(Mis)Understanding Freud with Lacan, Zizek, and Neuroscience (The Palgrave Lacan Series)

This book sets out to clarify five key Freudian concepts (the pleasure principle, the primary processes, the unconscious, transference, and the reality principle) elaborated early on in Freud’s work but, it is argued, rarely understood―even by psychoanalysts themselves. It examines in turn the post-Freudian paradigms employed in neuropsychoanalysis, Lacan, Zizek, object relations, and psychoanalytic approaches to identity politics, and in doing so reveals the extent to which they have been distorted and repressed in these new contexts. Over the course of the book the author demonstrates how Freud’s unpublished Project for a Scientific Psychology can be seen as a complete system of core concepts that both ground psychoanalysis in neurology and also introduce a vital challenge to the brain sciences. This book will appeal to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, clinical psychology, and psychoanalytic theory. Contents 7 1: Introduction 8 Book Outline 9 Method 10 2: Freud’s Project 13 The Pleasure Principle and the Death Drive 13 What Is Consciousness? 15 Transference and the Demand 20 The Unconscious 22 The Defensive Ego of Attention 27 The Reality Principle 28 3: Neuroscience and the Repression of Psychoanalysis 35 Natural Feelings 35 An Imaginary Unity 37 The Computer Brain 39 The Pleasure Principle Revised 41 Pleasure and the Unconscious 43 Are You Unconscious? 46 Feelings, Consciousness, and the Pleasure Principle 47 Nurture and Nature 53 From Theory to Practice 56 Defending the Science of Psychoanalysis 62 4: Moving from Freud’s Five Principles to Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts 69 The Unconscious and the Primary Processes 69 The Dream of the Subject 72 Repetition and Desire 77 Repression and Consciousness 83 Transference 90 The Unconscious and Sexuality 94 The Drives and the Pleasure Principle 96 Working Through Transference and the Drives at the End of Analysis 99 5: The Desire of the Analyst and the American Repression of Psychoanalysis 110 The Ethics of Care 110 Comforting the Patient 116 Writing about Analysis 117 From Hypnosis to Neutrality 119 Theory and Practice 120 The Known Desire of the Analyst 121 The Resistance of Narcissism 128 6: Zizek and the Empty Unconscious 135 From Freud to Lacan 135 The Death Drive Distortion 137 Defining Culture 139 From Lacan to Marx and Back Again 141 Exchange Value 144 Cynical Behaviorism 145 The Return of the Repressed 149 From Lacan to Marx to Hegel 151 The Displacement of Ideology 152 From Transference to Social Reality 155 7: Misunderstanding Psychoanalysis from the Left 163 Warning: Reader Be Aware 163 Identity in Analysis 165 How Identity Politics Affects Clinical Practice 174 Neutrality and Free Association 176 The Limits of Identity Politics in Analysis 179 8: Conclusion: Still (Mis)Understanding Psychoanalysis 189 Index 194 This book sets out to clarify five key Freudian concepts (the pleasure principle, the primary processes, the unconscious, transference, and the reality principle) elaborated early on in Freuds work but, it is argued, rarely understood even by psychoanalysts themselves. It examines in turn the post-Freudian paradigms employed in neuropsychoanalysis, Lacan, Zizek, object relations, and psychoanalytic approaches to identity politics, and in doing so reveals the extent to which they have been distorted and repressed in these new contexts. Over the course of the book the author demonstrates how Freuds unpublished Project for a Scientific Psychology can be seen as a complete system of core concepts that both ground psychoanalysis in neurology and also introduce a vital challenge to the brain sciences. This book will appeal to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, clinical psychology, and psychoanalytic theory