Psychology, Europe, and Beyond

Abstract

This paper asks what psychology might tell us about Europe and the way in which we in Britain voted in the Brexit referendum on 23 June 2016. I look back at five examples of psychological discourse that claimed to help us understand what we were thinking and feeling as we weighed up how to vote. The key question is how we might refuse where psychology leads us in order to find some alternative ways of thinking for ourselves. I argue that those who argued for Brexit or Brussels both thought they knew well what was good for us. Instead, we need to go well beyond psychology, to psychoanalysis, to discover why they are wrong.