Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post

Why do men tend to keep love letters in files along with their other correspondence, whereas women keep them with their clothes? And if a letter is written but not posted, at whom is it really directed? As psychoanalyst Darian Leader shows, such questions go to the heart of sexual desire, which is never addressed to our flesh and blood companion, but always to something beyond him or her. In an engaging, at times startling, enquiry into the fundamental loneliness of each sex, Leader asks why relationships frequently run aground on the trivial question, 'What are you thinking?' If a man chooses as his partner a woman unlike his mother, why does he try to make her behave towards him exactly as his mother did, when he was a boy? And why might a woman decide not to spend the night with a man, after one glimpse of his apartment?

This updated paperback edition contains all the very latest on the dramatic story of Crispr and the potential impact of this gene-editing technology.

When something called theory first broke onto the seemingly stagnant scene of literary studies, it offered bright new ways and fields for critical reading: new methods and subjects, and also new words to speak them. The syllabus and the styles would never be the same, and reading was proudly claimed as a mode of social critique. The short pieces brought together in Talking Walking engage with all sorts of arguments then, now and earlier about the uses and history of critical reading -- of literature, and also of other cultural forms. There is much on the changing styles of literary-critical writing, and on the place of particular writers -- Virginia Woolf or Jacques Derrida -- in contemporary critical culture. There are pieces on cliches, on footnotes, on the language of the university job interview, on the use of domesticate as a catch-all negative term. There are also essays on cultural questions informed by critical theory. For instance: why has the topic of walking been such a fruitful thinking theme in literature and philosophy? How does the history of shopping and marketing theory intersect with those of literature and subjectivity? How, in the light of reproductive technologies and new social forms, has becoming a parent turned into a culturally prominent kind of story? These are some of the questions that arise in the interview and essays that make up Rachel Bowlbys book, which derives from several decades of working and writing and talking and walking within the changing contemporary landscape of literary and critical studies. Old and new arrivals into this world will find pleasures of reading and matter for thinking on every page.

Transcending the sex and gender dichotomy, rethinking sexual difference, transgenerational trauma, the decolonization of gender, non-Western identity politics, trans*/feminist debates, embodiment, and queer trans* psychoanalysis, these specially commissioned essays renew our understanding of conventionally held notions of sexual difference. Looking at the intersections between psychoanalysis, feminism, and transgender discourses, these essays think beyond the normative, bi-gender, Oedipal, and phallic premises of classical psychoanalysis while offering new perspectives on gender, sexuality, and sexual difference. From Freud to Lacan, Kristeva, and Laplanche, from misogyny to the #MeToo movement, this collection brings a timely corrective that historicizes our moment and opens up creative debate. Written for professionals, scholars, and students alike, this book will also appeal to psychoanalysts, psychologists, and anyone in the fields of literature, film and media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and social work who wishes to grapple with the theoretical challenges posed by gender, identity, sexual embodiment, and gender politics.

This is the first book in English to explore in detail the genesis and consequences of Lacan's concept of the 'Real', providing readers with an invaluable key to one of the most influential ideas of modern times.

Ian Parker has been a leading light in the fields of critical and discursive psychology for over 25 years. The Psychology After Critique series brings together for the first time his most important papers. Each volume in the series has been prepared by Ian Parker, and presents a newly written introduction and focused overview of a key topic area. Psychology After Deconstruction is the second volume in the series and addresses three important questions: What is ‘deconstruction’ and how does it apply to psychology? How does deconstruction radicalize social constructionist approaches in psychology? What is the future for radical conceptual and empirical research? The book provides a clear account of deconstruction, and the different varieties of this approach at work inside and outside the discipline of psychology. In the opening chapters Parker describes the challenge to underlying assumptions of ‘neutrality’ or ‘objectivity’ within psychology that deconstruction poses, and its implications for three key concepts: humanism, interpretation and reflexivity. Subsequent chapters introduce several lines of debate, and discuss their relation to mainstream axioms such as ‘psychopathology’, ‘diagnosis’ and ‘psychotherapy’, and alternative approaches like qualitative research, humanistic psychology and discourse analysis. Together, the chapters in this book show how, via a process of ‘erasure’, deconstructive approaches question fundamental assumptions made about language and reality, the self and the social world. By demonstrating the application of deconstruction to different areas of psychology, it also seeks to provide a ‘social reconstruction’ of psychological research. Psychology After Deconstruction is essential reading for students and researchers in psychology, sociology, social anthropology and cultural studies, and for discourse analysts of different traditions. It will also introduce key ideas and debates within deconstruction to undergraduates and postgraduate students across the social sciences.

This volume offers an innovative set of critical examinations of the field of psychopathology. It investigates the social formation of psychopathology across different cultural, discursive, and political contexts and draws upon theory from two traditional domains of psychology social and abnormal psychology. The diverse topics covered include xenophobia, anorexia nervosa, witch hunting, post-traumatic stress, homosexuality, race categorization, and crosscultural issues. The various topics work in concert to unseat the notion of psychopathology as comprising decontextualized, individualized, essentialist categories of organic illness. "

In this forthright and fascinating study, Dr Stephen J. Costello, philosopher and logotherapist, takes us on a profound journey into the intricate and intriguing nature of the dynami of lying. Drawing on philosophy, logical puzzles and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Costello investigates the types of lies we tell, the lies that include a good deal of truth, how and why children lie, the lies lovers tell, self-deception and much more. In the final section of the book Costello focuses in particular on how men and women lie in different ways. Men, he argues, lie in the guise of truth while women tell the truth in the guise of a lie. Men tend to be more direct while women are more deceptive. Men lie to create a better image of themselves, women lie to make others feel more comfortable. Provocative, while also frequently amusing, The Truth about Lying is a pithy primer on the act and art of lying. “This is an absolutely fascinating book . . . a quite extraordinary range of information . . . I can only encourage everyone to read it and thoroughly enjoy it as I did.” - Ivor Browne, from the Foreword