Digitalization and artificial intelligence, technological acceleration, developments in the labor market, social and institutional optimization, perfection requirements, climate change and sustainability discourse, new and old wars and associated forced migration, pandemics, the boom in conspiracy ideologies, and much more: the analysis of such cultural and social transformation processes, indicated by exemplary buzzwords, is carried out from an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective in this research focus. Central questions are: How is the coexistence of people in private, social, and professional contexts changing? How do individuals, communities and societies react to this? What holds them together, what separates or even divides them? How can Work 4.0 be conceived in a humanistic way in the face of dynamic competitive conditions and quantification logics? How has the coronavirus pandemic influenced the perception and experience of social relationships and collective belonging? What resources and skills are necessary in order to feel empowered as a subject or social group and actively shape the social world? Critical psychology and psychoanalysis as a culturally reflexive paradigm have a key role to play in understanding the reciprocal and conflict-laden connections between social development processes, cultural and institutional change, changes in the world of work, individual lifestyles, and modes of subjectivation. The focus here is on lifeworld appropriation and translation processes as well as the associated experiences and perspectives of emancipatory social practices.
For example, two transdisciplinary collaborative projects funded by the Volkswagen Foundation "Aporias of Perfection in the Accelerated Modern Age" and "The Measured Life – Productive and Counterproductive Consequences of Quantification in Digitally Optimizing Society" (Frankfurt a. M., Jena, and Berlin) examined the ambivalent consequences of an optimization logic that is highly focused on quantitative increase, as it has gained in importance over the course of digital change. Using a three-part project design, the focus here is on productive and counterproductive dimensions of the "orientation towards numbers" and the measurement of life in the context of organizational and individual digital optimization processes, which are researched with regard to their intersubjective and psychological meanings.