What can depth psychology and politics offer each other? In The Political Psyche Andrew Samuels shows how the inner journey of analysis and psychotherapy and the passionate political convictions of the outer world are linked. He brings an acute psychological perspective to bear on public themes such as the market economy, environmentalism, nationalism, and anti-semitism. But, true to his aim of setting in motion a two-way process between depth psychology and politics, he also lay bare the hidden politics of the father, the male body, and of men's issue generally. A special feature of the book is an international survey into what analysts and psychotherapists do when their patients/clients bring overtly political material into the clinical setting. The results, including what the respondents reveal about their own political attitudes, destabilize any preconceived notions about the political sensitivity of analysis and psychotherapy.

Table of Contents

Part I The Political Psyche 1. The Mirror and the Hammer: The Politics of Resacralization 2. Subjectivity and Political Discourse: The Contirbution of the Clinic 3. Depth Psychology and Politics 4. The Lion and the Fox: Morality, Trickster and Political Transformation 5. Against Nature. Part II The Political Person 6. Fathers 7. Political Readings of Paternal Imagery 8. Reflecting on Men 9. The Political Person. Part III The Political Therapist 10. Political Material in the Clinical Setting: Replies to an International Survey 11. Object Relations, Group Process and Political Change 12. Jung, Anti-Semitism and the Nazis 13. Nations, Leaders and a Psychology of Difference 14. Ending and Beginning.