What can psychoanalysis, a psychological approach developed more than a century ago, offer us in an age of rapidly evolving, hard-to-categorize ideas of sexuality and the self? Should we abandon Freud's theories completely or adapt them to new findings and the new relationships taking shape in modern liberal societies? In a remarkably prescient series of lectures delivered in the early 1960s, the French philosopher Louis Althusser anticipated the challenges that psychoanalytic theory would face as politics moved away from structuralist frameworks and toward the elastic possibilities of anthropological and sociological thought. Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences translates Althusser's remarkable seminars into English for the first time, making available to a wider audience the origins and potential future of radical political theory. Althusser takes the important step in these lectures of distinguishing psychoanalysis from psychology and especially psychiatry, which long resisted Freud's analytical concepts of the unconscious and overdetermination. By freeing psychoanalysis from this bind, Althusser can then apply these analytical concepts to the social and the political, integrated with Marxist theory. The result is an enlivened methodology for comprehending social organization and change that had a profound influence on the Frankfurt School and scholars who continue to work at the forefront of radical thought today: Judith Butler, Étienne Balibar, and Alain Badiou.

"Provides a critical and historical introduction to the core themes and influential thinkers that helped to shape contemporary human science approaches to psychotherapy"--Provided by publisher.

Introduction to Psychology as a Human Science gathers together the disparate pieces of the story of psychology as a human science and places this story into the broader history of science in general. The book explains how psychology as a human science is linked to, but distinctly different from, psychology as a natural science. Students first learn how science, knowledge, and truth have been framed since antiquity. Once they have become familiar with these concepts, they are ready to examine the development of science through the ages and see how psychology drew from this development. They study the approaches of Freud and psychoanalysis, as well as existential, humanistic, and transpersonal psychology. The book also includes a chapter on social constructionism, and concludes by revisiting some of its framing questions, such as how best to study human beings, and what it may mean to characterize psychology as a science. Introduction to Psychology as a Human Science responds to three linked questions. How does each of the approaches view human beings? What are the scientific assumptions of each approach, given their view of human beings? What are the scientific methods and procedures through which each approach gathers knowledge? Intelligent and thought-provoking, the text is a unique choice for introductory psychology courses including those that emphasize research methods.

Addressing one of the most fundamental issues in any examination of human experience, this important new work connects evolutionary biological concepts to modern psychoanalytic theory and the clinical encounter. Synthesizing their years of experience in the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, the authors provide a comparative psychoanalytic map of current theoretical controversies and a new way of deconstructing the hidden assumptions that underlie Freudian, Ego Psychological, Kleinian, Object Relational, Self Psychological, and Interpersonal theories. In so doing, they provide a new vantage point from which to integrate competing models into a larger picture that more fully embraces the many facets of human nature. Moreover, they offer clinicians a new framework with which to understand and respond to the inevitable paradoxes and conflicts that arise in the therapeutic relationship.

This collection of some of Louis Althusser's major essays on psychoanalytic thought documents his relationship with Jacques Lacan and presents aspects of his personal and intellectual life

This volume offers a psychology of human personality and behavior created as a function of the politics practiced by the social structure in which they are based. The interaction of individuals with authoritarian/totalitarian, democratic/humanistic and anarchistic forms of politics is examined. The focus is on the particular type of politics practiced by psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, with the conclusion that these enterprises operate more along authoritarian/totalitarian than democratic/humanistic lines. Simon argues that the mental health field, as currently dominated by psychiatric thinking entrenched in the myths of mental illness, is acting as a social control agency and a force in the development of a totalitarian state. This volume aso offers a view of how psychotherapy can be used as a means to fuel democratic states for individuals. Other works that focus on the politics of psychiatric services have also emerged since Thomas Szasz' work, The Myth of Mental Illness, but this is the first to demonstrate the dangers of the psychiatry and therapy industries from this variety of political, religious, and scientific perspectives.

This work continues the debate on whether psychoanalysis can be treated as a cognitive science, providing an epistemological rationale for the field's scientific validity, as well as an ethical rationale for its humanism. The authors reject the humanist and empiricist constructions of various theories as "foundationalist," and develop a philosophical foundation which they term "cognitivist." They address issues related to social science and society, and to psychotherapeutic research. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR