Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen Boeken

An absorbing, moving sequence of portraits of the men and women treated by Sigmund Freud.

Just what is the subject in Freud? The author draws on a wide range of French critical thought to argue that the subject is always fundamentally identification, in an even more radical sense than has previously been postulated. Rigorously examining the texts of Freud, he arrives at compelling rereadings of familiar concepts, concluding with a disturbing new analysis of the social bond.

Exploring the rise of psychoanalysis, the book reveals how it secured its influential cultural status not by defeating competing theories but by reshaping historical narratives. It delves into the intricate interplay between psychoanalysis and its contemporaries, highlighting the strategic maneuvers that allowed it to dominate intellectual discourse. Through this lens, the text examines the broader implications of this rescripting on contemporary understanding of psychology and culture.

Challenging conventional views, this book posits that mental illnesses stem from the differing expectations between therapists and patients rather than being categorized as diseases. It explores the implications of this perspective on treatment and understanding of mental health, encouraging readers to reconsider the nature of mental illness and its societal perceptions.

In this brief but comprehensive introduction to Freud's theories, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen provides a step-by-step overview of his ideas regarding the unconscious, the cure, sexuality, drives, and culture, highlighting their indebtedness to contemporary neurophysiological and biological assumptions. The picture of Freud that emerges is very different from that of the fact-finding scientist he claimed to be. Bold conceptual innovations - repression, infantile sexuality, the Oedipus complex, narcissism, the death drive - were not discoveries made by Freud, but speculative constructs placed on clinical material to satisfy the requirements of the general theory of the mind and culture that he was building. Freud's Thinking provides a final accounting of this mirage of the mind that was psychoanalysis.