ABSTRACT
Socio-economic, racial and gender divisions clearly underpin all the conflicts troubling the West, yet they do not straightforwardly scan onto traditional political differences. From both a metaphysical and a psychological point of view, the left and the right both depend on and feed off each other, as do Remainers and Leavers. The resources of psychoanalysis offer the possibility, however momentarily, of not taking any of these sides and of understanding them all the better as a consequence. In so far as it has contributed to analyses of culture and politics, psychoanalysis has mostly been deployed from a liberal or left position. This is particularly, although not exclusively, true of academic deployments of psychoanalysis. Certain features of the referendum lent it the characters of a psychical symptom rather than a decision and thus left it open to psychoanalysis. The conflicts and repressions among British voters about Brexit were active before, during and after the referendum.
