Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and the Origins of Meaning

This title was first published in 2001. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of psychoanalysis, and on considerations of the nature of psychoanalytic theory itself, this book reveals new possibilities which psychoanalysis offers for an understanding of the mind - more broadly, the subject of mental states - and its relation to the world. Entailing a re-examination of an approach embedded in the work of certain Continental thinkers, notably Heidegger and Hegel, the connections between philosophy and psychoanalysis presented in this book represent a fresh departure. Linking Kleinian notions of an "inner world" of unconscious phantasy, to philosophical conceptions of non-linguistic meaning whose significance for the psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity has been hitherto overlooked, Snelling argues that psychoanalysis demands a significant place in our philosophical understanding of ourselves.

Autorentext

David Snelling

Inhalt

Contents: Introduction; Cavell, Klein and the Extension of Commonsense Psychology: The pattern of commonsense explanation; Marcia Cavell's reconstruction of psychoanalysis; The challenge from Kleinian theory; Unconscious phantasy and mental life: The ubiquity of unconscious phantasy; The basic nature of phantasy; How Kleinian and Freudian theory connect; From Freud to Phenomenology: The Freudian object; A Wittgensteinian approach to phenomenology; Heidegger and meaning; Pre-reflective intentionality: some consequences; Hegel and Being-in-the-World?: Hegel's doctrine of 'soul'; Hegel and madness; The pre-reflective basis of skill and habit; Wilfred Bion and the Psychoanalytic Theory of Thinking: Klein and symbol-formation; Psychosis and infancy; Doing things with words; Bion's 'empiricism'; Psychoanalysis, Psychosis and Being: 'Falling-out-of-the-World': Psychoanalysis and the pre-reflective level; Sartre's loss of meaning; Further applications; Internal Objects and Ontology: Hegel's holistic metaphysics; Internal objects assessed; Objects and universals; Hegel and Holism: Unifying pluralities, sundering unities; Unity, the universal and the internal object; Unity and holistic metaphysics; Conclusion: the ramifications of holism; Bibliography; Index.