Psychoanalytic Investigations in Philosophy

Psychoanalytic Investigations in Philosophy PDF

Author: Dorit Lemberger

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-02-24

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1000842096

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This pioneering volume explores and exemplifies the relevance of psychoanalysis to contemporary philosophical problems. The novelty of the book's viewpoint is the consideration of psychoanalysis as an existentialist mode of thinking that deals with current existential problems such as loneliness, uncertainty, struggling with personal tragedies, and rehabilitation. Each chapter presents classic aspects of psychoanalytic theory based on Greek tragedies, as well as their similarities with interdisciplinary aspects in other areas of study like modern literature, hermeneutics, and philosophy of language. To deepen each subject, each chapter also applies an interdisciplinary methodology that illuminates previously hidden insights arising from the fusion of psychoanalysis and philosophy. Featuring contributions from well-known scholars like Professor Avi Sagi and Professor Dov Schwartz, as well as more up-and-coming writers, the book suggests possible implications of philosophical, hermeneutical, and literary theories to the perception of post-modern issues concerning agency and the subjective emotional world. Psychoanalytic Investigations in Philosophy is of great interest to scholars of psychoanalysis and hermeneutic philosophy, as well as teachers and academics who want to explore new teaching methods in various disciplines, and general-interest readers who wish to expand their horizons around concepts that can be applied to better understand themselves and the age in which we live.

Human Virtuality and Digital Life

Human Virtuality and Digital Life PDF

Author: Richard Frankel

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08-12

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1351379712

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Winner of the Gradiva® Best Book Award 2022, and the Courage to Dream Book Prize 2023 from the Academy of the American Psychoanalytic Association! This book is a psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of how the digital is transforming our perception of the world and our understanding of ourselves. Drawing on examples from everyday life, myth, and popular culture, this book argues that virtual reality is only the latest instantiation of the phenomenon of the virtual, which is intrinsic to human being. It illuminates what is at stake in our understanding of the relationship between the virtual and the real, showing how our present technologies both enhance and diminish our psychological lives. The authors claim that technology is a pharmakon - at the same time both a remedy and a poison - and in their writing exemplify a method that overcomes the polarization that compels us to regard it either as a liberating force or a dangerous threat in human life. The digital revolution challenges us to reckon with the implications of what is being called our posthuman condition, leaving behind our modern conception of the world as constituted by atemporal essences and reconceiving it instead as one of processes and change. The book’s postscript considers the sudden plunge into the virtual effected by the 2020 global pandemic. Accessible and wide-reaching, this book will appeal not only to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and philosophers, but anyone interested in the ways virtuality and the digital are transforming our contemporary lives.

Ethics of Evil

Ethics of Evil PDF

Author: Jon Mills

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-29

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0429913346

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In today's world where every form of transgression enjoys a psychological motive and rational justification, psychoanalysis stands alone in its ability to uncover the hidden motives that inform individual and social collective behaviour. Both in theory and practice, it bears witness to the impact of anonymity on the potential for perpetration, especially when others are experienced as faceless, disposable objects whose otherness is, at bottom, but a projection, displacement, and denial of our own interiority-in short, the evil within. In keeping with this perspective, Ethics of Evil rejects facile rationalizations of violence; it also rejects the idea that evil, as a concept, is inscrutable or animated by demonic forces. Instead, it evaluates the moral framework in which evil is situated, providing a descriptive understanding of it as a plurality and a depth psychological perspective on the threat it poses for our well-being and ways of life. In so doing, it also fashions and articulates an ethical stance that recognizes the intrinsic link between human freedom and the potential for evil.

Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis

Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis PDF

Author: Sebastian Gardner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-03-25

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 9780521410908

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In a reconstruction of the theories of Freud and Klein, Sebastian Gardner asks: what causes irrationality, what must the mind be like for it to be irrational, to what extent does irrationality involve self-awareness, and what is the point of irrationality? Arguing that psychoanalytic theory provides the most penetrating answers to these questions, he rejects the widespread view of the unconscious as a 'second mind', in favour of a view of it as a source of inherently irrational desires seeking expression through wish-fulfilment and phantasy. He meets scepticism about psychoanalytic explanation by exhibiting its continuity with everyday psychology.

The Foundations of Psychoanalysis

The Foundations of Psychoanalysis PDF

Author: Adolf Grunbaum

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1985-12-16

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0520907329

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This study is a philosophical critique of the foundations of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. As such, it also takes cognizance of his claim that psychoanalysis has the credentials of a natural science. It shows that the reasoning on which Freud rested the major hypotheses of his edifice was fundamentally flawed, even if the probity of the clinical observations he adduced were not in question. Moreover, far from deserving to be taken at face value, clinical data from the psychoanalytic treatment setting are themselves epistemically quite suspect.

Hegel and Psychoanalysis

Hegel and Psychoanalysis PDF

Author: Molly Macdonald

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1135010684

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Both Hegel's philosophy and psychoanalytic theory have profoundly influenced contemporary thought, but they are traditionally seen to work in separate rather than intersecting universes. This book offers a new interpretation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and brings it into conversation the work of two of the best-known contemporary psychoanalysts, Christopher Bollas and André Green. Hegel and Psychoanalysis centers a consideration of the Phenomenology on the figure of the Unhappy Consciousness and the concept of Force, two areas that are often overlooked by studies which focus on the master/slave dialectic. This book offers reasons for why now, more than ever, we need to recognize how concepts of intersubjectivity, Force, the Third, and binding are essential to an understanding of our modern world. Such concepts can allow for an interrogation of what can be seen as the profoundly false and constructed senses of community and friendship created by social networking sites, and further an idea of a "global community," which thrives at the expense of authentic intersubjective relations.

Becoming a Subject

Becoming a Subject PDF

Author: Marcia Cavell

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2006-02-23

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0191536903

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Marcia Cavell draws on philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the sciences of the mind in a fascinating and original investigation of human subjectivity. A 'subject' is a creature, we may say, who recognizes herself as an 'I', taking in the world from her own subjective perspective; who is an agent, doing things for reasons, sometimes self-reflective, and able to assume responsibility for herself and some of her actions. The idea of a 'subject' points, then, toward an ideal. It asks for the conditions under which a human infant becomes a subject, and for the sorts of things, like self-deception and massive anxiety, that get in the way. What sorts of questions are these? Certainly philosophical. They burrow into central issues in moral philosophy: freedom of the will, the 'self', self-knowledge, the relations between reason and passion, between autonomy and self-knowledge, issues that form roughly the second half of the book. They lead also into metaphysics and epistemology: Is subjectivity incompatible with objectivity? Are subjects not also objects in the real world? As such, how are they to be treated? Would it be possible, in theory, for a creature to become a subject in the absence of relationships with other subjects? But the questions are also practical. In particular they are at the heart of psychoanalysis both as a theory of the mind, and as a therapy which aims at maximizing the ideals of autonomy and self-knowledge implicit in the very idea of a 'subject'. One of the guiding premises of Becoming a Subject is that philosophical investigation into the specifically human way of being in the world cannot separate itself from investigations of a more empirical sort. Cavell brings together for the first time reflections in philosophy, findings in neuroscience, studies in infant development, psychoanalytic theory, and clinical vignettes from her own psychoanalytic practice.

Human Virtuality and Digital Life

Human Virtuality and Digital Life PDF

Author: Taylor & Francis Group

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781138505155

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is a psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of how the digital is transforming our perception of the world and our understanding of ourselves. Drawing on examples from everyday life, myth, and popular culture, this book argues that virtual reality is only the latest instantiation of the phenomenon of the virtual, which is intrinsic to human being. It illuminates what is at stake in our understanding of the relationship between the virtual and the real, showing how our present technologies both enhance and diminish our psychological lives. The authors claim that technology is a pharmakon --at the same time both a remedy and a poison-- and in their writing exemplify a method that overcomes the polarization that compels us to regard it either as a liberating force or a dangerous threat in human life. The digital revolution challenges us to reckon with the implications of what is being called our posthuman condition, leaving behind our modern conception of the world as constituted by atemporal essences and reconceiving it instead as one of processes and change. The book's postscript considers the sudden plunge into the virtual effected by the 2020 global pandemic. Accessible and wide-reaching, this book will appeal not only to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and philosophers, but anyone interested in the ways virtuality and the digital are transforming our contemporary lives.

Fetishism, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy

Fetishism, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy PDF

Author: Alan Bass

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-27

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1351368656

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Fetishism, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy explores how and why Freud’s late work on fetishism led to the beginnings of a re-formulation of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Freud himself, however, was unaware of the long history of the concept of fetishism, a history crucial to understanding the concept. This book contains three main thrusts. One is historical, tracing the development of the concept of fetishism from the 16th century onwards. The focus here is on two important thinkers: Charles de Brosses from the 18th century, and Auguste Comte from the 19th. The second thrust is philosophical. Fetishism is always about the relation between the mind and things. Martin Heidegger, Jaques Derrida, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have made essential contributions in this area, contributions which have important scientific relevance. The third thrust integrate the historical, philosophical, and psychoanalytic investigations of fetishism. It also looks at Wallace Stevens’ poetic meditation on mind and thing, which helps to illuminate everything that precedes. This comprehensive book features careful integration of the historical, philosophical, and psychoanalytic investigations of fetishism. It will contribute to opening new ways of thinking about the mind and how it is structured, so that fetishism is possible. Fetishism, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as philosophy scholars.

Of Philosophers and Madmen

Of Philosophers and Madmen PDF

Author: Richard Askay

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9401207143

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Cast of Characters -- Play Setting -- Of Philosophers and Madmen -- On the Nature of Humans: Sigmund Freud -- Finding Oneself in Heidegger's Early Philosophy -- Stemming the Tide: Martin Heidegger's Critique of Freudian Psychoanalysis -- A Creative Misunderstanding: Ludwig Binswanger -- In Search of a Humanistic Grounding for Psychoanalysis: Medard Boss -- Toward an Integration of Psychoanalysis and Phenomenological Ontology -- Bibliography.