Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical SettingLynne Layton, Nancy Caro Hollander, Susan Gutwill Do political concerns belong in psychodynamic treatment? How do class and politics shape the unconscious? The effects of an increasingly polarized, insecure and threatening world mean that the ideologically enforced split between the political order and personal life is becoming difficult to sustain. This book explores the impact of the social and political domains at the individual level. The contributions included in this volume describe how issues of class and politics, and the intense emotions they engender, emerge in the clinical setting and how psychotherapists can respectfully address them rather than deny their significance. They demonstrate how clinicians need to take into account the complex convergences between psychic and social reality in the clinical setting in order to help their patients understand the anxiety, fear, insecurity and anger caused by the complex relations of class and power. This examination of the psychodynamics of terror and aggression and the unconscious defences employed to deny reality offers powerful insights into the microscopic unconscious ways that ideology is enacted and lived. Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics will be of interest to all mental health professionals interested in improving their understanding of the ideological factors that impede or facilitate critical and engaged citizenship. It has a valuable contribution to make to the psychoanalytic enterprise, as well as to related scholarly and professional disciplines. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 Working directly with political social and cultural material in the therapy session | 11 |
Contradiction and paradox in psychoanalysis | 29 |
3 That place gives me the heebie jeebies | 51 |
4 The manic society | 65 |
5 Despair and hope in a culture of denial | 81 |
The ideological dance in the transference and countertransference | 92 |
The unconscious pull to dissociate individuals from their social context | 107 |
Reclaiming our minds | 141 |
11 Psychoanalysis and the problem of the bystander in times of terror | 154 |
A roundtable discussion with Neil Altman Jessica Benjamin Ted Jacobas and Paul Wachtel Moderated by Amanda Hirsch Geffner | 166 |
Somethings gone missing | 195 |
Politics andorinfor psychoanalysis | 202 |
What dare we not do? Psychoanalysis a voice in politics? | 210 |
A personal postscript | 217 |
225 | |
8 The normative unconscious and the political contexts of change in psychotherapy | 118 |
9 Racism classism psychosis and selfimage in the analysis of a woman | 129 |
Other editions - View all
Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical Setting Lynne Layton,Nancy Caro Hollander,Susan Gutwill No preview available - 2006 |
Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical Setting Lynne Layton,Nancy Caro Hollander,Susan Gutwill No preview available - 2006 |