Edoardo Weiss


Book Description

Edoardo Weiss (1889-1970) was a favored disciple of Freud and is acknowledged as the founder of psychoanalysis in Italy. Although he was the author of six books and over a hundred professional papers, he has remained a shadowy figure. In this volume, Paul Roazen provides a definitive portrait of this notable individual. Based on his extensive interviews with Weiss, Roazen evaluates the significance of Weiss's own contribution to psychoanalytic thought and practice and presents a fascinating picture of the reception given to Freud's thought in Italy.Despite his prominence, Weiss's life and work has not been well documented. Roazen shows that his links to modern Italian history and culture were extensive and closely bound to the political and social conflicts of the twentieth century. Born in the cosmopolitan city of Trieste, Weiss was the nephew of the novelist Italo Svevo, whose masterpiece The Confessions of Zeno remains one of the principle psychoanalytic novels in modern literature. Another Triestine, Umberto Saba, one of the great modern Italian poets, was Weiss's patient. Weiss's career also intersected with Italian politics. The daughter of one of Mussolini's cabinet ministers was one of his patients, an analysis that has raised questions about Freud's own relation to the Italian dictator. Roazen documents Weiss's tribulations in trying to establish a psychoanalytic culture opposed not only by the fascist regime but the Catholic Church. In spite of these instances of opposition, Roazen shows that the Italian intellectual world was highly receptive to Freudian ideas and that psychoanalysis is flourishing today in Italy.Weiss has never before been recognized as a front-rank analytic thinker, but he was leader of the movement in Italy, a country that mattered deeply to Freud. This, along with the genuine intimacy of his contacts with Freud makes Weiss a figure of considerable interest to students of psychoanalysis, Italian culture, and intellectual history.




Literary Translation and Cultural Mediators in 'Peripheral' Cultures


Book Description

This book sets the grounds for a new approach exploring cultural mediators as key figures in literary and cultural history. It proposes an innovative conceptual and methodological understanding of the figure of the cultural mediator, defined as a cultural actor active across linguistic, cultural and geographical borders, occupying strategic positions within large networks and being the carrier of cultural transfer. Many studies on translation and cultural mediation privileged the major metropolis of Paris, London, and New York as centres of cultural production and translation. However, other cities and megacities that are not global centres of culture also feature vibrant translation scenes. This book abandons the focus on ‘innovative’ centres and ‘imitative’ peripheries and follows processes of cultural exchange as they develop. Thus, it analyses the role of cultural mediators as customs officers or smugglers (or both in different proportions) in so-called ‘peripheral’ cultures and offers insights into an under-analysed body of actors and institutions promoting intercultural transfer in often multilingual and less studied venues such as Trieste, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Lima, Lahore, or Cape Town.




Psychoanalysis and Politics


Book Description

This volume explores a central paradox in the evolution of psychoanalytic thought and practice and the ways in which they were used. Why and how have some authoritarian regimes utilized psychoanalytic concepts of the self to envisage a new social and political order?




Freud at Work


Book Description

Presenting a new frame of reference, the author argues that Freud's theories are not the result of his genius alone but were developed in exchange with colleagues and students, which is not always apparent at first glance. Replete with examples, the author reconstructs who the theories were addressed to and the discursive context they originally belonged to, thus presenting fresh and surprising readings of Freud's oeuvre. The book also offers a glimpse into Freud's practice. For the first time, Freud's patient record books which he kept for ten years, are being reviewed, offering readers the hard facts about the length and frequency of Freud's analyses.




James Joyce in Zurich


Book Description

This book offers a comprehensive account of James Joyce and Zurich, one of the four cities (including Dublin, Trieste and Paris) in which he spent significant parts of his life. As a refugee during World War I, Joyce wrote a substantial part of Ulysses in Zurich and subsequently visited the city regularly during the 1930s. Finally, a refugee for the second time, he died there on 13 January 1941 and is buried in Fluntern Cemetery. This guide is conceived both as a book that may be read in its entirety or consulted selectively for specific information. An introduction and three chapters, Joyce in Zurich, Zurich in Joyce and Zurich after Joyce, are followed by sixty alphabetically ordered articles on people, places, institutions and events relevant to Joyce during his time in Zurich. Linked by cross-references and an index, they provide a rich, kaleidoscopic view of Joyce’s Zurich.




The Trauma of Freud


Book Description

Over one hundred years have passed since Sigmund Freud first created psychoanalysis. The new profession flourished within the increasing secularization of Western culture, and it is almost impossible to overestimate its influence. Despite its traditional aloofness from ethical questions, psychoanalysis attracted an extraordinary degree of sectarian bitterness. Original thinkers were condemned as dissidents and renegades and the merits of individual cases have been frequently mixed up with questions concerning power and ambition, as well as the future of the "movement." In The Trauma of Freud, Paul Roazen shows how, despite this contentiousness, Freud's legacy has remained central to human selfawareness.Roazen provides a much-needed sequence and perspective on the memorable issues that have come up in connection with the history of Freud's school. Topics covered include the problem of seduction, Jung's Zurich school, Ferenczi's Hungarian following, and the influence of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud in England. Also highlighted are Lacanianism in France, Erik Erikson's ego psychology, and Sandor Rado's innovations. In considering these historical cases and related public scandals, Roazen continually addresses important general issues concerning ethics and privacy, the power of orthodoxy, creativity, and the historiography of psychoanalysis. Throughout, he argues that rival interpretations are a sign of the intellectual maturity and sophistication of the discipline. Vigorous debate is healthy and essential in avoiding ill-considered and dogmatic self-assurance.He observes that potential zealotry lies just below the surface of even the most placid psychoanalytic waters even today. Examining the past, so much a part of the job of scholarship, may involve challenging those who might have preferred to let sleeping dogs lie. Roazen emphasizes that Freud's approach rested on the Socratic conviction that the unexamined life is not worth living and that this constitutes the spiritual basis of its influence beyond immediate clinical concerns. The Trauma of Freud is a major contribution to the historical literature on psychoanalysis.




Anna Freud


Book Description

This new edition of the biography of pioneering child analyst Anna Freud includes, among other features, a major retrospective introduction by the author.




The Paranormal Surrounds Us


Book Description

Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce, E.M. Forster and Ingmar Bergman all made the paranormal essential to their depiction of humanity. Freud recognized telepathy as an everyday phenomenon. Observations on parapsychological aspects of psychoanalysis also include the findings of the Mesmerists, Jung, Ferenczi and Eisenbud. Many academicians attribute such psychic discoveries to "poetic license" rather than to accurate understanding of our parapsychological capacities. The author--a practicing psychoanalyst and parapsychologist, and a lawyer familiar with Navajo culture--argues for a fresh appraisal of psi phenomena and their integration into psychoanalytic theory and clinical work, literary studies and anthropology.




The Abused and the Abuser


Book Description

Severe abuse often occurs in settings where the grouping, whether based around a family or a community organisation or institution, outwardly appears to be very respectable. The nature of attachment dynamics allied with threat, discrediting, the manipulation of the victim's dissociative defences, long-term conditioning and the endless invoking of shame mean that sexual, physical and emotional abuse may, in some instances, be essentially unending. Even when separation from the long-term abuser is attempted, it may initially be extremely difficult to achieve, and there are some individuals who never achieve this parting. Even when the abuser is dead, the intrapsychic nature of the enduring attachment experienced by their victim remains complicated and difficult to resolve. This volume includes multiple perspectives from highly experienced clinicians, researchers and writers on the nature of the relationship between the abused and their abuser(s). No less than five of this international grouping of authors have been president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, the world's oldest international trauma society. This book, which opens with a highly original clinical paper on 'weaponized sex' by Richard Kluft, one of the foremost pioneers of the modern dissociative disorders field, concludes with a gripping historical perspective written by Jeffrey Masson as he reengages with issues that first brought him to worldwide prominence in the 1980s. Between these two pieces, the contributors, all highly acclaimed for their clinical, theoretical or research work, present original, cutting edge work on this complex subject. This book was originally published as a double special issue of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.




Freud and Italian Culture


Book Description

This book explores the different ways in which psychoanalysis has been connected to various fields of Italian culture, such as literary criticism, philosophy and art history, as well as discussing scholars who have used psychoanalytical methods in their work. The areas discussed include: the city of Trieste, in chapters devoted to the author Italo Svevo and the artist Arturo Nathan; psychoanalytic interpretations of women terrorists during the anni di piombo; the relationships between the Freudian concept of the subconscious and language in philosophical research in Italy; and a personal reflection by a practising analyst who passes from literary texts to her own clinical experience. The volume closes with a chapter by Giorgio Pressburger, a writer who uses Freud as his Virgil in a narrative of his descent into a modern hell. The volume contains contributions in both English and Italian.




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