The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis

The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis
Author: Jamieson Webster
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2018-03-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429921306

From its peculiar birth in Freud’s self-analysis to its current state of deep crisis, psychoanalysis has always been a practice that questions its own existence. Like the patients that risk themselves in this act - it is somehow upon this threatened ground that the very life of psychoanalysis depends. Perhaps psychoanalysis must always remain in a precarious, indeed ghostly, position at the limit of life and death?

Life and Death in Psychoanalysis

Life and Death in Psychoanalysis
Author: Jean Laplanche
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1976-01-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780801827303

Most critics have come to terms with the contradictions in Freud's work by attempting to impose a unified system even at the cost of rejecting crucial metapyschological concepts such as the death wish. According to Jean Laplanche, "such variations or variants deserve better than a choice in favor of one of the other: they require an interpretation and such as interpretation implies that, as is the case with the analysis of dreams, all the elements be juxtaposed so that nothing be eliminated, that the either / or be retanslatedinto an and." In a way that Freud plainly does not control, Laplanche argures, there are at work two different concepts corresponding to each of a series of crucial Freudian terms; in each of these conceptual pairs of one of the elements is solidary with a specific conceptual scheme and the other with a second one. The entire body of Freud's work, for Laplanche, is constituted as an elaborately structured polemical field in which two mutually exclusive schemes may be seen to be struggling to dominate a single terminological apparatus. Life and Death in Psychoanalysis is a painstakingly lucid inquiry into the interpretative consequences of the conceptual and terminological difficulties posed by Freud's texts. It is an uncannily precise delineation of the perverse rigor with which Freud's most virulent discoveries perpetually escape him-and are endlessly rediscovered.

Matters of Life and Death

Matters of Life and Death
Author: Salman Akhtar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429916124

This book focuses on the intrapsychic vicissitudes of what it means to be truly alive and how death accompanies us at each step of our life's journey. It shows that, psychologically-speaking, death is always present in life and life in death.

Freud, Psychoanalysis and Death

Freud, Psychoanalysis and Death
Author: Liran Razinsky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2013
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1107009723

A convincing critique of the neglect of death in psychoanalytic theory, arguing that death has been a repressed subject in psychoanalysis.

Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger

Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger
Author: Havi Carel
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9401201404

Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger argues that mortality is a fundamental structuring element in human life. The ordinary view of life and death regards them as dichotomous and separate. This book explains why this view is unsatisfactory and presents a new model of the relationship between life and death that sees them as interlinked. Using Heidegger’s concept of being towards death and Freud’s notion of the death drive, it demonstrates the extensive influence death has on everyday life and gives an account of its structural and existential significance. By bringing the two perspectives together, this book presents a reading of death that establishes its significance for life, creates a meeting point for philosophical and psychoanalytical perspectives, and examines the problems and strengths of each. It then puts forth a unified view, based on the strengths of each position and overcoming the problems of each. Finally, it works out the ethical consequences of this view. This volume is of interest for philosophers, mental health practitioners and those working in the field of death studies.

Battling the Life and Death Forces of Sadomasochism

Battling the Life and Death Forces of Sadomasochism
Author: Harriet I. Basseches
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2018-03-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429911203

This book examines the forces of sadomasochism in the clinical domain where transference and countertransference reside. Psychoanalysts write in depth about cases where sadomasochism is present for both analysand and analyst. Four cases present the unfolding analytic exchange where life and death forces collide. Each case is accompanied by three discussions illuminating the complex phenomena that often include lifelong perversions and painful narcissistic difficulties. Through the case presentations and discussions, psychoanalytic therapists will find maps for guiding their own work with sadomasochistic processes. Treatments where sadomasochism is prominent abound with dramas containing control and denigration, domination, and submission. Often there is a history of over stimulation and under stimulation from infancy and childhood influencing the formation of object relations and unconscious fantasy. Since Freud first introduced the concepts of component instincts and psychosexual development, psychoanalysts have been exploring sadomasochism in its various forms. The belief that togetherness involves tormenting pain creates a sense of life and death struggle that is imbued with powerful instinctual gratification. Unconscious sexualized scenes of both dyadic and triadic forms carry humiliation and conquest.

Life Against Death

Life Against Death
Author: Norman Oliver Brown
Publisher: Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 1959
Genre: Anus (Psychology)
ISBN:

A shocking and extreme interpretation of the father of psychoanalysis.

Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life

Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life
Author: Jonathan Lear
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2002-02-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674040031

Separated by millennia, Aristotle and Sigmund Freud gave us disparate but compelling pictures of the human condition. But if, with Jonathan Lear, we scrutinize these thinkers' attempts to explain human behavior in terms of a higher principle--whether happiness or death--the pictures fall apart. Aristotle attempted to ground ethical life in human striving for happiness, yet he didn't understand what happiness is any better than we do. Happiness became an enigmatic, always unattainable, means of seducing humankind into living an ethical life. Freud fared no better when he tried to ground human striving, aggression, and destructiveness in the death drive, like Aristotle attributing purpose where none exists. Neither overarching principle can guide or govern "the remainder of life," in which our inherently disruptive unconscious moves in breaks and swerves to affect who and how we are. Lear exposes this tendency to self-disruption for what it is: an opening, an opportunity for new possibilities. His insights have profound consequences not only for analysis but for our understanding of civilization and its discontent.

Killing Freud

Killing Freud
Author: Todd Dufresne
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2006-09-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780826493392

Killing Freud takes the reader on a journey through the 20th century, tracing the work and influence of one of its greatest icons, Sigmund Freud. A devastating critique, Killing Freud ranges across the strange case of Anna O, the hysteria of Josef Breuer, the love of dogs, the Freud industry, the role of gossip and fiction, bad manners, pop psychology and French philosophy, figure skating on thin ice, and contemporary therapy culture. A map to the Freudian minefield and a masterful negotiation of high theory and low culture, Killing Freud is a witty and fearless revaluation of psychoanalysis and its real place in 20th century history. It will appeal to anyone curious about the life of the mind after the death of Freud.

Climate Psychology

Climate Psychology
Author: Paul Hoggett
Publisher: Phoenix Publishing House
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2022-01-26
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1800130848

Climate Psychology offers ways to work with the unthinkable and emotionally unendurable current predicament of humanity. The style and writing interweave passion and reflection, animation and containment, radical hope and tragedy to reflect the dilemmas of our collective crisis. The authors model a relational approach in their styles of writing and in the book's structure. Four chapters, each with a strikingly original voice and insight, form the core of the book, held either end by two jointly written chapters. In contrast to a psychology that focuses on individual behaviour change, the authors use a transdisciplinary mix of approaches (depth psychology and psychotherapy, earth systems, deep ecology, cultural sociology, critical history, group and institutional outreach) to bring into focus the predicament of this period. While the last decade required a focus on climate denial in all its manifestations (which continues in new ways), a turning point has now been reached. Increasingly extreme weather across the world is making it impossible for simple avoidance of the climate threat. Wendy Hollway, Paul Hoggett, Chris Robertson, and Sally Weintrobe address how climate psychology illuminates and engages the life and death challenges that face terrestrial life. This book will appeal to three core groups. First, mental health and social care professionals wanting support in containing and potentially transforming the malaise. Second, activists wanting to participate in new stories and practices that nurture their engagement with the present social and cultural crisis. Third, those concerned about the climate emergency, wanting to understand the deeper context for this dangerous blindness.