Sigmund Freud's Mission


Book Description

DIVRenowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm examines the creator of psychoanalysis and his followers/divDIV/divDIV With his creation of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud redefined how people relate to themselves and to the larger world. In Sigmund Freud’s Mission, Freud scholar and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm demonstrates how Freud’s life experiences shaped his creation and practice of psychoanalysis./divDIV /divDIVFromm also revises parts of Freud’s theories, especially Freud’s libido theory. In his thorough and comprehensive analysis, Fromm looks deep into the personality of Freud, and the followers who tried to dogmatize Freud’s theory rather than support the further stages of psychoanalysis./divDIV/divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate./divDIV /div




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.




The Question of God


Book Description

Compares and contrasts the beliefs of two famous thinkers, Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, on topics ranging from the existence of God and morality to pain and suffering.




A Dark Trace


Book Description

Figures of the Unconscious, No. 8Sigmund Freud, in his search for the origins of the sense of guilt in individual life and culture, regularly speaks of "reading a dark trace," thus referring to the Oedipus myth as a myth about the problem of human guilt. In Freud's view, this sense of guilt is a trace, a path, that leads deep into the individual's mental state, into childhood memories, and into the prehistory of culture and religion. Herman Westerink follows this trace and analyzes Freud's thought on the sense of guilt as a central issue in his work, from the earliest studies on the moral and "guilty" characters of the hysterics, via later complex differentiations within the concept of the sense of guilt, and finally to Freud's conception of civilization's discontents and Jewish sense of guilt. The sense of guilt is a key issue in Freudian psychoanalysis, not only in relation to other key concepts in psychoanalytic theory but also in relation to Freud's debates with other psychoanalysts, including Carl Jung and Melanie Klein.




Political Freud


Book Description

In this masterful history, Eli Zaretsky reveals the power of Freudian thought to illuminate the great political conflicts of the twentieth century. Developing an original concept of "political Freudianism," he shows how twentieth-century radicals, activists, and intellectuals used psychoanalytic ideas to probe consumer capitalism, racial violence, anti-Semitism, and patriarchy. He also underscores the continuing influence and critical potential of those ideas in the transformed landscape of the present. Zaretsky's conception of political Freudianism unites the two overarching themes of the last century—totalitarianism and consumerism—in a single framework. He finds that theories of mass psychology and the unconscious were central to the study of fascism and the Holocaust; to African American radical thought, particularly the struggle to overcome the legacy of slavery; to the rebellions of the 1960s; and to the feminism and gay liberation movements of the 1970s. Nor did the influence of political Freud end when the era of Freud bashing began. Rather, Zaretsky proves that political Freudianism is alive today in cultural studies, the study of memory, theories of trauma, postcolonial thought, film, media and computer studies, evolutionary theory and even economics.




Freud's Free Clinics


Book Description

Today many view Sigmund Freud as an elitist whose psychoanalytic treatment was reserved for the intellectually and financially advantaged. However, in this new work Elizabeth Ann Danto presents a strikingly different picture of Freud and the early psychoanalytic movement. Danto recovers the neglected history of Freud and other analysts' intense social activism and their commitment to treating the poor and working classes. Danto's narrative begins in the years following the end of World War I and the fall of the Habsburg Empire. Joining with the social democratic and artistic movements that were sweeping across Central and Western Europe, analysts such as Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Erik Erikson, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Helene Deutsch envisioned a new role for psychoanalysis. These psychoanalysts saw themselves as brokers of social change and viewed psychoanalysis as a challenge to conventional political and social traditions. Between 1920 and 1938 and in ten different cities, they created outpatient centers that provided free mental health care. They believed that psychoanalysis would share in the transformation of civil society and that these new outpatient centers would help restore people to their inherently good and productive selves. Drawing on oral histories and new archival material, Danto offers vivid portraits of the movement's central figures and their beliefs. She explores the successes, failures, and challenges faced by free institutes such as the Berlin Poliklinik, the Vienna Ambulatorium, and Alfred Adler's child-guidance clinics. She also describes the efforts of Wilhelm Reich's Sex-Pol, a fusion of psychoanalysis and left-wing politics, which provided free counseling and sex education and aimed to end public repression of private sexuality. In addition to situating the efforts of psychoanalysts in the political and cultural contexts of Weimar Germany and Red Vienna, Danto also discusses the important treatments and methods developed during this period, including child analysis, short-term therapy, crisis intervention, task-centered treatment, active therapy, and clinical case presentations. Her work illuminates the importance of the social environment and the idea of community to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.




The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind


Book Description

The remarkable story of how the Allies used psychoanalysis to delve into the motivations of the Nazi leadership and to explore the mass psychology of fascism.




Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe


Book Description

Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe explores the close relationship between psychoanalysis, psycho-medical discourses, literature, and the visual arts of the late 1800s and early 1900s in Central Europe. Agnieszka Sobolewska addresses the issue of theories and practices of psychoanalysis in Central Europe and the need to undertake interdisciplinary reflection on the specificity of psychoanalytic literary genres and fin-de-siècle psycho-medical discourses. With a focus on the circulation of Freudianism in the territories of present-day Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany, the book considers the creative transformations that psychoanalytic thought underwent in these countries and reflects on the specificity of psychoanalytic literary genres and the pivotal role of lifewriting genres in the psychoanalytic movement. Sobolewska’s work both fills a visible gap in research on the history of psychoanalysis in Central Europe before the outbreak of World War II and offers the first insightful analysis of the role of life writing in the development of psychoanalytic thought. Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training as well as scholars of the history of psychoanalysis, the history of psychology, literature, cultural anthropology, and modernism.




Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Thought


Book Description

DIVDIVRenowned social psychologist Erich Fromm’s classic study of Freud’s most important—and controversial—ideas/divDIV Bestselling philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm contends that the principle behind Freud’s work—the wellspring from which psychoanalysis flows—boils down to one well-known belief: “And the truth shall set you free.” The healing power of truth is what Freud used to cure depression and anxiety, cutting through repression and rationalizations, and it provided the foundation for modern psychology./divDIV /divDIVFreud’s work, however, was not without its flaws. Though he pioneered many of the practices still in use today, Freud’s perspective was imperfect. In Greatness and Limitation of Freud’s Thought, Fromm deepens the understanding of Freud by highlighting not just his remarkable insights, but also his flaws, on topics ranging from dreams to sexuality. /divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate./div/div




Freud and Monotheism


Book Description

Over the last few decades, vibrant debates regarding post-secularism have found inspiration and provocation in the works of Sigmund Freud. A new interest in the interconnection of psychoanalysis, religion and political theory has emerged, allowing Freud’s illuminating examination of the religious and mystical practices in “Obsessive Neurosis and Religious Practices,” and the exegesis of the origins of ethics in religion in Totem and Taboo, to gain currency in recent debates on modernity. In that context, the pivotal role of Freud’s masterpiece, Moses and Monotheism, is widely recognized. Freud and Monotheism brings together fundamental new contributions to discourses on Freud and Moses, as well as new research at the intersections of theology, political theory, and history in Freud’s psychoanalytic work. Highlighting the broad impact of Moses and Monotheism across the humanities, the contributors hail from such diverse disciplines as philosophy, comparative literature, cultural studies, German studies, Jewish studies and psychoanalysis. Jan Assmann and Richard Bernstein, whose books pioneered the earlier debate that initiated the Freud and Moses discourse, seize the opportunity to revisit and revise their groundbreaking work. Gabriele Schwab, Gilad Sharvit, Karen Feldman, and Yael Segalovitz engage with the idiosyncratic, eccentric and fertile nature of the book as a Spӓtstil, and explore radical interpretations of Freud’s literary practice, theory of religion and therapeutic practice. Ronald Hendel offers an alternative history for the Mosaic discourse within the biblical text, Catherine Malabou reconnects Freud’s theory of psychic phylogenesis in Moses and Monotheism to new findings in modern biology and Willi Goetschel relocates Freud in the tradition of works on history that begins with Heine, while Joel Whitebook offers important criticisms of Freud’s main argument about the advance in intellectuality that Freud attributes to Judaism.