Questions for Freud : The Secret History of Psychoanalysis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rand, Nicholas T. (Nicholas Thomas)

Contributor:

Torok, Maria.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939.

Freud, Sigmund.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (256 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1998.

Summary:

With all the intrigue and twists of a mystery, Questions for Freud uncovers the paradoxes that riddle psychoanalysis today and traces them to Freud's vacillation at key points in his work--and from there to a traumatic event in Freud's life. What role did censored family history play in shaping Freud's psychological inquiries, promoting and impeding them by turns? With this question in mind, Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok develop a new biographical and conceptual approach to psychoanalysis, one that outlines Freud's contradictory theories of mental functioning against the backdrop of his permanent lack of insight into crucial and traumatic aspects of his immediate family's life. Taking us through previously unpublished documents and Freud's dreams, his clinical work and institutional organization, the authors show how a shameful event in 1865 that shook Freud and his family can help explain the internal clashes that later beset his work--on the origins of neurosis, reality, trauma, fantasy, sexual repression, the psychoanalytic study of literature, and dream interpretation. Steeped in the history, theory, and practice of psychoanalysis, this book offers a guide to the wary, a way of understanding the flaws and contradictions of Freud's thought without losing sight of its significance. This book will alter the terms of the current debate about the standing of psychoanalysis and Freud.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: Why Question Freud?

III Fundamental Contradictions of Freudian Thought

1. Dream Interpretation: Free Association or Universal Symbolism?

2. The Concept of Psychical Reality and Its Traps

III Psychoanalysis in the Eye of Literature

3. Applied Psychoanalysis in Question

4. A Case Study in Literary Psychoanalysis: Jensen’s Gradiva

5. The Distortions of Psychoanalysis: Freud versus Jensen

III Transmissions of Psychoanalysis

6. Censorship and Secrets in the Historical Topography of Psychoanalysis

7. The Setbacks of Catharsis: Emmy von N.

8. Neutralizing Constructive Criticism: Freud Faced with Ferenczi’s Research on Trauma

IV Gaining Insight into Freud

9. Methodological Issues

10. The Freud Family’s Disaster Seen through the Original Documents

11. Freud’s Self-Analysis and the Field of Biographical Studies

12. Freud’s Dreams: Witnesses to His Family Disaster

13. The Secret of Psychoanalysis

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Rand, Nicholas Questions for Freud

ISBN:

9780674042544

0674042549

OCLC:

1312726261