ABSTRACT
The concept of nuclear war is supported by a fairly complex tangle of fantasies of different kinds; psychoanalyst certainly include fantasies of omnipotence, of personal magical immunity; there are also apocalyptic, millenarian, “religious” aspects—which sometimes emerge publicly in the statements of American politicians. The problem of the existence on earth of nuclear weapons, and of governments which contemplate their use in some way, cannot be seen by a psychoanalyst as exclusively political, economic or social: it is imbued with unconscious thoughts and fantasies. The real problem with nuclear war is not how to do it, but how not to do it—because doing it would mean destroying the human race, and the whole planet, and many of us think that that must not happen. The mechanisms so masterfully described by Hanna Segal: denial, separation, projection, linguistic mystification, which make it difficult even for the group to confront the reality of what a nuclear war would imply.
