Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community

Description

This book brings together the work of scholars and writer-practitioners of psychoanalysis to consider the legacy of two of Sigmund Freud's most important metapsychological papers: 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914) and 'Mourning and Melancholia' (1917 [1915]). These twin papers, conceived in the context of unprecedented social and political turmoil, mark a point in Freud’s metapsychological project wherein the themes of loss and of psychic violence were becoming incontrovertible facts in the story of subject formation. Taking as their concern the difficulty of setting apart the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ worlds, as well as the difficulty of preserving an image of the coherently boundaried subject, the psychoanalytic frameworks of narcissism and melancholia provide the background coordinates for the volume’s contributors to analyse contemporary subjectivities in new psychosocial contexts. This collection will be of great interest to all scholars and practitioners of psychoanalysis and the psychotherapies, social and cultural theory, gender and sexuality studies, politics, and psychosocial studies. Front Matter ....Pages i-viii Introduction: Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community (Barry Sheils, Julie Walsh)....Pages 1-40 Narcissism and Melancholia from the Psychoanalytical Perspective of Object Relations (Michael Rustin)....Pages 41-63 Narcissism Through the Digital Looking Glass (Jay Watts)....Pages 65-89 Something to Do with a Girl Named Marla Singer: Capitalism, Narcissism, and Therapeutic Discourse in David Fincher’s Fight Club (Lynne Layton)....Pages 91-117 Melancholia, the Death Drive and Into the Wild (Derek Hook)....Pages 119-143 The Monster in the Mirror: Theoretical and Clinical Reflections on Primary Narcissism and Melancholia (Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz)....Pages 145-160 Shame, Pain and Melancholia for the Australian Constitution (Juliet B. Rogers)....Pages 161-184 Dr Fanon on Colonial Narcissism and Anti-Colonial Melancholia (Colin Wright)....Pages 185-210 ‘This Nothing Held in Common’: Towards a Theory of Activism Beyond the Community of One (Barry Watt)....Pages 211-234 Neurotic and Paranoid Citizens (Stephen Frosh)....Pages 235-253 Narcissism, Melancholia and the Exhaustion of the ‘Journeying’ Subject (Anastasios Gaitanidis)....Pages 255-268 Back Matter ....Pages 269-281