Troubled People, Troubled World: Psychotherapy, Ethics and Society - cover image

Copyright

Michael Briant

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-356-0
Hardback978-1-80511-357-7
PDF978-1-80511-358-4
HTML978-1-80511-360-7
EPUB978-1-80511-359-1

Language

  • English

THEMA

  • MKMT1
  • MKMT5
  • JMH
  • JMAF

BISAC

  • PSY028000
  • PSY010000
  • PSY026000
  • PSY031000

Keywords

  • Psychotherapy
  • Collective Psychopathology
  • Contemporary conflicts
  • Persecutory conscience
  • Humanistic conscience
  • Humanistic ethics

    Troubled People, Troubled World

    Psychotherapy, Ethics and Society

    • Michael Briant (author)
    FORTHCOMING
    Ethical issues are the stuff of psychotherapy, and in fact Freud envisaged the process as one in which an unexamined, irrational and oppressive conscience gives way to one more benignly rooted in reason.

    Therapists endeavour to be non-judgemental and, indeed, are no more qualified to pass judgement on others than anyone else; do they nevertheless learn anything about ethics from their disciplined listening?

    The same question was asked after the war about the persecution of the Jews and other minorities, and it’s a very live issue again, faced as we are by movements like ISIS, or Putinism in Russia, that cause great suffering in the name of religious or moral regeneration - a bewildering paradox that David Astor, former editor of The Observer called ‘the scourge’.

    Can psychotherapy throw any light on it, or contribute any ideas as to how we might contain, if not prevent, the barbarism it sanctions? Can it offer any insights into a different, more inclusive kind of ethics, and if so, can we glean any guidance from it as to how we might further it?

    These are the questions the author explores, drawing on psychoanalytic thinking on these issues for over a century and illustrated by his work with individuals over four decades.

    Endorsements

    Michael Briant offers rich psychoanalytic insights on ethics, politics and economics and their powerful interrelationships. His is a humane vision, albeit one that takes into consideration the irrational aspects of the human mind and behavior.

    Prof Timo Storck

    Psychologische Hochschule Berlin

    Contributors

    Michael Briant

    (author)

    Michael Briant is a member of the Guild of Psychotherapists and an Associate member of the Cambridge Society for Psychotherapy. After graduating from the University of Cambridge he worked for the British Council, where, amongst other things he was involved in the cultural exchange agreements which, it was hoped, would further understanding between Britain and the former Soviet Union. He left to pursue post-graduate studies at the L.S.E., where, as a pupil of Ernest Gellner, he wrote a doctoral thesis on psychoanalysis. His experience has mostly been in various parts of the education system, for the last 36 years within the University of Cambridge, where he also directed a postgraduate diploma in psychodynamic studies, run jointly by the University Counselling Service and the Department of Continuing Education. Michael has contributed to leading journals in the field of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis and is the author of “Psychotherapy, Ethics, and Society: Another Kind of Conversation’ (2018), of which this book is a new, revised and expanded edition.