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In this volume, the work of British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott is set in conversation with some of today´s most talented psychodynamically-sensitive political thinkers. The editors and contributors demonstrate that Winnicott´s thought contains underappreciated political insights, discoverable in his reflections on the nature of the maturational process, and useful in working through difficult impasses confronting contemporary political theorists. Specifically, Winnicott´s psychoanalytic theory and practice offer a framework by which the political subject, destabilized and disrupted in much postmodern and contemporary thinking, may be recentered. Each chapter in this volume, in its own way, grapples with this central theme: the potential for authentic subjectivity and inter-subjectivity to arise within a nexus of autonomy and dependence, aggression and civility, destructiveness and care. This volume is unique in its contribution to the growing field of object-relations-oriented political and social theory. It will be of interest to political scientists, psychologists, and scholars of related subjects in the humanities and social sciences.

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Chapter 1: Introduction Matthew H. Bowker and Amy Buzby
Part I: The Subject´s Creation: Aggression, Isolation, and Destruction
Chapter 2: Being and Encountering: Movement and Aggression in Winnicott Jeremy Elkins
Chapter 3: The Isolation of the True Self and the Problem of Impingement: Implications of Winnicott´s Theory for Social Connection and Political Engagement David P. Levine
Chapter 4: The Psychoanalytic Winnicott We Need Now: On the Way to a Real Ecological Thought Melissa A. Orlie
Part II: The Subject Faced with Deprivation and Disaster
Chapter 5: Playing ´Riot´: Identity in Refuge - Absent Child Narratives in the 2013 Hindu Muslim Riots in Muzaffarnagar, India Zehra Mehdi
Chapter 6: Safety in Danger and Privacy in Privation: Ambivalent Fantasies of Natural States Invoked in Reaction to Loss Matthew H. Bowker
Chapter 7: ´Out Like a Lion´: Melancholia with Euripides and Winnicott Bonnie Honig
Chapter 8: Forgiveness and Transitional Experience C. Fred Alford
Part III: Revitalizing the Subject of Political Theory
Chapter 9: In Transition, but to where?: Winnicott, Integration, and Democratic Associations David W. McIvor
Chapter 10: Vanquishing the False Self: Winnicott, Critical Theory and the Restoration of the Spontaneous Gesture Amy Buzby
Chapter 11: Adults in the Playground: Winnicott and Arendt on Politics and Playfulness John LeJeune
Part IV: Inter-Subjectivity, Justice, and Equality
Chapter 12: D.W. Winnicott, Ethics, and Race: Psychoanalytic Thought and Racial Equality in the United States Alex Zamalin
Chapter 13: Winnicott at Work: Potential Space and the Facilitating Organization Michael A. Diamond
Chapter 14: Winnicott and the History of Welfare State Thought in Britain Gal Gerson
Chapter 15: Vulnerability, Dependence, Sovereignty, and Ego-Distortion Theory: Psycho-Analyzing Political Behaviors in the Developing World Robert C. Chalwell

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Matthew H. Bowker is Clinical Assistant Professor of Humanities at Medaille College, USA. He is the author of several books in the field of psycho-politics, including: A Dangerous Place to Be (Forthcoming), Ideologies of Experience (2016), and Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity (2014).
Amy Buzby is Associate Professor of Political Science at Arkansas State University, USA. She obtained her PhD in political science from Rutgers University, USA. Her published works include Subterranean Politics and Freud´s Legacy (2013) and Communicative Action (2010).

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