This book looks at the intersection of psychoanalytic thinking, society and culture, using examples drawn from literature, clinical practice and everyday life.

The book explores the various ways in which psychoanalysis shares preoccupations with the humanities including but not restricted to music, art, philosophy, history and politics, while retaining its own way of understanding phenomena. Each chapter is built around a different illustrative example, exploring how psychoanalytic thinking can let us better understand key cultural works such as Macbeth, Wordsworth and Mahler, as well as societal examples such as the politics of delivering psychiatric services, and the nature of happiness and misery. In doing so it explores how the human subject becomes more alive in the encounter with human activity in all its varieties and complexities.

Informed by deep clinical understanding but written in a highly accessible way, this is key reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, cultural studies scholars and anyone wanting a better understanding of the role of psychoanalytic thinking in contemporary society and culture.