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In this fascinating book, Michel Thys explores the limitations of human imagination and symbolisation, showing the potentially destructive result of a mind that cannot confront reality. His wide-ranging research takes us into the domain of the unimaginable, unthinkable and unspeakable.
List of contents
Part 1: From Fascination to Desire for Being 1. Phenomenology of fascination - A dialogue with Sartre 2. Fear of self-destruction - Fascinating metamorphoses and solidified truth 3. I is a thing- On trauma and desire for being
Part 2: From Body to Identity 4. Dysincarnation - The body on the edge of the symbolic 5. From discreet whispers to public shouts - Psychoanalysis and the culture of self-disclosure 6. Inevitable and elusive- Identity between melancholy and megalomania
Part 3: Narrative Challenges 7. Hopper, Levinas and the quasi-subject - The subject outside time 8. The corpse of Polynices - The obscene and tragedy as fascinum 9. Monstrous Frankenstein- The narrative at the last minute
Part 4: On the Edge of the Human 10. Disaster tourism and violent transformations - Cultural figures of the inhuman 11. From Charcot to Chaplin - On the infantile, the traumatic and the grotesque 12. The subject as ruin - Back to the desire for being Bibliography
About the author
Michel Thys is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst and doctor of philosophy. He is a member of the Flemish Association of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Belgian School of Psychoanalysis. He is former editor-in-chief of the Dutch-Flemish journal
Tijdschrift voor Psychoanalyse. He works in private practice in Antwerp, Belgium.
