Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan


Alenka Zupančič - 2000
    In attempting to interpret such a revolutionary proposition in a more ‘humane’ light, and to turn Kant into our contemporary—someone who can help us with our own ethical dilemmas—many Kantian scholars have glossed over its apparent paradoxes and impossible claims. This book is concerned with doing exactly the opposite. Kant, thank God, is not our contemporary; he stands against the grain of our times. Lacan on the face of it appears the very antithesis of Kant—the wild theorist of psychoanalysis compared to the sober Enlightenment thinker. His concept of the Real, however, provides perhaps the most useful backdrop to this new interpretation of Kantian ethics. Constantly juxtaposing her readings of the two philosophers. Alenka Zupan?i? summons up an ‘ethics of the Real’, and clears the ground for a radical restoration of the disruptive element in ethics.

How to Read Lacan


Slavoj Žižek - 2006
    These books use excerpts from the major texts to explain essential topics, such as Jacques Lacan's core ideas about enjoyment, which re-created our concept of psychoanalysis.Lacan’s motto of the ethics of psychoanalysis involves a profound paradox. Traditionally, psychoanalysis was expected to allow the patient to overcome the obstacles which prevented access to "normal" sexual enjoyment; today, however, we are bombarded by different versions of the injunction "Enjoy!" Psychoanalysis is the only discourse in which you are allowed not to enjoy.Slavoj Žižek’s passionate defense of Lacan reasserts Lacan’s ethical urgency. For Lacan, psychoanalysis is a procedure of reading and each chapter reads a passage from Lacan as a tool to interpret another text from philosophy, art or popular ideology.

Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought


Stephen A. Mitchell - 1995
    But psychoanalytic thinking has undergone an enormous expansion and transformation over the past fifty years. With Freud and Beyond, Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black make contemporary psychoanalytic thinking—the body of work that has been done since Freud—available for the first time. Richly illustrated with case examples, this lively, jargon-free introduction makes modern psychoanalytic thought accessible at last.

Écrits


Jacques Lacan - 1966
    This new translation of his complete works offers welcome, readable access to Lacan's seminal thinking on diverse subjects touched upon over the course of his inimitable intellectual career. .

Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality


Sigmund Freud - 1905
    Here, Freud outlines the core features of libido theory, his grand view of the psychology of sexuality: sexual perversion is a matter of human nature and "normal" sexual behavior only appears later in life, sexual urges begin in infancy, and these urges turn their attention outward as we mature through puberty. Freud first wrote Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905 and spent the next two decades making major revisions to the text. This edition offers Freud's complete vision of the sexual self, in the definitive James Strachey translation.

Lacan: A Beginner's Guide


Lionel Bailly - 2009
    Building upon the work of Sigmund Freud, he sought to refine Freudian insights with the use of linguistics, arguing that “the structure of unconscious is like a language”. Controversial throughout his lifetime both for adopting mathematical concepts in his psychoanalytic framework and for advocating therapy sessions of varying length, he is widely misunderstood and often unfairly dismissed as impenetrable. In this clear, wide-ranging primer, Lionel Bailly demonstrates how Lacan’s ideas are still vitally relevant to contemporary issues of mental health treatment. Defending Lacan from his numerous detractors, past and present, Bailly guides the reader through Lacan’s canon, from “l'objet petit a” to “The Mirror Stage” and beyond. Including coverage of developments in Lacanian psychoanalysis since his death, this is the perfect introduction to the great modern theorist.

Studies in Hysteria


Josef Breuer - 1895
    Freud’s recognition that hysteria stemmed from traumas in the patient’s past transformed the way we think about sexuality. Studies in Hysteria is one of the founding texts of psychoanalysis, revolutionizing our understanding of love, desire, and the human psyche. As full of compassionate human interest as of scientific insight, these case histories are also remarkable, revelatory works of literature.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Playing and Reality


D.W. Winnicott - 1971
    In this landmark book of twentieth-century psychology, Winnicott shows the reader how, through the attentive nurturing of creativity from the earliest years, every individual has the opportunity to enjoy a rich and rewarding cultural life. Today, as the 'hothousing' and testing of children begins at an ever-younger age, Winnicott's classic text is a more urgent and topical read than ever before.

Four Archetypes


C.G. Jung - 1970
    Jung believed that every person partakes of a universal or collective unconscious that persists through generations. The origins of the concept can be traced to his very first publication in 1902 and it remained central to his thought throughout his life. As well as explaining the theoretical background behind the idea, in Four Archetypes Jung describes the four archetypes that he considers fundamental to the psychological make-up of every individual: mother, rebirth, spirit and trickster. Exploring their role in myth, fairytale and scripture, Jung engages the reader in discoveries that challenge and enlighten the ways we perceive ourselves and others.

Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists


Joan Copjec - 1994
    Ordinarily, these discourses only cross paths long enough for historicists to charge psychoanalysis with an indifference to history, but here psychoanalysis, via Lacan, goes on the offensive. Refusing to cede historicity to the historicists, Copjec makes a case for the superiority of Lacan's explanation of historical process, its generative principles, and its complex functionings.

Jacques Lacan


Sean Homer - 2004
    Lacanian theory has reached far beyond the consulting room to engage with such diverse disciplines as literature, film, gender and social theory. This book covers the full extent of Lacan's career and provides an accessible guide to Lacanian concepts and his writing on: the imaginary and the symbolic; the Oedipus Complex and the meaning of the phallus; the subject and the unconscious; the real; sexual difference.Locating Lacan's work in the context of contemporary French thought and the history of psychoanalysis, Sean Homer's Jacques Lacan is the ideal introduction to this influential theorist.

What Is Madness?


Darian Leader - 2011
    From the popular press to TV soaps and films, the depiction of madness always borders on the extreme: violent outbursts, fits, hallucinations. But what if madness is not exactly what we think it to be? What if it is the rule rather than the exception? And what if its defining features are not visible and dramatic but, on the contrary, highly discreet, shared by average citizens who will never come to psychiatric attention? What if, in other words, there is a difference between being mad and going mad? Beginning and ending with the case of Harold Shipman - a mass-murderer so apparently 'normal' that some of his patients said they would still be treated by him even after his conviction - psychoanalyst Darian Leader explores the idea of discreet madness, and argues that it is only through revising our concept of what madness is that we will have the tools to help those who have gone mad to rebuild their lives.

The Origins and History of Consciousness


Erich Neumann - 1949
    Neumann, one of Jung's most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right, shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, or tail-eating serpent. The intermediate stages are projected in the universal myths of the World Creation, Great Mother, Separation of the World Parents, Birth of the Hero, Slaying of the Dragon, Rescue of the Captive, and Transformation and Deification of the Hero. Throughout the sequence the Hero is the evolving ego consciousness.

Winnicott


Adam Phillips - 1988
    W. Winnicott (1896-1971) is now regarded as one of the most influential contributors to psychoanalysis since Freud. In over forty years of clinical practice, he brought unprecedented skill and intuition to the psychoanalysis of children. This critical new work by Adam Phillips presents the best short introduction to the thought and practice of Winnicott that is currently available.Winnicott's work was devoted to the recognition and description of the good mother and the use of the mother-infant relationship as the model of psychoanalytic treatment. His belief in natural development became a covert critique of overinterpretative methods of psychoanalysis. He combined his idiosyncratic approach to psychoanalysis with a willingness to make his work available to nonspecialist audiences. In this book Winnicott takes his place with Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan as one of the great innovators within the psychoanalytic tradition.

Freud


Jonathan Lear - 2005
    These include the philosophy of mind, free will and determinism, rationality, the nature of the self and subjectivity, and ethics and religion. He also considers some of the deeper issues and problems Freud engaged with, brilliantly illustrating their philosophical significance: human sexuality, the unconscious, dreams, and the theory of transference.Freud is one of the most important introductions and contributions to understanding this great thinker to have been published for many years, and will be essential reading for anyone in the humanities, social sciences and beyond with an interest in Freud or philosophy.