Through this book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Aner Govrin demonstrates how psychoanalysis' engagement with philosophy formed a crucial factor in the evolution of new psychoanalytic theories in three areas: perception of truth, developmental theories, and study of psychoanalytic treatment. Beginning with a Freudian perspective, through ego psychology to the intersubjective and the relational approach, Govrin shows that philosophy seeps into psychoanalytic theory itself, becoming a constitutive factor. When we discuss psychoanalysis, we cannot do it without reference to (...) philosophy since virtually every sentence it has generated harks back to and is embedded in philosophy. Moving onto the Post-psychoanalytic Schools Era in the second part, this seminal volume provides a model for understanding the evolution of psychoanalytic thought in the postmodern era, where "sensibilities" like the relational approach and infant research replaced the orthodox psychoanalytic schools. Govrin also explores whether psychoanalysis is a branch of philosophy, how psychoanalysis progresses, what a psychoanalytic innovation is, and why mainstream psychoanalysis rejects neuropsychoanalysis. Exploring the intricate relationship between psychoanalysis and philosophy, this book will be of interest to clinicians, scholars, teachers, and students of contemporary psychoanalysis across a broad spectrum of theoretical orientations, as well as those in the fields of philosophy of science, epistemology, and neuropsychoanalysis. (shrink)

The Freud Wars offers a comprehensive introduction to the crucial question of the justification of psychoanalysis. Part I examines three powerful critiques of psychoanalysis in the context of a recent controversy about its nature and legitimacy: is it a bankrupt science, an innovative science, or not a science at all but a system of interpretation? The discussion makes sense of the entrenched disagreement about the validity of psychoanalysis, and demonstrates how the disagreement is rooted in the theoretical (...) ambiguity of the central concept of psychoanalysis, the unconscious. This ambiguity is then presented as the pathway to a new way of understanding psychoanalysis, based on a mode of thinking that precedes division into mental and physical. The reader is drawn into a lively and thought-provoking analysis of the central issues: · What would it mean for psychoanalysis to count as a science? · Is psychoanalysis a form of hermeneutics? · How can mental and physical explanations coincide? Part II contains the source material for Part I: the influential critiques of psychoanalysis by Adolf Grünbaum, Thomas Nagel and Jürgen Habermas. No specialised knowledge is assumed, and the book is clear and accessible while still conveying the complexity and richness of the subject. It provides a fascinating introduction to philosophical thinking on psychoanalysis for students and practitioners of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and philosophy. (shrink)

This volume contains monologues and dialogues in which the most basic questions of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and logic are given clear and cogent answers. Table of Contents: 30 Laws of Logic Different Kinds of Mathematical Functions: A Dialogue Functions, Bijections, and Mapping-relations What is Logic? Outline of a Theory of Knowledge Determinism, Indeterminism, and Personal Freedom A Dialogue Neurosis vs. Psychosis What determines whether one is happy? Compulsive Work Stuttering How men and women are different One learns from adversity, (...) not from failure Does everybody want money? The #1 Rule of Writing Lack of Coordination Mental Illness: The Ultimate Litmus Test The #1 Rule of Business Honesty and Integrity A Dialogue Anger A Dialogue What is Bullshit? A Short Treatise on Causality Part 1: Causality and Continuity Part 2 : Causation and Explanation Part 3: Causation and Counterfactual Truth Part 4: Program-causation Part 5: The four different kinds of causes involved in the development of mental illness Part 6: Singular Causation Obsessions and Compulsions A Dialogue concerning OCD Writing Animated Dialogues as Self-Analysis: A Dialogue Neurotic Anxiety as Rational Fear: A Dialogue Agency Analyticity Anomalous Monism Bullshit Two Kinds of Insanity Ignorance of the Future Justice Proof that Time-Travel is Impossible Rationality vs. Intelligence: A Dialogue. (shrink)

Even as it skirts mainstream contemporary culture, pornography remains a social taboo; there still exist strong biases both in favor and against it. With chapters addressing imagination, gender, power relationships, truth claims, aesthetics, and both pro and anti-porn slants, this book presents a balanced view of pornography in modern society.

This article offers a critical rethinking of the view on ideas of psychoanalysis that have been established in Russian philosophical texts. The need to consider psychoanalytic concepts in the history of philosophy of the twentieth century, as well as in other educational courses, led to the creation of an unsubstantiated theoretical construct – «the philosophy of psychoanalysis». Against the backdrop of a number of problems of this type of conceptualization, we propose to concretize the area of (...) interaction between philosophy and psychoanalysis to a series of anthropological questions that have consequences for cultural, ethical and socio-philosophical issues, but in a revised form that does not have a direct connection with the theory and practice of contemporary psychoanalysis. Such a clarification, as shown in the article, allows us to more adequately and correctly (without the inaccuracies of a superficial and philosophically biased translation) present the originality of psychoanalytic ideas. This approach confronts us with the question of how exactly contemporary psychoanalytic thought can be used as a methodology in philosophical and anthropological research. (shrink)

The drive dynamic -- Aristotle (and Heidegger) on natural movement and the drive force of living beings -- The metaphysics of drive and desire in Leibniz -- Schopenhauer on the drives of bodies and the ambiguities of human desire -- The three stages of Freud's drive theory and Lacan's amendments -- Drives and subjectivity -- Husserl on the pleasures of a bodily and drive-based subject -- The Freudian subject -- Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Lacan on a drive subject sublimated by the (...) encounter with art -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Index. (shrink)

Argues that married sex is an extreme sexual practice that shows up pornography and other alternatives as second best.

Responses to the pernicious influences of mainstream pornography on its viewers fall into two main sorts: regulation and education. Pornography has long been a core topic in analytic feminist philosophy, but it has largely focused on issues around regulation, in particular with trying to undermine arguments against regulation on the grounds that pornography should count as protected speech. Here I instead look at some ways that philosophy can contribute to an education-based approach, in particular to what has been (...) called an ‘education to address pornography's influence’. I first argue that philosophical considerations can help to motivate this kind of overall approach to countering pornography's influence, but the main contribution of the paper is to contend that such considerations can also contribute to shaping the kind of content and messaging that such an education should have. I discuss two related issues, focusing on pornographic films. The first concerns the status of pornographic films as fiction; it is misleading and unhelpful to tell teenagers and young adults that pornography is ‘just fiction’, as is sometimes proposed, but it is not clear what more effective and accurate message might be offered instead. The second concerns the ways that pornographic films often present the people (and in particular the women) who perform in them as ideals or archetypes when it comes to what kinds of sexual acts people typically choose and enjoy, which I argue is a neglected form of objectification. I briefly evaluate some suggestive examples of proposed messaging, targeted at teens and young adults. (shrink)

Using the concepts developed by Lacan to analyse the inner logic of Freud's thought Samuels provides a bridge between Lacanian theory and traditional categories of psychoanalytic theory and practice.

This book provides an introduction to philosophical treatments of pornography. It considers relevant debates in ethics, aesthetics, feminist philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, and social ontology thus offering a comprehensive examination of the topic. While offering an introduction, the book also puts forward substantive philosophical views on pornography.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.4 (2005) 325-329 [Access article in PDF] Psychoanalysis as Natural Philosophy R. D. Hinshelwood Keywords evolution, psychopathology, ethics, unconscious phantasy Andreas De Block has offered us a most fascinating paper. We do not have to agree with all his points to be profoundly stimulated by them. His core proposition is that Freud pathologizes ordinary psychology and personalities, as well as the abnormal. (...) There has been a perennial debate about whether, psychoanalytically speaking, there is a continuum from pathology to normality or if there is a discontinuity at some point between the two. Freud's famous quote—"much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness" (Breuer and Freud 1895, 305)—is ambiguous. Interestingly, De Block takes a hard stand on this; he not only assumes a continuum, but further he reads Freud as saying that all normality is neurotic. This is not a usual reading of Freud. De Block then expands this into a philosophical position. It is, he says, Freud's philosophy on the nature of mind.Freud himself was not interested in philosophy, and thought it largely irrelevant to psychoanalysis. In fact, he mused about the traffic being inevitably in the opposite direction—that philosophy might come to psychoanalysis. In discussing the work of a philosophically inclined analyst, he remarked, The decisive reason for the rejection of Putnam's proposals was the doubt as to which of the countless philosophical systems should be accepted, since they all seem to rest on an equally insecure basis.... It seemed more prudent to wait, and to discover whether a particular attitude towards life might be forced upon us with all the weight of necessity by analytical investigation itself. (Freud 1921, 270) Psychoanalysis, Freud thought, might be the very substance from which a philosophical system could emerge. De Block has followed that route; he has gone to Freud's writing to discovery a weltanshaung on which we might develop a philosophy of life. He has come back from his intellectual expedition with Freud's fascinating paper, published only in 1987 (discovered in 1983), "A Phylogenetic Phantasy." This was actually written in 1914, but Freud never published it and in fact destroyed his own copy of the draft. The paper has been called a "metabiology" (Gubrich-Simitis 1987), and deals with Freud's speculation on how a threatened species during the ice age developed certain biological and biopsychological traits1 necessary to survive the harsh environmental conditions. These traxits, which included the repression of libido, had significant side effects, namely, the pathologies arising from repression: the neuroses, perversions and psychoses. Moreover, today the environmental conditions no longer apply, so we are left with the side effects of traits that are no longer biologically useful. [End Page 325]So, De Block indicates at least the possibility of an evolutionary theory of the nature of mind. Even if Freud's Lamarckianism makes his particular speculative metabiology implausible, it is a way of thinking that suggests that a theory of mind can arise from biological understanding of its evolutionary development. However, De Block goes further. As a corollary, because Freud's view of the evolution of mind is to involve the evolutionary nature of psychopathology, then Freud's psychoanalysis can suggest an evolutionary psychiatry—that is to say, psychiatry can look for distant causes of mental disturbance in the vagaries of evolutionary influence.This way of approaching philosophy is interesting because it starts with the outcome of a scientific investigation of the human mind, just as Freud suggested in the passage quoted (Freud 1921, 270). The prospect is for a natural philosophy of mind, just as the physics of fundamental particles and the "big bang" prompt us toward a kind of natural ontology of the universe and its contents, arising from empirically tested facts.However, De Block is on rather uncertain ground with the evidence for his argument; he commits Freud to this biological speculation on the basis of a paper that Freud did not in fact publish and tore up.2 Even if Freud's reading of the evolutionary origins of man... (shrink)

Claims that pornography cannot be art typically depend on controversial claims about essential value differences (moral, aesthetic) between pornography and art. In this paper, I offer a value-neutral exclusionary claim, showing pornography to be descriptively at odds with art. I then show how my view is an improvement on similar claims made by Jerrold Levinson. Finally I draw parallels between art and pornography and art and advertising as well as show that my view is consistent with our typical usage of (...) the term “pornographic art.”. (shrink)

To be radical about pornography used to mean that one favored less censorship; now it often means that one favors more. That political change reflects a shift in the dominant paradigm of pornography and its putative evils. Until quite recently, most people who believed pornography wrong thought that it offended against decency and propriety and was therefore obscene. That was certainly the view of the law. English judges first created the crime of obscene libel in 1727 on the basis that (...) such expression tended to corrupt the morals of the King's subjects, a thought that inspired most subsequent legislation in the common‐law world. Sometimes the underlying concern really was paternalistic: pornography degrades and corrupts its producers and consumers; the law forces them to become better people. More often, however, it was just moralism of the familiar sorts: the view that a majority of a community is entitled to enforce its moral views on the rest, either because that is democratic or because that is just what it means to be a community. The obscenity paradigm thus had two features. First, it was illiberal: it ranked personal autonomy below realizing the good, enforcing the majority will, or embodying communitarian values. Second, it was gender neutral: to understand the nature of pornography did not require theorizing relations between men and women. On the obscenity paradigm, pornography was a matter of virtue versus vice, majorities versus minorities. (shrink)

A book in which analytic philosophers examine the portrayal of sex in art and the possible artistic value of pornography proves a disappointment. Although a transcendental objection to pornographic art is rebutted, the papers employ barren philosophical methods that divert energy away from significant problems and into scholastic quibbles.

This essay develops the thesis that the essence of psychoanalysis lies in emotional phenomenology.

If critical momentum in European philosophy and theory has seemed to shift away from deconstruction over the past decade or so, nevertheless the indebtedness of contemporary key thinkers to Derrida's writing and the entire project of deconstruction is unquestionable, regardless of whether it is always fully acknowledged, and whether or not Derrida's influence manifests itself as a source of inspiration or the grounds of critical antagonism or opposition. Many of those who now reject deconstruction continue to write texts that (...) engage with Derrida's work, whether dismissively or not. In this context, how best to recall deconstruction as a continuing 'voice' across the various fields of the critical humanities, theory and philosophy? The starting point for this collection of essays is the idea that, rather than reduce deconstruction to an object of historical importance or memory, one might more fruitfully analyze its significance in terms of complex matrices of desire in which it continues to figure; ceaselessly provoked in this way, deconstruction may neither be dismissed as simply 'dead', nor unproblematically defended as still alive and well. Instead, it asks to be repositioned on the threshold of life-death (about which deconstruction has always had much to say), an intricate threshold which profoundly complicates its relationship to the 'present' field of critical thought. This is a field which-according to a highly complex set of desires-still struggles to memorialize, to inter, or indeed to cremate, reduce to ashes, the deconstructive corpus. This collection therefore brings together leading voices at the forefront of their critical fields, in order to address the question of the desires of deconstruction, in precisely these multiple senses. With contributions from Etienne Balibar, Catherine Malibou and Martin Hagglund, the volume includes key thinkers across various generations of scholarship: those whose careers took off in the 1960s, at the same time Derrida's importance was gaining acknowledgement; those who played their part in the Anglo-American reception and translation of Derrida in the subsequent two or three decades; those taught by him; and those who, without undue discipleship or hagiography, now seek to critically re-evaluate his work. (shrink)

Continental philosophers examine Freud’s metapsychology.

This essay explains the prevalence of porn consumption by modeling it as a form of simulation. According to simulation theory (Gordon 1986, Goldman 2006) people predict and explain other’s behavior by using their own mind to model the mind of a target individual, much like an engineer might use a model aircraft to simulate the behavior of an actual aircraft. However, the cognitive mechanisms required for simulation have application outside of psychological interpretation. For example, it is plausible that while consuming (...) pornography individuals simulate the actual activities as depicted by the pornographic material. On this construal, viewers of pornography think and feel as though they are truly having the depicted experience: from the psychological and phenomenological perceptive of someone watching a pornographic video, they really are being sexually pleasured by others, and in just those specific ways. The goal of this essay is to develop the pornography-as-simulation model and examine both its social and theoretical implications. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of the key philosophical themes and debates in discussions of pornography. In particular, I consider the major positions on how pornography ought to be defined, when (and if ) it should be regulated, whether it is best understood as speech (or action), whether there is evidence that is it harmful. I argue in favor of what is known as the civil rights approach to pornography, as reflected in the work of Catharine MacKinnon.

_Psychoanalysis Beyond the End of Metaphysics_ offers a new paradigm approach which advocates reengaging the importance of metaphysics in psychoanalytic theorizing. The emergence of the relational trend has witnessed a revitalizing influx of new ideas, reflecting a fundamental commitment to the principle of dialogue. However, the transition towards a more pluralistic discourse remains a work in progress, and those schools of thought not directly associated with the relational shift continue to play only a marginal role. In this book, Robin S. (...) Brown argues that for contemporary psychoanalysis to more adequately reflect a clinical ethos of pluralism, the field must examine the extent to which a theoretical commitment to the notion of relationship can grow restrictive. Suggesting that in the very effort to negotiate theoretical biases, psychoanalytic practice may occlude a more adequate recognition of its own evolving assumptions, Brown proposes that the profession’s advance requires a return to first principles. Arguing for the fundamental role played by faith in supporting the emergence of consciousness, this work situates itself at the crossroads of relational, Jungian, and transpersonal approaches to the psyche. Psychoanalysis Beyond the End of Metaphysics will be of significant interest to all psychodynamically oriented clinicians, alongside scholars of depth psychology and the philosophy of mind. It will also be helpful to advanced and postgraduate students of psychoanalysis seeking to orient themselves in the field at present. (shrink)

This paper sets the framework for a hybrid theory of Logic-Based Therapy and Psychoanalysis through an examination of Sigmund’s Freud’s theory of perfectionism.

When the cluster on “Sexual Expressions” began to take shape, one of the first people I thought of to serve as a referee was Joan Mason-Grant, given her longstanding philosophical and activist interest in pornography. It was with great sorrow that I learned, when I contacted her, that she had been diagnosed with a fast moving cancer. Joan was most interested to hear about this emerging “found cluster”; “it sounds like an interesting issue of Hypatia to look forward to, but (...) unfortunately my own academic work has had to be suspended” (May 17, 2009). She died just four days later. (shrink)

What is the future of legal philosophy? No doubt it has many. But we are betting that jurisprudence will gravitate towards freedom. Freedom, the attribute of the human subject, has largely been absent from legal philosophy. This is a lack that psychoanalytic jurisprudence aims to correct. In this essay, drafted as chapter in "On Philosophy in American Law" (Francis Jay Mootz III, ed.) to be published by the Cambridge University Press, we set forth what we think are (...) the primary differences between a jurisprudence based in the Continental tradition of speculative philosophy, and the liberal jurisprudences that dominate in the American academy. Most importantly, all liberal theories start with some intuition of the free, autonomous individual. In contrast, psychoanalysis views the subject's definition as the problem of philosophy. For psychoanalysis, as reformulated by Jacques Lacan, personality and freedom cannot exist in any empirical or hypothetical state of nature because nature is unfree - bound by iron-clad laws of cause and effect. Personality and freedom are artificial creations - hard-won achievements. Subjectivity - the capacity to bear duties and rights - is a stage in this struggle. (shrink)

When Susan Sontag addresses the problem of pornography and relates it to Hegel, she is not merely describing a path in European philosophy aimed to construct a new language, but she is also committing this aim to the importance of re-reading culture. The fashion in which pornography describes reality is meaningful when we are trying to approach Hegel in his aim to construct a post-religious language that finally will make ready-to-hand life as life. Politics, and society, being two essential (...) elements to understand reality, become singularly interesting when analyzed through the gaze of Sontag in combination of Hegel’s philosophy. The conservative morals that reign over what we understand as pornography, and the cultural moment of Europe since the most progressive moments of the 19 th century, describe a fatalist landscape for the future of society and politics. Yet, the learnings from Hegel remain meaningful. In this paper I examine how a post-religious philosophy, aimed long ago by Hegel’s contribution to philosophy, can serve to the understanding of a post-pornographic society: a society that is able to learn from the contributions of Frankfurt’s school with regards to an efficient cultural tissue, and defeat the old religious morals that are inserted in the backbone of politics and philosophy still today. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to analyze some of the epistemically pernicious effects of the use of the internet and social media. In light of this analysis, it introduces the concept of epistemic pornography and argues that epistemic agents both can and should avoid consuming and sharing epistemic pornography. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on research on epistemic virtue, cognitive biases, social media use and its epistemic consequences, fake news, paternalistic nudging, pornography, moral philosophy, moral elevation and moral exemplar theory to (...) analyze the epistemically pernicious effects of the internet and social media. Findings There is a growing consensus that the internet and social media activate and enable human cognitive biases leading to what are here called “failures of epistemic virtue.” Common formulations of this problem involve the concept of “fake news,” and strategies for responding to the problem often have much in common with paternalistic “nudging.” While fake news is a problem and the nudging approach holds out promise, the paper concludes that both place insufficient emphasis on the agency and responsibility of users on the internet and social media, and that nudging represents a necessary but not sufficient response. Originality/value The essay offers the concept of epistemic pornography as a concept distinct from but related to “fake news” – distinct precisely because it places greater emphasis on personal agency and responsibility, and following recent literature on moral elevation and moral exemplars, as a heuristic that agents might use to economize their efforts at resisting irrational cognitive biases and attempting to live up to their epistemic duties. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur's Freud and Philosophy was a major reinterpretation of psychoanalysis and its philosophical significance, but Ricoeur also wrote many important articles on similar themes. This volume makes available some of his key writings on Freud and psychoanalysis: together with Freud and Philosophy, they form a major part of his philosophical legacy. What kind of science is psychoanalysis? What kind of truth does it offer and what kind of proof does it provide? What does the (...) concrete practice of psychoanalysis consist of? What can it tell us about creativity and the work of art? What is its place within our culture and how can it transform culture? What is the role of narrative in psychoanalysis? Ricoeur reading Freud: this could have been the title of this volume, in which the focus is on the actual work of Freud and not on subsequent commentaries. An open reading of intellectual integrity. A critical reading which shuns definitive positions. A reading to understand Freud. -- Publisher description. (shrink)

Most people are familiar with Justice Stewart's now classic statement that while he cannot describe pornography, he certainly knows it when he sees it. We instantly identify with Justice Stewart. Pornography is not difficult to recognize, but it does elude description. This is because traditional attempts at description are attempts that seek to explain at either an abstract or empirical level rather than at the level that accounts for experience in its totality. Justice Stewart's lament represents the need to understand (...) the subjective experience of pornography and cease trying to explain it in purely objective terms. Much feminist literature in general and Catharine MacKinnon's work in particular seeks to do just this. MacKinnon argues that pornography should not be explained in familiar First Amendment freedom -of-expression terms, but rather in terms of the actual sexual abuse it constitutes in experience. Then, and only then, are we able to select the appropriate legal remedy. This essay suggests that MacKinnon's position not only needs the support of a non-traditional philosophical approach, but has one readily available in the phenomenology of philosopher Edmund Husserl. (shrink)

... he writes of the destruction of Mnemosyne's city and of the severing of the locks of the goddess herself: From her also, when God put off his cloak, ...

Love, hate, slavery, torture, addiction and death - as this book shows, only psychoanalysis can speak well of such matters. Psychoanalysis was the most important intellectual development of the 20th century, which left no practice from psychiatry to philosophy to politics untouched. Yet it was also in many ways an untouchable project, caught between science and poetry, medicine and hermeneutics. This unsettled, unsettling status has recently induced the philosopher Alain Badiou to characterise psychoanalysis as an 'antiphilosophy', (...) that is, as a practice that issues the strongest possible challenges to thought. Justin Clemens takes up the challenge of this denomination here, by re-examining a series of crucial psychoanalytic themes: addiction, fanaticism, love, slavery and torture. Drawing from the work of Freud, Lacan, Badiou, Agamben and others, Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy offers a radical reconstruction of the operations and import of key psychoanalytic concepts and a renewed sense of the indispensable powers of psychoanalysis for today. (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)

Violation pornography is pornography where the depicted behavior includes unjust sexual acts, e.g., rape. In this paper I argue that it is unclear whether the enjoyment of violation pornography is bad for the viewer. My essay has three parts. First, I set out an account of flourishing. I adopt a composite account, whereby flourishing is a function of the degree to which an individual has pleasure and various objective-list elements. Objective-list elements are things (e.g., knowledge and meaningful relationships) that make (...) my life go better independently of their effects on pleasure and desire-fulfillment. In the next two parts, I relate violation pornography to each component of flourishing. Thus, in the second part, I explore whether violation pornography promotes or hinders pleasure. In the third part I explore whether pornography is compatible with these objective-list elements, particularly virtue. (shrink)

The question of “time” is a worthy topic of psychoanalytic inquiry, concerning at least three different levels: technical, epistemological, and existential. However, if subjective well-being is the ultimate purpose of the analytic experience, it is immediately clear that the last level also defines the previous ones. In this perspective, we can attribute an innovative role to Lacan’s inquiry on time, in receiving the Freudian psychoanalytical legacy and in participating in the contemporary thought about subjective consciousness of time. Indeed, starting from (...) the paper entitled “Logical time”, Lacan completely abandons a linear notion of time: what concerns psychoanalysis is not the “real” past sequence of events in themselves, but the way these events exist “now” in memory, and the way the patient reports them. This dynamic idea of subjective temporality was immediately received not only by clinical therapy but also by other branches of knowledge. Nevertheless, in his late teaching Lacan directly engages the epistemological level of time analysis, trying to offer constants to the dynamic of time consciousness. Therefore, in the last years of his Seminar, he introduces into his work the mathematical concept of topological space, and begins to delineate a close relationship between time and space from the immanent point of view of discourse theory. If “rhythm” seems to be the ultimate horizon opened by Lacan’s teaching on time toward the end of his career, this perspective could mark the definitive return to Freud and anticipate some of the current most valid research in semiotics and physics. Unfortunately, the death of the French psychoanalyst resulted in this perspective remaining only barely sketched out. (shrink)

Pornography has attracted a good deal of academic and political attention, primarily from feminists of various persuasions, moral philosophers, and legal scholars. Surprisingly less work has been forthcoming from film theorists, given how much pornography has been produced on video and DVD and is now available through live streaming video over the Internet. Indeed, it is not until 1989, with the publication of Linda Williams’ groundbreaking Hard Core, that pornography is distinguished, in terms of its content, intent, and governing conventions, (...) as a filmic genre of its own. Still, not all pornography exists as film, and so a full discussion of it must encompass its other manifestations (e.g., magazines, websites, comics, etc.). The central questions about pornography are these: (1) What is it? How is it to be defined? (2) What are its effects? (3) How, if at all, ought it to be regulated? While these questions are simple, providing answers to them, as we shall see, is complicated. There is plenty of disagreement about how to define pornography; research about pornography’s effects is not univocal; and this in turn leads to substantial debate about what can and may be done about pornography. It is to these matters that the bulk of this essay is addressed. To begin, however, we will take a brief snapshot of the emergence of pornographic film and of the pornography business as it exists today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Foucault for Psychoanalysis”Monique David-Ménard’s Kind of BluePenelope DeutscherFoucault for psychoanalysis? This is a paradoxical question. Foucault also produced a critique of psychoanalysis, aiming to show that sexuality was not an a-temporal reality, nor a truth eventually discovered by Freud. It was a discursive formation, one among others.—Eloge des hasards dans la vie sexuelle, 172.To the philosophers..A practicing psychoanalyst and a professor of philosophy, Monique David-Ménard (...) extends a singular proposition to philosophers. She is not the first philosopher to engage the assumptions of psychoanalysis, but hers is a particularly idiosyncratic suggestion for how to think with the analyst’s clinical work, intimate and alien. She has proposed we do so in the company of Gilles Deleuze,1 and most recently, in Eloge des hasards dans la vie sexuelle (2011) has extended her invitation to think with the clinic through an ingenious reading of Michel Foucault.As Eloge opens, David-Ménard’s reading of Foucault is far from the scene. Early in the work, we are asked to think with a practice, seemingly in a different register. An analyst finds herself accused of being an obstacle, of opposing the analysand’s wishes in life. In this context, we are asked to think about the blue of a painting in the room where the analysand waits (David-Ménard 2011, 34). [End Page 111]Given the criticisms of psychoanalysis elaborated in the work of Foucault and Deleuze, one might have expected these philosophers to be considered in Eloge in that stead.2 Or, one could imagine Foucault playing a role because of his genealogical analysis of the formation of the Oedipus complex.3Two years after the publication of Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus, Foucault had, in Abnormal, characterized the desiring space of the family as stimulated in a capillary network of individualizing normalization (Foucault 2003, 257), linked by medicalized and expert concern of which parents became the auxiliaries. They are charged, and charge themselves, with the goals of family health, of preservative and defensive good parenting, and with the conduct of the child’s conduct. Foucault describes the pre-twentieth century emergence of lay and expert preoccupation with the dangers of childhood masturbation. This produces an environment whose intensive scrutiny involves a close “folding of... parents’ bodies over... children’s bodies” (ibid., 265) in a saturated, hermetic environment stimulating oedipalized desire. This means one can offer a genealogical account of the conditions of formation of the latter. These include a responsibilization of parents, who control for the presence of abnormal sex, advised by new experts (lay, medical, pseudo-scientific) in collective crusades for health and life. Thus there is differentiation through minor gradations of abnormality. Even the specificity of the architectural spaces in which scrutiny is directed plays a role in the hollowing out of the child’s putatively interior psychic-sexual life, the intense object of “palpating” interest (Foucault 1978, 45) in new apparatuses of knowledge-power (Foucault 2003, 327).Because he presents this as the context in which the “nuclear and substantial family was gradually constituted” (Foucault 2003, 264), along with its oedipal configurations of desire, Foucault emphasizes the contingency of both. Psychoanalysis would be, from his perspective, willfully indifferent to these or other possibilities for genealogical analysis of the apparatus of power, knowledge, and the body, of the repeating configurations of desire that are its special domain of expertise,4 and the emergent forms of authority associated with the analyst, described in History of Madness (Foucault 2009) and in Psychiatric Power (Foucault 2006).Perhaps we’d expect to see David-Ménard, the psychoanalyst, addressing these accounts, but they are neither repudiated in Eloge, nor extensively discussed. Far from rejecting a genealogical analysis of psychoanalysis, she promotes its promise. But this is so in a particular sense.Necessity and repetitionA particular patient might fear being “mad like her mother.” She might fear being denied, trapped, or annihilated (David-Ménard 2011, 33). She might [End Page 112] consider herself somehow denied a lover. She might seem to be denying herself a lover. There’s a degree of necessity in all these variants. Perhaps these... (shrink)

The latest book in a series that seeks to illuminate Francis Bacon's art and motivations and open up fresh and stimulating ways of understanding his paintings.

This essay proposes a reading of psychoanalytic development through crisis. It will be argued that various crisis within and outside of the psychoanalytic field had a determining and constituting role in theoretical and clinical development. The disavowed historical antagonisms that are inherent to psychoanalysis and helped advance psychoanalytic theory, equally created further schisms, perpetuating dialectic of resistance-criticism-revision that maintains the radical potential of the theory and at the same time the destructive other side. The non-relation between particular theories of (...) psychoanalysis and philosophy will be placed in the context of the dialectic that fosters this antagonistic relation, formulating new views and theoretical postulates and equally, the potential for destruction of the radical idea. (shrink)

Only by the method of free-association could Sigmund Freud have demonstrated how human consciousness is formed by the repression of thoughts and feelings that we consider dangerous. Yet today most therapists ignore this truth about our psychic life. This book offers a critique of the many brands of contemporary psychoanalysis and psychotherapy that have forgotten Freud's revolutionary discovery. Barnaby B. Barratt offers a fresh and compelling vision of the structure and function of the human psyche, building on the pioneering (...) work of theorists such as André Green and Jean Laplanche, as well as contemporary deconstruction, feminism, and liberation philosophy. He explores how ‘drive’ or desire operates dynamically between our biological body and our mental representations of ourselves, of others, and of the world we inhabit. This dynamic vision not only demonstrates how the only authentic freedom from our internal imprisonments comes through free-associative praxis, it also shows the extent to which other models of psychoanalysis tend to stray disastrously from Freud's original and revolutionary insights. This is a vision that understands the central issues that imprison our psychic lives - the way in which the reflections of consciousness are based on the repression of our innermost desires, the way in which our erotic vitality is so often repudiated, and the way in which our socialization oppressively stifles our human spirit. Radical Psychoanalysis restores to the discipline of psychoanalysis the revolutionary impetus that has so often been lost. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, mental health practitioners and students and academics with an interest in the history of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

"A modern philosopher's profound and eloquent inquiry into the depths of human nature. Rich in insight and immediately relevant to our contemporary world, here is a striking challenge for man to confront the demons within himself."--Back cover.

This paper examines the challenge that psychoanalytic theory cannot be refuted. It does so by considering the theory in its orthodox Freudian form, and in the main branches into which it can be divided ? the theory of Instincts, of Development, of Psychic Structure, of Mental Economics or Defence, and of Symptom Formation. The essential character of the generalizations and concepts of these branches will just be indicated; and we shall ask of each branch whether it is possible to refute (...) it. A considerable amount of scientific enquiry has been done into the concepts and generalizations of psychoanalysis. Relevant examples of these enquiries will be noted; and the question asked whether these scientific studies have in fact done anything to refute or support the various branches of psychoanalytic theory. The general upshot will be that the challenge is both important and a mistake. (shrink)

In this paper an attempt is made to look at Freud's contribution from the point of view of its scientific validity. A factual survey is made of the results of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, of the kinds of facts and arguments used to support the psychoanalytic doctrine and of the experiments carried out to test it. The conclusion arrived at is that psychoanalysis and the theories associated with it is not a science, but a myth; adherence to it is based on (...) emotion and prejudice rather than on fact and reason. (shrink)