Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself?

From the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos comes a provocative hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated.

A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

More than just a therapeutic technique, psychoanalysis as a school of thought has redefined our ideas on sexuality, the self, morality, family, and the nature of the mind for much of the twentieth century. At its broadest, Freud's thinking on civilization and social forces provides a context in which to consider the history of political struggle among individuals and societies. 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? How did psychoanalysis provide both theoretical and practical elements to legitimize resistance to those same regimes? How can a school of thought be co-opted so deftly by different groups for different political ends? Bringing together contributions from innovative scholars of history, politics, and psychoanalysis, this volume analyzes the various outcomes of this fascinating and influential theory's development under a wide spectrum of governments that restricted political and cultural freedoms from the 1930s to the present. The regimes analyzed range from Fascist Italy, Vichy France, and Spain and Hungary under Fascism and Communism; modern Latin American dictatorships, such as Brazil and Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s; and the influence of Hoover, McCarthy, and the larger Cold War on psychoanalysis in America. A fresh addition to an enormous body of scholarship, this will be required reading for academics interested in the relationship between politics and non-political systems of thoughts and beliefs, the transnational circulation of ideas, social movements, and the intellectual and social history of psychoanalysis.

Academics, analysts and artists are gathered together in this illustrated volume, which celebrates the culmination of a two-year project at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies to discover and debate current issues in psychoanalysis in the arts and humanities across five language-fields in Europe and beyond. The twenty-four essays include surveys of psychoanalytic thought in areas speaking French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish; the work of eight artists, ranging from found objects in Marseilles or the figure of Gradiva on a man-hole cover to the life of Le Corbusier, the lightest object in the world and words on a glass wall; and eight academic essays, including studies of humour in child therapy, Freud in Argentina, sibling trauma in the Schreber family and psychoanalysis in the university curriculum.

The common, existing distance between children and adults is the basis of this work, which has been addressed in many literary and cultural works throughout history. Not being able to remember how we, now adults, thought as children -like their spontaneity or magic and omnipotent form of thinking- would leave children completely isolated, like a helpless immigrant in a foreign land. This book attempts to comprehend, how parents' misunderstanding, can induce loneliness and helplessness in children, that with time will become traumatic, and will remain unconsciously present in all of us forever. It will continue to repeat using infantile emotions, children form of thinking, and experiencing as well, loneliness, anxiety, depression, fears and the chronic need of finding a 'rescuer', in the form of power, fame, drugs, money, religion, and so on. This very innovative approach to the understanding of children's segregation and its repercussion on adult's emotional life, will be of invaluable interest to all practicing psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and parents included.

This is the first comparative study of the work of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur and the psychoanalayst Jacques Lacan. The book explores the conflict between the two thinkers that arose from their differing views of ethics: Ricoeur's universalist stance drew on a phenomenological reading of Kant, whereas Lacan's was a relativist position, derived from a psychoanalytic reading of Freud and De Sade. "Ricoeur and Lacan" gives a full critical overview of the work of both figures, tracing the origins and development of their principal ideas, and identifying key similarities and differences. The book identifies and explores the key philosophical influences upon their work: Descartes; Kant; Nietzsche; Husserl; Freud; Marcel; and Jaspers. It gives an original perspective upon the development of ethics within Continental philosophy, providing clear and cogent analysis. Finally, it evaluates the importance of Ricoeur and Lacan in the development of ethical and political theory since the 1980s, with particular reference to the work of Slavoj Zizek. Not only a valuable and original addition to the literature on two major thinkers, "Ricoeur and Lacan" is also an important study of contemporary Continental ethics.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Intended for those who are troubled by their lives and want to make changes, but don't know where to begin, this is a book about relationships. It is not intended as a self-help book, but as one which will encourage the reader to really think about themselves and the way they act - how their behaviour is driven by thoughts, feelings, and impulses of which they may not have any conscious awareness. Jukes examines his 'Mad Hypothesis' - so called because it seems, at first glance, to be 'mad.' He has used it successfully in therapeutic work to refer to everything that is wrong in a patient's relationship and even their life: "You are responsible for everything that is wrong with your relationship including any behaviour of your partner which you use to justify, excuse, or in any other way account for yo own behaviour towards him/her, or the world in general." The author draws on his vast clinical experience to explore this fascinating idea and looks at other related issues such as anxiety, sulking, masochism, and attachment. He also includes many illuminating case-studies which perfectly illustrate his theories and make the text accessible to both clinicians and non-professionals.

What stands out about racism is its ability to withstand efforts to legislate or educate it away. In The Racist Fantasy, Todd McGowan argues that its persistence is due to a massive unconscious investment in a fundamental racist fantasy. As long as this fantasy continues to underlie contemporary society, McGowan claims, racism will remain with us, no matter how strenuously we struggle to eliminate it. The racist fantasy, a fantasy in which the racial other is a figure who blocks the enjoyment of the racist, is a shared social structure. No one individual invented it, and no one individual is responsible for its perpetuation. While no one is guilty for the emergence of the racist fantasy, people are nonetheless responsible for keeping it alive and thus responsible for fighting against it. The Racist Fantasy examines how this fantasy provides the psychic basis for the racism that appears so conspicuously throughout modern history. The racist fantasy informs everything from lynching and police shootings to Hollywood blockbusters and musical tastes. This fantasy takes root under capitalism as a way of explaining the failures and disappointments that result from the relationship to the commodity. The struggle against racism involves dislodging the fantasy structure and to change the capitalist relations that require it. This is the project of this book.

A Feminist Mythology takes us on a poetic journey through the canonical myths of femininity, testing them from the point of view of our modern condition. A myth is not an object, but rather a process, one that Chiara Bottici practises by exploring different variants of the myth of "womanhood" through first- and third-person prose and poetry. We follow a series of myths that morph into each other, disclosing ways of being woman that question inherited patriarchal orders. In this metamorphic world, story-telling is not just a mix of narrative, philosophical dialogues and metaphysical theorizing: it is a current that traverses all of them by overflowing the boundaries it encounters. In doing so, A Feminist Mythology proposes an alternative writing style that recovers ancient philosophical and literary traditions from the pre-Socratic philosophers and Ovid's Metamorphoses to the philosophical novellas and feminist experimental writings of the last century.

While psychoanalysis has traditionally been at odds with transgender issues, a growing body of revisionist psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice has begun to tease out the trans-affirming potential of the field. This issue features essays that highlight this potential by simultaneously critiquing and working within the boundaries of psychoanalytic concepts and theories guiding clinical work. Featuring a range of clinicians and scholars, this issue centers on questions pertaining to trans* experience, desire, difference, otherness, identification, loss, mourning, and embodiment. The contributors explore these questions through topics like bathroom bans, ethics, popular culture, and the Freudian couch. By setting up this dialogue between psychosocial studies and trans* cultural studies, this revisionist work may radically transform psychoanalytic theory and practice. Contributors. Sheila L. Cavanagh, Chris Coffman, Elena Dalla Torre, Kate Foord, Patricia Gherovici, Oren Gozlan, Griffin Hansbury, Jordon Osserman, Amy Ray Stewart, Simon van der Weele