DOCSLIB.ORG

Psychoanalysis and the Law Beyond the Oedipus : a Study in Legal Fictions

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Psychoanalysis and the Law Beyond the Oedipus : a Study in Legal Fictions Psychoanalysis and the law beyond the Oedipus : a study in legal fictions. Voruz, Veronique M. M. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/1627 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] Psychoanalysis and the Law beyond the Oedipus A Study in Legal Fictions Thesissubmitted for the degree of Ph.D. in Lax Veronique M. M. VORUZ Faculty of Laws Queen Mary College University of London BIBL LONDON UNIV. We need not answer for any ultimate truth, and certainly not for or against any particular religion. It is already significant that I had to situate here the dead Father in the Freudian myth. But a myth does not confine itself to not propping up rites, and psychoanalysis is not the Oedipal rite ... Jacques LACAN' Ecritr ' 81.8;316 (translationB. Fink, unpublished). 2 Abstract The present thesis considers the function of law in the political from the perspective of psychoanalysis, a discipline which foregrounds the subject. Drawing from the Lacanian contributions to psychoanalytic theory, I begin by assessing the validity of the Oedipal hypothesis for the purposes of understanding the dynamics of collective life. My analysis of civilisation in psychoanalytic terms will expose the subject as the seat of 'certain key phenomena which, despite their deeply intimate character, play themselves out in the field of law, in the confines of the institution, or again in the political realm: essentially, culpability, belief and love. I will argue that, although these phenomena irretrievably obstruct the rational unfolding of discourse, they also impel the precipitation of the subject's attachment to the political, and permit the consolidation thereof through the medium of transference. Yet, and in contradistinction to other strands of psychoanalytic jurisprudence, in this work psychoanalysis will be used neither as an hermeneutic tool nor as an analogical model. Indeed, my purpose is to evidence the existence of a certain continuity between the unconscious as discourse and the political order. This continuity between the unconscious and the political will be presented in terms of the logic of exception, which structures the subject's relation to language, and which Lacan identified as the structural core of the Oedipus complex. I will then apply Lacan's hypothesis of the exceptional structure of discourse to the theories of three political thinkers, chosen for the distinctness of their approach: Legendre, Bentham and Foucault. Finally, I will argue for the dispensability of the function of the Ideal, parasitic occupier of what should remain the structurally `empty' place of exception. 3 PSYCHOANALYSISAND THE LAW BEYONDTHE OEDIPUS A Study in Legal Fictions Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 6 Preface 7 In the Wasteland of Ethics Parr I- THE FATHERS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 15 In the Name of the Law I Of Fictions and Men 15 II Situating Psychoanalysisin the Fictional Land of the Law 25 III Itinerary of a Journey in the Underworld of Political Power 29 Chapter I The Primordial Fact of Politics I Introduction 35 II The Freudian Discontent 38 III Law, Religion and Ethics 49 IV Introducing Jouissance 57 V Conclusion 62 Chapter II Culpability and the Politics of Love I Introduction 65 II A Genealogy of the Recuperation of Desire 68 III A Psychoanalytic Theory of Power 73 IV The Political Function of Identification 80 V The SymbolicEfficacy of the Dogmatic Order 88 VI Conclusion 94 Chapter III Exceptional Fictions of the Universal I Introduction 97 II DiscursiveModalities of the Universal 101 III A Symbolic Organisation of the Universal 109 IV An Imaginary Supplement to the Symbols of Textual Truth 118 V A Real Organisation of the Universal 122 VI Conclusion 129 4 Chapter IV The Vicious Circle of Belief I Introduction 132 II The Mechanism of Transference 137 III A Foucauldian Critique of Psychoanalysis 151 IV Individualisation, Totalisation and Bio-Power 158 V The Body in the Place of Exception 166 VI Conclusion 172 PART 11 - LAW AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 174 Taking Exception to the Letter Chapter V Psychosis and the Law: Legal Responsibility and Law of Symbolisation I Introduction 176 II Politics of Psychoanalysis 179 III Legal Responsibility; Law of Symbolisation 185 IV Psychotic Linguistics 189 V Conclusion 194 Chapter VI The Topology of the Subject of Law: The Nullibiquity of the Fictional Fifth I Introduction 196 II A Clinic of Fictions 197 III From the Other to the Letter 201 IV Love, Law and Psychoanalysis 207 V The Propositional Logic of Exception 209 VI Conclusion 214 CONCLUSION 217 w BIBLIOGRAPHY 230 5 Acknowledgements I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Peter Fitzpatrick for his careful supervision, his patience, and his timely, pertinent interventions. I also wish to thank him for sharing his genuine ethical concerns with his students and for allowing us the benefit of his own tarrying with questions of justice and alterity. Many thanks also to my thinking companions of the past few years, Colin Perrin, Christopher Stanley, David Taylor, Roshan De Silva, Sarah Kyambi, Barry Collins, Baljit Dhadda, Stewart Motha and Ian Wollington, for stimulating, challenging discussions and most enjoyable company. For the understanding of psychoanalysis I acquired during my research years, many thanks to the members of the London Circle- and in particular to Vincent Dachy, Roger Litten, Natalie Wülfing and Bogdan Wolf -, and to those of the Associationde la CauseFreudienne - Val de Loire/Bretagne(ACF-VLB) for their dedication to the transmission of Lacanian psychoanalysis,not as a doxabut as an ethical practice. Many thanks also to Eileen Tanner, Barry and Gail Dravers for offering secluded abodes at various points of the writing process, and to my family for material and moral support. Chronologically, my last expression of gratitude goes to the University of Leicester, which proved to be a propitious environment for completion, and in particular to my three direct colleagues, Pascale Lorber, Giorgio Monti and Charlotte Walsh, who made my first lecturing year as easy and enjoyable as possible. Finally, heartfelt thanks to my dear friends, Heather Menzies and Nicolas Abraham, for being who they are, and for always being there. And with thepromise of a newknotting, to mypartner-sin(gt'homme,Philip Dravers. 6 Preface - In the Wasteland of Ethics PREFACE In the Wasteland of Ethics When in the wasteis the wisdom? JamesJoyce I A Tale of Lost Legitimacy In the West, and in the present context, our laws bear the deep imprint of a pervasive lack of definitive legitimacy; and this lack forces the legal discourse ever further down the self-referential circuits of rhetorical truth. As to the loss of law's legitimacy, it is no doubt to be ascribed to the enduring erosion of the This is be in mythical dimension of political power. statement to understood two moments: Firstly, demonstrate, legitimacy - and as this thesis will strive to obtains as a result of a certain correspondence between people's beliefs and the actual forms of power. French constitutionalist Claude Leclercq, for instance, concisely formulates the key condition which political power must fulfil if it is to command legitimacy: Legitimacy designates the capacity of a power to conform to the beliefs of the governed concerning its origin and its forms. Legitimacy is then accepted naturally by the governed. It entails natural obedience. [... ] Legitimacy attests to a fundamental agreement of the people (subjects or citizens) regarding the identity of the sovereign. (1999,28; my translation) is by - Secondly, this correspondence traditionally secured way of the signifying mediation performed through an utilisation of the mythical subtext which subtends a given discourse of power. Thus, Leclercq also notes that the legitimacy of the sovereign, or more generally of those who govern, is securedthrough the operation of myth: Myths make the population accept the lack of identity between those who govern and those who are governed [... ]. (ibid., 29) Yet, in an era in which the representative, liberal democracy is the prevalent mode of government, the mythical cipher which supplies the material required for the institution of a correspondence Finnegan Wake. 1992,114. 7 Preface - In the Wasteland of Ethics between the subject's beliefs and the contemporary forms of power is ever less legible. As such, one could even encapsulatewhat is known as the post-modern condition with the expression "the decline of the mythical function". How, then, is the declining efficacy of the myth in its function of securing legitimacy remedied in the present day legal system? To address this question, I suggest we qualify traditional, sovereign legitimacy with the term justness, in contradistinction to current forms of legitimacy, which echo with that of justice. More explicitly, I would pose that a form of power which derives its legitimacy from the strength of a given myth only has to maintain a certain correspondence between the beliefs of its subjects and the manifestations of its power by exploiting the mythical elements at its disposal. Today though, considering the waning mythical contents of the political, legitimacy will rather obtain as a result of the apparent justice dealt out by apparatuses of power. Having asserted that justice is now more relevant to law's legitimacy than the function of the myth, let us see where this leaves us. The Ethical Supplement It is the transience of our law-givers' sway, compounded by the marked absence of law's other-worldly truth, which foregrounds the function of ethics as the substitutive referent of the legal discourse.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Freud on Time and Timelessness: the Ancient Greek Influence
    ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Freud on time and timelessness: the ancient Greek influence https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40071/ Version: Full Version Citation: Noel-Smith, Kelly Ann (2014) Freud on time and timelessness: the ancient Greek influence. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email Freud on Time and Timelessness: the Ancient Greek Influence A dissertation presented by Kelly Ann Noel-Smith in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Birkbeck College, University of London January 2014 Declaration I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. …………………………………………………… ………………… 2014 Kelly Ann Noel-Smith © 2014 Kelly Noel-Smith. All rights reserved. 2 Kelly Noel-Smith Freud on Time and Timelessness: the Ancient Greek Influence Abstract This thesis turns on two assumptions: first, that there is a current absence within the psychoanalytic library of a consolidated account of Freud's theories of time and timelessness; second, that there is compelling evidence of an influence by the ancient Greek canon on Freud's metapsychology of time. The thesis is that a detailed examination of this influence will bring additional clarity to our understanding of Freud’s thoughts about time and timelessness and permit the provision of the currently lacking systematic account of this part of his theory. The author brings the three components of the Greek canon most important to Freud - myth, tragedy and philosophy – into dialogue with psychoanalysis to show the importance of their influence on Freud's ideas on temporality.
    [Show full text]
  • Oedipal Guilt, Punishment and Criminal Behaviour
    ! OEDIPAL GUILT, PUNISHMENT AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR ! By Brendan Dolan ! ! The Thesis is submitted to the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) for the award of Higher Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy form Dublin Business School, School Of Arts. ! May 2014 ! Supervisor - Cathal O’Keeffe ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! "1 Contents ! ! Abstract Page 3 Introduction Page 4 Chapter 1. Freud - Criminals from a sense of Guilt Page 6 Chapter 2. Lacan - The No/Name of the Father Page 8 Chapter 3. Punishment, Guilt and the Severe Superego Page 11 Chapter 4. Discussion Page 15 Conclusion Page 17 Bibliography Page 18 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! "2 ! Abstract The successful negotiation of the Oedipus complex is vital for our psychical development as it provides us with the means to form relationships and integrate into society. Resolution of the Oedi- pus complex requires the intervention of the father (Freud) or a symbolic representation of the func- tion of the father (Lacan). Unresolved Oedipal issues lead to unconscious guilt which over time can become unbearable causing the individual to seek to externalise the guilt through the commission of crime in order to receive the punishment their guilt demands. Freud calls these individuals Crimi- nals from a sense of guilt. This paper looks at the theory of Freud and Lacan around criminal be- haviour and the Oedipus complex. It also shows that the desire of the individual for punishment to expiate unconscious guilt, the desire of society to punish in order to expiate inherited unconscious guilt and the presence of a severe Superego all collude to entice the individual to commit crime.The application of psychoanalytical theory to the legal and penal system shows that rather than acting as a deterrent they may in fact incite the commission of crime.
    [Show full text]
  • View / Open Hayes Oregon 0171A 12498.Pdf
    TO WRITE THE BODY: LOST TIME AND THE WORK OF MELANCHOLY by SHANNON HAYES A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Philosophy and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2019 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Shannon Hayes Title: To Write the Body: Lost Time and the Work of Melancholy This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Philosophy by: Alejandro Vallega Chairperson Rocío Zambrana Core Member Ted Toadvine Core Member Jeffrey Librett Institutional Representative and Janet Woodruff-Borden Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2019. ii © 2019 Shannon Hayes This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (United States) License. iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Shannon Hayes Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy June 2019 Title: To Write the Body: Lost Time and the Work of Melancholy In this dissertation I develop a philosophical account of melancholy as a productive, creative, and politically significant affect. Despite the longstanding association of melancholy with the creativity and productivity of poets, artists, and philosophers, melancholy is judged to be a nonpolitical mood associated with stagnancy, paralysis, and a willful alienation. If Marxist critical theory still holds true today and it remains the case we are already dismembered and distanced in our worldly relations, then melancholy is a mood that unmasks our present situation. In the fatigue and weariness of the melancholic body, there is an insight into the decay and fragmentation that characterizes social existence.
    [Show full text]
  • Totem, Taboo and the Concept of Law: Myth in Hart and Freud Jeanne L
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Washington University St. Louis: Open Scholarship Washington University Jurisprudence Review Volume 1 | Issue 1 2009 Totem, Taboo and the Concept of Law: Myth in Hart and Freud Jeanne L. Schroeder Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_jurisprudence Part of the Jurisprudence Commons Recommended Citation Jeanne L. Schroeder, Totem, Taboo and the Concept of Law: Myth in Hart and Freud, 1 Wash. U. Jur. Rev. 139 (2009). Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_jurisprudence/vol1/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington University Jurisprudence Review by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Totem, Taboo and the Concept of Law: Myth in Hart and Freud Jeanne L. Schroeder* A startling aspect of H.L.A. Hart’s The Concept of Law1 is just how profoundly it rests on imaginary anthropology. Hart suggests that the development of “secondary” rules of change, recognition, and adjudication to supplement “primary,” or substantive, rules of law is the process by which primitive societies evolve into modern ones. In fact, like the writers of Genesis, Hart actually modulates between two unconnected creation stories. According to one, the rule of law is created after the death of a conqueror, Rex I, to insure the succession of his idiot son, Rex II. In a second story, primitive society loses its direct relationship with primary laws and develops the secondary rules.
    [Show full text]
  • Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
    Akhtar prelims CORREX 7/16/09 5:30 PM Page i 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 COMPREHENSIVE DICTIONARY 9 10 OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 50 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Akhtar prelims CORREX 7/16/09 5:30 PM Page ii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 201 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 50 1 2 3 4 5 6 71 Akhtar prelims CORREX 7/16/09 5:30 PM Page iii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 COMPREHENSIVE DICTIONARY 1 2 3 OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 4 5 6 7 8 9 Salman Akhtar M.D. 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 50 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Akhtar prelims CORREX 7/16/09 5:30 PM Page iv 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 First published in 2009 by 9 Karnac Books Ltd 10 118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT 1 2 3 4 5 Copyright © 2009 Salman Akhtar 6 7 8 9 The right of Salman Akhtar to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 201 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • Freud on Time and Timelessness: the Ancient Greek In- fluence
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses ORBIT - Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses Enabling Open Access to Birkbecks Research Degree output Freud on time and timelessness: the ancient Greek in- fluence http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/71/ Version: Full Version Citation: Noel-Smith, Kelly Ann (2014) Freud on time and timelessness: the an- cient Greek influence. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London. c 2014 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit guide Contact: email Freud on Time and Timelessness: the Ancient Greek Influence A dissertation presented by Kelly Ann Noel-Smith in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Birkbeck College, University of London January 2014 Declaration I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. …………………………………………………… ………………… 2014 Kelly Ann Noel-Smith © 2014 Kelly Noel-Smith. All rights reserved. 2 Kelly Noel-Smith Freud on Time and Timelessness: the Ancient Greek Influence Abstract This thesis turns on two assumptions: first, that there is a current absence within the psychoanalytic library of a consolidated account of Freud's theories of time and timelessness; second, that there is compelling evidence of an influence by the ancient Greek canon on Freud's metapsychology of time. The thesis is that a detailed examination of this influence will bring additional clarity to our understanding of Freud’s thoughts about time and timelessness and permit the provision of the currently lacking systematic account of this part of his theory.
    [Show full text]
  • A Comparative Analysis of the Freudian Theory of 'Deferred Action'
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD ISSN – 2455-0620 Volume - 3, Issue - 7, July - 2017 A Comparative Analysis of the Freudian Theory of ‘Deferred Action’ and the Derridean Theory of ‘Defers-Differs’ Amrik Singh Ph.D. Scholar and Assistant Professor, Department of English, Lovely Professional University Phagwara, Punjab, India Email - [email protected], [email protected] Abstract: The present paper explores the similarities and dissimilarities between the Freudian theory of ‘deferred action’ and the Derridean theory of ‘defers-differs’. The findings are obtained by implementing these two theories in Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel The Pakistani Bride. Freud advocates that the reasons of trauma should be analyzed and grasped so that the patients of neurosis and psychosis can be nursed successfully whereas Derrida lectures that every philosophical and literary text needs to be reinterpreted after a deferment to evolve new centres of thought. It’s concluded that the application of ‘deferred action’ theory in the selected novel helps finding reasons and ramifications of trauma whereas the theory of ‘defers-differs’ is used to breakdown the unified structure of linear systems and words to evolve the various meanings and interpretations of a word, a text, and the world. Key Words: similarities, dissimilarities, ‘deferred action’, ‘defers-differs’, reasons, ramifications, revivification. 1. INTRODUCTION: The research paper discovers the common ground and the areas of variation between the Freudian theory of ‘deferred action’ and the Derridean theory of ‘defers-differs’. Firstly it has been explicated what the selected theories are mainly about. It’s been also been discussed how the other scholars, psychoanalysts, and critics have viewed these theories.
    [Show full text]
  • Veering Toward an Evolutionary Realignment of Freud's Hamlet
    Brief Chronicles Vol. III (2011) 9 Veering Toward an Evolutionary Realignment of Freud’s Hamlet Michael Wainwright King. Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death Our state to be disjoint and out of frame. Hamlet (1.2.19–20)1 ust as all neurotic symptoms, and, for that matter, dreams, are capable of being ‘over-interpreted’ and indeed need to be, if they are to be “Jfully understood,” reasons Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), “so all genuinely creative writings are the product of more than a single motive and more than a single impulse in the poet’s mind.” 2 Yet, while psychoanalysis enables the literary critic to investigate the stimuli behind creativity, “the grandest and most overwhelming creations of art,” as Freud concludes in “The Moses of Michelangelo” (1914), “are still unsolved riddles to our understanding. We admire them, we feel overawed by them, but,” he maintains, “we are unable to say what they represent to us.”3 Michelangelo’s Moses exemplifies this mystery in sculpture, while “another of these inscrutable and wonderful works of art,” William “Shakespeare’s masterpiece,” Hamlet, does so in literature.4 The truly artistic process remains a psychoanalytical enigma. In accordance with Freudian precepts, a functioning member of society allows the “reality principle” to repress the “pleasure principle,” but artists must temporarily abjure repression. This renunciation affords them the freedom to shape their fantasies into substantive expressions. Their masterpieces arise from the interplay of “displacement, condensation and overdetermination,” which is common to the imaginative faculty during dreams, as Freud had posited in The Interpretation of Dreams, but these particular conflations become the creatively successful sublimation of personal neuroses.5 In short, great artists are a class of fascinating but annoying patients Brief Chronicles Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Redemptive Criticism: Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Stanley Cavell, and Democratic Culture
    REDEMPTIVE CRITICISM: SIGMUND FREUD, WALTER BENJAMIN, STANLEY CAVELL, AND DEMOCRATIC CULTURE By Lara K. Giordano Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Philosophy May, 2015 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Gregg M. Horowitz, Ph.D. José Medina, Ph.D. Lisa Guenther, Ph.D. Rebecca Comay, Ph.D. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work would not have been possible without the financial and academic support of the Vanderbilt Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities nor without the intellectual and moral support of Michael Alijewicz, Elizabeth Barnett, Cory Duclos, Cari Hovanec, Paddy McQueen, Rosie Seagraves, and Jen Vogt, the wonderful Fellows with whom I spent the 2012-2013 academic year. Many thanks to Dr. Lisa Guenther and Dr. José Medina, who served on my dissertation committee and from whose experience and research I have benefitted so much, as well as to my outside reader, Dr. Rebecca Comay. I’m also grateful to my friends and colleagues for the patience and enthusiasm that they brought to the many hours of conversation through which I found my way through this project. Most importantly, I would like to acknowledge the depth of my gratitude to Dr. Gregg Horowitz, my dissertation chair. A more supportive, generous, and inspiring mentor is, to me, unimaginable. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Works by Benjamin AP Arcades Project OGT Origin of German Tragic Drama SW1 Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926 SW2 Selected Writings,
    [Show full text]
  • Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression Author(S): Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz Source: Diacritics, Vol
    Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression Author(s): Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz Source: Diacritics, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 9-63 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465144 Accessed: 24/12/2009 21:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Diacritics. http://www.jstor.org ARCHIVE FEVER A FREUDIAN IMPRESSION JACQUESDERRIDA Let us not begin at the beginning, nor even at the archive.
    [Show full text]
  • Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression Author(S): Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz Source: Diacritics, Vol
    Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression Author(s): Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz Source: Diacritics, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 9-63 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465144 Accessed: 20/09/2009 21:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Diacritics. http://www.jstor.org ARCHIVE FEVER A FREUDIAN IMPRESSION JACQUESDERRIDA Let us not begin at the beginning, nor even at the archive.
    [Show full text]
  • Sigmund Freud: Religion As Neurosis
    3 Sigmund Freud: Religion as Neurosis igmund Freud (1856-1939) was a towering presence in twentieth­ Scentury intellectual life. A thinker of fertile imagination and learned originality, he was a pioneering figure in the rise of psychology as a field of scientific inquiry. Perhaps more significantly, he has become, with Karl Marx, one of the two chief mentors of the modern mind. For some he is the icon of a revolution in sexual behavior and morality; for others, a fearless excavator of the depths of the human personality; for still others, the scourge of traditional religion and morality, and a somber prophet of the perils that shadow the future of civilization. Freud himself savored his position as outsider in a Victorian world, bent on disturbing the intel­ lectual peace of the establishment. That posture of the brilliant dissenter, the modern Socrates in a complacent Athens, was the signature stance of his career. In early years, Freud was an outstanding student, with a gift for lan­ guages, a capacious memory, and a keen interest in science. He pursued conventional medicine until he encountered Josef Breuer and Martin Char­ cot, two pioneers in the study of mental illness under whose influence he turned from physiological research on the brain to psychological study of the mind. In working with patients he developed a novel way of investigat­ ing-and treating-their disorders that he came to call "psychoanalysis:' The technique centered on listening to patients, who were encouraged to report, by free association, whatever came into the mind: intimate secrets, distressing anxieties, and especially the contents of dreams.
    [Show full text]