ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a psychoanalytic approach to some aspects of the social processes that give rise to the attitudes in Western society towards nuclear war and the nuclear threat. It shows that there are profound hidden factors that work against changing the current views on war and nuclear war, and that some peace groups are inadvertently recruited into maintaining the status quo. The chapter discusses a psychoanalytic view of the social processes in which nuclear threat are embedded and explores the possibility of the social system being structured as a psychological defence. The nuclear threat is special in human psychological life as it touches on the most elemental and primitive of experiences. The chapter explains the psychodynamics of individuals in a collective unconscious system typical of a nation at war or preparing for it. It aims to emphasise certain aspects which are unique to the nuclear threat.
