ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes Hanna Segal’s contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding of art and culture. It examines the escalation of the arms race and its ideology from a psychoanalytic perspective, showing how processes of denial and splitting bring a vicious circle of ever increasing destructiveness, helplessness, paranoia and fragmentation of responsibility. The book shows how these extreme defensive manoeuvres are intensified in groups, most especially those large groups that it call ‘nations’. It draws on ancient literature to illustrate an important phenomenological distinction between on the one hand Pride based on a realistic sense of self-worth and, on the other hand, Pride as a manifestation of arrogance and superiority. The book suggests that the phenomena of hypnotism can be understood as a ‘folie a deux’ and emphasises the centrality of the idea of freedom to the psychoanalytic endeavour.
