Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology Books

Book SynopsisIn a career spanning more than five decades the distinguished French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (1924 - 2012) elaborated a distinctive methodology for the reading of Freud's corpus and evolved, in connection with it, a radical new metapsychology - one that critically recast Freud's early 'seduction' theory of trauma and placed at the heart of psychic life a particular model of 'enigmatic signification'. Seductions and Enigmas is a volume dedicated to the implications of Laplanche's thought for reading and interpretation. It collects papers that elaborate Laplanche's unique method for the interpretation of Freud, with its attention to the decentering and recentering movements of thought that structure the psychoanalytic field, and explore how the metapsychological developments arising from the implementation of that method open up new horizons for the psychoanalytic reading of other texts and oeuvres in the cultural domain. The volume comprises essays by Laplanche as well as by clinicians and scholars whose work takes inspiration from his research. Authors variously establish, develop or consolidate Laplanche's critical methodology as such, or work through aspects of his major theoretical innovations as points of departure for the reading of cultural works of different kinds: fiction, drama, painting, visual and sound installations, and film. These theoretical innovations cover a breadth of topics including seduction, sublimation, gender, femininity, the functions of binding and unbinding, masochism and the role of the enigmatic. In their range, the texts brought together here are a testament to the vitality and fertility of Laplanche's theoretical endeavour, for anyone concerned with the re-reading of Freud or with continuing to recalibrate and advance the parameters of critical interpretation in light of Freud's legacy.Trade ReviewThis superb collection will be essential reading on Jean Laplanche, both for his analysis of Freud on interpretation, and for Laplanche's centrally important idea of seduction as 'the other in me'. New insights emerge in the exploration of its significance for understanding sexuality and gender, and for our experience of cultural works and their impact as 'enigmatic messages'. Elizabeth Cowie, Professor of Film Studies University of Kent This collection of important papers advances the vital project of bringing Laplanche's originality to the attention of Anglophone readers. What Laplanche offers to both clinicians and cultural critics is an account of interpretation that locates alterity and constitutive opacity at the heart of human relations. Happily this book is not opaque but admirably lucid in its exposition of key concepts and their potential for illuminating a range of aesthetic forms and cultural formations. Seductions and Enigmas is an extremely useful book. Tim Dean, Director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture, SUNY-BuffaloTable of ContentsIntroduction; Seductions and Enigmas: Laplanche, Reading, Theory - John Fletcher and Nicholas Ray; Reading and Interpretation: Laplanche and the Case of Freud; Interpreting (with) Freud - Jean Laplanche; Exigency and Going-Astray - Jean Laplanche; Sublimation and/or Inspiration - Jean Laplanche; Seduction, Sexuality, Gender Primal Femininity - Jacques Andres; Seduction, Gender and the Drive - Judith Butler; Seductions, Enigmas, Literary Texts Culture, Cognition and Jean Laplanche's Enigmatic Signifier - Allyson Stack; Gothic's Enigmatic Signifier: the Case of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla - Mike Davis; The Ides of March: from Mastery to Vampirism - Eric Toubiana; The Scenography of Trauma: a 'Copernican' reading of Sophocles' Oedipus the King - John Fletcher; Seduction and Infraction in the Visual and Aural Fields; Breast-Feeding as Original Seduction and Primal Scene of Seduction: Giorgione's La Tempesta - Jacqueline Lanouziere Femininity and Passivity in the Primal Scene: The Little Death of Sardanapalus - Jacques Andre Seduction, Receptivity and the 'Feminine' in Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book - Nicholas Ray Bruce Nauman, Jean Laplanche and the Art of Helplessness - Josh Cohen

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Book SynopsisAn engaging book that charts the turbulent journey from childhood to adulthood of a well-known psychoanalyst. "Our human task is to be lived by Life. Life as a transcendent principle. It seems to me that a reliable test of whether we have lived worthwhile lives is this: is the world a better place for my having lived in it?" Neville Symington has written a dozen books about psychoanalysis but this one is different from all the others. It is an emotional autobiography that starts with his own birth and gives a character sketch of his mother and father and his upbringing in Portugal, with a two year period in Canada, and takes the reader through to the age of 45 by which time he was a qualified psychoanalyst, married with two sons and, at the time, living in London. This sounds like the story of a peaceful journey from childhood through to his chosen career in adulthood. However, the author takes the reader through the period of his earlier career in the Church in a parish in the East End of London and the turbulent period of change that led him to take leave of this first career, seek psychoanalysis and finally to become a psychoanalyst himself. This is an engaging book that charts the emotional storms and the ups and downs that beset the life's journey of a well-known psychoanalyst.Table of ContentsCONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR ix CHAPTER ONE Father 1 CHAPTER TWO Mother 49 CHAPTER THREE School and after school 69 CHAPTER FOUR Nightmare in Lisbon 101 CHAPTER FIVE The seminary 119 CHAPTER SIX The birth of subjectivity 149 CHAPTER SEVEN In exile 201 CHAPTER EIGHT Disaster and recovery 261

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Book SynopsisWhat is revolutionary about psychoanalysis, and why should those of us concerned with political praxis take it seriously? This manifesto is an argument for connecting social transformation with personal liberation, showing that the two aspects of profound change can be intimately linked together using psychoanalysis. This manifesto explores what lies beyond us, what we keep repeating, what pushes and pulls us to stay the same and to change, and how those phenomena are transferred into clinical space. This book is not uncritical of psychoanalysis, and transforms it so that liberation movements can transform the world. With a preface by Suryia Nayak.Trade Review'There are always complex and inevitable ties between the personal and the political, but to understand them fully we need to grasp the radical potential of psychoanalysis, despite its uses being constantly tamed and domesticated. If you want to know how to make and to keep psychoanalysis revoutionary, read this Manifesto. It will inspire you.' – Lynne Segal, Author of Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy

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Book Synopsis

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