Truth in a Time of Disinformation (Paperback)

In an age where certainty has dissolved into opinion, and falsehood often travels faster than fact, Truth in a Time of Disinformation asks one of the most urgent questions of our era: what has become of truth, and how might psychoanalysis help us to find our way back to it?

From Plato’s forms to postmodern relativism, the book traces the long, complex evolution of humankind’s relationship with truth – its beauty, its necessity, and its fragility. Today, this ancient pursuit faces unprecedented threat as narcissism, power, and digital distortion corrode our shared sense of reality. The psychoanalytic lens offers a unique response: an exploration of how inner truth – our unconscious phantasies, denials, and projections – shapes both the personal and the political fabric of the world we inhabit.

At once a meditation on civilisation’s current crisis and a testament to psychoanalysis as a discipline grounded in truth-seeking, this book argues that the nourishment of truth – both emotional and intellectual – is essential for freedom, democracy, and psychic integrity.

Gathering leading psychoanalytic thinkers from across traditions and countries, the volume illuminates truth as a lived, relational process rather than an abstract ideal. The book features Jorge L. Ahumada, Jean Arundale, David Bell, Christopher Bollas, Ronald Britton, Giuseppe Civitarese, Sara Collins, Gregorio Kohon, Alessandra Lemma, David Morgan, Thomas H. Ogden, Elias M. da Rocha Barros, Eran J. Rolnik, Hanna Segal, Mark Solms, and John Steiner. They examine how truth emerges, is tested, and co-created in the analytic encounter. Their essays span philosophical reflection and clinical experience, linking the analyst’s consulting room with the public sphere and revealing the moral and emotional courage required to face reality without illusion.

Beautifully written and deeply relevant, Truth in a Time of Disinformation invites readers to reconsider what it means to know, to think, and to remain human in an age of distortion.

Jean Arundale, PhD, is a training and supervising analyst for the British Psychoanalytic Association. In the BPA, she recently served as president, was chair of the Scientific Committee for six years, and worked on many other committees since the BPA was founded in 2010. Primarily in private practice in North-West London, Jean was a consultant psychotherapist working part-time in the National Health Service for more than forty years, supervising groups of psychotherapy trainees at Guy’s Hospital, London. She has taught widely and presented papers at University College London, the European Psychoanalytical Federation, and International Psychoanalytical Association conferences, and published papers and books on psychoanalysis, the most recent being The Omnipotent State of Mind, published by Routledge in 2022. Jean is presently serving on The International Journal of Psychoanalysis editorial board.