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Hello, at the turn of the 1920th century we saw the birth and rise of psychoanalysis,

championed by Sigmund Freud, people began to think about how the mind functioned and how our behavior might be understood through the process of working with

the psychoanalyst, either to warn or in a group.

Freud thought a lot about this process and in 1922 he published group psychology and

the analysis of the ego in which he pronounces the group,

quote, wants to be ruled and oppressed and to fear its masters, unquote.

Freud was writing at a time when ideas about rules and oppression were much discussed because the

20th century was also a century of fascism, totalitarianism and dictatorship.

Freud died in 1939 just as a wave of despotism was sweeping across Europe.

Today we'll be discussing the relationship

between politics and psychoanalysis.

To what extent does psychoanalysis function

by the rules of a dictatorship, and to what extent

does it function like a democracy?

Is there a part of us that craves dictatorship?

And if so, why?

And is there a war going on in our own minds between ideas that we allow into our consciousness

and others that we repress.

With me to discuss psychoanalysis and democracy, Adam Phillips, psychotherapist and author

of an excellent new book, Equals and general editor of the new Penguin Translations of Freud, Sally Alexander, Professor of Modern History

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