On the Shoulders of Freud
On the Shoulders of Freud

Author: Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 1991-01-01

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 9781412830164

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Taking his title from a saying of the French philosopher Bernard de Chartres that "even dwarfs on the shoulders of giants can see farther than them," the author offers a brilliant new reading of the history of psychoanalysis. Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca exploits Sigmund Freud's fundamental stature, but rejects the common belief that "orthodox" psychoanalysis begins and ends with its founder. The author attempts to "see farther" than those who deny the advances and radical epistemological ruptures that have enriched and modified psychoanalysis after Freud. He also rejects the presumptions of those who condemn Freud for having "missed" much that only today is held to be true in psychoanalytic theory. In the author's view the relatively slow development of new ideas in psychoanalysis is traceable to what he terms "closure"-the narrow authoritarianism with which Freud's and his first followers protected the validity and basic outline of his method. Aware that a new approach to the understanding of the Freudian revolution means challenging this authoritarianism, Speziale-Bagliacca analyzes three chapters of the history of psychoanalysis to test its resilience: the Eissler-Roazen controversy over the suicide of Freud's pupil Victor Tausk, the case of the Wolf-Man analyzed by Freud, and the personality of Jacques Lacan and its influence on his writing and teaching method. In each instance, the author demonstrates how psychoanalytic knowledge runs the risk of becoming a closed system, a sort of secret society. To Speziale-Bagliacca, Freud is not infallible, but his "dethroning" must be conducted with courage, honesty, and an awareness of the inevitable anxiety that such an operation imposes. "On Freud's Shoulders "is an authoritative work on the complex ways in which psychoanalysis can look at its history and improve its therapeutic approach.

Killing Freud
Killing Freud

Author: Todd Dufresne

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2006-09-19

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780826493392

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Killing Freud takes the reader on a journey through the 20th century, tracing the work and influence of one of its greatest icons, Sigmund Freud. A devastating critique, Killing Freud ranges across the strange case of Anna O, the hysteria of Josef Breuer, the love of dogs, the Freud industry, the role of gossip and fiction, bad manners, pop psychology and French philosophy, figure skating on thin ice, and contemporary therapy culture. A map to the Freudian minefield and a masterful negotiation of high theory and low culture, Killing Freud is a witty and fearless revaluation of psychoanalysis and its real place in 20th century history. It will appeal to anyone curious about the life of the mind after the death of Freud.

The Late Sigmund Freud
The Late Sigmund Freud

Author: Todd Dufresne

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-03-24

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 110717872X

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A fundamental reassessment of the meaning of Freud's last phase of work: the applied psychoanalysis of culture and society.

Freud
Freud

Author: Frederick Crews

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2017-08-22

Total Pages: 768

ISBN-13: 1627797181

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From the master of Freud debunkers, the book that definitively puts an end to the myth of psychoanalysis and its creator Since the 1970s, Sigmund Freud’s scientific reputation has been in an accelerating tailspin—but nonetheless the idea persists that some of his contributions were visionary discoveries of lasting value. Now, drawing on rarely consulted archives, Frederick Crews has assembled a great volume of evidence that reveals a surprising new Freud: a man who blundered tragicomically in his dealings with patients, who in fact never cured anyone, who promoted cocaine as a miracle drug capable of curing a wide range of diseases, and who advanced his career through falsifying case histories and betraying the mentors who had helped him to rise. The legend has persisted, Crews shows, thanks to Freud’s fictive self-invention as a master detective of the psyche, and later through a campaign of censorship and falsification conducted by his followers. A monumental biographical study and a slashing critique, Freud: The Making of an Illusion will stand as the last word on one of the most significant and contested figures of the twentieth century.

On Freud's ''Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning''
On Freud's ''Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning''

Author: Lawrence J. Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0429902697

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This book is a collection of papers by leading contemporary psychoanalysts who comment on the continuing important relevance of Freud's (1911) paper, Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning. The contributors gathered here represent current European, Latin American, and North American perspectives that elaborate the continuing value of Two Principles for present-day psychoanalytic thinking. Each author examines Freud's paper through a personal lens that is coloured by the psychoanalytic culture from which he or she comes. In each instance, the writers' chapters demonstrate the heuristic value of Two Principles for twenty-first century psychoanalytic theory and technique. A common thread that runs through all the chapters is the view that this brief paper by Freud, which he humbly introduced by stating, "The deficiencies of this short paper, which is preparatory rather than expository ...", is a masterpiece that contains within it the seeds of much of his later writing. The distinction he draws between the pleasure principle and the reality principle are profound and raise questions that still preoccupy analysis today.

The Freud Scenario
The Freud Scenario

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2013-03-12

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 1844677729

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In 1958, the US director John Huston asked Jean-Paul Sartre to write a scenario for a film about Sigmund Freud. Huston wanted Sartre to concentrate on the conflict-ridden period of Freud’s life when he abandoned hypnosis and invented psychoanalysis. The Freud Scenario, discovered in Sartre’s papers after his death, is the result—a deft portrait of a man engaged in a personal and intellectual struggle that would prove a turning point in twentieth-century thought. Sartre did not regard this script as a diversion from his larger intellectual project. Freud’s preoccupations with female hysteria and the father relationship touched on major themes in his own work, and Loser Wins, The Family Idiot and Words, some of Sartre’s most celebrated publications, are all in some way derived from his work for Huston. Written for a Hollywood audience, The Freud Scenario demonstrates that, in addition to a towering intellect, Sartre enjoyed a genuine popular touch. Already widely acclaimed in France, The Freud Scenario stands as a valuable testament to two of the most influential minds in modern history.

The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955
The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955

Author: Jacques Lacan

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780393307092

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A complete translation of the seminar that Jacques Lacan gave in the course of a year's teaching within the training programme of the Société Française de Psychanalyse. The French text was prepared by Jacques-Alain Miller in consultation with Jacques Lacan, from the transcriptions of the seminar.

Freud's Early Psychoanalysis, Witch Trials and the Inquisitorial Method
Freud's Early Psychoanalysis, Witch Trials and the Inquisitorial Method

Author: Kathleen Duffy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-07

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1000732894

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In Freud’s Early Psychoanalysis, Witch Trials and the Inquisitorial Method: The Harsh Therapy, author Kathleen Duffy asks why Freud compared his ‘hysterical’ patients to the accused women in the witch trials, and his ‘psychoanalytical’ treatment to the inquisitorial method of their judges. He wrote in 1897 to Wilhelm Fliess: ‘I ... understand the harsh therapy of the witches’ judges’. This book proves that Freud’s view of his method as inquisitorial was both serious and accurate. In this multidisciplinary and in-depth examination, Duffy demonstrates that Freud carefully studied the witch trial literature to develop the supposed parallels between his patients and the witches and between his own psychoanalytic method and the judges’ inquisitorial extraction of ‘confessions’, by torture if necessary. She examines in meticulous detail both the witch trial literature that Freud studied and his own case studies, papers, letters and other writings. She shows that the various stages of his developing early psychoanalytic method, from the 'Katharina' case of 1893, through the so-called seduction theory of 1896 and its retraction, to the 'Dora' case of 1900, were indeed in many respects inquisitorial and invalidated his patients’ experience. This book demonstrates with devastating effect the destructive consequences of Freud’s nineteenth-century inquisitorial practice. This raises the question about the extent to which his mature practice and psychoanalysis and psychotherapy today, despite great achievements, remain at times inquisitorial and consequently untrustworthy. This book will therefore be invaluable not only to academics, practitioners and students of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, literature, history and cultural studies, but also to those seeking professional psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic help.

Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan
Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan

Author: Stephanie Swales

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-27

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0429828349

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Taking a deep dive into contemporary Western culture, this book suggests we are all fundamentally ambivalent beings. A great deal has been written about how to love – to be kinder, more empathic, a better person, and so on. But trying to love without dealing with our ambivalence, with our hatred, is often a recipe for failure. Any attempt, therefore, to love our neighbour as ourselves – or even, for that matter, to love ourselves – must recognise that we love where we hate and we hate where we love. Psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud, has claimed that to be in two minds about something or someone is characteristic of human subjectivity. Owens and Swales trace the concept of ambivalence through its various iterations in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to question how the contemporary subject deals with its ambivalence. They argue that experiences of ambivalence are, in present-day cultural life, increasingly excised or foreclosed, and that this foreclosure has symptomatic effects at the individual as well as social level. Owens and Swales examine ambivalence as it is at work in mourning, in matters of sexuality, and in our enjoyment under neoliberalism and capitalism. Above all, the authors consider how today’s ambivalent subject relates to the racially, religiously, culturally, or sexually different neighbour as a result of the current societal dictate of complete tolerance of the other. In this vein, Owens and Swales argue that ambivalence about one’s own jouissance is at the very roots of xenophobia. Peppered with relevant and stimulating examples from clinical work, film, television, politics, and everyday life, Psychoanalysing Ambivalence breathes new life into an old concept and will appeal to any reader, academic, or clinician with an interest in psychoanalytic ideas.