Jeffrey Prager - Böcker

The Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities provides a comprehensive, critical overview of the historical, theoretical and applied forms of psychoanalytical criticism. This path-breaking Handbook offers students new ways of understanding the powers and limits of psychoanalysis, and of the social, cultural and political possibilities of psychoanalytic critique.The book offers students and professionals clear and concise chapters on the development of psychoanalysis, introducing key theories that have influenced debates over the psyche, desire and emotion in the social sciences and humanities. There are substantive chapters on classical Freudian theory, Kleinian and Bionian theory, object-relations psychoanalysis, Lacanian and post-Lacanian approaches, feminist psychoanalysis, as well as postmodern trends in psychoanalysis. There is a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to psychoanalytic critique, with contributions drawing from developments in sociology, politics, history, cultural studies, women’s studies and architecture.

The Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities provides a comprehensive, critical overview of the historical, theoretical and applied forms of psychoanalytical criticism. This path-breaking Handbook offers students new ways of understanding the powers and limits of psychoanalysis, and of the social, cultural and political possibilities of psychoanalytic critique.The book offers students and professionals clear and concise chapters on the development of psychoanalysis, introducing key theories that have influenced debates over the psyche, desire and emotion in the social sciences and humanities. There are substantive chapters on classical Freudian theory, Kleinian and Bionian theory, object-relations psychoanalysis, Lacanian and post-Lacanian approaches, feminist psychoanalysis, as well as postmodern trends in psychoanalysis. There is a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to psychoanalytic critique, with contributions drawing from developments in sociology, politics, history, cultural studies, women’s studies and architecture.

Most of the independent nations of the twentieth century have been racked by political disorder and social instability. Ireland is one of the few to have successfully established a stable democratic order. In this book, Jeffrey Prager examines the first decade of Irish independence in order to explain how the Republic of Ireland achieved democracy. In so doing, he provides a deeper understanding of the Irish case while shedding light on the process of democratic consolidation in modern state-building. His combination of political and cultural approaches also contributes to the development of a political sociology that encompasses the problem of cultural meaning as a crucial domain of analysis. By exploring the interconnections between political structures, social activities, and cultural legacies, he promotes an awareness of the vital dimensions of political life and institutions.

Psychology is the dogma of our age; psychotherapy is our means of self-understanding; and "repressed memory" is now a universally familiar form of trauma. Jeffrey Prager, who is both a sociologist and a psychoanalyst, explores the degree to which we manifest the clichés of our culture in our most private recollections. At the core of Presenting the Past is the dramatic and troubling case of a woman who during the course of her analysis began to recall scenes of her own childhood sexual abuse. Later the patient came to believe that the trauma she remembered as a physical violation might have been an emotional violation and that she had composed a memory out of present and past relationships. But what was accurate and true? And what evidence could be persuasive and valuable? Could the analyst trust either her convictions or his own? Using this case and others, Prager explores the nature of memory and its relation to the interpersonal, therapeutic, and cultural worlds in which remembering occurs.Synthesizing research from social science, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, Prager uses clinical examples to argue more generally that our memories are never simple records of events, but constantly evolving constructions, affected by contemporary culture as well as by our own private lives. He demonstrates the need that sociology has for the insights of psychoanalysis, and the need that psychoanalysis has for the insights of sociology.

The desegregation situation is the keynote theme of the following chapters. I Each of them touches on a different dimension of the situation: the historical, the temporal, the spatial. But the reader, perusing the essays with the situation in mind, should remember that the desegregation situation should not be inter­ preted literally. Authorities and adults certainly, school-age children probably, are influenced by their awareness of a sequence of past and future situations. Some may even operate with William James's (1890, p. 608) notion of "the specious present" that "has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming," thus reducing the potency of the present situation. Others may be dancing to a slower tempo of change, thus becoming more responsive to the present situation. Whatever the perceived tempo, many must share the view that the future may reverse the direction of the past. Some may see that new future direction as unswerving, unending, or long-lasting; others may see it as short-lived. And it is through attention to the phenomenological description of desegregation that these issues can be explored; a theme that is considered in several of the following chapters.

Psychoanalytic Sociology presents a careful selection of the most important seminal articles on the inter-relations which have developed between psychoanalysis and sociology.A new introductory chapter, prepared by the editors, reviews the most recent developments clarifying the different influences of psychoanalytical writers such as Freud, Klein and Lacan on sociological thought. A broad definition of 'the sociological' has been adopted, corresponding to the topics and ideas being explored.This comprehensive and authoritative two volume set is an essential reference guide to both the origins and the most recent developments in psychoanalytic sociology.

This book engages the globally pressing question of how to live and work with the haunting power of the past in the aftermath of mass violence.