What does it mean to psychoanalyse sport?: Reflections from the field

Jack Black; Joseph Reynoso; Ben Bernstein; David Cushman; Rayyan Dabbous; Zane Dodd; Robert  Geal; Sandra Meeuwsen; Bonnie Peng; Miguel Rivera; Shani Samai-Moskovich; Patrick Scanlon; Lee Shapiro; Bradley A. Thomas; Stacy  Thompson; Karen Tocatly; Steve Tuber; Klaudia Franziska Wittmann

doi:10.1080/23311886.2025.2562379

What does it mean to psychoanalyse sport? Reflections from the field

Jack Black
, Joseph Reynoso
, Ben Bernstein
, David Cushman
, Rayyan Dabbous
, Zane Dodd
, Robert Geal
, Sandra Meeuwsen
, Bonnie Peng
, Miguel Rivera
, Shani Samai-Moskovich
, Patrick Scanlon
, Lee Shapiro
, Bradley A. Thomas
, Stacy Thompson
, Karen Tocatly
, Steve Tuber
, Klaudia Franziska Wittmann

Research Centre for Dance Research

Research output: Contribution to journal › Editorial › peer-review

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Abstract

What does it mean to psychoanalyse sport? The question itself invites a confrontation with the strange, the opaque, and the frequently overlooked aspects of a cultural form that is typically read for its surface meanings: that is, its spectacles, performances, outcomes, and statistics. Yet, for the contributors gathered here—eighteen scholars working across and within the intersecting fields of psychoanalysis and sport—the meaning of psychoanalysing sport resides precisely in its refusal to accept these meanings, indeed, to take sport seriously not despite of its frivolity, spectacle, or absurdity, but because of it. Whether engaging with professional or amateur sport, watching televised sport, or attending the live event, when celebrating the triumph or consoling the calamity, to psychoanalyse sport requires us to trace how the sporting field acts as a staging ground for unconscious life.

Original language	English
Article number	2562379
Pages (from-to)	1-21
Number of pages	21
Journal	Cogent Social Sciences
Volume	11
Issue number	1
Early online date	26 Sept 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2025.2562379
Publication status	Published - 2025

Bibliographical note

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), whichpermits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the terms on which this article has beenpublished allow the posting of the accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent

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10.1080/23311886.2025.2562379Licence: CC BY

Wittmann2025VORFinal published version, 1.14 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

Black, J., Reynoso, J., Bernstein, B., Cushman, D., Dabbous, R., Dodd, Z., Geal, R., Meeuwsen, S., Peng, B., Rivera, M., Samai-Moskovich, S., Scanlon, P., Shapiro, L., Thomas, B. A., Thompson, S., Tocatly, K., Tuber, S., & Wittmann, K. F. (2025). What does it mean to psychoanalyse sport? Reflections from the field. Cogent Social Sciences, 11(1), 1-21. Article 2562379. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2025.2562379

Black, J, Reynoso, J, Bernstein, B, Cushman, D, Dabbous, R, Dodd, Z, Geal, R, Meeuwsen, S, Peng, B, Rivera, M, Samai-Moskovich, S, Scanlon, P, Shapiro, L, Thomas, BA, Thompson, S, Tocatly, K, Tuber, S & Wittmann, KF 2025, 'What does it mean to psychoanalyse sport? Reflections from the field', Cogent Social Sciences, vol. 11, no. 1, 2562379, pp. 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2025.2562379

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What does it mean to psychoanalyse sport? Reflections from the field

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