Download or read book Why Psychoanalysis written by Elisabeth Roudinesco and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-10 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some people still choose psychoanalysis-Freud's so-called talking cure-when numerous medications are available that treat the symptoms of psychic distress so much faster? Elisabeth Roudinesco tackles this difficult question, exploring what she sees as a "depressive society": an epidemic of distress addressed only by an increasing reliance on prescription drugs. Far from contesting the efficacy of new medications like Prozac, Zoloft, and Viagra in alleviating the symptoms of any number of mental or nervous conditions, Roudinesco argues that the use of such drugs fails to solve patients' real problems. In the man who takes Viagra without ever wondering why he is suffering from impotence and the woman who is given antidepressants to deal with the loss of a loved one, Roudinesco sees a society obsessed with efficiency and desperate for the quick fix. She argues that "the talking cure" and pharmacology represent not just different approaches to psychiatry, but different worldviews. The rush to treat symptoms is itself symptomatic of an antiseptic and depressive culture in which thought is reduced to the firing of neurons and desire is just a chemical secretion. In contrast, psychoanalysis testifies to human freedom and the power of language.
Download or read book Critique on the Couch written by Amy Allen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does critical theory still need psychoanalysis? In Critique on the Couch, Amy Allen offers a cogent and convincing defense of its ongoing relevance. Countering the overly rationalist and progressivist interpretations of psychoanalysis put forward by contemporary critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, Allen argues that the work of Melanie Klein offers an underutilized resource. She draws on Freud, Klein, and Lacan to develop a more realistic strand of psychoanalytic thinking that centers on notions of loss, negativity, ambivalence, and mourning. Far from leading to despair, such an understanding of human subjectivity functions as a foundation of creativity, productive self-transformation, and progressive social change. At a time when critical theorists are increasingly returning to psychoanalytic thought to diagnose the dysfunctions of our politics, this book opens up new ways of understanding the political implications of psychoanalysis while preserving the progressive, emancipatory aims of critique.
Download or read book Liberating Oedipus written by Filip Kovacevic and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Liberating Oedipus?: Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory, Dr. Filip Kovacevic demonstrates how psychoanalytic theory can join political theory in designing alternative political norms and values. Detailing the thoughts of major psychologists including Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Alain Badiou, this book offers a new approach to traditional Lacanian theory. Kovacevic's emphasis on Lacanian psychoanalysis is especially relevant due to the modern challenges of failed globalization and the subsequent terrorist reactions. Kovacevic proves that political practice without an emancipatory psychology to guide it is potentially dangerous. Liberating Oedipus? is a critical text for scholars of political theory and those interested in the history of ideas.
Download or read book Derrida Deleuze Psychoanalysis written by Gabriele Schwab and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-11-23 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Derrida, Deleuze, Psychoanalysis explores the critical relationship between psychoanalysis and the work of Derrida (Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammatology, and his later writing on autoimmunity, cruelty, war, and human rights) and Deleuze (A Thousand Plateaus, Anti-Oedipus, and more). Each essay illuminates a specific aspect of Derrida's and Deleuze's perspectives on psychoanalysis: the human-animal boundary; the child's polymorphism; the face or mouth as constitutive of ethical responsibility toward others; the connections between pain and suffering and political resistance; the role of masochism in psychoanalytic thinking; the use of psychoanalytic secondary revision in theorizing film; and the political dimension of the unconscious. Placing a particular emphasis on liminal figurations of the human and challenges to discourses on free will, the essays explore shared concerns in Derrida and Deleuze with regard to history, politics, the political unconscious, and resistance. By addressing the need to overcome the split between the psychological and the political, Derrida, Deleuze, Psychoanalysis illuminates the ongoing relevance of psychoanalysis to critical interrogations of culture and politics.
Download or read book Transitional Subjects written by Amy Allen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical social theory has long been marked by a deep, creative, and productive relationship with psychoanalysis. Whereas Freud and Fromm were important cornerstones for the early Frankfurt School, recent thinkers have drawn on the object-relations school of psychoanalysis. Transitional Subjects is the first book-length collection devoted to the engagement of critical theory with the work of Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and other members of this school. Featuring contributions from some of the leading figures working in both of these fields, including Axel Honneth, Joel Whitebook, Noëlle McAfee, Sara Beardsworth, and C. Fred Alford, it provides a synoptic overview of current research at the intersection of these two theoretical traditions while also opening up space for further innovations. Transitional Subjects offers a range of perspectives on the critical potential of object-relations psychoanalysis, including feminist and Marxist views, to offer valuable insight into such fraught social issues as aggression, narcissism, “progress,” and torture. The productive dialogue that emerges augments our understanding of the self as intersubjectively and socially constituted and of contemporary “social pathologies.” Transitional Subjects shows how critical theory and object-relations psychoanalysis, considered together, have not only enriched critical theory but also invigorated psychoanalysis.
Download or read book Death and Mastery written by Benjamin Y. Fong and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first philosophers of the Frankfurt School famously turned to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud to supplement their Marxist analyses of ideological subjectification. Since the collapse of their proposed "marriage of Marx and Freud," psychology and social theory have grown apart to the impoverishment of both. Returning to this union, Benjamin Y. Fong reconstructs the psychoanalytic "foundation stone" of critical theory in an effort to once again think together the possibility of psychic and social transformation. Drawing on the work of Hans Loewald and Jacques Lacan, Fong complicates the famous antagonism between Eros and the death drive in reference to a third term: the woefully undertheorized drive to mastery. Rejuvenating Freudian metapsychology through the lens of this pivotal concept, he then provides fresh perspective on Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse's critiques of psychic life under the influence of modern cultural and technological change. The result is a novel vision of critical theory that rearticulates the nature of subjection in late capitalism and renews an old project of resistance.
Download or read book Critical Theory Today written by Lois Tyson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Theory Today is the essential introduction to contemporary criticial theory. It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness. This new edition provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The chapters provide an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts; a list of specific questions critics who use that theory ask about literary texts; an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory; a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to different literary works; and a bibliography of primary and secondary works for further reading.
Download or read book Perversion and Utopia written by Joel Whitebook and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996-10-31 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sweeping challenge to the postmodern critiques of psychoanalysis, Joel Whitebook argues for a reintegration of Freud's uncompromising investigation of the unconscious with the political and philosophical insights of critical theory. Perversion and Utopia follows in the tradition of Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization and Paul Ricoeur's Freud and Philosophy. It expands on these books, however, because of the author's remarkable grasp not only of psychoanalytic studies but also of the contemporary critical climate; Whitebook, a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, writes with equal facility on both Habermas and Freud. A central thesis of Perversion and Utopia is that there is an essential affinity between the utopian impulse and the perverse impulse, in that both reflect a desire to bypass the reality principle that Freud claimed to define the human condition. The book explores the positive and negative aspects of the relationship between these impulses, which are ubiquitous features of human life, and the requirements of civilized social existence. Whitebook steers a course between orthodox psychoanalytic conservatism, which seeks simply to repress the perverse-utopian impulse in the name of social continuity and cohesion, and those forms of Freudo-Marxism, postmodernism, and psychoanalytic feminism that advocate its direct and full expression in the name of emancipation. While he demonstrates the limitations of the current textual approaches to Freud, especially those influenced by Lacan, Whitebook also enlists the lessons of psychoanalysis to counteract the excessive rationalism of the Habermasian brand of critical theory, thus making a substantial contribution to current discussions within critical theory itself. His analysis and interpretation of perversion, narcissism, sublimation, and ego bring new insight to these central and thorny issues in Freud, and his discussions of Adorno, Marcuse, Castoriadis, Habermas, Ricoeur, Lacan, and others are equally penetrating.
Download or read book Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism written by Maud Ellmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays provides students of literary critical theory with an introduction to Freudian methods of interpretation, and shows how those methods have been transformed by recent developments in French psychoanalysis, particularly by the influence of Jacques Lacan. It explains how classical Freudian criticism tended to focus on the thematic content of the literary text, whereas Lacanian criticism focuses on its linguistic structure, redirecting the reader to the words themselves. Concepts and methods are defined by tracing the role played by the drama of Oedipus in the development of psychoanalytic theory and criticism. The essays cover a wide generic scope and are divided into three parts: drama, narrative and poetry. Each is accompanied by explanatory headnotes giving clear definitions of complex terms.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory written by Fred Leland Rush and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-08-26 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Theory constitutes one of the major intellectual traditions of the twentieth century, and is centrally important for philosophy, political theory, aesthetics and theory of art, the study of modern European literatures and music, the history of ideas, sociology, psychology, and cultural studies. In this volume an international team of distinguished contributors examines the major figures in Critical Theory, including Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, and Habermas, as well as lesser known but important thinkers such as Pollock and Neumann. The volume surveys the shared philosophical concerns that have given impetus to Critical Theory throughout its history, while at the same time showing the diversity among its proponents that contributes so much to its richness as a philosophical school. The result is an illuminating overview of the entire history of Critical Theory in the twentieth century, an examination of its central conceptual concerns, and an in-depth discussion of its future prospects.
Download or read book Philosophy Science and Psychoanalysis written by Simon Boag and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perennial interest in psychoanalysis shows no signs of abating and the longevity of psychoanalytic theory is seen in the varied extensions and elaborations of Freudian thinking in the fields of neuroscience and cognitive theory. Nevertheless, the scientific standing of psychoanalysis has long been questioned and developments in the fields of the philosophy of science and psychology require a fresh assessment of the scientific standing of psychoanalysis. While there are a range of views on the topic of whether psychoanalysis is in fact scientific, any satisfactory approach to understanding mind and behaviour requires an approach that is at once both philosophic and scientific. Accordingly, to even approach the question regarding the scientific nature of psychoanalysis, a foundation comprising a sophisticated conceptual and philosophical framework is required. This volume represents the junction where philosophy, science, and psychoanalysis meet and presents arguments critical and supportive of the scientific standing of psychoanalysis.
Download or read book Psychoanalysis and Literary Theory written by Mathew R. Martin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychoanalysis and Literary Theory introduces the key concepts, figures and movements of both psychoanalytic theory and the history of literary criticism and theory, engaging with Freud, Zizek, Plato, posthumanism, and beyond. Divided into two parts - concepts and movements – the structure of the book is clear and accessible. Each chapter builds upon the one before, allowing the reader to progress from little or no background in psychoanalysis, philosophy, or literary theory to the ability to engage actively with the relatively sophisticated ideas presented in later sections of the work. Mathew R. Martin consistently directs attention to the task of interpreting texts by illustrating abstract theoretical points with literary texts and at apposite moments provides brief readings of selected texts. This book will be essential reading for academics and students of psychoanalytic studies, literary criticism, and literary theory.
Download or read book Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan written by Mari Ruti and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan explores convergences and divergences in the psychoanalytic theories of Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan, with a special focus on the implications of their work for critical theory, broadly construed. The book is co-authored in the form of a dialogue between Amy Allen, a prominent representative of Frankfurt School critical theory with expertise on Klein, and Mari Ruti, a leading Lacanian critical theorist. Klein and Lacan are among the two most important and influential psychoanalytic theorists after Freud. Their work has profound implications for how we understand subjectivity, intersubjectivity, autonomy, agency, desire, affect, trauma, history, and the potential for individual and social change. Allen and Ruti offer distinctive interpretations of Klein and Lacan that not only bring out their complexities but also highlight productive points of convergence where most psychoanalytic and critical theorists see irreconcilable differences. The book is organized around key themes that cut across and through the work of Klein and Lacan, culminating in an assessment of the implications of their theories for thinking about politics.
Download or read book Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis written by Jon Mills and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical theory has traditionally been interested in engaging classical psychoanalysis rather than addressing postclassical thought. For the first time, this volume brings critical theory into proper dialogue with modern developments in the psychoanalytic movement and covers a broad range of topics in contemporary society that revisit the Frankfurt School and its contributions to psychoanalytic social critique. Theoretical, clinical, and applied investigations in social pathology are explored in relation to new directions in critical cultural discourse from a variety of psychoanalytic perspectives. In this volume, internationally acclaimed social political theorists, philosophers, psychoanalysts, cultural critics, and scholars of humanities examine contemporary issues in social critique that address a myriad of topics. Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis will be of interest to philosophers, psychoanalysts, political scientists, cultural theorists, sociologists, psychologists, religious studies, academe, and those generally interested in the humanities and social sciences.
Download or read book Psychoanalysis and Gender written by Rosalind Minsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is object-relations theory and what does it have to do with literary studies? How can Freud's phallocentric theories be applied by feminist critics? In Psychoanalysis and Gender: An Introductory Reader Rosalind Minsky answers these questions and more, offering students a clear, straightforward overview without ever losing them in jargon. In the first section Minsky outlines the fundamentals of the theory, introducing the key thinkers and providing clear commentary. In the second section, the theory is demonstrated by an anthology of seminal essays which includes: * Feminity by Sigmund Freud * Envy and Gratitude by Melanie Klein * An extract from Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena by Donald Winnicot * The Meaning of the Phallus by Jacques Lacan * An extract from Women's Time by Julia Kristeva * An extract from Speculum of the Other Woman by Luce Irigaray
Download or read book The Academic Face of Psychoanalysis written by Louise Braddock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Freud, psychoanalysts have explored the connections between psychoanalysis and literature and psychoanalysis and philosophy, while literary criticism, social science and philosophy have all reflected on and made use of ideas from psychoanalytic theory. The Academic Face of Psychoanalysis presents contributions from these fields and gives the reader an insight into different understandings and applications of psychoanalytic theory. This book comprises twelve contributions from experts in their fields covering philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology and literary theory. The chapters are divided into three distinct sections: Psychoanalysis Philosophy Social science and literary theory Louise Braddock and Michael Lacewing successfully bring these contributions together with an in-depth introduction that allows the reader to explore the connections between the different disciplines. The multi-disciplinary approach to this book is rare; it will appeal to academics and students, from the subject areas of psychoanalysis, humanities and social science.
Download or read book Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences written by Louis Althusser and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can psychoanalysis, a psychological approach developed more than a century ago, offer us in an age of rapidly evolving, hard-to-categorize ideas of sexuality and the self? Should we abandon Freud's theories completely or adapt them to new findings and the new relationships taking shape in modern liberal societies? In a remarkably prescient series of lectures delivered in the early 1960s, the French philosopher Louis Althusser anticipated the challenges that psychoanalytic theory would face as politics moved away from structuralist frameworks and toward the elastic possibilities of anthropological and sociological thought. Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences translates Althusser's remarkable seminars into English for the first time, making available to a wider audience the origins and potential future of radical political theory. Althusser takes the important step in these lectures of distinguishing psychoanalysis from psychology and especially psychiatry, which long resisted Freud's analytical concepts of the unconscious and overdetermination. By freeing psychoanalysis from this bind, Althusser can then apply these analytical concepts to the social and the political, integrated with Marxist theory. The result is an enlivened methodology for comprehending social organization and change that had a profound influence on the Frankfurt School and scholars who continue to work at the forefront of radical thought today: Judith Butler, Étienne Balibar, and Alain Badiou.
