Whose Freud?
The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture
Edited by Peter Brooks and Alex Woloch
One hundred years after the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud remains the most frequently cited author of our culture—and one of the most controversial. To some he is the presiding genius of modernity, to others the author of its symptomatic illnesses. The current position of psychoanalysis is very much at issue. Is it still valid as a theory of the mind? Have its therapeutic applications been rendered obsolete by drugs? Why does it still figure in debates about sexual identity, despite its rejection by many feminists? How does it contribute to cultural analysis?
This book offers a new assessment of the status of psychoanalysis as a discipline and a discourse in contemporary culture. It brings together an exceptional group of theorists and practitioners, such partisans and critics of Freud as Frederic Crews, Judith Butler, Leo Bersani, Juliet Mitchell, Robert Jay Lifton, Richard Wollheim, Jonathan Lear, and others.
These contributors, who are active in literature, philosophy, film, history, cultural studies, neuroscience, psychotherapy, and other disciplines, debate how psychoanalysis has enriched—and been enriched by—these fields.
Peter Brooks is Tripp Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is also the author of The Melodramatic Imagination and coeditor of Law's Stories, both published by Yale University Press. Alex Woloch is assistant professor of English at Stanford University.
"These essays on one of the chief architects of the of modern mind are open minded and rigorous. Whose Freud? will be of major importance."—Volney Gay, Prof. and Chair, Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University
"Pulling no punches, Brooks and Woloch begin with Frederic Crews's scathing, provocative attack on Freud's theories as a science. The other sections provide some equally thought provoking presentations on such disparate topics as Freud and homosexuality and the 'psychoanalysis" of Nazi architecture. . . . An excellent academic treatment of the relative value of Freud at the turn of the millennium."—Library Journal
"Whose Freud deserves a respected place in the immense ever-growing literature on the assessment of psychoanalysis and Freud's place in history."—Sophie Freud, American Journal of Psychotherapy
"[A]cademicians—whether in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, the humanities, or neuroscience—will probably enjoy it as a delectable, far-ranging, intellectual feast."—Carl J. Tuss, MSW, Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health
Realist Vision
Peter Brooks
Law's Stories
Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law
Edited by Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz
The Melodramatic Imagination
Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess
Peter Brooks; With a new preface