Negativity in Psychoanalysis: Theory and Clinic

Negativity in Psychoanalysis examines the role of negativity in psychoanalytic theory and its application in clinical settings. While theories around negativity and death drive have become routinized within philosophical interpretations of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, they often mask an inherent positivity. This volume assembles highly esteemed psychoanalytic theorists and clinicians for an in-depth discussion on the topic. It features comprehensive introductions to Freudian and Lacanian perspectives, alongside contemporary clinical and cultural issues. The book also investigates how psychoanalytic negativity influences and is influenced by social, theological, and philosophical dialogues. This work will prove invaluable for practicing psychoanalysts and those in training, while also appealing to academics and scholars in critical and cultural theory, continental and post-continental philosophy, and sociology, especially those whose research intersects clinical and theoretical traditions.

Table of Contents:
Editor biography Contributor biography Acknowledgements Introduction Duane Rousselle Section 1: Foundations1. Ellie Ragland - “Who is Transferring What to Whom?”2. Sergio Benvenuto - “On Sigmund Freud’s ‘Negation’” Section 2: Drive & Desire3. Colin Wright - “Turning Opportunities into Crises: The Lacanian Antidote to Toxic Positivity”4. Todd McGowan - “The Ethics of the Death Drive”5. Simone Medina Polo - “Humility and Humiliation of the Drive: Comedy and Tragedy in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis”6. Mark Murphy - “Apophatic Psychoanalysis: The Plenitude of the Negative” Section 3: Clinical Implications7. Leon S. Brenner - “Negation Beyond Neurosis”8. Cyrus Saint Amand Poliakoff - “Spiraling”9. Aino-Marjatta Mäki - “What is Non-Negativisable Jouissance?: From Negation to a Singular Norm”10. Ian Parker - “Badbeing: What’s So Bad About Resistance in the Clinic?”11. Stijn Vanheule - “Singularity and the Real that cannot be Written: On Lacan’s Use of Frege in his Later Work” Section 4: Spare Parts12. Nicholas Balaisis - “‘To Create, Perform, Produce Psychology From Scratch’: Negativity in the Work of Wolfgang Giegerick”13. Mark Featherstone - “(Un)Mourning the End of History”14. Wanyoung Kim - “Trauma, Negativity, and Death in Spielrein, Heidegger and Buddhist Thought”15. Joel Crombez - “Why Positive Thought Must be Negated in the Analytic Session: Negative Dialectic as Therapeutic Technique”16. Juliette Tocino-Smith - “The Hau Must be Returned: The Exile of the Dead and Its Effects on the Western Imaginary”

About the Author :
Duane Rousselle, PhD, is a Canadian sociological theorist and practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst. He is a visiting associate professor of sociology at the University Colleges of Dublin and Cork. Mark Gerard Murphy is an editor for the political journal and blog Taiwan Insight and a lecturer at St. Mary’s University, Scotland, Gillis Centre, where he convenes courses on ethics, philosophy, and mystical theology and spirituality. His research interests include the relationship between psychoanalysis and mystical theology. He has published in the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory and the European Journal of Psychoanalysis.

Review :
"The use of the notion of negativity in psychoanalysis is double-edged: while it definitely remains the philosophical concept which provides the key to what Freud called death-drive, it simultaneously opens up the path to the philosophical colonization of psychoanalysis - psychoanalytic theory is de facto reduced to another version of "philosophy of negativity" with no links to clinical experience. Here the volume edited by Murphy and Rousselle sets the record straight: it articulates negativity as a concept immanent to psychoanalytic experience and practice, as well as in our social reality. For this reason alone, it deserves to be read by thousands!" - Slavoj Žižek, Professor, European Graduate School; International Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London; senior researcher, Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia