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.

Carl Jung - Dreams and Philosophy (Biography)


Biographiq - 2008
    Jung's unique and broadly influential approach to psychology has emphasized understanding the psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy. Although he was a theoretical psychologist and practicing clinician for most of his life, much of his life's work was spent exploring other realms, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung emphasized the importance of balance and harmony. Carl Jung - Dreams and Philosophy is highly recommended for those interested in reading more about this respected Swiss psychiatrist.

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.

A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance


Leon Festinger - 1957
    The theory of dissonance is here applied to the problem of why partial reward, delay of reward , and effort expenditure during training result in increased resistance to extinction.The author contends that a state of impasse exists within learning theory largely because some of its major assumptions stand in apparent opposition to cetain well-established experimental results. The book puts forward a new theory that seems to reconcile these data and assumptions. This new theory can account for data with which other theories have difficulty: it integrates empirical phenomena that have been regarded as unrelated, and it is supported by the results of experiments designed specifically to test its implications. These experiments are fully described in the text.

Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History


Norman O. Brown - 1959
    A shocking and extreme interpretation of the father of psychoanalysis.

Lacan: In Spite Of Everything


Élisabeth Roudinesco - 2011
    Angelic to some, he is demonic to others. To recall Lacan’s career, now that the heroic age of psychoanalysis is over, is to remember an intellectual and literary adventure that occupies a founding place in our modernity. Lacan went against the current of many of the hopes aroused by 1968, but embraced their paradoxes, and his language games and wordplay resonate today as so many injunctions to replace rampant individualism with a heightened social consciousness. Widely recognized as the leading authority on Lacan, Élisabeth Roudinesco revisits his life and work: what it was – and what it remains.

Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity


Catherine Malabou - 2009
    Bodily and psychic transformations do nothing but reinforce the permanence of identity. But as a result of serious trauma, or sometimes for no reason at all, a subject's history splits and a new, unprecedented persona comes to live with the former person - an unrecognizable persona whose present comes from no past and whose future harbors nothing to come; an existential improvisation, a form born of the accident and by accident. Out of a deep cut opened in a biography, a new being comes into the world for a second time. What is this form? A face? A psychological profile? What ontology can it account for, if ontology has always been attached to the essential, forever blind to the alea of transformations? What history of being can the plastic power of destruction explain? What can it tell us about the explosive tendency of existence that secretly threatens each one of us? Continuing her reflections on destructive plasticity, split identities and the psychic consequences experienced by those who have suffered brain injury or have been traumatized by war and other catastrophes, Catherine Malabou invites us to join her in a philosophic and literary adventure in which Spinoza, Deleuze and Freud cross paths with Proust and Duras.

The Wit and Wisom of Nani A. Palkhivala


Jignesh R. Shah - 2015
    Palkhivala, a multi-talented personality, played diverse roles in his life—lawyer, diplomat, orator, author, political and economic thinker, and social reformer. An advocate of civil liberties, he proactively defended the Constitution and the principles enshrined in it.This book contains select quotations—classified subject-wise under various chapters—from his writings and speeches over six decades of his working life. The book introduces the man through his thoughts and ideas with the aim of inspiring readers, particularly the youth.

Mental Illness and Psychology


Michel Foucault - 1954
    Written in 1954 and revised in 1962, Mental Illness and Psychology delineates the shift that occurred in Foucault's thought during this period. The first iteration reflects the philosopher's early interest in and respect for Freud and the psychoanalytic tradition. The second part, rewritten in 1962, marks a dramatic change in Foucault's thinking. Examining the history of madness as a social and cultural construct, he moves outside of the psychoanalytic tradition into the radical critique of Freud that was to dominate his later work. Mental Illness and Psychology is an important document tracing the intellectual evolution of this influential thinker. A foreword by Foucault scholar Hubert Dreyfus situates the book within the framework of Foucault's entire body of work.

Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–1977


Félix Guattari - 1995
    The stock market is certainly rational; one can understand it, study it, capitalists know how to use it, and yet it is completely delirious, it is mad. That's why we say: the rational always is the rationality of an irrational. Marx is fascinated by capitalist mechanisms precisely because the system is demented, yet works very well at the same time. Down below, there are investments of desire that cannot be confused with the investments of interest: all kinds of libidinous-unconscious flows that make up the delirium of this society. The true history is the history of desire."This collection of essays and interviews edited by Sylvere Lotringer and published in 1995, focuses on the French anti-psychiatrist and theorist's work as director of the experimental La Borde clinic ("A Clinic Unlike Any Other") and longtime collaborator with the philosopher Gilles Deleuze."Chaosophy" is a groundbreaking introduction to Guattari's theories on "schizo-analysis" a process meant to replace Freudian interpretation with a more pragmatic, experimental, and collective approach rooted in reality. Unlike Freud, Guattari believes that schizophrenia is an extreme mental state induced by the capitalist system itself, which keeps enforcing neurosis as a way of maintaining normality. Guattari's post-Marxist vision of capitalism provides a new definition not only of mental illness, but also of the micropolitical means of its subversion.This collection contains key essays, such as, "Balance-Sheet Program for Desiring-Machines" and "Capitalism and Schizophrenia," co-signed by Deleuze (with whom he co-authored "Anti-Oedipus" and "A Thousand Plateaus"), and the perennially provocative "Everybody Wants To Be a Fascist.

The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics


Maurice Merleau-Ponty - 1964
    The title essay, which is in essence a presentation of the underlying thesis of his The Primacy of Perception, is followed by two courses given by Merleau-Ponty at the Sorbonne on phenomenological psychology. "Eye and Mind" and the concluding chapters present applications of Merleau-Ponty's ideas to the realms of art, philosophy of history, and politics. Taken together, the studies in this volume provide a systematic introduction to the major themes of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy.

The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves


Siri Hustvedt - 2009
    Despite her flapping arms and shaking legs, she continued to speak clearly and was able to finish her speech. It was as if she had suddenly become two people: a calm orator and a shuddering wreck. Then the seizures happened again and again. The Shaking Woman tracks Hustvedt’s search for a diagnosis, one that takes her inside the thought processes of several scientific disciplines, each one of which offers a distinct perspective on her paroxysms but no ready solution. In the process, she finds herself entangled in fundamental questions: What is the relationship between brain and mind? How do we remember? What is the self?During her investigations, Hustvedt joins a discussion group in which neurologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and brain scientists trade ideas to develop a new field: neuropsychoanalysis. She volunteers as a writing teacher for psychiatric in-patients at the Payne Whitney clinic in New York City and unearths precedents in medical history that illuminate the origins of and shifts in our theories about the mind-body problem. In The Shaking Woman, Hustvedt synthesizes her experience and research into a compelling mystery: Who is the shaking woman? In the end, the story she tells becomes, in the words of George Makari, author of Revolution in Mind, “a brilliant illumination for us all.”

Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud


Herbert Marcuse - 1953
    In this classic work, Herbert Marcuse takes as his starting point Freud's statement that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts, his reconstruction of the prehistory of mankind - to an interpretation of the basic trends of western civilization, stressing the philosophical and sociological implications.

How Fiction Works


James Wood - 2008
    M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, How Fiction Works is a scintillating study of the magic of fiction--an analysis of its main elements and a celebration of its lasting power. Here one of the most prominent and stylish critics of our time looks into the machinery of storytelling to ask some fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we "know" a fictional character? What constitutes a telling detail? When is a metaphor successful? Is Realism realistic? Why do some literary conventions become dated while others stay fresh?James Wood ranges widely, from Homer to Make Way for Ducklings, from the Bible to John le Carré, and his book is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound, How Fiction Works will be enlightening to writers, readers, and anyone else interested in what happens on the page.

Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century


Lauren Slater - 2004
    F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, Slater takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, chock-full of plot, wit, personality, and theme.