ABSTRACT
This chapter considers developments in the way in which psychoanalysis thinks about psychic defences, which could deepen the understanding of social defences. Over the last fifteen years there has been an unprecedented revival in the application of psychoanalysis to the social sciences in the UK. This development has gone under the heading "psycho-social studies" and has led to the emergence of research centres and groupings working under this rubric in over a dozen British universities and the launch of a new national learned society, the Association for Psychosocial Studies. One of the common themes in psycho-social studies has been the attempt to use psychoanalysis to illuminate the interpenetration of psyche and society—that is, to combine psychoanalytic with social scientific ways of thinking without giving either one undue prominence. The chapter also considers how developments in psychoanalytic and sociological thinking enable us to extend and deepen the original concept that Menzies Lyth bequeathed us.
