Irreverence and Psychoanalysis

This book explores the role of psychoanalysis as an irreverent discipline—questioning received wisdoms, challenging internal and external constraints, and unearthing links between the outlandish and the transformative.

This book explores the role of psychoanalysis as an irreverent discipline—questioning received wisdoms, challenging internal and external constraints, and unearthing links between the outlandish and the transformative. Psychoanalysis is a field exquisitely suited to embracing complication and contradiction. Irreverence can be complex, as it risks disrespect for what others value or cherish. Yet a willingness to challenge the sacred can expose ideologies and hypocrisies that protect existing power structures both outside and inside the psychoanalytic field. The chapters in this volume span this territory engaging tensions between tradition and change and raising profound questions about what the future holds. From the political to the personal, the psychic to the social, the mind to the body, the voices in this volume, which include some of the most influential thinkers in contemporary psychoanalysis, speak to what is often left silenced or unquestioned. This is essential reading for all psychoanalysts, as well as for readers across other disciplines, dilettantisms, and curiosities interested in probing the unruly forces that give psychoanalysis its particular power.