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This collection of articles on urgent contemporary topics reflects a growing awareness of the meaning of a psychoanalytic perspective for understanding political and social processes. Edited by David Morgan, they were presented at the Political Mind Seminars, run by the British Psychoanalytical Society since 2015. The unique contribution of psychoanalysis allows us to reflect on how unconscious, irrational, early—in Jungian psychology we would add archetypal—states of mind (including the group mind) influence group processes, shaping both politics and history.
The shift in psychoanalysis from a focus on the individual psyche to approaching it in the wider, social and historical context is a very important one. As Volkan (2012) shows, the collective psyche and the impact of external events on the inner world and treatment process were not always considered relevant. In Jungian psychoanalysis the collective psyche was always an important factor, but in recent decades there has been a shift from concentration on archetypal aspects of the group psyche to historical, social and cultural aspects. The book gives full respect to the meaning of the social unconscious, both in the context of the individual process and in the wider social dynamic. As David Morgan writes in the Introduction:
Political and ideological turmoil in the current and the last century has been certainly influenced by the effects of economics, revolution, and endless battles for power and supremacy. These events are also experienced by each human being in the most personal way, leaving deep emotional scars and trauma. Each individual's experience is multifaceted and reflects a transgenerational history that has profound influence on the future generations that underpins themselves and their families, involving both the individual and the social unconscious.
As described in The Unconscious in Social and Political Life, political and ideological turmoil is the subject of ongoing debate in the social sciences