Origins and Ends of the Mind

Psychoanalysis claims that the individual human mind is structured by its childhood relationships with its parents. But the theory of attachment, evolutionary psychology and contemporary philosophy of mind have all recently re-introduced new dimensions of innateness into mental development and pathology. If attachment is an instinct, then what is the psychological status of the child's relation to the mother? If the mind is in part a product of evolution, then how far down do the inhibitory mechanisms of the mind go? If the mind of the child is shaped by their encounter with a set of prohibitions, how, in the light of contemporary 'cognitive science' and philosophy of mind, can the child be conceived as 'taking on' a rule? How is the construction of the mind related to the normative ends of cognitive experience? Today, it is Lacanian psychoanalysis which most vigorously defends psychoanalytic theory and practice from the encroachment of the biological and 'cognitive' sciences. But a paradigm shift nevertheless appears to be underway, in which the classical psychoanalytic theories about the Oedipus complex, primary and secondary repression, sexual difference and psychosexuality, the role of symbols,etc, are being dismantled and reintegrated into a new synthesis of biological and psychological theories. In this collection of theoretical essays by philosophers and psychoanalysts, encounters are brought about between Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis on the one hand, and attachment theory, evolutionary psychology and philosophy of mind on the other.

Part 1
Origin and End:
Relations between Psychic Origins and Psychic Normativity

The Missing Link between Psychoanalysis and Attachment Theory: Michael Balint's New Beginning
Philippe van Haute

Quasi-beliefs and Crazy Beliefs: Subdoxastic States and the 'Special Characteristics' of the Unconscious
Brian Garvey

Paradoxes of Normativity in Lacanian Psychoanalysis.
Or: Is Castration Necessary?
Christian Kerslake

Lacan and ethics: the Ends of Analysis and the Production of the Subject
Philip Derbyshire

Part 2
Psychoanalysis and Evolution

The Ultimate Causes of Paranoia: a Cross-Pathological and Psychodynamic Approach
Andreas De Block

Reinterpreting Freud's Genealogy of Culture
Tinneke Beeckman

The Thanatosis of Enlightenment
Ray Brassier Part 3
Philosophy and the Psychosexual Subject

Poetic Pleasure, Psychosis, and Perversion: Freud on Fore-pleasure
Thomas Geyskens

The Origins and Ends of 'Sex'
Stella Sandford

Love as Ontology: Psychoanalysis against Philosophy
Justin Clemens

Psychoanalysis: A Non-Ontology of the Human
Marc de Kesel

Format: Edited volume - ebook - PDF

218 pages

ISBN: 9789461660374

Publication: October 22, 2007

Series: Figures of the Unconscious 7

Languages: English

Stock item number: 50106

Christian Kerslake is Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University (London, UK)

Ray Brassier is Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University (London, UK).