Culture and ideology in Ian Suttie's theory of mind.

Abstract

The author discusses the comprehensive outlook that shaped Ian Suttie's psychology. Suttie is seen as a background influence behind the British school of psychoanalysis, and his ideas pervade that school and therefore late-modern notions of the mind. The author describes the formation of Suttie's independent theory, and argues that his project was expressly ideological, as he tried to counter what he saw as the reactionary and disruptive influence of Freud's classical theory. Suttie offered an optimistic perception of the mind, which could serve as the basis for a progressive social policy. This perception was rooted in the outlook of early 20th-century reforming liberalism, whose preferences and prejudices it shares.

Christian anti-Judaism and early object relations theory

“…Rather than offering a critical engagement of Freud’s ideas, Suttie’s book amounts to little more than an overwrought repudiation of them. He compiles a limited and repetitive series of ideological charges against Freudian theory that are the product of personal values (Gerson, 2009: 20, 30) and religious prejudice (Hewitt, 2014: 123–128). One (sympathetic) commentator admits that Suttie’s “robustly polemical style” rests upon “serious oversimplifications of Freudian theory” (Gordon, 2002: 114, 123).…”

“…Crichton-Miller shared Suttie’s view that Christianity introduces love as a “new principle” to psychology (Hoffman, 2011: 69). At the Tavistock, then sometimes known as “the parson’s clinic” (Zaretsky, 1998: 47-48; Gerson, 2009: 23), Crichton-Miller and Suttie belonged to a “powerful clique of Christian psychologists and psychotherapists” who were committed to integrating psychology into a “religiously grounded psychotherapy” (Richards, 2011: 81). From the beginning, psychotherapy in Scotland and Britain was heir to a Protestant tradition that profoundly shaped its theory and practice (Miller, 2008: 45; Richards, 2011: 77; Bondi, 2013: 683).…”

“… 6 Gal Gerson (2009: 36) observes that “the circumstances of the 1930s and 1940s made Suttie’s views on ethnicity and culture less publicly tenable” and “although not endorsing Suttie’s openly confrontational attitude to Freud, the later British theorists found his work helpful in offering a perception that was more in keeping with their received values.” However, while Gerson is well aware of Suttie’s anti-Judaism, it is not the focus of his essay.…”

Suttie’s Influence on Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory

“…The importance of Suttie's work is becoming recognized and discussed in a wider context, in which some of the most interesting work on the social, cultural, and historical aspects of British object relations thinking is found (Cassullo and Capello 2010: Gerson 2004, 2009Miller 2007Miller , 2008a, but unfortunately Suttie remains outside the psychoanalytic mainstream. For instance, The Origins of Love and Hate is not among the books in the PEP database; where Suttie does appear in the journal papers in PEP, there is little substantive discussion of his work, and his influence is stated briefly rather than argued in any depth.…”

The ontogeny of an idea: John Bowlby and contemporaries on mother–child separation.

“…This movement ultimately evolved into a school centered around the Tavistock Clinic (with Ian Suttie as the central figure; cf. Gerson, 2009). The "eclectics" were led to their "heresy" because in many cases of war traumata (the cases of "shell shock" that were so prevalent in the First World War), it was impossible to retrace these traumata to unresolved mental (sexual) conflicts in childhood or infancy.…”