Other Banalities

Melanie Klein is one of the few analysts whose body of work has inspired sociologists, philosophers, religious scholars, literary critics and political theorists, all attracted to the cross-fertilisation of her ideas. Other Banalities represents a long over-due exploration of her legacy, including contributions from acclaimed interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners. The contributors situate Klein within the history of the psychoanalytic movement, investigate her key theoretical and clinical advances, and look at how her thought has informed contemporary perspectives in the behavioural sciences and humanities. Topics covered range from Klein’s major psychological theories to clinical pathology, child development, philosophy, sociology, politics, religion, ethics and aesthetics. This volume reflects the auspicious future for Kleinian revivalism and demonstrates the broad relevance of Kleinian thought. It will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of psychology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

How is it possible to murder a million people one by one? Hatred, fear, madness of one or many people cannot explain it. No one can be so possessed for the months, even years, required for genocides, slavery, deadly economic exploitation, sexual trafficking of children. In The Evil of Banality, Elizabeth Minnich argues for a tragic yet hopeful explanation. “Extensive evil,” her term for systematic horrific harm-doing, is actually carried out, not by psychopaths, but by people like your quiet next door neighbor, your ambitious colleagues. There simply are not enough moral monsters for extensive evil, nor enough saints for extensive good. In periods of extensive evil, people little different from you and me do its work for no more than a better job, a raise, the house of the family “disappeared” last week. So how can there be hope? The seeds of such evils are right there in our ordinary lives. They are neither mysterious nor demonic. If we avoid romanticizing and so protecting ourselves from responsibility for the worst and the best of which humans are capable, we can prepare to say no to extensive evil—to act accurately, together, and above all in time, before great harm-doing has become the daily work of ‘normal’ people.

This book explores connections between the diverse ideas of Melanie Klein, Jean-Paul Sartre and Ingmar Bergman. These ideas are explored in relation to their shared focus on imagination and through detailed readings of a number of Bergman's key films.

This thoroughly readable and stimulating social history of Western Europe, first published in 1984, explores the family, religion and the supernatural, and the social structure and social controls of rural society. This title will be of interest not only to students, but to anyone who is anxious to understand the lives – both internal and external – of rural people in his fascinating period that is so central to everyone’s past.

This book is about boyfriends and girlfriends - getting them, keeping them and moving on from them. The book will be essential reading for professionals and parents struggling with the ferocity of young people's feelings where 'I love you!' and 'I hate you!' are never far apart.

All humans are born in Super-Religion. It’s built into our genes. Even Jesus Christ said so: "But now are they many members, yet but one body..."(1 Corinthians, 12:4-20.) "Know you are not that you are not your own?...For you are bought with a price."(Ibid, 6:19-20.) Super-Religion doesn’t need missionaries. You’re already converted—for eternity. It’s a lot like the Mafia. No one can quit it—neither alive nor dead. When Jehovah’s Witnesses bang on your front door, you can slam it in their faces and keep them out, maybe, but not Super-Religion. It has been in your house all along—and inside you! No "maybes." Man is constantly trying to destroy Super-Religion and counterfeit his own illegally, such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Sikhism, Shintoism, fragmenting each of them into tens of thousands of different sects. But Super-Religion is always indestructible and indivisible. It’s still what it was! Super-Religion is the only religion that science regards as valid. Even atheists practice Super-Religion fanatically. They have no choice in the matter. This book will tell you what you need to know about what you already know—but pretend not to!

This book turns our search for intimacy on its head, suggesting that our way to creativity in love may be through idiocy. The book takes its readers on a journey through the work of Plato and Melanie Klein in theorizing the dynamics of intimacy while exploring some of the paradoxical aspects of love in works by Fyodor Dostoevsky and French filmmaker Catherine Breillat. Revisiting core concepts of how we think about relationships, the book lays out a model for relational breakdown—the idiot lovecycle—in which we are constantly in the flux between seeing ourselves and seeing the other. Effecting close readings of literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytical sources, the book draws on parallels between these fields of inquiry while tracing their shared intellectual genealogy, suggesting that the tension between Narcissus and Cassandra, with its inherent conflicts, is also the space through which love emerges from intimacy.

Emotions are central to our practices and understanding of public life. This book examines the political, social and personal consequences of public emotions in relation to conflict, ritual, social classification, collective life, identity, memory and power and is a multidisciplinary collaboration showing the emotional character of public life.