Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan

by Boothby,Richard

• ISBN13: 9780415925891
• ISBN10: 0415925894
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-09-21
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Using Jacques Lacan's work as a key, this groundbreaking work reassesses the philosophical significance of Freud's most ambitious general theory of mental functioning: metapsychology. Richard Boothby forcefully argues that this theory has been misunderstood, and that therefore Freud's impact on philosophy has been unjustly muted.Freud as Philosopherilluminates in a fresh and newly accessible way the central points of Freud's metapsychology-including the guiding metaphor of psychical energy and the final, enigmatic theory of the twin drives of life and death-through the three cardinal Lacanian categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. This exciting and brilliant book will have a definitive impact on how psychoanalysis is conceived in relation to philosophy.

Author Biography

Richard Boothby is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Preface	xiii
List of Bibliographical Abbreviations Used in the Text	xvii
Introduction Returning to Metapsychology	1	(1)
To Recall Freud's Witch	2	(7)
The Lacanian Return to Freud	9	(8)
Toward the Unthought Ground of Thought	17	(54)
Monet's Pursuit of the ``Enveloppe''	18	(3)
The World of the Water Lilies	21	(5)
The Class of 1890: James, Bergson, and Nietzsche	26	(11)
Gestalt Psychology and Phenomenology	37	(6)
Heidegger: The Disposition of Being	43	(11)
The Gestaltist Ontology of Merleau-Ponty	54	(7)
The Unthought Ground of Thought in the Freudian Unconscious	61	(10)
Between the Image and the Word	71	(62)
In the Shadow of the Image	72	(6)
The Unconscious Play of the Signifier	78	(8)
From Image to Sign	86	(8)
The Ratman's Phantasy	94	(5)
The Specimen Dream of Psychoanalysis	99	(6)
In the Navel of the Dream	105	(9)
The Dream's Solution	114	(5)
Circulation in the Psychical Apparatus	119	(5)
The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles	124	(9)
The Freudian Dialectic	133	(58)
The Formative Power of the Image	134	(7)
Imaginary Alienation	141	(9)
Aggressivity and the Death Drive	150	(4)
The Agency of Death in the Signifier	154	(9)
Language Acquisition and the Oedipus Complex	163	(12)
Psychoanalysis and the Theory of Sacrifice	175	(8)
Toward a Lacanian Theory of Sacrifice	183	(8)
The Freudian Thing	191	(50)
A Love Triangle	193	(5)
The Thing about the Other	198	(11)
Thing or No-thing	209	(7)
Speaking of the Thing	216	(8)
Freud avec Jakobson	224	(17)
Figurations of the Object a	241	(40)
The Object-Cause of Desire	242	(6)
``You don't love me ... you just don't give a shit.''	248	(4)
Between the Look and the Gaze	252	(9)
Why One and One Make Four	261	(10)
How the Real World Became a Phantasy	271	(10)
Conclusion	281	(16)
Notes	297	(16)
Bibliography	313	(10)
Index	323