Freud in the Antipodes : a cultural history of psychoanalysis in Australia

Psychoanalysis—one of the most important intellectual developments of the twentieth century—is perhaps as much a cultural experience as a clinical one. This groundbreaking book is the first to examine the history and impact of Freudian ideas in Australia. Joy Damousi shows that ways of understanding our emotional and interior lives have a notable and complex history that challenges Australian stereotypes of shallow hedonism and emotional barrenness. By linking psychoanalysis with modernity, the book is, in effect, an alternative history of twentieth century Australia. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction......Page 12 1 Seeing is believing: Victorians and insanity......Page 21 2 ‘I can speak if the listener will be patient’: Listening to the shell-shocked......Page 42 3 ‘Do I really get better by just talking?’: The auditory self in the age of modernity......Page 64 4 Psychoanalysis and intellectuals......Page 90 5 Dreams......Page 118 6 Shaping the child......Page 142 7 ‘The War of Specialists’......Page 168 8 ‘Europe’s loss is Australia’s gain’: The advent of institutes of psychoanalysis in Australia, 1940s and 1950s......Page 190 9 War, Freud and art......Page 216 10 The self and society: 1950s and 1960s......Page 241 11 In and out of the asylums......Page 267 12 The politics of the self and consciousness raising: Women's liberation and Freud......Page 292 13 Recent psychoanalytic thought and practice......Page 316 Conclusion: Listening in the age of drugs......Page 341 Notes......Page 348 Index......Page 380 Psychoanalysis--one of the most important intellectual developments of the twentieth century- is perhaps as much a cultural experience as a clinical one. This groundbreaking book is the first to examine the history and impact of Freudian ideas in Australia. Joy Damousi shows that ways of understanding our emotional and interior lives have a notable and complex history that challenges Australian stereotypes of shallow hedonism and emotional barrenness. By linking psychoanalysis with modernity, the book is, in effect, an alternative history of twentieth century Australia "Freud in the Antipodes discusses the impact of Freud on the medical profession before looking more widely, finding that Freudian ideas have permeated intellectual circles as well." "By linking psychoanalysis with modernity, the book is, in effect, an alternative history of twentieth-century Australia. Joy Damousi considers the changes that increasingly sophisticated drugs have wrought on talking and listening therapies, and asks what the place of psychoanalysis might be in the twenty-first century."--Jacket