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 …
In my previous post on psychosalvation I argued that psychotherapy, and, to a certain extent, psychoanalysis, were grounded in an ideology of ‘psychosalvation’, by which I meant that therapy offers the possibility of ‘saving’ the human subject from the secular equivalent of Christian hell and damnation. On this reading, ‘hell’ …
Many years ago, when I was in final year of my undergraduate studies, I wrote a dissertation on humanistic psychotherapy, within which I strongly criticised its concept of the ‘self’ or ‘ego’ and, linked to this, the notion of ‘psychosalvation’. By this I mean the idea that therapy can, in …
At one point near the end of the Watchmen graphic novel, and in the film of the same name, Dr Manhattan tells his companion and lover Laurie that he has been blinded by a shower of tachyons that he attributes to a nuclear bomb being detonated by the ‘villain’ of …
I concluded my previous post on the psychopathology of Brexit by suggesting that right-wing populist ideology is an attempt to articulate a trauma. In this context, trauma can be thought of as a manifestation of the Real, as Lacan makes clear in Seminar XI. Another way to look at this …