4: Episode 4: Complicity

What does it really mean to be complicit? In this episode, Candida Yates is joined by psychosocial scholar Dr Lita Crociani-Windland and psychoanalytic psychotherapist Dr Noreen Giffney to explore complicity as a concept which is far richer and nuanced than its current usage often suggests. Tracing the word's roots from the Latin complicari - to fold together - through to its modern deployment as a tool of public judgment, the guests argue that complicity is often flattened into an instrument of shame and accusation, stripping away the genuine ethical complexity of knowing, not knowing, and choosing not to know. Drawing on psychoanalytic ideas around disavowal, paranoia, and other defence mechanisms, they examine why our minds work so hard to protect us from feeling implicated and what happens when that protection fails us. The conversation ranges widely from the temporality of being called out even before wrongdoing has ended, to the double bind of being told not to be complicit while being pressured to comply; from Vincent Delacroix's 2023 Booker-shortlisted novel Small Boat - a devastating meditation on a real Channel drowning disaster, to institutional complicity in universities, tabloid media, and political populism. The guests are candid about the difficulty of the topic, reflecting in the podcast postscript on how their own defences shaped the conversation itself. Ultimately, they offer not easy answers but a thoughtful invitation to sit with ambivalence and to consider whether honest association with others, rather than accusation, might be a preferable response to the moral challenges of our time. Guest Biographies: Dr Lita Crociani-Windland is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Psychosocial Studies at the University of the West of England in Bristol and a faculty member of the National Institute for Organisational Dynamics Australia.  She is a founding member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and a current board member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies. She is a director of the Centre for Social Dreaming, she is editorial board member for Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society and Organisational and Social Dynamics journals. She has written on affective dynamics in relation to different topics, including disabilities, politics and group dynamics.  She is currently co-lead in a transdisciplinary team based psychosocial and artistic research project titled Psychostructures: exploring architecture and buildings as subjective assemblages and in idle moments likes to play around with art materials. Dr Noreen Giffney is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist based in Ireland, and a lecturer and researcher at Ulster University, Belfast. She is the author of the book, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic, and the author and/or editor of additional articles and books on psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, and the arts, culture and mental health. She is the joint editor-in-chief, with Emmanuelle Smith, of New Associations psychoanalytic magazine. Noreen is the co-director, with Allen Fatimaharan, of Cultural Encounters, an animated short film about the nourishment and protection provided by our experiences with the arts and culture. She is a member of the creative team, led by Jill Bennett, for World Comes Alive, the first VR experience underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking. Noreen is an associate member of the performance arts organisation, Bbeyond, and takes opera singing lessons in her spare time. Host and Executive Producer: Candida Yates, Professor Emerita in Psychosocial and Cultural Studies: www.thepsychoculturalagency.com Audio Producer and Theme Music Composer: Callum Blades This podcast is co-sponsored by the British Psychoanalytic Council, Bournemouth University and The Psychocultural Agency.