More Than Bread and Butter: A Psychologist Speaks to Progressives About What People Really Need

by Michael J. Bader

In More Than Bread and Butter, Dr. Michael Bader, a practicing psychologist, psychoanalyst, writer, and social activist for over 35 years, argues that the traditional liberal assumption that people's need for economic security dwarfs all other needs in importance is incorrect and too narrow, neglecting as it does the centrality of other powerful human motivations such as the need for meaning and purpose, connectedness to others, recognition, and agency. The satisfaction of these non-economic needs is crucial to engaging more people and building healthier progressive organizations. Dr. Bader presents vignettes from his direct clinical work, consultations with the leadership teams of large progressive political organizations, and reviews of current research, to paint a compelling picture of the range of deep, sometimes even unconscious, motivations that make someone tick, that make up the whole person, and that are vital for progressives to more effectively address. The most successful political organizations address all of these needs and don't limit themselves to appeals to material security and to generating outrage at the despicable disparities in income and wealth in America today. People-including voters-experience their worlds through unconscious prisms that shape what they see and what they want, and these prisms always include longings for satisfactions that are more than material in nature. Progressives, according to Bader, have to build their organizations and define their goals in ways that incorporate the true psychological complexity of what people want and need.

138 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 2015

About the author

Dr. Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst with over 30 years of clinical experience. He received a Doctor of Mental Health degree at the University of California, San Francisco, in 1980, and became licensed as a Clinical Psychologist in January 1984, he currently combines a private practice in San Francisco with his work as a senior advisor for the Institute4Change, an interdisciplinary team of change experts devoted to developing leaders of progressive organizations and providing them consultation around issues of strategy and organizational change.

Dr. Bader has written extensively for both academic and popular audiences. His primary intellectual interests are in exploring the intersection of psychology, culture, and politics. He has written over 50 articles for popular magazines, both print and on-line, including The Huffington Post, Alternet, and Tikkun Magazine. In these, he analyses vital political controversies, crises, and struggles using the wisdom and insights gained in his long clinical career. His arguments—and his theoretical agenda—usually involve weaving together a sophisticated understanding of politics and history with a psychological approach that appreciates the importance of unconscious desires and conflicts.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an incredibly naive book that has no notes or citations. Any book or speaker that says, "Research shows" or "Studies show," but then never cites the research or the studies is of questionable seriousness and accuracy to me. When he wrote about Viktor Frankl talking with two inmates with whom he had been "interred" in a concentration camp, I quit. Interred means buried, and Frankl was never buried or cremated or he wouldn't have been able to write Man's Search for Meaning, which is one of the great books of all time.