METAPOLITICS explores the deeper currents that shape our political world. Moving beyond the daily news cycle, we examine the psychological, social, and cultural forces that drive political behavior and transform societies.
What is political psychology?
This podcast series is not so much about the day-to-day business of politics, but about the forces in and around us in our societies which shape our politics. Foremost amongst these is the extremely powerful and complex phenomenon known as the human mind. So our main interest is in the psychology of politics. That phrase will not mean much to many people. For some, it may suggest the psychological study of individual politicians and their careers, or of how political negotiation processes are influenced by the personalities of those involved and the dynamics between them. These are important topics in political psychology, but there is a much wider claim to be made for it. There are psychological questions at the heart of fundamental elements of politics, such as:
· Democracy: Why we citizens want it, what it demands of us psychologically, and how we may fall short of meeting those demands.
· Nation states: How they figure in our experience, and how we identify (or not) with them.
· Ideologies: Why they have influence over people.
· Leaders: How their personalities, and their relationships with the public, shape their leadership.
· Political violence: How individuals get involved in terrorism and other forms of violent coercion.
· Inequalities: What impact they have on who we are.
Focus on feelings
Major problems of the day - geo-political conflicts, delusion and denial in political discourse, polarisation, the climate crisis, and global demographic shifts - play out through these core elements and the psychological processes associated with them. In metapolitics, we approach this very broad field of study with a focus on the emotions involved, and on the activity of the unconscious mind which is the inner source of our emotional life. Why this focus on emotion and the unconscious? Because so much in politics depends on how we, as citizens and leaders, feel about the world and the people in it: the dynamics of trust, complicated feelings towards authority of all kinds, the universal need to feel safe, the importance of belonging, fears of failure, desires for dignity and respect, the consequences of humiliation, and so on.
The importance of psychoanalysis
Emotional life is studied very closely by psychoanalysis, which is therefore the tradition within psychology on which we mainly draw in studying politics. Despite its imperfections, the psychoanalytic tradition offers the most profound and complex ways of understanding the mind. It is poorly understood by many academics (including some psychologists), partly because of its own esoteric language. Also, its explorations of the irrational in human behaviour have not fitted well with the rationalistic bias of much social science (which has been especially marked in political science). Its origins in the clinical practice of psychoanalytic therapy mean that it has an evidence base in qualitative data, unlike the quantitative and statistically-processed data which predominates in academic psychology.
A developing field
However, in recent decades the growing interest in emotion across the social sciences has meant there is now more readiness amongst academics to consider what psychoanalysis has to offer, and psychoanalytic psychology is increasingly contributing to the growing field of political psychology. Overall, though, psychoanalysis is still a minority approach in the field, and to date it has been a marginal presence at annual conferences of the International Society of Political Psychology, and in the ISPP's journal Political Psychology. Instead, many of its contributions appear in a wide range of journals and books, sometimes linked to related research areas in sociology or cultural studies, or to the interdisciplinary fields of psychosocial studies and psychoanalytic studies.
The psycho- and the socio-
Whatever kind of psychology is used to understand politics, it needs to be integrated with other disciplinary perspectives. Politics being fundamental to human society, the effort to understand it must involve psychology (and politics itself as an academic discipline) working alongside all the other social science and humanities (SSH) disciplines. For political psychology, the aim is to understand what part is played in politics by the interactions between our individual internal worlds and what is happening around us in the external world. In academic language, the psychology of politics is, or should be, a psychosocial project, combining psychological with societal perspectives.
The importance of popular culture
This involves going outside psychology, and also outside the direct study of politics itself, to include some consideration of its social and cultural contexts, and their histories. Of particular importance is the domain of popular culture, not only in its traditional core of sport, music and entertainment, but also in the development of consumer culture, and in the rise of 'therapeutic' culture with its emphasis on feeling. Many people live their lives with much more awareness of their involvement in and attachment to these areas than they feel for politics. Yet politics and popular culture are not clearly separate domains. Both are areas in which we align or identify ourselves with social groups, and so find collective identities, as well as expressing ourselves individually. Moreover, popular culture and politics are becoming intertwined, as part of a very broad cultural shift which has meant that many previously separated areas of life now overlap or seep into each other. Consequently, some of the conversations in our podcasts are about societies and their cultures, not specifically about politics.
Of course, every approach to understanding politics has its own politics. So you need to know something about who’s doing the talking.
Who are we?
Barry Richards
Barry Richards is a political psychologist and writer. After training and working as a clinical psychologist in the British National Health Service, he undertook a PhD in sociology, and began a long academic career in which he has taught and researched across a wide range of areas, including popular culture, cultural change, political communication, political violence, polarisation and extremism. He has worked at the University of East London, and at Bournemouth University, where he is now Professor Emeritus of Political Psychology. His political orientation has evolved into a heterodox kind of social-democratic liberalism, focussed on distributive fairness, national cohesion and collective security, and the role of a strong state in achieving those aims. His writings on psychology, politics and culture are listed here.
Mustafa Selek
After completing his undergraduate degree in psychology, Mustafa Selek pursued a master's in political psychology and is currently working toward his doctorate in the same field. His research focusses on radicalisation, socialisation, and well-being—with particular emphasis on the self-radicalisation processes of lone-actor terrorists. Born and raised in Turkey, Mustafa has been living in Britain for eight years. His life has been marked by witnessing democratic institutions crumble in his homeland. Seeking academic refuge, he ventured westward, only to discover—with perfect timing—that the Western world was facing its own democratic crisis. In this increasingly turbulent world, he contemplates the approaching era of automation and post-work economics with profound unease. Though he could write volumes on his political ideals, Mustafa believes our fundamental struggle will be preserving even basic elements of the social welfare state amid rapid change.
When not pondering democratic decline, he explains to bewildered colleagues why Turkish politics makes perfect sense if you stop trying to make sense of it.
