_The Freudian Exodus_ redefines the traumatic experience that Freud argued was the origin of Judaic monotheism, the murder of Moses. Focusing on the Babylonian Exile, the study explores a series of topics understood as the aftershocks of that cultural trauma.

The article unveils the intellectual indebtedness of Hans J. Morgenthau's realist theory of international power politics to Freudian meta- and group psychology. It examines an unpublished Morgenthau essay about Freudian anthropology written in 1930, placing this work within the context of Morgenthau's magna opera, the 1946 Scientific Man vs. Power Politics and the 1948 Politics among Nations. The article concludes that Morgenthau's international theory is ultimately based on the early instinct theory of Sigmund Freud. Freud is thus to be seen (...) as one of Morgenthau's intellectual fathers. A second main argument refers to the theoretical tradition that Morgenthau has founded within International Relations (IR), namely: political realism. By investigating its core principles, it is argued that realism also may be rooted in Freudian thought. Throughout, the article calls upon IR, Morgenthau scholarship, and international-political theory to take Freud seriously. (shrink)

THE FREUDIAN SYSTEM: ESSENTIALS this book is written from the standpoint of political science, and, more particularly, political philosophy. ...

In Archive Fever , Jacques Derrida deftly guides us through an extended meditation on remembrance, religion, time, and technology--fruitfully occasioned by a deconstructive analysis of the notion of archiving. Intrigued by the evocative relationship between technologies of inscription and psychic processes, Derrida offers for the first time a major statement on the pervasive impact of electronic media, particularly e-mail, which threaten to transform the entire public and private space of humanity. Plying this rich material with characteristic virtuosity, Derrida constructs a (...) synergistic reading of archives and archiving, both provocative and compelling. "Judaic mythos, Freudian psychoanalysis, and e-mail all get fused into another staggeringly dense, brilliant slab of scholarship and suggestion."-- The Guardian "[Derrida] convincingly argues that, although the archive is a public entity, it nevertheless is the repository of the private and personal, including even intimate details."-- Choice "Beautifully written and clear."--Jeremy Barris, Philosophy in Review "Translator Prenowitz has managed valiantly to bring into English a difficult but inspiring text that relies on Greek, German, and their translations into French."-- Library Journal. (shrink)

Since Freud reimagined Sophocles' Oedipus as a transhistorical Everyman, far-reaching changes have occurred in the social and sexual conditions of Western identity. This book shows how both classical and Freudian perspectives may now differently illuminate the forming stories of a present-day world of serial families, multiple sexualities, and reproductive technologies.

Throughout history philosophers have relentlessly pursued what may be called "inaccessible domains." This book explores how the traditions of existential phenomenology relate to Freudian psychoanalysis. A clear, succinct, and systematic account of the philosophical presuppositions of psychoanalytic theory and practice, this work offers a deeper and richer understanding and appreciation of Freudian thought, as well as its antecedents and influences. With its unique perspective on Freud's work, Apprehending the Inaccessible puts readers in a better position to appreciate his contributions and (...) evaluate the relationship between his and other philosophical world views. The authors, both of whom have extensive backgrounds in philosophy and psychology, present balanced critical analyses of crucial developments in, for example, the evolution of the Freudian notion of the unconscious, and the engagement of existential phenomenology with Freudian psychoanalysis. Askay and Farquhar then consider-often for the first time-individual thinkers' reflections on and interpretations of Freud, ranging from the primary figures in existential phenomenology to the most prominent figures in the existential psychoanalytic movement. Even as their work offers a new approach to Freudian thought, it reasserts the importance of alternative views found in existential phenomenology as those views pertain to psychoanalysis and the question of apprehending the inaccessible. (shrink)

MYSTICISM, FREUDIANISM AND SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER I MYSTICISM The term mysticism and its cognate terms mystical and mystic have in popular usage a ...

I discuss aspects of Freudian theory that have entered folk psychology.

The present text is a branch of a research previously titled: “Philosophies of the transindividual: Spinoza, Marx, Freud.” This document includes the elements of a course taught in 2004 and 2005 at the Universities of Paris X Nanterre (seminar _Anthropology and Politics_, in collaboration with Bertrand Ogilvie) and the University of California, Irvine (_Emphasis on Critical Theory_), as well as subsequent communications at the EHESS and the University of Paris VII. The relevance of this text lies in the meaning and (...) possible uses in philosophy, politics and social sciences of the category of the ‘transindividual’. (shrink)

This paper aims at taking a fresh look at Freudian psychoanalytical theory from a modern perspective. Freudian psychology is a science based on the unconscious (id) and the conscious (ego). Various aspects of Freudian thinking are examined from a modern perspective and the relevance of the psychoanalytical theory of consciousness is projected. Do psychoanalysis and the unconsciousness have something to teach us about consciousness? Approaching Freud from a historical, psychoanalytical, anthropological and sociological perspective, we need to look at how Freudian (...) theory may contribute to a better understanding of consciousness. We also need to look at psychoanalytical psychotherapy and its contribution to a better understanding of body-mind dualism and consciousness as a whole. Ego psychology is considered in the present day context and it is synthesized with various psychological studies to give us a better understanding of consciousness. (shrink)

To reduce the likelihood that psychology will develop in a deeply flawed manner, the present article seeks to provide an introduction to Freud?s conception of consciousness because, for among other reasons, his general theory is highly influential in our science and culture and among the best understood by clinicians and experimentalists. The theory is complex and all of its major parts have a bearing on one another; indeed, consciousness has a central place in the total conceptual structure ? as is (...) argued, in effect, throughout the present article. The discussion focuses mainly on how conscious psychical processes differ from processes of the psychical apparatus that do not instantiate the Freudian attribute of consciousness. This intrinsic attribute that belongs to every conscious psychical process is seen as including, along with qualitative content, an unmediated, witting awareness of the psychical process that is directed upon itself. (shrink)

This book uses clear language, modern contexts, and key psychoanalytic concepts to exemplify how Sigmund Freud's thinking and legacy is directly relevant to contemporary therapists. Interweaving theory with history, Freudian Thought for the Contemporary Clinician allows readers to take a walk in Freud's shoes, offering a new framework for understanding his arcane language and the cultural mores of the early 20th century. Robert Mendelsohn explores topics including sexuality and gender, racial injustices, and cultural differences with direct reference to Freud's cases, (...) demonstrating how traditional psychoanalytic ideas may inform solutions to issues we face today. Featuring clinical examples and philosophical explorations delivered in an accessible style, Freudian Thought for the Contemporary Clinician will be a key text for psychoanalytic clinicians in practice and in training. It will also be of great interest to academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, the history of psychology and the history of ideas. (shrink)

In this article I present and discuss a reading hypothesis, according to which, with the purpose of thinking about the genesis of meaning in the lived experience without needing, for that, to resort to the reflexive transparency expedient ensured by the idea of a pure self, Merleau-Ponty promotes a shift in the way of employing the Gestalt notion, which starts to be read from the unconscious drive Freudian theory. Interpreted from psychoanalysis, however, Gestalt's notion would no longer address the lived (...) from a descriptive point of view and would assume a dynamic point of view, which Merleau-Ponty (1964a, p. 165) will call ontological, which, in turn, it will influence the Merleau-Ponty appropriation of psychoanalysis. Beyond anthropology, psychoanalysis, as a gestalt (or ontological) reading of the way the lived is articulated, would become a form of philosophy (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1964a, p. 323), the presentation of Being as a process of differentiation between incarnated signifiers, which would configure a “primary symbolism”. And my greatest interest, with this hypothesis, is to measure to what extent, with this approaching strategy between gestalt and psychoanalytic operators, Merleau-Ponty manages to solve a problem that he himself faced in his way of understanding how it is possible to have singularity in a context of production of spontaneous and generic meanings wholes. This means asking: in what sense the notion of gestalt whole clarifies what is the intimacy that, for example, psychoanalysis believes it can hear from the people? (shrink)

This paper aims at taking a fresh look at Freudian psychoanalytical theory from a modern perspective. Freudian psychology is a science based on the unconscious and the conscious . Various aspects of Freudian thinking are examined from a modern perspective and the relevance of the psychoanalytical theory of consciousness is projected. Do psychoanalysis and the unconsciousness have something to teach us about consciousness? Approaching Freud from a historical, psychoanalytical, anthropological and sociological perspective, we need to look at how Freudian theory (...) may contribute to a better understanding of consciousness. We also need to look at psychoanalytical psychotherapy and its contribution to a better understanding of body-mind dualism and consciousness as a whole. Ego psychology is considered in the present day context and it is synthesized with various psychological studies to give us a better understanding of consciousness. (shrink)

Can the explanations which Freud gives of neurotic symptoms be seen as fitting into the pattern of rational explanation? After some clarification of the notion of a rational explanation, I shall be examining what I take to be the only plausible ways of trying to construe Freudian explanations as explanations of this type--by treating Freudian cases first as analogous to ordinary cases of pretending (Section II), secondly, as analogous to cases of superstitious belief (Section IV), and finally as analogous to (...) cases involving acts of communication (Section V). I shall be arguing that none of these ways of construing many of the Freudian explanations is successful. (shrink)

This paper consists of two related parts:I. A detailed critique of Donald Davidson's thesis—in his “The Paradoxes of Irrationality”—that “…any satisfactory [explanatory] view [of irrationality] must embrace some of Freud's most important theses” (p. 290). I argue that this conclusion is doubly flawed: (i) Davidson's case for it is logically ill‐founded, and (ii) its Freudian plaidoyer is also factually false.II. Relatedly, in the second part, I confute the recent arguments given by Marcia Cavell, Thomas Nagel, et al. to establish that (...) psychoanalytic causal explanations of irrationality are epistemically justified, because they are extensions of the desire‐cumbelief pattern of accounting for intentional actions. As a corollary, it becomes clear that these authors have failed to undermine my epistemological strictures on the foundations of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

For some time now a number of critics have argued that Juergen Habermas has misinterpreted Freud. The gist of this criticism is that Habermas' interpretation of psychoanalysis as `depth hermeneutics' must violate the intent of Freud's work, which is so deeply grounded in drive theory. In other words, Habermas confuses philosophical reflection with psychoanalysis. This paper takes a somewhat different focus. It examines the consequences of Habermas' interpretation of Freud for Habermas' view of the individual. It is shown that Habermas' (...) interpretation eventuates in an abstract and shadowy view of the individual. It is argued that an alternative view of psychoanalysis, object relations theory, can help locate the source of Habermas' pale view of the individual, and help correct it, without succumbing to `neo-Freudian revisionism'. Object relations theory also suggests that in order to overcome the diminution of the individual in real life it is necessary for political theory to examine seriously the role of the family. Finally, object relations theory generates an interesting criticism of so-called postmodern psychoanalysis—for example, the work of Jacques Lacan. This criticism can help us better understand the relationship between Habermas and modernism. (shrink)

One of the most complex areas of Foucault's work is his relationship to Freudian psychoanalysis. Foucault consistently argued for the historical specificities of the two principal human objects of psychoanalysis – madness and sexuality. He now stands starkly removed from Freudian thought, which cannot countenance ethnographic or cultural versions of madness or sexuality. Foucault welcomed the extra‐psychoanalytic potentials of the Freudian unconscious for undermining existentialist and phenomenological accounts of the subject and knowledge. Foucault in fact celebrated the political divergences of (...) psychoanalysis as one of its strengths. The critique of desire is really the climax of Foucault's efforts to develop an alternative Nietzschean genealogy of the modern subject as a historical and cultural reality – a domain that had hitherto excluded sexual identity, while the Freudian and feminist traditions had perhaps seen only sexuality and not the wider political domains. (shrink)

A history of psychoanalysis through the twentieth century, critiquing Freud as a scientist and as a creative thinker, and considering the political and social environment in which psychoanalysis was born and applied.

In this paper, I criticize the claim made by Donald Davidson, among others, that Freud’s psychoanalytic theory provides “a conceptual framework within which to describe and understand irrationality.” Further, I defend my epistemological strictures on the explanatory and therapeutic foundations of the psychoanalytic enterprise against the efforts of Davidson, Marcia Cavell, Thomas Nagel, et al., to undermine them.