The Maternalists is a study of the hitherto unexplored significance of utopian visions of the state as a maternal entity in mid-twentieth century Britain. Demonstrating the affinities between welfarism, maternalism, and psychoanalysis, Shaul Bar-Haim suggests a new reading of the British welfare state as a political project. After the First World War, British doctors, social thinkers, educators, and policy makers became increasingly interested in the contemporary turn being made in psychoanalytic theory toward the role of motherhood in child development. These public figures used new notions of the "maternal" to criticize modern European culture, and especially its patriarchal domestic structure. This strand of thought was pioneered by figures who were well placed to disseminate their ideas into the higher echelons of British culture, education, and medical care. Figures such as the anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and Geza Róheim, and the psychiatrist Ian Suttie—to mention only a few of the "maternalists" discussed in the book—used psychoanalytic vocabulary to promote both imagined perceptions of motherhood and their idea of the "real" essence of the "maternal." In the 1930s, as European fascism took hold, the "maternal" became a cultural discourse of both collective social anxieties and fantasies, as well as a central concept in many strands of radical, and even utopian, political thinking. During the Second World War, and even more so in the postwar era, psychoanalysts such as D. W. Winnicott and Michael Balint responded to the horrors of the war by drawing on interwar maternalistic thought, making a demand to "maternalize" British society, and providing postwar Britain with a new political idiom for defining the welfare state as a project of collective care.

Poses an argument for living a spiritual life that is not dependent on religion, explaining that an acceptance of philosophical spiritual traditions and values does not require practitioners to embrace the existence of a higher order.

For decades, psychoanalysis has provided essential concepts and methodologies for critical theory and the humanities and social sciences. But it is also, inseparably, a clinical practice and technique for treatment. In what ways is clinical practice significant for critical thought? What conceptual resources does the clinic hold for us today? Carolyn Laubender examines cases from Britain and its former colonies to show that clinical psychoanalytic practice constitutes a productive site for novel political thought, theorization, and action. She delves into the clinical work of some of the British Psychoanalytic Society’s most influential practitioners—including Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Wulf Sachs, D. W. Winnicott, Thomas Main, and John Bowlby—exploring how they developed distinctive and politically salient practices. Laubender argues that these figures transformed the clinic into a laboratory for reimagining race, gender, sexuality, childhood, nation, and democracy. By taking up the clinic as both a site of inquiry and realm of theoretical innovation, she traces how political concepts such as authority, reparation, colonialism, decolonization, communalism, and security at once informed and were reformed by each analyst’s work. While psychoanalytic scholarship has typically focused on its intellectual, social, and political effects outside of the clinic, this interdisciplinary book combines history with feminist and decolonial social theory to recast the clinic as a necessarily politicized space. Challenging common assumptions that psychoanalytic practice is or should be neutral, apolitical, and objective, The Political Clinic also considers what progressive clinical praxis can offer today.

In this unique and hybrid book, cultural and music historian Michael P. Steinberg combines a close analysis of Wagnerian music drama with a personal account of his work as a dramaturg on the bicentennial production of The Ring of the Nibelung for the Teatro alla Scala Milan and the Berlin State Opera. Steinberg shows how Wagner uses the power of a modern mythology to heighten music’s claims to knowledge, thereby fusing not only art and politics, but truth and lies as well. Rather than attempting to separate value and violence, or “the good from the bad,” as much Wagner scholarship as well as popular writing have tended to do, Steinberg proposes that we confront this paradox and look to the capacity of the stage to explore its depths and implications. Drawing on decades of engagement with Wagner and of experience teaching opera across disciplines, The Trouble with Wagner is packed with novel insights for experts and interested readers alike.

Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism provides rich new insights into the history of political thought and clinical knowledge. In these chapters, internationally renowned historians and cultural theorists discuss landmark debates about the uses and abuses of ‘the talking cure’ and map the diverse psychologies and therapeutic practices that have featured in and against tyrannical, modern regimes. These essays show both how the Freudian movement responded to and was transformed by the rise of fascism and communism, the Second World War, and the Cold War, and how powerful new ideas about aggression, destructiveness, control, obedience and psychological freedom were taken up in the investigation of politics. They identify important intersections between clinical debate, political analysis, and theories of minds and groups, and trace influential ideas about totalitarianism that took root in modern culture after 1918, and still resonate in the twenty-first century. At the same time, they suggest how the emergent discourses of ‘totalitarian’ society were permeated by visions of the unconscious. Topics include: the psychoanalytic theorizations of anti-Semitism; the psychological origins and impact of Nazism; the post-war struggle to rebuild liberal democracy; state-funded experiments in mind control in Cold War America; coercive ‘re-education’ programmes in Eastern Europe, and the role of psychoanalysis in the politics of decolonization. A concluding trio of chapters argues, in various ways, for the continuing relevance of psychoanalysis, and of these mid-century debates over the psychology of power, submission and freedom in modern mass society. Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism will prove compelling for both specialists and readers with a general interest in modern psychology, politics, culture and society, and in psychoanalysis. The material is relevant for academics and post-graduate students in the human, social and political sciences, the clinical professions, the historical profession and the humanities more widely.

In Psychoanalysis, Classic Social Psychology and Moral Living: Let the Conversation Begin, Paul Marcus uniquely draws on psychoanalysis and social psychology to examine what affects the ethical decisions people make in their everyday life. Psychoanalysis traditionally looks at early experiences, concepts and drives which shape how we choose to behave in later life. In contrast, classic social psychology experiments have illustrated how specific situational forces can shape our moral behaviour. In this ground-breaking fusion of psychoanalysis and social psychology, Marcus gives a fresh new perspective to this and demonstrates how, in significant instances, these experimental findings contradict many presumed psychoanalytic ideas and explanations surrounding psychoanalytic moral psychology. Examining classic social psychology experiments, such as Asch’s line judgement studies, Latané and Darley’s bystander studies, Milgram’s obedience studies, Mischel’s Marshmallow Experiment and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, Marcus pulls together insights and understanding from both disciplines, as well as ethics, to begin a conversation and set out a new understanding of how internal and external factors interact to shape our moral decisions and behaviours. Marcus has an international reputation for pushing boundaries of psychoanalytic thinking and, with ethics being an increasingly relevant topic in psychoanalysis and our world, this pioneering work is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, moral philosophy scholars and social psychologists.

A brief commentary on the necessity and the impossibility of black men’s participation in the development of black feminist theory and politics, Black Men, Black Feminism examines the basic assumptions that have guided—and misguided—black men’s efforts to take up black feminism. Offering a rejoinder to the contemporary study of black men and masculinity in the twenty-first century, Jared Sexton interrogates some of the most common intellectual postures of black men writing about black feminism, ultimately departing from the prevailing discourse on progressive black masculinities. Sexton examines, by contrast, black men’s critical and creative work—from Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep to Jordan Peele’s Get Out— to describe the cultural logic that provides a limited moral impetus to the quest for black male feminism and that might, if reconfigured, prompt an ethical response of an entirely different order.

Studying Lacan’s Seminar VII offers a contemporary, critically informed set of analyses of Lacan’s ethics seminar and astute reflections about what Lacan’s ethics offer to the field of psychoanalytic thought today. The volume interrogates the seminar with fresh voices and situated curiosities and perspectives, making for a compellingly exciting range of explorations of the crucial matters related to an ethics of psychoanalysis. The chapters question and tease out the paradoxes Lacan draws attention to in his seminar of 1959–1960, and in addition, they offer radical engagements with the seminar in light of theories of racism, inequality, capitalism, education, and subjectivity. The key elements in Lacan’s seminar are explained, debated, and reconsidered with Antigone, das Ding, and the inevitable “ne céder pas sur son désir ” duly unpacked, examined, and ruminated upon. Studying Lacan’s Seminar VII will be of interest to psychoanalytic scholars and students of Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as psychoanalytic therapists and analysts. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of politics, philosophy, and studies at the intersections of racism, film, feminism, sociology, gender, and queer theory.

If you are searching for a clear exploration of the key concepts in psychodynamic thinking and practice, then this is the book for you. In this book Jeffrey Longhofer unravels the complex field of psychodynamic practice and lays it out in an accessible A-Z format that enables any practitioner to implement psychodynamic practice into their work with people. Each entry introduces the reader to the fundamental aspects of psychodynamic practice: the theoretical underpinnings, key thinkers, debates and research. With 'Points for reflection and practice' and 'Key texts' throughout it provides clear guidance for day-to-day practice and further study. Whether you work in social work, psychology, counselling or related fields, this book will equip you with a broad knowledge of psychodynamic practice and its contribution to understanding human development.