In this volume, the work of British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott is set in conversation with some of today’s most talented psychodynamically-sensitive political thinkers. The editors and contributors demonstrate that Winnicott’s thought contains underappreciated political insights, discoverable in his reflections on the nature of the maturational process, and useful in working through difficult impasses confronting contemporary political theorists. Specifically, Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theory and practice offer a framework by which the political subject, destabilized and disrupted in much postmodern and contemporary thinking, may be recentered. Each chapter in this volume, in its own way, grapples with this central theme: the potential for authentic subjectivity and inter-subjectivity to arise within a nexus of autonomy and dependence, aggression and civility, destructiveness and care. This volume is unique in its contribution to the growing field of object-relations-oriented political and social theory. It will be of interest to political scientists, psychologists, and scholars of related subjects in the humanities and social sciences.

Nathan Gerard draws upon the pathbreaking insights of a pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott to offer a new set of ideas in the novel domain of contemporary work life and its discontents. Locating Winnicott within a broad landscape of critical scholarship that dissects work’s perils, the book positions Winnicott as both a radical critic and creative advocate for building a different kind of work life—one that might make room for the presence of self. By shuffling the discourse on neoliberal subjectivity to reclaim what Winnicott calls “unit status” of the separate self, Gerard differentiates Winnicott from the relational tradition by advocating for Winnicott’s non-relational aspects. Through such analysis, the book reveals how work and home have become two sides of the same impoverished coin, each contributing to a legitimately “bad environment” that perpetuates self-absence and annihilates one’s unique sense of “feeling real” and alive. Winnicott and Labor’s Eclipse of Life will be of interest to readers of Winnicott and psychoanalysis, organization and management studies, and anyone hoping to deepen their engagement with the dynamics of contemporary work life.

This book explores the significance of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s ideas for contemporary debates about care. Locating Winnicott in relation to a range of fields, including psychology, philosophy, sociology, critical theory and feminist theory, it examines the implications of his thinking for understanding and transforming the relationship between care and society. Winnicott was unique amongst psychoanalysts for the emphasis he placed on care in the development of subjectivity. The book unpacks Winnicott’s understanding of care and assesses its relevance for conceptions of social responsibility, justice and transformation. In a world where care is in crisis, how might we theorise the conditions necessary for the development of caring subjectivities, and is it possible to infer a relationship between those conditions and progressive social change? This unique book will be of interest to readers in psychosocial studies, politics and anyone concerned with thinking about the relationship between care and social transformation.

"Nathan Gerard draws upon the pathbreaking insights of pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott to offer a new set of ideas in the novel domain of contemporary work life and its discontents. Locating Winnicott within a broad landscape of critical scholarship that dissects work's perils, the book positions Winnicott as both a radical critic and creative advocate for building a different kind of work life-one that might make room for the presence of self. By shuffling the discourse on neoliberal subjectivity to reclaim what Winnicott calls "unit status" of the separate self, Gerard differentiates Winnicott from the relational tradition by advocating for Winnicott's non-relational aspects. Through such analysis, the book reveals how work and home have become two sides of the same impoverished coin, each contributing to a legitimately "bad environment" that perpetuates self-absence and annihilates one's unique sense of "feeling real" and alive. Winnicott and Labor's Eclipse of Life will be of interest to readers of Winnicott and psychoanalysis, organization and management studies, and anyone hoping to deepen their engagement with the dynamics of contemporary work life"--

Ruthless Winnicott is an extended exploration of the role of ruthlessness in psychic development. That survival is of no use unless it is preceded by a ruthless attack is one of D. W. Winnicott’s most resonant paradoxes. The book links this with the search for subjective freedom for those traumatized by colonialism, and in doing so draws on the work of Algerian psychiatrist and revolutionary psychoanalytic thinker Frantz Fanon. Sally Swartz examines essential pieces of Winnicott’s work on ruthlessness as central to the emergence of concern for the Other. She illustrates, with clinical examples, ways in which the ruthless use of the psychoanalytic psychotherapeutic space allows the patient either to enter fully into a process that allows growth, or to defend ruthlessly against the anxieties provoked by psychic change. Ruthless Winnicott also maps decolonial challenges to psychoanalytic theory, and the role of ruthlessness in protest movements demanding radical subjective change. Swartz’s exploration of ruthlessness as both zest and defense in individual development and in protest movements illuminates processes of psychological collision and change. It traces links between individual trauma and collective turbulence, and maps ways in which ruthlessness is essential to subjective change. Ruthless Winnicott will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as scholars of colonialism, decolonization and post-colonialism.

What is behind the upsurge of virulent nationalism and intransigent politics across the globe today? In Fear of Breakdown, Noëlle McAfee uses psychoanalytic theory to explore the subterranean anxieties behind current crises and the ways in which democratic practices can help work through seemingly intractable political conflicts. Working at the intersection of psyche and society, McAfee draws on psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott’s concept of the fear of breakdown to show how hypernationalism stems from unconscious anxieties over the origins of personal and social identities, giving rise to temptations to reify exclusionary phantasies of national origins. Fear of Breakdown contends that politics needs something that only psychoanalysis has been able to offer: an understanding of how to work through anxieties, ambiguity, fragility, and loss in order to create a more democratic politics. Coupling robust psychoanalytic theory with concrete democratic practice, Fear of Breakdown shows how a politics of working through can help counter a politics of splitting, paranoia, and demonization. McAfee argues for a new approach to deliberative democratic theory, not the usual philosopher-sanctioned process of reason-giving but an affective process of making difficult choices, encountering others, and mourning what cannot be had.