Freud as Philosopher
Subtitle: Metapsychology After Lacan
Publisher: Routledge
Published: September 21, 2001
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780415925891
First sentence: This book seeks to regrasp the meaning of Freud's psychoanalytic theory and to chart its relation to some of the main currents of contemporary philosophy.
Description: Using Jacques Lacan's work as a key, this groundbreaking work reassesses the philosophical significance of Freud's most ambitious general theory of mental functioning: metapsychology. Richard Boothby forcefully argues that this theory has been misunderstood, and consequently, Freud's impact on philosophy has been unjustly muted. Freud as Philosopher illuminates in a fresh and newly accessible way the central points of Freud's metapsychology -- including the guiding metaphor of psychical energy and the final, enigmatic theory of the twin drives of life and death -- through the three cardinal Lacanian categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. This exciting and brilliant book will have a definitive impact on how psychoanalysis is conceived in relation to philosophy.