The Secret War in the Dis-United Kingdom: Psychological Aspects of the Ulster Conflict

Abstract

The prospect of resolving the conflict in Northern Ireland (Ulster) is illusory unless one considers the Ulster situation as a violent expression of separation-individuation dynamics in the whole of the British Isles: this article attempts to locate the war in the context of regional separatist impulses and their repression by an archaic grandiose self structure in the centralist political psyche. The paper attempts to elaborate some of the particular psychological features of the conflict by reference to a group session which occurred immediately after the October 1993 Shankill Road, Belfast, bomb explosion. It is asserted that a dream presented by one of the group members gives clear insight into the psychological anxieties and preoccupations structured into the Ulster state at its inception and which continue to fuel the violence.