Psychoanalytic Approaches to Wellbeing, Democratic Crisis and Counter-Strategy

Activity: External talk or presentationOral presentation

Description

This presentation draws on my recent work on the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott and the politics of care (Kellond 2022) in order to offer a psychoanalytic contribution to understanding wellbeing, democratic crisis and counter-strategy. Using the work of Winnicott and other object relations psychoanalysts, the presentation will develop a conception of wellbeing that defines and emphasises emotional ‘health.’ Drawing on the scholarship of Shapira (2013) and Alexander (2016), the presentation explores the relationship between this conception of wellbeing and ideals of democratic citizenship and welfare coming to the fore in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s, as an antidote to the rise of authoritarianism. Having established this historical context, the presentation considers how this account informs more recent attempts, notably in the work of Layton (2008, 2014) and Rustin (2014), to understand and theorise the relationship between states of insecurity and psychic tendencies towards splitting, which psychosocial theorists link to neoconservative and anti-democratic tendencies. Finally, the presentation considers counter-strategies. Whilst psychoanalytic thinkers in the 1930s and 1940s saw a well-supported family as the key to facilitating democratic subjectivities, the paper insists that contemporary counter-strategies must foreground the communalisation of care, rather than bolster its privatisation.
Period5 Oct 2024
Event titleCounterstrategies to authoritarianism: toward a politics of wellbeing?
Event typeWorkshop
LocationVienna, AustriaShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational