We are an international and interdisciplinary non-profit organization incorporated in 1994 for the purpose of promoting the development of new, more socially beneficial applications of psychoanalysis to important social and cultural issues.

Our Purpose

APCS is an international and interdisciplinary association created to promote the development of new, more socially beneficial applications of psychoanalysis to important social and cultural issues. APCS was incorporated in 1994 as a nonprofit organization.

Our Mission

The mission of APCS is to promote the use of psychoanalysis for the solution of social problems. The most serious of these problems, including interpersonal, international, institutional, and structural violence, as well as drug abuse, irresponsible sexuality, and intolerance in its various forms, will be extremely difficult if not impossible to solve unless we address the psychological roots that are the immediate causes of these destructive behaviors.

Psychoanalysis offers the best model we have for understanding how the most basic and powerful psychological forces - love, hate, knowledge, belief, meaning, identity, desire, enjoyment, fantasy - function as both causes and effects of social and cultural phenomena. The psychoanalytic investigation of culture and society thus constitutes a unique and arguably indispensable means of understanding and intervening in the psychological roots of our most serious social problems, as well as understanding and promoting the psychological and social benefits that various social formations and cultural phenomena offer.

Our Activities

As an organization, APCS publishes the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society and sponsors the annual APCS Conference, as well as specific projects for social change. Our members actively pursue applications of psychoanalytic principles to culture and society in their work as psychoanalysts, scholars, and teachers.

To request additional information, contact Marshall Alcorn at alcornma@gwu.edu.

The Journal: Psychoanalysis of Culture and Socie

For help with these pages, contact the webteam. Copyright 2010, 2009, 2008 APCS.