A Political Mind Special

Organised by:

British Psychoanalytical Society (incorporating the Institute of Psychoanalysis)

Description

A Political Mind Special – “Psychoanalytic Object relations theory as a necessary foundation of social democracy”

Speaker: Prof Michael Rustin

Now that we are beginning another period in which a Labour government is in office, what expectations do we have about what kind of society it might encourage into being? Do we expect little more than a continuation of the neo-liberalism we have lived under for the last 40 + years, perhaps with its roughest edges knocked off? Or do we think that “the Forward March of Labour”, declared “Halted” by Eric Hobsbawm in 1978, will now be resumed, and if so, is its ultimate destination the overthrow of capitalism?

I will argue in this paper that there is need for the re-articulation of an idea of social democracy, as a feasible compromise between recognising a useful role for capitalism in society, and a functioning democratic society and state. Psychoanalytic object relations theory had some influence on the early post-Second War development of social democracy in Britain, through the influence of Bowlby, Winnicott and the Kleinian’s on social policy, especially on the understanding of child development. I will argue in this paper that a larger approach to object-relatedness can provide a necessary psycho-social foundation for a social democratic worldview. It can provide a frame in which its necessary diversity of social purposes can be understood and valued. Social democratic theory and politics can be strengthened, I shall claim, if they are based on a psychoanalytically based theory of mental life.

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