This chapter explores the potential of a psychoanalytic shift from intersubjectivity to interobjectivity through the lens of Fairbairn's object-relations theory. It builds upon Fairbairn’s emphasis on the social genesis of the internal object, as well as my own work, Culture as a Bad Object (2024), which further examines the 'nature' of the objects within the psychic structure. Rather than merely reiterating the theoretical trope of co-construction between the material and psychic domains, the chapter examines the materiality of psychic experience itself. It argues that the formation of internal objects is not only a symbolic process but also deeply material - actively reconstituting and archiving real-life struggles embedded within the material conditions of the social world.

Aligning with a trans-subjective lens, this chapter transcends the individuated strata of subject-to-subject relating, exploring instead how complex networks of material arrangements are internalised and (re)created within oneself as relational conditions that govern how one relates to others. Through theoretical discussions and clinical illustrations, the chapter reviews the interobjective dynamics within the unconscious realms of the therapeutic encounter, demonstrating how object-to-object relations become mutually enlivened by shared representations, facilitating profound moments of psychosocial remembrance for both therapist and client.

Keywords: materiality, interobjective, Fairbairn

The UK’s health and social care systems are widely described as being “in crisis” and in a “state of emergency”. These lexical terms connote a turning point (for better or worse) and imply a need for urgent and immediate action. The crisis affecting statutory services in England and Wales, however, presents an ongoing and ever-evolving challenge, not only for policy makers and government officials but, importantly, for us all as individuals.

Legislation, policy documents and political discourse is typically structured in terms of strategic “goals”, “principles” and “visions”. Frequent references are made to “drivers” and “vehicles” for change and key “targets” are set out as a means of demonstrating “impact”, thereby focusing on actions and outputs which, crucially, can be measured.

In contrast to the clear cause and effect processes that these inherently public-facing communications present, the people for whom they matter and whose lives they affect most powerfully are of course motivated to act and respond in far more complex and ambivalent ways.

Drawing on a range of psychosocial theories, this paper will argue that the innovation and transformation described as objectives of legislation and policy can best be achieved by exploring the ways in which we engage with and invest in policy texts and communications. It will consider how our identities – and our sense of personal agency – shape the extent to which we respond positively to policy change. It will also explore how our emotions and feelings (our inner worlds) serve to promote or hinder positive responses and motivations in enabling us to make important changes to our behaviours and beliefs during the contemporary health and social care crises. Particular consideration will be given to the current emphasis on prevention of ill health, and the promotion of wellbeing across the life course, both of which are significant policy priorities.

This proposal starts from a psychodynamic explanation of bullying as a relational pathology characterized by a narcissistic mental state in the bully, which is expressed in the desire to humiliate the victim as a consequence of an attack of envy. It is argued that the issue of social exclusion, as a fundamental theme that emerges as a salient object of interest also in research on bullying, allows us to connect this exploration to one of the central factors of civilizational discomfort (Freud, 1929), of social crisis in our contemporary world and in the latest youth generations. In a model of society today dominated by narcissistic pathology, social exclusion increasingly has as its object and victims not only those who lose in the competition, but also those who oppose its logic and become bearers of a social, ethical, emotional and educational alternative.

From this perspective, the analysis of the functioning of informal peer groups is important and significant (Meltzer, 1978), which from the earliest adolescent and youth experiences are formed on the basis of interaction dynamics that are today largely disturbed rather than healthy. These are groups often dominated by a concrete mental functioning, in which the discomfort of many adolescents is expressed in a need for greed, narcissistic affirmation and admiration from others, which finds an automatic outlet in contempt, devaluation and the social exclusion of those peers who are more vulnerable but also who express an alternative ideal and order of values. In this sense, narcissistic society (Lasch, 1979) vindictively penalizes and punishes both those who are not equipped to compete or are defeated in the competition, and those who refuse to compete, because they are animated by more supportive feelings, by more authentic values ​​and by an opposition movement to a dominant order of thought today’s very disturbed.

My work approaches the crisis in the least pejorative way possible, thus as a tension and disruption of the progression of events and, with it, of subjectivities. If the risk of rupture is never far away in the event of a crisis, a dual clinical and research experience of more than twenty years with Tunisian subjects, couples and families in peri-revolutionary times, has taught me that confronting the unprecedented can open up unsuspected areas of resilience. This experience led me to describe a phenomenon I called "Interlocking violence" in which the state of crisis resonates, echoes in various areas of subjectivation (intrasubjective area, that of the subject of the unconscious, intersubjective one, that of the subject of the link and transsubjective one, that of the subject of culture). This moment of multiplied crisis in the social-cultural-political and the intimate-psychic spaces offers a unique way of resonance to structure conflicts and relaunch subjectivities undermined by the historical traumas and political violence and exploitation. The individual, couple or family crisis is therefore no longer the sterile repetition of the political or societal crisis but a way of transforming it and inventing new ways of coping in the face of adversity. I will support this reflection with vignettes of Tunisian couples and families going through the political and economic crisis of post-revolutionary Tunisia.