TOC

The Narration of Collective Trauma: The “True Story” of Jasper, Texas — Kalina Brabeck and Ricardo Ainslie

“Two Brotherless Peoples”: On the Constitutive Traumas of Class Struggle — Akis Gavriilidis

Psychotherapy and Political Activism: Examining The Israeli–palestinian Case — Nissim Avissar

Other Pasts: Family Romances of Pan’s Labyrinth — Janet Thormann

The Notion of the Work of Culture in Freud’s Writings — Eric Smadja

An interview with a sociologist who blames Nietzsche, Freud and Rorty!

TOC

Beyond totem and idol, the sexuate other — Luce Irigaray, Karen I. Burke

From nature in love: The problem of subjectivity in Adorno and Freudian psychoanalysis — Sara Beardsworth

The errant name: Badiou and Deleuze on individuation, causality and infinite modes in Spinoza — Jon Roffe

The practical absolute: Fichte’s hidden poetics — Anthony Curtis Adler

A ravaged site: on time and the law — Peg Birmingham

Richard Polt: The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy — Stuart Elden

Stuart Elden, Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language and the Politics of Calculation — Richard Polt

Alan Paskow, The Paradoxes of Art: A Phenomenological Investigation — Robert J. Dostal

A review of The Freud Wars: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis

This book is about some very important heuristic consequences of (Freud’s) psychoanalytic theory. How psychoanalytic thinking can be justified? Is it possible (or is even it necessary) to justify psychoanalytic theory within the framework of the natural sciences? Or do we need some other (interpretative, hermeneutic) framework?

The subject matter of this book is more fundamental than either psychoanalysis itself or any particular branch of philosophy. Its concern is with the common ground of all psychoanalytic approaches, and the focus is on the divergent principles which different philosophers (Adolph Grunbaum, Thomas Nagel and Jurgen Habermas) have used to justify or to reject psychoanalytic thinking. The aim is to work towards an understanding of psychoanalysis thought its central concepts, the unconscious, which recognizes and makes some of the entrenched disagreement about what its foundational principles are.

This book could be seen as an introduction to the philosophy of psychoanalysis, for those with an interest or engagement in philosophy, psychotherapy, or both, as well as anyone wanting to explore the profound and overlapping field. Although this is a complex subject, no prior knowledge or experience of either philosophy or psychoanalysis is required.

Continue reading here

Even though the entire book is available in html format here (thank to Joel for the tip), I received a link for the famous “Freud and Lacan” chapter in pdf. (Thanks to the tipster as well).

[I also apologize of the backlog of emails to which I have not responded. After a brief down period, I am trying to catch up.]

TOC:

Adorno’s aesthetic concept of aura — Yvonne Sherratt

Critique of teleology in Kant and Dworkin: The law without organs — Alexandre Lefebvre

Towards a critical theory of whiteness — David S. Owen

The ethical residue of language in Levinas and early Wittgenstein — Søren Overgaard

Questioning and the materiality of crisis: Freud and Heidegger — Jeffrey M. Jackson

Exquisite Ex-timacy: Jacques Lacan vis-à-vis Contemporary Horror

Stefan Gullatz

A few brief introductory remarks on the cultural dimension of a subjective economy of pleasure may prove the best avenue to any psychoanalytic reading of the supernatural horror genre. According to Zizek, there are different phases in Freud's differentiation between the pleasure and reality principles. Freud initially posits an ideal state whereby an individual, shielded from the exigencies of the 'reality principle', experiences a pure, undisturbed bliss. At this stage of Freudian theory, the need to accommodate to the reality principle is accomplished via the subordination of the pleasure to the reality principle, so that the direct route to pleasure becomes blocked. By the time of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, [2] the situation looks more complex. Phenomena like the repetition compulsion and the paradoxical recurrence of traumatic dreams lead Freud to the theory of the 'death drive' that entailed a different view of the nature of the pleasure principle. Thus, even in the absence of the reality principle the ceaseless drive for pleasure continuously encounters an internal obstacle. Although this hindrance is experienced as a 'hard kernel', an empirical object, it only objectifies the ontological impossibility of enjoyment. The role of the reality principle becomes evident when we consider symbolic castration which constitutes the social subject imposing a traumatic loss from the outside. The initially internal conflict is transposed to another level as the differentiation between an inside and an outside occurs. The internal obstacle to satisfaction is externalized, so that the subject re-encounters this object as his 'objective correlative' amidst a universe structured by the reality principle. This object, perceived as a meaningless 'stain', a distortion in the 'visual field' of any culture, is the subject's 'ex-timate' core. [3]

Continue reading 

Edited by Linda Edwards and Michael Williams

Issue Design and Upload by Godfre Leung, Nicola Mann, Aviva Dove-Viebahn, Cynthia Foo

Introduction, by Linda Edwards and Michael Williams

The Return of the Repressed: Cybersubjectivity in ROBOCOP, by Dale Bradley

Bewilderment and Suspension Bridges: The Joke as Symptom of Language, by Shane Herron

Multiple Symptoms and the Visible Real: Culture, Media, and the Displacements of Vision, by Sudeep Dasgupta

Freud, "Thoughts for the times on war and death"

In the confusion of wartime in which we are caught up, relying as we must on one-sided information, standing too close to the great changes that have already taken place or are beginning to, and without a glimmering of the future that is being shaped, we ourselves are at a loss as to the significance of the impressions which bear down upon us and as to the value of the judgements which we form. We cannot but feel that no event has ever destroyed so much that is precious in the common possessions of humanity, confused so many of the clearest intelligences, or so thoroughly debased what is highest. Science herself has lost her passionless impartiality; her deeply embittered servants seek for weapons from her with which to contribute towards the struggle with the enemy. Anthropologists feel driven to declare that enemy inferior and degenerate, psychiatrists issue a diagnosis of his disease of mind or spirit. Probably, however, our sense of these immediate evils is disproportionately strong, and we are not entitled to compare them with the evils of other times which we have not experienced.

The rest…