Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse

Knowing and Being since Freud's Psychology

Barnaby B. Barratt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138951525
• eBook ISBN: 9781317360346
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

According to the author, psychoanalytic theory and practice – which discloses 'the interminable falsity of the human subject's belief in the mastery of its own mental life' – is in part responsible for the coming of the postmodern era. In this title, originally published in 1993, Barratt examines the role of psychoanalysis in what he sees as the crisis of modernism, shows why the modernist position – what he calls the 'modern episteme' – is failing, and proposes that psychoanalysis should redefine itself as a postmodern method.

In Barratt's innovative account of psychoanalysis, which focuses on the significance of the free-associative process, Freud's discovery of the repressed unconscious leads to a claim that is basic to postmodern ideas: 'that all thinking and speaking, the production and reproduction of psychic reality, is inherently dynamic, polysemous, and contradictorious.' He argues that subsequent attempts to 'normalize and systematize' psychoanalysis are reactionary and antipsychoanalytic efforts to salvage the modern episteme that psychoanalysis itself calls into question.

Subject Index

Absence(s), 66, 67, 68, 84, 85–86, 87, 100, 103, 104, 106, 119, 122–23

Act of establishment, 12, 50–51, 65–66, 69, 71, 86, 87, 101, 174, 220–21; and historicity, 96, 97; and identitarian semiosis, 88, 100; “I-now-is” in, 100–101; and instantiation of present, 99; and libidinality, 141; phallic principle in, 108, 109–10; and psychoanalysis, 13–14, 15; and “psychoanalysis,” 167–68; and psychotherapy, 174; and suppressed, 177; and system, 77, 84; and temporality, 93–94, 100, 129. See also Interpretation(s)

Adaptation, 6, 41–42, 60–64, 105, 107, 173, 174, 194, 199, 221

Aggressivity or aggression, 30–32, 63–64, 109, 139, 143, 150–51, 151

Alienation and estrangement, 15–16, 88, 107, 120, 130, 155, 199, 201, 203, 205, 206, 222

Alternativism, 55, 59–60, 133, 165–66, 175–79

Analytico-referential discourse, 3, 5, 60, 69, 70–71, 83, 88, 161–62, 208–9, 214; and computer talk, 192; and dichotomous organization, 102; “humanism” of, 111; and identitarianism, 84 (see also Identitarianism); imperialism of, 114; law and order of, 96–97; patriarchy in, 109; and Peirce, 216; and postmodern thinking, 222; questioning of, 214–16; time in, 100

Aristotelian philosophy, 67, 83, 89, 90, 91, 92, 100, 103, 124, 133, 135, 142

Authority. See Law and order

Being/being-in-the-world, 23–24, 37, 168; and desire, 107, 162; and free-associative method, 5; and Heidegger, 179–80, 212, 213; and identitarianism, 66; and knowing, 5, 44, 46, 98, 161; and modern masterdiscourse, 4; and presence, 4, 84, 99, 212, 213; and psychoanalytic method, 168–69; and representational temporality, 92; as subjectivity or objectivity...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• One The Psychoanalytic Revolution
• Two Free-Associative Method and the Dimensions of Meaningfulness
• Three Semiosis I: Signification, Subject, and Totality
• Four Semiosis II: Representational Time, Law and Order
• Five Desire I: Temporality and the Undiscussable Otherwise
• Six Desire II: Libidinality and the Contradictorious “Unconscious”
• Seven Working-through I: Ethicality, Critique and Method
• Eight Working-through II: Free-Associative Discourse, Mobilization and Cure
• Nine Postmodern Subversions and the Future of Psychoanalysis
• Bibliography
• Index of Authors
• Subject Index