ABSTRACT
Longing: Psychoanalytic Musings on Desire is a contemporary, interdisciplinary exploration of one of psychoanalysis's most foundational and fascinating areas of investigation. This anthology explores the vicissitudes and varieties of desire, its public and private, normative and transgressive, its light and dark expressions. It examines desire in its relational, cultural, clinical, physical, sexual and aesthetic forms. Collectively, these essays demonstrate an understanding of the difficulties of identifying and realizing desire, precisely because it is multiple, omnipresent, shape-shifting, ongoing and, perhaps, always ultimately unfulfillable. They question whether desire is by definition something that cannot be satisfied, and contemplate how we relate to our desires? Interpersonal psychoanalytic practice and theory understands desire not merely as an intrapsychic drive but also as a force shaped by and shaping interpersonal relationships. From within this perspective, a number of the contributors examine a broad variety of clinical manifestations of desire as it struggles for expression or suppression.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|46 pages
"Listen, Do You Want to Know a Secret?": Selves Untold or Lost in Translation
part II|52 pages
"Sympathy for a Devil": Managing Pain with Pain
chapter Six|13 pages
“I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then”: longing for a coherent mind
chapter Eight|10 pages
"Oh what a blow that phantom gave me" 1 : observations on the rise of virtual desire
part III|47 pages
"Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend": Reflections on a Woman's Relationship with her Body and its Adornments
part IV|43 pages
"Like a Moth to the Flame": Signed by Desire
part V|51 pages
Seduction in the Garden of Eden