1) Doctoral thesis: "Symptom Invented: Lacan in the Context of French
Marxism"
Lacanian psychoanalysis has received increasing attention in the last few decades for its relevance to thinking about politics, mainly as a result of its key role in the work of the post-Althusserian philosophers of the Ljubljana School. This, however, has resulted in a portrayal of Lacan’s position with respect to Marx that can seem obvious and uncomplicated, and that elides the complexities of the historical narrative of psychoanalysis’s interaction with Marxist thought. This thesis offers a more complex historical picture of how Lacan relates to Marx. It argues that the political possibilities opened up by psychoanalysis, in particular with respect to its response to Marx, cannot be understood extraneously to this historical dimension. The thesis carries out readings of key texts in twentieth-century philosophy, science, and political theory associated with Marxist thought to construct this intellectual history. It finds that, at each moment of its development, Lacan’s work responded to conceptual impasses precipitated by the legacy of this tradition. What also emerges, though, is a view of Lacan that cannot be reduced to a Marxist framework, precisely because of the pressure-points within it that he exploits. There is a history conditioning Lacan’s position with respect to Marx that has been forgotten, and that haunts attempts currently being made, in the half-century after his work was completed, to come to terms with it. This thesis begins a study of the contours of this history, in order to register the political possibilities that Lacan opened up.
2) “Post-World War II Group Psychology and the Limits of Leadership: Bion, Lacan and the Leaderless Group”, Psychoanalysis and History 22.3 (2020)
This article attempts to reveal something different about the afterlife of a number of innovations made in British psychiatry during World War II – in particular around the notion of leadership – by reading them in a much broader context which includes Jacques Lacan’s article ‘Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty’ (1945). Within such a broader trajectory, considerations of leaders and leaderlessness, which pressed towards democracy and egalitarianism, intersect (paradoxically) with other currents, equally radical, which envision a totalizing reduction of individuals to a technocratic mass. The article’s starting point is Jacques Lacan’s high praise of British military psychiatry – in particular of W.H. Bion, John Rickman and John Rawlings Rees, consulting psychiatrist to the army during the war. It then weighs Lacan’s description of their achievements against a historical account of where such experiments led in the post-war context, and the social functions envisaged for them, that differed from those Lacan hoped they could perform. It concludes with a comparison of Lacan’s article ‘Logical Time’, his first published after reading Bion and Rickman, to the contemporary work of Friedrich von Hayek, the early theorist of neoliberal economics, to illustrate the profound ambiguity which exists within the political implications of psychoanalytic theories of groups.
3) “Jobs and Well-being: Reopening the Debate” (co-authored with David Frayne), Autonomy (September 2021),
This report investigates the supposed finding of research commissioned by the UK Government that employment is necessarily beneficial for mental and physical health. The claim that employment is indispensable for well-being is often presented as a conclusive fact, grounded in evidence, and has been drawn on for political purposes—such as justifying job-focused benefit conditionality, establishing employment as a health outcome, and putting pressure on disabled people to enter work. However, my review of the key studies influencing this claim suggests that the relationship between employment and well-being is variable, sensitive to context, and ultimately ambiguous. Existing studies have explored the mediating role played by a range of factors, including job quality, individual preferences, and the extent to which policies, relationships and cultural values support people’s ability to control their lives when not working. Against the initial claim on which UK policy is based, I found that the impact of employment and unemployment on human well-being is shaped by context, and that citizens’ well-being is not supported by the prescription of employment. In our report, published by Autonomy in 2021, I and my co-author outline the principles for a less job-centred policy agenda, which would be more in tune with existing research. This agenda would recognise the importance of job quality and the right to work, but would also stress the possibility of reconstructing unemployment, increasing the potential for time outside work to be secure, dignified and rewarding.