Social Symptoms of Identity Needs

Mark Bracher, PhD, is Professor of the Department of English, and Director of the Center for Literature and Psychoanalysis, Kent State University, Ohio. He is the Founding Editor of 'Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society' and author of numerous books and articles.

• Preface -- Identity and the Causes of Social Problems -- Introduction -- The nature of identity and its role in social problems -- Social Problems as Symptoms of Identity Needs -- Delinquency, crime, and violence -- Terrorism and war -- The Role of Identity in the Failure to Solve Social Problems -- Phobic objects, subalterns, and enemies as resources for identity maintenance -- Identity-damaging social and cultural forces -- Social Change and Identity Development -- Promoting benign identity contents -- Decommissioning harmful defences -- Promoting identity integration -- Promoting more inclusive identity structures -- Conclusion -- Psychological symptoms as expressions of identity needs -- Multiple self-motives and self-esteem

A central argument of this book is that people avoid knowledge of how to solve social problems because solving these problems is threatening to them. Indeed, many people are threatened by the mere understanding of these problems, or more precisely, by a comprehensive understanding of their causes. Such an understanding is easy enough to come by, for researchers have compiled substantial bodies of evidence for the causes of all of our major social problems. And while the causes are often multiple and various, the matrix of variables in each case is usually no greater than that involved in numerous cognitive tasks that most people are quite capable of performing. Yet when it comes to social problems, many people fail to recognize the full array of causes, both proximal and distal, that combine to produce the social problem at issue. Instead, they attribute social problems to the supposedly flawed characters of certain segments of the population. Thus crime is seen as caused by immoral and violent people, the drug problem by self-indulgent people, poverty by lazy people, and so on. Simply put, people like to assume that social problems are caused by harmful behaviors and that these harmful behaviours are themselves caused by flawed character, period: Flawed Character leads to Harmful Behaviours leads to Social Problems.Social Symptoms of Identity Needs demonstrates how our ineffective and counterproductive responses to these problems - including the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, and the War on Terror - are themselves the result of the fact that we don't really want to solve them, because they serve as means for us, the general public, to maintain our own identities. It concludes by explaining social and cultural interventions that can prevent the social problems by preventing, repairing, or compensating for the identity problems that give rise to them.'This is one of the most interesting and potentially important books I have read for some time.'- Colin Feltham, Professor of Critical Counselling Studies at Sheffield Hallam University, in Therapy Today