Analysing the Cultural Unconscious

Analysing the Cultural Unconscious PDF Author: Lilian Munk Rösing
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350088374
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
What are we doing when taking psychoanalysis from the couch to the analysis of society, culture, and arts? How is it possible to do so? How is it possible to move from singular experiences to universal structures detected in culture and society? Could psychoanalysis applied to art works become more sensitive to their aesthetics form? Psychoanalysis is often disclaimed as non-scientific, since its main object – the unconscious – has no positive existence. This book, however, proposes psychoanalysis to be a “science of the signifier”. It takes as its object the signifier – the signifying part of the sign – insisting that it always says more (or less) than intended, because its very materiality carries unintended messages. By defining the object of psychoanalysis as the signifier, this volume argues that we can speak of psychoanalysis as a science, even if it is closer to semiotics than biology. Analysing the Cultural Unconscious builds on this idea by arguing that the analysis of the signifier is the way to understand not only the individual unconscious, but also the cultural one. Replacing a person's monologue on the couch with ideology criticism or a piece of art, applied psychoanalysis allows us to analyse culture and the arts in a new way, uncovering the cultural unconscious.

Analysing the Cultural Unconscious

Analysing the Cultural Unconscious PDF Author: Lilian Munk Rösing
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350088374
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
What are we doing when taking psychoanalysis from the couch to the analysis of society, culture, and arts? How is it possible to do so? How is it possible to move from singular experiences to universal structures detected in culture and society? Could psychoanalysis applied to art works become more sensitive to their aesthetics form? Psychoanalysis is often disclaimed as non-scientific, since its main object – the unconscious – has no positive existence. This book, however, proposes psychoanalysis to be a “science of the signifier”. It takes as its object the signifier – the signifying part of the sign – insisting that it always says more (or less) than intended, because its very materiality carries unintended messages. By defining the object of psychoanalysis as the signifier, this volume argues that we can speak of psychoanalysis as a science, even if it is closer to semiotics than biology. Analysing the Cultural Unconscious builds on this idea by arguing that the analysis of the signifier is the way to understand not only the individual unconscious, but also the cultural one. Replacing a person's monologue on the couch with ideology criticism or a piece of art, applied psychoanalysis allows us to analyse culture and the arts in a new way, uncovering the cultural unconscious.

Beneath the Crust of Culture

Beneath the Crust of Culture PDF Author: Howard F. Stein
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042008182
Category : Anthropology, Cultural
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
This impressive book by Howard Stein, one of the most insightful and important cultural analysts writing today, offers a profound understanding of how social problems ranging from xenophobia, terrorism, and school violence to natural disasters and corporate downsizing are exacerbated, provoked, and sometimes even produced by our deepest psychological needs and vulnerabilities - forces of which we are largely unaware but which we can come to understand and thus deal with more productively through a method of psychoanalytically informed cultural analysis that Stein both explains and performs in this eminently readable and engaging book. The insights and methodology offered here are indispensable for any cultural workers

Japan in Analysis

Japan in Analysis PDF Author: I. Parker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023059395X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
This book is about the development of psychoanalysis and modern subjectivity in Japan, and addresses three key questions: 'Why is there psychoanalysis in Japan?', 'What do we learn about Japan from its own forms of analysis?', and 'What do we learn about ourselves from Japan?'

The Concepts Used to Analyze "culture"

The Concepts Used to Analyze Author: Dennis Sobolev
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780773437951
Category : Identity (Philosophical concept)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This study is devoted to the stratified description and analysis of the unconscious mechanisms of culture: the mechanisms that form the human being, as an empirical subject in its actual existence.

The Flight into The Unconscious

The Flight into The Unconscious PDF Author: Wolfgang Giegerich
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000078248
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Book Description
Psychological analysis usually sets its sights upon the patient or upon cultural phenomena such as myths, literature, or works of art. The essays in this volume, by contrast, have another addressee, another subject matter: psychology itself. Deeply informed by Jung’s insight regarding the discipline’s lack of an objective vantage point outside and beyond the psyche, their Jungian author again and again turns Jung’s contribution to psychology around upon itself in the spirit of an immanent critique. Cutting to the quick, the question is put: in its constitution as psychology is Jungian psychology up to the level of what its insight into psychology’s lack of an Archimedean point would require? Are the interpretations it gives of its various subject matters—alchemy, religion, the unconscious and the rest-matched by its interpretation of itself? Has its meeting itself in them had consequences for itself, consequences in terms of the fathoming of its own truth? Or clinging to the standpoint of empirical observer, did it ultimately demur with regards to the question of their truth and its own - this despite Jung’s having characterized his work as an opus divinum? Topics include Jung’s psychology project as a response to the condition of the world, the "smuggling" inherent in the logic of "the unconscious," the closure and setting free dialectic of alchemy and psychology, the blindness to logical form problematic, the faultiness of the opposition "Individual" and "Collective", Jung’s communion fiasco, his thinking the thought of not-thinking, the veracity of his Red Book, the disenchantment complex, and, as indicated in the title of this volume, Jung’s psychology project as a counter-speculative "flight into the unconscious."

Society and the Unconscious

Society and the Unconscious PDF Author: Dieter Sandner
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3662661756
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
This book will interest anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of the psychological relationship between individual psychological dynamics, social structure and the unconscious collective paradigms. It focuses on an analysis of patriarchal culture, which is, as it were, the psychological enclosure in which all individual and collective processes take place. Starting from the genesis and current structure of this culture, the strong social changes of the last 50 years are examined: the change in relations between men and women social relations in terms of solidarity and desolidarisation the situation of social security the social and political power relations, and the economic dynamics. At the same time, collective fantasies are elaborated that emerge from the socio-structural changes. The basis of the study is psychoanalytical cultural theory in the form of a cultural-critical deconstruction of its fundamental assumptions. In 16 interesting chapters, essential questions of psychological cultural theory are answered and practical applications of this theory to current sociostructural processes are shown.

Freud's Theory and Its Use in Literary and Cultural Studies

Freud's Theory and Its Use in Literary and Cultural Studies PDF Author: Henk de Berg
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571133014
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Rarely has a single figure had as much influence on Western thought as Sigmund Freud. His ideas permeate our culture to such a degree that an understanding of them is indispensable. Yet many otherwise well-informed students in the humanities labor under misconceptions or lack of knowledge about Freudian theory. There are countless introductions to Freudian psychoanalysis but, surprisingly, none that combine a genuinely accessible account of Freud's ideas with an introduction to their use in literary and cultural studies, as this book does. It is written specifically for use by advanced undergraduate and graduate students in courses dealing with literary and cultural criticism, yet will also be of interest to the general reader. The book consists of two parts. Part one explains Freud's key ideas, focusing on the role his theories of repression, conscious and unconscious mental processes, sexuality, dreams, free associations, "Freudian slips," resistance, and transference play in psychoanalysis, and on the relationship between ego, superego, and id. Here de Berg refutes many popular misconceptions, using examples throughout. The assumption underlying this account is that Freud offers not simply a model of the mind, but an analysis of the relation between the individual and society. Part two discusses the implications of Freudian psychoanalysis for the study of literature and culture. Among the topics analyzed are Hamlet, Heinrich Heine's Lore-Ley, Freud's Totem and Taboo and its influence on literature, the German student movement of the late 1960s, and the case of the Belgian pedophile Marc Dutroux and the public reactions to it. Existing books focus either on Freudian psychoanalysis in general or on psychoanalytic literary or cultural criticism; those in the latter category tend to be abstract and theoretical in nature. None of them are suitable for readers who are interested in psychoanalysis as a tool for literary and cultural criticism but have no firm knowledge of Freud's ideas. Freu

The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups and Societies

The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups and Societies PDF Author: Earl Hopper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042992223X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The social unconscious is vital for understanding persons and their groupings, ranging from families to societies, committees to organisations, and from small to median to large therapeutic groups, and essential for comprehensive clinical work. This series of volumes of contributions from an international network of psychoanalysts, analytical psychologists, group analysts and psychodramatists draw on the classical ideas of Freud, Klein and Jung, Bion, Foulkes and Moreno, and on contemporary relational perspectives, self-psychology and neuroscience. Volume 1 is concerned mainly with the theory of the social unconscious. It is focused on topics such as location, sociality, the social brain, identity, ideology, the foundation matrix, social psychological retreats, false collective self-objects, the collective unconscious and its archetypes and social dreaming.

The Social Unconscious

The Social Unconscious PDF Author: Earl Hopper
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 9781846423789
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
'In this text, Earl Hopper has made a major contribution to the understanding of the depth and breadth of individuals and how we might help them to know more of their patterns of relatedness with others, inter-personally, socially and culturally. Of particular note is the open honest manner of his consideration of his counter-transference and these can be clearly observed in the abundance of pertinent vignettes. This book draws attention to theory and practice in relation to a side of therapeutic work insufficiently attended to and will reward readers at all stages of professional development. It is written in a clear, accessible style and manages to convey complex ideas in a readily comprehensible manner'. - Psychotherapy and politics international 'The Social Unconscious represents a line of thinking whose time has come. From bullying and youth violence in schools, to bombings in our cities, to anti-semitic or anti-Muslim activities and other race or religious hatred, to anxieties, well founded or otherwise, about immigration - wherever we live, all of us are touched and shaped by these events... This book draws attention to theory and practice in relation to a side of therapeutic work insufficiently attended to and will reward readers at all stages of professional development. It is written in a clear, accessible style and manages to convey complex ideas in a readily comprehensible manner.' - Psychotherapy & Politics International 'Dr Hopper argues for the awareness of, and training in, the processes of what he terms the Social Unconscious, for all mental health professionals. Hopper provides insight into the multiple forces that affect us and how we may reorganize our constraints. Does Hopper simply find what he is looking for, or does he discover something new? I recommend readers take this book of essays seriously and make their own decision.' - Psychologist - Psychoanalyst 'A very timely selection of papers by Earl Hopper on a very timely subject... People need to recognize that we are not merely passive sufferers of our world, rather we constitute it and have the power to shape it to a great extent. Much of what goes on in that world is unconscious in spite of the fact that we make it, therefore the importance of the social unconscious has been in the centre of Earl's interest for a number of years, and he has become one of the best known exponents of it.' - Reflections 'This most timely book - with its ready application across disciplines in a world fragmented by group-induced conflicts and traumas - will, no doubt, stimulate many thoughts, feelings and new possibilities for integration.' - Mark Ettin, Group Psychotherapist and Group Relations Consultant, USA 'The Social Unconscious offers a carefully composed selection of the author's group analytic contributions... the complexities of sociology, group analysis and psychoanalysis are put in mutually enriching perspectives.' - Dieter Nitzgen, Psychoanalyst and Group Analyst, Germany 'This record will be a lasting contribution to the literature. He movingly records with startling honesty the details of his family background and current history with poetic grace, thus applying what he has learned of the social unconscious to his own practice.' - W. Gordon Lawrence, Group Relations and Organizational Consultant, UK 'Earl Hopper's writing contributes a penetrating and unique view of pathology rooted in society as well as in the individual psyche.' - Dennis Brown, Psychoanalyst and Group Analyst, UK The social unconscious and its manifestations in group analysis are the focus of this important new book of Earl Hopper's selected papers. Drawing on sociology, psychoanalysis and group analysis, he argues that groups and their participants are constrained unconsciously by social, cultural and political facts and forces. These hypotheses are illustrated with clinical vignettes concerning anti-Semitism, racism, the politics of class and gender, and the effects of rapid social change. Transference and countertransference processes are examined both vividly and honestly. Theoretically generative and clinically astute, this book will be of value to both analysts and their students.

The Social Unconscious

The Social Unconscious PDF Author: Earl Hopper
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 1843100886
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The social unconscious and its manifestations in group analysis are the focus of this important new book of Earl Hopper's selected papers. Drawing on sociology, psychoanalysis and group analysis, he argues that groups and their participants are constrained unconsciously by social, cultural and political facts and forces.