Routledge A New Therapy for Politics?

Andrew Samuels has established an international practice as a political consultant, working with senior politicians, political parties and activist groups. His lectures and workshops on the application of 'therapy thinking' to social and political issues attract wide interest. His previous books in this area, such as The Political Psyche and Politics on the Couch, have been widely appreciated. Now, in a long-anticipated tour-de-force that is both compassionate and intellectually stimulating, this book deepens in a new and innovate style his engagement with themes such as economics, ecopsychology, leadership, aggression and violence, the role of the individual in progressive politics, and sexuality and spirituality in political contexts. The reader is encouraged to move beyond conventional professional or academic discourse by the inclusion of experiential exercises in the text. In this way, activism and analysis, public and private, therapeutic and more-than-personal are all brought together in a satisfying yet challenging synthesis. Review "At a time when policy-makers are looking to psychology for simplistic answers to complex problems, and when psychotherapy is being co-opted in the service of capitalism, A New Therapy for Politics? offers an essential, radically different vision of the interplay between the political and the psychoanalytic. Now that politics seems more stuck than ever, Samuels' fresh and provocative analysis might help us understand this condition, and what it would take to change it."--William Davies, author of The Happiness Industry "What could be more important than bringing to politics and the great social issues of our time the profound and clarifying perspective of psychodynamic thinking? Once again Andrew Samuels challenges and inspires us with questions we haven't dared formulate, and thankfully, at the same time, offers a brilliant analysis of the difficulties that overwhelm and obstruct the pursuit of them."--Jessica Benjamin, psychoanalyst and author of Shadow of the Other "Andrew Samuels always challenges us. This book extends his themes of the polity and the therapeutic. Everyday, political crises emerge which lend themselves to psychoanalytic analysis and therapeutic interventions. Who will be brave enough to listen?"--Susie Orbach, psychoanalyst and writer About the Author Andrew Samuels