Psychoanalysis has always been a source of controversy throughout academic and popular culture. This controversy relates to questions of its true value, its scientific status, its politics and its therapeutic effectiveness. Psychoanalysis is regarded as a body of knowledge built on careful and painstaking exploration of complex clinical encounters, offering more detailed insights than can be obtained from other sources.
Key Features
- Thoroughly revised and updated: This second edition of For and Against Psychoanalysis examines key arguments surrounding psychoanalysis.
- Critical analysis: Discusses its standing as a scientific theory, its value as a method of therapy, and its contribution to identity construction debates.
- Accessible introduction: Provides a critical guide to the current standing of psychoanalysis, suitable for students and researchers.
- Wide-ranging relevance: Relevant for counselling, psychotherapy, psychology, social research, and social theory.
Additional Information
Psychoanalysis' defenders regard it as a body of knowledge built on careful and painstaking exploration of complex clinical encounters, offering more detailed and valid insights than can be obtained from other sources. Psychoanalysis is also a building block for considerations of human subjectivity in a wide range of academic disciplines and practical areas of work, from social theory to feminist studies, to counselling and psychotherapy.
At each of the key points discussed, there is something to be said 'for and against' psychoanalysis, with the balance depending on whether it deepens our understanding of human functioning, whether it is consistent with its own perceptions and theories or seems subservient to social pressures and norms, and whether it is coherent or muddled, evocative or sterile.
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