Passivity Generation

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Irene Bruna Seu

   Pages 1-8

3. Between Knowledge and Action: Multidisciplinary Frames and the Psychosocial

   • Irene Bruna Seu

   Pages 9-35

4. The Web of Passivity: Everyday Morality and the Banality of a Clear Conscience

   • Irene Bruna Seu

   Pages 36-67

5. The Public and NGOs: Neutralisation and Denial in Response to Human Rights Appeals

   • Irene Bruna Seu

   Pages 68-97

6. Us and Them

   • Irene Bruna Seu

   Pages 98-129

7. Identities, Biographies and Invested Narratives

   • Irene Bruna Seu

   Pages 130-156

8. A Plea for Emotional Complexity: Conflicts and (Psycho)Dynamic Equilibria

   • Irene Bruna Seu

   Pages 157-190

9. Conclusions

   • Irene Bruna Seu

   Pages 191-215

10. Back Matter

    Pages 216-252

    PDF

The book applies a unique mix of psychosocial methods to understand the complexity of emotional, cognitive and ideological responses to human rights violations and examines the banal quality of the everyday vocabularies that people use to make sense of human rights and their violations, and justify not intervening. In Passivity Generation, Irene Bruna Seu offers a vivid and compassionate account of how past experiences of trauma and suffering affect individual (un)responsiveness, and explores the psychodynamics of passivity and its underpinning defence mechanisms.

• passivity
• human rights
• psychosocial
• biography
• conflict
• emotion
• Generation
• methodology
• morality

'Seu's nuanced discussion of the widespread borrowing by participants of vocabularies or scripts from other contexts, the complex interaction of such scripts (the 'web of passivity'), and the psychological defence mechanisms used to sustain them, is both perceptive and breaks new ground.' - Journal of Human Rights Practice

• Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

  Irene Bruna Seu

Irene Bruna Seu is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Her books include Who am I? The Self and the Ego in Psychoanalysis and Feminism and Psychotherapy: Reflections on Contemporary Theory and Practice (co-editor). Her main research interests are human rights, social responsibility and helping behaviour, gender, and psychoanalysis, reflecting an intellectual interest in Western culture and values, and a political commitment to the attainment of a just society.

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