Mari Ruti combines theoretical reflection, cultural critique, feminist politics, and personal experience to analyze the prevalence of bad feelings in contemporary everyday life. Proceeding from a playful engagement with Freud’s idea of penis envy, Ruti’s autotheoretical commentary fans out to a broader consideration of neoliberal pragmatism. She focuses on the emphasis on good performance, high productivity, constant self-improvement, and relentless cheerfulness that characterizes present-day Western society. Revealing the treacherousness of our fantasies of the good life, particularly the idea that our efforts will eventually be rewarded—that things will eventually get better—Ruti demystifies the false hope that often causes us to tolerate an unbearable present. Theoretically rigorous and lucidly written, Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings is a trenchant critique of contemporary gender relations. Refuting the idea that we live in a postfeminist world where gender inequalities have been transcended, Ruti describes how neoliberal heteropatriarchy has transformed itself in subtle and stealthy, and therefore all the more insidious, ways. Mobilizing Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, Jacques Lacan’s account of desire, and Lauren Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism, she analyzes the rationalization of intimacy, the persistence of gender stereotypes, and the pornification of heterosexual culture. Ruti shines a spotlight on the depression, anxiety, frustration, and disenchantment that frequently lie beneath our society’s sugarcoated mythologies of self-fulfillment, romantic satisfaction, and professional success, speaking to all who are concerned about the emotional costs of the pressure-cooker ethos of our age.

Psychoanalytic perspective on what Western philosophers from Socrates to Foucault have called “the art of living.”

Should we feel inadequate for failing to be healthy, balanced, and well-adjusted? Is such an existential equilibrium realistic or even desirable? Condemning our cultural obsession with cheerfulness and “positive thinking,” Mari Ruti calls for a resurrection of character that honors our more eccentric frequencies, arguing that sometimes the most tormented and anxiety-ridden life can also be the most rewarding. Ruti critiques our current search for personal meaning and the pragmatic attempt to normalize human beings’ unruly and idiosyncratic natures. Exposing the tragic banality of a happy life commonly lived, she instead emphasizes the advantages of a lopsided life rich in passion and fortitude. Ruti shows what counts is not our ability to evade existential uncertainty but to meet adversity in such a way that we do not become irrevocably broken. We are in danger of losing the capacity to cope with complexity, ambiguity, melancholia, disorientation, and disappointment, leaving us feeling less “real,” less connected, and unable to metabolize a full range of emotions. Heeding the call of our character may mean acknowledging the marginalized, chaotic aspects of our being, for they carry a great deal of creative energy. Ruti shows it is precisely this energy that makes us inimitable and irreplaceable.

Essential reading for scholars and students in critical theory, psychoanalysis, and gender studies. How does the self care for itself in the posthumanist era? What psychic processes might allow the postmodern subject to find meaning and value in its life? Is it possible to delineate a theory of psychic potentiality that is compatible with poststructuralist models of fluid, decentered, and polyvalent subjectivity? Reinventing the Soul offers a new perspective on what it means to be a human being and to strive in the world despite the wounding effects of the socialization process. Drawing on the rich legacies of French poststructuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Ruti builds an affirmative alternative to the post-Foucaultian tendency to envision subjectivity as a function of hegemonic systems of power. She proposes that the subject's encounter with the world also necessarily activates the psyche's innovative potential. By focusing on matters of creative agency, imaginative empowerment, inner metamorphosis, and self-actualization, Ruti outlines some of the mechanisms by which the psyche manages not only to survive its lack, alienation, or suffering, but also to transform its abjection into an existentially livable reality. Central to Ruti's argument is the idea that human beings relate to the world in active rather than merely passive ways—as dynamic creators of meaning rather than as powerless dupes of disciplinary power.

Praise for The Case for Falling in Love "Why play 'hard to get' when you can just get what you want? Mari Ruti's lively research, from Plato to Freud to Gossip Girl to her own bedroom, finally puts an end to playing games, and provides a resource for lovers and the love-scorned alike. A must-read for anyone who has ever fallen in love, wants to, or wants to know what went wrong." —Arianne Cohen, creator of TheSexDiariesProject.com "At last, a relationship advice book that will actually work. If you're intelligent, interested in love, and like a book you can't put down, this is it. John Gray, move over. The brilliant Mari Ruti has arrived." —Juliet Schor, professor of sociology, Boston College, and author of Born to Buy and Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth "Groundbreaking...Ruti opens the eyes of her readers so that they can love better...A must-read." —Nancy Redd, New York Times bestselling author of Body Drama "Finally, a book that takes love seriously. Written with passion and verve...I wish I had read this book years ago!" —Sean Carroll, author of From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time Are you tired of reading book after book and playing game after game, trying to avoid heartbreak? It seems impossible, and maybe that's because you can't lock up your heart like that—not if you want the real thing. And maybe that's one of the best things about love. We've been thinking about it all wrong. Our culture's insistence that women need to learn how to catch and keep a man is actually doing much more harm than good. The more we try to manipulate our relationships, the less we are truly able to experience love's benefits and wonders. Love is a slippery, unruly thing, and trying to control and manage it robs us of its delicious unpredictability. Sure, letting go of the reins a bit might mean a broken heart, but heartbreak, in fact, offers a wealth of possibilities—creativity, wisdom, and growth—that we need in order to make the most of our lives. Liberating for women who are frustrated by the idea that they just need to learn the right "formula," The Case for Falling in Love shows that there isn't a method to mastering the madness of love. But that might be exactly what's so wonderful about it.

Modern individuals often enter analysis because of a feeling of hollowness; a deadened absence of aliveness, meaninglessness, and a sense of being alone in a world that seems otherwise exciting, engaging and alive. Joseph Newirth believes that these feelings reflect a disease of modern man which can be traced to a failure in the development of subjectivity. Through a careful reading of theory and well-reasoned presentations of case material, Newirth vividly evokes the contemporary dilemma of the individual’s lack of subjectivity. Newirth positions this lack of subjectivity as a failure in the development of the unconscious, an understanding that provides the foundation for the development of a two-person theory of the unconscious. Newirth proposes a Neo-Kleinian model of the unconscious, the “generative unconscious” in contrast to the “repressed unconscious” of classical theory, or the “relational unconscious” of interpersonal and relational theory. He defines the “generative unconscious” as a source of creativity, of apprehending and generating experience in terms of emotional meanings through the development of metaphors, transitional experiences and poetic images. Newirth draws on a wealth of clinical material to support his argument that traditional forms of interpretation are considerably less effective in the development of subjectivity than his alternative Neo-Kleinian approach. He contends that locating subjectivity in the unconscious frees us from the nineteenth century bias which privileged consciousness and rational thought, and suggests that the analytic enterprise is not to make the unconscious conscious, but rather to make the conscious unconscious.

Argues that schadenfreude is a normal human emotion, looking at its roots in feelings of justice, positive sense of self, and concern with inferiority.