MacRury Iain - The inner world of Doctor Who psychoanalytic reflections in time and space

THE INNER WORLD OF DOCTOR WHO

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND POPULAR CULTURE SERIES

Series Editors: Caroline Bainbridge and Candida Yates

Consulting Editor: Brett Kahr

Other titles in the Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture Series:

The Psychodynamics of Social Networking: Connected-up Instantaneous Culture and the Self

by Aaron Balick

Television and Psychoanalysis: Psycho-Cultural Perspectives

edited by Caroline Bainbridge, Ivan Ward, and Candida Yates

THE INNER WORLD OF DOCTOR WHO

Psychoanalytic Reflections in Time and Space

Iain MacRury and Michael Rustin

First published 2014 by Karnac Books Ltd.

Published 2018 by Routledge

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Copyright 2014 by Iain MacRury and Michael Rustin

The right of Iain MacRury and Michael Rustin to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 9781782200833 (pbk)

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CONTENTS

We would like to thank the editors of the Media and the Inner World series, Caroline Bainbridge and Candida Yates, for encouraging us to write this book, and the staff at Karnac for their invaluable and efficient help in the editing and production processes.

Students on the postgraduate degree course in Psychoanalytic Studies at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust gave us an encouraging response to our initial reflections on the show, giving us confidence to proceed with our project. We would also like to thank our colleagues at Bournemouth University, the University of East London, and the Tavistock for their support for our work recently, and over many years.

We would especially like to thank Laura Bunt-MacRury and Margaret Rustin for their perceptive advice on many episodes of Doctor Who and on our writing.

For Leith
and
Gloria, Madeleine, Rosemary, and Gilbert

Professor Iain MacRury is Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange in The Media School at Bournemouth University. He has taught on the MA Psychoanalytic Studies at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. He is co-editor of Fictitious Capital: London after the Recession (Ashgate, 2012) and Olympic Cities: 2012 and the Remaking of London (Ashgate, 2009). He is author of Advertising (Routledge, 2009) and co-author of The Dynamics of Adverting (Harwood, 2000). He has published in Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society and in Psychodynamic Practice.

Michael Rustin is Professor of Sociology at the University of East London, a Visiting Professor at the Tavistock Clinic, and an Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He has written widely on psychoanalytic approaches to culture and society, including on childrens fiction (Narratives of Love and Loss) and drama (Mirror to Nature), both with Margaret Rustin. He is also author of The Good Society and the Inner World and is a co-author/editor of the current After NeoLiberalism: The Kilburn Manifesto.

We have approached this as a shared project, however, Iain MacRury is the principal author of and Thirteen are the responsibility of both.

The application of psychoanalytic ideas and theories to culture has a long tradition and this is especially the case with cultural artefacts that might be considered classical in some way. For Sigmund Freud, the works of William Shakespeare and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were as instrumental as those of culturally renowned poets and philosophers of classical civilisation in helping to formulate the key ideas underpinning psychoanalysis as a psychological method. In the academic fields of the humanities and social sciences, the application of psychoanalysis as a means of illuminating the complexities of identity and subjectivity is now well established. However, despite these developments, there is relatively little work that attempts to grapple with popular culture in its manifold forms, some of which, nevertheless, reveal important insights into the vicissitudes of the human condition.

The Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture book series builds on the work done since 2009 by the Media and the Inner World research network, which was generously funded by the UKs Arts and Humanities Research Council. It aims to offer spaces to consider the relationship between psychoanalysis in all its forms and popular culture that is ever more emotionalised in the contemporary age.

In contrast to many scholarly applications of psychoanalysis, which often focus solely on textual analysis, this series sets out to explore the creative tension of thinking about cultural experience and its processes with attention to observations from the clinical and scholarly fields. What can academic studies drawing on psychoanalysis learn from the clinical perspective and how might the critical insights afforded by scholarly work cast new light on clinical experience? The series provides space for a dialogue between these different groups with a view to creating fresh perspectives on the values and pitfalls of a psychoanalytic approach to ideas of selfhood, society, and popular culture. In particular, the series strives to develop a psycho-cultural approach to such questions by drawing attention to the usefulness of a post-Freudian, object relations perspective for examining the importance of emotional relationships and experience.

The Inner World of Doctor Who: Psychoanalytic Reflections in Time and Space draws on this psychoanalytic tradition to explore the emotional and relational dynamics of the BBC television series Doctor Who, which was relaunched in 2005 to much critical and popular acclaim. As the authors Michael Rustin and Iain MacRury discuss, the programme was first broadcast fifty years ago and it has developed a large and highly committed international fan base, with its appeal also reflected in the lively subculture that surrounds it. The psychoanalytic study of Doctor Who as a beloved object of popular culture is thus timely, and sits well with the aims and approach of the Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture book series more widely, as the mode of analysis deployed throughout the book is one that is shaped by cultural concerns and also by theories of the inner world. As the authors discuss, since its relaunch, Doctor Who has focused on the feelings and relationships of its characters, and the book draws on theories of the unconscious to explore the fantasies and transferences evoked by the representation and identification with those characters and their emotional dilemmas. The emotional intensity of the series also reflects, perhaps, a recurring theme of the book series and the Media and Inner World research network, which addresses the emotionalisation of contemporary popular culture and the various kinds of psychological work associated with that development. The unconscious processes that underpin that psychic work are also addressed throughout this book and, as the authors discuss, the