Psychoanalysis has transformed our culture. We constantly use and refer to ideas from psychoanalysis, often unconsciously. Psychology, philosophy, politics, sociology, women's studies, anthropology, literary studies, cultural studies, and other disciplines have been permeated by the competing schools of psychoanalysis. But what of psychoanalysis itself? Where is it going one hundred years after Freud's own speculations took shape? Does it still have a role to play in cultural debate, or should it perhaps be abandoned? Speculations After Freud confronts the dilemmas of contemporary psychoanalysis by bringing together some of the most influential and best known writers on psychoanalysis, philosophy and culture. The advocates and critics of psychoanalysis, both institutional and theoretical, critically appraise the powerful role psychoanalytic speculation plays in all areas of culture.

This book draws on a number of Freud's lesser-known works to explore psychoanalytic perspectives on memory, mourning and repetition. It is remarkable that Freud in his speculations on the human psyche often took his point of departure in an insignificant detail. It might be a lapse of memory or a detail in a piece of art. From here he uncovered the many layers of the psyche, its complex structure and the processing of meaning right to the limit of understanding. At this point Freud ́s exploration encountered the unknown, an internal outland as difficult to acknowledge as the external reality. Freud did not invent the unconscious but he demonstrated how it works. The unconscious according to Freud does not exist, but insists on making itself visible. The eleven essays in this book draw a picture of the critical humanistic thinking so characteristic of Freud. His concepts and suppositions were the result of many years’ speculations, based on observation, experience and ideas, and although they are marked by the time and culture from which they emerged, they demonstrate a revolutionary knowledge of the psyche transcending the knowledge of his time. In her reading of the chosen texts the author has chosen the position of a contemporary interpretation. Examining how psychoanalytic work on the topics of memory, mourning and repetition has changed since Freud and how these themes remain of crucial importance in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, this book intersperses theory with clinical practice. It will be of great interest to training and practicing psychoanalysts, as well as scholars of art, literature and sociology.

in Freud's view we are driven by the desire for pleasure as well as by the desire to avoid pain. But the pursuit of pleasure has never been a simple thing. Pleasure can be a form of fear, a form of memory and a way of avoiding reality. Above all, as these essays show with remarkable eloquence, pleasure is a way in which we repeat ourselves. The essays collected in this volume explore, in Freud's uniquely subtle and accessible style, the puzzles of pleasure and morality - the enigmas of human development.

Abraham Drassinower takes a fresh look at Freud, countering his prevalent image as a man pessimistically renouncing the possibility of social, political, and cultural change.

This is a book that should satisfy a longfelt need. Freud's writings comprise a small library. To know how the founder of psychoanalysis defined his original terms, how he changed or amplified them in his later writings; to have his exact statements at hand on all possible psychoanalytic questions will be of considerable assistance to students and practitioners alike. Some analysts, known as specialists in Freudian quotations, have been receiving constant requests to supply references to those who sorely needed them. This book will safeguard them from the penalty of specialization, and will place all Freudiana within easy reach of professional and non-professional researchers.

In Derrida and the Legacy of Psychoanalysis, Paul Earlie offers a detailed account of the importance of psychoanalysis in Derrida's thought. Based on close readings of texts from the whole of his career, including less well-known and previously unpublished material, the title sheds new light on the crucial role of psychoanalysis in shaping Derrida's response to a number of key questions. These questions range from the psyche's relationship to technology to the role of fiction and metaphor in scientific discourse, and from the relationship between memory and the archive to the status of the political in deconstruction. Focusing on Freud but proposing new readings of texts by Lacan, Torok and Abraham, Laplanche and Pontalis, amongst other seminal figures in contemporary French thought, Earlie argues that Derrida's writings on psychoanalysis can also provide an important bridge between deconstruction and the recent materialist turn in the humanities. Challenging a still prevalent 'textualist' reading of Derrida's work, he explores the ongoing contribution of deconstruction and psychoanalysis to pressing issues in critical thought today, from the localizing models of the neurosciences and the omnipresence of digital technology to the politics of affect in an age of terror.