“Everything is Permitted, Restrictions Still Apply” – a psychoanalytic perspective on contemporary life.

York Explore Library :

Mon 17 Dec :

6.00pm – 7.45pm :

Free

Ian Thurston, a public sector psychoanalytic psychotherapist living in York talks about his recently published first book, which offers an applied psychoanalytic perspective on dominant emotional trends in contemporary life.

There is a need to better understand the emotional motivations that might underlie the polarized thinking currently evident amongst populist right and progressive left alike, motivations that might be at odds with professed political ideology.

The author suggests that there are powerful social defences against facing loss, limitation and internal conflict. He applies a historicized psychoanalytic perspective on these phenomena, highlighting the decline and denigration of the old centres of traditional industry, and the rise of an increasingly narcissistic culture, in which emotional narratives of victimhood trump the need for evidence and the claims of “traditional” expertise and authority.

There will be opportunity for discussion and debate.

Author’s Biography:
I am a York resident, brought up on Tyneside,  currently working as a psychonanalytic psychotherapist within the NHS, and with many years of experience of working in public sector mental health care, in the north of England and London.

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