This collection of essays at the juncture between psychoanalysis, philosophy, and cultural studies questions the future of a discipline which has emerged from the intimate experience of therapy to exert a powerful hold over contemporary culture.

In this landmark collection of original essays, outstanding feminist critics in Britain, France, and the United States present new perspectives on feminism and psychoanalysis, opening out deadlocked debates. The discussion ranges widely, with contributions from feminists identified with different, often opposed views on psychoanalytic criticism. The contributors reassess the history of Lacanian psychoanalysis and feminism, and explore the significance of its institutional context. They write against the received views on 'French feminism' and essentialism. A remarkable restatement of current (...) positions within psychoanalysis and feminism, the volume as a whole will change the terms of existing debates, and make its arguments and concerns more generally accessible. (shrink)

The Philadelphia Association is always linked with the name of R. D. Laing, one of its founders, but very little is known about its unorthodox contribution to the development of psychoanalysis. Founded in 1965, it took as its aim the relief of mental illnesss of all desciptions, in particular schizophrenia. At its inception it was a focus for people, with a diversity of backgrounds and interests, concerned with 'mental illness' and how society defines it. Its members - who included (...) psychoanalysis, psychiatrists and artists - developed a philosophical critique of psychoanalysis grounded in phenomenology, and an 'anti-psychiatry' critique of the institutional treatment of the mentally ill. They favoured the setting up of therapeutic community households of which the best known was Kingsley Hall. The PA was then very much part of the counter culture - it staged, for example, the famous Dialectics of Liberation Congress at London's Roundhouse in 1967. The psychotherapists who currently belong to the Philadelphia Association continue to work with community households and to offer a psychotherapy training. Here the authors share their innovative and distinctive approach on a number of interrelated themes: the herapeutic community and differend ways it can be understood; work with deeply regresed patients; the concept of identity in a social context; the debate between Lacan and Derrida on Poe's 'The Purloined Letter'; the phenomenology of knowledge and transference and authority. Together, they offer a cogent critique of many psychiatric and psychonalaytic assumptions. The contributors are Robin Cooper, Joseph friedman, Steven Gans, John Heaton, Chris Oakley, Haya Oakley and Paul Zeal. They are all psychotherapists and members of the Philadelphia Association. (shrink)

_Sigmund Freud and His Impact on the Modern World_, volume 29 of The Annual of Psychoanalysis, is a comprehensive reassessment of the influence of Sigmund Freud. Intended as an unofficial companion volume to the Library of Congress's exhibit, "Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture," it ponders Freud's influence in the context of contemporary scientific, psychotherapeutic, and academic landscapes. Beginning with James Anderson's biographical remarks, which are geared specifically to the objects on display in the Library of Congress exhibit, and Roy (...) Grinker Jr.'s more personal view of Freud, the volume branches out in various directions in an effort to comprehend the multidimensional and multidisciplinary richness of Freud's contribution. In section II, we find authoritative summaries of Freud's scientific contributions, of his continuing impact as a thinker, of his notion of symbolization in the context of recent neuroscientific findings, and of his status as a "cultural subversive". In section III, contributors hone in on more specific aspects of Freud's legacy, such as an experimental method to review how Freud's idea of childhood sexuality has fared and a look at the women who became analysts in the United States. In the concluding section of the volume, contributors turn to Freud's influence in various humanistic disciplines: literature, drama, religious studies, the human sciences, the visual arts, and cinema. With this scholarly yet highly accessible compilation, the Chicago Institute provides another service to its own community and to the wider reading public. Sure to enhance the experience of all those attending "Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture," _Sigmund Freud and His Impact on the Modern World_ will appeal to anyone desirous of an up-to-date overview of the man whose work shaped the psychological sensibility of the century just past and promises to reverberate throughout the century just born. (shrink)

It is patently clear that theoretical difficulties in the understanding of human freedom exist, the roots of which can be found in classic psychological proposals. The western crisis may require reconsideration of freedom and responsibility as expressed in each person. One such proposal of this type begs clarification of the approaches that led to the loss of freedom in the existential horizon and thus of social dynamics. The purpose of this paper is to explain its roots in the psychoanalytic context. (...) Specifically there seems to be three theses that give way to this analysis: the role of the past in shaping the personality; the influence of the psychological workings as related to the handling of conflict as well as the understanding of psychoanalysis as hermeneutics. The three are united in the consideration of freedom as “liberation”, and the temporal dynamics implicit in this concept. We conclude that this is the origin of the limitation of the concept of freedom within psychoanalysis. (shrink)

In this paper I am going to present several ideas selected from the field of two important current inputs to the interface of philosophy and psychoanalysis. First, there is the study of Linda Brakel who confronts Freudian unconscious with meaning theory, i.e. the philosophy of Donald Davidson. Brakel feels that the approach of Davidson/Cavell misinterprets the Freudian concepts and robs it of its central characteristics. She insists in the primary process which she describes as representational, contentful and a-rational. The (...) second input is to be found within today’s reception of Kant in the epistemological field. The debates depart from the controversial issue of whether Kant was a conceptionalist or a non-conceptionalist and frequently refer to McDowells Mind and World. Then I will present my own approach that combines psychoanalytical ideas with an application of Peircean categories. My aim is to show that this approach contributes to the understanding of mind in general. In comparing the philosophical concepts with psychoanalytical ones, I will point out the specific place of psychoanalytical concepts within the theory of knowledge. I will conclude by pleading for the integration of the psychoanalytic ideas into a broader theory of thinking. Furthermore, the meaning of this integration on psychoanalysis itself will be evaluated. (shrink)

Essa publicação requer esclarecimentos: os trabalhos escritos ou transcritos são o resultado de um evento com algumas peculiaridades. A primeira por ser um evento que convocou psicanalistas a refletir sobre o campo social, promovendo uma interlocução entre a psicanálise e a política. A segunda, e essa talvez a principal razão da singularidade, é que tal convocação se deu a partir do testemunho vivo de um evento traumático. Os diferentes textos que compõem esse livro procuram fazer um verdadeiro diálogo, tendo como (...) ponto de partida o depoimento de Estela Carlotto, presidente das Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Um depoimento que transmite, ainda que sob as mais terríveis condições, a possibilidade de resistir, criando práticas e prosseguir lutando, sem se acomodar diante de vitórias aparentes. Uma ação intensa, contínua, que evidencia que a ação política se refere a acreditar que o impossível é possível. A "Coleção Departamento Formação em Psicanálise" reúne obras produzidas a partir de eventos científicos e culturais organizados por este Departamento, assim como de reflexões sobre a clínica psicanalítica contemporânea e de estudos desenvolvidos por seus integrantes. Os temas tratados são diversos: desde questões metapsicológicas, técnicas e teóricas, na tentativa de abarcar as diferentes formas de expressão do sofrimento psíquico, até a extensão da psicanálise além do setting analítico habitual e suas interfaces com outras ciências. Dessa forma, o espaço é pensado como um vetor de formação permanente, interlocução e pesquisa, marcado por uma psicanálise engajada nas questões políticas e sociais, e em conformidade com a Carta de Princípios do Instituto Sedes Sapientiae. (shrink)

The purpose in this text is to focus on one of the possible use of broadly psychoanalytic concepts in history: the analysis and treatment of historical testimonies by witnesses of “traumatic events”. A number of historians have proposed that some witness accounts could be understood as “elaborations of the past”, in the technical psychoanalytic sense. My interest is in the question whether the discourse of the psychoanalytic patient and the historical testimony by the traumatized witness possess the same epistemological status, (...) as claimed by the historians alluded to. My view is that the claims of similarity should be resisted.Is philosophyrelevant to everyday life? Is it not too abstract and general? The knowledge of priests, psychologists or physicians is as abstract and general, yet its relevance is not contested. Is not its relevance limited to the case of the rare sage which is both able to discuss complex philosophical matters and ready to adopt “the philosophical attitude” to life? Such popular notions ignore controversies with regard to the existence of such sages, the content of their alleged wisdom, or the nature or impact of their “philosophical attitude”. Modern philosophy is generally much more skeptical, realistic, pluralistic and therefore “democratic” thanthe elitist classics. It does not trust myths about the “good life” of the wise, nor ignore their preoccupation with death. (shrink)

This work constitutes the Proceedings of the Bar-Ilan International Symposium on the topic ?Sense and Nonsense in Philosophy and Psychopathology.? The symposium was held at Bar-Ilan University (Israel) from June 7-8, 1993, with lectures given in three languages (English, Hebrew and French). Through this symposium an outline of a philosophy of psychopathology related to biology and ethics was presented. It is now clear, especially from clinical experience, that the notions of sense and nonsense cannot be grasped directly, but must be (...) constructed through a reflective process connected with concepts. Furthermore, since psychopathology is for the most part concerned with the disturbance of intersubjective experience, it is directly related to ethics. For this reason, as clearly illustrated by this symposium, psychopathology could provide an excellent basis for philosophical interrogation. (shrink)

ArgumentThe paper is based on a hitherto unexplored document (audiotape of an interview accompanied by a German transcript) from 1953, located in the Freud Papers at the Library of Congress. It contributes to a better understanding of the impact of Freud and of Psychoanalysis on personalities from the exact sciences, here represented by the noted applied mathematicians Richard von Mises and Hilda Geiringer from Vienna. The detailed discussion of the interview sheds some new light on the different roles of (...) Kraus and Freud in the Vienna culture, on the Vienna Jugendkulturbewegung (youth culture movement) during WWI in which Geiringer was involved, on Freud’s and Siegfried Bernfeld’s standing around 1930 among German philosophers and psychologists, and on Wilhelm Fließ’ theory of periodicity, which von Mises—based on his attitude as an applied mathematician—defended against superficial accusations. Finally, new biographical material is provided for von Mises and the remotely related Freud family, and for Geiringer’s and von Mises’ early lives. The interview, which was taken during the Cold War, also allows conclusions as to how politics influenced the memories and views of the participants. Part of the aim of the paper is historical documentation of unknown material (letters by Karl Kraus and Wolfgang Köhler, one book review by Wilhelm Ostwald, a file on Richard Pfennig), including some correction of erroneous information in the literature. (shrink)

The First International Congress for Analytical Psychology was held in Zurich from 7 to 12 August 1958. On this occasion a small group of Israeli psychologists, represented by Erich Neumann, was accepted as a charter group member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP), which marked the foundation of the Israel Association of Analytical Psychology. The history leading up to this official birth date is mainly associated with the efforts of Erich Neumann – and rightly so; however, a number (...) of other therapists, scholars and patients have been forgotten or deleted from this historical narrative, to their detriment. While I was working on the edition of the correspondence between C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann I came across their names, which were often only casually mentioned re some episode, and I have since tried to find out their stories and what happened to them. In this article I discuss the contributions to the development of analytical psychology in British Mandate Palestine, later Israel, of two such figures, Max M. Stern (1895–1982) and Margarete Braband-Isaac (1892–1986). Both had been in personal contact with C. G. Jung and built a bridge between the isolated Jewish therapists in British Mandate Palestine and the Zurich circles. In Tel Aviv they collaborated for a while with Neumann, with whom for different reasons both fell out. The article shows the cause of these controversies with Neumann and tries to find out why those two characters were historically marginalized. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Chaos, Fractals, and the Pedagogical Challenge of Jackson Pollock's "All-Over" PaintingsFrancis Halsall (bio)IntroductionThe "all-over" abstract canvases that Jackson Pollock produced between 1943 and 1951 present a pedagogical challenge in how to account for their apparently chaotic structure. One reason that they are difficult to teach about is that they have proved notoriously difficult for art historians to come to terms with. This is undoubtedly a consequence of their abstraction. (...) In the face of an apparent disintegration of the traditional pictorial distinction between figure and ground, multiplicities of (sometimes contradictory) readings present themselves. The question, posed to students, as to what they represent is an open one. To many, recalling the opinions of the baffled audience of the 1950s, they are nothing but an inchoate mess. In 1950 Time magazine referred to them as "chaos," prompting Pollock to wire a heated reply, "NO CHAOS DAMN IT."1Pollock's claim of "no chaos" can, however, be unpacked. This article looks at how a scientific analysis based on Chaos Theory and fractal patterns can be used to demonstrate to students that the paintings are indeed chaotic, but that this in turn provides evidence of an internal structure, an order within the chaos. This order is mimetically similar to other chaotic patterns and systems, from coastlines to economic systems. My overall position in this article is one of skepticism as to what such analysis ultimately has to offer in art historical, aesthetic, or pedagogical terms.The ProblemFor a student encountering Pollock's work for the first time, especially after a standard first-year survey of Western art, it can seem incomprehensible. [End Page 1] The challenge of Pollock's work is that none of the multiple interpretations that have been brought to bear on the paintings have any special claim to validity. Given the suggestive ambiguity and "chaos" of the images, there is little in the work itself that challenges the numerous, often contradictory, readings that have been posited. In fact, how art historians approach such images tells students something about the way art history itself works and how art historians are faced with particular choices in applying their discursive models. They must choose whether these accounts "fit" or satisfy the conditions of "rightness," to evoke Nelson Goodman's terms.2The numerous questions that have been asked of what the paintings actually represent are themselves demonstrative of the wide variety of techniques that modern art historians have at their disposal. Analyses have been based upon observations that are couched in the vocabularies of the political (often Marxist theory), feminism, psychoanalysis, iconography, formalism, and so forth.3 At the time of the paintings' creation even the CIA was in on the act; apparently realizing the ambiguity of the work left it open to political manipulation, they secretly funded the promotion of abstract expressionism as a weapon of the cold war.4 Simultaneously, members of Congress such as George Dondero were actually claiming the opposite—that Pollock was making paintings that were a "means of espionage" (sic) and that "If you know how to read them... [they] will disclose weak spots in U.S. fortifications, and such crucial constructions as Boulder Dam."5Ernst Gombrich's celebrated frustration with abstract art highlights the problems that those following traditional art historical methods had with such art at the time. Writing on Pollock's Number 12 (1952), Gombrich also seemed perplexed in the face of chaos. His response to the lack of explicit representational content or apparently accountable meaning was to claim:It is quite consistent that these [action] painters must counteract all semblance of familiar objects or even of patterns in space. But few of them appear to realise that they can drive into the desired identification only those who know how to apply the various traditional consistency tests and thereby discover the absence of any meaning except the highly ambiguous meaning of traces.6Indeed, if there is any consensus to be communicated to students about the work, it is that a single, specific meaning will always allude them.All of the above reactions to the work makes the claims of three physicists to have found the... (shrink)

We present the dossier “Studies of Childhood: movements, limits and frontiers”, a theme discussed in the III Brazilian Congress Childhood Studies (CEI). The Congress was organized by members of the Department of Childhood Studies (DEDI) and the Graduate Program in Education (ProPEd) of the State University of Rio de Janeiro. The articles that compose the dossier review the debates that took place during the event in the fields of education, international relations, and ethno-racial issues. In this presentation, inspired by Mario (...) Benedetti's poem “The Bridge”, we explore the power of three words to think about childhood and the relationship we establish with children: borders, strangeness and movements. How many borders do childhood and children cross into the political, cultural, social, and biological order of life? Which movements or changes do they produce, reproduce, and spread? How to destrange childhood, in the sense of challenging the actions and discursive productions that promote exclusions of various forms? Which movements – in the field of research and in society in general – are instituted to encourage the agency of childhood? Starting from the idea that both our culture and our subjectivity are constituted in the relationship between an interior and an exterior that are placed in tension, we draw on philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies to explore these questions. In this dossier, the texts compose a set that dialogues with the philosophy of childhood and goes beyond conceptual and methodological limits, in the sense of making moves to understand children and childhood through their perspectives, actions, languages and positions, in an objective and subjective form. (shrink)

_Edward Bibring Photographs the Psychoanalysts of His Time_ provides us with a unique pictorial window into a fascinating period of psychoanalytic history. It is the gift of Edward Bibring, a passionate photographer who, Rolleiflex in hand, chronicled international psychoanalytic congresses from 1932 to 1938. The period in question spans the ascendancy of Hitler, the great exodus of analysts to England and the U.S., and the Anschluss of 1938. A year after the Paris Congress, the last meeting photographed by Bibring, Europe (...) would be in flames. At Wiesbaden in 1932, we find an ever dignified Ernest Jones relaxing aboard a sight-seeing ship, and Helene Deutsch and Heinz Hartmann delightfully at ease at a coffee shop. At the Lucerne Congress of 1934, Anna Freud, Ludwig Jekels, Wilhelm Reich, Grete Bibring, Max Eitingon, and Franz Alexander happily converse outside a hotel. At Marienbad in 1936, there are smiling new faces: Annie Reich, Ernst Kris, Otto Fenichel, Edward Glover, and others. At Budapest in1937 the women – Anna Freud, Vilma Kovacs, Dorothy Burlingham, and Elisabeth Geleerd – speak animatedly among themselves. A demure Margaret Mahler and a chic Marianne Kris make their appearance. In 1938, we see a series of table shots, where analysts, now with suit jackets removed and even a few collars loosened, relax with their food, wine, and cigars. Bracketed by Sanford Gifford’s brief introduction and biographical sketches of all the captured parties, Bibring’s photographs, digitized and enlarged, retain just enough graininess to evoke a different era in the history of psychoanalysis. It is heartening to see the paragons of “classical psychoanalysis” as warmly human, their analytic reserve supplanted by relaxed affability. But it is sobering to remember that the high spirit engendered by Congresses – in Bibring’s time no less than our own – may overlay the gravest political developments and the deepest personal anxieties. (shrink)

The diverse group of philosophers and literary critics who contribute to this volume address the question of how bodies think, how thought is embodied, from a variety of approaches including deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, feminist theory, postmodernism, cultural and media studies, literary criticism, and the revisionist study of oppressed peoples.

As presented in the early work, 'Revolution in Poetic Language,' Julia Kristeva’s 'subject-in-process' can be interpreted as a semiotic alternative to older conceptions of the philosophical subject.This discussion of Kristeva’s early work will attempt to demonstrate that new interpretations of Fregean logic and Freudian psychoanalysis radically displace the traditional subject. This act of displacement allows Kristeva to employ Hegelian dialectics to introduce a “textual” conception of meaning of experience. As a consequence, the Kristevan semiotexte offers a basis for both (...) understanding and misunderstanding in which language mediates between semiotic meaning and cultural practices. The conclusion of the paper maintains that Kristeva's unique formulation of the semiotexte re-defines human subjectivity in relation to the existing world. (shrink)

Jonathan Lear, member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, psychoanalyst, and author of works on Aristotle’s logic and epistemology and a philosophical interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis, has compiled a collection of 12 essays, all but three previously published, reflective of his varied training and talents. The essays themselves range from a piece in The New Republic on the “Freud-bashing” that led to the cancellation of the Library of Congress’s exhibition “Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture” (...) late in 1995 to fairly technical pieces written for the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Phronesis, and the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Original dates of publication range widely as well, from 1984 to 1996, and would seem to mark the author’s intellectual pilgrimage, outlined in his Preface: from the preserves of analytic philosophy, often identified by him with professional philosophy simpliciter, to the more “open-minded” concern with the history of philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis. He contrasts his own concern with the Platonic problem, “giving a logos of the psyche” or “working out the logic of the soul,” to the computationism of modern psychology departments and to “ersatz philosophy.” Ersatz philosophy is exemplified, in his interpretation by Oedipus’ thoughtless, self-oblivious argumentation which, according to a footnote, may count its “modern descendants in verificationism, Popperianism, ordinary-language philosophy”. In a passage that explains the book’s title, Lear affirms the truth that he believes Socrates’ life represented: “that we have the capacity to be open minded: the capacity to live nondefensively with the question of how to live”. (shrink)

I was more excited by Jacques Ranciere’s idea about aesthetics being, in his opinion, a special way of thinking (mode de pensee) that works of art provoke and that tends to show what they are like as art objects. Aesthetics then (following this intention) would not be viewed as a discipline akin to art theory that wouldexamine the structure of the work of art, its peculiarities, conditions of arising, et cetera, all that attests either to its objectivity or subjectivity. Ranciere (...) underscores the special (in the style of Hegel and Romanticist philosophy) regime of thinking about art where the idea is not yet an idea, but is what is not yet being thought. In spite of the fact that Ranciere’s declarations refer to S. Freud’s theory of the unconscious that, in his opinion, is closely linked with the way of artistic thinking and possibly can be expressed in no other way but through the medium of artistic thinking. The same way refers to the basic concepts of Freud’s psychoanalysis including also the unconscious and the ideas on complexes, especially on the Oedipus complex. It is interesting that Ranciere compares the framework ofthe dramatic nature of Oedipus’ fate with the basic fluctuations of aesthetics and art and namely – just like Oedipus is also the one who experiences everything absolutely and is completely expressed in action so the character of aesthetics and art is hidden in the contradictions between activities and sufferings or action and passions. This theme just like the question of the extreme poles of understanding aesthetics – pleasure and pain is comparable with the question of the determination of aesthetics and also art that grasps human experience in figural bodily shapes because that is the way of discerning the thought that is not yet being thought, but is hidden in bodily or animated figures. This tradition or historical regime, I think, is not to be discovered as a rectilinear trajectory; it manifests itself in a contradictory and sporadic way, frequently as an interlude between crucial conclusions and an essential interest pointing towards the ambivalence of art that referring to the words of the early modernist poet Charles Baudelaire: “I am the wound and the knife” would mark these relationships between action and its effect that could also attest to the painful birth of the thought in the not thought yet or else the negative character of aistheton. (shrink)

In her introduction to this collection, Tymieniecka presents her phenomenology of life - the leitmotif of the three-volume anniversary publication of Analecta Husserliana - as something that stands out from preceding historical attempts to investigate life in an 'integral' or 'scientific' way. After an incubation lasting throughout the 2000 years of Occidental philosophy, this scientific phenomenology/philosophy of life at last uncovers the entire area of the 'inner workings of Nature', exposing the way in which the 'sufficient reason' and the 'ground' (...) of beingness as such crystallise out of the 'onto poietic' process. This onto-poietic process, continuing as it does in the human creative condition, also reveals the authentic genius of the works of the human spirit. This new and original philosophy, free of fallacious simplifications, speculations and reductionism, opens up a basic starting point for all philosophy. Life, 'the theme of our times', at last receives a profound philosophical treatment. (shrink)

Many historians and philosophers emphasize the great importance of periodization for the study of history. There is no doubt that periodization is a rather effective method of data ordering and analysis, though it deals with exceptionally complex types of processual and temporal phenomena. For any periodization its basis is a very important point. One can choose different bases for periodization if he constantly uses the same criteria. According to the theory that we propose, the historical process can be subdivided more (...) effectively into four major stages. The transition from any of these stages into another one is the change of all basic characteristics of the respective stage. As the starting point of such a change we propose the production principle that describes the major qualitative stages of the development of the world productive forces. We single out four principles of production: Hunter-Gatherer; Craft-Agrarian; Industrial; and Information-Scientific. As an additional basis of our periodization, by means of which the chronology of the beginning of each respective stage may be worked out, we propose the threeproduction revolutions: the Agrarian or Neolithic Revolution; the Industrial Revolution; and the Information-Scientific Revolution. There are many traditional discussions in philosophy of history that have dealt with issues having to do with the relevance and suitability of the use of broadly psychoanalytic concepts in history (Certeau, 1995; Mudrovcic, 2003). In these discussions some have noted a number of very abstract connections between the concepts and techniques of historiography and those of psychoanalysis. In this text, however, I want to focus on a potential, more concrete point of contact considered only relatively recently: the analysis and treatment of historical testimonies by witnesses of “traumatic events”. (shrink)

Modern cognitive and clinical psychology offer insight into how people deal with natural disasters. In my methodological paper, I make a strong case for incorporating experimental findings and theoretical concepts of modern psychology into environmental historical disaster research. I show how psychological factors may influence the production and interpretation of historical sources with respect to perceptions of and responses to disasters. While previous psychological approaches to history mostly involve psychoanalysis, I focus on empirical psychology. Specifically, I review a number (...) of well documented heuristics, biases, and memory modulations as described by cognitive psychology. Moreover, I argue that including investigations on disaster related mental disorders would complement the environmental historical research of natural disasters. My approach highlights a strong potential for interdisciplinary collaborations among environmental historians and psychologists. (shrink)

Wild Ideas is a collection of essays that brings a fresh and refreshing perspective to the wilderness paradoxically at the center of our civilization.

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

"Well over one half of this brilliant new Monograph constitutes a major sequel to Professor Grunbaum's highly influential 1984 book The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique, which was labeled "magisterial" by Frank J. Sulloway, and "the most important book ever written on Freud's status as a scientist" by J. Allan Hobson. The importance of the present Monograph lies in the extent to which the author now goes beyond that earlier volume to offer new original ideas on fundamental themes." (...) "Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psycho-analysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psycho-analysis contains Adolf Grunbaum's new basic critique of the psychoanalytic theory of transference in its role of an etiologic theory; it turns out that etiologic transference interpretations rest on fallacious causal inferences from so-called "meaning connections" between mental states: moreover, just these unsound inferences are the stock-in-trade of the "hermeneutic" reconstruction of psychoanalysis, which charges Freud with a "scientistic self-misunderstanding."" "This volume joins the issue with Marshall Edelson's defenses of the investigative viability of the single-subject case study method. As a spin-off from the import of the serious placebo challenge to psychoanalysis, this Monograph presents the author's widely recognized new account of the placebo concept across all of medicine and psychotherapy. Whereas Foundations of Psychoanalysis objected that Freud's dream theory was evidentially ill-founded, the burden of the present book is to give two new basic reasons for presuming the theory to be false. It also develops the import of the author's appraisal of psychoanalytic theory for the scrutiny of Freud's triadic psychology of religious belief in theism." "Since Sir Karl Popper's most detailed charge of pseudoscience against psychoanalysis in 1983 could not be examined for inclusion in the 1984 book, the present monograph shows in what ways it is wide of the mark as an incoherent diagnosis of the scientific liabilities of psychoanalytic theory. In addition, four important papers that had antedated Foundations by a few years and were scattered over diverse publications have been updated and integrated with the other chapters herein."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Charles James William Pfoundes (1840?1907), a young emigrant from Southeast Ireland, spent most of his adult life in Japan, received a Japanese name ?Omoie Tetzunostzuke?, first embraced and then turned against Theosophy and, from 1893, was ordained in several Japanese Buddhist traditions. Lacking independent means but educated, intellectually curious, entrepreneurial, fluent in Japanese and with a keen interest in Asian culture, Pfoundes subsisted as a cultural intermediary, explaining Japan and Asia to both Japanese and foreign audiences and actively seeking involvement (...) in global expositions and congresses, in Asia and beyond. Drawing on a previously unstudied collection of Pfoundes' personal documents, this paper first outlines Pfoundes' unusual career and then focuses on his engagement, in the last 15 years of his life, in actual or proposed international congresses and expositions in London, Chicago, Japan, Hanoi, St Louis and Oregon. The paper thereby draws attention, through the forgotten figure of Charles Pfoundes, to the distinctive nineteenth century phenomenon of great international expositions and their associated congresses, viewing these complicated events as another kind of crossroads; innovative nodes and material stimuli to the kinds of travel, cultural communication and interaction which, like monastic, trade, political and ethnic networks, helped to exchange and promote modern representations of Buddhism. (shrink)

Does critical theory still need psychoanalysis? In Critique on the Couch, Amy Allen offers a cogent and convincing defense of its ongoing relevance. Countering the overly rationalist and progressivist interpretations of psychoanalysis put forward by contemporary critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, Allen argues that the work of Melanie Klein offers an underutilized resource. She draws on Freud, Klein, and Lacan to develop a more realistic strand of psychoanalytic thinking that centers on notions of loss, (...) negativity, ambivalence, and mourning. Far from leading to despair, such an understanding of human subjectivity functions as a foundation of creativity, productive self-transformation, and progressive social change. At a time when critical theorists are increasingly returning to psychoanalytic thought to diagnose the dysfunctions of our politics, this book opens up new ways of understanding the political implications of psychoanalysis while preserving the progressive, emancipatory aims of critique. (shrink)

Neuroscience was the basic science behind Freud's psychoanalytic theory and technique. He worked as a neurologist for 20 years before being aware that a new approach to understand complex diseases, namely the hysterias, was needed. Solms coined the term neuropsychoanalysis to affirm that neuroscience still belongs in psychoanalysis. The neuropsychoanalytic field has continued Freud's original ideas as stated in 1895. Developments in psychoanalysis that have been created or revised by the neuropsychoanalysis movement include pain/relatedness/opioids, drive, structural model, dreams, (...) cathexis, and dynamic unconscious. Neuroscience has contributed to the development of new psychoanalytic theory, such as Bazan's ( 2011 ) description of anxiety driven by unconscious intentions or “phantoms.” Results of adopting the “dual aspect monism” approach of idiographic psychoanalytic clinical observation combined with nomothetic investigation of related human phenomena include clarification and revision of theory, restoration of the scientific base of psychoanalysis, and improvement of clinical treatments. By imbricating psychoanalytic thinking with neuroscience, psychoanalysts are also positioned to make contributions to neuroscience research. Freud's original Project for a Scientific Psychology/Psychology for Neurologists can be carried forward in a way that moves psychoanalysis into the twenty-first century as a core contemporary science (Kandel, 1999 ). Neuroscience as the basic science of psychoanalysis both improves the field, and enhances its scientific and cultural status. (shrink)

In this essay and the next, on Foucault, Derrida reencounters two thinkers to whom he had earlier devoted important essays, which precipitated stormy discussions and numerous divisions within the intellectual milieus influenced by their ...

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

_Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Trauma in Psychoanalysis_ is the first of two volumes that delves into the overwhelming, often unmetabolizable feelings related to mourning. The book uses clinical examples of people living in a state of liminality or ongoing melancholia. The authors reflect on the challenges of learning to move forward and embrace life over time, while acknowledging, witnessing and working through the emotional scars of the past. Bringing together a collection of clinical and theoretical papers, _Ghosts (...) in the Consulting Room _features accounts of the unpredictable effects of trauma that emerge within clinical work, often unexpectedly, in ways that surprise both patient and therapist. In the book, distinguished psychoanalysts examine how to work with a variety of ‘ghosts’, as they manifest in transference and countertransference, in work with children and adults, in institutional settings and even in the very founders and foundations of the field of psychoanalysis itself. They explore the dilemma of how to process loss when it is unspeakable and unknowable, often manifesting in silence or gaps in knowledge, and living in strange relations to time and space. This book will be of interest to psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, as well as social workers, family therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. It will appeal to those specializing in bereavement and trauma and, on a broader level, to sociologists and historians interested in understanding means of coping with loss and grief on both an individual and larger scale basis. (shrink)