1st Edition

Unconscious Mental Life and Reality

By Richard Ekins Copyright 2002
    176 Pages
    by Routledge

    176 Pages
    by Routledge

    It is the aim of the present collection of seminal essays to offer a balanced yet rigorous examination of the durability and contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis, understood as a comprehensive system of theory and technique. The contributors eschew the establishment of yet another school of Freudian thought, not wishing to add to the already confusing array of competing and conflicting perspectives.Each essay seeks to underscore, refine and add to the perceived strength, richness and flexibility of early psychoanalytic thought. A broad range of psychoanalytic concerns are addressed: the unconscious, mind and brain, mind and body, affect, cognition and character. Each topic is surveyed in a spirit of thoughtful and judicious consolidation. Open, and well-informed, a sure course is taken between the opposing dangers of dogma and fragmentation.Insisting upon a well-grounded appreciation of the origins and historical unfolding of psychoanalysis, and remaining close to both clinical observations and theoretical developments, the present volume looks forward to the continuing fertility and pertinence of psychoanalytical exploration.

    Foreword -- Introduction -- The distinctiveness of the psychoanalytic unconscious -- What is affect? -- Mode of operation of unconscious mental processes as revealed by pathological forms of cognition -- Reflections on the psychoanalytic study of character -- Of teeth and theft and Poe: non-Lacanian purloining

    Biography

    Ekins, Richard