Psychoanalysis on the Verge of Language

Psychoanalysis on the Verge of Language
Author: Dana Amir
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000436349

This book examines the importance of language and writing in psychoanalytic theory and practice, offering an understanding of how language works can give a deeper insight into the psyche both in clinical practice and everyday life. Bringing together psychoanalytic insights that hinge on the language of "difficult cases", this collection also includes contributions dedicated to meta-study of psychoanalytic writing. The first chapter shows how music includes tonal regions that deploy existing rules and syntax, alongside atonal ones dominated by caesuras, pauses, and tensions. The second chapter discusses the malignant ambiguity of revealing and concealing typical of incestuous situations, pinpointing how the ambiguous language of incest "deceives by means of the truth,". The third chapter brings in Virginia Woolf’s character Orlando in order to illustrate two types of gender crossing. Distinctions defined by the linguist Roman Jakobson help in the fourth chapter to offer an integrative description of obsessive-compulsive phenomenon as an interaction between metaphoric and metonymic dimensions, as well as with a third, psychotic dimension. The fifth chapter focuses on what is called the "screen confessions" typical of the perpetrator’s language. George Orwell’s "newspeak" is used here to decipher the specific means by which the perpetrator turns his or her "inner witness" into a blind one. The final chapter uses Roland Barthes’ concepts of "studium" and "punctum" to discuss the limits of psychoanalytic writing. As a whole, this book sets the psychoanalytic importance of language in a wider understanding of how language helps to shape and even create internal as well as the external world. Drawing on insights from psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as from linguistics and cultural theory, this book will be invaluable for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and bibliotherapists, as well as anyone interested in how language forms our reality.

Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos

Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos
Author: Joseph Dodds
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2012-03-12
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1136585958

This book argues that psychoanalysis has a unique role to play in the climate change debate through its placing emphasis on the unconscious dimensions of our mental and social lives. Exploring contributions from Freudian, Kleinian, Object Relations, Self Psychology, Jungian, and Lacanian traditions, the book discusses how psychoanalysis can help to unmask the anxieties, deficits, conflicts, phantasies and defences crucial in understanding the human dimension of the ecological crisis. Yet despite being essential to studying environmentalism and its discontents, psychoanalysis still remains largely a 'psychology without ecology.' The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, combined with new developments in the sciences of complexity, help us to build upon the best of these perspectives, providing a framework able to integrate Guattari's 'three ecologies' of mind, nature and society. This book thus constitutes a timely attempt to contribute towards a critical dialogue between psychoanalysis and ecology. Further topics of discussion include: ecopsychology and the greening of psychotherapy our ambivalent relationship to nature and the non-human complexity theory in psychoanalysis and ecology defence mechanisms against eco-anxiety and eco-grief Deleuze|Guattari and the three ecologies becoming-animal in horror and eco-apocalypse in science fiction films nonlinear ecopsychoanalysis. In our era of anxiety, denial, paranoia, apathy, guilt, hope, and despair in the face of climate change, this book offers a fresh and insightful psychoanalytic perspective on the ecological crisis. As such this book will be of great interest to all those in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, philosophy, and ecology, as well as all who are concerned with the global environmental challenges affecting our planet's future.

Conversations with Lacan

Conversations with Lacan
Author: Sergio Benvenuto
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2019-12-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 042962428X

Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan brings a unique, non-partisan approach to the work of Jacques Lacan, linking his psychoanalytic theory and ideas to broader debates in philosophy and the social sciences, in a book that shows how it is possible to see the value of Lacanian concepts without necessarily being defined by them. In accessible, conversational language, the book provides a clear-sighted overview of the key ideas within Lacan’s work, situating them at the apex of the linguistic turn. It deconstructs the three Lacanian orders – the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real – as well as a range of core Lacanian concepts, including alienation and separation, après-coup, and the Lacanian doctrine of temporality. Arguing that criticism of psychoanalysis for a lack of scientificity should be accepted by the discipline, the book suggests that the work of Lacan can be helpful in re-conceptualizing the role of psychoanalysis in the future. This accessible introduction to the work of Jacques Lacan will be essential reading for anyone coming to Lacan for the first time, as well as clinicians and scholars already familiar with his work. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and scholars of philosophy and cultural studies.

The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy

The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy
Author: Aner Govrin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 802
Release: 2022-11-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000773159

The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy provides a rich panoramic view of what philosophy offers or disturbs in psychoanalysis and what it represents for psychoanalytic theory and practice. The thirty-three chapters present a broad range of interfaces and reciprocities between various aspects of psychoanalysis and philosophy. It demonstrates the vital connection between the two disciplines: psychoanalysis cannot make any practical sense if it is not entirely perceived within a philosophical context. Written by a team of world-leading experts, including established scholars, psychoanalysts and emerging talents, the Handbook investigates and discusses the psychoanalytic schools and their philosophical underpinning, as well as contemporary applied topics. Organized into five sections, this volume investigates and discusses how psychoanalysis stands in relation to leading philosophies such as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Kant; philosophical perspectives on psychoanalytic schools such as Freud, Klein, Bion, Kohut, and Lacan; how psychoanalysis addresses controversial topics in philosophy such as truth, language and symbolism, ethics, and theories of mind. The last section addresses contemporary applied subjects in psychoanalytic thought: colonialism, gender, race, and ecology. This Handbook offers a novel and comprehensive outlook vital for scholars, philosophers, practicing psychoanalysts and therapists alike. The book will serve as a source for courses in psychoanalysis, philosophy of science, epistemology, ethics, semiotics, cognitive science, consciousness, gender, race, post-colonialism theories, clinical theory, Freud's studies, both in universities and psychoanalytic training programs and institutes.

The Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities

The Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities
Author: Anthony Elliott
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 495
Release: 2016-04-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317308204

The Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities provides a comprehensive, critical overview of the historical, theoretical and applied forms of psychoanalytical criticism. This path-breaking Handbook offers students new ways of understanding the powers and limits of psychoanalysis, and of the social, cultural and political possibilities of psychoanalytic critique. The book offers students and professionals clear and concise chapters on the development of psychoanalysis, introducing key theories that have influenced debates over the psyche, desire and emotion in the social sciences and humanities. There are substantive chapters on classical Freudian theory, Kleinian and Bionian theory, object-relations psychoanalysis, Lacanian and post-Lacanian approaches, feminist psychoanalysis, as well as postmodern trends in psychoanalysis. There is a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to psychoanalytic critique, with contributions drawing from developments in sociology, politics, history, cultural studies, women’s studies and architecture.

Religion, Society, And Psychoanalysis

Religion, Society, And Psychoanalysis
Author: Janet L Jacobs
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2018-02-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429966261

Distinguished contributors provide an overview of three generations of psychoanalytic theory, including the work of Freud, Horney, Winnicott, and Kristeva, and discuss the evolution of psychoanalytic thought as it relates to the role that religion plays in modern culture. }Religion clearly remains a powerful social and political force in Western society. Freudian-based theory continues to inform psychoanalytic investigations into personality development, gender relations, and traumatic disorders. Using a historical framework, this collection of new essays brings together contemporary scholarship on religion and psychoanalysis. These various yet related psychoanalytic interpretations of religious symbolism and commitment offer a unique social analysis on the meaning of religion.Beginning with Freuds views on religion and mystical experience and continuing with those of Horney, Winnicott, Kristeva, Miller, and others, this volume surveys the work of three generations of psychoanalytic theorists. Special attention is given to objects relations theory and ego psychology, as well as to the recent work from the European tradition. Distinguished contributors provide a basic overview of a given theorists scholarship and discuss its place in the evolution of psychoanalytic thought as it relates to the role that religion plays in modern culture. Religion, Society, and Psychoanalysis marks a major, interdisciplinary step forward in filling the void in the social-psychology of religion. It is an extremely useful handbook for students and scholars of psychology and religion.

Language, Symbolization, and Psychosis

Language, Symbolization, and Psychosis
Author: Giovanna Ambrosio
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429915578

In this book, the authors compare different psychoanalytic thinking and models – all of a rigorously Freudian stamp – on three concepts of great theoretical and clinical importance: language, symbolization, and psychosis.

Joy and the Objects of Psychoanalysis

Joy and the Objects of Psychoanalysis
Author: Volney P. Gay
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2001-08-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780791451007

Shows how literature can aid psychoanalysts in the understanding of psychological conflicts.

Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy

Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy
Author: Justin Clemens
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0748678956

Love, hate, slavery, torture, addiction and death - as this book shows, only psychoanalysis can speak well of such matters. Psychoanalysis was the most important intellectual development of the 20th century, which left no practice from psychiatry to philosophy to politics untouched. Yet it was also in many ways an untouchable project, caught between science and poetry, medicine and hermeneutics. This unsettled, unsettling status has recently induced the philosopher Alain Badiou to characterise psychoanalysis as an 'antiphilosophy', that is, as a practice that issues the strongest possible challenges to thought. Justin Clemens takes up the challenge of this denomination here, by re-examining a series of crucial psychoanalytic themes: addiction, fanaticism, love, slavery and torture. Drawing from the work of Freud, Lacan, Badiou, Agamben and others, Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy offers a radical reconstruction of the operations and import of key psychoanalytic concepts and a renewed sense of the indispensable powers of psychoanalysis for today.

Catch Them Before They Fall

Catch Them Before They Fall
Author: Christopher Bollas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2012-12-14
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0415637198

In this exploration of a radical approach to the psychoanalytical treatment of people on the verge of mental breakdown, Christopher Bollas offers a new and courageous clinical paradigm. He suggests that the unconscious purpose of breakdown is to present the self to the other for transformative understanding; to have its core distress met and understood directly. If caught in time, a breakdown can become a breakthrough. It is an event imbued with the most profound personal significance, but it requires deep understanding if its meaning is to be released to its transformative potential. Bollas believes that hospitalization, intensive medication and CBT/DBT all negate this opportunity, and he proposes that many of these patients should instead be offered extended, intensive psychoanalysis. This book will be of interest to clinicians who find that, with patients on the verge of breakdown, conventional psychoanalytical work is insufficient to meet the emerging crisis. However, Bollas's challenging proposal will provoke many questions and in the final section of the book some of these are raised by Sacha Bollas and presented in a question-and-answer form.