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Harmonizing with Freud's (1914) hypothesized split between the sex drive and other ego functions, while simultaneously drawing criticism from the New Left (cf., McKinney, 2003), Lennon and McCartney (1968) famously sang that, “If you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao, you ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow.” Therein is an assumption that radical politics as with other ego functions are fundamentally alien to the sex drive. In the collection of papers under review, Lynn Layton argues that such a split between drive and political social functions has devalued the social save an ahistorical oedipal and pre-oedipal nod to socialization, and that such devaluing is commonplace in and detrimental to contemporary psychoanalysis. Layton draws on the manner in which character is formed by economic and socio-historic forces in concert with the Kohutian idea that omnipotence and aggression are not primary, but instead by-products of narcissistic injury.
Through focus on social psychoanalysis and her concept of a normative unconscious, Layton labors to rework the split between drive theory and the social with links to relational psychoanalytic conceptualizations of trauma where misrecognition and abuse are the genesis of division within a subject. Herein is an argument that politics, like sex are bedrock, and that attunement to this psychically social plurality contributes to better outcomes in and out of the consulting room. Layton notes that cartographic differences between psychic illustrations have led to protracted arguments. She also holds that all cultural definitions of social groupings are rooted in asymmetrical splitting. Additionally, she posits that social inequality disables spontaneity while social equality enables creativity. She traces the concept of social character to early analysts such as Otto Fenichel and Wilhelm Reich, and writes with concern that links made between narcissism and capitalism “are at risk of falling too soon into the dustbin of hist