What consequences will recent developments in neurobiology have for the ways in which we are governed by others, and the ways we govern ourselves? The development of psychology in the twentieth century had a major social impact: on understanding and treatment of distress; on conceptions of normality and abnormality; on techniques of socialisation, education, regulation, reformation and correction; on advertising, marketing and consumption technologies; on the management of human behaviour in practices from the factory to the military. Human beings came to understand themselves as inhabited by a deep interior psychological space that is the site of personhood and personality, the locus of inscription of beliefs, the origin of affect, the target of therapeutic interventions. Psychological expertise played a significant role in making it possible to govern individuals, families, groups and populations in liberal democracies. In the early 21st century, we are witnessing a cascade of claims from the new brain sciences, which appear to map conduct, affect, and cognition directly onto the brain.

This lecture considers whether the languages, techniques and personnel of the new neurobiological complex supplement or supplant psychological ways of thinking and acting. What are the social, political, economic, scientific and technological conditions for the emergence of these new ways of thinking? What styles of explanation and intervention are taking shape, and what are their consequences for ideas of subjectivity, identity and normality?