Subversion and Desire : Pathways to Transindividuation

This book presents the importance of subversion in psychotherapy and revaluates the positive role of desire as an integrating force in the individual and collective psyche. The text provides a solid philosophical frame which helps to expand the scope of contemporary psychotherapy at a time when it is being curtailed by a reductionist neoliberal zeitgeist. The latter emphasizes cognition over motivation, behaviour over emotion, consciousness over the unconscious, the self over the organism, and tends to reframe psychotherapeutic practice as a reprogramming of individuals. In response, this book outlines concerted acts of "soft subversion" which can undermine the status quo and open new possibilities of individual and collective transformation. The author also retraces and reassesses some of the more inspiringly subversive legacies in psychoanalysis, with a view to sketching a life-affirming psychology wedded to broadminded political engagement. Covering psychotherapy, politics, art and literature, and social and cultural theory, this book will appeal to anyone interested in understanding how psychotherapy and philosophy can be more radical and subversive endeavours. Cover Endorsements Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Also by Manu Bazzano Books Music Albums Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Player of Tender Loves Notes Chapter 2: Counter-Fantasies Notes Chapter 3: Where It Was, the Other Shall Be Notes Chapter 4: After Attachment Theory Notes Chapter 5: What Is the Body? The Organism The Unconscious The Body-without-Organs The First Layer: The Organism The Second Layer: Signifiance (Not Significance) The Third Layer: Subjectification Notes Chapter 6: Power, Psyche, and Poisoned Solidarities Notes Chapter 7: Transformer Notes Chapter 8: Of the Devil's Party Notes Chapter 9: A Conspiracy of Orphans Notes Chapter 10: Men Going Down Notes Chapter 11: The Trauma Club Chapter 12: Therapy as Art and Praxis Notes Chapter 13: Of Strawberries and Salty Dogs Chapter 14: Brooklyn Rimbaud Chapter 15: Help Me Become Free of You Chapter 16: I is Another Notes Chapter 17: The Skin is Faster than the Word Obsessive Measurement Disorder Bodily Ontology Android Therapy Data before Existence A number is a signifier like any other The Reign of Calculability Humanly Yours Becoming-Animal Notes Chapter 18: Chronic Chapter 19: Of Joyrides & Killjoys Chapter 20: As Petals from a Flower Of the Dead that Seize the Living On Gilbert Simondon Being-Time Individuality and Transindividuality And yet ... Notes Index "This book presents the importance of subversion in psychotherapy and revaluates the positive role of desire as an integrating force in the individual and collective psyche. The text provides a solid philosophical frame which helps expand the scope of contemporary psychotherapy at a time when it is being curtailed by a reductionist neoliberal zeitgeist. The latter emphasizes cognition over motivation, behaviour over emotion, consciousness over the unconscious, the self over the organism, and tends to reframe psychotherapeutic practice as a reprogramming of individuals. In response, this book outlines concerted acts of 'soft subversion' which can undermine the status quo and open new possibilities of individual and collective transformation. The author also retraces and reassesses some of the more inspiringly subversive legacies in psychotherapy, with a view to sketching a life-affirming psychology wedded to broadminded political engagement. Covering psychotherapy, politics, art and literature, and social and cultural theory, this book will appeal to anyone interested in understanding how psychotherapy and philosophy can be more radical and subversive endeavours"-- Provided by publisher