On Lying and Disillusionment

Abstract

This paper looks at our current political crisis in terms of a general disavowal of the evils of neoliberalism. Drawing on Freud’s and Bion’s discussions of disavowal and lying, I look at the way this disavowal, turning a blind eye to the truth of neoliberalism, operates among neoliberalism’s winners, losers, and critical bystanders. The paper goes on to argue for a radical psychoanalytic ethic of disillusionment, in which we, as therapist-citizens, might understand more about our complicity with and resistance to the inequities of the neoliberal order.

Keywords:

• disavowal
• disillusionment
• neoliberalism
• politics
• Trumpism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lynne Layton

Lynne Layton, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. She supervises at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and is adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is the author of Who’s That Girl? Who’s That Boy? Clinical Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory, coeditor of Bringing the Plague. Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis, and coeditor of Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical Setting. She is coeditor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, associate editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and cofounder of the Boston Psychosocial Work Group. She is President of Section IX, Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility, of Division 39, and cofounder of Reflective Spaces/Material Places–Boston.