liz

Honestly still not over this scene.

Dominant expectations of heterosexual masculinity have long dictated that “real men” should be tough, aggressive, courageous, and able to withstand pain (Connell, 1995; Kivel, 1999). These masculine traits are reflected in the norms of sporting culture, where the very definition of “athlete” is typically predicated on these characteristics. Hughes and Coakley (1991) suggest that strict conformity to a masculine sport ethic is idolized in competitive team sports. Here, athletes are expected to pay the price thought necessary for victory; playing with pain, taking risks, challenging limits; overconforming to rigid and sometimes exploitative team norms; obeying orders; and sacrificing other social and academic endeavors (Anderson, 2010).

It is for this reason that to psychoanalyse sport is to take seriously the idea that sport is not just something we do or watch but something that does something to us. It means drawing on the theories and concepts of psychoanalysis to explore the deeper, often non-rational, forces that structure our intense attachments to sport (Black & Reynoso, 2024a, 2024b, 2025). These attachments frequently exceed explanation by way of conscious motivations, such as, pleasure, fitness, or entertainment. Instead, they suggest a field where unconscious desires, unresolved tensions, and shared fantasies are constantly being enacted, negotiated, and sometimes disavowed (Black et al., 2024). In this sense, psychoanalysing sport is not about pathologizing athletes or fans, nor about enhancing performance, instead, it is about interrogating how and why sport becomes such a powerful and enduring part of human subjectivity and social life. This requires, in one respect, a treatment of sport that does not simply view it as a mere escape from the ‘real world’. On the contrary, if we understand the Real in Lacanian terms as that which resists symbolisation, that which ruptures the smooth surface of everyday life (1991/2007; Lacan, 1973/2004), then, in sport, we see this in the various moments of failure, loss, repetition, and contradiction that are routinely enacted. We see it in the irrational intensity of fandom, in the tears shed after defeat, in the curious frustration and despair (jouissance) found not in winning, but in the struggle and loss itself. These moments cannot be adequately understood through frameworks that prioritise rational choice, conscious motivation, or utilitarian value. Sport, from a psychoanalytic perspective, stages the drama of human desire in its most condensed and often confusing forms.