Identity or Identification? Why the Difference Between These Concepts Matters

This paper examines two major issues related to the concept of identity. The first of these concerns the place of this concept in psychoanalytic theory and practice, particularly taking note of its limited presence in the psychoanalytic literature of the British School of psychoanalysis. My argument is that the concept and phenomena of identification has been preferred to that of identity in the discourse of British Object Relations and considers why that might be the case. The second issue concerns the salience of the concept of identity in contemporary political and cultural debate, as this has come to denote differences of a socially-constructed kind such as those of race, gender, ethnicity, and religion. In this context, the idea of identity has become an important point of reference in much recent psychoanalytic thinking. The significance of this development will be considered in its relevance for psychoanalytic and wider social practices

Sibling Catastrophes: an Essay on two Jacobean Tragedies

In this essay, the authors explore the mental and social worlds depicted in Webster's two great Jacobean tragedies, The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi. (1623). The authors particularly focus on the sibling relationships depicted in these plays, and explore how far the strengths or weakness of these relationships, their domination by the life or death drives, by emotions of love or hate, can be understood as a measure of the health of the social order in which these relationships are situated

Jury deliberation: An observation study.

In this article, the way that the jury works is considered from a group-analytic perspective. Observational fieldwork of simulated jury deliberations is presented. The data was gathered from a joint funded Home Office and Law Commission project at the Socio- Legal Studies Centre, Oxford in 1995. Inferences are drawn from the observations and the unconscious group processes are considered. The efficacy of the jury process is discussed

The Regeneration of Doctor Who

This article analyses the new series of Doctor Who, now in its third run on BBC Television since its revival in 2005.The approach, which follows the authors’ earlier work on children’s fiction and on drama, is in part psychoanalytic and in part sociological. From a psychoanalytic point of view, the authors investigate the states of mind and feeling evoked in the dramatic action of the episodes, and the ways in which these provide imaginative spaces for the audience – especially children and adolescents – to explore aspects of their own development. From a more sociological point of view, the authors suggest ways in which the show reflects aspects of the society in which it is set, including the ways in which it takes advantage of the opportunities of time and space travel to encourage its viewers to become aware of other ‘possible worlds’, different from their own. Two episodes in particular are used to demonstrate how much the production team has achieved in its regeneration of Doctor Who

The Long Revolution Revisited

In this article Michael Rustin argues that the ideas of Raymond Williams in The Long Revolution (first published in 1961) have much to offer the contemporary left. Williams had a vision of all citizens participating fully in a ‘common culture’. He focused attention on the role of media technologies and education in the development of modern societies. He believed that the deepest understanding of a way of life was to be found in its imaginative explorations - in novels, plays, cultural criticism - rather than in its formal political writings. In this article Professor Rustin argues that the contemporary left needs to return to William’s imaginative modes of understanding in order to fashion a critique of the current order. He argues that the possibilities which Williams identified in The Long Revolution and in Towards 2000 remain valid starting points for the renewal of the socialist project today

The Making of Political Identity: Edward Thompson and William Cobbett

Michael Rustin looks at the crucial role played William Cobbett in the formation of Edward Thompson's identity as a writer and a radical

Psychotherapy in a neoliberal world

The neoliberal regime has significant consequences for the psychotherapies. In particular, the idea that individuals is deserving of support from society and government when they need it – for example in managing the inevitable stresses of the life cycle – is being displaced by an ideology of total individual responsibility. Psychotherapies framed around relational conceptions of the self find themselves particularly out of key with this dominant way of thinking. Governmental approaches to developmental needs become more instrumental, measurement-oriented and ‘disciplinary’ in this situation. Market incentives and disciplinary sanctions are introduced to ensure that institutions and their personnel conform to governmental directives. There is pressure on psychotherapists to adapt to this instrumentalised environment to survive. However, ‘expressive individualisation’ was also stimulated by the cultural liberation of the 1960s, and survives alongside the ‘possessive individualism’ of neoliberalism. This alternative culture has not been entirely suppressed, and therapies continue to be sought which offer the possibility of self-understanding and growth, although the pressure is for such therapies to become luxury goods. What is at risk under neoliberalism is the idea that society should support the self-development and self-understanding of all its citizens, as an aspect of a modern kind of democratic citizenship

Psychotherapy and its alternatives: Commentary on a critique

In this commentary, Michael Rustin reviews the articles in the symposium, outlining their main aims and arguments. He goes on to provide some critical reflections, asking questions about the key concept of the ‘therapeutic state’. He notes that little attention is given to psychoanalytic or other psychological theories of the mind, as distinct from the biological models which are the main object of criticism in the symposium. He argues that just as it is justifiable and useful to take account of theories of the mind in considering issues of mental health and therapy, so it is desirable also to take account of the structures of society which have responsibility for generating conditions of mental well- or ill-being, and to reflect on how these may be changed. The commentary argues that the counter-cultural and somewhat ‘post-modern’ critical approach which informs the symposium can only form part of a sufficient response to the problems which the symposium identifies

What do child psychotherapists know?

In the decades after the death of Freud in 1939, the psychoanalytic tradition in Britain was substantially shaped by child analysis. Melanie Klein’s discoveries emerged from psychoanalytic practice with children, which was based on ‘play technique’. Some of Donald Winnicott’s most important ideas were developed through work with children, and through study of the relationships between mothers and babies. In this book chapter Professor Rustin argues that the theoretical advances of the 1940s and 1950s in the British psychoanalytic tradition could not have occurred without the priority given to the psychoanalysis of children, and the corpus of ideas and techniques with which British analysts now work can scarcely be imagined without that contribution. The chapter concludes that there is much to be learned from the participation of psychoanalysts and child psychotherapists in this growing debate about methods of research