Neuroscience in Psychology Textbooks 43theorize subjectivity as always escaping itself.^13 And precisely here, on
could argue, at the point of the impossible closure of subjectivity, the
social and the collective come in.
But to go deeper into the latter would lead us far. Let us, for the
purposes of this chapter, keep it to the point that, in the end, criticality is
about refusing the short-circuits that cover up how subjectivity always
escapes itself, that deny the impossible closure of (inter)subjectivity. These
short-circuits, as argued, are particularly visible in psychology textbooks,
of which the prime example today is the short-circuit of thinking that
something is explained when it is (arguably) located in the brain. Or
thinking, in relation to my former dean’s words, about the short-circuit of
telling students that psychology is not about solving one’s issues. Putting
forward, on the one hand, that there would be something as a “non-
pathological choice for studying psychology,” and, on the other hand,
suggesting that psychology would be as such an unproblematic, valid
science.
Let us try to make this point for a last time with a final quote from a
psychology textbook (Coon & Mitterer, 2012, p. 74):
“You might also be interested to know that music you would
describe as “thrilling” activates pleasure systems in your brain. This may
explain some of the appeal of music that can send shivers down your
spine... (It may also explain why people will pay so much for concert
tickets!)This neuropsychological take might be criticized for explaining away
your own explanations, your own meanings why a certain piece of music
thrills you. But is the opposite not at hand? That is, is this
neuropsychological reduction not about taking away the very lack of
meaning, your lack of understanding, why for example a certain piece of
music touches you so much? Hence it is only here that the mainstream
neuropsysciences are potentially desubjectifying: not precisely by taking
(^13) In the words of Slavoj Žižek (2006b): “the subject is correlative to its own limit, to the element
which cannot be subjectivized, it is the name of the void which cannot be filled out with
subjectivation.”