David Morgan - The Unconscious in Social and Political Life

THE UNCONSCIOUS IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE

THE UNCONSCIOUS IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE

Edited by

David Morgan

THE POLITICAL MIND

First published in 2019 by

Phoenix Publishing House Ltd

62 Bucknell Road

Bicester

Oxfordshire OX26 2DS

Copyright 2019 to David Morgan for the edited collection, and to the individual authors for their contributions.

The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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

ISBN-13: 978-1-912691-17-3

Typeset by Medlar Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd, India

Printed in the United Kingdom

www.firingthemind.com

Everything ends in the same way. With death. But before there was life, hidden beneath all the babbling and noise. Silence and feelings. Excitement and fear. The spare, unsteady splashes of beauty.

From La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty)
directed by Paolo Sorrentino, 2013

We never know how high we are
Till we are asked to rise
And then if we are true to plan
Our statures touch the skies.

Emily Dickinson, We never know how high we are, 1176

Front cover image

August Landmesser, the man who refused to salute

This photo was taken during a ceremony that was attended by Adolf Hitler himself. Within the picture a lone man stands bravely whilst everyone else obeys the power of the crowd and national hysteria by saluting and paying allegiance to the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler.

August Landmesser defiantly shows his disapproval. It demonstrates the protest of a single person in an authentic way. It is a symbol for me of the courage to stand out against cruelty and fundamentalism. Others who inspire us in these complex times could be Sophie Scholl and the White Cross, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Rosa Luxembourg, Jesus of Nazareth, Rosa Parks, or Marielle Franco, to name a few of my inspirations. We need great leadership at these times, otherwise the falseness of those who lead through bigotry and hate will triumph.

When going into exile from Vienna, before he was granted safe passage, Freud was paid a visit by members of the Nazi Party and was asked to write a reference to his persecutors attesting to their good conduct. He accepted, writing sarcastically, I would recommend the SS to anybody! Needless to say, his ignorant and humourless protagonists did not perceive the joke.

Contents

Permissions

The following have been reprinted with permission.

of mind by Christopher Bollas was originally published in: Bollas, C. (2018). The democratic mind in: Meaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment (pp. 7992). Abingdon, Oxfordshire/New York, NY: Routledge. Copyright 2018 Christopher Bollas. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

by Jonathan Sklar was originally published in: Sklar, J. (2019). Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning . Bicester, Oxfordshire: Phoenix. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Epigraph at the start of by Jonathan Sklar. From Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova, translated by D. M. Thomas. Published by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited. 1985.

on behalf of The Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the NHS.

Verse from Country Life by Show of Hands within by David Morgan. Reprinted with permission of Firebrand Music / Show of Hands Ltd.

Refuge by J. J. Bola within David Morgan. Reprinted with permission of the author.

by R. D. Hinshelwood was originally published in: Hinshelwood, R. D. (2017). Reflection or action: And never the twain shall meet. Psychotherapy and Politics International, 15:1 : e1401. Copyright 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Acknowledgements

The Political Mind Seminars at the British Psychoanalytical Society have now been running successfully since 2015. They consist of a series of ten seminars presented by colleagues from the British Society with one or two expert external contributors.

I became increasingly interested in exploring the role of the unconscious and the political mind after the events of 9/11. I sat in my consulting room feeling overwhelmed by the horror traumatically unfolding. I felt helpless but thought perhaps psychoanalysis could provide some insight into what was happening in the USA on that day and elsewhere in the world.

What grievances with the West and what basis in religious fundamentalism could lead to this apocalyptic event? Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents was pessimistic about mans inhumanity to man and the tendency to obviate anxieties around life and death through war and power.

Similar feelings arose around the enormity of climate change and the terrible loss of life with immigrants drowning in the Mediterranean. I felt our lives, our allies lives, and, indeed, everybodys lives were being bombarded by events that were difficult to comprehend and that turning a blind eye was dangerous and inhuman.

There is always something to be said for just concentrating on the microcosm of the consulting room and helping each individual patient develop internal resilience through understanding his or her internal world within the security of the analytic setting. This extends to the families, workplace, and beyond. This is revolutionary in its way and I know that sometimes there is criticism from colleagues who feel that psychoanalysis is overextending its remit when used to attempt to understand the wider world and the social unconscious. However, the consulting room can become a psychic retreat in itself when we are confronted by events that threaten our lives, our loved ones lives, and the people we care for in our work. There has been a real hunger for psychoanalytic understanding from those attending the seminars. The content of the presentations has been very varied and the quality superlative. Each evening has attracted between 60 and 120 attendees, including a solid group of regulars who have come to all the seminars, plus new people every year.

This book is representative of the seminar series and I hope readers find the ideas helpful. We all need help in these complex times and understanding the unconscious is helpful.

I am extremely grateful to all who have provided their talks and time to this venture. I have been so impressed with the quality of the presentations and their capacity to engage with a wide range of political opinions and audience participation.

I would like to extend my appreciation to Marjory Goodall and recently Harriet Myles and Natasha Georgiou without whose help this venture would not have been possible. Im grateful to Roger Holden whose technological expertise and demeanour make things run so smoothly.

I would particularly like to thank Ruth, Freya, William, Alex, and Leo; without them, the world would be a much less interesting and more difficult place to be.