Cogent Social Sciences

Aggression in Sport: Psychoanalytic Investigations

Aggression has long held a paradoxical position in sport: it is valorized as evidence of passion and competitiveness, yet simultaneously problematized when it transgresses into violence, abuse, or hostility. Psychoanalysis offers a unique lens for interrogating this ambivalence, through foregrounding unconscious dynamics of drive, fantasy, and psychic conflict in both athletes and spectators. From Freud’s theorization of sublimation to Lacanian insights into jouissance, aggression in sport can be read as both socially regulated and psychically excessive, revealing tensions between embodiment, enjoyment, and social order. This Article Collection seeks to explore these tensions by drawing together interdisciplinary scholarship on the psychic, social, and symbolic dimensions of aggression in sport. By considering aggression in its destructive and generative forms, and situating it within wider contexts, such as, gender, race, nationalism, and digital media, the issue will contribute to contemporary debates on the intersections of sport, subjectivity, and society.

The importance of interrogating aggression in sport lies in its capacity to illuminate wider questions of subjectivity, culture, and society. Sport is a privileged site where aggression is both sanctioned and spectacularized, often celebrated as a marker of competitiveness while simultaneously generating moral panic when it exceeds acceptable boundaries. Understanding this paradox is vital because it reveals how aggression is mediated, contained, or unleashed within social and institutional frameworks. A psychoanalytic perspective foregrounds the unconscious investments that underpin aggression, highlighting how desire, fantasy, and enjoyment shape both athletes’ performances and spectators’ identifications. This matters not only for grasping the psychic dimensions of sporting life but also for situating aggression within broader social struggles around gender, race, nationalism, and digital media. By critically analyzing aggression, in both its productive and destructive forms, scholarship can advance debates about power, embodiment, and the politics of sport in contemporary culture.

Aggression in sport is a multifaceted phenomenon that touches on psychic life, cultural practice, and institutional power. It encompasses sanctioned acts of competitiveness and play, as much as it does hostility, violence, and transgression. Psychoanalysis offers a distinctive means of examining these dynamics, situating aggression within frameworks of drive, fantasy, and unconscious desire. Therefore, this Article Collection invites contributions that explore aggression as it manifests across sporting contexts, from the embodied experiences of athletes and fans to the symbolic operations of media, culture, and politics. Subtopics may include, but are not limited to:

• Aggression as drive, instinct, or fantasy in psychoanalytic theory and its implications for sport.
• The relation between aggression, enjoyment, and spectatorship.
• Spectator complicity in sport as aggression towards athletes.
• Sporting violence: from sanctioned forms of aggression (e.g. tackling, fighting, sledging) to transgressive acts.
• Sublimation, rivalry, and the transformation of aggression in competitive contexts.
• Aggression and the body: injury, pain, and the somatic inscription of hostility.
• Self-aggression, self-undermining, and masochism in sport.
• Gendered dimensions of aggression in sport, including femininity, masculinity, and queer subjectivities.
• Racialised and nationalised forms of sporting aggression.
• Aggression, media, and representation: how aggression is narrated, celebrated, or condemned.
• Online aggression in sporting contexts, including trolling, abuse, and digital hostilities.
• Psychoanalytic case studies of athletes, fans, or institutions.
• The cultural politics of aggression: between regulation, containment, and excess.

We particularly welcome original research articles and review essays, but also encourage clinical reports and media reviews that bring psychoanalytic concepts into dialogue with sport’s psychic, social, and symbolic dimensions.

Jack Black is Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University (UK). His research specialises in the intersections of sport, media, and cultural studies, drawing upon psychoanalysis and critical theory to explore issues of race and racism, nationalism and national identity, and the politics of representation. He has developed a psychoanalytic approach to understanding the cultural and political significance of sport, with particular attention to its contradictions and complexities.

Joseph S. Reynoso is a psychoanalytic clinical psychologist in New York City, where he treats children and adults in private practice.  He is also a provider for the National Basketball Players Association’s mental health and wellness program.  He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, and is the former book review editor for Psychoanalytic Psychology.  His past publications are in the areas of psychoanalysis, sports, racism, colonialism personality disorder treatment, teaching and reading fiction.

Neither Guest Advisor has any conflicts of interest to disclose.

For more information about this Collection, please contact the Commissioning Editor, Dr. Molly Cole, at [email protected].