Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe

Narrative Assemblages of Self-Analysis, Life Writing, and Fiction

Agnieszka Sobolewska

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781000967050
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Literature

Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe explores the close relationship between psychoanalysis, psycho-medical discourses, literature, and the visual arts of the late 1800s and early 1900s in Central Europe.

Agnieszka Sobolewska addresses the issue of theories and practices of psychoanalysis in Central Europe and the need to undertake interdisciplinary reflection on the specificity of psychoanalytic literary genres and fin-de-siècle psycho-medical discourses. With a focus on the circulation of Freudianism in the territories of present-day Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany, the book considers the creative transformations that psychoanalytic thought underwent in these countries and reflects on the specificity of psychoanalytic literary genres and the pivotal role of lifewriting genres in the psychoanalytic movement. Sobolewska's work both fills a visible gap in research on the history of psychoanalysis in Central Europe before the outbreak of World War II and offers the first insightful analysis of the role of life writing in the development of psychoanalytic thought.

Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training as well as scholars of the history of psychoanalysis, the history of psychology, literature, cultural anthropology, and modernism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Reading Sigmund Freud’s correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess: Between a lover’s discourse and self-analysis
• 2. The sexological discourse on non-normative sexuality: Sándor Ferenczi, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and Magnus Hirschfeld
• 3. The interpretation of literary dreams: Psychoanalysis, trauma, and painful modernity – the case of Mihály Babits
• 4. The specters of psychoanalysis in interwar Prague: Bohuslav Brouk and Jindřich Štyrský
• 5. The queer case of Piotr Odmieniec Włast: (Psycho)biography, psychoanalysis, and the origins of anti-psychiatric discourse in Poland
• 6. Freud’s queer fellow: Georg Groddeck between psychoanalytic theory and literary modernism
• 7. Practicing friendship – a new beginning for psychoanalytic theory and practice: Ferenczi between Georg Groddeck and Elizabeth Severn
• 8. Conclusion
• 9 Appendix
• Index