Saturday, July 9, 2011

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Broadview Editions)

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Broadview Editions) Review



Beyond the Pleasure Principle is Freud's most philosophical and speculative work, exploring profound questions of life and death, pleasure and pain. In it Freud introduces the fundamental concepts of the "repetition compulsion" and the "death drive," according to which a perverse, repetitive, self-destructive impulse opposes and even trumps the creative drive, or Eros. The work is one of Freud's most intensely debated, and raises important questions that have been discussed by philosophers and psychoanalysts since its first publication in 1920. The text is presented here in a contemporary new translation by Gregory C. Richter. Appendices trace the work's antecedents and the many responses to it, including texts by Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche, Melanie Klein, Herbert Marcuse, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, among many others.


Friday, July 8, 2011

The Interpretation of Dreams

The Interpretation of Dreams Review



Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams translated by James Strachey


Thursday, July 7, 2011

Electra After Freud: Myth And Culture (Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry)

Electra After Freud: Myth And Culture (Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry) Review



"Electra’s story is essentially a tale of murder, revenge, and violence. In the ancient myth of Atreus, Agamemnon returns home from battle and receives no hero’s welcome. Instead, he is greeted with an ax, murdered in his bath by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover-accomplice, Aegisthus. Electra chooses anger over sorrow and stops at nothing to ensure that her mother pays. In revenge, Electra, with the help of her brother, orchestrates a brutal and bloody matricide, and her reward is the restitution of her father’s good name. Amid all this chaos, Electra, Agamemnon’s princess daughter, must bear the humiliation of being treated as a slave girl and labeled a madwoman."
—from the Introduction

Almost everyone knows about Oedipus and his mother, and many readers would put the Oedipus myth at the forefront of Western collective mythology. In Electra after Freud, Jill Scott leaves that couple behind and argues convincingly for the primacy of the countermyth of Agamemnon and his daughter. Through a lens of Freudian and feminist psychoanalysis, this book views renderings of the Electra myth in twentieth-century literature and culture.

Scott reads several pivotal texts featuring Electra to demonstrate what she calls "a narrative revolt" against the dominance of Oedipus as archetype. Situating the Electra myth within a framework of psychoanalysis, medicine, opera, and dance, Scott investigates the heroine’s role at the intersections of history and the feminine, eros and thanatos, hysteria and melancholia. Scott analyzes Electra adaptations by H.D., Hofmannsthal and Strauss, Musil, and Plath and highlights key moments in the telling and reception of the Electra myth in the modern imagination.


Wednesday, July 6, 2011

From Freud to Jung: A Comparitive Study of the Psychology of the Unconscious (C. G. Jung Foundation Books)

From Freud to Jung: A Comparitive Study of the Psychology of the Unconscious (C. G. Jung Foundation Books) Review



This comparative study of the basic concepts of Freud and Jung is designed to give a comprehensive understanding of Jung's work. The author traces the development of Jung from his initial fascination with Freud's ideas to his gradual liberation from these powerful concepts and the final breakthrough into his own unique theories of man and the cosmos. Jung's fundamental view—that the psyche is a totality of conscious and unconscious elements that seeks to realize itself—stands in sharp contrast to Freud's early view of the psyche as primarily the effect of prior causes. Hence Freud tends to stress the pathological, whereas Jung looks to the creative and self-transcending aspects of human nature. The final section of the book describes the development of Jung's ideas after the death of Freud, particularly his concept of the archetypes.


Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Essentials of Psychoanalysis (The International psycho-analytical library)

The Essentials of Psychoanalysis (The International psycho-analytical library) Review



In this selection of her father’s writings Anna Freud has defined and included, in a single volume, the essential, irreducible elements of psychoanalysis. She begins with the most appropriate of Freud’s own introductory essays, The Question of Lay Analysis, and follows the sequence of themes that he adopted in that work—the meaning of dreams, the concept of the unconscious, instinctual and sexual life, the structure of the personality, defense mechanisms, and symptom-formation. The result, with her own lucid commentaries supplementing her father’s writing in the authorized translations by James Strachey, is a coherent, manageable, and authoritative guide to the principal themes and concepts of psycho-nalysis.


Monday, July 4, 2011

Freud and Cezanne: Psychotherapy as Modern Art (Frontiers in Psychotherapy Series)

Freud and Cezanne: Psychotherapy as Modern Art (Frontiers in Psychotherapy Series) Review



This book is an exploration of ideas within the context of culture history. It involves an ideational reversal of the usual relationship existing between psychotherapists and artists. Instead of approaching the phenomenon of art from within a scientific frame of reference, psychotherapy is approached from within an aesthetic frame of reference. This unorthodox procedure proves to be productive in generating novel perspectives and new meanings in what are seen to be the twin phenomena of modern art and psychotherapy. Freud and Cezanne were key figures among those instrumental in the transformation of nineteenth century Western consciousness into twentieth century consciousness. Their influence continues unabated as we move into a new century. There are continuing radical implications in their thought that have yet to be fully realized.


Friday, July 1, 2011

Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen (German Edition)

Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen (German Edition) Review



This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.