Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences

Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences translates Althusser's remarkable seminars into English for the first time, making available to a wider audience the origins and potential future of radical political theory. Althusser takes the important step in these lectures of distinguishing psychoanalysis from psychology and especially psychiatry, which long resisted Freud's analytical concepts of the unconscious and overdetermination. By freeing psychoanalysis from this bind, Althusser can then apply these analytical concepts to the social and the political, integrated with Marxist theory. The result is an enlivened methodology for comprehending social organization and change that had a profound influence on the Frankfurt School and scholars who continue to work at the forefront of radical thought today: Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, and Alain Badiou.

About the author

Louis Althusser (1918-1990) was a French Marxist philosopher and professor of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure. His books include Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan (Columbia, 1996) and Reading Capital (1965). Steven Rendall is professor emeritus of romance languages at the University of Oregon. Pascale Gillot is professor of philosophy at the Lycée Henri Moissan and Researcher at the Université Paris

Summary

Can psychoanalysis expand our comprehension of social and political life?

Product details

• Authors: Louis Althusser, Althusser Louis
• Assisted by: Pascale Gillot (Foreword), Steven Rendall (Translation), Rendall Steven (Translation)
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 27.09.2016
• EAN: 9780231177658
• ISBN: 978-0-231-17765-8
• No. of pages: 144
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 180 mm x 7 mm
• Series: European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism; European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism; European Perspectives (COUP)
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology; Sociology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Post-Structuralism, PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Deconstruction, Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology, PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Structuralism, Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology), Deconstructionism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Structuralism and Post-structuralism, PSYCHOLOGY / Psychotherapy / Psychoanalysis