Series: Psychoanalytic Horizons

Analyzed by Lacan brings together the first English translations of Why Lacan, Betty Milan's memoir of her analysis with Lacan in the 1970s, and her play, Goodbye Doctor, inspired by her experience. Why Lacan offers a unique and valuable perspective on how Lacan worked as a psychoanalyst, as well as his approach to psychoanalytic theory. Milan's testimony illustrates that Lacan's...

A psychoanalytic approach to screen adaptation that examines the role of deep-rooted desire evident in the persisting media practice of adaptation from literature to film. The prevalence of adaptations in cinema – from literary texts – is striking. What does this lead us to think about adaptation? This open access book answers this question from a psychoanalytic perspective by exploring...

Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis tells the story of a fundamental fight between a caring and an uncaring imagination. It helps us to recognise the uncaring imagination in politics, in culture—for example, in the writings of Ayn Rand—and also in ourselves. Sally Weintrobe argues that achieving the shift to greater care requires us to stop colluding with Exceptionalism, the...

A work of feminist psychoanalytic literary criticism that offers original readings of early canonical works of the Western tradition. In cogently argued and brilliant readings of texts ranging from St. Augustine’s Confessions to Milton’s Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, Psychoanalysis and the Patriarchal Tradition shows the ongoing cultural value of psychoanalytic approaches—flexibly and critically applied—to the interpretation of...

What stands out about racism is its ability to withstand efforts to legislate or educate it away. In The Racist Fantasy, Todd McGowan argues that its persistence is due to a massive unconscious investment in a fundamental racist fantasy. As long as this fantasy continues to underlie contemporary society, McGowan claims, racism will remain with us, no matter how strenuously...

Develops a new psychoanalytic theory of genius, a concept that is often invoked and pervasive in popular culture but which is rarely scrutinised in depth. In the absence of this scrutiny, genius has come to be understood as exceptional talent or intelligence—an elitist notion. Genius After Psychoanalysis intervenes in this debate by offering a new account of genius. Drawing on...

An engaging biographical introduction to Sigmund Freud, contextualising the evolution of his theories within the vibrant and tumultuous climate of early-20th-century Vienna. Freud Explained presents Freud’s core ideas as they developed over the course of his life, in context with his historical moment. It explains key moments in the progression of Freud’s theories – such as sexual repression, the Oedipus...

An engaging biographical introduction to Sigmund Freud, contextualising the evolution of his theories within the vibrant and tumultuous climate of early-20th-century Vienna. Freud Explained presents Freud’s core ideas as they developed over the course of his life, in context with his historical moment. It explains key moments in the progression of Freud’s theories—such as sexual repression, the Oedipus complex, and...

Psychoanalysis has not had a comfortable history in relation to "race" and racism, despite its origins in the Jewish lives of Freud and its other first-generation progenitors and the insistent pressure of antisemitism upon it. Indeed, the failure to fully address racism is a running sore in the psychoanalytic movement. This has begun to be remedied in recent years, but...

Visual Culture in Freud's Vienna shows how photography and film in turn-of-the-century Vienna (the birthplace of psychoanalysis) not only reflected modernist ideas already in force, but helped to bring into being what might be referred to as a “psychoanalytic imagination.” Mary Bergstein demonstrates that visual images not only illustrated, but also engendered ways of seeing social, psychological, and scientific ideas...