Radical Psychoanalysis

This crisis-ridden world is having disastrous effects on the climate, on our bodies and on our internal worlds, on how we feel and try to respond, on how we panic and on how we act collectively. Psychoanalysis can be part of this collective political response. Ian Parker shows how personal struggle can be linked to political struggle so we confr

Only by the method of free-association could Sigmund Freud have demonstrated how human consciousness is formed by the repression of thoughts and feelings that we consider dangerous. Yet today most therapists ignore this truth about our psychic life. This book offers a critique of the many brands of contemporary psychoanalysis and psychotherapy that have forgotten Freud's revolutionary discovery. Barnaby B. Barratt offers a fresh and compelling vision of the structure and function of the human psyche, building on the pioneering work of theorists such as André Green and Jean Laplanche, as well as contemporary deconstruction, feminism, and liberation philosophy. He explores how ‘drive’ or desire operates dynamically between our biological body and our mental representations of ourselves, of others, and of the world we inhabit. This dynamic vision not only demonstrates how the only authentic freedom from our internal imprisonments comes through free-associative praxis, it also shows the extent to which other models of psychoanalysis (such as ego-psychology, object-relations, self-psychology and interpersonal-relations) tend to stray disastrously from Freud's original and revolutionary insights. This is a vision that understands the central issues that imprison our psychic lives - the way in which the reflections of consciousness are based on the repression of our innermost desires, the way in which our erotic vitality is so often repudiated, and the way in which our socialization oppressively stifles our human spirit. Radical Psychoanalysis restores to the discipline of psychoanalysis the revolutionary impetus that has so often been lost. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, mental health practitioners and students and academics with an interest in the history of psychoanalysis.

Radical Claims in Freudian Psychoanalysis: Point/Counterpoint, edited by M. Andrew Holowchak, features pro and con essays on some of the most extreme Freudian claims, including the Freudian unconscious and the Oedipus complex. The format of this volume allows for a close examination of the contentious issues in some of the most radical claims of Freud's psychoanalysis from different viewpoints.

2020 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis (ABAPsa) book award winner! Only by the method of free-association could Sigmund Freud have demonstrated how human consciousness is formed by the repression of thoughts and feelings that we consider dangerous. Yet today most therapists ignore this truth about our psychic life. This book offers a critique of the many brands of contemporary psychoanalysis and psychotherapy that have forgotten Freud's revolutionary discovery. Barnaby B. Barratt offers a fresh and compelling vision of the structure and function of the human psyche, building on the pioneering work of theorists such as André Green and Jean Laplanche, as well as contemporary deconstruction, feminism, and liberation philosophy. He explores how ‘drive’ or desire operates dynamically between our biological body and our mental representations of ourselves, of others, and of the world we inhabit. This dynamic vision not only demonstrates how the only authentic freedom from our internal imprisonments comes through free-associative praxis, it also shows the extent to which other models of psychoanalysis (such as ego-psychology, object-relations, self-psychology and interpersonal-relations) tend to stray disastrously from Freud's original and revolutionary insights. This is a vision that understands the central issues that imprison our psychic lives - the way in which the reflections of consciousness are based on the repression of our innermost desires, the way in which our erotic vitality is so often repudiated, and the way in which our socialization oppressively stifles our human spirit. Radical Psychoanalysis restores to the discipline of psychoanalysis the revolutionary impetus that has so often been lost. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, mental health practitioners and students and academics with an interest in the history of psychoanalysis.

In Beyond Psychotherapy: On Becoming a (Radical) Psychoanalyst, Barnaby B. Barratt illuminates a new perspective on what it means to open our awareness to the depths of psychic life and restores the radicality of genuinely psychoanalytic discourse as the unique science of healing. Starting with an incisive critique of the ideological conformism of psychotherapy, Barratt defines the method of psychoanalysis against the conventional definition, which emphasizes the practice of arriving at useful interpretations about our personal existence. Instead, he shows how a negatively dialectical and deconstructive praxis successfully ‘attacks’ the self-enclosures of interpretation, allowing the speaking-listening subject to become existentially and spiritually open to hidden dimensions of our lived-experience. He also demonstrates how the erotic deathfulness of our being-in-the-world is the ultimate source of all the many resistances to genuinely psychoanalytic praxis, and the reason Freud’s discipline has so frequently been reduced to various models of psychotherapeutic treatment. Focusing on the free-associative dimension of psychoanalysis, Barratt both explores what psychoanalytic processes can achieve that psychotherapeutic ones cannot, and considers the sociopolitical implications of the radical psychoanalytic ‘take’ on the human condition. The book also offers a detailed and compassionate pointer for those wanting to train as psychoanalysts, guiding them away from what Barratt calls the ‘trade-school mentality’ pervading most training institutes today. Groundbreaking and inspiring, Beyond Psychotherapy will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and all other therapists seeking a radically innovative approach. It will also be a valuable text for scholars and students of psychoanalytic studies, social sciences, philosophy and the history of ideas.

Psychoanalysis engages with the difficult subjects in life, but it has been slow to address climate change. Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis, and Radical Ethics draws on the latest scientific evidence to set out the likely effects of climate change on politics, economics and society more generally, including impacts on psychoanalysts. Despite a tendency to avoid the warnings, times of crisis summon clinicians to emerge from comfortable consulting rooms. Daily engaged with human suffering, they now face the inextricably bound together crises of global warming and massive social injustices. After considering historical and emotional causes of climate unconsciousness and of compulsive consumerism, this book argues that only a radical ethics of responsibility to be "my other’s keeper" will truly wake us up to climate change and bring psychoanalysts to actively take on responsibilities, such as demanding change from governments, living more simply, flying less, and caring for the earth and its inhabitants everywhere. Linking climate justice to radical ethics by way of psychoanalysis, Donna Orange explores many relevant aspects of psychoanalytic expertise, referring to work on trauma, mourning, and the transformation of trouble into purpose. Orange makes practical suggestions for action in the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic communities: reducing air travel, consolidating organizations and conferences, better use of internet communication and education. This book includes both philosophical considerations of egoism (close to psychoanalytic narcissism) as problematic, together with work on shame and envy as motivating compulsive and conspicuous consumption. The interweaving of climate emergency and massive social injustice presents psychoanalysts and organized psychoanalysis with a radical ethical demand and an extraordinary opportunity for leadership. Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis, and Radical Ethics will provide accessible and thought-provoking reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as philosophers, environmental studies scholars and students studying across these fields.

Psychoanalysis, History, and Radical Ethics: Learning to Hear explores the importance of listening, being able to speak, and those who are silenced, from a psychoanalytic perspective. In particular, it focuses on those voices silenced either collectively or individually by trauma, culture, discrimination and persecution, and even by the history of psychoanalysis. Drawing on lessons from philosophy and history as well as clinical vignettes, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding the role of trauma in creating silence, and the importance for psychoanalysts of learning to hear those silenced voices.

In Conservative and Radical Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Knowledge: The Fascinated and the Disenchanted, psychoanalyst and philosopher Aner Govrin demonstrates that the vitality and robustness of psychoanalytic theory has been maintained, on the one hand by emotional elements such as loyalty and fascination and, on the other hand, by rational criticism and doubt.