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Christopher Bollas argues that democracy is both a political concept and a theory of mind.

From the perspective of British object relations theory, which conceptualizes the mind as an assembly of different parts of the self, he maintains that the dynamics of the internal world apply both to the individual and to the group. Linking the theories of group relations and psychoanalysis therefore allows us to make crucial connections between the functioning of the internal world and the politics of democracy.

He discusses how the US elections of 2016 objectified a breakdown in the democratic process, and he advocates a “political psychology” that employs psychoanalytical models to help opposing parties negotiate differences by using the psychology of democracy. He suggests that paranoid states pose the gravest threat to preserving an open mind, essential to the wellbeing of individuals, groups, nations, and the politics of globalization.

Christopher Bollas is a Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and has been called the most influential psychoanalyst writing in English today. His first book, The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known, is republished by Routledge in a 30th anniversary edition. His talk on the democratic process will be included in his forthcoming book Meaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment.

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