ABSTRACT

This book explores the unconscious in psychoanalysisusing cross-disciplinary input from the cultural, social and linguistic perspectives. This book is the first contemporary collection applying the various perspectives from within the psychoanalytic discipline.

It covers the unconscious from three main perspectives: the metaphysical, including links with quantum mechanics and Jung's thought; the socio-relational, drawing on ideas from politics, inter-generational trauma and the interpersonal; and the linguistic, drawing on notions of the social construct of language and hermeneutics. Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, theorists have wrestled with the ubiquitousness and diverse nature of the unconscious. This collection is an account of the contemporary psychoanalytic struggle to understand and work with this quintessential, defining, and foundational object of psychoanalysis.

This book is primarily of interest to practicing clinicians and trainees. It is also of significant interest to any academic professionals and students who adapt psychoanalytic thought in their studies in the humanities, including literature, philosophy, and the social sciences.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

part I|56 pages

The unconscious is everywhere, and nowhere

chapter Chapter 2|17 pages

Into the frog swamp

Jungian conceptions of the unconscious in practice

part II|64 pages

Power and the social unconscious

chapter Chapter 4|27 pages

The power principle

The shame of the father or the emperor’s new clothes

chapter Chapter 5|22 pages

Enacting identity

Normative unconscious processes in clinic and culture