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This book represents the continued concern and effort on the part of author Andrew Samuels to construct a bridge between two very unlikely bedfellows: politics and psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The improbability of joining the two successfully is naturally more apparent than real. The project's well-known origins are to be found in Freud (1915, 1933) and in a respectably long list of psychoanalysts who have subsequently continued this challenge. In this book Samuels is not concerned with reviewing the history of such efforts but with the attempt to ‘work out a new language’ (p. ix) as part of his bridging efforts. One question that this goal immediately presents is: A language for whom? Here Samuels is quite clear: as the book's subtitle indicates, it is a language aimed at the citizenry at large—all of us, in our various social roles with their various political implications and with their attendant tensions, satisfactions, defeats and despairs. In this sense the book is aimed at a wide and general readership. It has relatively little to offer to the psychoanalyst who is interested in the juncture of psychoanalysis and political life, either as a theoretical or an applied venture. It does, however, drive home the view that the political represents a major appreciation and understanding of life, and that politics permeate, partake of and colour everything—our most private and intimate experiences included.
While this realisation may date back to