The Political Self: Understanding the Social Context for Mental Illness

by Roderick Tweedy (Editor)

Overview

This book explores how our social and economic contexts profoundly affect our mental health and wellbeing, and how modern neuroscientific and psychodynamic research can both contribute to and enrich our understanding of these wider discussions. It therefore looks both inside and outside - indeed one of the main themes of The Political Self is that the conceptually discrete categories of 'inner' and 'outer' in reality constantly interact, shape, and inform each other. Severing these two worlds, it suggests, has led both to a devitalised and dissociated form of politics, and to a disengaged and disempowering form of therapy and analysis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782204091
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/05/2016
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

Foreword — INTRODUCTION — Insight — Understanding the social context of individual distress — Power in the therapeutic relationship — Therapy in late capitalism — The selfish society: the current state of things — Divided brain, divided world — Outsight — Born to run: wounded leaders and boarding school survivors — On Killing: the psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society — A tangled web: internet pornography, sexual addiction, and the erosion of attachment — The corporation as a pathological institution — We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy—And the World's Getting Worse — APPENDIX Additional resources

Editorial Reviews

"A compelling compilation of arguments which convincingly pulls together a critique that should underpin the training and practice of all of us who try to work therapeutically with unhappy people."

Susan Llewelyn

"An important book offering psychotherapists new concepts and technical considerations."

Vamik D. Volkan

"An excellent book that brings together some of our best analysts and academics, integrating the profound insights of psychoanalysis with the social and economic malaise of our times."

David Morgan

"Vital, informed, and inspiring."

Andrew Samuels