The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War, and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain

Description

The War Inside is a groundbreaking history of the contribution of British psychoanalysis to the making of social democracy, childhood, and the family during World War II and the postwar reconstruction. Psychoanalysts informed understandings not only of individuals, but also of broader political questions. By asserting a link between a real 'war outside' and an emotional 'war inside', psychoanalysts contributed to an increased state responsibility for citizens' mental health. They made understanding children and the mother-child relationship key to the successful creation of a democratic citizenry. Using rich archival sources, the book revises the common view of psychoanalysis as an elite discipline by taking it out of the clinic and into the war nursery, the juvenile court, the state welfare committee, and the children's hospital. It traces the work of the second generation of psychoanalysts after Freud in response to total war and explores its broad postwar effects on British society.

Michal Shapira is Assistant Professor of History and Gender Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her research deals with the domestic, sociocultural, crossnational and imperial legacies of World War II in Britain and beyond.

'This scholarly and well-researched book is the first to investigate how psychoanalysis influenced social policies relating to children in mid-twentieth-century Britain and demonstrates the far-reaching role of psychoanalytic ideas within social policy. Michal Shapira has been particularly effective in demonstrating the way in which psychoanalytic experts, in dealing with the disruptions and mass separation of families in wartime, introduced psychoanalytic ideas to discussions of citizenship and democracy.' Michael Roper, University of Essex 'A substantial and well-researched contribution to the history of British psychoanalysis; Michal Shapira's illuminating book, The War Inside, deserves a wide readership.' Daniel Pick, Birkbeck, University of London 'Shapira does a superb job of narrating the shift in both clinical thinking and public attitudes effected by the suffering of the shell-shocked in the previous war, demonstrating how, by the 1940s, fear and anxiety were recognised as legitimate responses to war but ones that needed careful management by the state.' Helen McCarthy, Reviews in History (history.ac.uk/reviews) 'Shapira's work is one that I am likely to go back to more often ... Reading this work, one can see the profound ways in which psychoanalytic thinking informed the society in which we now live; and because there are so many wonderfully researched details in the book, it is one that I will keep on my shelf and can imagine dipping back into again and again.' Psychoanalysis and History 'In this important and original contribution, Michal Shapira presents an interdisciplinary, social and cultural history that examines the impact of psychoanalysis on the self, child development, and the family in post World War II Britain. Drawing on published and archival materials as well as clinical case histories this book will interest a wide range of academics as well as clinicians and psychoanalysts.' Lewis Aron, Director, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis