On the Edge of Human Imagination

Philosophical-Psychoanalytic Perspectives
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-80212-1
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 383 g

In this fascinating book, Michel Thys explores the limitations of human imagination and symbolization, showing the potentially destructive result of a mind that cannot confront reality. His wide-ranging research takes us into the domain of the unimaginable, unthinkable and unspeakable.

Divided into four parts, On the Edge of Human Imagination sees Thys adopt a phenomenological perspective to move through experiences encountered in the analyst’s room, from depression and psychosis to PTSD. Through a dialogue with philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas, Thys investigates the relationship between fascination, identification, socio-cultural phenomena and aesthetic pleasure. Throughout, he uses the paintings of Edward Hopper, Sophocles’ Antigone, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times to support his ideas. Integrating Freudian, Kleinian and Bionian theories, he shows the psychic impact of humanity’s attempt to balance fear and passion on the edge of the imaginable and the liminality of the search for meaning. The book brings together psychoanalytic theory and practice and philosophical anthropology, confronting, in the end, Freud’s ideas of the death drive with Sartre’s understanding of the desire for being as the main driving force in human existence.

This book offers an illuminating evaluation of what it means to be human, making it an important read for psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychotherapists, as well as philosophers interested in the intersection between psychoanalytic, philosophical and phenomenological thought.

Zielgruppe

Professional Practice & Development

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thys, Michel

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Phänomenologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Psychologische Theorie, Psychoanalyse Psychoanalyse (S. Freud)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part 1: From Fascination to Desire for Being  1. Phenomenology of fascination - A dialogue with Sartre 2. Fear of self-destruction - Fascinating metamorphoses and solidified truth 3. I is a thing- On trauma and desire for being  Part 2: From Body to Identity  4. Dysincarnation - The body on the edge of the symbolic 5. From discreet whispers to public shouts - Psychoanalysis and the culture of self-disclosure 6. Inevitable and elusive- Identity between melancholy and megalomania  Part 3: Narrative Challenges 7. Hopper, Levinas and the quasi-subject - The subject outside time 8. The corpse of Polynices - The obscene and tragedy as fascinum 9. Monstrous Frankenstein- The narrative at the last minute  Part 4: On the Edge of the Human  10. Disaster tourism and violent transformations - Cultural figures of the inhuman 11. From Charcot to Chaplin - On the infantile, the traumatic and the grotesque 12. The subject as ruin - Back to the desire for being Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Michel Thys is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst and doctor of philosophy. He is a member of the Flemish Association of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Belgian School of Psychoanalysis. He is former editor-in-chief of the Dutch-Flemish journal Tijdschrift voor Psychoanalyse. He works in private practice in Antwerp, Belgium.