Freud and the Institution of Psychoanalytic Knowledge


Book Description

Combining approaches from literary studies and historical sociology, this book provides a groundbreaking cultural history of the strategies Freud employed in his writings and career to orchestrate public recognition of psychoanalysis and to shape its institutional identity.




Freud and the Institution of Psychoanalytic Knowledge


Book Description

Combining approaches from literary studies and historical sociology, this book provides a groundbreaking cultural history of the strategies Freud employed in his writings and career to orchestrate public recognition of psychoanalysis and to shape its institutional identity.




The Legend of Freud


Book Description

"Psychoanalysis is dead!" Again and again this obituary is pronounced, with ever-increasing conviction in newspapers and scholarly journals alike. But the ghost of Freud and his thought continues to haunt those who would seal the grave. The Legend of Freud shows why psychoanalysis has remained uncanny, not just for its enemies but for its advocates and practitioners as well—and why it continues to fascinate us. For psychoanalysis is not just a theory of psychic conflict: it is a thought in conflict with itself. Often violent, the conflicts of psychoanalysis are most productive where they remain unresolved, thus producing a text that must be read: deciphered, interpreted, rewritten. Psychoanalysis: legenda est. Review "The Legend of Freud is a fine example of what can be done with Freud's texts when philosophical and literary approaches converge, and you leave the couch in the other room. . . . Like Lacan and Derrida, Weber doesn't so much explain or interpret Freud as engage him, performing what Freud would have called an Auseinandersetzung, a discussion or argument that's also a taking apart, a deconstruction. . . . Deconstruction has picked up a bad name, especially in the minds of those who don't understand it; but this wouldn't be the case if there were more books like Weber's. The Legend of Freud is the best deconstructive work I've seen lately, and the best response to Freud; it merits close attention from anyone who wants a challenge, not merely a guide to what's right and wrong. . . . Weber is brilliantly imaginative, respectful of his subject and his readers, and productive of new ideas." —Village Voice Literary Supplement




Freud in the Pampas


Book Description

This is a fascinating history of how psychoanalysis became an essential element of contemporary Argentine culture--in the media, in politics, and in daily private lives. The book reveals the unique conditions and complex historical process that made possible the diffusion, acceptance, and popularization of psychoanalysis in Argentina, which has the highest number of psychoanalysts per capita in the world. It shows why the intellectual trajectory of the psychoanalytic movement was different in Argentina than in either the United States or Europe and how Argentine culture both fostered and was shaped by its influence. The book starts with a description of the Argentine medical and intellectual establishments’ reception of psychoanalysis, and the subsequent founding of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in 1942. It then broadens to describe the emergence of a "psy culture” in the 1960s, tracing its origins to a complex combination of social, economic, political, and cultural factors. The author then analyzes the role of "diffusers” of psychoanalysis in Argentina--both those who were part of the psychoanalytic establishment and those who were not. The book goes on to discuss specific areas of reception and diffusion of psychoanalytic thought: its acceptance by progressive sectors of the psychiatric profession; the impact of the psychoanalytically oriented program in psychology at the University of Buenos Aires; and the incorporation of psychoanalysis into the theoretical artillery of the influential left of the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, the author analyzes the effects of the military dictatorship, established in 1976, on the "psy” universe, showing how it was possible to practice psychoanalysis in a highly authoritarian political context.




A Critique of Psychoanalytic Reason


Book Description

This original and provocative work begins by examining the shift of scientific paradigms that took place in the late eighteenth century, a shift illustrated by the report of a French Royal Commission appointed in 1784 to investigate Mesmerism. The reactions to Mesmerism among the Commission members--in particular the chemist Lavoisier and the botanist Jussieu--crystallized conflicts about the notion of reason and its role as a scientific ideal, about how science ought to be done. The Commission's denunciation of Mesmerism as the work of the "imagination" then serves as the starting point for the authors' reconsideration of the history of psychoanalysis, notably its suppression and repression of phenomena associated with hypnosis--imagination, suggestion, and empathy--in its search to establish itself as a science in accord with the new ideal of scientific reason. Examining the new and often troubled relationship in psychoanalysis between therapeutic effectiveness and advances in theory, the authors highlight the challenge to Freudian ideals in the 1920's by Otto Rank and Sandor Ferenczi. The discrediting of Ferenczi--engineered to a large extent by Ernest Jones and Freud himself--was an attempt to "purify" psychoanalysis of the effects of suggestion. The authors discuss Freud's own therapeutic nihilism occasioned by his recognition that suggestion, by means of the transference relationship, played an uncontrollable role in psychoanalytic therapy. In assessing Freud's legacy, the authors examine evolving notions of psychoanalysis, especially the role played by the effects of suggestion in recent theoretical representations of the development of the subject. Asserting that hypnosis and the challenge it poses to our understanding of human motivation, reason, and the mind/body relationship constitutes the fourth narcissistic wound to the human ego (after those introduced by Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud), the authors analyze Lacan's rejection of hypnosis and explain current resistance to hypnosis through its challenge to the modern scientific notion of reason.




Tales from the Freudian Crypt


Book Description

A fundamental reassessment of the Freud legend that aims to shake the very foundations of Freud studies.




Sigmund Freud


Book Description

Sigmund Freud’s name is known throughout the world. He opened up the world of the unconscious, so people can understand themselves so much better than before. His unique ideas are discussed in academic circles. His psychoanalytic techniques influenced mental health, counselling, psychotherapy and psychiatry. His words form part of everyday language. Lying on a couch and having dreams interpreted by an analyst is an iconic picture of modern life and popular culture. Sigmund Freud: A Reference Guide to Her Life and Work captures his eventful life, his works, and his legacy. The volume features a chronology, an introduction, a comprehensive bibliography, and the dictionary section lists entries on Freud, his family, friends (and foes), colleagues, and the evolution of psychoanalysis.




Psychoanalyzing


Book Description

Scarcely any theoretical discourse has had greater impact on literary and cultural studies than psychoanalysis, and yet hardly any theoretical discourse is more widely misunderstood and abused. In Psychoanalyzing, Serge Leclaire offers a thorough and lucid exposition of the psychoanalysis that has emerged from the French “return to Freud,” unfolding and elaborating the often enigmatic pronouncements of Jacques Lacan and patiently working through the central tenets of the “Ecole freudienne.” As a concise but nuanced introduction to the subject, Psychoanalyzing will prove indispensable to anyone interested in psychoanalysis, especially those curious about its Lacanian reconceptualization and the linguistic theory of the unconscious and its effects. Leclaire’s study is particularly valuable for the way its author links theoretical issues to psychoanalytic practice. The opening chapter—on listening—highlights the necessity, and the impossibility, of the “floating attention” required from the analyst, while preparing the reader for the following chapters, which deal with such topics as unconscious desire, how to speak of the body, and the intrication of the object and the “letter” (i.e. the signifier, the “material support that concrete discourse borrows from language”). The final chapter—on transference—shows how the analytical dialogue differs from other dialogues. Despite the intricacy of its subject matter, the book takes very little for granted. It does not simplify the issues it presents, but does not assume a reader familiar with the concepts of psychoanalysis, let alone a reader acquainted with its French inflection. Each basic concept and term is carefully explained, so that the reader knows the meaning of “transference” or “primal scene” before proceeding to more advanced elements of psychoanalysis. Leclaire’s text is not intended merely to be “user friendly”; its purpose is to clarify and advance, rather than to impress or convert.




Foucault Versus Freud


Book Description

In Foucault Versus Freud, Jerome C. Wakefield offers a novel analysis of one of the great intellectual clashes of our times, the attack on Sigmund Freud's influential sexual theories by the eminent French philosopher and historian of ideas Michel Foucault. Starting from Foucault's question, "What makes the psychoanalytic theory of incest acceptable to the bourgeois family?", and drawing on Foucault's relatively unexplored published lectures as well as his celebrated History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Wakefield evaluates Foucault's argument that there is a continuity between the two-century medical anti-masturbation crusade and Freud's theory, providing the reader with an accessible introduction to Foucault's conceptual innovations including power/knowledge, the deployment of sexuality, and the use of surveillance and confession as tactics in medicalizing sexuality and reshaping family life. Rather than allowing the argument to stay at the evidentially uncertain level one often finds in Foucault's writings, Wakefield undertakes close readings of both Freud's "seduction-theory" texts and later Oedipal-period texts to test whether Foucault's provocative arguments find support or disconfirmation. Despite identifying weaknesses in Foucault's position, Wakefield argues that a careful look at Freud's sexual theories through Foucault's theoretical lens changes forever the way one sees Freud's theory—and has the potential to help psychoanalysis move forward in a constructive way. This book is written to be understandable for those who are not steeped in philosophy or familiar with Foucault's philosophy, offering a lucid introduction to Foucault's ideas and his clash with Freud that will be of interest to clinicians, students, and scholars alike.




Impious Fidelity


Book Description

In Impious Fidelity, Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg investigates the legacy of Anna Freud at the intersection between psychoanalysis as a mode of thinking and theorizing and its existence as a political entity. Stewart-Steinberg argues that because Anna Freud inherited and guided her father's psychoanalytic project as an institution, analysis of her thought is critical to our understanding of the relationship between the psychoanalytic and the political. This is particularly the case given that many psychoanalysts and historians of psychiatry charge that Anna Freud's emphasis on defending the supremacy of the ego against unconscious drives betrayed her father's work. Are the unconscious and the psychoanalytic project itself at odds with the stable ego deemed necessary to a democratic politics? Hannah Arendt famously (and influentially) argued that they are. But Stewart-Steinberg maintains that Anna Freud's critics (particularly disciples of Melanie Klein) have simplified her thought and misconstrued her legacy. Stewart-Steinberg looks at Anna Freud's work with wartime orphans, seeing that they developed subjectivity not by vertical (through the father) but by lateral, social ties. This led Anna Freud to revise her father's emphasis on Oedipal sexuality and to posit a revision of psychoanalysis that renders it compatible with democratic theory and practice. Stewart-Steinberg gives us an Anna Freud who "betrays" the father even as she protects his legacy and continues his work in a new key.