Belonging to oneself alone: The spirit of neoliberalism

In the last three decades, neoliberalism has come to dominate most of the West, reshaping many institutions according to its ideological belief in markets as the optimal form of regulation of social and economic life. Whereas formerly market ideology was contested by collectivist ideas of the public good, at this point of its triumph there is little systemic opposition to it. Does psychoanalysis have distinctive insights to offer on neoliberalism, and if so, can they contribute to contesting its domination? Two starting points for such a critique are the relational ideas that are the foundations of psychoanalytic object-relations approaches, and the post-Kleinian theory of narcissism. Neoliberalism is engaged in the remaking of identities and subjectivities in individualist terms, and psychoanalytic ideas provide a resource for contesting its conception of human nature.