Over one hundred years have passed since Sigmund Freudfirst created psychoanalysis. The new profession flourishedwithin the increasing secularization of Westernculture, and it is almost impossible to overestimate its influence.Despite its traditional aloofness from ethical questions,psychoanalysis attracted an extraordinary degree of sectarianbitterness. Original thinkers were condemned as dissidentsand renegades and the merits of individual cases havebeen frequently mixed up with questions concerning powerand ambition, as well as the future of the "movement." In TheTrauma of Freud, Paul Roazen shows how, despite this contentiousness,Freud's legacy has remained central to human selfawareness. Roazen provides a much-needed sequence and perspectiveon the memorable issues that have come up in connection withthe history of Freud's school. Topics covered include the problemof seduction, Jung's Zurich school, Ferenczi's Hungarianfollowing, and the influence of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud inEngland. Also highlighted are Lacanianism in France, ErikErikson's ego psychology, and Sandor Rado's innovations. In consideringthese historical cases and related public scandals,Roazen continually addresses important general issues concerningethics and privacy, the power of orthodoxy, creativity, andthe historiography of psychoanalysis. Throughout, he argues thatrival interpretations are a sign of the intellectual maturity andsophistication of the discipline. Vigorous debate is healthy andessential in avoiding ill-considered and dogmatic self-assurance. He observes that potential zealotry lies just below the surfaceof even the most placid psychoanalytic waters even today. Examiningthe past, so much a part of the job of scholarship, mayinvolve challenging those who might have preferred to let sleepingdogs lie. Roazen emphasizes that Freud's approach restedon the Socratic conviction that the unexamined life is not worthliving and that this constitutes the spiritual basis of its influencebeyond immediate clinical concerns. The Trauma of Freudis a major contribution to the historical literature on psychoanalysis. Paul Roazen is professor emeritus of social and political scienceat York University in Toronto, Ontario, and the author ofThe Historiography of Psychoanalysis, Freud: Political and SocialThought, Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst's Life, EncounteringFreud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis, andBrother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk.

This book argues that Freud’s mapping of trauma as a scene is central to both his clinical interpretation of his patients’ symptoms and his construction of successive theoretical models and concepts to explain the power of such scenes in his patients’ lives. This attention to the scenic form of trauma and its power in determining symptoms leads to Freud’s break from the neurological model of trauma he inherited from Charcot. It also helps to explain the affinity that Freud and many since him have felt between psychoanalysis and literature (and artistic production more generally), and the privileged role of literature at certain turning points in the development of his thought. It is Freud’s scenography of trauma and fantasy that speaks to the student of literature and painting. Overall, the book develops the thesis of Jean Laplanche that in Freud’s shift from a traumatic to a developmental model, along with the undoubted gains embodied in the theory of infantile sexuality, there were crucial losses: specifically, the recognition of the role of the adult other and the traumatic encounter with adult sexuality that is entailed in the ordinary nurture and formation of the infantile subject.

In this book, Roger Luckhurst both introduces and advances the fields of cultural memory and trauma studies, tracing the ways in which ideas of trauma have become a major element in contemporary Western conceptions of the self. The Trauma Question outlines the origins of the concept of trauma across psychiatric, legal and cultural-political sources from the 1860s to the coining of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in 1980. It further explores the nature and extent of ‘trauma culture’ from 1980 to the present, drawing upon a range of cultural practices from literature, memoirs and confessional journalism through to photography and film. The study covers a diverse range of cultural works, including writers such as Toni Morrison, Stephen King and W. G. Sebald, artists Tracey Emin, Christian Boltanski and Tracey Moffatt, and film-makers David Lynch and Atom Egoyan. The Trauma Question offers a significant and fascinating step forward for those seeking a greater understanding of the controversial and ever-expanding field of trauma research.

In a book that is bound to ignite controversy, Ruth Leys investigates the history of the concept of trauma. She explores the emergence of multiple personality disorder, Freud's approaches to trauma, medical responses to shellshock and combat fatigue, Sándor Ferenczi's revisions of psychoanalysis, and the mutually reinforcing, often problematic work of certain contemporary neurobiological and postmodernist theorists. Leys argues that the concept of trauma has always been fundamentally unstable, oscillating uncontrollably between two competing models, each of which tends at its limit to collapse into the other."--Pub. desc.

Attempts to understand recent changes in the canon of American literature through the aid of psychoanalytic theory.

This volume addresses trauma not only from a theoretical, descriptive and therapeutic perspective, but also through the survivor as narrator, meaning maker, and presenter. By conceptualising different outlooks on trauma, exploring transfigurations in writing and art, and engaging trauma through scriptotherapy, dharma art, autoethnography, photovoice and choreography, the interdisciplinary dialogue highlights the need for rethinking and re-examining trauma, as classical treatments geared towards healing do not recognise the potential for transfiguration inherent in the trauma itself. The investigation of the fissures, disruptions and shifts after punctual traumatic events or prolonged exposure to verbal and physical abuse, illness, war, captivity, incarceration, and chemical exposure, amongst others, leads to a new understanding of the transformed self and empowering post-traumatic developments. Contributors are Peter Bray, Francesca Brencio, Mark Callaghan, M. Candace Christensen, Diedra L. Clay, Leanne Dodd, Marie France Forcier, Gen’ichiro Itakura, Jacqueline Linder, Elwin Susan John, Kori D. Novak, Cassie Pedersen, Danielle Schaub, Nicholas Quin Serenati, Aslı Tekinay, Tony M. Vinci and Claudio Zanini.

Employing psychoanalysis, trauma theory, and materialist perspectives, this book examines Shakespeare's appropriations of Ovid's poetry in his Roman poems and plays. It argues that Shakespeare uses Ovid to explore violence, trauma, and virtus - the traumatic effects of aggression, sadomasochism, and the shifting notions of selfhood and masculinity.

Neurologist Sigmund Freud, known as the father of psychoanalysis, helped many dive into their subconscious and better understand themselves. Less known is that Freud struggled with neuroses too. In fact, he used some of his famed techniques on himself. This extraordinary book is a compelling chronological account of Freud’s life, both personal and professional. Of particular focus is the examination of how he developed his theories. Primary sources from the London Freud Museum, such as diary extracts, rare photographs, and personal notes, give insight into the mind of the man who helped unravel the mystery of our own minds.

In The Freudian Reading, Lis Moller examines the premises, procedures, and objectives of psychoanalytic reading in order to question the kind of knowledge such readings produce. But above all she questions the role of Freud as master explicator.

Roth and Trauma: The Problem of History in the Later Works (1995-2010) moves beyond a critical reception of Philip Roth's recent fiction that has focused primarily on an interest in post WWII America. By contrast, Aimee Pozorski argues that these novels grapple more comprehensively with US history in their fascination with America's "traumatic beginnings" and the legacy of the American Revolution. Drawing on close readings and trauma theory, Roth and Trauma reveals the problem of history in Roth's later works to be the unexpected and repeated appearance of historical trauma that links the still-unfinished American dream with the nightmarish quality of our recent history.