SUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture – serie

This book provides the first truly sustained commentary to appear in either French or English on Lacan's most important seminar, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. The 16 contributors unpack Lacan's notoriously difficult work in simple terms, and supply elegant illustrations from a variety of fields: psychoanalytic treatment, film, literature, art, and so on. Each of Lacan's fundamental concepts—the unconscious, transference, drive, and repetition—is discussed in detail, and related to other important notions such as object a cause of desire, the gaze, the Name-of-the-Father, the subject, and the Other. This volume also includes a translation of Lacan's companion piece to Seminar XI, "Position of the Unconscious" (an article from the French edition of the Ecrits that has never before appeared in English), by one of the foremost translators of Lacan's work, Bruce Fink. As an indication of the important of this article, Lacan considered it to be the sequel to his "Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," arguably his most important paper in the 1950s.The contributors include many of the best minds in the Lacanian psychoanalytic world in Paris today. Chapters include "Excommunication: Context and Concepts" by Jacques-Alain Miller, "The Subject and the Other I and II" by Colette Soler, "Alienation and Separation I and II" by Eric Laurent, "Science and Psychoanalysis" by Bruce Fink, "The Name-of-the-Father" by Francois Regnault, "Transference as Deception" by Pierre-Gilles Gueguen, "The Drive I and II" by Marie-Helène Brousse, "The Demontage of the Drive" by Maire Jaanus, "The Gaze as an Object" by Antonio Quinet, "The Phallic Gaze of Wonderland" by Richard Feldstein, "The 'Evil Eye' of Painting: Jacques Lacan and Witold Gombrowicz on the Gaze" by Hanjo Berressem, "Art and the Position of the Analyst" by Robert Samuels, "The Relation between Voice and the Gaze" by Ellie Ragland, "The Lamella of David Lynch" by Slavoj Zizek, "The Real Cause of Repetition" by Bruce Fink, "Introductory Talk at Sainte-Anne Hospital" by Jacques-Alain Miller, and "The End of Analysis I and II" by Anne Dunand.

Uses recent psychoanalytic theory to analyze the work of three contemporary scholars—Harold Bloom, Stanley Cavell, and Sacvan Bercovitch—while viewing their work as expressing Jewish immigrant desires for integration into American culture.This book primarily concerns the work of three prominent literary scholars, Harold Bloom, Stanley Cavell, and Sacvan Bercovitch, treating them as second-generation immigrant Jewish Americans. With at least two meanings of "transferring" in mind, the title alludes both to the historical, socio-cultural actualities of immigrancy, and to the psychoanalytic model used to describe the relations between these readers and the American texts they interpret. The central claim is that the theories and critical practices of Bercovitch, Bloom, and Cavell can be considered as the tools and tactics of an ambivalent, not yet fully realized desire for integration into America. Their cultural identity as members of the Jewish minority in America can thus still be seen to operate as a compelling source of anxiety and motivation.

In this collection of essays, Lacan's early work is first discussed systematically by focusing on his two earliest seminars: Freud's Papers on Technique and The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis. These essays, by some of the finest analysts and writers in the Lacanian psychoanalytic world in Paris today, carefully lay out the background and development of Lacan's thought. In Part I, Jacques-Alain Miller spells out the philosophical and psychiatric origins of Lacan's work in great detail. In Parts II, III, and IV, Colette Soler, Eric Laurent, and others explain in the clearest of fashions the highly influential conceptualization Lacan introduces with the terms "symbolic," "imaginary," and "real." Part V provides the first sustained account in English to date of Lacan's reformulation of psychoanalytic diagnostic categories—neurosis, perversion, psychosis, and their subcategories—their theoretical foundations, and clinical applications (ample case material is provided here.)Parts VI and VII of this collection take us well beyond Seminars I and II, relating Lacan's early work to his later views of the 1960s and 1970s. Slavoj Zizek explores the complex philosophical relations between Hegel and Lacan regarding the subject and the cause. And Lacan's article, "On Freud's 'Trieb' and the Psychoanalyst's Desire"—that appears here for the first time in English and is brilliantly unpacked by Jacques-Alain Miller in his "Commentary on Lacan's Text"—takes a giant step forward to 1965 where we see a crucial reversal in Lacan's perspective: desire is suddenly devalued, the defensive, inhibiting nature of desire coming to the fore. "What then becomes essential is the drive as an activity related to the lost object that produces jouissance."

In this first English translation of a classic text by one of the foremost commentators on Lacan's work, Nasio eloquently demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory, even in its most difficult or obscure moments.Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan is the first English translation of a classic text by one of the foremost commentators on Lacan's work. Juan-David Nasio makes numerous theoretical advances and eloquently demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory, even in its most difficult or obscure moments. What is distinctive, in the end, about Nasio's treatment of Lacan's theory is the extent to which Lacan's fundamental concepts-the unconscious, jouissance, and the body-become the locus of the overturning or exceeding of the discrete boundaries of the individual. The recognition of the implications of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, then, brings the analyst to adopt what Nasio calls a "special listening."

Draws attention to the enigmatic missed encounter between Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Lacan, and articulates the theoretical stakes and practical consequences of such a disjunctive encounter for ethics.Levinas and Lacan traces the similar concepts and logics of Jacques Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas, to explicitly render the rigorous questioning of the philosophic tradition undertaken by these thinkers, and to articulate the theoretical stakes and practical consequences of such a conjunction for ethics. In this book, contemporary philosophers examine this missed encounter between Levinas and Lacan by tracing their preoccupation with issues that emerge in late modernity: language, subjectivity, alterity, and ethics.

Examines the psychological, cultural, and political implications of Gothic fiction, and helps to explain why horror writers and filmmakers have found such large and receptive audiences eager for the experience of being scared out of their wits.Exploring the psychological and political implications of Gothic fiction, Valdine Clemens focuses on some major works in the tradition: The Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The Shining, and Alien. She applies both psychoanalytic theory and sociohistorical contexts to offer a fresh approach to Gothic fiction, presenting new insights both about how such novels "work" and about their cultural concerns.Clemens argues that by stimulating a sense of primordial fear in readers, Gothic horror dramatically calls attention to collective and attitudinal problems that have been unrecognized or repressed in the society at large. Gothic fiction does more, however, than simply reflect social anxieties; it actually facilitates social change. That is, in frightening us out of our collective "wits," Gothic fiction actually shocks us into using them in more viable ways.

Explores the wounded body in literature from Homer to Toni Morrison, examining how it functions archetypally as both a cultural metaphor and a poetic image.An almost obsessive interest in the human body in literary and psychological theory over the past ten years has uncovered not just the physical body but the body as metaphor, political emblem, social construction, and symptom. The Wounded Body builds on this recent interest in the body by providing an ambitious interdisciplinary exploration of the wounded body in literature from Homer to Toni Morrison. Guided by insights from phenomenology to Jungian archetypal psychology, Dennis Slattery argues that the body in its scarred, marked, diseased, tattooed, or otherwise afflicted state is not only an individual phenomenon but, in the hands of the poet, a cultural symptom, a place of suffering, as well as a way of seeing and ordering the experience of the one who is wounded.

Focuses on the role of shame and trauma as it looks at issues of race, class, color, and caste in the novels of Toni Morrison.Quiet As It's Kept draws on and extends recent psychoanalytic and psychiatric work of shame and trauma theorists to offer an in-depth analysis of Toni Morrison's representation of painful and shameful race matters in her fiction. Providing a frank and sustained look at the troubling, if not distressing, aspects of Morrison's fiction that other critics have studiously avoided or minimized in their commentaries, this book challenges established views of Morrison, showing her to be an author who forces readers into uncomfortable confrontations with matters of race. In Quiet As It's Kept, J. Brooks Bouson explores these issues in Morrison's works The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise.Morrison, Nobel prize-winning author, has viewed part of her cultural and literary task as a writer to bear witness to the plight of black Americans. "Quiet as it's kept, much of our business, our existence here, has been grotesque. It really has," she has commented. As she exposes to public view sensitive race matters in her fiction, Morrison presents jarring depictions of the trauma of slavery and the horrors of racist oppression and black-on-black violence.

Explores Lacan's theory of the registers through readings of a wide variety of texts.The other Side of Desire puts Jacques Lacan's theoretical constructs to work on texts as varied as Plato's Symposium, Hamlet, Tootsie, and the journals of Sylvia Plath, making the techniques of Lacanian analysis accessible to a wide variety of readers. Moving from oppositional readings of Lacan himself, through Lacan's search for an alternative to oppositionality, to his solution in the theory of the registers, Van Pelt rereads Lacan's most significant essays on aggressivity, the mirror stage, the subversion of the subject, and the signification of the phallus, making explicit the reading practices implicit in Lacan's first seven Seminars and his Écrits. Throughout, Van Pelt demonstrates Lacanian theory's pivotal role in the intellectual transition from the poststructuralism of the mid–twentieth century to the post-humanism of the twenty-first.

Offers a psychoanalytically enhanced theory of poetics through close readings of Dylan Thomas and Julia Kristeva.Highly original and theoretically wide-ranging, this book offers new insights into the origins of poetry. Working with much of the significant primary and secondary literature in psychoanalysis, particularly the theories of Julia Kristeva, the book skillfully sketches out a psychoanalytically enhanced theory of poetics through close readings of the works of Dylan Thomas. Through an intense dialogue with pivotal poems, it offers a "subjectivist" theory of poetic language, one that focuses on the interrelation between meaning and subjectivity in the dynamics of the poetic text. In this scheme, the "genesis of the speaking subject" is held to be a reenactment of old and new fantasies of origins, the reality of which is inaccessible to us-buried, as it were, "below time." Among these fantasies, the author also recognizes the psychoanalytic fantasy of origins that guides her own project.

Examines the manifestations of racism, sexism, and homophobia in the literary works of Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, and Toni Morrison.Writing Prejudices addresses critical attempts to undermine prejudice through education in general, and literary studies in particular. Robert Samuels argues that these attempts often fail because they do not take into account the different forms of prejudice, the role played by homophobia in racism and sexism, the structure of what Lacan calls symbolic castration, and the unconscious foundations of cultural formations. Addressing these deficiencies, Samuels uses psychoanalytic theory to examine the manifestations of racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and homophobia in the works of Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, and Toni Morrison, showing how these distinct modes of oppression feed off of each other and the diverse ways that cultural critics can work to undermine them.

Shows how literature can aid psychoanalysts in the understanding of psychological conflicts.For more than a hundred years, psychoanalysts have applied their theories of neurosis to objects of culture, including literature. In this book, psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and scholar of religion Volney P. Gay reverses field and uses literature to reevaluate psychoanalysis. Arguing that neurosis occurs when we cannot recollect joy, Gay focuses upon the nature of joy as articulated in drama and literature. It is the absence of joy, he suggests, that evokes in children a lifelong quest for repair and restitution, usually through the stories they tell themselves. Therefore, Gay argues, literary accounts of joy are essential to contemporary psychoanalysts because they illuminate the nature of an "object" that, when absent, produces the form of human suffering that Freud named "neurosis." Throughout the book, case studies are juxtaposed with analyses of works by Plato, Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Hawthorne, Wharton, and others in order to explore the notion that the objects of psychoanalysis (and similar psychotherapies) are structured like narratives rather than organisms or other natural objects.

Investigates the psychocultural crisis confronting our increasingly appearance-oriented, shame-driven society.In Disappearing Persons, psychoanalyst Benjamin Kilborne looks at how we control appearance as an attempt to manage or take charge of our feelings. Arguing that the psychology of appearance has not been adequately explored, Kilborne deftly weaves together examples from literature and his own clinical practice to establish shame and appearance as central fears in both literature and life, and describes how shame about appearance can generate not only the wish to disappear but also the fear of disappearing. A hybrid of applied literature and psychoanalysis, Disappearing Persons helps us to understand the roots of the psychocultural crisis confronting our increasingly appearance-oriented, shame-driven society.

Uses psychoanalysis to reconsider cultural studies with a focus on wholeness and integration.Incorporating Cultural Theory addresses the status of the body and sexuality in cultural criticism by focusing on issues of sexuality, intimacy, and identity. With a perspective grounded in body politics, O'Neill offers careful but contesting studies of theorists including Barthes, Derrida, Lyotard, Freud, Lacan, Hegel, Parsons, and Merleau-Ponty, that amplify his own overarching theoretical framework. Concluding chapters demonstrate the practicality of the author's body-political critical theory, offering analyses of Jurassic Park and the London Millennium Dome as cyborg practices designed to bypass the reproductive anxieties of bodies, families, and communities by shape-shifting the loss of a civic boundary. The overarching frame of the book-maternity at the millennium-provides a unique topic for using psychoanalysis to reconsider cultural studies, and O'Neill argues throughout for keeping cultural studies focused on wholeness and integration, instead of the fragmentation and alienation embraced by postmodern theoretical excesses.

Examines Lacan's key seminar on sexual difference, knowledge, desire, and love.This collection offers the first sustained, in-depth commentary on Seminar XX, Encore, considered the cornerstone of Lacan's work on the themes of sexual difference, knowledge, jouissance, and love. Although Seminar XX was originally popularized as Lacan's treatise on feminine sexuality, these essays, by some of today's foremost Lacanian scholars, go beyond feminine sexuality to address Lacan's significant intertwining concern with the rupture between reality and the real produced by modern science, and the implications of this rupture for subjectivity, knowledge, jouissance, and the body.The essays clarify basic concepts, but for readers already familiar with Lacan they also offer sophisticated workings-through of the more challenging and obscure arguments in Encore-both by tracing their historical development across Lacan's œuvre and by demonstrating their relation to particular philosophical, theological, mathematical, and scientific concepts. They cover much of the terrain necessary for understanding sexual difference-not in terms of chromosomes, body parts, choice of sexual partner, or varieties of sexual practice-but in terms of one's position vis-à-vis the Other and the kind of jouissance one is able to obtain. In so doing, they make significant interventions in the debates regarding sex, gender, and sexuality in feminist theory, philosophy, queer theory, and cultural studies.

The authors use examples from their own clinical practice to explain the development of Lacanian theory.After Lacan combines abundant case material with graceful yet sophisticated theoretical exposition in order to explore the clinical practice of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Focusing on the groundbreaking clinical treatment of psychosis that Gifric (Groupe Interdisciplinaire Freudien de Recherches et d'Interventions Cliniques et Culturelles) has pioneered in Quebec, the authors discuss how Lacanians theorize psychosis and how Gifric has come to treat it analytically. Chapters are devoted to the general concepts and key terms that constitute the touchstones of the early phase of analytic treatment, elaborating their interrelations and their clinical relevance. The second phase of analytic treatment is also discussed, introducing a new set of terms to understand transference and the ethical act of analysis in the subject's assumption of the Other's lack. The concluding chapters broaden discussion to include the key psychic structures that describe the organization of subjectivity and thereby dictate the terms of analysis: not just psychosis, but also perversion and obsessional and hysterical neurosis.

Explores how filmmakers and screenwriters have used comedy and science fiction to extend the boundaries of the Frankenstein narrative.Focusing on films outside the horror genre, this book offers a unique account of the Frankenstein myth's popularity and endurance. Although the Frankenstein narrative has been a staple in horror films, it has also crossed over into other genres, particularly comedy and science fiction, resulting in such films as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Bladerunner, and the Alien and Terminator film series. In addition to addressing horror's relationship to comedy and science fiction, the book also explores the versatility and power of the Frankenstein narrative as a contemporary myth through which our deepest attitudes concerning gender (masculine versus feminine), race (Same versus Other), and technology (natural versus artificial) are both revealed and concealed. The book not only examines the films themselves, but also explores early drafts of film scripts, scenes that were cut from the final releases, publicity materials, and reviews, in order to consider more fully how and why the Frankenstein myth continues to resonate in the popular imagination.

Explains why the American cultural obsession with enjoying ourselves actually makes it more difficult to do so.Winner of the 2004 Gary Olson Award for best book in cultural theory presented by JAC Exploring the emergence of a societal imperative to enjoy ourselves, Todd McGowan builds on the work of such theorists as Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zðizûek, Joan Copjec, and Theresa Brennan to argue that we are in the midst of a large-scale transformation-a shift from a society oriented around prohibition (i.e., the notion that one cannot just do as one pleases) to one oriented around enjoyment. McGowan identifies many of the social ills of American culture today as symptoms of this transformation: the sense of disconnection, the increase in aggression and violence, widespread cynicism, political apathy, incivility, and loss of meaning. Discussing these various symptoms, he examines various texts from film, literature, popular culture, and everyday life, including Toni Morrison's Paradise, Tony Kushner's Angels in America, and such films as Dead Poets Society and Trigger Effect. Paradoxically, The End of Dissatisfaction? shows how the American cultural obsession with enjoying ourselves actually makes it more difficult to do so.

Looks at how therapy and the "talking cure" have been portrayed in the movies.Consisting of contributions from psychoanalysts and therapists, as well as authors in such fields as literature and cinema studies, Celluloid Couches, Cinematic Clients explores how therapy and therapists have been portrayed in the movies over the last seventy-five years. From the 1926 silent film Secrets of a Soul, to Hitchcock's 1946 classic Spellbound, to the recent Girl, Interrupted, the contributors look at how moviemakers view therapy and the "talking cure" and examine important themes and controversies in the process.Very often, cinematic efforts to portray the treatment process in psychoanalysis or psychotherapy are idiosyncratic, misleading, distorted, or even pathological. Yet this collection is not nearly as interested in denouncing such portrayals as in examining those films that offer us the opportunity to explore themes and issues from a vantage point outside our usual reference frame. Rather than focusing on what screenwriters and directors got wrong, each contributor asks instead what might be learned from the movies about professional selves and the nature of the therapeutic endeavor.

Looks at the dynamics of identification, envy, and idealization in fictional narratives by Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, and others, as well as in nonfictional accounts of cross-race relations by white feminists and feminists of color.Risking Difference revisions the dynamics of multicultural feminist community by exploring the ways that identification creates misrecognitions and misunderstandings between individuals and within communities. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Jean Wyatt argues not only that individual psychic processes of identification influence social dynamics, but also that social discourses of race, class, and culture shape individual identifications. In addition to examining fictional narratives by Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, and others, Wyatt also looks at nonfictional accounts of cross-race relations by white feminists and feminists of color.

Provides insight into the ritual lures and effects of mass media spectatorship, especially regarding the pleasures, risks, and purposes of violent display.Contemporary debates about mass media violence tend to ignore the long history of staged violence in the theatres and rituals of many cultures. In Theatres of Human Sacrifice, Mark Pizzato relates the appeal and possible effects of screen violence todayin sports, movies, and television newsto specific sacrificial rites and performance conventions in ancient Greek, Aztec, and Roman culture. Using the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan, Kristeva, and Zðizûek, as well as the theatrical theories of Artaud and Brecht, the book offers insights into the ritual lures and effects of current mass media spectatorship, especially regarding the pleasures, purposes, and risks of violent display. Updating Aristotle's notion of catharsis, Pizzato identifies a sacrificial imperative within the human mind, structured by various patriarchal cultures and manifested in distinctive rites and dramas, with both positive and negative potential effects on their audiences.

Traces the development of Lacanian theory, and its possible future.In Beyond Lacan, James M. Mellard traces psychoanalytic literary theory and practice from Freud to Lacan to Zðizûek. While Freud effectively presupposes an unconscious that is textual, it is Lacan whose theory all but articulates a textual unconscious as he offers the epoch a cutting-edge psychoanalytic ideology. Mellard considers this and then asks, "Which Lacan? Is there one or many? Early or late?" As Zðizûek counters the notion of a single, unitary Lacan, Lacanians are asked to choose. Through Lacanian readings of various texts, from novels like Ellison's Invisible Man and O'Connor's Wise Blood to short stories by Glaspell and Fitzgerald, Mellard shows that in critical practice Lacanians produce a middle Lacan, between early and late.Mellard concludes by examining why Zðizûek has perhaps transcended Lacan. More than any other, it is Zðizûek who has constructed early and late Lacan, making possible that middle Lacan of praxis, but in the process he has also claimed an independent authority. Ultimately, Mellard explains how Zðizûek offers a post-Lacanian critique-one built on a pervasive philosophy of paradox-that opens new avenues of analysis of contested cultural and literary issues such as subjectivity, political economy, multiculturalism, and religious belief.

How modern conceptions of paranoia became associated with excessive or unregulated masculinity.Sex, Paranoia, and Modern Masculinity explores how twentieth-century conceptions of paranoia became associated with the excessive or unregulated exercise of masculine intellectual tendencies. Through an extended analysis of Freudian metapsychology, Kenneth Paradis illustrates how paranoid ideation has been especially connected to the figure of the male body under threat of genital mutilation or emasculation. In this context, he also considers how both midcentury detective fiction (especially the work of Raymond Chandler) and contemporaneous autobiographies of male-to-female transsexuals negotiate the terms of this gendered understanding of psychopathology, thus articulating their own notions of moral value, individual autonomy, and effective agency.

Examines fundamental concepts of the later Lacan.This book includes essays by some of the finest practicing analysts and teachers of psychoanalysis in the Lacanian community today. The writings offer an essential introduction to the later teachings of Jacques Lacan, illuminate the theoretical developments introduced by the later Lacan, and explore their clinical implications with remarkable acumen.

Examines the gaze in Lacanian film theory.Winner of the 2008 Gradiva Award, Theoretical Category, presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis The Real Gaze develops a new theory of the cinema by rethinking the concept of the gaze, which has long been central in film theory. Historically film scholars have located the gaze on the side of the spectator; however, Todd McGowan positions it within the filmic image, where it has the radical potential to disrupt the spectator's sense of identity and challenge the foundations of ideology. This book demonstrates several distinct cinematic forms that vary in terms of how the gaze functions within the films. Through a detailed investigation of directors such as Orson Welles, Claire Denis, Stanley Kubrick, Spike Lee, Federico Fellini, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, Andrei Tarkovsky, Wim Wenders, and David Lynch, McGowan explores the political, cultural, and existential ramifications of these differing roles of the gaze.

Explores psychoanalytic approaches to cultural studies.Why do we continue to desire psychoanalysis? What can this desire contribute to a vital cultural criticism? In Desire of the Analysts, these and other questions are addressed by leading contributors from a variety of fields, including Sharon Nell, Deneen Senasi, Kaja Silverman, Henry Sussman, Domietta Torlasco, Pierre Zoberman, and Slavoj Zðizûek. They argue for the urgency of a psychoanalytic criticism that is at once intellectually vibrant, politically engaged, and uniquely able to illuminate the psychic motivations and gratifications underlying a range of contemporary cultural phenomena. These phenomena include nationalistic violence, the formation of normative masculinity, the psychic appeal of domination and submission, and the place of the "queer" desire in counterhegemonic practices. The contributors explore the role of psychoanalysis in shaping the future of cultural criticism; elaborate on innovative ways to approach group dynamics from a psychoanalytic perspective; rethink psychoanalytic understandings of authorship; and offer original interpretations of the intersections between gender, sexuality, and domination. Desire of the Analysts demonstrates that psychoanalysis remains an indispensable resource for critiquing our contemporary condition.

Psychoanalytic perspective on what Western philosophers from Socrates to Foucault have called "the art of living."How are our lives meaningful? What is the relationship of loss to creativity? How can we best engage and overcome our suffering? From Socrates to Foucault, Western philosophers have sought to define "the art of living"-the complex craft of human existence that elicits our thoughtful participation, and the idea that even though death escapes our control, life is not something that simply happens to us in a passive manner but is instead a process that invites our active and lively engagement. A World of Fragile Things offers a distinctly psychoanalytic perspective on "the art of living," one that focuses on ongoing and ever-evolving processes of self-fashioning rather than defining a fixed and unitary sense of self. With a compelling blend of philosophical insight and psychoanalytic acumen, Mari Ruti asks experts and readers alike to probe the complexities of human existence, offering a contemporary outlook on some of the most enduring questions of Western thought.

Sussman here explores the relevance and value of object-relations theory to literature and literary studies. His study of character treats literature as a medium in which important relationships to conceptualized others-artifacts, mentors, activities, and schools of thought-are being worked through. Although rooted in the psychoanalytical model, this book is ultimately a study of character and of the conditions of subjectivity and intellectual work in the contemporary world. No background in literature or psychoanalysis is necessary for its understanding and productive use.Beginning his study of character with Sophocles' The Antigone and Shakespeare's Othello, Sussman then goes on to locate the underpinnings of twentieth-century notions of the grandiose and of subjective emptiness in the Romantic exploration of the sublime. Discussions of characterization in Kafka, Joyce, and Beckett lead to an extended reading of Musil's A Man Without Qualities. To show the increasing awareness of narcissistic psychopathology in contemporary popular culture, Sussman also includes readings of "Citizen Kane" and "The Silence of the Lambs."

An anthology of psychoanalytic criticism applied to the wider field of cultural studies including class, gender, representation, ideology, and lawIn this volume, psychoanalysts, cultural theorists, and literary critics demonstrate the relevance of the unconscious economy to the field of cultural studies, applying psychoanalytic criticism to political and aesthetic issues related to the legal and ideological superstructure of contemporary society.These writers have adopted a variety of rhetorical positions when engaging cultural issues that deal with representation, ideology, class, and gender. Contributors include Willy Apollon, Richard Feldstein, Slavoj Zizek, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Judith Roof, Ellie Ragland, Elizabeth J. Bellamy, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus, Elizabeth Bronfen, Hanjo Berressem, Peter Widmer, Danielle Bergeron, Lucie Cantin, and Catherine Portuges.