ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION In my analytical practice, I noted that many patients seemed to be introducing political themes more often than they had before. Talking to a few colleagues confirmed that this was also their experience and we tended to put it down to the fact that, since the mid-1980s, the pace of political change in the world appeared to have quickened. But, we also agreed, we were not as sure as we once were how to understand and handle this material. At times, as I noted in Chapter 1, I felt that the usual formulation-that such material needs to be understood symbolically, perhaps as a communication on the transference-countertransference level-was still adequate to guide practice. At other times, it turned out that the patient had a need to talk about some public issue, such as the Gulf War, but had ‘learned’ that, in analysis, you don’t do that. Hence, behind many apparent transference communications there seemed also to be a concern, perhaps still on a psychological level, for the political theme, issue or problem that had been introduced-but in its own right.
