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Retaliatory discourse: the politics of attack and withdrawal
Author(s) -
Layton Lynne
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
international journal of applied psychoanalytic studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.314
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1556-9187
pISSN - 1742-3341
DOI - 10.1002/aps.96
Subject(s) - politics , vulnerability (computing) , subject (documents) , autonomy , sociology , psychoanalytic theory , liberalism , population , environmental ethics , social psychology , criminology , political science , political economy , psychology , psychoanalysis , law , philosophy , demography , computer security , library science , computer science
Long‐term and recent sociopolitical trends in the USA pull for narcissistic ways of fashioning the self and relating to others. Discourses that sustain a split between capacities for autonomy and capacities for attachment, and discourses that sustain a split between individuals and their social surround elicit omnipotent and/or submissive modes of narcissistic relating. An increasingly vulnerable and socially abandoned population, conditioned to be ashamed of its vulnerabilities and dependency, finds itself subject to discourses that pull for various splits between “us” and “them.” This situation is a breeding ground for a politics of attack, or a politics of hostile withdrawal, or both. Neoconservatism fosters a politics of attack, and liberalism fosters a politics of withdrawal. Drawing on the psychoanalytic concept of “thirdness,” the paper concludes that only discourses and institutions that foster interdependence, containment of vulnerability, and the bringing together of relational and autonomous capacities can counter retaliatory politics. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.