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Psychoanalysts
for Peace and Justice
Because
we know the destructiveness
that resides in each of us, we know
the importance of not letting it
destroy what we hold dear...
A
member organization of United
for Peace and Justice
WHO WE ARE
We are psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-informed citizens united
for peace and justice. We have gathered, in opposition to the pending
Iraq war, with the goals of participating as psychoanalysts and
citizens in the broader peace and justice movements and of bringing
our psychoanalytic insights to bear on the critical social issues
that confront our country and our world today.
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Psychoanalysts
for Peace and Justice Documents and Resources
The
first Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice
public forum, The Psychodynamics of Empire
was conducted on February 6th at the Friends Meeting House in Cambridge,
MA. Speakers: Stephen Soldz: Security, Terror, and the Psychodynamics
of Empire [This talk has been posted on at least three major web
sites: ZNet;
Information
Clearinghouse; & Global
Policy Forum]; Stephen Price: The Role of Sacrifice; Jane
Snyder: Power and Paranoia. You can listen to the Forum
Introduction in which I describe the origins of Psychoanalysts for
Peace and Justice. [More of the forum available soon!] [the forum was
co-sponsored by the Institute
for the Study of Violence of the Boston
Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.] (POSTED: December 16, 2003.
MODIFIED February 7, 2004)
PPJ's Stephen Soldz will conduct a workshop on The
Psychodynamics of War and Empire
at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, Friday, May
14, 7-9pm. (POSTED: December 16, 2003)
IRAQ
Occupation and Resistance Report a site developed by Stephen
Soldz of PPJ. It is dedicated to documenting the US occupation of
Iraq, and the Iraqi resistance to it.
Iraq
Antiwar Resources, an extensive list developed by
Stephen Soldz of
PPJ. It contains many links for those seeking to educate themselves
on the background of the current situation, understand what led up to
it, and the inter-war situation in Iraq, as the war against the US
occupation begins. Also contains links to antiwar music and video
and contacts for major peace organizations. All you need to get started
in one place! And its constantly growing!
Where
is the US Headed? , a PPJ site devoted to broader reflections on
where the US is headed, economically, in terms of foreign policy, psychologically,
and spiritually.
Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis (BGSP) Speakout
on the War Flyer. Now of historic interest. Where PPJ started.
Perspectives
on Current Events: War, Peace, and Theft
New
York Times reporter Chris Hedges is a reformed war correspondent who
is intimately familiar with the intoxication of war. He portrays this
in beautiful yet haunting prose in his award-winning book War
Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, which discusses war in terms of
the struggle between life and death forces. It ends with a chapter that
should be of special interest to psychoanalysts: Eros and Thanatos.
You can hear an interview with him on The Connection: War
as Addiction. You can read an article about his work by Tom Roberts
in the National Catholic Reporter: Seeing
through the lie that is war. He was booed
off the stage and had his microphone cut at a commencement speech
at Rockford College in Illinois, May 21st, 2003. Here is the text
of this speech and the text of an interview with him by Amy Goodman
of Democracy
Now! regarding the incident The
Silencing of Dissent on Graduation Day. Finally, here is an interview
with Hedges from TomPaine.com:
An Interview With
Author Chris Hedges. (POSTED: February 8, 2004)
- [Seeing through
the lie:] Using Freuds division, Hedges sees two impulses at tension:
Eros, that propels us to become close to others, to preserve and
conserve, and the Thanatos, or death instinct, the impulse that
works towards the annihilation of all living things, including ourselves.If
Eros was the overriding impulse of the culture following the Vietnam
War, he believes Thanatos has taken over. We have lost our revulsion
to war and now celebrate it.
- [Democracy
Now!:] You know, as I looked out on the crowd, that is exactly what
my book is about. It is about the suspension of individual conscience,
and probably consciousness, for the contagion of the crowd for that
euphoria that comes with patriotism. The tragedy is that and I've
seen it in conflict after conflict or society after society that
plunges into war with that kind of rabid nationalism comes racism
and intolerance and a dehumanization of the other. And it's an emotional
response. People find a kind of ecstasy, a kind of belonging, a
kind of obliteration of their alienation in that patriotic fervor
that always does come in war time. As I gave my talk and I looked
out on the crowd, I was essentially witnessing things that I had
witnessed in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina or in squares in Belgrade
or anywhere else. Crowds, especially crowds that become hunting
packs are very frightening. People chanted the kind of cliches and
aphorisms and jingoes that are handed to you by the state... I've
seen it in effect and take over countries. But of course, it breaks
my heart when I see it in my country.
Marco Chiesa of the
British Psychoanalytic Society has written a Kleinian analysis of why
those of us in the West were so profoundly affected by the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, and so unmoved by the hundreds of thousands who died
in Iraq under sanctions: Terrorism:
Psycho-political observations on shock and indifference. See also
the contribution of M. Fakhry Davids: 11
September 2001: Some thoughts on racism and religious prejudice as an
obstacle. (POSTED: February 7, 2004)
- [Chiesa:] When
indifference is the main reaction to a catastrophe occurring to
people who do not share our culture and race, and who do not belong
to our political sphere of influence, I suggest that the differences
felt between them and us are magnified to a point where these people
become so alien that they tend to disappear altogether as human
entities from our consciousness.
- [Davids:] Psychoanalysis
clearly has many vital contributions to make to the debate surrounding
the current crisis.... However, the effectiveness of these contributions
is constrained by the current racialised context in which they are
formulated and presented, and in my opinion this has to be taken
into account, much in the way that we take into account the atmosphere
in a session, for at least two reasons.
Katherine van Wormer,
Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern Iowa and co-author
of 'Addiction Treatment: A Strengths Perspective', argues that Bush
can be understood as a "dry drunk": More
Evidence that Bush Is a "Dry Drunk"?. (PUBLISHED and POSTED:
January 27, 2004)
US troops suffer serious psychiatric problems associated with chronic
stress: Stress
epidemic strikes American forces in Iraq: The war's over, but the suicide
rate is high and the army is riddled with acute psychiatric problems..
(PUBLISHED and POSTED: January , 2004)
- Up to one in
five of the American military personnel in Iraq will suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder, say senior forces' medical staff
dealing with the psychiatric fallout of the war. This revelation
follows the disclosure last month that more than 600 US servicemen
and women have been evacuated from the country for psychiatric reasons
since the conflict started last March.
- "In comparison
with the combat phase, what we are now seeing are conditions of
chronic stress which the troops are experiencing every day. It is
a combination of danger, boredom and sleep deprivation, and the
knowledge that they are a long way from home," said Berg. "In
addition people are no longer sure when or what the end will be.
No one knows when they will be going home. They are also working
in an environment where the people they came to help are very hostile...."
- The psychiatrists
have seen symptoms ranging from disturbed sleep, heart palpitations,
nausea and diarrhoea to more obvious behavioural problems, such
as forgetful-ness, aggression, irrational anger and feelings of
alienation. From the present period of chronic stress to the personnel,
the doctors are expecting symptoms of depression and generalised
anxiety to develop....
- At least 22
US soldiers have killed themselves - a rate considered abnormally
high - mostly since President George Bush declared an end to major
combat on 1 May last year....
- The military
psychiatrists are puzzled by the suicide rate in Iraq, saying that
it makes little sense in comparison with those in past conflicts.
The accepted wisdom in military psychiatry is that the level of
suicides - far from increasing during wars - drops as the survival
instinct kicks in among the personnel in the conflict zone.
Sociologist Thomas
J. Scheff has spent a career exploring, from a microsociological perspective,
many of the phenomenon of interest to psychoanalysts, including a detailed
examination of the role of shame and rage as causes of war. His web
site has many goodies worth examining. See, for example Male
Emotions/Relationships and Violence: A Theory of Humiliated Fury
or Emotion,
alienation, and narratives: resolving intractable conflict (Suzanne
Retzinger and Thomas Scheff). For psychoanalysts, his Review
of Freudian Repression: Conversation Creating the Unconscious,
by Michael Billig is very interesting in its discussion of repression
from a sociological perspective. (POSTED: January 20, 2004)
A couple more interviews with linguist George Lakoff about the political
relevance of his concept of "frames": Inside
the Frame and Framing
the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives
use language to dominate politics. And Lakoff analyzes the State
of the Union address: The
Hidden State of the Union. (POSTED: January 20, 2004)
M Shahid Alam, professor of
economics at Northeastern University, analyzes: The
Semantics of Empire. (PUBLISHED and POSTED: January 17, 2004)
- It would appear
that the indictment of Saddam gathers power, conviction, irrefutability,
by adding the possessive, proprietary, emphatic "own"
to the people tortured, gassed or killed. What does the grammar
of accusations say about the metrics of American values?
- In the colonial
era, racism inoculated people against feeling empathy toward those
other people in the periphery. Those other people were children,
barbarians, savages, if not worse.
Richard Goldstein
of the Village Voice views Dean's success as do to his image of being
a real man, countering the perceived threats to their masculinity experienced
by white men: Sex
and the Democrats. (POSTED: January 12, 2004)
The cost of being human. Soldier was charged with cowardice for suffering
trauma at witnessing a dead Iraqi soldier: US
sergeant branded a coward mounts furious fightback. (PUBLISHED and
POSTED: January 12, 2004)
The Chief of Iraq's only mental hospital expresses concerns about the
mental health of many Iraqis: For
Iraq's emotionally fragile, future is bleak. (PUBLISHED January
7 and POSTED: January 8, 2004)
Liberal Talk show host Thom Hartmann describes the Republicans "psychological
warfare" on white working men, to convince them that their problems
are due to castrating women, not the insecurity created by ant-worker
policies. This piece complements those of sociologist Arlie Hochschild,
[see below]: Conservatives
Target Testicles. (PUBLISHED and POSTED: December 20, 2003)
- Rush Limbaugh
just declared psychological war on the working white males of America,
although most of them probably didn't realize it. This week Limbaugh
rolled out a "funny" faux advertisement for the "Hillary
Clinton Testicle Lock Box" that now any woman can use to clamp
down on men's testicles just like Hillary does.... It's part of
a sophisticated psychological operations program by conservatives
that explicitly targets working men in America, and dates back to
research first done for Richard Nixon.
Renana Brooks continues
her dissection of the psychological basis of Bush's popularity: The
Character Myth: To Counter Bush, the Democrats Must Present a Different
Version of a Safe World. She argues that only an alternative world
view, of safety and security based on collaboration can defeat Bush:
(POSTED: December 12, 2003)
- Bush's leadership
style and use of language essentially have created cognitive dissonance
in the electorate. The more that Americans observe the Bush presidency
pushing policies they do not support, and would normally question,
the more they confront the choice of whether to oppose him actively
or rationalize away their discomfort. Many Americans have chosen
the latter because the President has convinced them that the situation
is desperate and that only he can handle the continuing crisis.
The more they depend upon Bush, the more they rationalize away any
objections they may have to his specific ideas and policies.
- The current
President, however, uses the word "I" far more often than
the word "we," and usually refers only to the United States,
or himself and his party, not the entire world community, when he
says "we." This President also tends to undercut his words
of inspiration with references to dangers that loom and threaten,
hovering vaguely outside our immediate sphere of control. Even as
Bush promises action, he fosters a sense of chaos and danger.
Jonathan Rowe also
analyzes political speech, but he argues for a strength in progressive
speech: Don't
Talk Like a Twit. (POSTED: December 12, 2003)
In a new book, psychoanalyst Robert Jay Lifton discusses America's Superpower
Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World. In
his web column, Tom Engelhard presents a short piece from the Nation
by Lifton, American Apocalypse summarizing some of his themes: Tomgram:
Robert Jay Lifton on superpower syndrome. (PUBLISHED and POSTED:
December 8, 2003)
- Stepping off
the superpower treadmill would also enable us to cease being a nation
ruled by fear. Renouncing omnipotence would make our leaders themselves
less fearful of weakness, and diminish their inclination to instill
fear in their people as a means of enlisting them for illusory military
efforts at world hegemony. Without the need for invulnerability,
everyone would have much less to be afraid of.
A new report by the
group Medact (the British
affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear
War (IPPNW) ) - winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985) suggests that
the health effects of the Iraq war are greater than previously reported
and that "while the health and environmental consequences of the
conflict will be felt for many years to come." Continuing
Collateral Damage: The health and environmental costs of war on Iraq.
Of special interest to PPJ are three Working Papers, especially #3:
Working
Paper 1 "Highlights and explains the contrast beween the widespread
use of precision weapons and the high number of incidents involving
civilian deaths and friendly fire." And
Working Paper 2 "Looks at the questionable legality of inhumane
weapons used during the conflict and explains their impact on health.
" Working
Paper 3 Mental well-being in Iraq six months after the start of
Operation Iraqi Freedom. [See also the BBC report: Iraq
'faces severe health crisis'.] (PUBLISHED and POSTED: November 11,
2003)
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild applies the thinking of George Lakoff and
Norman Mailer to examine the question, why would blue-collar workers
support George Bush? Let
Them Eat War. See also the interview
with Arlie Hochschild on this issue by BuzzFlash.
(POSTED: October 7 & December 20, 2003)
Another thought-provoking piece by linguist George Lakoff analyzing
the language of political discourse: Framing
a Democratic Agenda and Lakoff's comments on the Arnold Schwartzenegger
victory in California: The
Frame Around Arnold. See also the Rockridge
Institute which builds on Lakoff's work to: "Reframe the terms
of political debate to make a progressive moral vision more persuasive
and influential." (POSTED: September 28 & October 14, 2003)
For what its worth, here is a psychological analysis from the Guardian
(UK) of President George W. Bush: So
George, how do you feel about your mom and dad? Psychologist Oliver
James analyses the behaviour of the American president . Of course,
one should take all such products with a grain of salt. (PUBLISHED and
POSTED: September 2, 2003)
Conservatives are in an uproar about a research paper just published
in the Psychological Bulletin entitled Political
Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition by John T. Jost, Jack
Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, & Frank J. Sulloway (See also a Critique
by Jeff Greenberg & Eva Jonas and a Response
by the authors). For the controversy, see the article Conservative
psychosis by George Will and an article on the controversy by Julian
Borger in the Guardian (UK) Study
of Bush's Psyche Touches a Nerve. (POSTED: August 13, 2003)
- [From the original
paper:] The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to
change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs
that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty
and threat.
James Carrol, the
Boston Globe's resident columnist/moralist discusses the American thirst
for revenge, as well as our denial of it, as motivators for the Iraq
war, and other horrors: America's
habit of revenge (PUBLISHED and POSTED: August 5, 2003)
The The Institute for Psychohistory
has several interesting papers by Lloyd deMause available online The
Gulf War as a Mental Disorder (on the first Gulf War) and War
as Righteous Rape and Purification. (POSTED: August 2, 2003)
George Monbiot, columnist for the Guardian, dissects the warrior America,
and its blindness to reality, based on a religious conception of America.
America
is a religion: US leaders now see themselves as priests of a divine
mission to rid the world of its demons (PUBLISHED and POSTED: July
29, 2003)
In the aftermath of 9/11, Canadian Timothy
J.F. Lash wrote a still relevant piece on the Medical
Aspects of Canada's Response to Terrorism (pdf). Much of the piece
focuses on the need to apply psychological knowledge to understand issues
of grief, fundamentalism, terrorism, etc. (PUBLISHED September 26, 2001
and POSTED: July 13, 2003)
- In addition
to grieving for lost lives, and individual injury, many in North
America have a wounded national self-image. So many have said "the
world will never be the same". Actually the world is little
different from before. It is North Americans' sense of our place
in the world that has been shocked. It is our inescapable vulnerability
to what others think of us that needs consideration.
James Carroll, as
usual, has a very perceptive comment on the moral dimensions, or lack
thereof, of President Bush as he responds to the current situation:
Bush's
war against evil (PUBLISHED and POSTED: July 8, 2003)
- To address
concerns about the savage violence engulfing "postwar"
Iraq with a cocksure "Bring `em on!" as he did last week,
is to display an absence of imagination shocking in a man of such
authority. It showed a lack of capacity to identify either with
enraged Iraqis who must rise to such a taunt or with young GIs who
must now answer for it. Even in relationship to his own soldiers,
there is nothing at the core of this man but visceral meanness.
- No human being
with a minimal self-knowledge could speak of evil as he [President
Bush] does, but there is no self-knowledge without a self. Even
this short "distance of history" shows George W. Bush
to be, in that sense, the selfless president, which is not a compliment.
It's a warning.
Ben Tripp analyzes
American's indifference to the missing WMD in terms of the cognitive
dissonance caused by the distance between the American fantasy (ideal)
and the current reality. They
Just Don't Want to Know: Of Dissidents and Dissonance (PUBLISHED
June 14 and POSTED: June 21, 2003)
- America invaded
another nation, unscrewed its head and took a giant dump down its
neck--unprovoked. Confronted with the singularly un-American nature
of this exploit, our leaders responded by claiming we had to do
it-- because this enemy nation was aiming a vast artillery of deadly
weapons designed especially to kill blonde people at us. I don't
think all that many people really believed it, not really really.
But they went along with it, because to confront the real reasons
for such aimless aggression would be too horrible for their fragile
worldviews and patriotic self-images to bear. When the 'WMD' bit
turned out not to be true, the rationale switched to exporting American
Democracy by force. Which is an oxymoron, a common symptom of cognitive
dissonance.
- The beauty
part of cognitive dissonance is the worse it gets, the more people
throw up [their hands] and say "who cares?" In this way
such public works projects as genocide and empire-building can be
accomplished, because people refuse to care. It's too damn demanding,
too scary, and too damaging to that ever-threatened bird called
Self Esteem.
George Lakoff's linguistic
analysis of the metaphors used to justify the first Gulf War:
Metaphor
and War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf
Guardian
(UK) article on a personality analysis of Saddam Hussein by Jerrold
Post, former CIA psychiatrist.
New
Yorker article on Jerrold Post's analysis.
Robert M. Young's paper Psychoanalysis,
Terrorism, and Fundamentalism
Civilization's
Obscene Ghost , from the Los Angeles Times (April 6, 2003) by Peter
Brooks discusses the current Iraq war in the light of Freud's observtions
on the first World War in "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death"
.
Wallace Shawn in The Nation states the obvious -- that the hawks are
possessed by the opportunity to express their internal violence: Fragments
From a Diary (POSTED: April 23, 2003)
- Why are we
being so ridiculously polite? It's as if there were some sort of
gentlemen's agreement that prevents people from stating the obvious
truth that Bush and his colleagues are exhilarated and thrilled
by the thought of war, by the thought of the incredible power they
will have over so many other people, by the thought of the immensity
of what they will do, by the scale, the massiveness of the bombing
they're planning, the violence, the killing, the blood, the deaths,
the horror.
-
-
- The love of
killing is inside each one of us, and we can never be sure that
it won't come out. We have to be grateful if it doesn't come out.
In fact, it is utterly wrong for me to imagine that Bush is violent
and I am not, that Bush is cruel and I am not. I am potentially
just as much of a killer as he is, and I need the help of all the
sages and poets and musicians and saints to guide me onto a better
path, and I can only hope that the circumstances of my life will
continue to be ones that help me to stay on that path. But we can't
deny that Bush and his men, for whatever reason, are under the sway
of the less peaceful side of their natures.
While one may not
agree with his entire argument, Anis Shivani poses interesting questions
crying out for psychoanalytic explanation; Is
America Becoming Fascist? (PUBLISHED and POSTED: April 28, 2003)
Norman Mailer: We
went to war just to boost the white male ego (PUBLISHED and POSTED:
April 29, 2003)
A comment on the paternalistic ideology behind the occupation of Iraq,
by Ira Chernus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado
at Boulder. Ideology
is Key to Corporate Imperialism in Iraq (PUBLISHED and POSTED: May
9, 2003 )
Renana Brooks, a clinical psychologist and Director of Sommet
Institute for the Study of Power and Persuasion has a linguistic
analysis of A
Nation of Victims: The Hidden Costs of President Bushs Successful State
of the Union Address[An updated
version was published in the June 30, 2003 issue of the Nation]
(POSTED: June 17, 2003)
- Bushs language,
based on a good versus evil world-view, has strong appeal because
it meets peoples emotional needs. It creates an impression that
complicated problems are easily addressed by quite elemental steps
that only Bush has the power to put in place....
-
- Like a magician
distracting his audience from the slight of hand, the abusive personality
first uses empty languageto distract the listener broad statements
that are so abstract they mean little and are virtually impossible
to oppose.... in the State of the Union speech, I found 39 instances
of such impossible-to-disagree-with statements....
- [Empty language]
makes the listener ready for the second technique involved in abusive
technique, using language to create a core negative framework. Bush
is a master at developing negative frameworks.... Bush uses this
negative framework with its underlying pessimism as a political
and linguistic technique. Bush consistently opts to describe the
existing situation as a crisis and as a future and ongoing problem
rather than a past or present one.... Bush then utilizes abstract
passive construction to build up the bogeyman- a terrible force
outside our control that is threatening our survival -- threats
that are beyond any specific solution problems that are totally
overwhelming.... Bushs language is designed to create fear, to disable
people from feeling they have the ability to solve their problems,
to depend on Bush.
Boston Globe collumnist
James Caroll regularly searches for the psychological roots of our current
situation in his columns. Here is is speculation on the role of millennial
fear: Millennial
war (POSTED: June 17, 2003)
Other
Perspectives
Other
Relevant Resources
My
set of Psychoanalytic
Resources Online and my Resources
for the Study of Violence. (POSTED: June 17, 2003)
Here is the classic Einstein-Freud Correspondence (1931-1932) Why
War? (POSTED: May 27, 2003 & new link: February 3, 2004)
Human Relations, Authority
and Justice , an e-journal and web site attempting "to bring
psychoanalytic and related psychodynamic approaches to bear on group,
institutional, cultural and political processes." Edited by Dr
Toma Tomov, Professor of Psychiatry, Medical University of Sofia, Bulgaria,
Dr Robert M. Young, Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies,
University of Sheffield, England.
Peter H. Wolff comments on Why
psychoanalysis is still interesting? touching upon its potential
subversive political content. (POSTED: June 10, 2003)
- A brief survey
of contemporary papers, keynote addresses and panels presented at
official psychoanalytic congresses, suggests that the politically
subversive implications of psychoanalysis are now judged to be out
of date and irrelevant, socially inappropriate, or divisive and
therefore best forgotten. Yet, I believe that, given the far reaching
theoretical and clinical consequences of today's sanitized psychoanalysis,
many of the questions once raised by the Freudian Left are even
more pertinent today....
- Does the claim
of neutrality cover up the reactionary intent of clinical practice
to explain away the social basis of human miseries by reducing them
to "intrapsychic conflicts" and discouraging dissent?
Related
Journals
Robert
M. Young (UK) & Toma Tomov (Bulgaria) edit an online journal devoted
to "bring(ing) psychoanalytic and related psychodynamic approaches
to bear on group, institutional, cultural and political processes."
Human Relations, Authority,
and Justice: Experiences and Critiques (POSTED: )
JPCS:
Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society (POSTED:
June 17, 2003)
- JPCS is the
official publication of the Association
for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society, an international
and interdisciplinary organization. The journal publishes articles,
reviews, field notes, international notes, and letters to the editor
that employ psychoanalysis to address the psychological roots or
consequences of social and cultural phenomena in such a way as to
enhance the possibilities for social change.
Radical
Psychology, the online journal of the RadPsychNet
Related
Organizations
PsyACT:
Psychologists Acting with Conscience Together is a new group whose
initial efforts are focusing on using psychological knowledge to address
poverty. (POSTED: September 17, 2003)
- The main rationale
for this coalition is to create synergy amongst various groups and
individuals to take effective action together. Our assumption is
that together we can be more effective than separately. Although
there are various groups of psychologists concerned with social
justice in a variety of formal and informal organizations, there
is no effective voice that unites these psychologists and others
at a global scale.
Association
for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society (POSTED: June 17,
2003)
- If we are to
begin to solve our most serious social problems, we must understand
their psychological roots. Many of these problems, including violence,
drug abuse, irresponsible sexuality, and intolerance in its various
forms, will be extremely difficult if not impossible to solve unless
we address the psychological roots that are the immediate causes
of these destructive behaviors.
A UK based group:
Psychotherapists and Counsellors for
Social Responsibility (POSTED: August 2, 2003)
Psychologists for Social Responsibility
is a group of psychologists who use "psychological knowledge and
skills to promote peace with social justice at the community, national,
and international levels."
Society
for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Division 48 (Peace
Psychology) of the American Psychological Association.
Physicians
for Social Responsibility, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize,
"is a leading public policy organization with 24,000 members representing
the medical and public health professions and concerned citizens, working
together for nuclear disarmament, a healthful environment, and an end
to the epidemic of gun violence."
Society for the Psychological Study
of Social Issues (SPSSI) "is an international group of over
3500 psychologists, allied scientists, students, and others who share
a common interest in research on the psychological aspects of important
social issues. In various ways, the Society seeks to bring theory and
practice into focus on human problems of the group, the community, and
nations, as well as the increasingly important problems that have no
national boundaries."
RadPsychNet is an organization
of over 300 members word-wide dedicated to using psychological knowledge
to "help create a society better able to meet human needs and bring
about social justice." "Psychology" appears to be very
broadly defined and a number of their members appear to be psychoanalytically-oriented.
They have a free web journal: Radical
Psychology. Membership is free.
Site developed by Stephen
Soldz
If you find this information useful,
or if you have other ideas for what should be included,
please let us know by sending us e-mail
or signing our Guestbook below:
ssoldz@bgsp.edu
Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice
c/o Stephen Soldz
Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis
1581 Beacon St.
Brookline, MA 02446
http://soldzresearch.com/stephensoldz
Also visit:
IRAQ
Occupation and Resistance Report
Iraq
Antiwar Resources
Progressive
News Online
Where
is the US Headed?
Psychoanalytic
Resources Online
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