1st Edition

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World On The Body

Edited By Vaia Tsolas, Christine Anzieu-Premmereur Copyright 2018
    212 Pages
    by Routledge

    212 Pages
    by Routledge

    A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World: On the Body examines the importance of the body in everyday psychoanalytic practice and beyond. Written by world leading clinicians and international scholars, this important book aims to relocate the psychoanalytic body in the modern, more challenging world. Bringing together perspectives from across the range of psychoanalytic schools of thought, it covers essential analytic topics such as family and parenting, sex and gender, illness and psychosomatics, and concepts of the body in infancy.

    Though in Freud’s writing the intertwining of body and psyche is fundamental, psychoanalytic thought has sometimes downplayed or ignored this idea. This book returns the body to its rightful place in psychoanalysis, and brings the body into the contemporary world of technology and change, offering fresh insight into the sick body, the sexual body, the speaking body, the body of the changing family in which the traditional gendered labels no longer fit seamlessly, gender dynamics and much more.

    A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World gives renewed and increased emphasis to an essential tenant of psychoanalysis. With contributions from some of the most important modern psychoanalysts, this book will prove an essential work for both psychotherapists and academics.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    General Introduction

    VAIA TSOLAS

    PART I: THE BODY IN OUR CHANGING WORLD

    Introduction

    Vaia Tsolas

    Empathy Machines

    Sherry Turkle

    Changing Attitudes about Sex: A Dual Inheritance Perspective

    Robert A. Paul

    Modern Gender Flexibility: Pronoun changes and the Body's Activities

    Rosemary H. Balsam

    PART II: THE BODY IN THE CHANGING FAMILY

    Introduction

    Vaia Tsolas

    Introduction to: "Transformations of Parentality", by Julia Kristeva, Translated by Edward Kenny

    Rosemary H. Balsam

    Transformations of Parentality

    Julia Kristeva

    The Sibling Body Ego

    Juliet Mitchell

    Perspectives on the Body Ego and Mother-Infant Interaction. I’ve Got You Under My Skin

    Christine Anzieu-Premmereur

    PART III: THE SEXUAL BODY, THE SPEAKING BODY AND THE SICK BODY

    Introduction

    Maria Christina Aguirre

           

    Body and Soul. A Never-Ending Story

    Paul Verhaeghe

       

    Somatic Ailment and Death Drive: Dangerous Liaisons

    Panagiotis Aloupis

    What is Alive in the Ill Body? Affect and Representation in Psychosomatics

    Marina Papageorgiou

    PART IV: SEX, GENDER AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY

    Introduction

    Christine Anzieu-Premmereur

    Foreign Bodies: The Body-Psyche and its Phantoms

    Dominique Scarfone

    Botched Bodies: Inventing Gender and Constructing Sex

    Patricia Gherovici

    Repudiation of Femininity and the Aftermath on the Female Sexual Body

    Vaia Tsolas

    CONCLUDING REMARKS

    Christine Anzieu-Premmereur

    Biography

    Vaia Tsolas is a psychologist and psychoanalyst on the faculty at Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center and Albert Einstein Medical School, teaching Freud and Lacan. She is the director of Rose Hill Psychological Services. She is the winner of IPA Sacerdoti Prize, Columbia Ovesey and Klar best teacher award.  

    Christine Anzieu-Premmereur is M.D., Ph.D. and Psychoanalyst, member at the Société Psychanalytique de Paris and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. She is currently the director of the Parent-Infant Program at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center and Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at Columbia University.

    "Fidelity to Freud's method in this book featuring contributions by many eminent psychoanalysts, becomes the creative spur towards bold new theories and ideas on the centrality of the body in psychoanalysis. The multiplicity of approaches guarantees a multidimensional and insightful journey that dares to tread new paths while remaining grounded in inalienability of the Freudian perspective.

    The academic rigor of On the Body makes it stand out and I have no doubt that it will great interest to those working in the field of mental health."

    Antonino Ferro, President of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, and Training and Supervising Analyst in the American Psychoanalytic Association.

    "The authors demonstrate that if today’s psychoanalysis wants to remain relevant, the body of the drives should be restored to a central position. Yet our world is dramatically changing. A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body raises fundamental questions that stem from philosophical and clinical thoughts on the body in post Freudian psychoanalysis. The complexity of infantile and adult sexuality is explored here, and this exploration gives rise to fascinating elaborations on the role of technology, gender, transgenderism. Every analyst should read it."

    Marilia Aisenstein, a training analyst and the former president of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society.

    "This book reclaims a fundamental connection/integration of the contemporary psychoanalytic mind with the reality of the body of drives. Like a tree’s branches, post-freudian achievements and visions have made psychoanalysis an advanced science and practice, but now we need a harmonious re-integration of the trunk of that analytic tree: as Freud asserted, body and its drives are the basis for a deep psychoanalytic view. This is the role of this wonderful book in our contemporary psychoanalytic literature."

    Stefano Bolognini, psychiatrist, training and supervising analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and the President of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

    "This fascinating collection of essays proposes to restore and elaborate original conceptions of drive and body sidelined in contemporary psychoanalysis, and thereby reopen their exciting intellectual and clinical potential. The complex theoretical contributions by brilliant and erudite scholars offer a fresh take on the existing body of thought on sexuality and drive in psychoanalysis. Based in primarily French traditions, On the Body offers rich and radical reflections on the body and its psychic representation that will challenge and enlighten readers of all backgrounds. "

    Jessica Benjamin, the author of Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third.