Description
Book SynopsisMeaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment sees Christopher Bollas apply his creative and innovative psychoanalytic thinking to various contemporary social, cultural and political themes.
This book offers an incisive exploration of powerful trends within, and between, nations in the West over the past two hundred years. The author traces shifts in psychological forces and frames of mind', that have resulted in a crucial intellectual climate change'. He contends that recent decades have seen rapid and significant transformations in how we define our selves', as a new emphasis on instant connectedness has come to replace reflectiveness and introspection.
Bollas argues that this trend has culminated in the current rise of psychophobia; a fear of the mind and a rejection of depth psychologies that has paved the way for what he sees as hate based solutions to world problems, such as the victory of Trump in America and Brexit in the United Kingdom. He ma
Trade Review
Praise for Christopher Bollas:
"One of the two most important living theoreticians in the world of psychoanalysis."-Al Haaretz
"The most influential psychoanalyst writing in English today."-The Townsend Center, University of California, Berkeley
"The most evocative psychoanalytic writer we have."-Adam Phillips
Table of ContentsPreface; Prologue; 1. The search for meaning 2. The Great War and the manic moment 3. The crash 4. Human character changes 5. Fractured selves 6. Normopathy and the compound syndrome 7. Transmissive selves 8. New forms of thinking 9. Resuscitation 10. Anti globalization 11. The democratic mind 12. "I hear that…" 13. Paranoia 14. Ideology 15. The pieces of the puzzle
