Compromise Formations

These essays are collected from the Fourth International Conference on Literature and Psychology held at Kent State University, 7-9 August 1987. In selecting the essays for this first collection to emerge from the varied conferences now being sponsored by the Kent State University Center for Literature and Psychoanalysis, Vera Camden has brought together representative contributions from two major contemporary schools of psychoanalytic criticism: object relations and Lacanian theory. These essays define the questions which emerge when both schools are brought into the kind of association engendered by this conference, offering not so much a resolution to opposing positions as a fuller articulation of the space each occupies and a fluidity of discussion which has characterized psychoanalysis since Freud's earliest discoveries. Each contributor is concerned with the place of the unconscious in the determination of the human subject and its representations. Whether the approach is primarily clinical or literary, each identifies and analyzes the anguish of the incomplete self--a sell which looks to construct, identify, regain, or even deny meaning. A crucial difference emerges among these authors as to how the experience of human alienation and the quest for identify is to be analyzed. Some would suggest, after Jacques Lacan, that the task of analysis is to recognize the illusion of the unitary self and to reconcile the individual to that state. Others would contend the task of analysis is to recover, by the transference relationship, the lost unity missing in childhood and reflect in adult object-relations. These essays range from clinical perspectives in psychosis and creativity to critical readings of Joyce and Shakespeare to recent applications of brain research to traditional psychoanalytic notions of the human subject. The richness and variety in this collection bear witness to the continuing impact of psychoanalysis on literary and cultural studies.

Today's clinical social workers face a spectrum of social issues and problems of a scope and severity hardly imagined just a few years ago and an ever-widening domain of responsibility to overcome them. Theory and Practice in Clinical Social Work is the authoritative handbook for social work clinicians and graduate social work students, that keeps pace with rapid social changes and presents carefully devised methods, models, and techniques for responding to the needs of an increasingly diverse clientele. Following an overview of the principal frameworks for clinical practice, including systems theory, behavioral and cognitive theories, psychoanalytic theory, and neurobiological theory, the book goes on to present the major social crises, problems, and new populations the social work clinician confronts each day. Theory and Practice in Clinical Social Work includes 29 original chapters, many with carefully crafted and detailed clinical illustrations, by leading social work scholars and master clinicians who represent the widest variety of clinical orientations and specializations. Collectively, these leading authors have treated nearly every conceivable clinical population, in virtually every practice context, using a full array of treatment approaches and modalities. Included in this volume are chapters on practice with adults and children, clinical social work with adolescents, family therapy, and children's treatment groups; other chapters focus on social work with communities affected by disasters and terrorism, clinical case management, cross-cultural clinical practice, psychopharmacology, practice with older adults, and mourning and loss. The extraordinary breadth of coverage will make this book an essential source of information for students in advanced practice courses and practicing social workers alike.

This series of interviews, conducted in the form of exchanges between Roy Bhaskar and Mervyn Hartwig, tells a riveting story of the formation and development of critical realism. Three intersecting and interweaving narratives unfold in the course of this unfinished story: the personal narrative of Roy Bhaskar, born of an Indian father and English mother, a child of post-war Britain and Indian partition and independence; the intellectual narrative of the emergence and growth of critical realism; and a world-historical story, itself theorized by critical realism in its discussion of the development of modernity. This book gives an invaluable account of the development of critical realism, and its consolidation as a leading philosophy of our times. It takes us through the major moments of its formation, the principal objections to and controversies within critical realism, the establishment of its institutions, and considers its limits and future development. Special features of the book include discussion of the genesis of critical realism, and the origins and nature of the so-called dialectical and spiritual turns. The informal dialogical style of The Formation of Critical Realism makes it compelling reading and an invaluable source for students of critical realism as well as all those interested in the intellectual story of our times.

This book is a stirring invitation to any reader who is interested in having a general sense of how the mind works and of the dominant role of mental conflict in everyday life. It is a topical reminder of the importance of Sigmund Freud the psychoanalyst, but also Freud the psychiatrist, neurologist, author and courageous natural scientist. However, this work is not a mere repetition or enumeration of Freud’s theories or descriptions of clinical cases. The book's primary purpose is to provide the reader with an introduction to important contemporary psychoanalytic ideas that modify and build on Freud’s classical theories.

According to the author, psychoanalytic theory and practice – which discloses ‘the interminable falsity of the human subject’s belief in the mastery of its own mental life’ – is in part responsible for the coming of the postmodern era. In this title, originally published in 1993, Barratt examines the role of psychoanalysis in what he sees as the crisis of modernism, shows why the modernist position – what he calls the ‘modern episteme’ – is failing, and proposes that psychoanalysis should redefine itself as a postmodern method. In Barratt’s innovative account of psychoanalysis, which focuses on the significance of the free-associative process, Freud’s discovery of the repressed unconscious leads to a claim that is basic to postmodern ideas: ‘that all thinking and speaking, the production and reproduction of psychic reality, is inherently dynamic, polysemous, and contradictorious .’ He argues that subsequent attempts to ‘normalize and systematize’ psychoanalysis are reactionary and antipsychoanalytic efforts to salvage the modern episteme that psychoanalysis itself calls into question.

Leading authors within organization studies and also from broader social science disciplines present the state of the art in the rapidly developing field of psychosocial approaches to organization studies and critical management studies.

This book introduces a theoretical framework for studying the mind. Specifically, an attempt is made to frame ideas from psychoanalysis and cognitive-social psychology so that they can be taken readily into a realm of neurobiology. Psychoanalytic Theory still represents a very comprehensive theory of the human mind. It includes cognitive, emotional and behavioral variables, plus the idea of unconscious mental operations. The 'pleasure principle and 'repetition compulsion' were Freud's most general concepts of mental functioning. These concepts are renovated to get them "on the same page" with ideas from social cognition and neurobiology.

In The Play within the Play: The Enacted Dimension of Psychoanalytic Process Gil Katz presents and illustrates the "enacted dimension of psychoanalytic process." He clarifies that enactment is not simply an overt event but an unconscious, continuously evolving, dynamically meaningful process. Using clinical examples, including several extended case reports, Gil Katz demonstrates how in all treatments, a new version of the patient’s early conflicts, traumas, and formative object relationships is inevitably created, without awareness or intent, in the here-and-now of the analytic dyad. Within the enacted dimension, repressed or dissociated aspects of the patient’s past are not just remembered, they are re-lived. Katz shows how, when the enacted dimension becomes conscious, it forms the basis for genuine and transforming experiential insight.