¹University of Brighton, UK

Correspondence: Dr James S Ormrod, School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9PH, UK. E-mail: j.ormrod@bton.ac.uk

Abstract

This paper uses psychoanalytic theory to understand the motivation of pro-space activists – people campaigning to increase human activity in outer space. It suggests that activists are motivated by fantasies of a spacefaring civilization, which manifest unconscious phantasies of omnipotence and fusion related to the experience of self in primary narcissism. The argument of the paper is that in order to understand this pursuit of a phantasized self, we must locate activists within the cultural conditions that encourage secondary narcissism. This is one example of how psychoanalytically informed social theory can account for the relationship between social structure and the motivation of political activists.