Andrew Samuels

Economics, psychotherapy and politics

The paper explores the application of ideas derived from psychotherapy to questions of economic and social policy. It is argued that disputes concerning human nature underlie many debates on economic theory. Class is reviewed from internal and emotional perspectives. Psychological obstacles to the achievement of economic inequality are explored and ways of overcoming them critically discussed. Particular attention is paid to the operation of economic sadism in the behaviour of individuals and societies. A range of possible gender differences in relation to money is reviewed. Inherited wealth is explored from the perspective of ‘therapy thinking’. The paper proposes that we reconsider what is deemed to be realistic and what is deemed to be (hopelessly) idealistic in thinking about economics. The paper concludes by proposing a deeper discussion of the problematic of sacrifice in connection with sustainable economics.

The Hidden Politics of Healing: Foreign Dimensions of Domestic Practice

In a reversal of the usual flow of traffic, the author suggests that Western therapists (of all orientations including psychoanalytic) working with clients who do not display obvious differences from themselves should learn from what has been discovered in the practices of transcultural psychotherapy and also from the manner which psychotherapy has evolved in non-Western locales. A destabilization is sought of the distinction between and relations of ?foreign? and ?domestic?. Issues focused on include power dynamics in the therapy process, the limitations of Western models of individual, parent, family and society, training issues and questions of pluralism and integration within the field of psychotherapy. Throughout, the background is the ubiquitous linkage of psychology/psychotherapy and politics, an inter-penetration of apparently internal and apparently external worlds.

From sexual misconduct to social justice

Sexual misconduct by analysts and psychotherapists is a topic that causes great public concern. The profession should certainly respond to this concern. But the problem of sexual misconduct also provides a stimulus to new theorizing leading to an engagement with issues of social justice. I argue that there are three contentious issues: First, I criticize the growing practice of “safe”; analysis, seen as a misplaced response to the problem of sexual misconduct. Second, I urge a fresh look at the theme of incestuous sexual fantasy in family process. This would provide a broader theoretical base for the exploration of sexual desire in analysis. Third, I seek to retheorize the father in general and paternal sexuality in particular. New thinking about paternal erotics turns out to have many sociopolitical implications.

The 'activist client': social responsibility, the political self and clinical practice in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis

The idea of the “activist client” is intended to be taken both literally and metaphorically—applying to some extent to a wider range of clients than actual activists. The paper develops a set of ideas about a “political turn” in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, using the tag “the inner politician.” There is a focus on working directly with political material in the session, and the pros and cos of this practice are reviewed. Wider issues such as social responsibility and social spirituality are discussed, as well as an exploration of the limits of individual responsibility. Some specific topics covered in the paper include the political roots of depression, difficulties with the concept of the therapeutic alliance from the point of view of democratic perspectives on clinical work, and a challenge to the unquestioned valuing of empathy (based on a reading of therapy though a Brechtian lens). There are numerous clinical examples.

“I Rebel, Therefore We Are” (Albert Camus) New Political Thinking on Individual Responsibility for Group, Society, Culture, and Planet

This article is an attempt to open discussion on the role of the individual, as opposed to the group, in contemporary progressive and radical politics. The phrase making a difference comes to mind. Academic ideas about the contexts and groups in which individuals operate are important yet require extensive revision. Jung’s ideas about the relationship of individuals and the social collective are useful as is Camus’ (1951/1953) book The Rebel. This article presents new thinking about individuals as fractured and broken as distinct from the autonomous unit promulgated by neoliberal thinking. Yet they remain individuals.

Socially Responsible Roles of Professional Ethics: Inclusivity, Psychotherapy and ‘the Protection of the Public’

The remit of the apparatus of professional ethics in the field of psychotherapy can be appropriately expanded so as to make the profession more socially responsible and thereby contribute to the ‘protection of the public’ that is said to be the main purpose of statutory regulation. Using ideas culled from the sociology of the professions, political theory and ethical discourse, it is proposed that ethical psychotherapy cannot take place if its overall social framework is itself profoundly unethical. Inclusivity and diversity are reframed as ethical professional practices. Questions of wealth, gender, sexuality and ethnicity are not only ‘social’ or ‘political’—they are also part of a morally imaginative expansion of what we mean by professional ethics. Attention is paid to the dangers of self-righteousness and moral tyranny.

‘And if not now, when?’: Spirituality, psychotherapy, politics

Abstract Without collapsing distinct discourses into each other, the paper considers the linkages between spirituality, psychotherapy and politics. Changes are taking place in all three areas. Therapists who focus on the spiritual dimension as part of their ordinary work still tend to be marginalized. Similarly, the political dimensions of the clients experience often receive insufficient attention. The author offers an initial sketch of a new ‘anatomy of spirituality’: into social spirituality, democratic spirituality, craft spirituality, profane spirituality and spiritual sociality. He criticizes the practice of ‘safe therapy’, meaning therapy based on an object relations paradigm that represses the (incestuous) sexuality that lies at the heart both of the therapy encounter and the domain of spiritual values. The paper concludes with some thoughts about justice and an account of pertinent grassroots political developments.

The future of Jungian analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (‘SWOT’)

Using a methodology derived from management and organizational studies, the author reviews the future of Jungian analysis. The methodology is termed SWOT - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. A selected list in each of these categories is presented. The author is transparent in allowing for the fact that the paper not only derives from a public lecture on the topic, but also retains the immediacy and the contrarian and opinionated style of such a lecture.

Shadows of the therapy relationship

The author argues that the relational turn in psychotherapy has led to moralism, conformism and hypocrisy on the part of many clinicians. Relationality cannot engage with the phenomenon of solitude in a satisfactory manner leading to a potential flight from the unconscious. The author proposes that there is more than one therapy relationship to sondier and that the key task is to hold their simultaneity in mind. He proposes a methodology by which this might be done. The author argues that what is being discussed will be incomprehensible in terms of the project of state regulation of psychotherapy currently being proposed by the British Government.

Psychotherapists and Counselors for Social Responsibility (UK)

The following is a brief report about one of the psychotherapeutic/social action organizations that I have helped to found in the UK—Psychotherapists and Counselors for Social Responsibility (hereafter PCSR). It’s a report, not a theoretical statement or a history of such organizations, which have existed or do exist in many countries. Inevitably, the report has its parochial features, and I will let readers work out how what follows does or does not align with their own experiences in their particular locations. The long-standing desire on the part of many psychotherapists and psychoanalysts to make a contribution to the alleviation of social as well as personal distress has often foundered when it comes to the matter of organization.1 Psychotherapists are incorrigibly disputatious, and pervasive worries about ‘neutrality’ contribute to a picture in which the intent to bring “therapy thinking” into a wider world is undermined. There may also be conscious or unconscious wishes to conform to whatever standards seem to fit with the prevailing ideology of the day (see Jacoby). In general, then, it has not been easy to find an organizational vocabulary that will articulate “therapy for the world” in the face of the world’s indifference or even hostility to what can sometimes seem crass psychological theorizing about complicated sociocultural and political conflicts. In my view, it is because politics involves conflict and struggle that it is so difficult to work out a psychotherapeutic approach; therapists tend to seek a pre-existing internal or external conflict that a client is experiencing, so as to explore or mediate or synthesize such conflict which, pace relationality and intersubjectivity, is not often one they are involved in as direct participants. We are better at being thirds in any bilateral conflict situation—“why don’t you and he fight?,” as the bar wit put it. Our record in terms of political awareness and respect for difference and diversity, whether sexual, ethnic or in terms of lifestyle, is not a terribly impressive one. Too many of our theories are Eurocentric, normative, bourgeois— or just prejudices dressed up as theories. And, to round off this somewhat depressing litany about the inadequacy of psychotherapy as basis for a political organization, the politics of the profession seem to many insiders as well as to informed outsiders to be grotesque, preoccupied with status and hierarchy, and bedevilled by crude character assassination. Very much aware of these problems, a group of psychotherapists in the UK got together in the mid-1990s to set up PCSR. The fact that counselors were involved in this as well as psychotherapists from many different orientations gave the new organization a unique flavour in the class and faction ridden psychotherapy scene in the UK. The general idea was for psychotherapists to find a collective voice as psychotherapists and, having found their generic voice, begin to make constructive interventions in areas where psychotherapeutic expertise seemed relevant, such as “the family,” pornography, crime and punishment and mental health practices generally—and subsequently in areas of “hard” policy, such as economic strategy where the case for the utility of therapy thinking seemed at first to be weaker (for illustrations of “soft” and “hard” policy fields from the view of the politically oriented psychotherapist, see Samuels, Political Psyche, esp. Chs. 3, 4, 5). The mission was to incorporate emotional and psychological perspectives into current debates on social, cultural, environmental and political issues—without falling into a “psychotherapy reductionism” which would be distasteful and counterproductive. The hope was to engage policy makers in dialogue and address the media in ways that acknowledged diversity and discouraged polarized thinking. The organization clearly intended to be an active one rather International Notes