Life and Death in Psychoanalysis

Erscheinungsjahr 1976
ISBN: 978-0-8018-2730-3
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 160 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 248 g

Most critics have come to terms with the contradictions in Freud's work by attempting to impose a unified system even at the cost of rejecting crucial metapyschological concepts such as the death wish. According to Jean Laplanche, "such variations or variants deserve better than a choice in favor of one of the other: they require an interpretation and such as interpretation implies that, as is the case with the analysis of dreams, all the elements be juxtaposed so that nothing be eliminated, that the either / or be retanslatedinto an and."

In a way that Freud plainly does not control, Laplanche argures, there are at work two different concepts corresponding to each of a series of crucial Freudian terms; in each of these conceptual pairs of one of the elements is solidary with a specific conceptual scheme and the other with a second one. The entire body of Freud's work, for Laplanche, is constituted as an elaborately structured polemical field in which two mutually exclusive schemes may be seen to be struggling to dominate a single terminological apparatus.

Life and Death in Psychoanalysis is a painstakingly lucid inquiry into the interpretative consequences of the conceptual and terminological difficulties posed by Freud's texts. It is an uncannily precise delineation of the perverse rigor with which Freud's most virulent discoveries perpetually escape him-and are endlessly rediscovered.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Laplanche, Jean

Weitere Mitwirkende

Mehlman, Jeffrey

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Sexualpsychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Psychologische Theorie, Psychoanalyse Psychoanalyse (S. Freud)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Translator's Introduction
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Order of Life and the Genesis of Human Sexuality
Chapter 2. Sexuality and the Vital Order in Psychical Conflict
Chapter 3. The Ego and the Vital Order
Chapter 4. The Ego and Narcissism
Chapter 5. Aggressiveness and Sadomasochism
Chapter 6. Why the Death Drive?
Conclusion
Appendix: The Derivation of Psychoanalytic Entities
Notes
Index of Freudian Terms

Über Autor(innen)

Mehlman, Jeffrey
Jeffrey Mehlman is University Professor at Boston University and the author, most recently, of Walter Benjamin for Children: An Essay on His Radio Years and Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France.

Laplanche, Jean
Jean Laplanche, one of the most distinguished figures of French psychoanalysis, is the author of Holderlin et la question du père.

Jean Laplanche, one of the most distinguished figures of French psychoanalysis, is the author of Holderlin et la question du père. Jeffrey Mehlman is associate professor of French at Boston University and author of Cataract: A Study of Diderot; Revolution and Repetition: Marx, Hugo, Balzac; and A Stuctural Study of Autobiography: Proust, Sartre, Levi-Strauss.