Life Narcissism Death Narcissism
Book Details
- Publisher : Free Association Books
- Published : January 2001
- Cover : Paperback
- Category :
Reprinting - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 12426
- ISBN 13 : 9781853435300
- ISBN 10 : 1853435309
Also by Andre Green
The Work of the Negative
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The Dead Mother: The Work of Andre Green
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This title illustrates the number of forms of narcisssim met with in clinical practice, and draws attention to the duplicity underlying its structure. The author also shows that it is necessary to postulate the existence of a death-giving narcissism.
Reviews and Endorsements
The reawakening of interest in narcissism in psychoanalytic theory comes at an appropriate moment for the publication of this collection of mostly hitherto untranslated texts, all centered on one of the most enigmatic questions in psychoanalysis. After introducing the concept of narcissism in 1914, Freud was to lose interest in it when he undertook the theoretical reshaping (begun around 1920) which gave rise to the final theory of drives (opposition of the life drives and the death drives), the second topography of the psychical apparatus (Id-Ego-Superego) and his new conception of anxiety. After a period of neglect, this concept though apparently re-discovered in America had, in fact, never been forgotten in French psychoanalysis. André Green, who has been pursuing this problem with interest since 1963, is one of the rare authors, if not the only one, who has attempted to link the theory of narcissism with Freud's final theory of drives. While narcissism is generally only considered in terms of its positive aspects in which it is linked to the life drives, Green shows that it is necessary to postulate the existence of death-giving narcissism, which he calls negative narcissism. Unlike the former, which aims at achieving ego unity, the latter strives, on the contrary, to abolish it, aspiring to reduce desire to the level zero. This theory of narcissism is illustrated by the exposition of a certain number of forms of narcissism met with in clinical practice, of which the "dead mother" is one of the most widely encountered. Finally, in a study of the ego, Green draws attention to the duplicity underlying its structure, in the contradiction between knowing that one is mortal and believing oneself to be immortal - all of which conjures up the mystical figure of Narcissus Janus.
About the Author(s)
André Green (1927–2012), French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society (SPP), was one of the most pre-eminent figures of the contemporary psychoanalytic movement, both for his theoretical and clinical research and his role within institutions. In 1965, Green became a member of the SPP, of which he was President from 1986 to 1989. From 1975 to 1977 he was a Vice-President of the International Psychoanalytical Association and from 1979 to 1980 a Freud Memorial Professor at University College London. He was elected an Honorary Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society.
He attended Jacques Lacan's seminars between 1961 and 1967, when he definitively broke with him. He then directed a seminar at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Paris where he invited the great philosophers and authors of his time including, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Michel Serres, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Detienne, and René Girard. A great reader of D. W. Winnicott and a friend of W. R. Bion, he constantly bridged the gap between British, American, and French psychoanalytical research in a spirit of international openness and turned towards the future of psychoanalysis. His theoretical contributions – the dead mother, private madness, the work of the negative, the analytic third, and the analytic object – opened the way to psychoanalysis beyond neurosis, the hallmark of twenty-first-century psychoanalysis.
Many of his works, such as Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism, On Private Madness, and The Work of the Negative are classics of psychoanalytic literature.
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