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The paper is a study of political process and the process of political change. In addition to exploring the significance of the political in the unconscious, its more ambitious project is to develop a form of political and cultural analysis which would ‘make an engagement of depth psychology with the public sphere possible’. Samuels is making an innovative and important theoretical contribution to depth psychology and to the application of psychological analysis to the economic and political realms. The work is further elaborated in his recently published book, The Political Psyche (1993).
Samuels views the attempt to engage depth psychology with politics and culture as part of a larger resacralization trend, which includes phenomena as diverse as the human potential movement, religious fundamentalism, and recent changes in Eastern Europe. ‘I want to depict resacralization as a contemporary attempt to shift a sense of holiness into the secular and material world.’ Involvement in the external world and political involvement are regarded ‘as psychologically valuable as an interior perspective’.
The trend towards resacralization may derive in part from dissatisfaction with political, economic and social systems, which are characterized by power issues and