Psychoanalytic Insights into Fundamentalism and Conviction: The Certainty Principle examines the role of, and need for, certainty in mental life, addressing questions raised by fundamentalism and extremism and exploring its relation to human nature. Murdin proposes a new synthesis in which certainty itself can be a cause of suffering and part of a defensive manoeuvre, and considers how the need for certainty can be managed in a positive way, rather than creating fear and extreme emotional responses. Illustrated throughout with examples from psychotherapy practice, literature and international politics, this book considers how the quest for certainty dominates much of human thinking. Murdin examines personal relationships, including politics and religion, where assumptions are taken for granted but function to hide fears and doubts, and argues that fundamentalist elements can generate harm in anyone but can be mitigated with understanding and work in therapy. Psychoanalytic Insights into Fundamentalism and Conviction helps to identify the underlying convictions that are causing mental harm. It is essential reading for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and counsellors in practice and in training, and will be of interest to readers interested in fundamentalist states of mind.
This insightful book critically reviews and presents an accessible introduction to the life and work of one of the most celebrated modern psychoanalysts, Michael Eigen. With work spanning over five decades, countless articles, and thirty published book volumes, Daws explores Eigen’s main works through key themes and concepts such as working with our psychotic core, psychic deadness, primary affects, and the need for spirituality for practicing psychoanalysts. The book covers Eigen’s early life and formative clinical years, explores his re-reading of Freud, Jung and Lacan, and lastly covers Eigen’s Seoul seminars, the impact of trauma, the importance of faith and the use of Kabbalah as a framework for analysis. This book will not only engage the first-time Eigen reader, but will also be of much interest to the experienced psychologist and psychoanalyst already familiar with Eigen’s work.
Our understanding of terrorism since the events of September 11th 2001 has usually been channelled through the two dimensional lens of religion and politics. This important new work contributes a richer understanding of terrorism by examining a third dimension of individual and group psychology and demonstrates how insights garnered from the human psyche may be translated into more effective public policy.
Psychoanalysis, Science and Power reexamines the current state of psychoanalysis and science and technology studies as they have been influenced by Robert Maxwell Young’s work. Robert Maxwell Young, a Texas émigré to Britain, was a scholar, publisher, TV documentarian, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, journal editor, conference organizer and political activist. Young urged that psychoanalysis, particularly in its Kleinian incarnation, illuminated new aspects of science and technology studies, and vice versa. This volume not only provides an overview of Young’s life and interests by a stellar cast of scholars and practitioners but also commemorates the many and intersecting streams of his contributions, reasoning for their continuing relevance in the contemporary studies of psychoanalysis, biological sciences, technology and Darwinian thought. Presenting perspectives that are rigorously analytical and yet often poignant, Psychoanalysis, Science and Power will be an important read for students, analysts and analytic therapists of all orientations who are interested in broadening their understanding of their practice.
This book explores the ethical dimension of the interface between psychiatry and religion, illustrating core principles with practical examples in a variety of contexts. These include subspecialties such as child, geriatric, forensic, inpatient, and community psychiatry, and settings such as ethics committees, religious organizations, and international conflicts, psychiatric education, and research.
A genealogy of fanaticism—unearthing its long history, before it became a tool in the Clash of Civilizations It is commonplace to hear fanaticism described as a deviant or extreme variant of an already irrational set of religious beliefs, an assertion that helps to demonize convictions outside political orthodoxy. Alberto Toscano’s compelling and erudite counter-history explodes this accepted convention by exploring the critical role fanaticism played in the formation of modern politics and the liberal state. Showing how fanaticism results from a failure to formulate an adequate emancipatory politics, this illuminating history sheds new light on an idea that continues to dominate debates about faith and secularism. This expanded edition includes new material that revisits the idea of fanaticism as it operates at the limits of the liberal political imaginary, highlighting its relation to fraternal violence, political purity and the refusal of compromise, as well as its centrality to times of social crisis and international conflict.
Critical Theory Today is the essential introduction to contemporary criticial theory. It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness. This new edition provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The chapters provide an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts; a list of specific questions critics who use that theory ask about literary texts; an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory; a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to different literary works; and a bibliography of primary and secondary works for further reading.
Psychoanalysis has traditionally had difficulty in accounting for the existence of evil. Freud saw it as a direct expression of unconscious forces, whereas more recent theorists have examined the links between early traumatic experiences and later ‘evil’ behaviour. Humanizing Evil: Psychoanalytic, Philosophical and Clinical Perspectives explores the controversies surrounding definitions of evil, and examines its various forms, from the destructive forces contained within the normal mind to the most horrific expressions observed in contemporary life. Ronald Naso and Jon Mills bring together an international group of experts to explore how more subtle factors can play a part, such as conformity pressures, or the morally destabilizing effects of anonymity, and show how analysts can understand and work with such factors in clinical practice. Each chapter is unified by the view that evil is intrinsically linked to human freedom, regardless of the gap experienced by perpetrators between their intentions and consequences. While some forms of evil follow seamlessly from psychopathology, others call this relationship into question. Rape, murder, serial killing, and psychopathy show very clear links to psychopathology and character whereas the horrors of war, religious fundamentalism, and political extremism resist such reductionism. Humanizing Evil is unique in the diversity of perspectives it brings to bear on the problem of evil. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, philosophers, and Jungians. Because it is an integrative depth-psychological effort, it will interest general readers as well as scholars from a variety of disciplines including the humanities, philosophy, religion, mental health, criminal justice, political science, sociology, and interdisciplinary studies. Ronald Naso, Ph.D., ABPP is psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in independent practice in Stamford, CT. The author of numerous papers on psychoanalytic topics, he is an associate editor of Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies, and contributing editor of Division/Review and Journal of Psychology and Clinical Psychiatry. His book, Hypocrisy Unmasked: Dissociation, Shame, and the Ethics of Inauthenticity, was published by Aronson in 2010. Jon Mills, Psy.D., Ph.D., ABPP is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. He is Professor of Psychology & Psychoanalysis at Adler Graduate Professional School, Toronto. A 2006, 2011, and 2013 Gradiva Award winner, he is Editor of two book series in psychoanalysis, on the Editorial Board for Psychoanalytic Psychology, and is the author and/or editor of thirteen books including his most recent works, Underworlds: Philosophies of the Unconscious from Psychoanalysis to Metaphysics, and Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, which won the Goethe Award for best book in 2013.
Heinz Kohut (1913-1981) stood at the center of the twentieth-century psychoanalytic movement. After fleeing his native Vienna when the Nazis took power, he arrived in Chicago, where he spent the rest of his life. He became the most creative figure in the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and is now remembered as the founder of 'self psychology,' whose emphasis on empathy sought to make Freudian psychoanalysis less neutral. Kohut's life invited complexity. He obfuscated his identity as a Jew, negotiated a protean sexuality, and could be surprisingly secretive about his health and other matters. In this biography, Charles Strozier shows Kohut as a paradigmatic figure in American intellectual life: a charismatic man whose ideas embodied the hope and confusions of a country still in turmoil. Inherent in his life and formulated in his work were the core issues of modern America. The years after World War II were the halcyon days of American psychoanalysis, which thrived as one analyst after another expanded upon Freud's insights. The gradual erosion of the discipline's humanism, however, began to trouble clinicians and patients alike. Heinz Kohut took the lead in the creation of the first authentically home-grown psychoanalytic movement. It took an emigre be so distinctly American. Strozier brings to his telling of Kohut's life all the tools of a skillful analyst: intelligence, erudition, empathy, contrary insight, and a willingness to look far below the surface.
