Examining early biographical events in C. Wright Mills’ life, along with his relationships to his family, some of whom he denied as even being family later in his life, the following study demonstrates a link between the early psychological traumas of a young Mills and the strong impact these had on his later intellectual thought. Such an approach looms as potentially important and beneficial in gaining insight into Mills’ theoretical positions when we turn to academics such as Alice Miller, Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung who demonstrate the lasting and shaping impact that early psychological development has on the thoughts, ideas and expressions of older adults. Even for empirical-based sociologists who may be hesitant to accept psychoanalytic explanations, it is difficult to reject this position outright. Even within sociology’s own house, Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, David Riesman and C. Wright Mills also utilize basic psychoanalytic insights in their sociological writings. Using Mills’ psychological development as an entry point, this work demonstrates the similarities between Mills’ early biographical trajectory and its psychological impact on his later life as compared to very similar developments in the lives of Friedrich Nietzsche, Thorstein Veblen and Weber. Ultimately, we come to see that not only is Mills’ early psychological development similar to these earlier thinkers, but his intellectual thought later in his life is similar as well.

Examining early biographical events in C. Wright Mills’ life, along with his relationships to his family, some of whom he denied as even being family later in his life, the following study demonstrates a link between the early psychological traumas of a young Mills and the strong impact these had on his later intellectual thought. Such an approach looms as potentially important and beneficial in gaining insight into Mills’ theoretical positions when we turn to academics such as Alice Miller, Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung who demonstrate the lasting and shaping impact that early psychological development has on the thoughts, ideas and expressions of older adults. Even for empirical-based sociologists who may be hesitant to accept psychoanalytic explanations, it is difficult to reject this position outright. Even within sociology’s own house, Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, David Riesman and C. Wright Mills also utilize basic psychoanalytic insights in their sociological writings. Using Mills’ psychological development as an entry point, this work demonstrates the similarities between Mills’ early biographical trajectory and its psychological impact on his later life as compared to very similar developments in the lives of Friedrich Nietzsche, Thorstein Veblen and Weber. Ultimately, we come to see that not only is Mills’ early psychological development similar to these earlier thinkers, but his intellectual thought later in his life is similar as well.

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A critical investigation of the public/private distinction as it has been conceived in Anglo-American political thinking in the second half of the 20th century. A broadly held consensus has developed amongst many theorists that public/private does not refer to any single determinate distinction or relationship but rather to an often ambiguous range of related but analytically distinct conceptual oppositions. The argument of this thesis is that if we approach public/private in the search for analytic or conceptual clarity then this consensus is correct. Against this I propose that a number of the most dominant invocations of the distinction can be understood to express public/private as an irreducibly political dialectic that mediates the relationship between the subjective and objective side of social and political life. By locating these conceptually diverse invocations within a broader and more determinate framework of the historical development and contestation of the boundaries which establish the conditions for subjectivity, as the assertion of political agency, on the one hand, and which demarcate, police and defend these particular boundaries, as part of the objectively given character of social life and institutional organisation, on the other hand, then a more determinate character to public/private can be recognized. I then seek to explore the capacity of this model to capture and explain the peculiar post-war problematisation of public/private amongst a number of new left thinkers in Britain and America.