Posttraumatic Joy

A Seminar on Nietzsche’s Tragicomic Philosophy of Life

Matthew Clemente, Andrew J. Zeppa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032391960
• eBook ISBN: 9781000899931
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mind & Body in Philosophy
• Index: Psychology

Posttraumatic Joy presents the major themes and ideas of Nietzsche's corpus from a continental and psychoanalytic perspective with a particular bent toward how they might illuminate ways of coping with and living beyond trauma and suffering. Through a series of transcribed and edited lectures—originally delivered as a part of the "Nietzsche for Clinicians" workshop run through the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College—this work traces the genesis of such fundamental psychoanalytic concepts as repression, the death drive, and the Oedipus complex to the works of one of philosophy's most audacious and original thinkers. Reading Nietzsche not as a philosopher in the traditional sense, but as a proto-psychoanalyst, a precursor to Freud and Lacan, this work explores his understanding of the origins of morality, the value of sublimation, the movement from mourning to melancholia—or, in Nietzsche's terms, from trauma to tragedy—and the possibility of a life lived in affirmation and self-overcoming.

This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners whose work intersects with continental philosophy and theoretical and philosophical psychology. This includes any psychotherapist, social worker, psychoanalyst, or pastoral counselor with an interest in understanding the deeply psychological philosophy of one of history's greatest thinkers.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword—Who Is the Fool? by Richmond Rugg
• Editor’s Introduction—by Andrew J. Zeppa
• Author’s Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 First Meeting, 01/27/2022—Mourning and Melancholia: From Trauma to The Birth of Tragedy
• 2 Second Meeting, 02/24/2022—The Value of Values: The Psychology of Morals
• 3 Third Meeting, 03/31/2022—Bad Conscience: Whence the Super-Ego?
• 4 Fourth Meeting, 04/28/2022—God Is Dead: Living in the Absence of the Father
• 5 Fifth Meeting, 05/26/2022—Our Virtue: An Honest Look at Suffering and Joy
• Appendix—Two Eulogies
• Index