Synopses & Reviews
"Vitally important .for those interested in psychoanalysis Many have questioned, and rightly so, the relevance of psychoanalysis for the new millenium. It is the richest of the psychological disciplines, and yet has come close to relegating itself to an intellectual and clinical antiquity due to its arrogance, suspicion of new ideas, and tribal social nature. This volume is a necessary and powerful corrective to psychoanalytic blindness.
Jeffrey Rubin offers psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts a new vision that preserves the powerful, unique contribution of the discipline while instilling a humane, receptive, and intellectually vital perspective on the field and its endeavors."
--Jerry Gold, Ph.D.
"By examining and confronting both psychoanalysis' strengths and its blind spots, this beautifully written and visionary book points the way toward a posthumanistic psychoanalysis characterized by self-reflectiveness, diversity, and an enormous emancipatory potential. A Psychoanalysis for Our Time is a breath of fresh air for all who are interested in the revitalization of contemporary psychoanalysis."
& Robert D. Stolorow, coauthor of Working Intersubjectively
Does psychoanalysis have a future?
Psychoanalysis is not a relic of a bygone era, argues Jeffrey B. Rubin in A Psychoanalysis for Our Time. Rather, it has profound relevance for our troubled time.
Steering a balanced course between Freud's virulent attackers and his loyalist defenders, Rubin discerns both blind spots and hidden strengths in psychoanalysis. He reveals its covert authoritarianism, Byzantine politics, censorship of dissident thinkers, residual sexism, and overly simplistic accounts of self. A Psychoanalysis for Our Time does not only cogently critique psychoanalysis, however; it also offers a visionary approach for its renewal, based on cultivating greater historical, theoretical, and methodological self-awareness within psychoanalysis.
Drawing on history, deconstructionism, feminism, anthropology, and Eastern meditative disciplines, Rubin portrays a psychoanalysis that is self-reflective and non-authoritarian, pluralistic and emancipatory. Encyclopedic in scope, integrative in spirit, A Psychoanalysis for Our Time is a brilliant and landmark work.
Review
"Vitally important .for those interested in psychoanalysis Many have questioned, and rightly so, the relevance of psychoanalysis for the new millenium. It is the richest of the psychological disciplines, and yet has come close to relegating itself to an intellectual and clinical antiquity due to its arrogance, suspicion of new ideas, and tribal social nature. This volume is a necessary and powerful corrective to psychoanalytic blindness. Jeffrey Rubin offers psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts a new vision that preserves the powerful, unique contribution of the discipline while instilling a humane, receptive, and intellectually vital perspective on the field and its endeavors." -Jerry Gold,Ph.D.
Review
"By examining and confronting both psychoanalysis' strengths and its blind spots, this beautifully written and visionary book points the way toward a posthumanistic psychoanalysis characterized by self-reflectiveness, diversity, and an enormous emancipatory potential. A Psychoanalysis for Our Time is a breath of fresh air for all who are interested in the revitalization of contemporary psychoanalysis."-Robert D. Stolorow,coauthor of Working Intersubjectively
Synopsis
Does psychoanalysis have a future?
Psychoanalysis is not a relic of a bygone era, argues Jeffrey B. Rubin in A Psychoanalysis for Our Time. Rather, it has profound relevance for our troubled time.
Steering a balanced course between Freud's virulent attackers and his loyalist defenders, Rubin discerns both blind spots and hidden strengths in psychoanalysis. He reveals its covert authoritarianism, Byzantine politics, censorship of dissident thinkers, residual sexism, and overly simplistic accounts of self. A Psychoanalysis for Our Time does not only cogently critique psychoanalysis, however; it also offers a visionary approach for its renewal, based on cultivating greater historical, theoretical, and methodological self-awareness within psychoanalysis.
Drawing on history, deconstructionism, feminism, anthropology, and Eastern meditative disciplines, Rubin portrays a psychoanalysis that is self-reflective and non-authoritarian, pluralistic and emancipatory. Encyclopedic in scope, integrative in spirit, A Psychoanalysis for Our Time is a brilliant and landmark work.
Synopsis
Cultural boundaries and group identity are often forged in relation to the Other. In every society, conceptions of otherness, which often reflect a group's fears and vulnerabilities, result in deep-rooted traditions of inclusion and exclusion that permeate the culture's literature, religion, and politics.
This volume explores the ways in which Jews have traditionally defined other groups and, in turn, themselves. The contributors, a distinguished international group of scholars, explore the discursive processss through which Jewish identity and culture have been constructed, disseminated, and perpetuated.
Among the topics addressed are: Others in the biblical world; the construction of gender in Roman-period Judaism; the Other as woman in the Greco-Roman world; the gentile as Other in rabbinic law; the feminine as Other in kabbalah; the reproduction of the Other in the Passover Haggadah; the Palestinian Arab as Other in Israeli politics and literature; the Other in Levinas and Derrida; Blacks as Other in American Jewish literature; the Jewish body image as symbol of Otherness; and women as Other in Israeli cinema.
Contributors to this interdisciplinary volume are: Jonathan Boyarin (New School for Social Research), Robert L. Cohn (Lafayette College), Gerald Cromer (Bar-Ilan University), Trude Dothan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Elizabeth Fifer (Lehigh University), Steven D. Fraade (Yale University), Sander L. Gilman (Cornell University), Hannan Hever (Tel Aviv University), Ross S. Kraemer (University of Pennsylvania), Orly Lubin (Tel Aviv University), Peter Machinist (Harvard University), Jacob Meskin (Williams College), Adi Ophir (Tel Aviv University), Ilan Peleg (Lafayette College), Miriam Peskowitz (University of Florida), Laurence J. Silberstein (Lehigh University), Naomi Sokoloff (University of Washington), and Elliot R. Wolfson (New York University).
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-245) and index.
About the Author
Laurence J. Silberstein is Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Studies at Lehigh University, where he directs the Philip and Muriel Berman Center for Jewish Studies.
Robert L. Cohn IS Associate Professor of Religion and Philip and Muriel Berman Scholar in Jewish Studies at Lafayette College, author of The Shape of Sacred Space: Four Biblical Studies, and co-author of Exploring the Hebrew Bible.