Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community

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. The psychoanalytic frameworks of narcissism and melancholia provide the background for contributors to analyse contemporary subjectivities in new psychosocial contexts, including community configured along the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and generation. 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.

Autorentext
Barry Sheils is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University, UK.
Julie Walsh is a lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, UK, and a psychoanalytic therapist in London.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: arcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community;arry Sheils and Julie Walsh.- Narcissism and Melancholia from the Psychoanalytical Perspective of Object Relations; Michael Rustin.- Narcissism through the Digital Looking Glass;ay Watts.-omething to do with a girl named Marla Singer: Capitalism, Narcissism, and Therapeutic Discourse in David Fincher's Fight Club;ynne Layton.- Melancholia, the death drive and Into the Wild;erek Hook.-he Monster in the Mirror: Theoretical and Clinical Reflections on Primary Narcissism and Melancholia;oroth Bonnigal-Katz.- Shame, Pain and Melancholia for the Australian Constitution;uliet B. Rogers.- Dr Fanon on Colonial Narcissism and Anti-Colonial Melancholia;olin Wright.- This Nothing Held in Common: Towards a Theory of Activism Beyond the Community of One;arry Watt.-. Neurotic and Paranoid Citizens;tephen Frosh.-. Narcissism, Melancholia and the Exhaustion of the'Journeying' Subject;nastasios Gaitanidis.