Media research and psychoanalysis: A suggestion

<jats:p> This short commentary outlines psychoanalysis as a theory and method and its potential value to media research. Following Dahlgren , it is suggested that psychoanalysis may enrich the field because it may offer a complex theory of the human subject, as well as methodological means of doing justice to the richness, ambivalence and contradictions of human experience in relation to media. The psychoanalytic technique of free association and how it has been adapted in social research is suggested as a means to open up subjective modes of expression and thinking –- in researchers and research participants alike – that lie beyond rationality and conscious agency. </jats:p>