world.
Engagement is not always facilitated in some of the ways in which theory is
mobilized, for example, in the journals for which I edit, the research proposals I
review and the sociological and psychoanalytic literature I read. Often what I
find and discussions with colleagues indicate I am not alone in this involves
(a) discussions of theory-in-itself and/or (b) discussions about what a given
theory can tell us about a particular form of representation (filmic, literary etc)
and/or (c) contain a far too great weight of theory that gets in the way of an
analysis of real events. What is often lacking is papers and articles which
confront reality we might say, for example, the reality of racism rather than
texts about, and representations of racism. There is no inherent reason why we
should not discuss representations of racism, especially where these discussions
illuminate our understanding of the structural bases of racism, but there is a
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danger that the pain of real racism and the structural conditions underlying
those representations can be occluded and obscured by a too great emphasis on
theory and theorizing.
I would argue that what is sometimes an over-concern with representations,
images and texts, and with what theory has to offer for an understanding of
those representations, has to do with more than the well-recognized linguistic
and cultural turn in the humanities and social sciences. It also tells us something
about our individual and social attachment to theory, an attachment which has
a psychodynamic component. Theory may not simply be a matter of
understanding something, of rationally explaining something, although, of
course, good enough theory enables this engagement to happen. There may, in
addition, be a powerful emotional attachment to theory and some relationships
between the sort of person we are, what we might term our characterology, and
the theories we espouse. We can begin to explore the psychodynamics and
characterology of theory by focusing on three possible approaches. First, using
Steiners analysis of psychic retreats (1993), I will discuss how theory can
become a means to avoid engagement with reality. Second, using Winnicotts
ideas concerning the false self (Winnicott, 1965; Belger, 2002), I will argue that
theory might encourage us to flee into over-intellectualization. Third, I will
discuss how our attachment to theory relates to hysterical, obsessional and
narcissistic character structures (Freud, 1931, 1966; Young-Bruehl, 1996,
2003). Subsequently, I will discuss the idea that we develop forms of attachment
to the methods of research we use and will then try to indicate how our
attachments to theory and methods might become less defensive.

A p sychosocial a pproach to theory

T h e o r i e s as p s y c h i c r e t r e a t s
[Psychic retreats] function to help the patient to avoid anxiety by avoiding
contact with other people and with reality. (Steiner, 1993, p 2)

Steiners analysis of psychic retreats occurs in the context of a series of clinical

studies of patients in analysis and is primarily oriented to understanding those
patients resistance to analysis. Steiners is an approach that has links, for
example, with Reichs analysis of character armour and with Abrahams
discussions of narcissistic resistance. Steiner suggests that there may be psychic
retreats at the social level, which facilitate similar forms of avoidance of anxiety.
In what follows, I will suggest that theory can form such a psychic retreat for
anxieties generated, in part, by the social and political role of the intellectual.
Steiners description and analysis of psychic retreats are clear and concise.
Faced with anxiety, the retreat becomes a way of managing and/or neutralizing
that anxiety by avoiding contact with reality and with other people. Although
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Steiner sees psychic retreats as a third position in addition to Kleins

identification of paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, the defences
mobilized in those positions are crucial. In the former, the defences include
splitting, paranoia and forms of pathological projective identification; in the
latter, omnipotence, denial of inner and outer reality, and reparation, the latter
of which can be manic, obsessional and, we might say, real. Contained in this
idea of psychic retreats are forms of interpersonal retreat cults, business
organizations, total institutions and the like which can become places where
internal and innate destructiveness and external trauma are managed. Theories
themselves can, under certain conditions, become interpersonal and social
psychic retreats.
The retreat is idealized and admired but the cost of this is that phantasy and
omnipotence work in a way unchecked by reality. The retreat may be normal or
pathological, but whichever it is, it can become addictive and masochistic. As
Steiner sums it up:
Psychic retreats vary, as we have seen, both in their structure and in the
anxiety they defend against. Some function predominantly as a retreat from
paranoid-schizoid anxieties of fragmentation and persecution, while others
are deployed primarily to deal with depressive affects such as guilt and
despair. All, to varying degrees, serve as a retreat from reality, and in most, if
not all, perverse mechanisms can be observed. (Steiner, 1993, p 99)

As Armstrong suggests (1998), the retreat comes to act as a container for

anxiety, and that container often takes the form of a social organization:
The organisation becomes personified: controlling, sanctioning and protecting as long as it remains unchallenged. Correspondingly, the individual
becomes locked into the organisation and in a way that makes it difficult to
regain, reassemble and move beyond the fragmentation of the self.
(Armstrong, 1998, p 6)

We could now think about theory and the attachment to theory as a form of
psychic retreat, especially where this attachment avoids contact with reality and
gives us a feeling of being locked in, such that theory becomes an end-in-itself.
This allows the free flow of phantasy and omnipotence in which the community
of theorists avidly colludes. Theory allows protection from external and
internal anxieties, [but] at the expense of [the] development and evolution of
izek have the answer for
meaning (Armstrong, 1998, p 7). Thus, Lacan and Z
everything even the answer to which is the real Freud and the community of
Lacanians and Zizekians colludes with this and excludes those who are not in
the community.
If theory is a form of psychic retreat then what are the anxieties that this
retreat is addressing? With reference to depressive affects, the helplessness and
despair of the theorist in the face of terrible social and political events 9/11,
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global warming, famine, the Asian Tsunami, 7/7 in London make theory an
attractive retreat, an alternative to engagement with the realities of despair.
With reference to paranoid-schizoid anxieties, the persecution of the theorist
when faced with the call to certainty and a return to fundamental truths may
lead to a paranoid attachment to theory through retreat from both a real and a
phantasied persecution. These forms of retreat may be exacerbated in three
ways: first, through the paranoid style in much contemporary political and
social action and thought, a paranoid style exacerbated by the fear engendered
by the war on terror; second, through the peculiar and particular conditions of
the social production of knowledge in the academy (Sibley, 2004), with its
attachment to systems of quality control and assessment, of tenure and
promotion, of user engagement and so on; and third, through what seem to be
the structural conditions of post-modernity, in which the fragmentation of the
self and of identity become, as it were, normal conditions. The structural
insecurities of flexible labour markets, and the constant pressure to change and
cultivate identities, feed into forms of defensive attachment to theory (Bauman,
2005).
Fa l s e s e l f- re l a t i o n s h i p s t o t h e o ri e s

The idea that theory may be a form of psychic retreat implies that we often use
theory for defensive purposes, both as individuals and as members of social
organizations. As Belger suggests (2002), we can approach the difficulties and
dangers of theory in another, but related way, that is, with reference to
Winnicotts idea of the False Self:
ythis False Self functions as the reactive protector of the true core of the
individual in an environmental context in which impingements [infantile and
contemporary] and neglect, rather than attunements, have dominated the
developmental fieldy . The False Self is reactive instead of proactive. (Belger,
2002, p 51)

In the context of theory in this case, the role of theory in the training of
analysts Belger postulates false self-relationships to theory which foreclose
potential space and inhibit the healthy development of the therapist-as-subject
(Belger, 2002, p 51). As such, there is an elaboration of the intellectual at the
expense of the real (p 55). These defensive, false self-relationships to theory are
further analysed by Ogden:
The illusion of knowing is achieved through the creation of a wide range of
substitute formations that fill the potential space in which desire and fear,
appetite and fullness, love and hate might otherwise come into beingy . In
the absence of the capacity to generate potential space, one relies on defensive
substitutes for the experience of being alivey . (Ogden, 1989, cited in Belger,
2002, p 55).
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Theory becomes defensive and delusional and provides us with a phantasy of

being all-knowing and omnipotent. For Belger and Ogden, the problem
becomes one of releasing omnipotent control in much the same way that the
infant may find it difficult to release its control in its relationships with carers.
As Belger suggests, following Wheelis (1958), theory becomes a way in which
we foreclose creativity, such that it is not experience which dictates what might
be called truth, but dogma. As we will see later, this release of control and this
withdrawal from theoretical dogma is part of the development of what could be
called a healthy relationship to theory.
This argument applies to the theorist-as-subject as much as to the therapistas-subject. Two aspects of our attachment to theory are significant here. First,
are the commonly noted attempts to identify with teachers and founders in
order to provide ourselves with a protective shell that might spare us from the
impingements of reality. Second, is the possible use of theory as a means to
avoid creativity and spontaneity, to avoid the experience of being alive. Of
course, this paper is not discussing what could be an equally disabling flight
from theory into some form of crude empiricism. Such a flight away from
theory is likely to have its own psychodynamics.
What are the social and political contexts in which theory becomes an aspect
of false self-formations? I would suggest that the real impingements of terrible
events and of the state, linked to the marginalization and neglect of the theorist,
facilitate a re-emergence of the impingements and neglect commonly
experienced in childhood. One way of dealing with these impingements is in
the form of what we might call over-intellectualization, with theory serving as a
mechanism by which that process is facilitated.
T h e o r y a n d c h a ra c t e r s t r u c t u re s

The Freuds, Sigmund and Anna (1931, 1966), and subsequently Young-Bruehl
(1996, 2003), have had much to say about what is best termed characterology.
They argue that we develop, as forms of defence and as ways of living in the
world, character structures that can take on both normal and pathological
forms. Of particular interest for attachment to theory are the three main
character structures, that is, hysterical, obsessional and narcissistic.
We need first to discuss character structures in general, and then we can see
how the different character structures may relate to different attachments to,
attitudes towards, and uses of theory. The character structures are forms of
defence that are, first and foremost, functional and normal, but may, as
indicated, become aspects of pathology. We all have hysterical, obsessional and
narcissistic traits, but not all of us come to have the disorders associated with
those traits. In addition, the character types are not pure types; we can, for
example, have hysterical obsessionals and narcissistic obsessionals. If we
characterize all these character structures as defenses against anxiety, then the
mechanisms of defence are clearly different. Repression is the main defence of
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the hysteric, reaction formation the main defence of the obsessional, and denial
and disavowal the main defence of the narcissist.
How might this relate to attachment to theory and the ways that theories help
us to manage anxiety? It is easiest to relate attachments to theory to the
obsessional character structure, as we can see in two short quotations from
Young-Bruehl (1996) that discuss the relationships between character structures
and prejudices:
Academics not infrequently need both the obsessional routines of schools and
a captive audience of students whom they think of as in need of shaping up,
of mental laundering. (Young-Bruehl, 1996, p 213)

In describing the work of many academics, Young Bruehl calls attention to

yconstant intellectualisationybrooding, repeating phrasesycomplex interpretations of doctrines, commentaries on commentaries, citations upon
citations, in arcane or very academic language. (Young-Bruehl, 1996, p 211)

It is slightly more difficult, but nonetheless useful, to explore both the hysterical
and the narcissistic attachments to theory.
In general, hysterical character structures involve dependency, constantly
changing symptoms, vanity and seduction, fear of the loss of love and
somatizations. Narcissistic structures narcissism of the mind (Young-Bruehl,
1996, p 566, footnote 36) include the admiration of intellectual abilities,
denial of reality, the need for attention and approval of others, and either the
idealization or the disparaging of interpretation. These seem to play a large part
in our attachments to theory as well as in some of the processes of academic
approval. We might therefore see the whole organization and structuring of
conferences as an aspect of narcissistic characterology and a narcissistic
attachment to theory. Not only are many conference presentations in sociology
and the humanities about theory-in-itself, but they involve a group of people
closely identifying with the particular theory being espoused and seeking to
bolster that attachment and idealize the theory/the theoretical.
Essentially, then, the ways we act as editors of journals, our concern with
citations, are themselves grounded in particular character structures which have
an elective affinity with the university as a social system (Weber, in Gerth and
Mills, 1946). We collude with academic processes and procedures by idealizing
theories and theorists. We come to fear the loss of the love and respect of the
community if we challenge this idealization. Repetition compulsion forces us to
compulsively repeat the theoretical shibboleths. We turn to theory because we
have a fear of not-knowing, and we rarely respond to our students questions
with the answer I/we dont know. As I will argue below, the acceptance of
not-knowing is part of the process of developing a less defensive attachment to
theory.

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I s t h e r e a l s o a t t a c h m e n t to me t h o d s o f r e s e a rc h ?
This paper has focused on emotional attachments to theory and how these relate
to both our social positions and our positioning as subjects. In this section, I will
briefly explore the extent to which we may develop such attachments to
methods of research. In essence, we may choose methodologies interviewing,
questionnaires, large-scale statistical surveys not simply because of the
evidence they deliver their scientificity but also because of the sort of person
we are understood to be psychoanalytically.
Most obviously, as McLaughlin (2003) and others have argued, research is an
emotional experience, particularly in that it involves relationships with others
the researched and because it may lead us to challenge our own and
respondents long-held ideas. As Clarke (2002) and others have also suggested,
the research process let us say interviewing will evoke some of the
mechanisms typical of the psychoanalytic encounter, for example, projection,
introjection and projective identification. These will affect both how we do
research and our interpretations of research data. Maybe, however, we choose
particular methods for reasons that are located in psychodynamics as much as in
the real world of bids for funding, the UK Research Assessment Exercise and
suchlike.
As a speculative exercise let us briefly consider the debate about quantitative
and qualitative methods. At one level, there is a politics of this debate. Funders
often favour quantitative research on the grounds of its greater scientificity.
Qualitative research is, as a consequence, frequently less valued and may not
attract the biggest grants for research. Is there, also, a psychodynamic element
to the methods of research we espouse? Quantitative research takes us a long
way from the social, and the statistical packages available for data analysis do
the interpretation for us. It takes us away from the processes of projection,
projective identification, containment that form part of much qualitative
research. This suggests that there may be an attraction that is psychodynamic in
choosing to do qualitative research a social bond, helping people to say
something not said before, the pleasure to be derived from interpretation while
recognizing the dangers of wild interpretation, and so on. In addition,
qualitative research may bring us closer to the messiness of the real world, to
forms of social and political engagement and to the anxieties about our role as
intellectuals.

O n t h e p o s s i b i l i t y o f n o n - de fe n s i v e at t a c hm en t s to t h eo r y a nd
method
It is clearly the social and political conditions of intellectuals that help to
generate forms of defensive attachment to theory. However, that need not
suggest that we are helpless in the face of those conditions and may, indeed,
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suggest that less defensive and more productive engagements with theory are
possible even while recognizing the constraints under which we operate. We can
turn to Winnicott and Bion in order to suggest how this may be possible.
Belger (2002) indicates that healthy relationships to theory are possible, ones
in which theory becomes first a holding environment and then a basis for
creativity. French and Simpson (1999), following Bion, suggest that we need to
accept the value of not-knowing and also the value of opening ourselves up to
an uncertainty not already cluttered with theory, an uncertainty that is
prematurely denied in too-early theorizations. An emphasis on creativity and
not-knowing may provide a basis on which to elaborate non-defensive
attachments to theory.
Let us see how less defensive attachments to theory might emerge. From
Belger, we can take the idea that we need an ever-loosening attachment to
theory (Belger, 2002, p 43). Just as the infant moves from absolute dependence
through relative dependence towards independence so must the developing
academic. This is how Belger describes the trainee analysts developing
relationship to theory:
ythe trainee must eventually be able to navigate an ever-loosening
attachment to theory. This does not mean that the trainee must renounce
theory outright, nor does it mean that the relationship to theory and the
content that has been taken in becomes forgotten or repressed. Instead, it
becomes internalised to such an extent that its form changes and its functions
dissipate within the mind of the therapist who is now in a position of making
use of the theory in a less consciousyless definable way. (Belger, 2002, pp
4344)

It is only when this loosening attachment, this independence has been achieved,
that the real work of theory creativity and play becomes possible.
Bion provides us with another basis on which to develop healthy relationships
to theory. French and Simpson (1999), organizational consultants working
within a Bionian psychoanalytic frame, argue that we work best not when we
know what we are doing, when we know what the truth is, but rather when we
work at the edge between knowing and not-knowing. Theory too often
forecloses this process and provides us with a too-early truth and a too-early set
of interpretative strategies. What we need to do is to remain receptive and wait
for knowing to emerge. As Bion has suggested (1991), we have a fear of notknowing of uncertainty. However, it is that very recognition that we do not
know that creates a space for new insights.
Combining the insights of Winnicott and Bion, we can say that we need to
develop independence from theory without rejecting it, and the longer we can
postpone the use of theory the more we will, in Bions terms, be able to learn
from experience. However, as French and Simpson suggest, not-knowing-too
early as they put it, not-knowing-what-we-are-doing (1998, p 2) has
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negative manifestations in the form of anxiety and uncertainty over our role and
a fear that if we admit to not-knowing we will be seen to be either incompetent
or not fulfilling our social role. This is exacerbated by the real social position the
intellectual inhabits, as suggested above, and by a world in which uncertainty is
part of the post-modern condition. We have to deal, then, with two sorts of
uncertainty, one which is pathological and which disables us, and the other
which is healthy and allows us to analyse seriously the nature and implications
of uncertainty.

Conclusion
None of the above is a call to reject theory but simply a desire to recognize that
that there is more to the theories we espouse than their social and political
usefulness. It is also a call to re-engage and to facilitate that re-engagement
through the realization of how much our attachments to, and uses of, theory are
defensive. The anxieties that theory allows us to manage have roots that are
psychosocial, referring both to our placement in socio-economic and political
structures and to our earliest childhood experiences. There then develops an
elective affinity between our positioning in the academy and our character
structures formed in infancy. That relationship is, however, in no sense a causal
one.
We can end, as we began, with a quotation from Sibley, who analyses his
disengagement from practical, political activity and his retreat into theory:
The production of value in academia, narrowly defined, militates against
border crossings because this would increaseyuncertainty. In the case of
research which was really grassrootsyit is likely to be judged unproductive
in terms defined by academic audits such as the British Research Assessment
Exercise, for exampley . Thus, the insulation or capsularisation of knowledge production discouraging movement outside the academy (apart from
cynical, short-term reach-out projects), simultaneously encourages work on
the quantifiable texts, funded projectsyand so on. I have suggested here
that this is a kind of madness, a paranoid-schizoid disturbancey . Akin to
gated communities, universities are institutions which can provide satisfaction for people who will adhere to ritual practices which remain unquestioned
within the insulating bounds of the institutional or suburban capsule, whether
it is mowing the lawn, producing so many papers a year, or sitting on
committees. (Sibley, 2004, no page)

The emphasis on madness is important. Given our attachments to theory,

massive anxiety is likely to result from a challenge to that theory. As the
container is threatened and perhaps starts to dissolve, paranoid/schizoid
mechanisms are likely to be mobilized. Only when there is a new container
perhaps a new theory or a new way of linking theory and practice or, indeed, a
John Bird

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new system of esteem within the academy will we develop a more healthy,
depressive, attachment to theory. Another part of the madness for Sibley is the
threat within the academy to creative thinking and how we might maintain
creative thinking and tolerate the disintegration of some of our, and our
institutions treasured ways of acting, without, in so doing, mobilizing primitive
defences. What is clear is that we will always have some psychodynamic
attachments to the theories we use. As intellectuals and teachers we need to be
on our guard to ensure that those attachments are as positive as possible.

A b o u t t he a ut h o r
John Bird is reader in Psycho-Social Studies and Fellow of the Centre for
Psycho-Social studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol, England.
He has had a longstanding interest in exploring the psychodynamics of racial
and ethnic exclusions. More recently he has been researching emotional
attachments to new technologies, in particular mobile/cell phones.

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John Bird