If it is characteristic of obsessional neurosis that an object can be an object of desire only insofar as it is impossible object, this impossibility is also traced at the basis of any desire. The obsessional however specializes in setting things up "so that the object of his desire becomes the signifier of this impossibility". By aiming at or erasing the desire of the other, the obsessional depreciates his own desire. Žižek provides us with a rather (...) classic version of this when describing the place of Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde in the history of modernity. This paper considers Žižek’s reading alongside a painting by Chilean artist Juan Davila, which I shall argue presents a quite different approach to the writing of modernity: one that is not based on an erasure of feminine jouissance. (shrink)

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, declared that religion is a universal obsessional neurosis in his famous work of 1927, The Future of an Illusion. This work provoked immediate controversy and has continued to be an important reference for anyone interested in the intersection of philosophy, psychology, religion, and culture. Included in this volume is Oskar Pfister's critical engagement with Freud's views on religion. Pfister, a Swiss pastor and lay analyst, defends mature religion from Freud's "scientism." Freud's and (...) Pfister's texts have been updated in Gregory C. Richter's translations from the original German. (shrink)

Michael Palmer provides a detailed account of two of the most important theories of religion in the history of psychology--those of Freud and Jung. The book first analyzes Freud's claim that religion is an obsessional neurosis, a psychological illness fueled by sexual repression. He then considers Jung's rejection of Freud's theory, and his own assertion that it is the absence of religion, not its presence, which leads to neurosis.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, declared that religion is a universal obsessional neurosis in his famous work of 1927, _The Future of an Illusion_. This work provoked immediate controversy and has continued to be an important reference for anyone interested in the intersection of philosophy, psychology, religion, and culture. Included in this volume is Oskar Pfister’s critical engagement with Freud’s views on religion. Pfister, a Swiss pastor and lay analyst, defends mature religion from Freud’s “scientism.” Freud’s and (...) Pfister’s texts have been updated in Gregory C. Richter’s translations from the original German. (shrink)

The Cartesian cogito—the principle articulated by Descartes that "I think, therefore I am"—is often hailed as the precursor of modern science. At the same time, the cogito's agent, the ego, is sometimes feared as the agency of manipulative domination responsible for all present woes, from patriarchal oppression to ecological catastrophes. Without psychoanalyzing philosophy, _Cogito and the Unconscious_ explores the vicissitudes of the cogito and shows that psychoanalyses can render visible a constitutive madness within modern philosophy, the point at which "I (...) think, therefore I am" becomes obsessional neurosis characterized by "If I stop thinking, I will cease to exist." Noting that for Lacan the Cartesian construct is the same as the Freudian "subject of the unconscious," the contributors follow Lacan's plea for a psychoanalytic return to the cogito. Along the path of this return, they examine the ethical attitude that befits modern subjectivity, the inherent sexualization of modern subjectivity, the impasse in which the Cartesian project becomes involved given the enigmatic status of the human body, and the Cartesian subject's confrontation with its modern critics, including Althusser, Bataille, and Dennett. In a style that has become familiar to Žižek's readers, these essays bring together a strict conceptual analysis and an approach to a wide range of cultural and ideological phenomena—from the sadist paradoxes of Kant's moral philosophy to the universe of Ayn Rand's novels, from the question "Which, if any, is the sex of the cogito?" to the defense of the cogito against the onslaught of cognitive sciences. Challenging us to reconsider fundamental notions of human consciousness and modern subjectivity, this is a book whose very Lacanian orthodoxy makes it irreverently transgressive of predominant theoretical paradigms. _Cogito and the Unconscious_ will appeal to readers interested in philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and theories of ideology. _Contributors. _Miran Bozovic, Mladen Dolar, Alain Grosrichard, Marc de Kessel, Robert Pfaller, Renata Salecl, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic. (shrink)

The Cartesian cogito—the principle articulated by Descartes that "I think, therefore I am"—is often hailed as the precursor of modern science. At the same time, the cogito's agent, the ego, is sometimes feared as the agency of manipulative domination responsible for all present woes, from patriarchal oppression to ecological catastrophes. Without psychoanalyzing philosophy, _Cogito and the Unconscious_ explores the vicissitudes of the cogito and shows that psychoanalyses can render visible a constitutive madness within modern philosophy, the point at which "I (...) think, therefore I am" becomes obsessional neurosis characterized by "If I stop thinking, I will cease to exist." Noting that for Lacan the Cartesian construct is the same as the Freudian "subject of the unconscious," the contributors follow Lacan's plea for a psychoanalytic return to the cogito. Along the path of this return, they examine the ethical attitude that befits modern subjectivity, the inherent sexualization of modern subjectivity, the impasse in which the Cartesian project becomes involved given the enigmatic status of the human body, and the Cartesian subject's confrontation with its modern critics, including Althusser, Bataille, and Dennett. In a style that has become familiar to Žižek's readers, these essays bring together a strict conceptual analysis and an approach to a wide range of cultural and ideological phenomena—from the sadist paradoxes of Kant's moral philosophy to the universe of Ayn Rand's novels, from the question "Which, if any, is the sex of the cogito?" to the defense of the cogito against the onslaught of cognitive sciences. Challenging us to reconsider fundamental notions of human consciousness and modern subjectivity, this is a book whose very Lacanian orthodoxy makes it irreverently transgressive of predominant theoretical paradigms. _Cogito and the Unconscious_ will appeal to readers interested in philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and theories of ideology. _Contributors. _Miran Bozovic, Mladen Dolar, Alain Grosrichard, Marc de Kessel, Robert Pfaller, Renata Salecl, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic. (shrink)

Derrida's work encompasses dynamic spatial dimensions to understanding as a pervasive theme, including the search for a ‘new psychoanalytic graphology’ in Writing and Difference. This preoccupation with a spatial text for repression also occurs later in Archive Fever. Building on Derrida, this paper seeks to develop key aspects of a new dynamic psychoanalytic graphology through diametric and concentric interactive spatial relation. These spatial movements emerge from a radical reconstruction of a neglected aspect of structural anthropologist Lévi-Strauss’ work on spatial relations (...) prior to myth. This psychoanalytic graphology is argued to silently pervade Freud's own direct accounts of repression. This graphological domain is developed through diametric and concentric spatial movements across common concerns of Derrida and Freud such as inversions, interruption and restoration, regarding traces in the unconscious. A spatial text is uncovered for diverse features of Freudian repression, including ambivalence in obsessional neurosis and psychosis, splitting of the ego and repetition compulsion. This psychoanalytic graphology challenges the construction of a restricted subjectivity based on repressive diametric spatial relations. It goes beyond Freud's logocentric repression, resonant with Derrida's more radical call for a wider spatio-temporal understanding of structures of differential relation, prior to causality and myth. (shrink)

Originally published in 1959, this book is primarily concerned with the question of psychiatric factors in religion, and, conversely, with that of religious factors in psychiatry. It rejects the Freudian theory that religion is a form of obsessional neurosis. Though this latter hypothesis may explain many of the phenomena of religious observance, it cannot explain the reality of religious experience. Dr Guirdham believes that orthodox Christianity is a perversion of the psychologically irrefutable teaching of Christ and that its (...) conception of God as a supreme being endowed with supreme power, its teaching on the resurrection, and its contamination with a sense of guilt, are especially conducive to psychiatric disorder. He shows how theology may actually be inimical to religious experience and how faith differs from belief and is a response of the whole man. The book explains also the psychological origins of clericalism and demonstrates the role played by the latter in stifling religious experience. (shrink)

Originally published in 1959, this book is primarily concerned with the question of psychiatric factors in religion, and, conversely, with that of religious factors in psychiatry. It rejects the Freudian theory that religion is a form of obsessional neurosis. Though this latter hypothesis may explain many of the phenomena of religious observance, it cannot explain the reality of religious experience. Dr Guirdham believes that orthodox Christianity is a perversion of the psychologically irrefutable teaching of Christ and that its (...) conception of God as a supreme being endowed with supreme power, its teaching on the resurrection, and its contamination with a sense of guilt, are especially conducive to psychiatric disorder. He shows how theology may actually be inimical to religious experience and how faith differs from belief and is a response of the whole man. The book explains also the psychological origins of clericalism and demonstrates the role played by the latter in stifling religious experience. (shrink)

Elvio Fachinelli was a leading Italian psychoanalyst of the 1960s-80s whose clinical, theoretical, and radical work resonated well beyond his discipline. In The Still Arrow, Fachinelli launched an interdisciplinary investigation ranging from anthropology to politics and the history of religions to the critique of ideology. From a psychoanalytic standpoint, individual obsessional neurosis is firmly connected to a process of repudiation of death. But Fachinelli argued that similar elaborations on time are also present at the group level, in disparate (...) social and historical contexts, for instance, in the archaic transformation of the dead into ancestors and in what he named "the fascist phenomenon." Originally written in Italian in 1979, this book displays Fachinelli's eclectic methodology, which came to serve as a precursor to Slavoj Zizek's work. Fachinelli differs from Freud's attempt in Totem and Taboo to equate individual psycho-libidinal predicaments with those of whole societies, and he points out an unbridgeable difference between the two. At the same time, for Fachinelli, that difference always remains one of degree, not of principle. He explores many questions about time, such as history's status not only as the sum of all possible histories but also of impossible ones. This first English translation of Fachinelli's work, The Still Arrow introduces a major critical European voice to the larger readership. (shrink)

Rat Man, a lucidly Lacanian rereading of Freud's famous case of obsessional neurosis, suggests at one point that an obsessional cannot establish any temporality of his or her, and is obliged to wait for what Lacan called "the hour of the Other" . As the authors preface makes clear, something similar is true of Rat Man itself; originally completed in 1977, this terse and instructive book took a full decade to find a publisher. I know nothing of (...) the specific circumstances involved in this delay, but hope that it is not an indication of the current status of Lacan and Lacanians in the English-speaking intellectual world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of FranceAndrew J. McKennaThe Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of France, by Eugene Webb; ix & 268 pp. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993, $35.00.That psychology and sociology are one science is the fundamental premise guiding Eugene Webb’s The Self Between, which he defines early on as “a self constituted dynamically and continuously by (...) the relationships it finds itself involved i n.” The “new social psychology of France” designated by his subtitle is mostly the one inspired by René Girard’s mimetic model of human behavior, to which four of Webb’s seven chapters are specifically devoted.Girard’s idea, which he learned from our literary masterpieces, is that human desire is mimetic, that it imitates other desires in its choice of objects and in pursuit of their possession. As desires converge on a single object, the locus of conflict will be between subjects rather within their individual psyches, a consequence that motivates Girard’s ongoing critique of Freudian psychoanalysis.But Freud’s theories are everywhere disputed in this book, which reports reliably on the devastating critiques advanced by François Roustang, Marie Balmary, and Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen. Roustang has convincingly (and entertainingly) uncovered Freud’s blindness to the pathologies of transference and discipleship investing the foundation of psychoanalysis. A pattern of rivalry for recognition and preeminence guides Freud’s career in a way that is reenacted around Lacan. Balmary, somewhat a Lacanian her self, has turned psychoanalytic theory against Freud to explore his own family secrets, while severely questioning the master’s bid for a universal theory pursued via self-analysis amidst a period of emotional upheaval. And Borch-Jacobsen has shown how th e dynamics of hypnosis that Freud rejected early on were brought back as transference, while arguing for his own part that mimetic identification with the other, rather than any primordial drives, is what brings the subject into being. These informat ive chapters help bring us up to date on significant debates that have developed since Lacan drew the French intellectual world, and so many Americans after it, into the orbit of psychoanalysis.But by far the bulk of Webb’s attention goes to Girard’s work and to that of [End Page 191] scholars and practitioners who have sought to extend it further in the social sciences. Principle among them is Jean-Michel Oughourlian, whose Puppet of Desire (translated by Webb in 1991) demonstrates how the mimetic model plays out in psychotherapy, notably in the workings of hypnotism and somnambulism, in cases of demonic possession, and in obsessional neurosis. In each case, the subject is unwitt ingly captive of another’s desire in a way that produces behavioral anomalies and disorders that are nonetheless available to lucid, jargon-free diagnosis. What is appealing here is the deployment of a rational explanation for irrational behavior, once we grasp the paradoxical rationale of desire; equally appealing prospects of actual healing are outlined here and at the end of the book, where possibilities of freedom and responsibility are resurrected from a technical vocabulary that smothers them.Girard’s idea of the self as relation, as interdividuality, rather than as a discreet unit, has social and political dimensions to which we only find tantalizing allusions in his works. They have been pursued with acumen by such writers as André Orléan, Paul Dumouchel and especially Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who figures importantly among those aligning systems theory with theories of social and economic organization. Like Borch-Jacobsen and Roustang, Dupuy restores due attention to concep tions of crowd behavior outlined at the end of the last century by Tarde and Le Bon, whose best insights Freud studiously discarded.This is richly interdisciplinary work, strongly suggesting that we variously redraw and erase lines defining academic fields. Occam’s razor flicks often and decisively in these pages, which restore needed balance to the effects of some wild er French imports. Webb brings no new ideas of his own to this capable synthesis, but his accurate report will help guide researchers toward major recent developments in France around and mostly beyond Freudian psychoanalysis... (shrink)

Background: The classical symptom specificity hypothesis (Blatt, 1974) links obsessional symptoms to autonomous interpersonal behavior. Inconsistent findings from cross-sectional group studies on symptom specificity have previously been associated with several conceptual and methodological limitations intrinsic to nomothetic research. Previous empirical case research reported ambivalences between autonomous and dependent interpersonal behavior in obsessional pathology. Aim and Method: The present ‘theory-building’ case study specifically aims at further refinement of the classical symptom specificity hypothesis by testing specific operationalizations within an empirical (...) single case design. Consensual Qualitative Research for Case studies is used to quantitatively and qualitatively describe the longitudinal, clinical interplay between obsessional symptoms and interpersonal dynamics throughout the process of a psychodynamic therapy. Interpersonal functioning is assessed by means of the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method. The classical symptom specificity hypothesis is contrasted to an alternative hypothesis of interpersonal ambivalences as determinants of obsessional symptoms. Results: Close associations between obsessions and interpersonal dynamics are observed. Findings predominantly affirm the ambivalence hypothesis rather than the classical symptom specificity hypothesis. Psychodynamic interventions focusing on interpersonal conflicts are related to symptomatic changes. Conceptual and methodological considerations, limitations and future research indications are discussed. (shrink)

Progress in psychiatry depends on accurate definitions of disorders. As long as there are no known biologic markers available that are highly specific for a particular psychiatric disorder, clinical practice as well as scientific research is forced to appeal to clinical symptoms. Currently, the nosology of obsessive-compulsive disorder is being reconsidered in view of the publication of DSM-V. Since our diagnostic entities are often simplifications of the complicated clinical profile of patients, definitions of psychiatric disorders are imprecise and always indeterminate. (...) This urges researchers and clinicians to constantly think and rethink well-established definitions that in psychiatry are at risk of being fossilised. In this paper, we offer an alternative view to the current definition of obsessive-compulsive disorder from a phenomenological perspective.TranslationThis article is translated from Dutch, originally published in [Handbook Obsessive-compulsive disorders, Damiaan Denys, Femke de Geus (Eds.), (2007). De Tijdstroom uitgeverij BV, Utrecht. ISBN13: 9789058980878.]. (shrink)

This article blends cultural history and theoretical psychology in a discussion of new treatment methods for psychiatric casualties that emerged early in World War II. It draws on philosophical hermeneutics and Hacking's historical ontology to clarify how our interpretation of this history inevitably reflects current struggles making sense of PTSD while efforts to understand this history can enrich present-day reflections about war neurosis and the social good. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book deals with the possibility of an ontological and epistemological account of the psychological category 'neurosis'. Intertwining thoughts from German idealism, Continental philosophy and psychology, the book shows how neurosis precedes and exists independently from human experience and lays the foundations for a non-essentialist, non-rational theory of neurosis; in cognition, in perception, in linguistics and in theories of object-relations and vitalism. The personal essays collected in this volume examine such issues as assimilation, the philosophy of (...) class='Hi'>neurosis, aneurysmal philosophy, and the connection between Hegel and Neurosis, among others. The volume establishes the connection between a now redundant psycho-analytic term and an extremely progressive discipline of Continental philosophy and Speculative realism. (shrink)

Some psychoanalytic truths are identified and some of their practical corollaries are identified.

The alliance of discursivity with neurosis on the one hand, and an exploration of new conditions of discourse on the other, conditions now self consciously denoted as 'West', gives notice of a certain disillusionment I feel with my culturally received, monotheistic valourization of the power of 'word-ing', and my sense that the problem is not discourse per se, but the way my understanding of it is, or has been, too stuck within its own cultural self enclosure, within the compound (...) of its own cultural grammar, one might say. In taking up these issues within the context of a conference convened to consider "Fragmentation and the Desire for Order/Unity" play off each other relationally, or symbiotically but how so inevitably and incidentally in the West that play-off has a neurotic tail-chasing character that is inspired precisely by Desire. My remarks, therefore, about the possibilities of new conditions of discourse for the West, turn most profoundly on a problematizing of Desire itself. (shrink)

Proposes that philosophy is the proper cure for neurosis.

The long-term persistence of neurotic symptoms, such as anxiety, poses difficult problems for any psychological theory. An attempt is made to revive the Watson-Mowrer conditioning theory and to avoid the many criticisms directed against it in the past. It is suggested that recent research has produced changes in learning theory that can be used to render this possible. In the first place, the doctrine of equipotentiality has been shown to be wrong, and some such concept as Seligman's “preparedness” is required, (...) that is the notion that certain CS are biologically prepared to be more readily connected with anxiety responses than others. In the second place, the law of extinction has to be amended, and the law of incubation or enhancement added, according to which the exposure of the CS-only may, under certain specified conditions, have the effect of increasing the strength of the CR, rather than reducing it. The major conditions favouring incubation are Pavlovian B conditioning, that is a type of conditioning in which the CR is a drive; a strong UCS, and short exposure of the CS-only. (shrink)

Freud said that 'the essence of neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.' In this short work, it is explained what this means and why it is true.

Este artículo se integra en una investigación general cuyo objeto es desvelar la discrepancia teórica fundamental entre la ontología y el psicoanálisis. Este artículo en concreto trata de explicar el modelo de estructura planteado por Gilles Deleuze en su ontología a partir de algunos de los mecanismos que Sigmund Freud descubre en la forma de represión específica de una de las configuraciones patológicas más comunes de la subjetividad, la neurosis obsesiva, tal y como la describe en el caso clínico (...) «El hombre de las ratas». (shrink)

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

Aristotle’s account of virtue is criticized through John Russon’s existential phenomenology of the human being. For Russon, neurosis is a characteristic of human being, whereas Aristotle would say that neurotic tensions do not arise in genuinely good people. The essay argues that an Aristotelian attitude engenders a particularly destructive form of neurosis by not recognizing the inherently dynamic nature of human identity. The essay seeks to build a theory of virtue that resists the idea of human fulfillment as (...) ending in a final state of well-being and contentment. (shrink)

ArgumentThe article retraces the shifting conceptualizations of psychological trauma in experimental psychopathological research in the middle decades of the twentieth century in the United States. Among researchers studying so-called experimental neuroses in animal laboratories, trauma was an often-invoked category used to denote the clash of conflicting forces believed to lead to neurotic suffering. Experimental psychologists, however, soon grew skeptical of the traumatogenic model and ultimately came to reject neurosis as a disease entity. Both theoretical differences and practical circumstances, such (...) as the technical challenge of stabilizing neurotic symptoms in rats, led to this demise. Yet, despite their reservations, experimental psychologists continued to employ traumatic stimuli to produce psychopathological syndromes. In the 1960s, a new understanding of trauma evolved, which emphasized the loss of control experienced by traumatized animal subjects. These shifting ideas about trauma, I argue, reflect both varying experimental cultures, epistemic norms as well as changing societal concerns. (shrink)

“The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so that the individual may reach the fullest and highest life attainable by man. The rules of conduct by which this end is to be attained are discoverable-like the other so-called laws of Nature-by observation and experiment, and only in that way.”THOMAS HUXLEYThe present moment is a portentous one in the history of human relations. Only yesterday the armies of half the world were locked in a death struggle with the armies (...) of the other half. And even now, as the representatives of the various governments gather together in attempts to organize an international State, the shadow of a weapon that threatens to end all life upon this earth lies athwart their deliberations. The moment with which we are faced is the more portentous because of the persistent hope man vainly entertains that a world of wholeness and peace will somehow issue out of these two warring and divided half-worlds. Even the student of behavior fondly believes that out of this divided world an undivided peace will come. Along with the rest of mankind even the seasoned psychiatrist fails to see that the overwhelming impetus to man's behavior—to his feeling and thinking—now stems from a social artifact of division. He does not see that, owing to a discrepancy in man's mental and social processes, the artificial world man has created is necessarily a world of conflict. In this hour of universal confusion and discord it would appear that we who study the problems of human adaptation are confronted with nothing less than a false, unilateral principle of motivation affecting the organism of man throughout. (shrink)