Auto-Erotism - A Psychiatric Study of Onanism and Neurosis


Book Description

This vintage book contains a psychiatric study of "Onanism and Neurosis" written by the seminal Austrian psychologist, Wilhelm Stekel. An interesting and comprehensive treatise on the subject written by the authority on early psychoanalytical theory concerning sexuality, this book constitutes a must-have for student’s psychology and collectors of Stekel’s work. Contents include: “The Social Function of Onanism”, “Masturbation and Neurosis”, “Masturbator – Analysis of a School Boy Who Committed Suicide”, “Cryptic Masturbation”, “Psychogenesis of Guilty Conscious”, “Masturbation and Religion”, and “General Considerations”. Wilhelm Stekel (1868 - 1940) was an Austrian psychologist and physician. He was an early follower of the seminal Sigmund Freud, often described as Freud's most distinguished pupil and commonly hailed as one of the founding fathers of modern psychoanalytical methodology. Many vintage texts such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.







Auto-Eroticism


Book Description

When this work was first published in the first hald of the last century, sexology and the unprejudiced study of sexual activity was in its infancy. In his study of human sexual behaviour, Kinsey was able to state that the majority of human beings had masturbated at one time or another but to us today this seems quite an astonishing statement to have made. The study of human sexuality was surrounded by ignorance and superstition, and the medical profession was regrettably the worst offender and the most ignored. In such a climate, Dr Stekel’s book was a revelation much ahead of its time. This edition first published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.




Sexy Bodies


Book Description

Through an examination of a variety of cultural forms and texts, Sexy Bodies investigates the ways in which sexual bodies, sexual practices and sexualities are produced.Are bodies sexy? How? In what sorts of ways? Sexy Bodies investigates the production of sexual bodies and sexual practices, of sexualities which are dyke, bi, transracial, and even hetero. It celebrates lesbian and queer sexualities but also explores what runs underneath and within all sexualities, discovering what is fundamentally weird and strange about all bodies, all carnalities.Looking at a pleasurable variety of cultural forms and texts, the contributors consider the particular charms of girls and horses, from National Velvet to Marnie; discuss figures of the lesbian body from vampires to tribades to tomboys; uncover 'virtual' lesbians in the fiction of Jeanette Winterson; track desire in the music of legendary Blues singers; and investigate the ever-scrutinised and celebrated body of Elizabeth Taylor. The collection includes two important pieces of fiction by Mary Fallon and Nicole Brossard.




Freud and the Problem of Sexuality


Book Description

While contemporary studies have paid renewed attention to the psychoanalytic theory of sexuality and routinely reference Sigmund Freud, they seldom engage directly with his work. Freud and the Problem of Sexuality returns to Freud's writings to argue that there is still something revolutionary and novel to be found there—something that will come to challenge both philosophical and popular understandings of sexuality. In lively, accessible prose, Bradley Ramos revisits some of the most difficult, even troubling aspects of Freud's work and sheds fresh light on foundational concepts such as Trieb (drive or instinct), perversion, infantile sexuality, and the Oedipus complex. Reading Freud alongside Jean Laplanche, Louis Althusser, and Jacques Derrida, we can begin to see why sexuality becomes for us, as it did for Freud, a problem in and by its nature. However, to take this problem of sexuality seriously, Ramos argues, we must dare to do what most refuse: renounce our persistent fantasies and assumptions about sexuality.







The Work of Psychic Figurability


Book Description

Based on experience of analytic practice and illustrated by fascinating clinical material, this book addresses what the authors call the work of figurability as a way of outlining the passage from the unrepresentable to the representational.




The Language of Psychoanalysis


Book Description

Sigmund Freud evolved his theories throughout his lifetime. This entailed many revisions and changes which he himself never tried to standardise rigidly into a definitive conceptual system. The need for some sort of a reliable guide which would spell out both the pattern of the evolution of Freud’s thinking, as well as establish its inherent logic, was felt for a long time by both scholars and students of psychoanalysis. Drs Laplanche and Pontalis of the Association Psychanalytique de France succeeded admirably in providing a dictionary of Freud’s concepts which is more than a compilation of mere definitions. After many years of creative and industrious research, they were able to give an authentic account of the evolution of each concept with pertinent supporting texts from Freud’s own writing (in the Standard Edition translation), and thus have endowed us with an instrument for work and research which is characterised by its thoroughness, exactitude and lack of prejudice towards dogma. The Language of Psychoanalysis is an established classic that will long continue to be of invaluable use to both the student and the research-worker in psychoanalysis.




Havelock Ellis


Book Description




Developments in Psychoanalysis


Book Description

Psychoanalysis is a science evidently fore-ordained to growth and expansion, and among those who have extended the scope of both theory and practice Melanie Klein holds a unique place. This book is a survey of the developments in psychoanalytical knowledge resulting from her work. Her main discoveries relate to the very early phases of mental life. She recognized that the world of unconscious feeling and impulse (which we call 'phantasy') is the effective source of all human actions and reactions, modified though they are when translated into actual external behaviour or conscious thought. Although Freud first enunciated this truth, which originates in his fundamental discovery of the unconscious mind of man, he left many problems still unsolved. These have been brought nearer to a solution through Melanie Klein's consistent awareness of the significance of unconscious phantasy. Not only students of psychoanalysis and workers in related medical fields but also practising child-psychologists and the informed lay public will find this book of absorbing interest.