Tag: Cogent Social Sciences

Psychoanalysis, with its attention to unconscious desire, psychic conflict, and the role of fantasy, provides a unique lens through which to interrogate the presence and function of aggression in sporting life. This special issue will advance psychoanalytic investigations of aggression in sport by bringing together interdisciplinary scholarship across clinical theory, cultural analysis, and critical sport studies. In doing so, it seeks to explore the psychic, social, and symbolic dimensions of aggression as they relate to athletes, spectators, institutions, and the media.

We are particularly interested in how social change affects the structures, practices, and cultures of sport—and conversely, how sport contributes to or resists social transformation. This includes change within sport (e.g., policy shifts, organisational reforms, or evolving norms), change through sport (e.g., activist interventions, grassroots movements), and change outside sport (e.g., broader societal shifts) that impacts the sporting realm. Discrimination, marginalisation, and exclusion remain persistent challenges, but they are also being confronted in new and creative ways that merit rigorous scholarly attention.

At first glance, Sport and Psychoanalysis may appear worlds apart: sport is associated with physicality, competition, and entertainment, while psychoanalysis explores the unconscious, desire, and the contradictions that structure subjectivity. Yet, it is precisely this apparent disparity that makes their relationship so compelling. By engaging with the psychic, cultural, and social dimensions of sport, the journal offers a critical space for examining how sport both reflects and unsettles the psychic and social structures that shape our lives.