Rereading Freud

Continental philosophers examine Freud's metapsychology.Rereading Freud assembles eminent philosophical scholars and clinical practitioners from continental, pragmatic, feminist, and psychoanalytic paradigms to examine Freud's metapsychology. Fundamentally distorted and misinterpreted by generations of English speaking commentators, Freud's theories are frequently misunderstood within psychoanalysis today. This book celebrates and philosophically critiques Freud's most important contribution to understanding humanity: that psychic reality is governed by the unconscious mind. The contributors focus on several of Freud's most influential theories, including the nature and structure of dreams; infantile sexuality; drive and defense; ego development; symptom formation; feminine psychology; the therapeutic process; death; and the question of race. In so doing, they shed light on the ontological commitments Freud introduces in his metapsychology and the implications generated for engaging theoretical, clinical, and applied modes of philosophical inquiry.Jon Mills is a psychologist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst in private practice; President of the Section on Psychoanalysis, Canadian Psychological Association; and Senior Faculty at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Toronto. He is the author of The Unconscious Abyss: Hegel's Anticipation of Psychoanalysis and the editor of Psychoanalysis at the Limit: Epistemology, Mind, and the Question of Science, both published by SUNY Press.