In a memorable scene in Menno Meyjes’ 2002 film Max, the would-be artist Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor) remarks to his would-be Jewish mentor, the (fictional) Munich art dealer Max Rothman (John Cusack), that ‘politics is the new art’. Too late Rothman realises the true meaning of Hitler’s words: this failed …
Twenty years ago Howard Schwartz wrote a paper on the Psychodynamics of Political Correctness which might easily have disappeared into the academic graveyard along with all those other countless publications that no-one outside their particular sub-discipline would ever read in the first place. However, times change and today political correctness …
The BBC news channel recently broadcast a fascinating documentary on American film noir and its relationship to small town America. In it, the historian Adam Smith argues that Donald Trump’s election victory has highlighted the division between the cultures of the (corrupt) big city and the (innocent) small town. Although …
There was an interesting book review in the Boston Review recently by Peter Gordon of Enzo Traverso’s Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History and Memory. In his introduction Gordon was very quick to link the book’s subject with the recent election of Trump: November 9, 2016, was a strange day to walk …
There are two ways to think about trauma. The first, and the one that I’ve consistently emphasised in the writings on this blog, is as a manifestation of the Real, as an encounter with the Real. In fact, to be traumatised is essentially to touch the Real (or perhaps it …
In my previous post I began to explore the question of whether psychotherapy in this country is left-wing or at least whether it has left leanings. I posed this question in the context of the recent UK election and Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise ‘victory’ (he lost but you wouldn’t know it), …
According to David Edgar’s article in Guardian, the right is suddenly on the retreat and the left is back with a vengeance. The fact that his article begins with a picture of Jeremy Corbyn at the Glastonbury festival in many ways encapsulates his argument: that the future belongs to the …
The recent attack on the Finsbury Park mosque by Darren Osborne has rekindled the whole argument regarding so-called ‘lone wolf’ terrorists. The Times was the first out of the gate with the headline “Jobless ‘lone wolf’ Darren Osborne held over attack on Finsbury Park mosque”. Other media reports were quick …
Last night’s ‘shock’ election result which has left the UK with its second hung parliament within the space of seven years has not only upset the usual suspects (the political class, the commentariat, Daily Mail and Telegraph readers, etc) but also all those people who thought there was a direct …
The following is definitely a ‘work in progress’ and a working hypothesis, and its main aim is to try and formulate a relationship between right-wing populism (RWP) and the Real. My basic contention is that RWP is founded on an ‘ideology of the Real’, which although posing a number of …