Whose Freud? : The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture

by Edited by Peter Brooks and Alex Woloch

• ISBN13: 9780300087451
• ISBN10: 0300087454
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2000-07-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

One hundred years after the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud remains the most frequently cited author of our culture -- and one of the most controversial. To some he is the presiding genius of modernity, to others the author of its symptomatic illnesses. The current position of psychoanalysis is very much at issue. Is it still valid as a theory of the mind? Have its therapeutic applications been rendered obsolete by drugs? Why does it still figure in debates about sexual identity, despite its rejection by many feminists? How docs it contribute to cultural analysis?

This book offers a new assessment of the status of psychoanalysis as a discipline and a discourse in contemporary culture. It brings together an exceptional group of theorists and practitioners, such partisans and critics of Freud as Frederic Crews, Judith Butler, Leo Bersani, Juliet Mitchell, Robert Jay Lifton, Richard Wollheim, Jonathan Lear, and others. These contributors, who are active in literature, philosophy, film, history, cultural studies, neuroscience, psychotherapy, an

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(14)
Peter Brooks
Part One Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents
Introduction	15	(4)
Unconscious Deeps and Empirical Shallows	19	(14)
Frederick Crews
Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents	33	(6)
Robert Michels
Quandaries of the Incest Taboo	39	(8)
Judith Butler
The Vortex Beneath the Story	47	(24)
Juliet Mitchell
Discussion	51	(16)
Part Two Psychoanalysis: Between Therapy and Hermeneutics?
Introduction	67	(4)
Is Anatomy Destiny? Freud and Biological Determinism	71	(22)
Toril Moi
Bridging the Gap Between Two Scenes	93	(3)
Hubert Damisch
Psychoanalysis as a Hermeneutic Science	96	(20)
Peter Loewenberg
The Pain in the Patient's Knee	116	(28)
Mary Jacobus
Discussion	130	(11)
Part Three Psychoanalysis and Sexual Identity
Introduction	141	(3)
Freud and Homosexuality	144	(6)
Paul Robinson
The Language of Care	150	(4)
Kaja Silverman
Speaking Psychoanalysis	154	(24)
Leo Bersani
Discussion	159	(16)
Part Four Psychoanalysis and the Historiography of Modern Culture
Introduction	175	(3)
Reflections on Trauma, Absence, and Loss	178	(27)
Dominick LaCapra
States of Emergency: Toward a Freudian Historiography of Modernity	205	(6)
Eric L. Santner
Early Modern Subjectivity and the Place of Psychoanalysis in Cultural Analysis: The Case of Richard Norwood	211	(11)
Meredith Skura
Whose Psychohistory?	222	(26)
Robert Jay Lifton
Discussion	229	(16)
Part Five Psychoanalysis and Theories of Mind
Introduction	245	(3)
Can Psychoanalysis and Cognitive-Emotional Neuroscience Collaborate in Remodeling Our Concept of Mind-Brain?	248	(7)
Morton F. Reiser
Freud's Neuromental Model: Analytic Structures and Local Habitations	255	(12)
David V. Forrest
Freud's Theory of the Mind and Modern Functional Imaging Experiments	267	(8)
Robert G. Shulman
Douglas L. Rothman
The Changing Psychoanalytic Model of the Mind	275	(21)
Arnold M. Cooper
Discussion	281	(12)
Part Six Psychoanalysis: What Kind of Truth?
Introduction	293	(3)
Psychoanalytical Theory and Kinds of Truth	296	(4)
Richard Wollheim
On Truth	300	(4)
Donald Davidson
Truth in Psychoanalysis	304	(7)
Jonathan Lear
What Kind of Truth?	311	(22)
John Forrester
Discussion	324	(9)
List of Contributors	333	(4)
Index	337