Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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Class relations and individual consciousness: a neglected dynamic in analytic group therapy
Get PDFThe author argues that class is an important but rarely acknowledged dynamic in analytic groups. She suggests that this, in part, reflects the dominant view in contemporary society that class is no longer an important aspect of social identity. This idea developed from a Weberian understanding of society as divided into many classes. She recommends the simplicity of a Marxist analysis of class as a relationship between those who hold economic power in society and those who do not. The author goes on to suggest why class is neglected as a dynamic in group analytic therapy. She suggests that, despite this neglect, class forms a significant aspect of analytic groups in clinical practice. She illustrates her argument with clinical examples
From demanding emancipation to negotiating autonomy: conflicting identifications in a changing world
Get PDFIn this paper I try to describe the central role that my involvement in the ideological climate of the seventies through participation in the feminist movement in Greece played in my professional practice as a psychotherapist and how these experiences informed a research project that I undertook in order to examine the changes in the identificatory process of Greek women. My personal, political and professional experiences interlinked in order to plan and realize this research project, which dealt with how femininity is constituted through the mother‐daughter relationship in a period when the traditional position of women is rapidly changing in Greece. The results of the research show the difficulty of the passage from emancipation to autonomy, from certainty to uncertainty, from a politics of identity to a politics of conflicting and contradicting identifications, which the postmodern subject has to go through
The politics of complexes
Get PDFThe complex, a central concept of analytical psychology, contributes to an understanding of political consciousness in at least three ways: in tracing the influence of complexes on political attitudes; in treating oppressed consciousness as an expression of a cultural complex; and in viewing psychopolitical healing as the integration of split‐off complexes in the oppressed. Case studies of Native people demonstrate the application of these ideas to the context of oppression
The alliance for counselling and psychotherapy, UK: Statement of intent
Get PDFThe alliance for counselling and psychotherapy, UK: Statement of inten
The Cold War and the rise of political correctness
Get PDFThe year 1968 saw an outburst of revolutionary spirit, which seemed to presage great changes for the better. Instead, idealism has given way to a culture of fraudulence and simulation, which began to be identified in different parts of the analytical world in the 1960s. It is this that has become the phenomenon now know as Political Correctness, which characterizes Orwell's world of 1984, far more of a reality now than 40 years ago
Narcissism: fragile bodies in a fragile world
Get PDFIn this two‐part paper we explore how, in Western society, intensified consumer culture, playing on feelings of shame and inadequacy, can be seen as reactivating the ‘narcissistic wound’ while the recent growth of information technology increasingly provides access to a global spectacle and a virtual world that offer an escape from reality. This fuels the illusion of immortality and invulnerability to physical/emotional needs. We ask who benefits from this culture of unrelatedness and disembodiment, and what the repercussions are in terms of participation in social life and organized response to global issues.
Using material from our practices and from social life, we seek to identify the collective cost of maintaining a disassociation that can permeate not only the therapeutic process but also work, personal relationships and events on the political stage. We consider a view of former president Bush as a narcissistic leader in a narcissistic culture with the Iraq war as a narcissistic misadventure and we present vignettes from the consulting room, Dance Movement Therapy work in Holloway Prison and the academic world of prehistoric archaeology to show how narcissistic behaviours are embedded in many diverse situations in Western society. We ask how the concept of narcissism in our media age can help us understand phenomena such as the rise of fundamentalism, celebrity cults, insatiable aspirations to ‘self‐improvement’, obsessions with ‘success’ and consumer goods, the denial of ageing, the upsurge in cosmetic surgery, body modification and self‐harm as well as growing addiction to alcohol and hard drugs. Finally, we ask how the narcissistic fantasy of self‐sufficiency, the disavowal of loss and the denial of the ultimate non‐discursive reality of death affect our ability to respond appropriately to human injustice and the fragility of our planet
Purposes outside ourselves
Get PDFThis article is derived from a talk given before the Psychotherapy and Liberation, May '68 Anniversary Conference held at the IGA, 2–4 May 2008. It examines the potential for realizing two aspects of liberation: individual and social. The article suggests that individualism emerged as the dominant strand and has been made use of by capitalism to deepen our subjection. The article offers an explanation of our compliance with this exploitative economic system, drawing on the psychoanalytic concepts of projection, projective identification, oedipal conflict, narcissism, paranoid‐schizoid functioning and the group matri
Living politics: psychotherapies and culture in a globalized world
Get PDFHow can we open up a dialogue across generations that shares the experiences, memories and learnings of psychotherapy and sexual politics and ways these were lived in the libertarian politics of the 1970s? Exploring attempts at living politics and the attempts to create more equal relationships and engage critically with traditions of psychoanalysis and humanistic psychotherapies so that they could engage more directly with issues of class, race, gender and sexuality, I explore how concerns around masculinities proved vital in shaping new political imaginations. I go on to raise questions that might open up a dialogue across generations and so learn from the past so that different hopes can be created for the present. This means recognizing the prevalence of complex transnational identities produced through mass migrations that have helped shape multicultural cities and so call for different frameworks to understand relationships between the ‘psyche’ and the ‘social/political’ within a globalized world
Carnal critiques: promiscuity, politics, imagination, spirituality and hypocrisy
Get PDFThe author explains the political, psychological and ethical reasons for writing about promiscuity. His previous work on what is ‘more‐than‐personal’ embraced politics and spirituality in the context of psychotherapy. He sets this inquiry in the historical context of the fortieth anniversary of the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s, reviewing critically the debate as to whether there was or was not a revolution. The manifold connections between sexual promiscuity and political critique are explored. This sets the scene for the location of promiscuous phenomena within a spiritual or transpersonal domain. Promiscuities (in the plural) rather than monolithic promiscuity are surveyed in terms of sex and sexual diversity. Promiscuity is reviewed in terms of imaginative process. Finally, the hypocritical attitudes towards promiscuity on the part of many (but not all) psychotherapists are explored with the intention of discovering the reasons for this phenomenon