Freud's Patients
- 256 pages
- 9 hours of reading
An absorbing, moving sequence of portraits of the men and women treated by Sigmund Freud.
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen Books
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen investigates the construct of psychic "facts," emphasizing how historical accounts of mental disorders intertwine with ongoing redefinitions. His work, shaped by French post-structuralist philosophy, delves deeply into the history and philosophy of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Borch-Jacobsen is recognized for his polemical stances within persistent debates surrounding psychoanalysis. His approach highlights how historical and social contexts actively shape psychological states.
Freud's Thinking
An Introduction
In this brief but comprehensive introduction to Freud's theories, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen provides a step-by-step overview of his ideas regarding the unconscious, the cure, sexuality, drives, and culture, highlighting their indebtedness to contemporary neurophysiological and biological assumptions. The picture of Freud that emerges is very different from that of the fact-finding scientist he claimed to be. Bold conceptual innovations - repression, infantile sexuality, the Oedipus complex, narcissism, the death drive - were not discoveries made by Freud, but speculative constructs placed on clinical material to satisfy the requirements of the general theory of the mind and culture that he was building. Freud's Thinking provides a final accounting of this mirage of the mind that was psychoanalysis.