Socio-Analytic Dialogue - Incorporating psychosocial dynamics into public policies (Hardcover)

In this book Bruno Boccara argues that complex and changing psychosocial issues, in particular those related to the societal unconscious, must be assessed and incorporated in public policy analysis through socio-analytic dialogue. The rationale for Socio-Analytic Dialogue is that the increased awareness and understanding of country-level psychosocial issues, as long as they are sufficiently internalized, should decrease the need, and therefore the likelihood, of societies adopting regressed social defenses. This would, in turn, decrease instances of policies failing and, as such, increase the likelihood of countries reaching their policy objectives in a manner consistent with a genuine internalization and ownership of their goals.

The book shows how Socio-Analytic Dialogue builds upon recent work in sociology and in psychoanalysis applied to organizational management and political science. The book makes several new contributions, in particular the idea that policies can themselves become social defenses. As such, it identifies a key linkage between public policy and country-level group unconscious dynamics. It also presents the first psychoanalytic-based evaluation of a country and of its policies, that of Bolivia. Finally, the analysis of the World Bank provides a detailed window into the mechanisms leading to perverse societal dynamics and policies failing. This topic is of particular and urgent relevance today.