Love in a Time of Loneliness : Three Essays on Drives and Desires

by VERHAEGHE, PAUL

• ISBN13: 9781892746313
• ISBN10: 189274631X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Other Press

Summary

Paul Verhaeghe here shows us what it is about sex that both motivates and inhibits us. A humorous and razor-sharp analysis of the relationship between contemporary man and woman, of the disappearance of the Oedipus complex and the shattering of classic gender roles, and of the boredom, anxiety, and anger ever-present in postmodern society, this book is a contemporary polemic whose refreshing informality belies its serious intent.

Author Biography

Paul Verhaeghe

Paul Verhaeghe is senior professor at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and head of the Department for Psychoanalysis and Counseling Psychology. He teaches clinical psychodiagnostics and psychoanalytic psychotherapy and works as a psychoanalyst in private practice as well. He is the author of Does the Woman Exist? (1999) and On Being Normal and Other Disorders (2004), which won the Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship, all available from Other Press.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Sex, Death and Power	viii
I. The Impossible Couple	1	(72)
The concerned techno-lover	6	(2)
Fantasies that create reality	8	(6)
Self-fulfilling prophecies	14	(3)
What about biology?	17	(4)
Divided desire	21	(5)
Animal instincts, human drives	26	(2)
Drives: partial and auto-erotic	28	(6)
Love is...	34	(4)
...total and exclusive	38	(2)
...cause of lack and desire	40	(3)
The art of saying no	43	(3)
About boys and girls	46	(4)
The power of the imagination	50	(3)
Culture and the prohibition of incest	53	(4)
Masturbation and addiction	57	(2)
Love and drive-the tunnel	59	(5)
Two sorts of love-love is giving what you haven't got	64	(6)
Love is poetry	70	(3)
II. Fathers in Flight	73	(69)
Freud, the Oedipus of his time	77	(5)
Oedipus on the wrong track	82	(5)
The traditional solution	87	(4)
Filling your belly comes first, ethics come later!	91	(8)
Traditional tales and historical reality	99	(6)
The impossible centre of a discursive field	105	(1)
Orestes in the twentieth century, or nothing new under the sun	106	(11)
Primal fathers, Incorporated	117	(5)
Credo quia absurdum: I believe this because it makes no sense	122	(4)
The `will to knowledge', eroticism and monsters	126	(3)
The perverse superego: enjoy!	129	(6)
The frightened band of heroes	135	(7)
III. The Drive	142	(60)
Irresistible urges	142	(5)
Jekyll and Hyde	147	(3)
Desire (drive): the never-ending story	150	(8)
Drive (desire): the immediate	158	(5)
Drive and trauma	163	(6)
The forbidden apple	169	(6)
Transgression: the sado-masochistic universe	175	(8)
With a little help from my friends...	183	(5)
The Meaning of Life-teleology	188	(6)
Eros versus Thanatos	194	(5)
Love in a Time of Loneliness	199	(3)
Notes	202	(5)
Bibliography	207	(5)
Films	212