The Idea of the Past: History, Science, and Practice in American Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalytic Crossroads, 1)
Books / Hardcover
Books › Psychology › General
ISBN: 0814750737 / Publisher: NYU Press, October 1993
Lamm redraws the map of American psychoanalytic argument and takes a fresh look at current debates on narrative truth, metapsychology, and the role of the past in theory and therapy. Rejecting the exclusivist claims of scientific and hermeneutic psychoanalysis, he argues that the task is no longer to unify psychoanalysis into a homogeneous discourse, but rather to ascertain the conditions under which each mode of discourse history, science, and practice is applicable and appropriate. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
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The advancement of psychoanalysis in America has reached an impasse. Scientists are pitted against hermeneuticists, theorists against practitioners, and narrative truth against historical truth, reflecting and refracting the role of the past in theory and therapy through a host of competing approaches. Leonard Lamm argues against the impossible task of unifying psychoanalysis into a homogenous discourse, proposing instead the acceptance of a pluralist model in which different modes of discourse are applicable and appropriate in different circumstances.This innovative work sets out to unravel the opaque idea of the psychoanalytic past as expressed in countless theoretical voices, from object relations to Lacanianism to ego psychology. Dr. Lamm redraws the map of American psychoanalytic argument and takes a fresh look at current debates on narrative truth, metapsychology, and the role of the past in psychoanalysis. A thoughtful model emerges in which historical, scientific, and practical discourses and constructions of the past do not compose a hierarchy in psychoanalytic understanding. Instead, they are voices in a conversation in which they may differ without disagreeing.
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