Political Mind Series 2024 | Commodities: Consuming people

I do not agree that psychoanalysis has an explanation for all political issues and problems. I believe there is a strong creative aspect to conscious linking, policies and planning. However, I think that there are sometimes unconscious interferences in the creative aspects of human life and achievement. That is when we as individuals come to a psychoanalyst, and it is when, in my view, we need to apply our thinking to social and political issues of a group or society. 

In a paper published forty years ago, I noticed a similarity between the term ‘alienation’ from Karl Marx’s early writings, and the Kleinian term ‘projective identification’ (Hinshelwood 1983). I have had a long time to consider the implications. I will quickly note the key point of that comparison. In his 1844Early Writings Marx’s about the psychological position of the industrial worker:

We shall start from a present-day economic fact. The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent … This fact simply means that the object that labour produces, its product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labour is labour embodied and made material in an object … this realisation of labour appears as loss of reality for the worker, objectification as loss of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation (Marx, 1844, pp. 323–4).

Please note: This event will be available for 1 week to all registered participants. This is to allow international attendees to enjoy the event at a more appropriate time in their time zone. After this time, the recording will no longer be available.