Contemporary Readings of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle explores this strange and unsettling text, and the impact it has had since its publication in 1920. The contributors to this book, representing diverse psychoanalytic traditions, invite us to re-read and to re-find Freud’s text in its rich complexity. There is much to explore beyond the death drive: the chapters included here reflect on the notion of a necessary binding ‘before the pleasure principle’, the genesis of psychic representation, the value as well as the cost of the repetition compulsion in psychic life and offer an account of the origins of symbol formation. These refreshing perspectives show us that Freud’s text continues to stimulate new life in clinical and theoretical understanding. Contemporary Readings of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in training and in practice. It will also be of interest to academics and scholars of psychoanalytic ideas.
