British Psychoanalytical Society
Book Notice

Psychoanalysis, History and Subjectivity
Now of the Past


by Roger Kennedy


Published by Brunner-Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group)

1583912606 Hbk £40.00
1583912614 Pbk £15.99   pp200

Clinical psychoanalysis since Freud has put reconstruction of the patient's history at the forefront of its task but in recent years, this approach has not been so prominent. This book aims to explore and re-evaluate the relationship between history and psychoanalysis.

Roger Kennedy develops new perspectives on historiography by applying psychoanalytic insight to the key issues of narrative, time and subjectivity in the construction of historical accounts. He also throws new light on the importance of history for and within psychoanalytic treatment. It is argued that human subjectivity is a major element in any historical enterprise, both the subjectivity of the historian or clinician and that of those being studied. Illustrated with clinical examples, Psychoanalysis, History and Subjectivity covers areas such as postmodernism, the nature of memory, clinical evidence and the place of trauma.

Psychoanalysis, History and Subjectivity will be of great interest both to professionals in the psychoanalytic and therapeutic fields and to historians.

Contents:
Introduction, or Swimming in the Past. Who Killed President Kennedy? A History of the Closure Threat to the Cassel Hospital, 1990. In my End is my Beginning. Greeks and Jews. Dreaming History. Fragmentation and Cohesion. One History or Many? Subject as Foundation. The Fragmented Subject. The Subject of Narrative. The Now of the Past.


A review will appear here in due course. (Ed.)

Contents: Introduction, or Swimming in the Past. Who Killed President Kennedy? A History of the Closure Threat to the Cassel Hospital, 1990. In my End is my Beginning. Greeks and Jews. Dreaming History. Fragmentation and Cohesion. One History or Many? Subject as Foundation. The Fragmented Subject. The Subject of Narrative. The Now of the Past.

Author Biography: Roger Kennedy is Consultant Psychotherapist at the Cassel Hospital, Richmond, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry at Imperial College London, and a Training Analyst at the British Psychoanalytical Society The books in this series can be ordered from Karnac Books Ltd

 

---