In this episode of the Metapolitics Podcast, we are joined by Bob Hinshelwood, Emeritus Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, former Clinical Director of the Cassel Hospital, and one of the most influential writers in contemporary psychoanalysis. Drawing on his latest book Unconscious Politics: Alienation, Social Science and Psychoanalysis, Bob walks us through the central insight that has shaped his work over five decades: a striking convergence between Marx's concept of alienation and Melanie Klein's concept of projective identification. Both describe a process of self-loss, one driven by social conditions, the other by internal psychic pressures and Bob argues that understanding how these two forces interact is essential to grasping what goes wrong in political life. The conversation ranges widely, from the irrationality of nuclear arms to the post-war origins of the welfare state, from the fall of Rome to the fragmentation within psychoanalysis itself. Throughout, Bob offers a rare combination of intellectual rigour and personal honesty about what psychoanalysis can and cannot do in the political arena.
How do we bridge the gap between individual psychology and collective political life? In Unconscious Politics: Alienation, Social Science and Psychoanalysis, R.D. Hinshelwood tackles one of the most enduring problems in social thought: the relationship between what happens in our minds and what happens in our societies.
Hinshelwood’s central insight is that Marx’s concept of alienation — the loss of self that workers experience under capitalism — and Klein’s concept of projective identification — the unconscious expulsion of parts of the self into others — describe the same fundamental human experience from different angles. Both capture how we can become estranged from our own faculties, “going to pieces” under social and psychological pressures that reinforce each other.
Drawing on clinical practice and theoretical reflection spanning five decades, Hinshelwood makes a case for what he calls “sociopsychoanalysis” — a discipline that can hold both individual unconscious processes and collective political forces in view without reducing one to the other.
