Posts Tagged ‘ psychoanalysis ’

New book – The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt

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The book The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt by Omnia El Shakry might be of interest to H-Madness readers. On the publishers website you can read the introduction of the book. The abstract reads as follows:

The first in-depth look at how postwar thinkers in Egypt mapped the intersections between Islamic discourses and psychoanalytic thought.

In 1945, psychologist Yusuf Murad introduced an Arabic term borrowed from the medieval Sufi philosopher and mystic Ibn ‘Arabi—al-la-shu‘ur—as a translation for Sigmund Freud’s concept of the unconscious. By the late 1950s, Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams had been translated into Arabic for an eager Egyptian public. In The Arabic Freud, Omnia El Shakry challenges the notion of a strict divide between psychoanalysis and Islam by tracing how postwar thinkers in Egypt blended psychoanalytic theories with concepts from classical Islamic thought in a creative encounter of ethical engagement.

Drawing on scholarly writings as well as popular literature on self-healing, El Shakry provides the first in-depth examination of psychoanalysis in Egypt and reveals how a new science of psychology—or “science of the soul,” as it came to be called—was inextricably linked to Islam and mysticism. She explores how Freudian ideas of the unconscious were crucial to the formation of modern discourses of subjectivity in areas as diverse as psychology, Islamic philosophy, and the law. Founding figures of Egyptian psychoanalysis, she shows, debated the temporality of the psyche, mystical states, the sexual drive, and the Oedipus complex, while offering startling insights into the nature of psychic life, ethics, and eros.

This provocative and insightful book invites us to rethink the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion in the modern era. Mapping the points of intersection between Islamic discourses and psychoanalytic thought, it illustrates how the Arabic Freud, like psychoanalysis itself, was elaborated across the space of human difference.

2017
09/21
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New book – On the Couch: A Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud

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The book ‘On the Couch: A Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud‘ by Nathan Kravis could be of interest to h-madness readers. The abstract on the website of MIT Press reads as follows:

The peculiar arrangement of the psychoanalyst’s office for an analytic session seems inexplicable. The analyst sits in a chair out of sight while the patient lies on a couch facing away. It has been this way since Freud, although, as Nathan Kravis points out in On the Couch, this practice is grounded more in the cultural history of reclining posture than in empirical research. Kravis, himself a practicing psychoanalyst, shows that the tradition of recumbent speech wasn’t dreamed up by Freud but can be traced back to ancient Greece, where guests reclined on couches at the symposion (a gathering for upper-class males to discuss philosophy and drink wine), and to the Roman convivium (a banquet at which men and women reclined together). From bed to bench to settee to chaise-longue to sofa: Kravis tells how the couch became an icon of self-knowledge and self-reflection as well as a site for pleasure, privacy, transgression, and healing.

Kravis draws on sources that range from ancient funerary monuments to furniture history to early photography, as well as histories of medicine, fashion, and interior decoration, and he deploys an astonishing array of images—of paintings, monuments, sculpture, photographs, illustrations, New Yorker cartoons, and advertisements.

Kravis deftly shows that, despite the ambivalence of today’s psychoanalysts—some of whom regard it as “infantilizing”—the couch continues to be the emblem of a narrative of self-discovery. Recumbent speech represents the affirmation in the presence of another of having a mind of one’s own.

2017
09/15
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New issue – History of Psychiatry

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The second issue of 2017 of History of Psychiatry is now available and could be of interest to H-madness readers. The issue includes the following articles:

Philippe Huneman, From a religious view of madness to religious mania: the Encyclopédie, Pinel, Esquirol.

This paper focuses on the shift from a concept of insanity understood in terms of religion to another (as entertained by early psychiatry, especially in France) according to which it is believed that forms of madness tinged by religion are difficult to cure. The traditional religious view of madness, as exemplified by Pascal (inter alia), is first illustrated by entries from the Encyclopédie. Then the shift towards a medical view of madness, inspired by Vitalistic physiology, is mapped by entries taken from the same publication. Firmed up by Pinel, this shift caused the abandonment of the religious view. Esquirol considered religious mania to be a vestige from the past, but he also believed that mental conditions carrying a religious component were difficult to cure.

 

Egidio Priani, ‘Shrouded in a dark fog’: comparison of the diagnosis of pellagra in Venice and general paralysis of the insane in the United Kingdom, 1840–1900.

The debate on the causes and the nature of pellagra in Italy during the nineteenth century resembles and evokes the similar debate on General Paralysis of the Insane (GPI) that was growing at the same time in the United Kingdom. Pellagra and GPI had a massive and virulent impact on the populations of Italy and the UK, respectively, and contributed to a great extent to the increase and overcrowding of the asylum populations in these countries. This article compares the two illnesses by examining the features of their nosographic positioning, aetiology and pathogenesis. It also documents how doctors arrived at the diagnoses of the two diseases and how this affected their treatment.

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2017
05/18
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New book – A history of the case study: Sexology, psychoanalysis, literature

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H-madness readers might be interested in the book A history of the case study: Sexology, psychoanalysis, literature written by Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi and Alison Lewis. The abstract reads:

Starting with Central Europe and concluding with the United States of America, this volume tells the story of the case study genre as inseparable from the foundation of sexology and psychoanalysis, and integral to the history of European literature. It examines the nineteenth and twentieth century pioneers of the case study who sought answers to the mysteries of sexual identity and shaped the way we think about sexual modernity. These pioneers include members of professional elites (psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and jurists) and creative writers writing for newly emerging sexual publics.

Among the figures considered in this volume are prolific Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the psychoanalytic master of case-writing Sigmund Freud and the influential New York psychoanalyst Viola Bernard, who all embraced the case study genre for its ability to convey new knowledge—and indeed a new paradigm for knowledge—in an authoritative manner. At the same time, these writers reinvented the genre’s parameters, reflecting constantly on its pertinence to definitions of the modern subject.

Where previous accounts of the case study have approached the history of the genre from a single disciplinary perspective, this book stands out for its interdisciplinary approach, well-suited to negotiating the ambivalent contexts of modernity. It focuses on key formative moments and locations in the genre’s past, those occasions when and where the conventions of the case study were contested as part of a more profound enquiry into the nature of the human subject.

2017
04/04
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“Cold War Freud” and “Freud: An Intellectual Biography” reviewed by Lisa Appignanesi (The Guardian)

H-Madness readers might be interested in the following article by Lisa Appignanesi. The piece, which was published today in The Guardian, is a review of Dagmar Herzog’s Cold War Freud (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Joel Whitebook’s Freud: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Still many strands to pursue … Sigmund Freud.

Cold War Freud and Freud: An Intellectual Biography review – the politics of psychoanalysis

A pair of rich, illuminating studies epitomise a new wave of thinking about the Freud wars and the history of analysis

If Freud, as Auden wrote in his 1939 elegy, is “a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives”, then it would be fair to say that the local weather patterns around him shift from temptestuous to clement with uncanny regularity. Geography inevitably plays into the picture.

There are actually only two (relative) constants in the diffusion of Freud’s invention, psychoanalysis, from 1906 on. One is the acceptance of the fact that each of us has an unconscious life: parts of ourselves that are hidden from our own view inform dreams, and shape unwitting remarks and behaviour. The second is the talk and listening technology of two people – the free-associating patient and the analyst engaged in an intimate therapeutic conversation. The rest of the huge and often subtle panoply of Freud’s ideas, developed and revised over a lifetime of practice and writing, has been – and is – up for grabs.

There is a wealth of material to pick over. From Freud’s first book, On Aphasia, published when he was 35, to his last, Moses and Monotheism, written just before his death at 83, there are 23 volumes of the standard edition, not to mention many thick tomes of reflective and revealing letters to his fiancee (then wife), Martha, and to friends andcolleagues, plus proceedings of international psychoanalytic meetings. Followers, interpreters, critics and bashers, reinventors and film-makers, slipper and watch manufacturers, in America, India, China, Europe, Africa and Latin America, can thus dispute, develop or make jokes about everything from the importance of the sex drive or libido to the dynamics of memory and repression; the relations between ego, id and superego; identification; therapeutic practice; cultural liberation and much more, including, of course, Freud’s own integrity – his scientific and medical status.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

 

2017
03/02
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Interview with Richard Noll on Carl Jung and His Legacy

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The site CelebrityTypes has recently published an interview with historian of psychiatry Richard Noll, focusing on the work and legacy of Carl Jung.  In the 1990s, Noll published two books on Jung:  The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement (Princeton University Press, 1994) and The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung (Random House, 1997). His critical assessments of Jung and his followers drew praise from some circles, but also the ire of some proponents of Jung’s ideas.

Noll, however, never really addressed his critics. Here in this interview, he explains why and shares his thoughts on Jung, the response his books received, and the status of Jungian scholarship today.

Excerpt:

When your books on Jung came out, you were savaged by certain pro-Jungian authors, yet (joining Nozick and Hume) you never answered your critics. Indeed you simply moved on to other fields altogether. Why did you decide to let the critics have the last word?

Once a book or article appears, it follows its own fate and speaks for itself. I feel it no longer belongs to me but instead must undergo its own ordeal in the arena – that is, if anyone reads and comments on it at all (most publications are totally ignored, by the way). I place great faith in the mechanisms of scholarship as a multigenerational project in which we all interpret and correct each other’s texts. In other words, we wash each other’s diapers because that’s our job – indeed, perversely, it’s our passion. All scholarship, including mine, has a short shelf-life. So that’s one reason.

 

2016
08/15
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Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism: Panel Discussion and Launch (London, June 2016)

Below please find information about a book launch for Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism, which contains a lengthy discussion between John Forrester and Eli Zaretsky about telling the history of psychoanalysis in the twentieth century.

psa and totalitarianism

(*IMPORTANT* 18 JUNE UPDATE: Please note that the event below is a ticket event, by invitation. People can apply to attend by emailing Hidden Persuaders <bbkhiddenpersuaders@gmail.com>)

Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism

Edited by Matt ffytche, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK and Daniel Pick, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck University of London, UK

Series: The New Library of Psychoanalysis ‘Beyond the Couch’ Series

Much of the important early growth of psychoanalysis took place against the backdrop of the rise of fascism, the Second World War and the Cold War. This atmosphere, in which totalitarianism flourished, was hugely significant for the development of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Here, internationally renowned psychoanalysts, historians and cultural theorists explore the impact of this political and social background on psychoanalysis, and of psychoanalysis on our subsequent understanding of the war and the totalitarian systems after 1945. They look at how lessons drawn from this era can help us understand the interplay between politics, culture and psychoanalysis now.

20% Discount Available – enter the code IRK71 at checkout*

Contributors Include: Sally Alexander, Ana Antic, John Forrester, Stephen Frosh, Dagmar Herzog, Derek Hook, Joel Isaac, Ruth Leys, Erik Linstrum, Peter Mandler, Knuth Müller, Jacqueline Rose, Michael Rustin, Michal Shapira, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Ross Truscott, and Eli Zaretsky.

For more details, or to request a copy for review, please contact: Paulina Miller, Marketing Assistant, psychology@routledge.com

 

(*IMPORTANT* 18 JUNE UPDATE: Please note that this event is a ticket event, by invitation. People can apply to attend by emailing Hidden Persuaders <bbkhiddenpersuaders@gmail.com>)

PANEL DISCUSSION AND LAUNCH

Thursday, 30 June 2016, 6pm to 8.30pm

Wine reception at the Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London, WC1H 0PD

Professor Catherine Hall, University College, London
Dr Nicholas Temple, President of the British Psychoanalytical Society
Dr D’Maris Coffman, UCL (Bartlett)
Professor Alessandra Lemma, Series editor, New Library of Psychoanalysis, and BPS Dr Matt ffytche, Director of the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, Essex
Professor Daniel Pick, Birkbeck College and BPS

will be in conversation about the themes of the book (from 6.45pm)

This event is hosted by the Hidden Persuaders project. Space is limited. Please email bbkhiddenpersuaders@gmail.com to reserve tickets.

2016
05/26
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