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Portraits of the thirty-eight known patients Sigmund Freud treated clinically—some well-known, many obscure—reveal a darker, more complex picture of the famed psychoanalyst. Everyone knows the characters described by Freud in his case histories: “Dora,” the “Rat Man,” the “Wolf Man.” But what do we know of the people, the lives behind these famous pseudonyms: Ida Bauer, Ernst Lanzer, Sergius Pankejeff? Do we know the circumstances that led them to Freud’s consulting room, or how they fared—how they really fared—following their treatments? And what of those patients about whom Freud wrote nothing, or very little: Pauline Silberstein, who threw herself from the fourth flo...
Reflections on the Reality of transient mental illnessThis text uses the case of Albert Dadas, the first diagnosed "mad traveller", to weigh the legitimacy of cultural versus physical symptoms in the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders. The author argues that psychological symptoms find niches where transient illnesses flourish.
An astutely argued and elegantly written (and translated) book on the philosophical genealogy and logical implications of the work of Jacques Lacan.--Choice
A provocative argument that mental illnesses are not diseases, but the product of varying expectations shared by therapists and patients.
Remembering Anna O. offers a devastating examination of the very foundations of psychoanalytic theory and practice, which was born with the publication of Breuer and Freud's Studies on Hysteria in 1895. Breuer described the case of Anna O., a young woman afflicted with a severe hysteria whom he had cured of her symptoms by having her recount under hypnosis the traumatic events that precipitated her illness. Drawing on the most recent Freud scholarship and on long-secret documents, Borch-Jacobsen demonstrates, however, that Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim) was never cured by Breuer's "talking cure" and that both Breuer and Freud knowingly falsified the historical record. Borch-Jacobsen points out the numerous inconsistencies in Breuer's account that suggests that Anna O.'s symptoms were simulated to meet Breuer's theoretical expectations and that her famed "reminiscences" were in fact fictitious memories induced by Breuer in the course of a hypnotic treatment.
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This provocative history of bipolar disorder illuminates how perceptions of illness, if not the illnesses themselves, are mutable over time. Beginning with the origins of the concept of mania—and the term maniac—in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, renowned psychiatrist David Healy examines how concepts of mental afflictions evolved as scientific breakthroughs established connections between brain function and mental illness. Healy recounts the changing definitions of mania through the centuries, explores the effects of new terminology and growing public awareness of the disease on culture and society, and examines the rise of psychotropic treatments and pharmacological marketing over the past four decades. Along the way, Healy clears much of the confusion surrounding bipolar disorder even as he raises crucial questions about how, why, and by whom the disease is diagnosed. Drawing heavily on primary sources and supplemented with interviews and insight gained over Healy's long career, this lucid and engaging overview of mania sheds new light on one of humankind's most vexing ailments.
Against Freud is a highly accessible, informative, and entertaining examination of Freud's controversial ideas and legacy by the world's most knowledgeable critics of psychoanalysis.
This worthy successor to Psychoanalysis and Feminism is both a defense of the long-dismissed diagnosis of hysteria as a centerpiece of the human condition and a plea for a new understanding of the influence of sibling and peer relationships. Juliet Mitchell argues that, because it our first social relationship, the sibling relationship is crucial to development, and that it is a critical failure of psychoanalysis and other psychological theories of development to obscure and ignore the importance of siblings and peers. In Mad Men and Medusas Mitchell traces the history of hysteria from the Greek "wandering womb" to modern-day psychiatric diagnoses, arguing that we need to reclaim hysteria to understand how distress and trauma express themselves in different societies and different times. Using fascinating examples from anthropology, Freud's case studies, literature, and her own clinical practice, Mitchell convincingly demonstrates that while hysteria may have disappeared as a disease, it is still a critical factor in understanding psychological development through the life cycle.
This book sets out to determine the validity of an accusation made against Jacques Lacan by Noam Chomsky in an interview in 1989. He stated that Lacan was a “charlatan” – not that his ideas were flawed or wrong, but that his entire discourse was fraudulent, an accusation that has since been repeated by many other critics. Examining the arguments of key anti-Lacanian critics, Mathews weighs and contextualizes the legitimacy of Lacan’s engagements with structural linguistics, mathematical formalization, science, ethics, Hegelian dialectics, and psychoanalysis. The guiding thread is Lacan’s own recurrent interrogation of authority, which inhabits an ambiguous zone between mastery and charlatanry. This book offers a novel contribution to the field for students and scholars of psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology, critical and literary theory.