Coming up on 'metapolitics'...

Here’s a quick guide to recent and forthcoming episodes of metapolitics. Our second season continues, based on conversations with people who have led the way in applying the ideas of psychoanalysis to politics. This is not about reducing politics to individual psychology in the terms of classical Freudian theory. It is about drawing critically on some of the rich ideas developed in the diverse world of post-Freudian thinking about unconscious processes, and linking them with other perspectives to build a more complex understanding of today’s politics. Our conversations to date have been with sociologists Neil McLaughlin and Mike Rustin, and psychotherapist Susie Orbach. Upcoming episodes will include, amongst others, psychoanalyst Bob Hinshelwood and psychotherapist Farhad Dalal, while Tom Derose of the London Freud Museum will speak about the one organisation in the UK concerned with the public dissemination of psychoanalytic ideas.

Interspersed with this series focusing on psychoanalytic thinking will be a number of special episodes dealing with specific and ongoing political issues. Following our conversation last year with Daniel James on developments in the Green Party of England and Wales, an episode with Alison Teal will extend the critique of the authoritarian tendency now evident in that party. (Our episode on the authoritarian/libertarian convergence, also from 2025, outlines one of the psychological drivers of this development.) Episodes on other issues are being planned.

So, sign up or stay signed up to metapolitics in order to keep in touch with our unique mixture of in-depth psychoanalytic exploration and wide-angle discussion of politics in its psychological and cultural contexts.