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The Power of Psychoanalysis

Details: Category: General Interest

The psychoanalytic discourse is a very powerful tool as it may be used to deconstruct other discourses, analyse its formulations and to revise social categories and its political implications. It can also provide the framework to explain the genesis and structure of human subjectivity. But far from being a unified field, the theoretical body discovered by Freud has developed into different schools with their own views and particular conceptualizations. Most of the psychoanalytical approaches might be useful to analyse other theories and social categories, as they seem to share a similar logic of thought. Also, they enable us to find alternatives to explanations based on a unilateral point of view. However when considering their views on human subjectivity and the way it is structured, they might differ significantly or even be contradictory which can lead to erroneous conceptualisations. Throughout the history of the feminist movement many intellectuals have tried to analyse the issue of "being a woman", its essence and the specificity of her desire taking into account the development of psychoanalytical ideas from different traditions and readings of Freud. I will try to summarise some of them and point out their implications, and finally will try to outline some concepts - more specifically Lacan's theorisation - that may give a tentative answer to the question: what is the essence of woman?

Questioning Identities; Philosophy in Psychoanalytic Practice

Details: Category: General Interest

Mary Lynne Ellis and Noreen O’Connor

This extract from our book Questioning Identities; Philosophy in Psychoanalytic Practice (Karnac 2010) contextualises the relevance of 20^th and 21^st century European philosophy to clinical work with individuals from a diversity of race, class, and cultural backgrounds, genders, and sexualities. Our book is principally concerned with questions of identity which arise consciously and unconsciously in the analytical relationship.

John Fletcher

Details: Category: Media

time

John Fletcher is a man of many parts. He is a Senior Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick, and has a long-standing interest in psychoanalysis. He has written on film, melodrama and Gothic writing, psychoanalytic theories of sexuality and gender, and primal fantasies. He is the leading commentator in this country on the work of Laplanche.

In this paper he addresses:

Time And Trauma In Freud’s Thought

On Addiction

Details: Category: General Interest

"On Addiction"

by Claudio Rosso

2. FREUD'S THEORIZATIONS ON ADDICTION

The Cocaine Papers
Civilizations and its Discontents

3.INTOXICATION AND TOXICOMANIA

4.ADDICTION AND THE ACTUAL NEUROSES
5.CAUSES OF ADDICTION
Freud's ideas on Pain
Cancellation of Pain
The Pharmakon
Administration of Enjoyment

6.TOXICOMANIA AND THE CLINICAL STRUCTURES

7.THE MARRIAGE WITH THE PHALLUS

8. CONCLUSION

NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY