Reflection on the history of psychoanalysis, its conceptual foundations and its relation to other disciplines.

This book makes clear that the problem of seduction and suggestion raises major psychoanalytic, and more generally philosophical problems that are still of great importance for the self-understanding of contemporary humankind.

Ever since the shocking revelations of the fascist ties of Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man, postmodernism has been haunted by the specter of a compromised past. In this intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, Richard Wolin shows that postmodernism’s infatuation with fascism has been extensive and widespread. He questions postmodernism’s claim to have inherited the mantle of the Left, suggesting instead that it has long been enamored with the opposite end of the political spectrum. Wolin reveals how, during in the 1930s, C. G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot were seduced by fascism's promise of political regeneration and how this misapprehension affected the intellectual core of their work. The result is a compelling and unsettling reinterpretation of the history of modern thought. In a new preface, Wolin revisits this illiberal intellectual lineage in light of the contemporary resurgence of political authoritarianism.

Despite the prominence of television in our everyday lives, psychoanalytic approaches to its significance and function are notoriously few and far between. This volume takes up perspectives from object relations theory and other psychoanalytic approaches to ask questions about the role of television as an object of the internal worlds of its viewers, and also addresses itself to a range of specific television programmes, ranging from Play School, through the plays of Jack Rosenthal to recent TV blockbuster series such as In Treatment. In addition, it considers the potential of television to open up new public spaces of therapeutic experience. Interviews with a TV producer and with the subject of a documentary expressly suggest that there is scope for television to make a positive therapeutic intervention in people's lives. At the same time, however, the pitfalls of reality programming are explored with reference to the politics of entertainment and the televisual values that heighten the drama of representation rather than emphasising the emotional experience of reality television participants and viewers.

A watershed in the articulation of the relational psychoanalytic paradigm, this volume offers a rich overview of issues currently being addressed by clinicians and theoreticians writing from a variety of complementary relational viewpoints. Chapter topics cover the roots of the relational orientation in early psychoanalytic thinking, the impact of relational consideration on developmental theory, relational conceptions of "self" and "other," and clinical applications of relational perspectives.

"The question, 'Who am I?' resounded throughout the surrealist movement. The exploration of dreams and the unconscious prompted surrealists to reject the notion of a unified, indivisible self by revealing the subject to be haunted by otherness and instability. In this book David Lomas explores the surrealist concepts of the self and subjectivity from a psychoanalytic viewpoint. Employing a series of case studies devoted to individual artists, Lomas arrives at a radically new account of surrealist art and its cultural and intellectual roots." "Weaving together psychoanalytic and historical material, the author analyses works by Ernst, Dali, Masson, Miro and Picasso with regard to such themes as automatism, hysteria, the uncanny and the abject. Lomas focuses closely on individual artworks, examines the specific circumstances in which they were produced and offers new insights into the artists and their projects as well as the theories of Bataille, Breton and others. Lomas demonstrates the powerful connection between the history of psychoanalysis and the history of surrealism, and along the way shows the unique value of psychoanalytic theory as a tool for the art historian."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

First published in 2000. Did people in early modern Europe have a concept of an inner self? Carla Mazzio and Douglas Trevor have brought together an outstanding group of literary, cultural, and history scholars to answer this intriguing question. Through a synthesis of historicism and psychoanalytic criticism, the contributors explore the complicated, nuanced, and often surprising union of history and subjectivity in Europe centuries before psychoanalytic theory. Addressing such topics as "fetishes and Renaissances," "the cartographic unconscious," and "the topographic imaginary," these essays move beyond the strict boundaries of historicism and psychoanalysis to carve out new histories of interiority in early modern Europe.

The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis: Understanding and Working With Trauma is an invaluable and cutting edge resource providing the current theory, practice, and research on trauma and dissociation within psychoanalysis. Elizabeth Howell and Sheldon Itzkowitz bring together experts in the field of dissociation and psychoanalysis, providing a comprehensive and forward-looking overview of the current thinking on trauma and dissociation. The volume contains articles on the history of concepts of trauma and dissociation, the linkage of complex trauma and dissociative problems in living, different modalities of treatment and theoretical approaches based on a new understanding of this linkage, as well as reviews of important new research. Overarching all of these is a clear explanation of how pathological dissociation is caused by trauma, and how this affects psychological organization -- concepts which have often been largely misunderstood. The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists, trauma therapists, and students.

"What makes Emily Dickinson such a fascinating poet? Although she left no personal poetics, she did define her own response to poetry as an immediate sensual reaction: "If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry" (L. 342a). Presumably, her own poetry is most significant not in what it communicates to a reader but in what it does to a reader. Is the continued popular success of that poetry not conclusive evidence of its capacity to elicit a similarly spontaneous, visceral response from its readers? And is Dickinson's critical reception not the visible proof of the perpetuation of a powerful (and uncanny) reading seduction?" "Relocating Dickinson within her own culture reveals the genesis of her rhetoric of seduction. But the consequences of the rhetorical "seduction" of antebellum readers still impact readers today. Why do critical studies of the poet so often identify her as the classic analysand, the female hysteric? Because transference is frequently the engine of analysis, misshaping the reader's relationship with the text by introducing a past scene of seduction into a present interpretive context. Recent critical interpretations of Dickinson's poetry exhibit a distinct homology between the interpreters' own prevailing fascinations and the apparent thematic concerns of the poetic text they analyze. These interpretations suggest that to analyze this poet is to put oneself under analysis: to attempt her seduction is to be oneself seduced."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved