Overview

This book offers a new account of Freud’s work by reading him as the social theorist and philosopher he always aspired to be, and not as the medical scientist he publicly claimed to be. In doing so, the author demonstrates that’s Freud’s social, moral, and cultural thought constitutes the core of his life’s work as a theorist, and is the thread that binds his voluminous writings together: from his earliest essays on the neuroses, to his foundational writings on dreams and sexuality, and to his far-ranging reflections on art, religion, and the dynamics of culture. Returning to the fundamental questions and concerns that animate Freud’s work - the nature of evil; the origins of religion, morality, and tradition; and the looming threat of resurgent barbarism - Freud as a Social and Cultural Theorist provides the first systematic re-examination of Freud’s social and cultural thought in more than a generation. As such, it will be of interest to social and cultural theorists, social philosophers, intellectual and cultural historians, and those with interests in psychoanalysis and its origins.

Full Product Details

Author:   Howard L. Kaye (Franklin and Marshall College, USA)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.453kg
ISBN:  

9780367582968

ISBN 10:   0367582961
Pages:   250
Publication Date:   30 June 2020
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Was Freud a Medical Scientist or a Social Theorist? 2. In Search of the ""Royal Road"" 3. The ""Compelling Call"" of Psychology and the Foundational Texts of 1899-1905 4. Psychoanalysis as Cultural Critique: From Frustrated Sexuality to the Problem of Authority 5. Totem and Taboo: The Emergence of Freud as a Social Theorist 6. From Metapsychology to Social Psychology 7. Death, the Uncanny, and the Post-war Crisis of Authority 8. The Psychology of the Ego and the Riddles of Mind and Culture 9. The Work of Culture 10. Freud’s Testament Conclusion: The Freud Who Endures Index"

Reviews

[...] Kaye's detailed and scholarly defence of Freud as a social theorist commands our respect and close attention. - Bryan Turner, Journal of Classical Sociology [a] highly intelligent and artfully compressed study of Freud. [...] the recession of Freud's reputation clears the way for a more rational and temperate appreciation of him, one that does not claim (or deny) too much and is not overly tainted by passion or partisanship. That would be a fair description of what Kaye's book attempts to do ...neither to praise Freud inordinately nor to bury him prematurely, but instead to understand him more accurately, and make a case for his enduring importance as a social thinker. Not, he insists, as a scientist. [...] Kaye's treatment of Freud recalls, in many ways, the great age of sociological writing, when sociology was philosophical inquiry of the highest order, and its practitioners--Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Simmel, Toennies, among others--belonged in a long and illustrious intellectual succession tracing back to Tocqueville, Hume, Hobbes (to whom Kaye compares Freud), and all the way to the ancients. - Wilfred M. McClay, The Hedgehog Review Instead of seeing Freud as a reckless scientist who failed to develop clinical protocols for his neurotic patients, Kaye wants us to see him as a social theorist who wrote broadly about social issues while supporting his family through his medical practice. Kaye wants to put the cart back behind the horse. The mistake he sees us making with Freud is, I suppose, a bit like the mistake of thinking of Alfred Schutz as a banker rather than as a phenomenologist or of Erving Goffman as a stock market expert and antique dealer rather than as a sociologist. [...] The scholarship surrounding Freud is intimidating, and Kaye has mastered it and is able to show this mastery while writing in a clear and elegant way. His book s

[...] Kaye's detailed and scholarly defence of Freud as a social theorist commands our respect and close attention. - Bryan Turner, Journal of Classical Sociology [a] highly intelligent and artfully compressed study of Freud. [...] the recession of Freud's reputation clears the way for a more rational and temperate appreciation of him, one that does not claim (or deny) too much and is not overly tainted by passion or partisanship. That would be a fair description of what Kaye's book attempts to do ...neither to praise Freud inordinately nor to bury him prematurely, but instead to understand him more accurately, and make a case for his enduring importance as a social thinker. Not, he insists, as a scientist. [...] Kaye's treatment of Freud recalls, in many ways, the great age of sociological writing, when sociology was philosophical inquiry of the highest order, and its practitioners--Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Simmel, Toennies, among others--belonged in a long and illustrious intellectual succession tracing back to Tocqueville, Hume, Hobbes (to whom Kaye compares Freud), and all the way to the ancients. - Wilfred M. McClay, The Hedgehog Review Instead of seeing Freud as a reckless scientist who failed to develop clinical protocols for his neurotic patients, Kaye wants us to see him as a social theorist who wrote broadly about social issues while supporting his family through his medical practice. Kaye wants to put the cart back behind the horse. The mistake he sees us making with Freud is, I suppose, a bit like the mistake of thinking of Alfred Schutz as a banker rather than as a phenomenologist or of Erving Goffman as a stock market expert and antique dealer rather than as a sociologist. [...] The scholarship surrounding Freud is intimidating, and Kaye has mastered it and is able to show this mastery while writing in a clear and elegant way. His book shows us a way out of the stark choice of fully embracing Freud's doctrines or decisively rejecting them. Kaye does not extend his discussion to the sociological reception of Freud-that is a separate task all together. What he does do-and do so well-is to keep Freud relevant and central to social theory. - Philip Manning, Contemporary Sociology Howard Kaye offers an important and compelling demonstration of Freud's continued significance as a cultural and social theorist. Kaye provides a deep reading of several important texts of Freud, responds to many of his interlocutors, and he situates him within the political, intellectual and social context of his time. [...] through his beautifully explicated, meticulously crafted engagements with many of [Freud's] important writings, Kaye makes apparent that Freud remains a major social theorist for our contemporary age. [...] By underscoring Freud's contributions to modern social thought, Kaye importantly closes the distance between this formula of the separation of psyche and society, and thereby demonstrates that Freud made an important mark beyond his elaboration of the character of the human mind itself. The social and cultural world, absent an understanding of the people who comprise it and the non-rational features of human though, is incomplete without according the human psyche its proper place in social and cultural thought. Kaye's book, in this way, is significant for keeping Freud alive among those who help define the canon of classical Western social and cultural thought. - Jeffrey Prager, Society Howard Kaye's substantive account of Freud; contribution to the disciplines of social and cultural theories has made Freud's cultural concerns that are implicit more explicit. He has shown that there are threads of internal consistencies that subserve Freud's contributions to modern social thought [and] has demonstrated that there is a sustained presence of social and cultural issues in Freud's metapsychology. - Maurice Apprey, Society What is the language of psychoanalysis? In Howard Kaye's book, we find a sustained argument that to understand it as an outmoded biology, or as the language that supervened upon a variably successful format of therapy, is to make a profound mistake. Kaye gives great importance to Sigmund Freud's carefully chosen words, articulating a philosophical ambition for his language. In so doing, Kaye argues that we should comprehend both Freud's intellectual biography, and the theory he elaborated with and against his proponents, critics, and defectors from the psychoanalytic movement, as addressing the core problems of social and cultural theory. - Isaac Ariail Reed, Society

Author Information

Howard L. Kaye is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Franklin and Marshall College, USA, and the author of The Social Meaning of Modern Biology.

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