Rereading Freud

Psychoanalysis through Philosophy

Edited by Jon Mills

Subjects: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy Of Psychology, Continental Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791460481, 240 pages, January 2012
Hardcover : 9780791460474, 240 pages, April 2004

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Table of contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. The Logic and Illogic of the Dream-Work
John Sallis

2. Freud's Dream Theory and Social Constructivism
Tom Rockmore

3. The Bodily Unconscious in Freud's "Three Essays"
John Russon

4. The Ego Does Not Resemble the Cadaver: Image and Self in Freud
Stephen David Ross

5. The 'Alchemy of Identification': Narcissism, Melancholia, Femininity
Emily Zakin

6. The Ontology of Denial
Wilfried Ver Eecke

7. The I and the It
Jon Mills

8. Temporality and the Therapeutic Subject: The Phenomenology of Transference, Remembering, and Working-Through
Maria Talero

9. Freud and Kierkegaard on Genocide and the Death Drive
Bruce Wilshire

10. The Unconscious Life of Race: Freudian Resources for Critical Race Theory
Shannon Sullivan

About the Contributors

Index

Continental philosophers examine Freud’s metapsychology.

Description

Rereading Freud assembles eminent philosophical scholars and clinical practitioners from continental, pragmatic, feminist, and psychoanalytic paradigms to examine Freud's metapsychology. Fundamentally distorted and misinterpreted by generations of English speaking commentators, Freud's theories are frequently misunderstood within psychoanalysis today. This book celebrates and philosophically critiques Freud's most important contribution to understanding humanity: that psychic reality is governed by the unconscious mind. The contributors focus on several of Freud's most influential theories, including the nature and structure of dreams; infantile sexuality; drive and defense; ego development; symptom formation; feminine psychology; the therapeutic process; death; and the question of race. In so doing, they shed light on the ontological commitments Freud introduces in his metapsychology and the implications generated for engaging theoretical, clinical, and applied modes of philosophical inquiry.

Jon Mills is a psychologist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst in private practice; President of the Section on Psychoanalysis, Canadian Psychological Association; and Senior Faculty at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Toronto. He is the author of The Unconscious Abyss: Hegel's Anticipation of Psychoanalysis and the editor of Psychoanalysis at the Limit: Epistemology, Mind, and the Question of Science, both published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"Mills is very much alive in contemporary psychoanalysis … his rereading of Freud and concern regarding false dichotomies and Freud's location in contemporary practice deserves to be taken seriously by any practitioner attracted to Freud's project and the contemporary scene. " — Psychologist-Psychoanalyst

"This timely book makes a profoundly significant contribution to research concerning the philosophical implications of Freud's thought. The rich array of perspectives by leading scholars will reinvigorate intellectual discourse in Freud studies for years to come. This is an extraordinary undertaking that is long overdue. " — David Pettigrew, cotranslator of The Book of Love and Pain: Thinking at the Limit with Freud and Lacan