The Political Mind Special The Evil Imagination: Understanding and resisting destructive forces

Roger Kennedy will talk about the concept of evil and how we can understand and overcome it.

He focuses on the Holocaust and slavery to show how the after-effects of evil lives on in contemporary society. 

The Nazi past continues to disturb Western societies, reliant on slavery as a foundation of economic wealth and is haunted by its inability to process slavery’s harsh reality and continuing after-effects. He uses the genius of Shakespeare and his encapsulation of the essential features of how evil can develop and take over a person’s mind. 

He explores how those who have stood up to evil and how we can use that knowledge to build a society that can resist the forces of evil. He

emphasises the power and influence of unconscious processes underlying human actions, and on the role of inner conflicting and elemental fears and anxieties.

Roger Kennedy 

Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and an adult psychoanalyst. He was an NHS consultant in charge of the Family Unit at the Cassel Hospital for nearly 30 years before moving exclusively into private practice. He is a training analyst and sees adults, children, families, and parents at his clinic. He is a past President of the British Psychoanalytical Society and well-known as an expert witness in the family courts. He has published 14 previous books. The Works of Jacques Lacan: Libido, Elusive Human Subject, The Power of Music, Tolerating Strangers, Psychic Home and many others. His latest is The Evil Imagination. Phoenix (2022). 

Prof Donald Carveth 

Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social and Political Thought and Senior Scholar at York University in Toronto. He is a training and supervising analyst in the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis and current Director of the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis. He helped found the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue Canadienne de Psychanalyse, of which he is a past Editor-in-Chief. He has published some fifty papers in this and other journals. His work has concentrated on issues of guilt, guilt-substitutes, and the differentiation of conscience as a fourth component of the structural theory of the mind in addition to id, ego and superego. He is author of The Still Small Voice: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Guilt and Conscience Karnacs (2013). 

Harriet Wolfe

M.D. is President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), Past President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.

Please note: This lecture will be recorded. The recording will be sent out on Monday 5th December and 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.