Special Section on Politics and Psychoanalysis, Editor’s Introduction

It is our hope that reading this introduction and the articles that follow will evoke an experience of connectedness in the face of sociopolitical pressures and cultural currents that leave us feeling more and more disenfranchised and alone. It is important now more than ever that we reach out to one another to put words to experiences about what is happening in the world that is unjust and corrupt, especially as our faith in what we used to call reality is eroding through a near-constant attack on truth.

Peltz (2012) quoted the artist and essayist John Berger as saying that there is hope in the creation of a “small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the new world economic order” (p. 279). Peltz goes on to say that this pocket of resistance is formed in the psychoanalytic relationship in its intention to uncover the truth of what is experienced for both participants, and what grows between them. We would like to add that the small pocket formed through the maintenance of integrity in the analytic dyad, though vital to the analytic project, is not enough. We need to grow and expand the shape of this pocket to include more of the ways we think about and interact with our professional and collegial peers, to create a psychoanalytic community of refuge in the face of oppression and the assault of misinformation. To share our truths with one another as an act of resistance and social responsibility, but also to take better care, to strengthen our feelings of connectedness as a salve for the ills facing us that leave us helpless and estranged from ourselves and from one another (Frommer, 2016).

The authors of the articles in this section challenge us to grapple with the place of psychoanalysis in the larger context of our culture and to consider a new set of psychoanalytic ethics for practice and beyond. Layton opens the discussion by making an appeal for a “psychoanalytic ethics of disillusionment” in which the psychoanalyst must come to terms with her own investment in the inequities of society, and Watkins similarly urges us to own our “deserved shame” so that we may engage in the reparative process of what she terms psychosocial accompaniment. Shomron-Atar looks at the replication of fascist structures within the psychoanalytic relationship and challenges us to step outside of the generalizable and familiar to reckon with what is unique to each individual, in order to break with the fascist within. In “I Should Like to Remind You,” Phillipson harkens back to Winnicott’s famous statement concerning air raid sirens sounding outside as a psychoanalytic meeting progressed and reflects upon why the political is one of the last bastions of taboo topics in psychoanalysis. Aibel similarly looks at the political within the context of the psychoanalytic relationship and argues for the integration of the sociopolitical dimension as a deeply ingrained part of each person and dyad. Finally, Sherman asks how we cope when the humanity and raw vulnerability of both patient and analyst are evoked by the same environmental traumas.

All of the authors in this special section on the political climate argue for a value of connection and acceptance, whether by the working through of dissociation, the surrender to our own shameful complicities, or continual analysis of the fascist influences within and without. The editors of Psychoanalytic Perspectives believe that we must keep trying to reach out to one another in various forums to grow the shape of our “pocket of resistance.” Let us continue to connect around the search for and expression of our own truths, as well as remain committed to an ethos of genuine receptivity to the truths of the other.