Mad about Trump – MAGA on the couch

BRLSI’s Democracy Under Threat series invites you to pause and take stock by surveying the wealth of history and political thinking which underpins our long-held democratic systems and institutions. It explores the laying down of democratic principles from Ancient Athens to the present day, and takes in current scenarios in international geopolitics, while considering Britain as its own small island with its own set of political traditions.

In recent years, political life has become increasingly charged with psychic stress, especially anger, grievance, nostalgia, and a powerful sense that something vital has been lost. The rise of Donald Trump and the enduring appeal of the “Make America Great Again” movement raise important questions not only about politics, but about the psychic life of politicians and political activists.

Focusing on the appeal of Trump and the MAGA movement, Bath-based psychoanalyst Daniel Jeffreys considers how unresolved loss – of status, identity, or imagined pasts – may shape both individual and collective experience.

Drawing on two personal interviews with Trump, and on his book America’s Back Porch, which mapped the communities that formed the MAGA movement, Jeffreys explores the Western political landscape with help from Sigmund Freud’s ideas of mourning and melancholia alongside Jacques Lacan’s concept of lack. Through this lens, he examines how difficulties in accepting loss and tolerating uncertainty may contribute to the hardening of belief, the rejection of unwelcome realities, and the pressures currently fracturing democratic life.

The talk will create a space for thinking about how unconscious processes – especially desire, and the need for certainty – may shape public life in an age where both the mind and democracy itself feel increasingly unsettled.

A discount of 20% is on offer to all those purchasing five tickets or more from the series, excluding the conference on the 4th of July.

To learn more about Democracy Under Threat and the exciting range of speakers coming up as part of the programme, don’t forget to follow our Democracy Under Threat Webpage: https://www.brlsi.org/democracyunderthreat/