Orientations - 1: Psychoanalysis

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Psychoanalysis has always been controversial, complex and hard to categorise. Is it a form of therapy or of social theory? Can it really claim to be a respectable science? Is it a branch of psychology or of philosophy, or neither? This introductory text uses clear language and everyday examples to take the reader, step by step, through the key ideas of psychoanalysis and its central figures. The first five chapters deal with the founding father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, while the second five examine the ideas of the key post-Freudians, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, and Jacques Lacan, before considering some of the most influential critiques of psychoanalysis coming from feminism and the philosophy of science. Despite its continuing controversial status, Colin Wright argues that psychoanalytic theory is in fact ideally placed to describe the oddities of emotional life in today's consumer society. Thus, as well as an understanding of fundamental theoretical terms such as 'repression', the 'unconscious', 'sexuality' and the infamous 'Oedipus Complex', readers of this lively volume will also come away with a general grasp of the history of, and the debates attending, the international psychoanalytic movement.