CASE BY CASE: Jamieson Webster & Patricia Gherovici with Rachel Connolly

Freud’s ‘talking cure’ and its offshoots are more widespread today than ever. But as the divisive issues of our time grow more urgent, a contentious question persists: must psychoanalysis remove itself from politics altogether in order to be effective? Or is it inherently political?

Specific disagreements about how clinicians should or shouldn’t engage with imperialism, violence, race, and gender identity point to the broader question of where politics is situated in our psychic life. Is it on the periphery – a symptom or displacement – or right at the heart of the matter?

Patricia Gherovici and Jamieson Webster examine the vexed relationship between psychoanalysis and politics through a sequence of case studies, exploring the many ways in which the political enters the consulting room.

Ranging from early cases confronting homosexuality and race to idiosyncratic analyses disentangling the legacies of state and colonial violence, the authors illuminate how the political shapes our relationships to power, normativity, and identity. These historic cases are prescient of the political dilemmas confronting us today.