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.

Collates discussion on two of Freud's most important metapsychological papers Analyses contemporary communities using narcissism and melancholia as a framework Balances clinical, literary, historical and political perspectives to create a truly interdisciplinary collection

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: Narcissism, Melancholia and the Subject of Community; Barry Sheils and Julie Walsh.- 2. Narcissism and Melancholia from the Psychoanalytical Perspective of Object Relations; Michael Rustin.- 3. Narcissism through the Digital Looking Glass; Jay Watts.- 4. Something to do with a girl named Marla Singer: Capitalism, Narcissism, and Therapeutic Discourse in David Fincher's Fight Club; Lynne Layton.- 5. Melancholia, the death drive and Into the Wild; Derek Hook.- 6. The Monster in the Mirror: Theoretical and Clinical Reflections on Primary Narcissism and Melancholia; Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz.- 7. Shame, Pain and Melancholia for the Australian Constitution; Juliet B. Rogers.- 8. Dr Fanon on Colonial Narcissism and Anti-Colonial Melancholia; Colin Wright.- 9. This Nothing Held in Common: Towards a Theory of Activism Beyond the Community of One; Barry Watt.- 10. Neurotic and Paranoid Citizens; Stephen Frosh.- 11. Narcissism, Melancholia and the Exhaustion of the'Journeying' Subject; Anastasios Gaitanidis.