1 Emotion, Affect Candida Yates The emotive, polarised nature of contemporary politics is now widely recognised and reflects what is called the ‘affective turn’ in political studies (Demertzis, 2013; Lilleker, 2014; Richards, 2007, 2017; Thompson and Hoggett, 2012; Yates, 2015). Psychoanalytic theory has much to contribute to this emerging field of study. Whether one is discussing the UK decision to leave European Union or the love or loathing of politicians such as Donald Trump, psychoanalytic accounts of affect and emotion are especially useful because they can shed light on the powerful and seemingly irrational feelings that are experienced in such political contexts. The emotionalisation of contemporary politics is linked to a number of factors that include the mediatisation of politics and the rise of new methods of political communication that stir up the emotions and enable their expression through social media and interactive media platforms. Such developments tap into the socio- economic forces of globalisation, war, the displacement of people and the emotional experience of precarity that has emerged as a consequence of such developments (Standing, 2011). The loss of faith in the political narratives that once shaped collective identities within national and global contexts has created fear and uncertainty and a distrust of the other. In Western democracies, the growth of emotive single-issue identity politics has also contributed to the emotionalisation of the contemporary political scene and coincides with what some refer to as ‘therapy’ brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Bournemouth University Research Online