'Frosh knows his material extremely well; he raises interesting questions and offers some suggestive insights...His interweaving of social theory with psychodynamic explanation is sophisticated and compelling...The book is valuable for its thoughtful and informed insights on contemporary psychoanalytic theories of the self and its pathologies' Contemporary Psychology Identity Crisis examines the psychological responses of people to the excitements and terrors that characterise the modern world. Beginning with a description of modernist and post-modernist accounts of contemporary life, it then moves into detailed discussions of narcissism and psychosis - two states of mind that seem to characterise the 'crises of self' to which the modern world gives rise. Identity Crisis will be of interest to students in a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, psychoanalysis, politics and cultural studies.

This edited volume provides a critical history of psychoanalysis in Brazil. Written mainly by Brazilian historians and practitioners of psychoanalysis, the chapters address some central questions about psychoanalysis' social role. How did psychoanalysis develop and flourish in a society in which modernisation was accompanied by inequality, authoritarianism and violence? How did psychoanalysis survive in Brazil alongside censorship and repression? Through a variety of lenses, the contributors demonstrate how psychoanalysis in Brazil presented itself as progressive and transformative and maintained this self-image even as it developed institutional structures that reproduce the authoritarianism of the wider society. This novel work offers rich conceptual and practical insights for academic researchers and practitioners of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and addresses methodological questions of concern to academics working across the social sciences. Crucially, it also outlines a distinctive vision of psychoanalysis seen through a Brazilian lens, which will be of interest to readers seeking to confront the Eurocentric and North American bias of much psychoanalytic debate.

"Offers superb coverage of the key concepts in psychoanalysis."
--Anthony Elliott, author of "Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction"

Over 100 years since its origins, psychoanalysis continues to be a key source of insights across the humanities and social sciences. Being well-versed in psychoanalytic concepts is a crucial element in cultural literacy today.

Key Concepts in Psychoanalysis accessibly introduces the core psychoanalytic concepts. In contrast to existing dictionaries, the volume does not simply offer cursory definitions, and it is not overly entrenched in a particular psychoanalytic tradition.

Providing short, reader-friendly descriptions of each concept, Key Concepts in Psychoanalysis shows both its place in the field as well its more general cultural usage. It is not simply a reference book, but can be read cover to cover to provide an overview of the therapeutic and cultural uses of central terms. Concepts are introduced in ways which make them truly available to a non-expert readership and to beginning students.

Examples of concepts introduced include: unconscious, repression, projection, Oedipus complex, interpretation, resistance, and transference.

Everyone talks abut their feelings, but what exactly are they? What are the distinguishing features of feelings, and how do they differ from emotions and affects? How do our feelings influence the kinds of people we are, and the sorts of communities and societies in which we live?

In this wonderful short book, acclaimed author Stephen Frosh interrogates the terrain of feelings and asks how this ?hidden? dimension of the self helps shape our worlds. The book provides an accessible and thought-provoking introduction to the major debates around feelings in the modern world.

Feelings is an accessible and engaging resource for students, academics, and indeed anyone with an interest in gaining a better understanding of this fundamental area of life.

Psychosocial studies challenges the traditions of psychology and sociology from a genuinely transdisciplinary perspective. The book reflects this agenda in its varied theoretical and empirical strands, producing a newly contextualised and restless body of understanding of how 'psychic' and 'social' processes intertwine.

More than a hundred years after its founding, psychoanalysis remains influential and controversial far outside its core sphere of activity in the 'clinic'. In a wide range of cultural and social disciplines, psychoanalytic ideas are drawn on to explain human subjectivity and its relationship with the social world. This lucid and engaging book explores these interventions through detailed examination of how psychoanalytic ideas apply in literature, politics, social psychology, philosophy and psychosocial studies. The highly-regarded and influential author, Stephen Frosh, shows how psychoanalysis can at times greatly illuminate these fields of study, and how at other times it might misread them. He also asks what psychoanalysis can learn from the disciplines with which it is in dialogue, and particularly how it can retain its own capacity for critical thought. Sophisticated and stimulating, yet accessible and approachable, this important book: * provides a critical exploration that will stimulate further debate about the place of psychoanalysis in intellectual life * develops the newly emerging psychosocial perspective as one that links psychological and social theories in novel ways. Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic will be of profound interest to students and academics across a wide range of disciplines, particularly those taking courses in social, cultural or political theory at undergraduate or postgraduate level or studying on programmes in Psychoanalytic or Psychosocial Studies.

How do boys see themselves? Their peers? The adult world? What are their aspirations, their fears? How do they feel about their own masculinity? About style, 'race', homophobia? About football? This book examines aspects of 'young masculinities' that have become central to contemporary social thought, paying attention to psychological issues as well as to social policy concerns. Centring on a study involving in-depth exploration, through individual and group intererviews, the authors bring to light the way boys in the early years of secondary schooling conceptualise and articulate their experiences of themselves, their peers and the adult world. The book includes discussion of boys' aspirations and anxieties, their feelings of pride and loss. As such, it offers an unusually detailed set of insights into the experiential world inhabited by these boys - how they see themselves, how girls see them, what they wish for and fear, where they feel their 'masculinity' to be advantageous and where it inhibits other potential experiences. In describing this material, the authors explore questions such as the place of violence in young people's lives, the functions of 'hardness', of homophobia and football, boys' underachievement in school, and the pervasive racialisation of masculine identity construction. Young Masculinities will be invaluable to researchers in psychology, sociology, gender and youth studies, as well as to those devising social policy on boys and young men. STEPHEN FROSH is Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London, and previously Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Vice Dean in the Child and Family Department at the Tavistock Clinic, London. He is the author of numerous academic papers and several books, including For and Against Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference: Masculinity and Psychoanalysis, Identity Crisis: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and the Self and The Politics of Psychoanalysis. He is joint author, with Danya Glaser, of Child Sexual Abuse and co-editor with Anthony Elliott of Psychoanalysis in Context. ANN PHOENIX is Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Open University. Her books include Standpoints and Differences (with Karen Henwood and Chris Griffin), Crossfires: Nationalism, Racism and Gender in Europe (with Helma Lutz and Nira Yuval-Davies), and Black, White or Mixed Race? (with Barbara Tizard). ROB PATTMAN is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Botswana. He has taught sociology in sixth form colleges and institutions of higher education in Britain and southern Africa, and published articles on whiteness, gender identities, sex and AIDS education and social theory.

Psychosocial studies in the UK is a diverse area of work characterised by innovation in theory and empirical research. Its extraordinary liveliness is demonstrated in this book, which showcases research undertaken at the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, highlighting three domains central to the discipline - psychoanalysis, ethics and reflexivity, and resistance. The book engages psychosocially with a wide variety of topics, from social critiques of psychoanalysis through postcolonial and queer theory to studies of mental health and resistance to discrimination. These 'New Voices in Psychosocial Studies' offer a coherent yet wide-ranging account of research that has taken place in one 'dialect' of the new terrain of psychosocial studies and an agenda-setting manifesto for some of the kinds of work that might ensure the continued creativity of psychosocial studies into the next generation. This book demonstrates the ongoing development of psychosocial studies as an innovative, critical force and will inspire both new and established researchers from across the fields that influence its transdisciplinary approach, including: critical psychology and radical sociology, feminist, queer and postcolonial theory, critical anthropology and ethnography and phenomenology.

Everyone talks about their feelings, but what exactly are they? What are the distinguishing features of feelings, and how do they differ from emotions and affects? How do our feelings influence the kinds of people we are, and the sorts of communities and societies in which we live?

In this wonderful short book, acclaimed author Stephen Frosh interrogates the terrain of feelings and asks how this hidden dimension of the self helps shape our worlds. The book provides an accessible and thought-provoking introduction to the major debates around feelings in the modern world.

Feelings is an accessible and engaging resource for students, academics, and indeed anyone with an interest in gaining a better understanding of this fundamental area of life.

Psychoanalysis has always been a source of controversy throughout academic and popular culture. This controversy relates to questions of its true value, its scientific status, its politics and its therapeutic effectiveness. Psychoanalysis' defenders regard it as a body of knowledge built on careful and painstaking exploration of complex clinical encounters, offering more detailed and valid insights than can be obtained from other sources. Psychoanalysis is also a building block for considerations of human subjectivity in a wide range of academic disciplines and practical areas of work, from social theory to feminist studies, to counseling and psychotherapy.
In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition of "For and Against Psychoanalysis," Stephen Frosh examines the arguments surrounding psychoanalysis at some key points: its standing as a scientific theory, its value as a method of therapy, its potency as a contributor to debates around identity construction, gender, homosexuality andracism. At each of these points, there is something to be said 'for and against' psychoanalysis, with the balance depending on whether it deepens our understanding of human functioning, whether it is consistent with its own perceptions and theories or seems subservient to social pressures and norms, and whether it is coherent or muddled, evocative or sterile.
"For and Against Psychoanalysis" provides an accessible introduction and critical guide to the current standing of psychoanalysis. It is essential reading for students of psychoanalysis, counseling, psychotherapy and psychology, and for social researchers and social theorists, as well as for those who are simply interested in what placepsychoanalysis has in the modern world.

Psychoanalysis has always been a source of controversy throughout academic and popular culture. This controversy relates to questions of its true value, its scientific status, its politics and its therapeutic effectiveness. Psychoanalysis' defenders regard it as a body of knowledge built on careful and painstaking exploration of complex clinical encounters, offering more detailed and valid insights than can be obtained from other sources. Psychoanalysis is also a building block for considerations of human subjectivity in a wide range of academic disciplines and practical areas of work, from social theory to feminist studies, to counseling and psychotherapy.
In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition of "For and Against Psychoanalysis," Stephen Frosh examines the arguments surrounding psychoanalysis at some key points: its standing as a scientific theory, its value as a method of therapy, its potency as a contributor to debates around identity construction, gender, homosexuality andracism. At each of these points, there is something to be said 'for and against' psychoanalysis, with the balance depending on whether it deepens our understanding of human functioning, whether it is consistent with its own perceptions and theories or seems subservient to social pressures and norms, and whether it is coherent or muddled, evocative or sterile.
"For and Against Psychoanalysis" provides an accessible introduction and critical guide to the current standing of psychoanalysis. It is essential reading for students of psychoanalysis, counseling, psychotherapy and psychology, and for social researchers and social theorists, as well as for those who are simply interested in what placepsychoanalysis has in the modern world.

Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions shows how the present is troubled by the past and by the future, using the idea of haunting to explore psychoanalytically how identities, beliefs, intimacies and hatreds are transmitted across generations and between people. It deals with the secrets that we inherit, the 'pull' of the past, and the way emotions, thoughts and impulses enter into us from others as a kind of immaterial yet real communication. It demonstrates how past oppressions return, demanding acknowledgement and reparation, and it explores how recognition and forgiveness can arise from this. Rooted in psychoanalysis, postcolonial and psychosocial studies, this book addresses the question of what passes through and between human subjects and how these things structure psychosocial and psychopolitical life.

During the last decade and a half there have been dramatic changes in psychoanalytic theory, as well as in cultural, social and political theory. This book examines these changes and explores the relationship between psychoanalysis and theory. New directions in psychoanalytic thinking are introduced, including the work of Castoriadis, and Freudian and object-relational approaches are examined from new or different perspectives. In addition, the contributors review the post-Lacanian writings of Kristeva, Irigaray and Zizek, and the contemporary Anglo-American writings of Benjamin, Kovel, Segal and others. The book creates a dialogue between different psychoanalytic approaches to the study of subjectivity, social action and modern societies. It should be of use to those interested in the connections between psychoanalysis and cultural theory.

During the last decade and a half there have been dramatic changes in psychoanalytic theory, as well as in cultural, social and political theory. This book examines these changes and explores the relationship between psychoanalysis and theory. New directions in psychoanalytic thinking are introduced, including the work of Castoriadis, and Freudian and object-relational approaches are examined from new or different perspectives. In addition, the contributors review the post-Lacanian writings of Kristeva, Irigaray and Zizek, and the contemporary Anglo-American writings of Benjamin, Kovel, Segal and others. The book creates a dialogue between different psychoanalytic approaches to the study of subjectivity, social action and modern societies. It should be of use to those interested in the connections between psychoanalysis and cultural theory.

"Sexual Difference: Masculinity and Psychoanalysis" offers a critical exploration of issues of gender in psychoanalysis. It acknowledges and unpacks the complexity of theory and writing in this area, particularly the way sexual difference can only be thought about from a gendered position. As the book is written by a male academic and psychologist, its orientation is towards the way masculinity is expressed in theory and practice, and how this influences the experience and construction of both masculinity and femininity in contemporary culture. In addition, Stephen Frosh describes how psychoanalysis itself can be seen as a system and approach heavily imbued with gender assumptions, and how the form and content of its theories express many of the dilemmas of sexual difference which it seeks to overcome. The text is written in an accessible and self-reflexive style. It introduces major strands of psychoanalytic theory on sexual difference, particularly those associated with the Kleinian and Lacanian traditions, and includes a detailed exploration of the gender assumptions apparent in some of Freud's work.

This edited volume provides a critical history of psychoanalysis in Brazil. Written mainly by Brazilian historians and practitioners of psychoanalysis, the chapters address some central questions about psychoanalysis' social role. How did psychoanalysis develop and flourish in a society in which modernisation was accompanied by inequality, authoritarianism and violence? How did psychoanalysis survive in Brazil alongside censorship and repression? Through a variety of lenses, the contributors demonstrate how psychoanalysis in Brazil presented itself as progressive and transformative and maintained this self-image even as it developed institutional structures that reproduce the authoritarianism of the wider society. This novel work offers rich conceptual and practical insights for academic researchers and practitioners of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and addresses methodological questions of concern to academics working across the social sciences. Crucially, it also outlines a distinctive vision of psychoanalysis seen through a Brazilian lens, which will be of interest to readers seeking to confront the Eurocentric and North American bias of much psychoanalytic debate.

In this collection of conversations that were conducted in Calcutta, at the London School of Economics, through Jewish Book Week, and on the radical website openDemocracy, internationally renowned Jewish scholar Jacqueline Rose explores the debates that have fueled her writing and thinking over three decades. Drawn out by her interlocutors, Rose discusses the difference between political and sexual identity and inquires whether psychoanalysis can be considered a radical form of thought that can be used fruitfully in dialogue about political struggle. Most significantly--since each of these conversations were sparked by her recent and controversial writing on Zionism, Israel, and Palestine--Rose reflects on the role of Jewish dissent in our time. In these conversations, Rose appears courageous, passionate, ethical, and never afraid to engage politically on issues that are of human concern in the ongoing Middle and Near East crisis.

Psychosocial studies challenges the traditions of psychology and sociology from a genuinely transdisciplinary perspective. The book reflects this agenda in its varied theoretical and empirical strands, producing a newly contextualised and restless body of understanding of how 'psychic' and 'social' processes intertwine.

Die psychosozialen Studien im Vereinigten Königreich sind ein vielfältiger Arbeitsbereich, der sich durch Innovation in Theorie und empirischer Forschung auszeichnet. Die außerordentliche Lebendigkeit dieses Bereichs zeigt sich in diesem Buch, das die Forschungsarbeiten der Abteilung für psychosoziale Studien an der Birkbeck University of London, UK, vorstellt und drei zentrale Bereiche der Disziplin beleuchtet: Psychoanalyse, Ethik und Reflexivität sowie Widerstand. Das Buch befasst sich auf psychosoziale Weise mit einer Vielzahl von Themen, von der Sozialkritik der Psychoanalyse über postkoloniale und Queer-Theorie bis hin zu Studien über psychische Gesundheit und Widerstand gegen Diskriminierung. Diese "New Voices in Psychosocial Studies" bieten eine kohärente und doch weitreichende Darstellung der Forschung, die in einem "Dialekt" des neuen Terrains der psychosozialen Studien stattgefunden hat, und ein Agenda-setzendes Manifest für einige der Arten von Arbeit, die die fortgesetzte Kreativität der psychosozialen Studien in der nächsten Generation sicherstellen könnten. Dieses Buch zeigt die kontinuierliche Entwicklung der psychosozialen Studien als innovative, kritische Kraft und wird sowohl neue als auch etablierte Forscher aus allen Bereichen inspirieren, die ihren transdisziplinären Ansatz beeinflussen, einschließlich: kritische Psychologie und radikale Soziologie, feministische, queere und postkoloniale Theorie, kritische Anthropologie und Ethnographie und Phänomenologie.  

"Offers superb coverage of the key concepts in psychoanalysis."
--Anthony Elliott, author of "Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction"

Over 100 years since its origins, psychoanalysis continues to be a key source of insights across the humanities and social sciences. Being well-versed in psychoanalytic concepts is a crucial element in cultural literacy today.

Key Concepts in Psychoanalysis accessibly introduces the core psychoanalytic concepts. In contrast to existing dictionaries, the volume does not simply offer cursory definitions, and it is not overly entrenched in a particular psychoanalytic tradition.

Providing short, reader-friendly descriptions of each concept, Key Concepts in Psychoanalysis shows both its place in the field as well its more general cultural usage. It is not simply a reference book, but can be read cover to cover to provide an overview of the therapeutic and cultural uses of central terms. Concepts are introduced in ways which make them truly available to a non-expert readership and to beginning students.

Examples of concepts introduced include: unconscious, repression, projection, Oedipus complex, interpretation, resistance, and transference.

Psychosocial studies in the UK is a diverse area of work characterised by innovation in theory and empirical research. Its extraordinary liveliness is demonstrated in this book, which showcases research undertaken at the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, highlighting three domains central to the discipline - psychoanalysis, ethics and reflexivity, and resistance. The book engages psychosocially with a wide variety of topics, from social critiques of psychoanalysis through postcolonial and queer theory to studies of mental health and resistance to discrimination. These 'New Voices in Psychosocial Studies' offer a coherent yet wide-ranging account of research that has taken place in one 'dialect' of the new terrain of psychosocial studies and an agenda-setting manifesto for some of the kinds of work that might ensure the continued creativity of psychosocial studies into the next generation. This book demonstrates the ongoing development of psychosocial studies as an innovative, critical force and will inspire both new and established researchers from across the fields that influence its transdisciplinary approach, including: critical psychology and radical sociology, feminist, queer and postcolonial theory, critical anthropology and ethnography and phenomenology.

This book explores the legacies of suffering in relation to 'those who come after' - the descendants of victims, survivors and perpetrators of traumatic events. It draws on recent discussions of 'postmemory' and 'haunting' that are concerned mainly with the transgenerational impact of personal and social trauma. It examines how we are connected to past events for which we have no direct responsibility yet in which we might in some way be 'implicated' and it asks how we might attain a position of active witnessing that helps resolve the suffering of others. Those Who Come After includes vivid accounts of witnessing from a variety of perspectives, ranging from Biblical and Jewish stories to contemporary art and music. The book draws on psychosocial studies and psychoanalysis to help make sense of this material and to develop an understanding of acknowledgment and responsibility that is both ethical and emancipatory. Those Who Come After will be of great interest to readers in psychosocial studies and psychoanalysis and to all who are concerned with the question of how to put past suffering to rest.

This text explores how the present is troubled by the past and the future. It uses the idea of haunting to explore how identities, beliefs, intimacies and hatreds are transmitted across generations and between people and how these things structure psychosocial and psychopolitical life.