Earthly Powers: Mourning, Idealisation and Institutional Failure

Chair: Dr Jan McGregor Hepburn

Speaker: Dr David Morgan We invite you to a double bill of Political Mind with David Morgan on Sat 25th April 2026 2-5pm. It will consist of two talks on contemporary subjects.

 

Earthly Powers:

Mourning, Idealisation and Institutional Failure

 

Abstract:

This paper examines the unconscious life of institutions and the psychic defences they mobilise in response to moral and structural collapse, drawing on Bion's concepts of O, alpha function and minus K, alongside Klein's paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions to argue that institutional failures of accountability are not aberrations but recurrent necessities of institutional survival. Institutions struggle to occupy the depressive position because doing so would require acknowledging that they have harmed what they claim to protect, and that this harm is not simply the product of a few individuals or external shocks, but of structural incentives, organisational design and defended self-idealisation that are embedded in their very functioning. When the truth threatens legitimacy, institutions often do more than deny it—they attack the conditions of knowing itself, what Bion called attacks on linking, thereby damaging not only specific facts but the epistemic apparatus through which reality might be apprehended and acted upon. Through analysis of the Grenfell Tower fire, the Post Office Horizon scandal, whistleblower dynamics at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, and the conflict in Gaza, I explore how institutions neutralise truth by fragmenting responsibility, proceduralising grief, and discrediting those who insist on making connections between cause and consequence.

 

Neutrality? Bystanders and the Refusal to Witness: Reflections on Ukraine Gaza Grenfell and Climate

Abstract:

In Euripides’ The Bacchae the playwright positions the audience as bystanders who are simultaneously fascinated horrified and implicated in unfolding violence. But the chorus does not merely observe. They participate through song commentary and ritual witnessing that frames the destruction of Thebes as inevitable mysterious or divine. Like these Theban elders who provide the libretto for catastrophe whilst insisting they remain external to its performance contemporary spectators are drawn into a drama of looking without acting of knowing whilst remaining disturbingly passive (Sklar personal communication 2025). They are to some extent liturgical accomplices and I would include my own voice in this paper as adding now to this liturgy.

 

 

*If you are a psychotherapist or counsellor residing in an active conflict zone, you are eligible to attend this event free of charge (regardless of whether you are a bpf member or not). Please email events@bpf-psychotherapy to enquire about a ticket.