ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book provides the methodology informing that its argument and analysis is not primarily about the deployment of psychoanalytic concepts and theories in relation to welfare and society, but about the application of a clinical sensibility to the study of these phenomena. Psychoanalytic theories and concepts are produced in and through practice, via processes of hypothesizing and testing in relation to clinical realities. The book discusses the "Listening Post" is a method developed by the organization Organization for Promoting Understanding in Society (OPUS) for exploring the relationship between society and the individual through attention to, and interpretation of, the social experience of groups of citizens. It assumes the social world is partly shaped and structured by unconscious processes and forces, and that a clinical sensibility is required in order to notice, name, and give conceptual shape to their presence.
