Psychoanalyzing the Politics of the New Brain Sciences by Robert Samuels

Author:Robert Samuels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Just as consumers tend to go with the status quo, we have seen how behavioral economics itself tends to support the neoliberal consensus as it shies away from pointing to the failure of our capitalist system and the need for direct government intervention. Although Thaler and Sunstein desire to turn to neuroscience and evolutionary psychology to present a new scientific and ideology-free version of economics, from a psychoanalytic perspective, we can argue that it is always important to look at how a person’s statements are related to their own perspective and desire; one always has to ask why is this person saying this and to whom are they really addressing their discourse.38 Moreover, how does their perspective on the world shape what they are saying now about the world?

For behavioral economists, a key question concerns the social frame that controls what people see and do not see:Framing works because people tend to be somewhat mindless, passive decision makers. Their Reflective System does not do the work that would be required to check and see whether reframing the questions would produce a different answer. One reason they don’t do this is that they wouldn’t know what to make of the contradiction. This implies that frames are powerful nudges, and must be selected with caution.39

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