Narration and Truth in Psychoanalytic Research: the Example of an Interdisciplinary Research Protocol of Online Conspiratorial Discourse (TwitToMyth)
Conspiracy ideology has been the subject of a great deal of research in recent years, mainly in the fields of social sciences and experimental psychology. However, very little research has been carried out from a psychoanalytical perspective. The authors present the protocol of an interdisciplinary exploratory study that brought together a dozen researchers to study online conspiracist discourse. The aim was to examine its relationship to myth and narrative, looking to its structural elements. This research raised the question of the relationship between fiction and truth in several ways: through its epistemological perspective, its object, and its methodology. Based on the interdisciplinary dialogue it has supported, this exploratory approach has helped to better situate the issues of storytelling in psychoanalytic research. The methodology was refined with reference to clinical devices based on group associativity. It has opened up clinical and scientific perspectives, in connection with raising teenagers’ awareness of conspiracy ideology. The aim would not be to dissuade teenagers from adhering to conspiracy theories, but to support a transitionalisation in their ideological investment, through the mediation of playing and group.
Keywords
- interdisciplinarity
- ideology
- conspiracy theories
- narrativity
- storytelling
- group associativity