Buy used: $80.00

Delivery Monday, January 16. Order within 13 hrs 55 mins

Used: Good | Details

Sold by BookSMART

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Add to List

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

Andrew Samuels

The Political Psyche 1st Edition

by Andrew Samuels (Author)

5 ratings

Part of: Routledge Mental Health Classic Editions (44 books)

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$59.80

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$175.00

$196.23

Paperback

"Please retry"

$62.95

$51.54

$60.81

Paperback, September 11, 1993

$80.00

—

$1.79

What can depth psychology and politics offer each other? In The Political Psyche Andrew Samuels shows how the inner journey of analysis and psychotherapy and the passionate political convictions of the outer world are linked. He brings an acute psychological perspective to bear on public themes such as the market economy, environmentalism, nationalism, and anti-semitism. But, true to his aim of setting in motion a two-way process between depth psychology and politics, he also lay bare the hidden politics of the father, the male body, and of men's issue generally. A special feature of the book is an international survey into what analysts and psychotherapists do when their patients/clients bring overtly political material into the clinical setting. The results, including what the respondents reveal about their own political attitudes, destabilize any preconceived notions about the political sensitivity of analysis and psychotherapy.

ISBN-10

9780415081023
ISBN-13

978-0415081023
Edition

1st
Publisher

Routledge
Publication date

August 12, 1993
Language

English
Dimensions

6.14 x 0.9 x 9.21 inches
Print length

398 pages
See all details

Andrew Samuels
17
Paperback
$40.32
Get it as soon as Friday, Jan 13
$16.55 shipping
Only 13 left in stock - order soon.
Andrew Samuels
1
Paperback
$36.95
$15.73 shipping
Andrew Samuels
8
Paperback
12 offers from $12.45
Andrew Samuels
2
Paperback
$6.76
$19.16 shipping
Andrew Samuels
5
Paperback
$62.95
$15.88 shipping
Andrew Samuels
2
Paperback
$52.95
$15.88 shipping

Editorial Reviews

Review

Andrew Samuels reconstitutes the relations between mind and power. . . . This is an ambitious, honest, radical and well-informed book written in a style free of jargon and warmly dialogical.
–Peter Homans, University of Chicago

A passionate and compelling case for connecting inner and outer worlds, and for clinicians' greater political involvement--in their training, with their patients and, above all, in the outer world.
–Lynne Segal

A splendid bringing together of Jungian, post-Jungian and Freudian thought in an effort to link psychology and politics . . . a stimulating and thoroughly original book.
–Paul Roazen

A courageous book . . . richer than I can describe . . . thoughtful and illuminating . . . challenges all depth psychologists to wake up from prejudices. . . . [Samuels] carries me along with the great wisdom and merit of his goal. He wants to speak the unspoken. . . . He does that extremely well and brings us all to new awarenesses about the crucial links between politics and depth psychology in our practice and theory.
–Polly Young-Eisendrath, Harvest, Fall 1993

Celebrate the publication of The Political Psyche.
–The Guardian

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0415081025
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 1st edition (August 12, 1993)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 398 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780415081023
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0415081023
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 0.9 x 9.21 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,338,693 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,529 in Medical Psychoanalysis
- #4,149 in Psychiatry (Books)
- #4,356 in Popular Psychology Psychoanalysis

Customer Reviews:
5 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Andrew Samuels

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

5 star		11%
4 star		21%
3 star		33%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		34%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Michael C. Anderson

This book is unreadable

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2022

This book is written in an unintelligible. You find yourself re-reading each paragraph to try and understand what it means.

Helpful

M. Winther

Marxist Freudianism...awful!! (Critique of Andrew Samuels : "The Political Psyche")

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2014

Andrew Samuels's work to 'deconstruct' Jungian psychology, along with his calumniation of Jung's character, as delineated in "The Political Psyche", builds on the Marxist notion that political consciousness is foundational to mankind, i.e. that we are political beings. In Marx's view, "consciousness was always political, for it was always the outcome of politic-economic circumstances. What one thinks of life, power, and self, for Marx, is always a product of ideological forces" (cf. Wikipedia).

To this Marxist notion, Samuels adds the *unconscious* political dimension, because the "failure to grasp the unconscious dimension of the treatment relationship between political analyst and political process marred much Marxist analysis of politics" (p.30). It follows that "any conception of the unconscious or the psyche that omits to refer to social institutions and political processes will be inadequate" (p.55).

Thus, S. introduces the concept of the "innate political potential" and "innate political level" of the unconscious psyche. It means that "making politics is innate in humans [and] there is an innate desire in humans to change social and political reality" (p.57). Accordingly, individuation takes the form of "political development". A politically individuated person has appropriated a "libertarian and progressive" view along with a "pluralist" approach to psychology, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, etc. Those who have not attained the political level of leftism, feminism, and multiculturalism, etc., are either to be regarded as immature or pathological. "Their political potential may be repressed so that his or her contribution to political process is stunted and distorted" (p.55).

Political development follows the principles of Freudian object-relations. A mature political view (i.e. a "progressive" leftist view) is acquired through the internalization (introjection) of a more ideal political standpoint, corresponding to the improvement of the father-imago in the patient. In this way, the "patient whose views are repulsive" is politically cured. The ideal for the individual is to "function pluralistically", a development that follows from an "ideological colouring of subjectivity" (p.35).

S. emphasizes the procedure of introjection of ideals and images from the outside world, and repudiates the father and mother archetypes proper. The father-infant relationship, "is a culturally constructed relationship" because "there is no father archetype; the father relation features a lack of innate features" (p.140). Thus, the archetype is regarded a mere empty potentiality. "Animus and anima signify unconscious potentials within a person--the kind of psychological characteristics they do not themselves (yet) have" (ibid.).

Thus, the archetype is reduced to nought. Allegedly, anima psychology comes from the outside in the form of internalizations--there is no innate anima psychology or maternal psychology. "Undermining the edifice of maternal psychology is [...] a political move, for the most devastating argument against any change is that change is, 'a priori', out of the question" (p.144).

Accordingly, S. criticizes M-L von Franz and Robert Bly for "the somewhat dated version of archetypal theory and uncritical acceptance of bourgeois values" (p.188). It gives rise to "conservative and reactionary" views, such as "biological differences" between the sexes, causing a "backlash against feminism and an uncritical reverence for the nuclear family" (p.185).

Yet, S. fails to provide any empirical evidence for the purported absence of biological and archetypal connateness. In fact, research in cognitive science has evinced that we are governed by "unconscious metaphors". They rest inaccessibly and firmly in our psychology on account of our brain's neurological structure. Thus, cognition is largely unconscious. By example, cognitive science has found that our psyche unconsciously nurtures the "soul metaphor" (i.e. the anima) as an autonomous spiritual being (vid. Lakoff & Johnson, "Philosophy in the Flesh").

Samuels has repudiated all central tenets of Jungian psychology: the collective psyche, the phenomenology of shadow psychology, and the archetype proper. He is peddling a form of object-relations theory in the guise of cultural Marxism, which flies in the face of science. It builds on the tenets of post-structuralism (an integral part of cultural Marxism), according to which "social construction" is central to all human life--everything in human consciousness is wholly constructed, including the sexual roles. Thus, Samuels's stance is essentially anti-Jungian:

"The general point about the contingency of the person--that, being embedded in an environment, we are socially constructed beings--has led to the realization that there is very little that is definitely fixed in the human sciences (no single conception of human nature), no fundamental and determining level in the psychological sphere (no agreement on what is given or constitutional in personality), no insulated gender essence (what used to be called masculine or feminine characteristics)" (p.197).

For this reason all conservative structures must be deconstructed (destroyed), including classical Jungian psychology. (This is the 'deconstructionism' of cultural Marxism.) Accordingly, "cultural fragmentation, fracture and complexity", is elevated as ideal, whereas the "fantasy of homogeneity" is rejected (p.10). An optimally disintegrated reality is to be "confronted by a political analysis that is equally fragmented, fractured and complex" (p.198). The ideal to be sought is "psychological pluralism". Here pluralism is understood as the deconstruction of all forms of homogeneity. It is regarded exemplary conduct to create and embrace fragmentation, in personal psychology as well as in society and the theoretical realm.

Since C.G. Jung is a cultural conservative and not a Marxist, he is unsuitable as father-imago. The internalization of a conservative father-imago would put a curb on individuation, the goal of which is the "progressive" and "pluralistic" personality. That's why Jung is subjected to a character-assassination. He is characterized as an anti-Semite, showing a tendency to collaborate with Nazis. He must have been a very strange anti-Semite, then, since he fell in love with a Jewish woman, collaborated with Jews all his life, invited them to his home (such as Pauli), and had many Jewish patients.

In a deceitful way Samuels manages to "associate" Jung's theories of collective psychology with Nazi nationalism and racism. Allegedly, the fact that Jung postulates a collective psychology of groups, ethnicities, and nations, brings him into the "same frame" as Nazi ideology (p.283). Yet, it is undeniable that there is a collective psyche as well as an individual psyche. Even families have a collective psyche and often carry a common problem. Teachers testify that different school classes have different psychology. We can't just repudiate the notion of collective psychology on the grounds that the Nazis endorsed ideas of the noble Aryans and the glorious Aryan nation.

What does it mean when individuation occurs through the internalization of a pluralistic politics? It simply means that the subject acquires an ideological algorithm that is utilized by consciousness to analyze all phenomena. The ideological person puts on eyeglasses with warped lenses, and lets a political ideology govern his perception of reality. It is like having recourse to a little computer program. You input the data, and out comes the answer. It is very convenient. In consequence, such a person spins a cocoon of intellectual spider threads around himself, serving as a shelter from reality. The ideological person always develops a pronounced shadow psychology, since everything politically incorrect is relegated to the shadow. As a consequence, there is a marked tendency to demonize other people.

It is well-known that bodily signalling plays a big part in social interaction and that the body gives expression to feeling. However, Samuels has the perception that the body can serve as an instrument of political analysis. Since the unconscious has an "innate political level", the body gives expression to politics. "Bodily reactions, sounds, smells [can lead] the political analyst to the heart of the culture and its political problems". To this end, the analyst must "differentiate and describe the somatic vocabulary and the bodily imagery [through which affect], bodily sensations, wild fantasy, are all reframed and re-evaluated as the tools of political analysis". Yet, intellectual sanity is not essential because "our discourse on politics may, with advantage, reek of hyperbole, blemish, crudity and farce, making a social critique out of their very irrationality" (pp.32-41).

S. regards dance movement therapy as a forerunner in this field. One might think of an exercise where Jungian analysts eat a lot of cauliflower. Through performing a dance, in the course of which they exude bodily odours, they may impact political reality. Needless to say, the conception of the body as a political instrument is highly implausible.

Yet, Samuels's reinterpretation of Freud's "primal scene" is even less plausible. The primal scene is the sexual act between father and mother, as perceived (and misinterpreted) by the child. However, in Samuels's view, "[the] primal scene is a self-generated diagnostic monitoring of the person's psychopolitical state at any moment. The level of political development is encapsulated in the primal scene image" (p.165). It indicates the person's "political capacity" and his ability to sustain conflict, i.e. to what degree he can function "pluralistically". If the mother and father are perceived as performing a harmonious copulation, it means that "opposites" can exist side by side. "Via primal scene imagery, the psyche is expressing the patient's pluralistic capacity to cope with the unity 'and' the diversity of the political situation he or she is in" (ibid.). So, if the person can function pluralistically he will be able to accept, for instance, that different races and cultures can exist intermingled.

This is Marxist Freudianism taken to its extremes. As a symbol occurring in historical religious traditions, including alchemy, the 'hieros gamos' and the 'coniunctio oppositorum' has a much deeper meaning.

Samuels's view of pluralism is self-contradictory. A conservative person is regarded as unindividuated, since he is supposed to abide at an inferior psychopolitical level. Yet, it doesn't seem very pluralistic that conservatism in all its forms, including various expressions of homogeneity, must be removed from society, whether by recourse to bodily smells, dance movements, or through patient therapy. It is reminiscent of the Communist concept of "psychopathological mechanisms" of dissent. In the Soviet Union, a systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place. It was based on the interpretation of political dissent as a psychiatric problem. Thus, people with "bourgeois values" could be confined in psychiatric wards. In Samuels's ideal world, no conservatives would exist in the Parliament--only individuated, i.e., pluralistic persons. Yet, if that were the case, the political situation isn't very pluralistic, is it? Samuels never resolves this obvious contradiction.

I don't know how the Jungian community can coexist with a such a destructive theorist. Samuels is outspokenly anti-Jungian and has rejected the essentials of Jungian theory. His theories are logically weak, wholly lacking in empirical veracity, and are also lacking in originality, since he has merely refitted post-structuralism with the clothes of object-relations theory. I characterize his thought as a theoretical phantasmagoria building on a destructive political ideology. For more on political correctness and cultural Marxism, see William S. Lind (ed.), "Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology" (2004):
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1332

M. Winther

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Sarah E. Stevens

Love it so far...

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2009

I have only read 70 pages so far, but this book seems like a perfect educational tool for what is going on in today's society. Political/emotional explosions in politics&culture(esp. in the U.S. right now) go much deeper than simple policy opinions, deep into the psyche and the imagery with which we identify as human beings on an individual as well as collective scale.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Bill Tell

Thought Provoking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2010

Verified Purchase

This thought provoking book is more about the political as an element of psychotherapy than about political psychology. I am a political analyst, with reasonable understanding of political psychology, rather than a psychoanalyst. There were some insights here for the likes of me, mostly about how psychotherapy might contribute to political discourse and vice versa, and also about Jung and Naziism. Much of the rest was lost on me since it discussed psychotherapeutical discourse unfamiliar and not entirely relevant to my research - but that was not the fault of the author! I imagine it to be quite stimulating for psychotherapists but am not qualified to make that judgement.

7 people found this helpful

See all reviews

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Follow the Author

The Political Psyche 1st Edition

Popular titles by this author

Editorial Reviews

Review

Product details

Videos

About the author

Andrew Samuels

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries