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In this brief but comprehensive introduction to Freud's theories, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen provides a step-by-step overview of his ideas regarding the unconscious, the cure, sexuality, drives, and culture, highlighting their indebtedness to contemporary neurophysiological and biological assumptions. The picture of Freud that emerges is very different from that of the fact-finding scientist he claimed to be. Bold conceptual innovations - repression, infantile sexuality, the Oedipus complex, narcissism, the death drive - were not discoveries made by Freud, but speculative constructs placed on clinical material to satisfy the requirements of the general theory of the mind and culture that he was building. Freud's Thinking provides a final accounting of this mirage of the mind that was psychoanalysis.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. The unconscious; 2. The analytic cure; 3. Sexuality; 4. Drives; 5. Culture; Conclusion.
About the author
A philosopher by training, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, USA and an award-winning theorist and historian of psychoanalysis and psychiatry. He is the author or co-author of some sixteen books translated into twelve languages, and co-author with Anne Georget of the documentary Branding Illness (2011).
Summary
Borch-Jacobsen provides an introductory summary of Freud's psychoanalysis, emphasizing biological and historical contexts, and offering a fresh perspective on the familiar facts of Freud's theories. Scholars and students of Freud, as well as practising psychoanalysts, will benefit from this book.
