The Feeling of Certainty

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction: The Feeling of Certainty, Towards a Psychosocial Approach

   • Nikolay Mintchev, R. D. Hinshelwood

   Pages 1-10

3. The Mentality of Conviction: Feeling Certain and the Search for Truth

   • Karl Figlio

   Pages 11-30

4. What Is Subjectivity and How Can We Study It Empirically? Understanding the Feeling of Certainty Through Psychoanalysis and Ethnography

   • Nikolay Mintchev

   Pages 31-47

5. Haunted by Uncertain Refrains

   • Stephen Frosh

   Pages 49-68

6. Internal Racism: Belief in the Racist Mindset

   • M. Fakhry Davids

   Pages 69-91

7. Being Racist: The Certainty of a Pathological Organisation of the Personality

   • R. D. Hinshelwood

   Pages 93-113

8. ‘Instead of Trying to Help You, They Try to Screw You’: The Feeling of Certainty and the Mexican-Origin Border Patrol Agents

   • Natalia Hernández Jiménez

   Pages 115-127

9. The Primitive Container of Fascism: Masculine Anxieties and Defences in Times of Trauma and Uncertainty

   • Christina Wieland

   Pages 129-148

10. Gender Certainty as a Defence: Oedipal Conflict in Wartime Sexual Violence

    • Tamaki Noro

    Pages 149-164

11. Collective Identities, Breivik and the National Container

    • Barry Richards

    Pages 165-185

12. Back Matter

    Pages 187-194

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This book explores the concept of certainty, a term which is widely used in everyday language to designate a psychological experience or feeling but is rarely considered controversial or politically charged. The Feeling of Certainty argues that conversely this most ordinary of feelings plays a key role in shaping identity formation, social exclusion, prejudice, and commitment to political causes. The authors question what it means for the subject to feel certainty about her or his relationships to self and others. From where does the feeling of certainty originate, and how does it differ from modes of thought that are open to scepticism about the order of things? They draw on a wide range of theories, including those of Freud, Klein, Lacan, Wittgenstein, Bion, and Jung, challenging readers to consider the world of ideologies, symbols, and stereotypes in which certainty is entrenched, as well as the inter- and intra-psychic processes and defence mechanisms which form the unconsciousfoundation of the experience of certainty. This collection will offer valuable insight to scholars of psychology, politics, social science and history.

• Uncertainty
• identity formation
• Karl Figlio
• Culture
• Unconscious motviation
• psychoanalysis
• Klein
• Bion
• Jung
• Lacan
• Ethnography

“Our increasingly uncertain times seem to be marked by polarized and often violent antagonisms between competing certainties informing social, religious and political identifications. How can we make sense of this paradox? This challenging volume argues for the importance of a psychosocial perspective in capturing the crucial unconscious complicities linking uncertainty and certainty. It deploys a series of illuminating concepts and theories as well as a truly critical ethos in a bid to rigorously thematize and potentially deactivate this explosive mix. Simultaneously bold in its scope and reflexive in its method, it will certainly reward and inspire!” (Yannis Stavrakakis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

• Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London, London, United Kingdom

  Nikolay Mintchev

• Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom

  R. D. Hinshelwood

Nikolay Mintchev is a research associate at the Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London, UK and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK, where he was previously a lecturer. He specialises in ethnic diversity, social transformation and psychosocial approaches to identity and difference.

R. D. Hinshelwood is a professor in the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, and previously Clinical Director at The Cassel Hospital, London, UK. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He authored A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought (1989) and other books and articles on Kleinian psychoanalysis. He has an interest in how psychoanalysis may contribute to social and political science.

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