The greater part of this book focuses on a critical analysis of the logics and ways of thinking supporting both explicit and implicit theories of sexual difference and the masculine/feminine pair. These theories may be private or collective; conscious, preconscious, or unconscious. They impact heavily on interpretations and constructions made in analytic practice, while they also affect transference-countertransference patterns. This conceptual analysis reviews the Freudian oeuvre as well as the work of other significant authors, post-Freudian and contemporary, that have contributed specifically to this topic. The concept of sexual difference contains a persistent problem: binary, dichotomous thinking and its blind spots and aporias. For this reason, the author has turned to other epistemologies that offer novel forms to think about the same problems, such as the paradigm of hyper-complexity, as well as thinking at intersections and limits between different categories.

Reading Klein provides an introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century's greatest psychoanalysts, known in particular for her contribution in developing child analysis and for her vivid depiction of the inner world. This book makes Melanie Klein's works highly accessible, providing both substantial extracts from her writings, and commentaries by the authors exploring their significance. Each chapter corresponds to a major field of Klein's work outlining its development over almost 40 years. The first part is concerned with her theoretical and clinical contributions. It shows Klein to be a sensitive clinician deeply concerned for her patients, and with a remarkable capacity to understand their unconscious anxieties and to revise our understanding of the mind. The second part sets out the contribution of her ideas to morality, to aesthetics and to the understanding of society, introducing writing by her associates as well as herself. The book provides a lucid account of Klein's published writing, presented by two distinguished writers who know her work well and have made creative use of it in their own clinical and extra-clinical writing. Its aim is to show how substantial her contribution to psychoanalytic thinking and clinical practice was, and how indispensable it remains to understanding the field of psychoanalysis. Reading Klein will be a highly valuable resource for students, trainees in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic practitioners and all who are interested in Melanie Klein and her legacy.

Subjectivity, the Unconscious and Consumerism is a unique and imaginative psycho-sociological exploration of how postmodern, contemporary consumerism invades and colonises human subjectivity. Investigating especially consumerism's unconscious aspects such as desires, imagination, and fantasy, it engages with an extensive analysis of dreams. The author frames these using a synthesis of Jungian psychology and the social imaginaries of Baudrillard and Bauman, in a dialogue with the theories of McDonaldization and Disneyization. The aim is to broaden our understanding of consumerism to include the perennial consumption of symbols and signs of identity - a process which is the basis for the fabrication of the commodified self. The book offers a profound, innovative critique of our consumption societies, challenging readers to rethink how we live, and how our identities are impacted by consumerism. As such it will be of interest to students and scholars of critical psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, but is also accessible to anyone interested in the complex psychology of contemporary subjectivity.

The term 'psychoanalytical process', though occurring but rarely in Freud's works, has become firmly established nowadays despite being hard to define, explain, or pin down in conceptual or meta-psychological terms. Although it is often employed as equivalent to 'psychoanalytic work', currents of thought that draw on the idea display a certain ambivalence, for it can relate both to a theory of treatment (the practice of analysis) and to a theory of mind (a theory of psychic functioning). Before developing his own original perspectives about the consequences of the heterogeneity of psychic functioning, the author examines how various practitioners have approached this subject since Freud. He shows how each has shed useful new light on this issue, leading to a diversity of points of view, thereby justifying the idea of the 'process' within psychoanalytic treatment.

This book explores family interaction and family psychoanalysis from varying standpoints used around the world. It illustrates these with extensive clinical cases discussed from varying perspectives. The book is the first in a series of volumes from the International Psychoanalytical Association's Working Group on Family and Couple Psychoanalysis, drawn from its ongoing research into comparative theories and methods of working analytically with families and couples, and with varying types of family structure. It also applies lessons from family psychoanalysis to analytic theory and to the practice of individual psychoanalysis.

A collection of papers focusing on the Kleinian conception of the Oedipus complex, how this is now understood, and what effect it has had on clinical practice. The papers by the authors which form the greater part of The Oedipus Complex Today were originally given at the Melanie Klein Conference on the Oedipus Complex in September 1987 at University College, London. The conference, jointly organized by Professor J. Sandler of the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College and Mrs. Ruth Riesenberg-Malcolm on behalf of the Melanie Klein Trust, was considered such a successful statement of modern Kleinian views on the subject that the Trust has decided to present the papers in book form, together with an expanded version of the introduction by Dr Hanna Segal, and also a reprint of Melanie Klein's 1945 paper 'The Oedipus Complex in the Light of Early Anxieties'. The three papers, writes Dr Segal, 'are based on central concepts first put forward by Mrs Klein.

Can psychoanalysis offer a new computer model? Can computer designers help psychoanalysts to understand their theory better?In contemporary publications human psyche is often related to neural networks. Why? The wiring in computers can also be related to application software. But does this really make sense?

Artificial Intelligence has tried to implement functions of human psyche. The reached achievements are remarkable; however, the goal to get a functional model of the mental apparatus was not reached. Was the selected direction incorrect?The editors are convinced: yes, and they try to give answers here. If one accepts that the brain is an information processing system, then one also has to accept that computer theories can be applied to the brain s functions, the human mental apparatus.

The contributors of this book - Solms, Panksepp, Sloman and many others who are all experts in computer design, psychoanalysis and neurology are united in one goal: finding synergy in their interdisciplinary fields."

Bion's identification of reverie as a psychoanalytic concept has drawn attention to a dimension of the analyst's experience with tremendous potential to enrich our interpretive understanding. The courage of these authors in revealing their own process of reverie as transformed into the action of psychoanalysis will inspire and foster further investigation of this fruitful yet heretofore infrequently explored area of psychoanalytic discovery.

This book theorizes five youth television series: "Dawson""'s Creek, Freaks and Geeks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Roswell, " and" Smallville "from a psychoanalytic perspective drawing on the meeting ground between Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. jagodzinski develops the notion of self-refleXivity (as distinct from self-reflection and self reflexion) to identify that aspect of the inhuman within ourselves, namely the order of the drives that these series explore. It is argued that the narratology of the post-Gothic form of "Buffy, Roswell, "and" Smallville" is the structure of paranoid schizophrenia. A hyper-self-reflexivity informs "Dawson's Creek," while "Freaks and Greeks" deals with ethical dilemmas.

Applying ideas drawn from contemporary critical theory this book historicizes psychoanalysis through a new, and significant, theorization of the Gothic. The central premise is that the nineteenth-century Gothic produced a radical critique of accounts of sublimity and Freudian psychoanalysis. This book makes a major contribution to an understanding of both the nineteenth century and the Gothic discourse which challenged the dominant ideas of that period. Writers explored include Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson and Bram Stoker.

What makes one reader look for issues of social conformity in Kafka's "Metamorphosis" while another concentrates on the relationship between Gregor Samsa and his father?

"Self-Analysis in Literary Study" investigates how the psychoanalytic self-analysis enables readers to gain a deeper understanding of literature as well as themselves.

In the past scholars have largely ignored self-analysis as an aid to approaching literature. The contributors in "Self-Analysis in Literary Study" boldly explore how the psyche affects intellectual intellectual discovery in the realm of applied psychoanalysis.

Jeffrey Berman confronts a close friend's suicide through Camus and his student's diaries, kept for an English class. Language, family history, and an attachment to Kafka are addressed in David Bleich's essay. Barbara Ann Schapiro writes of her attraction to Virginia Woolf during her emotional senior year of college. Other essayists include Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, Norman N. Holland, Bernard J. Paris, Steven Rosen, and Michael Steig.

Written for both scholars in the fields of psychology and literature and for a general audience intrigued by self- analysis as a tool for gaining insight, "Self-Analysis in Literary Study" answers traditional questions about literature and raises challenging new ones.

"Psychoanalysis is dead " Again and again this obituary is pronounced, with ever-increasing conviction in newspapers and scholarly journals alike. But the ghost of Freud and his thought continues to haunt those who would seal the grave. "The Legend of Freud" shows why psychoanalysis has remained "uncanny, " not just for its enemies but for its advocates and practitioners as well--and why it continues to fascinate us. For psychoanalysis is not just a theory of psychic conflict: it is a thought in conflict with itself. Often violent, the conflicts of psychoanalysis are most productive where they remain unresolved, thus producing a text that must be "read: " deciphered, interpreted, rewritten. Psychoanalysis: "legenda est."
"Review"
""The Legend of Freud" is a fine example of what can be done with Freud's texts when philosophical and literary approaches converge, and you leave the couch in the other room. . . . Like Lacan and Derrida, Weber doesn't so much explain or interpret Freud as engage him, performing what Freud would have called an "Auseinandersetzung, " a discussion or argument that's also a taking apart, a deconstruction. . . . Deconstruction has picked up a bad name, especially in the minds of those who don't understand it; but this wouldn't be the case if there were more books like Weber's. "The Legend of Freud" is the best deconstructive work I've seen lately, and the best response to Freud; it merits close attention from anyone who wants a challenge, not merely a guide to what's right and wrong. . . . Weber is brilliantly imaginative, respectful of his subject and his readers, and productive of new ideas."
--"Village Voice Literary Supplement"

The book is an in depth exploration of four categories that can define human experience. No prior book has tied the four conditions together or related them to faulty parenting.

During the rise of fascism and anti-Semitism in Germany, Albert Einstein wrote to Sigmund Freud asking the fundamental question: What can be done to liberate humanity from the menace of war? The psychoanalyst replied at length and their exchange of letters (reproduced here) was published in March 1933 under the title Why War?. The book would be included in the book burnings in Berlin on 10th of May that year. Why War? is important in Freud's work because in it he develops a fundamental idea that leads him to conclude that the life and death drives are linked - a thought that he had already entertained in works such as Death and Us (1915), which is also included here. In a terrible irony, Freud dedicated a copy of Why War? to Mussolini, who nonetheless instituted a police investigation of its author. The contributors to this volume explore the reasons underlying the dedication, as well as giving their own reflections on the genesis of war.

The current resurgence of interest in the scientific origins of psychoanalysis has overshadowed the artistic and literary models to which Freud had recourse time and again in the development and presentation of his theories. It is this neglected aesthetic wellspring of psychoanalysis to which Harry Trosman calls attention in Freud and the Imaginative World.

Trosman enriches our understanding of psychoanalysis by demonstrating how Freud's cultural and humanistic commitments guided his pursuit of a science of mind. Toward this end, he undertakes a number of challenging tasks: to situate Freud in the formative culture of his time, to adumbrate the human concerns that infromed his work in the natural sciences, and to delineate the multiple "modes of influence" that fostered his creativity. The second part of the book moves from the cultural sources of Freud's creativity to the psychoanalytic contribution to our understanding of art and literature. Here, Trosman focuses on the consumer of art and literature, tracing psychoanalytic perspectives on aesthetic responsiveness from Freud to the present. Trosman's critical review of the da Vinci and Hamlet literature illustrates the limitations as well as the explanatory potential of the two principal genres of applied psychoanalytic work, and leads naturally to the reflective estimation of psychoanalysis and creativity that concludes the work.

Throughout, Trosman is a well-informed and engaging guide, both to the imaginative Freud and to the abundant literature on psychoanalysis and the arts. He documents Freud's continuing indebtedness to the literary models that nourished his theorizing and gave shape to his narrative clinical expositions, even as he takes pains to show how psychoanalysis has, in many ways, outgrown Freud's own reductive explanations of aesthetic phenomena. A skillfully crafted overview, Freud and the Imaginative World is an exemplary introduction to a crucial aspect of the Freudian legacy.

This is the first detailed assessment of the life and work of Felix Guattari--"Mr. Anti" as the French press labelled him--the friend of and collaborator with Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan and Antonio Negri, and one of the 20th Century's last great activist-intellectuals. Guattari is widely known for his celebrated writings with Deleuze, but these writings do not represent the true breadth and impact of his thinking, writing and activism. Guattari's major work as a clinical and theoretical innovator in psychoanalysis was closely linked to his participation in struggles against European right-wing politics. Felix Guattari introduces the reader to the diversity and sheer range of Guattari's interests, from anti-psychiatry, to Japanese culture, political activism and his theorizing of subjectification.Highlighting why Guattari's work is of increasing relevance to contemporary political, psychoanalytical and philosophical thought, Felix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction presents the reader with an adventurous and provocative introduction to this radical thinker.

This book explores what we mean when we use the term "perversion." Are we dealing with a sexological classification, a mental disturbance, an ethical deviation, a hedonistic style, or an historical-cultural artifact? The book retraces some of the fundamental stages in the field of psychoanalytic thought-from Freud to Masud Khan, Stoller, and Lacan-and proposes an original approach: that "paraphilias" today are taken as an ethical failure of the sexual relationship with the other. The perversions signal a specific relationship with the other, who is treated not simply as a sexual object, but someone whose subjectivity is ably exploited precisely in order to get a perverse pleasure. Acts, if considered perverse, are understood as a metaphorical re-edition of a trauma, above all sexual, in which the subject (as a child) suffered the bitter experience of exclusion or jealousy.

Second Thoughts is a collection of papers on Schizophrenia, Linking and Thinking, and is a commentary upon them in the light of later work. Originally composed between 1950 and 1962, it derives its title from the lengthy critical commentary which Bion attached to these case histories in the year of publication, 1967, and represents the evolutionary change of position marked in his three previous books and brought to further refinement in the present work.

"[T]his is a scholarly, commendable biography and intellectual history. Lay readers will be challenged; psychologists and historians will be grateful."-Library Journal, starred review First published in 1946, Viktor Frankl's memoir Man's Search for Meaning remains one of the most influential books of the last century, selling over ten million copies worldwide and having been embraced by successive generations of readers captivated by its author's philosophical journey in the wake of the Holocaust. This long-overdue reappraisal examines Frankl's life and intellectual evolution anew, from his early immersion in Freudian and Adlerian theory to his development of the "third Viennese school" amid the National Socialist domination of professional psychotherapy. It teases out the fascinating contradictions and ambiguities surrounding his years in Nazi Europe, including the experimental medical procedures he oversaw in occupied Austria and a stopover at the Auschwitz concentration camp far briefer than has commonly been assumed. Throughout, author Timothy Pytell gives a penetrating but fair-minded account of a man whose paradoxical embodiment of asceticism, celebrity, tradition, and self-reinvention drew together the complex strands of twentieth-century intellectual life. From the introduction: At the same time, Frankl's testimony, second only to the Diary of Anne Frankin popularity, has raised the ire of experts on the Holocaust. For example, in the 1990s the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington purportedly refused to sell Man's Search for Meaningin the gift shop.... During the late 1960s and early 1970s Frankl became very popular in America. Frankl's survival of the Holocaust, his reassurance that life is meaningful, and his personal conviction that God exists served to make him a forerunner of the self-help genre.

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Philosophers and political theorists have engaged Lacan's concept of the 'Real' in particular, with Slavoj i ek and Alain Badiou deriving profound philosophical and political consequences from what is the most difficult of Lacan's ideas. This is the first book in English to explore in detail the genesis and consequences of Lacan's concept of the 'Real', providing readers with an invaluable key to one of the most influential ideas of modern times.

This book focuses on the priority that psychoanalysis places on the individual, how the treatment is conceived theoretically and the ways it can be incorporated in the overall organisation of an institution. It brings together the histories of a number of psychoanalytically informed hospitals.

This book provides the reader with rich evidence of the very contemporaneity of Karl Abraham, reminding the reader of his unique clinical contributions to such diverse areas of concentration as the psychoses, depression, and the pre-oedipal.

This book presents a theory of autistic subjectivity from a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective. Dr. Brenner describes autism as a singular mode of being that is fundamentally linked to one's identity and basic practices of existence, offering a rigorous alternative to treating autism as a mental or physical disorder. Drawing on Freud and Lacan's psychoanalytic understanding of the subject, Brenner outlines the unique features of the autistic subjective structure and provides a comprehensive synthesis of contemporary work on the psychoanalysis of autism. The book examines research by theorists including Jean-Claude Maleval, Eric Laurent, Rosine and Robert Lefort that has been largely unavailable to Anglophone audiences until now. In this book autism is posited to be a singular subjective structure not reducible to neurosis or psychosis. In accordance with the Lacanian approach, autism is examined with detailed attention to the subject's use of language, culminating in Brenner's "autistic linguistic spectrum." A compelling read for students and scholars of psychoanalysis and autism researchers and clinicians.

This book focuses upon theories of the Oedipus complex beginning with the theory that Freud gradually developed, starting with his recognition that it is "an integral constituent of the neuroses". It explores the main theories of the Oedipus complex in accessible languages.