Full Description
This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the malaise of the contemporary individual by returning the economic point of view of Freudian thinking, the concept of satisfaction, libido, and pleasure-unpleasure principle to their rightful place as the motivating forces of human existence.
For Freud, pleasure stands apart from other human experiences, side by side with unpleasure, always a bonus in the search for satisfaction of the pleasure principle and beyond. Along with libido, emotional fulfillment, and the capacities for sublimation and play, pleasure has not been given enough attention in the psychoanalytic literature. The editors of this book address this lack and highlight the importance of examining today's social and individual malaise through these specific lenses of inquiry. It is particularly timely and important today to address this lack, and thereby examine the impact of the social phenomena of the pandemic, the crises of ideals and virtuality on the subject who feels in a state of constant emergency, overwhelmed, addicted, and delibidinalized.
With contributions from across psychoanalysis, this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts in training and in practice who want to understand how the modern world has shaped our understanding of pleasure.
Contents
General Introduction
VAIA TSOLAS
Early Barriers to Pleasure
CHRISTINE ANZIEU-PREMMEREUR
PART I
Crises of Ideals, Delibidinalization and Its Discontents for Our Contemporary World Introduction
EVAN MORIARTY
1 Preface to Kristeva's Work: Vitality Against Virality and Virtuality
RACHEL BOUÉ-WIDAWSKY
2 "In the Current State of War, It Is Our Most Inner Selves That We Must Save"
JULIA KRISTEVA
3 Preface to Contri's Work: Thinking, Drive, Law
MICHAEL CIVIN
4 The Science of Thought: The Thought of Satisfaction
GIACOMO B. CONTRI
5 Three Chapters to Be Remembered and Post-Scriptum
GIACOMO B. CONTRI AND RAFFAELLA COLOMBO
6 Dead Mother (Ire)land
MATTHEW MCCOY AND MARISA BERWALD
PART II
Delibidinalization and the Malaise of the Contemporary Subject
Introduction
SEAN LYNCH AND ANDJELA SAMARDZIC
7 Uncanny Drives: On Nightmares and Wish Fulfillment
MONIKA GSELL
8 Ridding Oneself of Reality
LAURENCE KAHN
9 On the Roots of Addictive Behavior in Narcissist Vulnerability and Lack of Transitional Area
CHRISTINE ANZIEU-PREMMEREUR
10 Reaching for the Impossible Jouissance: The Contemporary Addictive Female
VAIA TSOLAS
11 The Risk of Loss: Anxiety and Depression in Women
JACQUELINE SCHAEFFER
12 Enemies of Unpleasure
PANOS ALOUPIS
13 Resistance to Psychoanalysis
CATHERINE CHABERT
14 "Unjoined Persons": Psychic Isolation and Bodily Symptoms in Adolescence
MARY T. BRADY
15 Death, Life, Birth and Sublimation in the Pandemic
ROSEMARY BALSAM
16 Death and the Use of Pleasure
DAVID LICHTENSTEIN
17 Destructive Envy and the Narcissistic Grip
DOMINIQUE CUPA
18 "... whatever ..."
MICHAEL CIVIN
Afterword
ANAND DESAI
