Editors’ introduction

This chapter illustrates the belief of some psychoanalysts that it is important and worthwhile to apply their metapsychology to society, a tradition that starts with Freud’s Das Unbehagen in der Kultur [Civilisation and its Discontents] (Freud, 1930a). Some of the themes of this paper seem rather obvious to clinicians today but it is to Melman’s credit to have laid the foundation of this work fifteen years ago at a time when Facebook did not exist. Clinicians working with young people may observe that the new social media has provided fertile terrain on which his New Psychic Economy has burgeoned.