ABSTRACT
THE OBJECT RELATIONS CONSENSUS In this book, I have been describing my version of a depth psychological analysis of political and cultural themes, working in terms of the field between psychic reality and sociopolitical reality. This chapter contains a critique in a similar vein of what I hope I can justify calling the ‘object relations consensus’. The object relations consensus is proving an active source of attempts to make a psychoanalytic engagement with politics.1 In this chapter, I want to dialogue energetically with object relations theory, focusing on the ability of the object relations consensus to function as a base for an analysis of politics or culture. The claim has been made that, in the object relations consensus, political and social theory has found a brand of psychoanalysis better equipped to engage with political institutions and social relations than classical Freudian theory.2 It follows —or so the argument runs-that a political analysis that harnesses object relations theory will not suffer from the defects of previous attempts to engage depth psychology with politics.
