Elisabeth Young-Bruehl - Böcker

As a founding father of Existentialism, Karl Jaspers has been seen as a twentieth-century successor to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard; as an exponent of reason, he has been seen as an heir of Kant.  But studies tracing influences upon his thought or placing him in the context of Existentialism have not dealt with Jasper’s concern with the political realm and how we think in it and about it.  In this study Elisabeth Young-Bruehl explicates Jasper’s practical philosophizing, his search for ways in which we can orient ourselves toward our world and its political questions.Political freedom and freedom for philosophizing, for critical thinking, were of a piece for Jaspers, and Young-Bruehl makes the dynamic unity of these two freedoms the subject of her book.  What was important for Jaspers was not a systematic set of philosophical concepts but the activity of philosophizing, a mode of thinking that could illuminate the origins and implications of such unprecedented phenomena as nuclear weapons and totalitarian regimes.  Young-Bruehl shows how Jaspers aimed at responsibility to the diversity of the world and attempted to formulate criteria for judgment conducive to responsible thought and action.

This highly acclaimed, prize-winning biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book’s 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject’s life and achievement. Praise for the earlier edition:“Both a personal and an intellectual biography . . . It represents biography at its best.”—Peter Berger, front page, The New York Times Book Review “A story of surprising drama . . . . At last, we can see Arendt whole.”—Jim Miller, Newsweek “Indispensable to anyone interested in the life, the thought, or . . . the example of Hannah Arendt.”—Mark Feeney, Boston Globe“An adventure story that moves from pre-Nazi Germany to fame in the United States, and . . . a study of the influences that shaped a sharp political awareness.”—Richmond (Va.) Times-DispatchCover drawing by David Schorr

From Arendt’s preeminent biographer, an exploration of the particular relevance of the great philosopher’s thought to the world of todayUpon publication of her “field manual,” The Origins of Totalitarianism,in 1951, Hannah Arendt immediately gained recognition as a major political analyst. Over the next twenty-five years, she wrote ten more books and developed a set of ideas that profoundly influenced the way America and Europe addressed the central questions and dilemmas of World War II. In this concise book, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl introduces her mentor’s work to twenty-first-century readers. Arendt’s ideas, as much today as in her own lifetime, illuminate those issues that perplex us, such as totalitarianism, terrorism, globalization, war, and “radical evil.”Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, who was Arendt’s doctoral student in the early 1970s and who wrote the definitive biography of her mentor in 1982, now revisits Arendt’s major works and seminal ideas. Young-Bruehl considers what Arendt’s analysis of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union can teach us about our own times, and how her revolutionary understanding of political action is connected to forgiveness and making promises for the future. The author also discusses The Life of the Mind, Arendt’s unfinished meditation on how to think about thinking. Placed in the context of today’s political landscape, Arendt’s ideas take on a new immediacy and importance. They require our attention, Young-Bruehl shows, and continue to bring fresh truths to light.

This edition of Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's definitive biography of pioneering child analyst Anna Freud includes—among other new features—a major retrospective introduction by the author. Praise for the Second Edition: “Young-Bruehl’s description of one of the most complex but brilliant lights in psychoanalytic history has stood as a beacon to students of psychoanalytic history.  It is the best most carefully crafted biography of any psychoanalyst and it illuminates the entire tradition with a clarity that only the exploration of the life of the daughter of the founder of the movement could possibly provide.  It is a beautifully written insightful and remarkably edifying piece of work.  The best has just got better.”-- Peter Fonagy, Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis, University College London Praise for the First Edition:“A gem of biographical writing. . . .”—Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune “Lucid, erudite, briskly authoritative, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl . . . has given us the insight into character that makes biography an art.”—James Atlas Elisabeth Young-Bruehl is a faculty member at the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and a practicing psychoanalyst in Manhattan.  She lives in New York and Toronto.

A seminal volume on prejudice against children for parents, teachers, psychologists, social workers, policy-makers—anyone concerned with the crucial subject of child welfare.In this groundbreaking volume on the human rights of children, acclaimed analyst, political theorist, and biographer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl argues that prejudice exists against children as a group and that it is comparable to racism, sexism, and homophobia. This prejudice—“childism”—legitimates and rationalizes a broad continuum of acts that are not “in the best interests of children,” including the often violent extreme of child abuse and neglect. According to Young-Bruehl, reform is possible only if we acknowledge this prejudice in its basic forms and address the motives and cultural forces that drive it, rather than dwell on the various categories of abuse and punishment.“There will always be individuals and societies that turn on their children," writes Young-Bruehl, “breaking the natural order Aristotle described two and a half millennia ago in his Nichomachean Ethics." In Childism, Young-Bruehl focuses especially on the ways in which Americans have departed from the child-supportive trends of the Great Society and of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.Many years in the making, Childism draws upon a wide range of sources, from the literary and philosophical to the legal and psychoanalytic. Woven into this extraordinary volume are case studies that illuminate the profound importance of listening to the victims who have so much to tell us about the visible and invisible ways in which childism is expressed.

This book comprises a collection of the distinguished psychoanalyst Elisabeth Young-Bruehl 's papers ranging from 'Psychoanalysis and Social Democracy', 'Civilization and its Dream of Contentment', 'Reflections on Women and Psychoanalysis' and 'Psychobiography and Character Study'.

By now, the lines of battle have become so many and so criss-crossed that it is not easy to see the original causus belli clearly. This anthology will encourage current and new generations of debaters, and discourage the circulation of simplistic versions of what Freud supposedly said about women.Chronologically arranged, this first volume to collect Freud's writing about women shows clearly how his views arose, then were refined, systematized, and revised. Certain theories stayed constant—such as the notion of universal bisexuality—while others changed. Elisabeth Young-Breuhl, in her comprehensive introduction, illuminates the theory and tracks the core elements. Each selection, based on the James Strachey translation, carries a brief commentary; and an annotated bibliography covers field developments since Freud's death. While appreciating the genius of Freud, this anthology aims not to present a point of view but to allow readers to discern for themselves the evolution of Freud's thinking.

In this provocative new book, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl illuminates the psychological and intellectual demands writing biography makes on the biographer and explores the complex and frequently conflicted relationship between feminism and psychoanalysis.A practicing psychoanalyst, a distinguished scholar, and the widely praised biographer of Anna Freud and Hannah Arendt, Young-Bruehl here reflects on the relations between self-knowledge, autobiography, biography, and cultural history. She considers what remains valuable in Sigmund Freud's work, and what areas--theory of character, for instance--must be rethought to be useful for current psychoanalytic work, for feminist studies, and for social theory.Psychoanalytic theory used for biography, she argues, can yield insights for psychoanalysis itself, particularly in the understanding of creativity. Subject to Biography offers not simply the products of an astute mind, but an entrée into the thinking process; it welcomes the reader into the writer's workshop.

In this deeply thoughtful book, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl turns a critical lens on prejudice. Surveying the study of prejudice since World War II, Young-Bruehl suggests an approach that distinguishes between different types of prejudices, the people who hold them, the social and political settings that promote them, and the human needs they fulfill. Startling, challenging, and courageous, this work offers an unprecedented analysis of prejudice.

First published in 1989, Mind and the Body Politic is a collection of Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s twelve essays and lectures on political theory, psychoanalysis, feminism, and the theory of biography. It is a must read for students and researchers of political philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

The study of creativity is as old as western thought. In recent times any crisis of confidence is likely to involve anxiety about the loss of creativity – scientific, artistic, technological – and to set off a new search for creativity’s definition.In Creative Characters, originally published in 1991, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl reflects on the long search for an understanding of creativity and offers a novel approach. She notes that studies of creativity fall into types. Some look at the act of creation, others focus on the creators, while others stress the conscious or unconscious motivations of creative people. All these approaches share certain limitations. They lack an integrative perspective and they search for a common denominator – one definition of the creative process, a single creative type – which obscures the diversity of creative people and their work.Young-Bruehl here offers an original analysis of creativity based on a theory of character. Creative people, she argues, create in the medium of their characters. They develop (usually unconsciously) an image of their characters or, in other terms, an ideal for the organization of their minds and lives, which they both aspire to and project into whatever they create. This character-ideal appears in their works, their social visions, their philosophies of nature, and also their understandings of creative processes, their own and others’. What creative people wish for themselves, is what they wish for in their lives and works.Young-Bruehl suggests that there are three broad character and creative types, each comprised of many variations. She displays these ways of getting one’s psychic act together or getting a product together by turning to three ancient Greek theorists of creativity – Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno – and three modern theorists – Nietzsche, Freud, and Proust. She then proceeds by clustering biographical vignettes and portraits of ideas in which she can show – rather than try to define – the creativity as well as the character ideal she has in mind.Of special interest to Young-Bruehl is what individuals say about their own creativity, especially when creativity is not explicitly their topic. Her approach is primarily psychoanalytic, but she also uses philosophical analysis, literary criticism, history of science, and biography.Psychoanalysts and psychologists will find the book not only a new approach to creativity, but a new way of doing applied psychoanalysis: there have been many psychobiographies but no effort has been made to survey them and draw conclusions. Philosophers will discover a major contribution to the theory of character, one of the most neglected subfields of philosophy. Finally in Creative Characters biography readers will see how the study of individual lives can lead to reflection on larger questions.

This book comprises a collection of the distinguished psychoanalyst Elisabeth Young-Bruehl 's papers ranging from 'Psychoanalysis and Social Democracy', 'Civilization and its Dream of Contentment', 'Reflections on Women and Psychoanalysis' and 'Psychobiography and Character Study'. Each essay is of value in its own right, and the collection together will be found to make an important contribution to our understanding of the history of psychoanalysis.