ABSTRACT

What can contemporary psychoanalysis offer to modern policymaking and progressive political practice? Psychoanalysis today offers a distinct vision for politics, bringing learning from the dyadic encounter between therapist and patient and from interventions across the strata of society. It posits that there is an urgent need for emotionally intelligent policymaking, which grapples with and roots itself in the complex realities of social relations and forges negotiated solutions. We have become used to rational-linear, “top-down” policymaking, but such processes fail to contend with the messy and often conflictual systems and domains in which we live, where our fears, desires, and agonies inevitably play a role. Modern psychoanalysis asks that policy thinking uses this understanding of society as a departure point for theory and action.