Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and the Origins of Meaning

by Snelling, David

• ISBN13: 9780754616290
• ISBN10: 0754616290
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co

Summary

Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of psychoanalysis, and on considerations of the nature of psychoanalytic theory itself, this book reveals new possibilities which psychoanalysis offers for an understanding of the mind - more broadly, the subject of mental states - and its relation to the world. Entailing a re-examination of an approach embedded in the work of certain Continental thinkers, notably Heidegger and Hegel, the connections between philosophy and psychoanalysis presented in this book represent a fresh departure. Linking Kleinian notions of an inner world of unconscious phantasy, to philosophical conceptions of non-linguistic meaning whose significance for the psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity has been hitherto overlooked, Snelling argues that psychoanalysis demands a significant place in our philosophical understanding of ourselves.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction	1	(4)
Cavell, Klein and the Extension of Commonsense Psychology	5	(18)
The pattern of commonsense explanation	5	(4)
Marcia Cavell's reconstruction of psychoanalysis	9	(6)
The challenge from Kleinian theory	15	(8)
Unconscious Phantasy and Mental Life	23	(20)
The ubiquity of unconscious phantasy	23	(6)
The basic nature of phantasy	29	(8)
How Kleinian and Freudian theory connect	37	(6)
From Freud to Phenomenology	43	(37)
The Freudian object	43	(6)
A Wittgensteinian approach to phenomenology	49	(14)
Heidegger and meaning	63	(10)
Pre-reflective intentionality: some consequences	73	(7)
Hegel and `Being-in-the-World'	80	(18)
Hegel's doctrine of `soul'	80	(9)
Hegel and madness	89	(4)
The pre-reflective basis of skill and habit	93	(5)
Wilfred Bion and the Psychoanalytic Theory of Thinking	98	(24)
Klein and symbol-formation	98	(7)
Psychosis and infancy	105	(8)
Doing things with words	113	(4)
Bion's `empiricism'	117	(5)
Psychoanalysis, Psychosis and Being: `Falling-out-of-the-World'	122	(22)
Psychoanalysis and the pre-reflective level	122	(8)
Sartre's loss of meaning	130	(7)
Further applications	137	(7)
Internal Objects and Ontology	144	(19)
Hegel's holistic metaphysics	144	(6)
Internal objects assessed	150	(6)
Objects and universals	156	(7)
Hegel and Holism	163	(32)
Unifying pluralities, sundering unities	163	(13)
Unity, the universal, and the internal object	176	(6)
Unity and holistic metaphysics	182	(5)
Conclusion: the ramifications of holism	187	(8)
Bibliography	195	(10)
Index	205