Psychoanalytic Theory

In this introduction to psychoanalytic theory and its application in the social sciences and humanities, Elliott provides lucid interpretations of key psychoanalytic theorists such as Freud, Klein, Winnicott, Kohut, Lacan, Laplanche and Kristeva.

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What reviewers said about the first edition. "I enthusiastically recommend this important book. It will stimulate much needed reaction and interaction among students of psychoanalysis, psychology, social theory, cultural studies and politics." Contemporary Psychology "An interestingly comprehensive book on psychoanalysis and its bearing on social challenge and change." Radical Philosophy "Anthony Elliott opts for a vigorously critical synoptic view, attempting to present both the strengths and weaknesses of classical psychoanalysis, ego psychology, object relations theory, Klienian theory, Lacanian and post-Lacanian theory. In this book he strives to articulate the positive contribution of all branches, but he also searches deftly for the blind spots and problems of each psychoanalytic school." Hysteria: Body, Medicine, Text "Anthony Elliott is quickly emerging as a one-person industry, intent in all of his writings to demonstrate both the relevance and the importance of psychoanalytic theory for critical social analysis...Psychoanalytic Theory is more than an introduction in the conventional sense...Elliott is boldly attempting to restore psychoanalysis relevant to a critical social theory but fundamentally respectful of human capacity for change and self-transformation.
" Thesis Eleven "Elliott succeeds, in Psychoanalytic Theory, in showing that psychoanalytic theorists must explain not only how numerous cultural processes and social intsitutions structure the subject, but how the subject can meaningfully structure culture and social institutions...Elliott is especially attentive to postmodern challenges of notions of the self and self-knowledge, as well as to the responsive critiques of postmodernism within psychoanalytic theory." Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society ANTHONY ELLIOTTt is Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of the West of England. He was formerly ARC Research Fellow in the Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Mourning of John Lennon, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition (Free Association Books), Concepts of the Self (forthcoming from Polity), editor of The Blackwell Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, Profiles in Contemporary Social Theory (Sage, with Bryan Turner) and Freud 2000 (Polity).