Psychoanalysis and Governance: Discourse and Decisions, Identities and Futures

Psychoanalysis and Governance makes a cogent argument for the use of psychoanalytic perspectives in the understanding of governance, the process of collective decision-making that maintains and reshapes communities.

This book is highly relevant to those interested in the ever-expanding field of applications of psychoanalysis and for all those willing to observe the discursive and affective underpinnings of public policy, administration, and planning. It locates the potential for self-analysis and self-transformation within governance, yet also indicates governance as the confluence of diverging understandings of the ideas of community and governance itself, as the place where competing desires and variegated patterns of fears and hopes collide and hold the transformational potential to destabilize the community.

Building on Freudian, Lacanian, and other psychoanalytic traditions, the book enriches our understanding of governance, the way communities remember and forget, are haunted by the past, remain untransparent to themselves yet also retain the possibility of reinvention, of imagining alternative selves, new futures, and discover paths to move in that direction. This book will be a suitable for psychoanalysts, planners, and all those interested in informed governance.

Kristof Van Assche, a professor at the University of Alberta, is interested in evolution and innovation in governance. He explores the relations between knowledge, affect, and organization in their implications for sustainability thinking and collective strategy. He is one of the proponents of Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT).

Monica Gruezmacher is an associate researcher at the University of Alberta and an adjunct professor at Memorial University. In the past she worked as a policy advisor. She is interested in the challenges of managing long-term relationships between communities and their environment, especially in rural, remote, and challenging settings.