Psychotherapy and Politics Books
The Unconscious in Social and Political Life
Traumatic events happen in every age, yet there is a particularly cataclysmic feeling to our own epoch that is so attractive to some and so terrifying to others. The terrible events of September 11th... (more)
Finding a Place to Stand: Developing Self-Reflective Institutions, Leaders and Citizens
What stands between us and authoritarianism seems increasingly fragile. Democratic practices are under attack by foreign intrusion into elections; voter suppression restricts citizen participation.... (more)
Internal Racism: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Race and Difference
Racism's external forms, from racial assault to petty discrimination, are readily recognized. However, its internal dimensions are easily overlooked: how can we understand what happens in the mind of... (more)
Thinking Space: Promoting Thinking About Race, Culture and Diversity in Psychotherapy and Beyond
'Thinking Space' was set up to develop the capacity of staff and trainees at the Tavistock Clinic to think about racism, and other forms of hatred toward difference in ourselves and others. Drawing... (more)
The Making of Them: The British Attitude to Children and the Boarding School System
This thought-provoking book reveals the bewildering dilemmas confronting the boarding school child, and discovers a dark secret at the heart of the British psyche. The author, a psychotherapist and... (more)
Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History, and Mourning
Today sees the rise of nationalism, the return of totalitarian parties in Europe to electoral success, and the rise of the alt-right and white supremacists in the US. Thus, there is urgency for... (more)
Wounded Leaders: British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion - A Psychohistory
In an age when America elected its first black president and the Middle East stirred with popular uprising, Britons were again content to elect the products of their elitist Public Schools. But,... (more)
Immigrants and Refugees: Trauma, Perennial Mourning, Prejudice, and Border Psychology
Aside from the many political, cultural and economic aspects of the present refugee crisis in Europe, it is also crucial to consider the psychological element. In our fast-changing world,... (more)
The Political Self: Understanding the Social Context for Mental Illness
This book explores how our social and economic contexts profoundly affect our mental health and wellbeing, and how modern neuroscientific and psychodynamic research can both contribute to and enrich... (more)
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald's only niece, shines a bright light on the... (more)
Trauma and Recovery: From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
A ground-breaking work in which the author makes the revolutionary link between the 'heroic' suffering of men in war and political struggle and the degraded suffering of women who are victims of... (more)
Psychoanalysis, Society, and the Inner World: Embedded Meaning in Politics and Social Conflict
Psychoanalysis, Society, and the Inner World explores ideas from psychoanalysis that can be valuable in understanding social processes and institutions and in particular, how psychoanalytic ideas and... (more)
A Nazi Legacy: Depositing, Transgenerational Transmission, Dissociation, and Remembering Through Action
This book relates the psychoanalytic journey of a man in his thirties, a grandson of a high-level SS officer, whose case illustrates how individuals can sometimes suffer greatly or cause the... (more)
Racist States of Mind: Understanding the Perversion of Curiosity and Concern
Racism is a treacherous phenomenon with many faces that allow it a remarkable capacity to co-exist with support for ethnic and cultural diversity. In both its subtle and virulent forms, racist states... (more)
Psychoanalysis and Politics: Exclusion and the Politics of Representation
Thinking psychoanalytically about the nature of social exclusion involves a self-questioning on the part of the interpreter. While we may all have some experiences of having been subject to... (more)
Why Some Politicians are More Dangerous Than Others
Politicians and the political process, even in ostensibly democratic countries, can be deadly. James Gilligan has discovered a devastating truth that has been "hiding in plain sight" for the past... (more)
Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves
Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves presents a unique approach to understanding the varied and multi-layered experience of immigration, exploring how social, cultural, political, and... (more)
A New Therapy for Politics?
Andrew Samuels has established an international practice as a political consultant, working with senior politicians, political parties and activist groups. His lectures and workshops on the... (more)
How to Survive Without Psychotherapy
This book is directly aimed at sufferers of mental distress. The book’s aim is to remove from sufferers the burden of 'fault' for their pain and to demystify some of the practices that surround the... (more)
The Origins of Unhappiness: A New Understanding of Personal Distress
It is the main argument of this book that emotional and psychological distress is often brought about through the operation of social-environmental powers which have their origin at a considerable... (more)
Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
This work challenges the notion that anxiety and depression amount to a mental illness denoting that something is wrong with the individual sufferer. Instead, anxiety and depression are described as... (more)
Psychoanalysis, International Relations, and Diplomacy: 39649
The author has three goals in writing this book. The first is to explore large-group identity such as ethnic identity, diplomacy, political propaganda, terrorism and the role of leaders in... (more)
Transcending the Legacies of Slavery: A Psychoanalytic View
This book puts psychological trauma at its centre. Using psychoanalysis, it assesses what was lost, how it was lost and how the loss is compulsively repeated over generations. There is a... (more)
Counselling and Psychotherapy with Refugees
This concise book is an essential tool to help counsellors and psychotherapists understand and engage with the experiences of persecution, violence and exile often faced by refugees. (more)
Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain
A fierce, mordantly funny and perceptive book about the act of national self-harm known as Brexit. A great democratic country tears itself apart, and engages in the dangerous pleasures of national... (more)
The Third Reich in the Unconscious
This work examines the effects of the Holocaust on second-generation survivors and specifically describes how historical images and trauma are transferred. (more)
Analysis and Activism: Social and Political Contributions of Jungian Psychology
Jungian psychology has taken a noticeable political turn in the recent years, and analysts and academics whose work draws on Jung's ideas have made internationally recognised contributions in many... (more)
Political Freud: A History
In this masterful psychological-intellectual history, Eli Zaretsky shows Freudianism to be something more than a method of psychotherapy. When considered alongside the major struggles of the... (more)
Taking Care: An Alternative to Therapy
Taking Care established David Smail as an important social and political analyst whose background happened to be in clinical psychology. In this work he develops the analysis of mental illness, and... (more)