Robert M. Young Online Writings
'Psychoanalysis, Values and Politics' 33k.
The year before the Cold War ended (1988), I was invited to give a talk by a group in London called Psychotherapists Against Nuclear Disaster. In it I tried to evoke the dynamics of extreme splitting and projective identification by drawing on films. I then tried to show how values and politics get split off in a way which makes it hard for professionals to treat them as integral to their work and their organisations. This is a theme which I have addressed many times, in particular, in 'Character and Morality'. The discussion was remarkable. One person was contemptuous of my attempt to link these problems with the philosophy of science. The tone of the discussion was as if the bomb would explode in the room at any moment. The dynamics of nuclear threat seemed to be acted out in the group's deliberations. I recall getting away as soon as I could in order to escape the fallout.