Browsing: Political Psychology

For some years I have been warning publicly that we are heading into a third global conflict, and this, at times, led me to feel quite down about the prospects for humanity. This third global conflict is not simply a rerun of the disasters of the twentieth century, for before 1945, however terrible a war was and however many people died, the world would repair itself and in time the population of the world could be restored. With the threat of nuclear war and the reality of climate change, humankind has brought about the very real danger of our own demise.

The phrase an obscure object of desire is not a common one, so I have taken it to be a reference to the critically acclaimed 1977 film That Obscure Object of Desire.

In the first of two papers in this Special Issue, Lord Alderdice draws on his personal experience of living and working in Northern Ireland and other countries that have suffered from terrorism, and describes from a psychoanalytic and systemic perspective the history of national, cultural and political conflicts which form the backdrop to the struggles against fundamentalism, radicalization and terrorism in current times.

Prior to the watershed events of 11 September 2001, terrorism was generally seen simply as politically motivated, criminal violence.