In Psychoanalysis as a Subversive Phenomenon: Social Change, Virtue Ethics, and Analytic Theory, Amber M. Trotter examines the radical sociopolitical roots of psychoanalysis and contends that psychoanalytic practices can and should be used to promote social change today. Trotter illustrates how analytic theory and practice could function subversively in contemporary American culture. This book is recommended for students and scholars of psychology, sociology, political science, cultural studies, and philosophy.
In Psychoanalysis as a Subversive Phenomenon, Amber M. Trotter explores processes of social change, highlights the role of ethics, and illuminates ways in which analytic theory and practice can disrupt contemporary American culture.
A collection of essays by internationally recognised and respected Lacanian analysts and theoreticians, Stupidity and Psychoanalysis thinks about how we can understand stupidity as a specific and necessary psychoanalytic encounter.
As inequality widens in all sectors of contemporary society, we must ask: is psychoanalysis too white and well-to-do to be relevant to social, economic, and racial justice struggles? Are its ideas and practices too alien for people of color? Can it help us understand why systems of oppression are so stable and how oppression becomes internalized? In A People’s Historyof Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology, Daniel José Gaztambide reviews the oft-forgotten history of social justice in psychoanalysis. Starting with the work of Sigmund Freud and the first generation of left-leaning psychoanalysts, Gaztambide traces a series of interrelated psychoanalytic ideas and social justice movements that culminated in the work of Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, and Ignacio Martín-Baró. Through this intellectual genealogy, Gaztambide presents a psychoanalytically informed theory of race, class, and internalized oppression that resulted from the intertwined efforts of psychoanalysts and racial justice advocates over the course of generations and gave rise to liberation psychology. This book is recommended for students and scholars engaged in political activism, critical pedagogy, and clinical work.
In Psychoanalysis from the Indian Terroir, Manasi Kumar, Anup Dhar, and Anurag Mishra discuss the synergies and diachronic thought that is emblematic of the current psychoanalytic narrative in India and examine what psychoanalysis in India could become. The contributors to this edited collection connect problems around culture, family, traditions, and the burgeoning political changes in the Indian landscape in order to provide critical rejoinders to the maternal-feminine thematic in India’s cultural psyche. Specifically, the contributors examine issues surrounding ethnic violence, therapists’ gender and political identities, narratives of illness, and spiritual and traditional approaches to healing.
The Theory and Practice of Psychoanalytic Therapy: Listening for the Subtext outlines the core concepts that frame the reciprocal encounter between psychoanalytic therapist and patient, taking the reader into the psychoanalytic therapy room and giving detailed examples of how the interaction between patient and therapist takes place. The book argues that the therapist must capture both nonverbal affects and unsymbolized experiences, proposing a distinction between structuralized and actualized affects, and covering key topics such as transference, countertransference and enactment. It emphasizes the unconscious meaning in the here-and-now, as well as the need for affirmation to support more classical styles of intervention. The book integrates object relational and structural perspectives, in a theoretical position called relational oriented character analysis. It argues the patient’s ways-of-being constitute relational strategies carrying implicit messages – a "subtext" – and provides detailed examples of how to capture this underlying dialogue. Packed with detailed clinical examples and displaying a unique interplay between clinical observation and theory, this wide-ranging book will appeal to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists in practice and in training.
The Subversive Edge of Psychoanalysis examines the radical and non-conformist perspectives of both classical and contemporary psychoanalysis. The chapters included in this book span the course of David James Fisher’s career. They contextualize significant cases from the recent history of psychoanalysis, critically analyze key aspects of psychoanalytic work, consider the role of psychoanalysis in the history of the twentieth century, and provide biographical sketches of major figures in the field. The book concludes with a cogent interview of the author by a distinguished psychohistorian, depicting how subjectivity, family themes, politics, and cultural affinities marked his choice of subject matter and methodology, his identifications, and his antipathies. The Subversive Edge of Psychoanalysis will appeal to mental health professionals and students with an interest in psychoanalytic practice and theory and academics and researchers who are fascinated by the subversive, non-conforming aspects of both classical and contemporary psychoanalysis.
This book looks at the political aspects of comedy and how humor is shaped by unconscious social and psychological factors within a particular cultural and historical context. Updating Freud’s work on jokes, Robert Samuels argues that any universal model of comedy must take into account the role played by distinct genres, which are themselves determined by particular political psychopathologies. In looking at contemporary comedy, we encounter a structure that is often seen throughout the world: in response to what is experienced as a Leftist super-ego censoring thoughts and speech and a Libertarian Right which promotes free speech as the ultimate value. Within this dynamic, comedians seeking to make their audience laugh by poking fun at sensitive and taboo subjects, intentionally and unintentionally, these humorists present an alternative to Left-wing political correctness and identity politics. Contemporary comedians then cannot help but to cater to Right-wing politics since the Right is centered on loudly rejecting the cultural dictations of the Left.
From mobile phones to consoles, tablets and PCs, we are now a generation of gamers. The PlayStation Dreamworld is – to borrow a phrase from Slavoj Zizek – the pervert's guide to videogames. It argues that we can only understand the world of videogames via Lacanian dream analysis. It also argues that the Left needs to work inside this dreamspace – a powerful arena for constructing our desires – or else the dreamworld will fall entirely into the hands of dominant and reactionary forces. While cyberspace is increasingly dominated by corporate organization, gaming, at its most subversive, can nevertheless produce radical forms of enjoyment which threaten the capitalist norms that are created and endlessly repeated in our daily relationships with mobile phones, videogames, computers and other forms of technological entertainment. Far from being a book solely for dedicated gamers, this book dissects the structure of our relationships to all technological entertainment at a time when entertainment has become ubiquitous. We can no longer escape our fantasies but rather live inside their digital reality.
