1st Edition

Memories and Monsters Psychology, Trauma, and Narrative

Edited By Eric R. Severson, David M. Goodman Copyright 2018
    312 Pages
    by Routledge

    312 Pages
    by Routledge

    Memories and Monsters explores the nature of the monstrous or uncanny, and the way psychological trauma relates to memory and narration. This interdisciplinary book works on the borderland between psychology and philosophy, drawing from scholars in both fields who have helped mould the bourgeoning field of relational psychoanalysis and phenomenological and existential psychology. The editors have sought out contributions to this field that speak to the pressing question: how are we to attend to and contend with our monsters?

    The authors in this volume examine the ways in which we might best relate to our monsters, and how the legacies of ancient traumas and anxieties continue to affect our current stories, memories and everyday practices. Covering such manifestations of the monstrous as racism, crimes against humanity, trauma as portrayed in music and art, and the Holocaust, this book explores the impact the uncanny has on our individual and collective psyches.

    By focusing on a very specific theme, and one that excites the imagination, Memories and Monsters stokes the flames of an important current movement in relational psychoanalysis. It will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as professionals in psychology and graduate school students and tutors in the fields of both psychology and philosophy.

    Introduction: Listening to Monsters Eric Severson and David Goodman

    Chapter 1: Apocalyptic Exceptionalism and Existential Particularity: The Rise in Popularity of Dystopian Myths and our Immortal "Other" Paul Cantz, PSYD, ABPP

    Chapter 2: The Golem Must Live, the Golem Must Die: On the Moral Imperative of Writing Critical Cultural Histories of Psychology Philip Cushman

    Chapter 3: The Golem and the Decline of Language and Magic—Or, Why Our Machines Disappoint Joel Rosenberg

    Chapter 4: Is Loyalty Really A Virtue? Shame and the Monstrous Other Peter Shabad

    Chapter 5: Toward A Psychoanalysis of Passion Jerome A. Miller

    Chapter 6: Living in the Shadows of the Past: German Memory, Trauma and Legacies of Perpetration Roger Frie

    Chapter 7: Haunting & Historicity Jerome Veith

    Chapter 8: Changing Societal Narratives, Fighting "Crimes Against Humanity" Doris Brothers, Ph.D.

    Chapter 9: Positioning Self and Other: How Psychiatric Patients, Psychiatric Inmates, and Mental Health Care Professionals Construct Discursively their Relationship to Total Institutions Branca Telles Ribeiro and Diana Souza Pinto

    Chapter 10: "I am not myself, but I am not an other": Self-dissolution Narrative in Medical Rehabilitation Psychotherapy Orin Segal

    Chapter 11: Idealized "Other": A Reparative Fiction Amira Simha-Alpern, Ph.D.

    Chapter 12: Foucault and Derrida on Interiority and the Limits of Psychoanalyzing Sexuality and Madness Peter Capretto

    Chapter 13: Beautiful Troubling Alterity: An Intersubjective Response to Nabokov's Lolita Steven Huett and George Horton

    Chapter 14: The Music Knows: Grieving Existential Trauma In Art, Music and Psychoanalysis Malcolm Owen Slavin, Ph.D.

    Biography

    Eric R. Severson is a philosopher specializing in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. He is author of the books Levinas's Philosophy of Time (Duquesne University Press, 2013) and Scandalous Obligation (Beacon Hill Press, 2011), and editor of several volumes on ethics, philosophy of religion and psychology. He currently teaches philosophy at Seattle University.

    David M. Goodman is a licensed clinical psychologist, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Advising at the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College, Director of the Psychology and the Other Institute, and a teaching associate at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Hospital.

    "This is a top-quality volume. Severson, Goodman and a stellar collection of contributors do a great job of weaving a diverse range of approaches to the topic together into a book that sheds really fresh insight on a subject first raised by Freud, and revisited by many within and outside psychoanalysis ever since."-Donna M. Orange