For several decades the writings of sociologist Neil J. Smelser have won him a vast and admiring audience across several disciplines. Best known for his work on social movements, economic sociology, and British social history, Smelser's psychoanalytic writings are less familiar to his readers. In fact, many people are completely unaware of Smelser's formal psychoanalytic training and ongoing counseling practice. With the publication of The Social Edges of Psychoanalysis, Smelser's thought-provoking essays on psychoanalytic concepts are finally brought together in one book. Psychoanalytic theory has had an ambivalent relationship with sociology, and these essays explore that ambivalence, providing arguments about how and why psychoanalytic approaches can deepen the sociological perspective. One of Smelser's main tenets is that human social behavior always contains both social-structural and social-psychological elements, and that psychoanalytic theory can bridge these two dimensions of human social life. Many of the issues Smelser addresses—including interdisciplinarity, the macro-micro link in research, masculinity and violence, and affirmative action—have generated considerable scholarly interest. This collection paves the way for further articulation of the relationship between sociology and psychoanalysis at a time when many sociologists are looking for interdisciplinary links in their work. Presented with clarity and grace, and free of the murkiness often found in both sociological and psychoanalytic writing, Smelser's new book will excite reflection and research on the less visible dynamics of social existence.

For several decades the writings of sociologist Neil J. Smelser have won him a vast and admiring audience across several disciplines. Best known for his work on social movements, economic sociology, and British social history, Smelser's psychoanalytic writings are less familiar to his readers. In fact, many people are completely unaware of Smelser's formal psychoanalytic training and ongoing counseling practice. With the publication of The Social Edges of Psychoanalysis, Smelser's thought-provoking essays on psychoanalytic concepts are finally brought together in one book. Psychoanalytic theory has had an ambivalent relationship with sociology, and these essays explore that ambivalence, providing arguments about how and why psychoanalytic approaches can deepen the sociological perspective. One of Smelser's main tenets is that human social behavior always contains both social-structural and social-psychological elements, and that psychoanalytic theory can bridge these two dimensions of human social life. Many of the issues Smelser addresses—including interdisciplinarity, the macro-micro link in research, masculinity and violence, and affirmative action—have generated considerable scholarly interest. This collection paves the way for further articulation of the relationship between sociology and psychoanalysis at a time when many sociologists are looking for interdisciplinary links in their work. Presented with clarity and grace, and free of the murkiness often found in both sociological and psychoanalytic writing, Smelser's new book will excite reflection and research on the less visible dynamics of social existence. For several decades the writings of sociologist Neil J. Smelser have won him a vast and admiring audience across several disciplines. Best known for his work on social movements, economic sociology, and British social history, Smelser's psychoanalytic wri

This book argues that psychoanalysis has a unique role to play in the climate change debate through its placing emphasis on the unconscious dimensions of our mental and social lives. Exploring contributions from Freudian, Kleinian, Object Relations, Self Psychology, Jungian, and Lacanian traditions, the book discusses how psychoanalysis can help to unmask the anxieties, deficits, conflicts, phantasies and defences crucial in understanding the human dimension of the ecological crisis. Yet despite being essential to studying environmentalism and its discontents, psychoanalysis still remains largely a 'psychology without ecology.' The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, combined with new developments in the sciences of complexity, help us to build upon the best of these perspectives, providing a framework able to integrate Guattari's 'three ecologies' of mind, nature and society. This book thus constitutes a timely attempt to contribute towards a critical dialogue between psychoanalysis and ecology. Further topics of discussion include: ecopsychology and the greening of psychotherapy our ambivalent relationship to nature and the non-human complexity theory in psychoanalysis and ecology defence mechanisms against eco-anxiety and eco-grief Deleuze|Guattari and the three ecologies becoming-animal in horror and eco-apocalypse in science fiction films nonlinear ecopsychoanalysis. In our era of anxiety, denial, paranoia, apathy, guilt, hope, and despair in the face of climate change, this book offers a fresh and insightful psychoanalytic perspective on the ecological crisis. As such this book will be of great interest to all those in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, philosophy, and ecology, as well as all who are concerned with the global environmental challenges affecting our planet's future.

“The Odyssey Experience puts forward the view that a journey, as encapsulated by the journey of Odysseus, provides a fundamental and archetypal human experience and develops a theory of this experience through personal experiences and a wide range of salient phenomena. There is a vast literature inspired by The Odyssey, but the way that Smelser approaches the subject is entirely unique.”—Yiannis Gabriel, University of London “Smelser draws together studies of an astonishing range of diverse topics and subsumes them under a single coherent, powerful, overarching concept—the odyssey experience. I believe his book will lead to the establishment of an entirely new field of study in the social and behavioral sciences, that will open up new and promising lines of theory and research that until now have not been possible.”—Robert Scott, Associate Director (emeritus), Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

The Subversive Edge of Psychoanalysis examines the radical and non-conformist perspectives of both classical and contemporary psychoanalysis. The chapters included in this book span the course of David James Fisher’s career. They contextualize significant cases from the recent history of psychoanalysis, critically analyze key aspects of psychoanalytic work, consider the role of psychoanalysis in the history of the twentieth century, and provide biographical sketches of major figures in the field. The book concludes with a cogent interview of the author by a distinguished psychohistorian, depicting how subjectivity, family themes, politics, and cultural affinities marked his choice of subject matter and methodology, his identifications, and his antipathies. The Subversive Edge of Psychoanalysis will appeal to mental health professionals and students with an interest in psychoanalytic practice and theory and academics and researchers who are fascinated by the subversive, non-conforming aspects of both classical and contemporary psychoanalysis.

"This exciting new book traces the development of an unfolding challenge for psychoanalytic attention, which augments contemporary theoretical lenses focusing on structures of meaning with an accompanying registration different than and interacting with structural experience. This accompanying registration of experience is given the term 'fluidity' in order to characterize it as too fast moving and unformulated to be symbolized with linguistic categorization. Expanding attention from speech meaning to include embodied registrations of rhythm involving tonality, pauses and accents can catalyse additional and often emotionally more significant communications central to the state of the transactional field in any psychoanalytic moment. This perspective is contextualized within recognition of how cultural practices and beliefs are carried along both structural and fluid registrations of experience and can shape emotional turbulence for both interactants in a clinical encounter. Experiences of gender, culture, class and race emerging as sources of conflict and mis-recognition are engaged and illustrated throughout the text. This book, part of the popular 'Psychoanalysis in a New Key' book series, will appeal to teaching and practicing psychoanalysts, but also an increasing volume of therapists attending to embodied experience in their practice and drawn to the practical clinical illustrations"--

Anthology of recent, cutting-edge work in psychoanalysis and philosophy on the concept of inheritance. In contrast to the way inheritance is understood in scientific discourse and culture more broadly, inheritance in psychoanalysis is a paradox. Although it’s impossible, strictly speaking, for the unconscious to be inherited, this volume demonstrates how the concept of inheritance can occasion a rich reassessment and reinvention of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The collection enacts a critical traversal of inheritance for psychoanalysis: from the most basic assumptions of natural or biological inheritance, such as innateness, heredity, evolution, and ontogenesis, to analysis of the ways cultural traditions can be challenged and transformed, and finally to the reinvention of psychoanalytic practice, in which the ethics of inheritance is fully realized as the individual’s responsibility to transform the social bond. Featuring strong interdisciplinary analysis rooted in both psychoanalysis and philosophy, this volume further engages science, politics, and cultural studies, and addresses contemporary political challenges such as autism and transgenderism.