Synopses & Reviews
What is psychoanalysis? Whereas there was once a time when proponents of "mainstream psychoanalysis" could point to the preeminence of Freud's drive theory and the version of the human condition associated with it-man as seeking pleasure in an erotically tinged universe-contemporary psychoanalysis is a fractured and contentious discipline in which competing theories share little more than the basic concepts of unconscious mental processes, repression, and transference.
Taking the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions engendered by psychoanalysis over the past several decades as an encouraging point of departure rather than as evidence of the dissolution of the "psychoanalytic tradition," Psychoanalytic Versions of the Human Condition makes explicit how, within each major theory, a particular story about the nature of the world and what it means to be human decisively shapes how the clinician conceptualizes individual psychopathology and approaches treatment. A chorus of voices that both challenges and reaffirms the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Versions of the Human Condition asks urgent questions-about the politics of psychoanalytic knowledge, and about how the profession is situated and operates in our contemporary culture. Whether Freudian, Jungian, Kleinian, Kohutian, Lacanian, or hybrid, the clinician will find this book a useful guide to understanding how each theory's "philosophy of life" infuses clinical work.
Review
"Psychologist Ness offers compelling evidence for the cultural and structural reasons why inner-city girls fight."-Choice Magazine,Choice Magazine
Review
"This is a scholarly book in which a case is made for the heretofore undocumented reasons why girls maintain a fighting stance both in school and in the streets . . . The ten pages of references attest to the academically rigorous research that went into this ground-breaking book." -Peggy Flemming,VOYA Library Magazine
Synopsis
In low-income U.S. cities, street fights between teenage girls are common. These fights take place at school, on street corners, or in parks, when one girl provokes another to the point that she must either “step up” or be labeled a “punk.” Typically, when girls engage in violence that is not strictly self-defense, they are labeled “delinquent,” their actions taken as a sign of emotional pathology. However, in
Why Girls Fight, Cindy D. Ness demonstrates that in poor urban areas this kind of street fighting is seen as a normal part of girlhood and a necessary way to earn respect among peers, as well as a way for girls to attain a sense of mastery and self-esteem in a social setting where legal opportunities for achievement are not otherwise easily available.
Ness spent almost two years in west and northeast Philadelphia to get a sense of how teenage girls experience inflicting physical harm and the meanings they assign to it. While most existing work on girls violence deals exclusively with gangs, Ness sheds new light on the everyday street fighting of urban girls, arguing that different cultural standards associated with race and class influence the relationship that girls have to physical aggression.
About the Author
Paul Marcus, a psychoanalyst and member of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, is the author of Autonomy in the Extreme Situation: Bruno Bettelheim, the Nazi Concentration Camps, and the Mass Society.
Alan Rosenberg is Professor of Philosophy at Queens College and coeditor of Martin Heidegger and the Holocaust.