Danse Macabre and Other Stories

A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Global Dynamics

Halina Brunning, Olya Khaleelee

• Publisher: Phoenix Publishing House
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800130890
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Industrial & Organizational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Danse Macabre and Other Stories: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Global Dynamics examines the world using a systemic and psychoanalytic lens, including concepts of splitting, separation, projection, displacement, and the return of the repressed. They consider what impact the disappearance of some iconic and psychic containers has on individuals' functioning and why we choose populist leaders to shore up our own social defences. They question why the world feels so threatening to the twenty-first-century linked-in citizens when the objective facts suggest that overall much is improving for the global citizen.

Building on their previous work, Halina Brunning and Olya Khaleelee have created a coherent framework in order to conceptualise global dynamics within a matrix form. The matrix contains dialectic dynamic forces for both good and evil, love and hate, creation and destruction. They take a closer look at the plethora of phenomena which they see arising therein.

Whilst the matrix holds steady, inside it is a world in constant flux, reconfiguring and rearranging itself, as if in a kaleidoscope, with inevitable and unavoidable turbulence, but – Brunning and Khaleelee hypothesise – with an underlying pattern that is available to be discerned and studied.

Aware of this turbulence, Brunning and Khaleelee wish to share their view of the world in the hope of offering a containing reflection, capable of calming the nerves of the readers as well as their own.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the authors and contributors
• Why this book now?
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Eros and Thanatos in a danse macabre: a glimpse at the contemporary world
• Chapter 2: Story about the disappearing containers
• Chapter 3: Story about splitting, separation, and the centre that does not hold
• Chapter 4: Story about troubling leadership in turbulent times
• Chapter 5: Story about the return of the repressed: the impact of colonisation and migration
• Chapter 6: Story about globalisation and its discontents
• Chapter 7: Story about social defences in a volatile world
• Chapter 8: What are these stories telling us about our world today?
• Chapter 9: Final thoughts
• Conclusions: The future we are in
• References
• Index