Labyrinths of the Mind: The Self in the Postmodern Age(SUNY series in Postmodern Culture)

Labyrinths of the Mind critically engages and creatively transforms the patterns of postmodern culture. It envisions strategies of self-discovery emerging in our era as a labyrinth, whose design evolves as we explore it. Nietzsche serves as our guide throughout the book as we wander the shopping mall, travel on an odyssey with Franz Kafka, critically explore the disorders of psychiatry and psychotherapy, attend a Nine Inch Nails concert during the Gulf War, wake on a medical examination table, and contemplate ourselves in the mirror of the biosphere.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction: Into the Labyrinth: The Self enters the Postmodern Condition A Sketch of the Labyrinth The Metaphysical Triad of Modernity Chapter 1. Nietzsche at the Mall: Deconstructing the Consumer The Church of the Consumer Decentering the Consumer Subject Learning and the Self-Transformation of the Consumer The Will to Power and the Will to Play New Forms of Empowerment Interlude: Nietzsche Goes to Hell (and so do we) Beyond Good and Evil: frohliches Kulturmachen Chapter 2. They Might be Giants: Mental Patients in Rebellion Psychiatry in the Labyrinth: Deconstructing Deviancy Postmodern Reflections on Modern Psychiatry: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) The Foundations of Modern Science The Lineage of Modern Psychiatry Dissidents from Scientific Orthodoxy The DSM-IV Choose a Case Postmodern Critics of Modernism Insanity, Autopoiesis and the Opening of the Lifeworld A Rose by Any Other Name Chapter 3. Postmodern Metamorphosis: The Transformation of the Self from Modern to Postmodern Forms, or The Power of the Uninterpretable in Kafka's Verwandlung Marxist Criticism Psychoanalytic Criticism Deleuze and Guattari: Toward a Postmodern Landscape Postmodern Metamorphosis Chapter 4. Nietzsche at the Altar: Situating the Devotee Prologue Event-Scene I: The Situation: A Rock Concert Event-Scene II: Situation: War Rages The Neocapitalist Imagology of the Sacred, or, Bush Does Baghdad : The TV Mini Series Event-Scene III: The Dionysia The Devotee of Life, or, God Quits Moralizing, Gets a Gender Change and Cultivates a Sense of Humor Event-Scene IV: Encore The Philosophy of Laughter, or, Adam Flushes Money and Eve Ditches Bridge when they discover Jouissance Chapter 5. Nietzsche's Joyous Health and Dionysian Ecology Nietzsche on the Table? Critical Narratives of a Postmodern "Im-Patient" Nietzche's Case The Narrative of Illness and Well-Being in Nietzsche's Autobiographical Writings On the sick Bed?: Nietzsche's "Joyous Illness" "Diverse" versus "Normal" Health Die Froliche Gesundheit: Toward a New Philosophy of Health A Genealogy of the Sick Bed: The Birth of the Clinic Climbing the Magic Mountain: Der Zauberberg as the Cultural Construction of Illness/Health Nietzsche Breaks out of the Sanatorium Off the Table and On the Road: The Will to Power The Ecological Self: Humanity and Nature in Nietzsche and Goethe The Ecological Sensibility: Nietzsche and Goethe on Mind and Nature Will the Genuine Ubermensch Please Rise? Ecological Premonitions: Nietzsche, Goethe and Dionysian Ecology Romanticism and Classicism: Toward a Genealogy of Cybernetics The Ethical Self: Beyond Good and Evil Toward a Poststructuralist Cybernetics The Will to Life: The Ecological Ubermensch Conclusion Creating Alternatives: Toward a New Joyous Science Notes Works Cited Index

About the Author :
Daniel R. White is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Postmodern Ecology: Communication, Evolution, and Play, also published by SUNY Press. Gert Hellerich is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bremen, Germany. He has published two books in Germany on social and postmodern issues.

Review :
"Labyrinths of the Mind traces the archaeology of 'the self' within the context of shifts in communication and culture and breakdowns in modernist institutions. Drawing on Lacan, Foucault, Kafka, Kristeva, Bateson, and, especially, Nietzsche, its central move is to open up ideas of self-formation, what it terms, in its central metaphor, 'the postmodern labyrinth of the self.' At the heart of the book is a critique of the human sciences for what Foucault has termed its 'technologies of control.' Situating postmodernism as 'a radically enlightened diversity of movements,' the authors explore the effects of this decentralization on the 'self.' Their particular interest is to move the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and therapy in postmodern directions. White and Hellerich offer a masterful discussion of Nietzsche's seeming contradictions in his revaluations of consciousness and will, reason and truth." - Patti Lather, Ohio State University "This book is full of provocative flashes of brilliance, of odd juxtapositions of various authors, ideas, outcomes." - Mary Gergen, Pennsylvania State University