Seeking and Confronting Self-Imposed Challenges Set One Free: Suits, Psychoanalysis, and Sport Philosophy

Since Sigmund Freud developed and popularized psychoanalysis, this psychological theory has significantly influenced contemporary thinking, particularly in philosophical disciplines focused on understanding human behavior and addressing social problems. Take the examples of political philosophy, race theory, and feminist thought, among many others. However, although sport philosophy qualifies as one such discipline, scholars in this field have given little to no attention to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theorists. Remarkably, psychoanalytical notions, especially those of Eric Berne and Norman O. Brown, significantly shaped Bernard Suits’ pioneering thoughts on games. Nevertheless, sport philosophers have largely overlooked the importance of psychoanalysis in Suits’ examinations of games and, more broadly speaking, rarely attempted to apply psychoanalytical concepts to their analyses of sport. In this paper, I explain the psychoanalytical roots of Suits’ theory of games and explore how much of his theory of games is indebted to psychoanalysis. Specifically, I first compare Suits’ analysis of unconscious gameplay to psychoanalytic concepts of repression and neurosis. Subsequently, I explore the alignment between Suits’ views on gameplay and psychoanalytic accounts of play and pleasure. To conclude, I examine the therapeutic and emancipatory character of Suits’ proposal, drawing parallels between his philosophical corpus and critical theorists whose critical analyses of modern society are heavily indebted to Freud.

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Work Title Seeking and Confronting Self-Imposed Challenges Set One Free: Suits, Psychoanalysis, and Sport Philosophy
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Open Access
Creators
  1. Francisco Javier Lopez Frias
Keyword
  1. Psychoanalysis
  2. Repression
  3. Gameplay
  4. Emancipation
  5. Autonomy
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy
Publication Date March 9, 2023
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2023.2188249
Deposited December 11, 2023

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  • Updated Keyword, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • Psychoanalysis, Repression, Gameplay, Emancipation, Autonomy
    Publication Date
    • 2023-01-01
    • 2023-03-09
  • Updated