Ruptures in the American Psyche
Ruptures in the American Psyche

Author: Michael J Diamond

Publisher: Phoenix Publishing House

Published: 2022-04-29

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1800131291

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This book describes Trumpism: the strong allegiance to former President Donald Trump that is in evidence among a sizable portion of the US population. How did Trump come to be elected in 2016, and who supported him during his presidential tenure - and why? How is it that he continues to hold cult-like status, exerting a strong influence not only on many individuals but also on numerous elected officials, despite his defeat in 2020? Why does his character continue to be an object of fascination even among anti-Trumpists, and why will Trumpism continue to play a major role in the American sociopolitical landscape even now he has left the presidential stage? Michael J. Diamond ponders these questions through the lenses of American history and culture, political theory, social phenomena, group dynamics, and psychoanalysis. In exploring the relationship between large-group regression, cultism, destructive populism, delusional thinking, conspiratorial beliefs, authoritarianism, and leadership characterised by narcissism and paranoia, psychoanalytic ideas pertaining to group dynamics, malignant regression, and leadership are brought into play. Prominent psychoanalytic thinkers who have addressed these topics and whose work usefully contributes to the discussion include Bion, Freud, Fromm, Bollas, Kernberg, Lifton, Rosenfeld, and Volkan, as well as Bleger, Jaques, and several more recent Kleinian/Bionian-influenced analysts. Most important, the book makes use of these understandings to reestablish a sufficiently containing frame that strengthens the body politics' nonpathological elements in order to come to grips with these disturbing factors. Whatever their political beliefs, psychoanalysts in the US and worldwide will find much to think about in reading this book's application of their discipline to today's sociopolitical environment. In addition, the book's insights extend beyond arguments targeting a strictly psychoanalytic audience in order to reach social and political thinkers, as well as activists, who are deeply concerned about dangers threatening the very foundations of democracy in the US and worldwide. And finally, the thoughtful lay person will appreciate the accessibility to all these fields that the book provides, and will come away with a much deeper understanding of just what motivates us to take a stand for or against a given political figure. In short, conceptual tools are provided that lead to greater understanding as well as effective strategies and tactics for containment of destructive forces - largely unconscious ones - that imperil our society.

Revolution and Constitutionalism in Britain and the U.S.
Revolution and Constitutionalism in Britain and the U.S.

Author: David A. J. Richards

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-02

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1000965430

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In Revolution and Constitutionalism in Britain and the U.S.: Burke and Madison and Their Contemporary Legacies, David A. J. Richards offers an investigative comparison of two central figures in late eighteenth-century constitutionalism, Edmund Burke and James Madison, at a time when two great constitutional experiments were in play: the Constitution of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the U.S. Constitution of 1787. Richards assesses how much, as liberal Lockean constitutionalists, Burke and Madison shared and yet differed regarding violent revolution, offering three pathbreaking and original contributions about Burke’s importance. First, the book defends Burke as a central figure in the development and understanding of liberal constitutionalism; second, it explores the psychology that led to his liberal voice, including Burke’s own long-term loving relationship to another man; and third, it shows how Burke’s understanding of the political psychology of the violence of “political religions” is an enduring contribution to understanding fascist threats to political liberalism from the eighteenth-century onwards, including the contemporary constitutional crises in the U.S. and U.K. deriving from populist movements. Mixing thorough research with personal experiences, this book will be an invaluable resource to scholars of political science and theory, constitutional law, history, political psychology, and LGBTQ+ issues.

How Autocrats Seek Power
How Autocrats Seek Power

Author: Richard L. Abel

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-03-26

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 104000380X

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Chronicling and analyzing resistance to the threat that autocracy poses to American liberal democracy, this book provides the definitive account of the rise of Trump’s populist support in 2016, and his failed efforts to nullify the result of the 2020 election. This book is about the threat of autocracy, which antedated Donald Trump and will persist after he leaves the stage. Autocracy negates both liberalism—which includes the protection of fundamental rights, the rule of law, separation of powers, and respect for specialist expertise—and democracy—which requires that the state be responsible to an electorate composed of all eligible voters—by concentrating unconstrained power in a single individual. Anticipating defeat in the 2016 election, Trump attacked suggestions that he had sought, or even benefited from, Russian assistance despite the evidence, and he made repeated claims of election fraud. In 2020, fearful that his mishandling of the pandemic had alienated voters, he intensified the allegations of fraud, demanding recounts, pressuring state legislatures and state election officials, advancing bizarre conspiracy theories, and finally, calling for a massive demonstration, urging protesters to march to the Capitol to pressure Congress, promising to accompany them. But as this book documents, Trump’s efforts to nullify the result of the 2020 election failed. As the courts rejected his numerous challenges, state election officials loyally performed their statutory duties, the Justice Department found no evidence of fraud, and politicians from all sides certified Biden’s victory, this book traces the many, and varied, forms of the defense of liberal democracy located within both the state and civil society, including law (judges, government lawyers, and private practitioners), the media, NGOs, science (and other forms of expertise), and civil servants (in federal, state, and local government). Evaluating their efficacy, the book maintains, is vital if—as history has repeatedly taught us—the price of liberal democracy, like that of liberty itself, is eternal vigilance. This definitive account and analysis of Trumpism and the resistance to it will appeal to scholars, students, and others with interests in politics, populism, and the rule of law and, more specifically, to those concerned with resisting the threat that autocracy poses to liberal democracy.

The Ego and the Id
The Ego and the Id

Author: Fred Busch

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-07-14

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 100091478X

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The Ego and the Id: 100 Years Later revisits Freud’s classic 1923 essay, which developed key psychoanalytic concepts and presented a radical revision of his earlier theory. International contributors explore the themes of this remarkable work from their own perspective, with novel and surprising results. There are mysteries uncovered, questions raised about the validity of Freud’s perspective, problems in psychoanalytic technique based on those clinging to Freud’s earlier model of the curative process in psychoanalysis, cybernetics as a way of evaluating Freud’s model, and many other gems. With contributors highlighting the significance of the essay and offering critiques based upon new understanding gathered over the last century, The Ego and the Id: 100 Years Later offers a fresh, international perspective on this classic paper. This book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training and of great interest to scholars of psychoanalytic studies.

Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads
Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads

Author: Fred Busch

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-15

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1000834573

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In this clear and thoughtful book, an international group of distinguished authors explore the central issues and future directions facing psychoanalytic theory and practice. The book explores four main questions in the development of psychoanalysis: what psychoanalysis is as an endeavour now and what it may be in the future; the effect of social issues on psychoanalysis and of psychoanalysis on social issues, such as race and gender; the importance of psychoanalytic institutes on shaping future psychoanalytic theory and practice; and the likely major issues that will be shaping psychoanalysis in years to come. Including contributions from within every school of psychoanalytic thought, this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and all who are curious about the future directions of the profession.

My Father Before Me
My Father Before Me

Author: Michael J. Diamond

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780393060607

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This book establishes fatherhood as an essential event for both the father and son's development and examines the relationship throughout the life cycle.

Rituals of Mediation
Rituals of Mediation

Author: François Debrix

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9780816640744

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A timely consideration of the meaning of transnational cultural interactions today. In an era of increasing globalization, the cultural and the international have borders as permeable as most nations'--and an understanding of one requires making sense of the other. Foregrounding the role of mediation--understood here as a site of representation, transformation, and pluralization--the authors engage two specific questions: How might we make theoretical and practical sense of transnational cultural interactions? And how are we to understand the ways in which the sites of mediation represent, transform, and remediate internationals? Accordingly, the authors consider international issues like security, development, political activism, and the war against terrorism through the lens of cultural practices such as traveling through airports, exhibiting art and photography, logging on to the Internet, and spinning news stories.

The Second Century of Psychoanalysis
The Second Century of Psychoanalysis

Author: Christopher Christian

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0429907907

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This book explores the internal and external boundaries of psychoanalysis. It examines the interrelationships between various psychoanalytic theoretical and clinical perspectives as well as between psychoanalysis and other disciplines.

Becoming a Father
Becoming a Father

Author: Jerrold Lee Shapiro

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13:

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The volume is the most comprehensive anthology available on the psychology of early fatherhood. Of interest to social psychologists, family therapists, and mental health professionals interested in men's issues.