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This book integrates thinking about dilemmas faced in the context of the clinical practice of psychoanalysis today, with contemporary social and political concerns specific to the age of the global consumer marketplace.Beginning with an analysis of the fate of the concept of sublimation in Freud's work, and its relationship to the elaboration of the concept of the superego in 1923, Jared Russell examines how these concepts provide a lever for integrating psychoanalytic thinking with topics of urgent social concern, beyond the critique of ideology. Taking up topics such as the experience of time, addiction to consumption, and the general consequences of the insinuation of digital technologies at increasingly earlier stages in human development—and thinking these through the lens of what the clinical practice of psychoanalysis teaches us about intimate human relatedness—the book addresses how a philosophically oriented approach to psychoanalysis can illuminate our response to the problems of everyday life under conditions of late capitalism. Drawing on a diverse range of authors such as Freud, Heidegger, Hans Loewald, Christopher Bollas, Lacan, Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler, it is argued that the concepts of sublimation and of the superego must be reinvented with regard to both clinical and critical discourse today if psychoanalysis is to remain relevant to the major issues we face, both individually and collectively, in the twenty-first century. Sublimation and Superego: Psychoanalysis Between Two Deaths stages a unique encounter between philosophy, critical theory and clinical practice that will be of interest to psychoanalysts, scholars of twentieth-century continental philosophy, critical social theorists and mental health practitioners.

Patients in psychoanalytic treatment present with a variety of problems that reflect contemporary cultural issues and values. Clinical Evolutions on the Superego, Body, and Gender in Psychoanalysis explores the effects of such societal changes on psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, covering topics such as greed, envy and deception, body narcissism, gender roles, and relationships. Janice S. Lieberman includes numerous clinical vignettes and insights into working clinically with changing norms.Lieberman explores how changes in values and norms of behavior in the world beyond the consulting room have influenced what is now heard by analysts within it, using clinical data to demonstrate the psychological underpinnings of the values promulgated by current trends in politics and in society more widely. She explores what she observes to be'a new superego'; where deception abounds and often goes unpunished, where greed and envy have arguably increased and there is an enhanced emphasis on the body and its appearance. Traditional gender roles have been challenged in fortuitous ways, but a certain amount of chaos and confusion has ensued. Relationships are found and maintained using technology, yet many feel lonely and empty. She writes about the clinical dilemmas she has faced and offers suggestions for resolving them in working with today's patients. Lieberman also sees parallels for these developments in several artists'lives and in their work.Clinical Evolutions on the Superego, Body, and Gender in Psychoanalysis will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

Dissecting the Superego: Moralities Under the Psychoanalytic Microscope offers a comprehensive overview of how the superego, the workings of our moral faculties, may be understood and clinically utilised in contemporary practice.Drawing on the latest psychoanalytic thinking – as well as neurobiological, psychological and ethical perspectives- this book reinstates the superego as a central concept, and gives a clear guide to its importance in the modern world. In addition to the theoretical background of this construct, the contributors provide a clear guide to the importance of the superego in a range of pathological and everyday scenarios, and particularly in clinical settings. With an emphasis on the wider social and cultural context, Dissecting the Superego: Moralities Under the Psychoanalytic Microscope will be of interest to trainee and qualified psychotherapists, social workers, youth offender and probation workers and ethicists.

Due to the inherent contradiction in Freud's concept of the Superego, there is a gap in our psychoanalytic understanding of how conscience evolves. This distinction is essential for the successful treatment of patients dominated by a harsh Superego and provides valuable insight into how contemporary society evaluates moral decisions. The Petrified Ego argues for a revision of psychoanalytic theory to include instinct as the primary form of morality. It makes the case that our earliest, infantile notion of'good'and'bad'is rather founded on experiences which have been'safe or'threatening'. More often than not, this is the basis of our moral judgement of others. It is only through direct challenge to these visceral values that beliefs independent of the survival instinct can be forged. Why does this matter? Lack of distinction between the two means that consideration of the'right or wrong'or the'good or bad'of others'behaviour is no more than the rationalising of an instinctual response.

This book offers a new perspective on conscience as an as yet unrealized human potential, but a potential toward which human beings are naturally driven. A distinction is made between a'mature'or'healthy'conscience - a'conscience capable of maturation'- and the classical notion of the superego; it also postulates that the two may represent two separate lines of development. Conscience is seen to be inseparable from consciousness; the development of a mature conscience is seen to have its foundation in the development of a true or authentic self, while the classical notion of the superego is viewed as an often pathological manifestation of this natural mental potential. Theological ideas are relevant to any discussion of morality, conscience and guilt. Freud's and Bion's perspectives on religion are closely examined, revealing fundamental differences in their views of the mind. The author incorporates the metaphysical perspective central to Bion's concept of'O'as fundamental to an understanding of the development of a healthy conscience.

The superego is one of those psychoanalytic concepts that has been assimilated into ordinary language, like repression, the unconscious and the Oedipus complex. Because it has become such a familiar notion, its complexity may not always be appreciated, nor the controversy that it can inspire. Its origins, for example, its timing in the course of development, whether and how it is influenced by gender all these questions and others have been the source of lively disagreement. For psychoanalysts it is a fundamental concept of their discipline, but it belongs to a meta psychology whose value is often questioned, and opinions might vary on whether it remains truly alive as a generative, energising idea in contemporary psychoanalysis.

This book is a personal reappraisal of psychoanalytic theories in the light of clinical experience. The first part is about sexuality and begins where psychoanalysis began, with hysteria. The second part is about the ego and the super-ego, the relationship of which dominated Freud's writing from his middle period onwards. The last part is on narcissism and the narcissistic disorders, a major preoccupation of psychoanalysis in the second half of the twentieth century.

Author of many respected psychoanalytic works including Narcissism: A New Theory, Emotion and Spirit, Making of a Psychotherapist and Spirit of Sanity, the distinguished psychoanalyst Neville Symington's latest book expands, refines and deepens what has become an ever more impressive, far-reaching and absorbing inquiry into the nature of madness and sanity. It is Symington's central contention that the core psychopathology of our times can be identified and designated as narcissism, although self-centredness, egoism or solipsism might serve equally well. Critical of psychiatry's mere symptomatology, and of much psychotherapeutic practice as superficial and sterile, the present volume probes compellingly into the narcissistic pattern in an effort to delineate its structure in all its complexity and thereby gain a measure of perspective and distance from this most intractable of psychic states.