Overview: The politics of psychology meets war and artificial intelligence. Psychology After Capitalism interrogates the moral and political implications of contemporary psychology in an age marked by war, mass deceit, and AI. It remains a dangerous discipline, wedded to Western ideology, individualism, and a fear of the political.

Verdict: As the author himself states, whether consciously aware of it or not, we are all involved in an ongoing search for meaning in our lives. At its core, the search for the/our meaning in life is a fundamental, ongoing human endeavor — a dedicated motivation rather than a luxury. It is defined as the belief that one’s existence has significance, purpose, and coherence. Indeed, research suggests this search is essential for well-being, driving individuals to find reasons for their existence and, in doing so, to live longer, healthier, and happier lives.

We live now in a time of perpetual crisis. Today’s task for psychologists is not limited to reflections upon our own individual or private concerns as they are buffeted from one calamity to another, nor simply to review the application and relevance of existing psychological constructs to the surrounding world.

These strange and disturbing signs are characterized by a dislocation of the psychological realm of existence from the traditional disciplinary concerns of psychologists and psychotherapists. What we are presently witness and simultaneously subject to is a structured psychologization of every aspect of life - personal, emotional, social economic, political, historical. This continual psychological bombardment invites us to suspend collective, historical memory and wisdom and surrender willingly to what Vos (2020) describes as the capitalist life syndrome.

Thus, within the essays contained here in Psychology After Capitalism: Reflections on War, Tyranny, and Artificial Intelligence, the purpose is to develop further, and several lines of thoughts which he has already outlined in previous works in which he has primarily sought to elaborate the moral and political implications of psychological thought as a structured societal, political and ideological undertaking.

And as it is constructed in a dutifully open and methodical, impassioned manner, what is clearly going to happen is that what author Ron Roberts has written is likely to divide readers’ opinions; even reopening conversations long since, perhaps, once deep in hibernation, even revealing both ethical and psychological valleys and peaks within.

About the Author - Ron Roberts is a Chartered Psychologist and Honorary Lecturer in Psychology at Kingston University with over 30 years’ experience in Higher Education. He is the author of eight other books, including Zer0 Books’ Psychology and Capitalism. He lives in London, UK.

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