The Good Society and the Inner World

A forceful advocacy of a psychoanalysis that is social not individualist in its view of human life, The Good Society and the Inner World surveys the implications of recent psychoanalytical work for political and cultural thought.

Michael Rustin identifies in the work of Melanie Klein and her successors as one of the most theoretically powerful and clinically rigorous traditions in psychoanalysis. The first part of the book examines the political meanings of Kleinian concepts, demonstrating their relevance for a radical agenda and to the understanding of many social issues, including racism. A second section is sociological in focus, looking at the organization of the analytic profession and defending its methods in the light of recent work in the philosophy of science. This explores current developments in psychoanalysis, describing its origins in modernism and outlining the traces of post-modernist thought in the work of Wilfred Bion. The final section of the book addresses issues of cultural theory and offers a radical revision of established psychoanalytical views on aesthetics.

This wide-ranging and accessible book will be of use both to the analytic profession and to all those who wish to examine the politics and culture of psychoanalysis.