Description
Book SynopsisElvio Fachinelli(19281989) was a leading Italian psychoanalyst whose clinical, theoretical, and activist work resonated well beyond his discipline. In The Still Arrow, Fachinelli launches an interdisciplinary investigation ranging from anthropology to politics, and from the history of religions to the critique of ideology. Originally published in 1979, this book displays Fachinelli's eclectic methodology. The Still Arrow goes against Freud's attempt in Totem and Taboo to equate individual psycho-libidinal predicaments with those of whole societies. Yet, it argues that the difference between the two always remains one of degree, not of principle. The vexing problem of their relation is approached through an interrogation of time. From a psychoanalytic standpoint, individual obsessional neurosis is firmly connected to a repudiation of death. But, Fachinelli argues, comparable temporal strategies are also present at the group level, in disparate social and historical contexts, for instanc
Trade Review"Fachinelli (1928–89) was a prominent Italian psychoanalyst, and wrote this landmark study of obsessional neurosis in Italian. First published in 1979 and here translated for the first time into English, the book was inspired by a single case in which an obsessional man was observed to attempt, through his practice of tackling daily activities, to nullify time by doing them in reverse order. . . . The book rethinks Freudianism and should interest scholars of the European history of ideas, psychoanalysis, and religion as well as practitioners who seek fresh approaches to conceptualizing the difficult cases of obsessional patients." * Choice *
Table of ContentsI. The Man Who Annulled Time
II. Beat, Wheel, Arrow
III. The Ferociousness of the Ancestors
IV. The Obsessive Lath
V. An Archaic Microsociety
VI. The Fascist Phenomenon
VII. Suggestions and Conclusions
Appendix
On Freud’s Verleugnung
The Sitting King
Index of Names
