Brandpsycho : Four Essays on Debranding

Is contemporary consumer society fostering a ‘branded’ culture at risk of psychosis? Is our imagination being slowly colonized by the plethora of off-the-shelf fantasies promoted by mass and social media? How can we build resilience in the face of this seduction and avoid turning into personal brands ourselves? These are some of the questions author, Jungian psychoanalys, and former brand director Max Jakob Lusensky explores in this collection of essays. Lusensky playfully de:brands consumer icons Apple and Starbucks while advocating for the withdrawal of psychic projections from brands’ shiny surfaces. Lusensky’s work updates and extends Jung’s basic insight that many things in contemporary life of which we might be ambivalent draw on the deepest and most authentic collective psychological dynamics. What Jung did when he understood the spiritual and soulful aspects of being involved with alcohol, Lusensky does in connection with our involvement with the big brand names and products of our time. Crucially, he writes from inside the problematic, as a former creator and user of these God-given modern phenomena. He is not disengaged or supercilious and this gives a personal embodiment to the ingenious argument of what is a very unusual – in the best sense – piece of work. Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex