The Legend of Freud

by Weber, Samuel

• ISBN13: 9780804731218
• ISBN10: 0804731217
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

"Psychoanalysis is dead!" Again and again this obituary is pronounced, with ever-increasing conviction in newspapers and scholarly journals alike. But the ghost of Freud and his thought continues to haunt those who would seal the grave.The Legend of Freudshows why psychoanalysis has remaineduncanny,not just for its enemies but for its advocates and practitioners as well--and why it continues to fascinate us. For psychoanalysis is not just a theory of psychic conflict: it is a thought in conflict with itself. Often violent, the conflicts of psychoanalysis are most productive where they remain unresolved, thus producing a text that must beread:deciphered, interpreted, rewritten. Psychoanalysis:legenda est. Review "The Legend of Freudis a fine example of what can be done with Freud's texts when philosophical and literary approaches converge, and you leave the couch in the other room. . . . Like Lacan and Derrida, Weber doesn't so much explain or interpret Freud as engage him, performing what Freud would have called anAuseinandersetzung,a discussion or argument that's also a taking apart, a deconstruction. . . . Deconstruction has picked up a bad name, especially in the minds of those who don't understand it; but this wouldn't be the case if there were more books like Weber's.The Legend of Freudis the best deconstructive work I've seen lately, and the best response to Freud; it merits close attention from anyone who wants a challenge, not merely a guide to what's right and wrong. . . . Weber is brilliantly imaginative, respectful of his subject and his readers, and productive of new ideas." --Village Voice Literary Supplement

Author Biography

Samuel Weber is Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the UCLA Paris Program in Critical Theory. Among his many books is Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media (Stanford, 1996).

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Uncanny Thinking	1	(34)
PART I. PSYCHOANALYSIS SET APART
Going My Way	35	(5)
A Problem of Narcissism	40	(10)
Observation, Description, Figurative Language	50	(17)
Metapsychology Set Apart	67	(34)
PART 2. THE OTHER PART
The Meaning of the Thallus	101	(20)
The Joke: Child's Play	121	(17)
The Shaggy Dog	138	(21)
PART 3. LOVE STORIES
The Analyst's Desire: Speculation in Play	159	(16)
The Fort!	175	(11)
Speculation: The Way to Utter Difference	186	(21)
The Sideshow, or: Remarks on a Canny Moment	207	(32)
Notes	239	(16)
Index	255