Whose Freud?: The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture Book

This provocative book brings together an exceptional group of contributors—partisans and critics of Freud—in vigorous debate over the meaning of psychoanalysis today. Representing such diverse fields as literature, philosophy, film, history, cultural studies, neuroscience, and psychotherapy, the writers offer a new assessment of psychoanalysis as a discipline and a discourse in contemporary culture.

Library Journal

This work records the activity of a 1998 symposium at Yale, whose goal was to "assess the status of psychoanalysis as a discipline and discourse in contemporary culture." Reflecting the conference's format, the book is divided into six sections focusing on the legitimacy of psychoanalysis as a science, its various theories of the mind, psychoanalysis and historiography, sexual identity, hermeneutics, and the quality of "truth" in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Each section is composed of an introduction, presentations by the seminar participants (including Judith Butler and Leo Bersani), and discussion. Pulling no punches, Brooks (humanities, Yale Univ.) and Woloch (English, Stanford Univ.) begin with Frederic Crews's scathing, provocative attack on Freud's theories as a science. The other sections provide some equally thought-provoking presentations on such disparate topics as Freud and homosexuality and the "psychoanalysis" of Nazi architecture. Within its broad intellectual scope, this book illustrates the intriguing crossroads of Freud's 19th-century sensibilities with our own. An excellent academic treatment of the relative value of Freud at the turn of the millennium geared to psychology and humanities professionals.--David Valencia, King Cty. Lib. Syst., Federal Way, WA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.