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It is important to understand how three registers - the psychological, the political and the ideological - converge to frame unconscious life in ways that either inhibit or facilitate individual and group capacities to exercise free speech and free association. Here a model for assessing how these registers of human affect and behavior either facilitate these freedoms of expression or sabotage them in favor of submission to authority is suggested. The discussion is positioned in the context of two traumatic periods in Argentine history, namely the military dictatorship's Dirty War (1976-1983) and the country's complete economic collapse in 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the psychopolitical dynamics of the bystander phenomenon in the context of Argentine state terror. It explores the population's adaptation to the military's Official Story through psychological defences that resulted in losses of individual and group identity. It depicts the factors that potentiate disengagement from a coercive power and its culture of fear. These themes are examined in Luis Puenzo's 1985 Academy-award winning film, The Official Story, whose story portrays the psychological and ideological characteristics of the bystander and the capacity of the subject to emerge from self-deception to tolerate the complex truths of psychic and social reality. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author expresses opinion on the psychoanalytic construct of "the psychic uses of the ethnic other" as a way of understanding the features of anti-Muslim prejudice in the U.S. and its implications on U.S.-Middle East policy. She analyzes the roots of U.S. anti-Muslim prejudice which it claims to have sprung from White racist cultural tradition in the U.S. and the prominence of Christianity. She explains how the September 11, 2001 terrorism attacks in the U.S. raised antagonism against Arabs and Muslims.

The article discusses the psychoanalytic view on the paradox of prejudice on the part of the U.S. as it created policies that favor Israel and the role of U.S. geopolitical interests in forming the nature of Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It emphasizes the importance of Israel to U.S. policies as the latter government fight against Arab nationalism that would pose a threat to its geopolitical interest and access to petroleum reserves. The author states the need to understand the role of the U.S. in the conflict within broader cultural matrix.

The author presents a psychoanalytic discourse on global warming and ecological destruction. She thinks that humans can suffer from many problematic aspects of social order without knowing the root of their discordant experience. She notes that humans defend themselves from anxiety and harsh reality by ignoring the threats to their existence. She expounds the concept of denial by referring to Sigmund Freud.

The paper consists of the online discussion of Nancy Hollander's ‘Psyche, Ideology, and the Creation of the Political Subject’, summarized. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of a discussion of Neil Altman's ‘Psychoanalysis and war’, which was conducted online through PsyBC in the fall of 2006. Discussants were a group of psychoanalytically oriented thinkers chosen by the author and Nancy Hollander, the author of the other paper included in the discussion. The paper represents the full discussion with only minor edits to correct typographical errors and improve clarity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the influence of socioeconomic and ideological factors on the psychological reactions to the terror of the September 11 attack. The article argues that the public response to the terrorist attacks is paradoxical as they were experienced as cataclysmic and causes the shocking loss of innocent lives. On the other hand, the attacks could also be seen as a relief from the deepening division among individuals in the U.S. that seemed to disappear in the wake of the shared pain, terror and loss.

An account of the aims and genesis of Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical Setting (Layton et al., 2006). The editors of the collection aim to convey a sense of what social and political concerns have shaped them as editors and why they were moved to produce the book. They each offer a personal piece that highlights particular themes in the book and in their lives as psychoanalyst-activists. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, written by a Latin American historian and psychoanalyst, accounts for the factors responsible for current United States foreign policy, which is contributing to the intensification rather than the amelioration of dangerous political and military tensions throughout the world. It offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the growing contradictions in United States class society that represent the context for the particular ways that the traumatic events of 9/11 were experienced by citizens and used by the Bush administration in its manipulation of the public's fears and anxieties for its own ideological ends. It shows how primitive mental states among both leaders and citizens have profoundly thwarted the ability of the country to sustain democracy and national security at home or to fashion a strategy to diminish antagonisms toward the world's only superpower. The author analyses the history of exploitative United States attitudes and policies toward Latin America as the backdrop for assessing the prevailing critical views throughout the subcontinent of the United States 'war on terror', which is seen in part as the continuation of the drive to expand geopolitical and military control throughout the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how in an interdisciplinary context psychoanalysis can illuminate the interface between ideology and mental states that produces citizens' identification with repressive political trends. It argues for a socially conscious clinical psychoanalysis that includes an awareness of and respectful exploration of the social as well as the psychic origins of patients' deep anxieties and conflicts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]