Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, the study of creativity and fine art has been a special concern. Psychoanalytic Studies of Creativity, Greed and Fine Art: Making Contact with the Self makes a distinct contribution to the psychoanalytic study of art by focusing attention on the relationship between creativity and greed. This book also focuses attention on factors in the personality that block creativity, and examines the matter of the self and its ability to be present and exist as the essential element in creativity. Using examples primarily from visual art David Levine explores the subjects of creativity, empathy, interpretation and thinking through a series of case studies of artists, including Robert Irwin, Ad Reinhardt, Susan Burnstine, and Mark Rothko. Psychoanalytic Studies of Creativity, Greed and Fine Art explores the highly ambivalent attitude of artists toward making their presence known, an ambivalence that is evident in their hostility toward interpretation as a way of knowing. This is discussed with special reference to Susan Sontag’s essay on the subject of interpretation. Psychoanalytic Studies of Creativity, Greed and Fine Art contributes to a long tradition of psychoanalytically influenced writing on creativity including the work of Deri, Kohut, Meltzer, Miller and Winnicott among others. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, historians and theorists of art.

Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, the study of creativity and fine art has been a special concern. Psychoanalytic Studies of Creativity, Greed and Fine Art: Making Contact with the Self makes a distinct contribution to the psychoanalytic study of art by focusing attention on the relationship between creativity and greed. This book also focuses attention on factors in the personality that block creativity, and examines the matter of the self and its ability to be present and exist as the essential element in creativity. Using examples primarily from visual art David Levine explores the subjects of creativity, empathy, interpretation and thinking through a series of case studies of artists, including Robert Irwin, Ad Reinhardt, Susan Burnstine, and Mark Rothko. Psychoanalytic Studies of Creativity, Greed and Fine Art explores the highly ambivalent attitude of artists toward making their presence known, an ambivalence that is evident in their hostility toward interpretation as a way of knowing. This is discussed with special reference to Susan Sontag’s essay on the subject of interpretation. Psychoanalytic Studies of Creativity, Greed and Fine Art contributes to a long tradition of psychoanalytically influenced writing on creativity including the work of Deri, Kohut, Meltzer, Miller and Winnicott among others. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, historians and theorists of art.

In this volume, the work of British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott is set in conversation with some of today’s most talented psychodynamically-sensitive political thinkers. The editors and contributors demonstrate that Winnicott’s thought contains underappreciated political insights, discoverable in his reflections on the nature of the maturational process, and useful in working through difficult impasses confronting contemporary political theorists. Specifically, Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theory and practice offer a framework by which the political subject, destabilized and disrupted in much postmodern and contemporary thinking, may be recentered. Each chapter in this volume, in its own way, grapples with this central theme: the potential for authentic subjectivity and inter-subjectivity to arise within a nexus of autonomy and dependence, aggression and civility, destructiveness and care. This volume is unique in its contribution to the growing field of object-relations-oriented political and social theory. It will be of interest to political scientists, psychologists, and scholars of related subjects in the humanities and social sciences.

Recent trends in politics culminating in the US with the election of Donald Trump both provoked and expressed a troubling intensification of emotion in the body politic. Heightened levels of anger, frustration, and distrust, the dismissal of the norms of politics and policy making, and the prevalence of intractable conflict indicated an increase in the power of regressive forces. The power of these forces takes the form of dark fantasies involving the loss, indeed the destruction, of safe space, the prevalence of existential threat, and the corrosion of the kinds of relationships that make living in the world tolerable. This book explores the emotional meaning of regressive movements in contemporary politics with special reference to Trump and his supporters. Its main hypothesis is that the primary goal of these movements is not to restore a lost world of safety and wellbeing as they claim it is, but to make their members' experience of the destruction and loss of that world universal.

Over the past several decades, colleges and universities in the United States and United Kingdom have made significant commitments to increasing diversity, most notably regarding race and gender. The result has not, however, been an amelioration of conflict over matters of difference. Instead, there has been continuing, if not increasing, conflict and strife in universities, often reflecting conflict in the larger society. A Dangerous Place to Be examines identity-based conflict in colleges and universities, analyzing the actions of students, teachers, administrators, and educational organizations as efforts to manage dilemmas and disturbances arising in the process of identity formation.

This book is about the use of vocal sound, melody, and rhythm to increase one’s sense of self and presence with others, and how to facilitate this process. We discover how the ten vocal principles and four non-vocal principles of Voice Movement Therapy work together, uniting in a single purpose: to facilitate a more embodied, flexible, durable, and versatile voice. Singing the Psyche: Uniting Thought and Feeling Through the Voice provides a basic understanding of Voice Movement Therapy and how it uses both spontaneous vocalization and the creation and performance of song, integrated with active body movement, to increase expressive and communicative skills. First-hand practitioner experiences offer a compelling and fascinating account of how our voices hold a core intelligence that can transform our lives from constriction to freedom and from trauma to compassionate understanding. Perfect for anyone dedicated to unlocking the therapeutic power of the voice, this book is an invaluable tool for therapists, counselors, singing teachers, speech and drama instructors, and speech-language pathologists. It's also a must-have for academic institutions offering creative arts therapies courses, music and drama conservatories, and parents and organizations supporting children with special needs and hidden disabilities. What people say - “As an artist and writer, I and my friends in many different disciplines are well acquainted with creative blocks both in art and in life. When a friend suggested that I may be interested in reviewing a book on Voice Movement Therapy, I said, “Well, OK,” expecting to read an informative, but unexciting tome. To my delight, this book clearly explains the basic principles of VMT in the first chapter, then presents five chapters of case studies by VMT practitioners who work with human situations worldwide read like stories. It is a great read and so interesting that I called a musician friend and read one of the stories aloud!” — Jo Walters, Visual Artist and Writer MA, MFA, University of California, Berkeley “This comprehensive volume will enhance therapists', educators’, caregivers’, and parents’ understanding of the intricacies of using our voices for expression and communication. Through practical guidelines woven together with current interdisciplinary practices, theory and research, Anne Brownell and colleagues creatively decode the language of vocal expression.” —Susan Loman, MA, NCC, KMP Profiler, former Director Dance Movement Therapy Program Dept. of Applied Psychology, Antioch New England Graduate School

Literature and Psychoanalysis is an exciting, and compulsive working through of what Freud really said, and why it is so important, with a chapter on Melanie Klein and object relations theory, and two chapters on Lacan, and his work on the unconscious as structured like a language. Investigating different forms of literature through a careful examination of Shakespeare, Blake, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and many other examples from literature, the book makes the argument for taking literature and psychoanalysis together, and essential to each other. The book places both literature and psychoanalysis into the context of all that has been said about these subjects in recent debates in the theory of Derrida and Foucault and Žižek, and into the context of gender studies and queer theory.

What's in a shadow? Menace, seduction, or salvation? Immaterial but profound, shadows lurk everywhere in literature and the visual arts, signifying everything from the treachery of appearances to the unfathomable power of God. From Plato to Picasso, from Rembrandt to Welles and Warhol, from Lord of the Rings to the latest video game, shadows act as central players in the drama of Western culture. Yet because they work silently, artistic shadows often slip unnoticed past audiences and critics. Conceived as an accessible introduction to this elusive phenomenon, Grasping Shadows is the first book that offers a general theory of how all shadows function in texts and visual media. Arguing that shadow images take shape within a common cultural field where visual and verbal meanings overlap, William Sharpe ranges widely among classic and modern works, revealing the key motifs that link apparently disparate works such as those by Fra Angelico and James Joyce, Clementina Hawarden and Kara Walker, Charles Dickens and Kumi Yamashita. Showing how real-world shadows have shaped the meanings of shadow imagery, Grasping Shadows guides the reader through the techniques used by writers and artists to represent shadows from the Renaissance onward. The last chapter traces how shadows impact the art of the modern city, from Renoir and Zola to film noir and projection systems that capture the shadows of passers-by on streets around the globe. Extending his analysis to contemporary street art, popular songs, billboards, and shadow-theatre, Sharpe demonstrates a practical way to grasp the "dark side" that looms all around us.

“Although the benefits of this study to scholars are obvious, this thought-provoking mixture of scholarly and colloquial will enlighten inquisitive general readers, too.” — Library Journal (starred review) The classic study of the creative process from the bestselling author of Flow. Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (“The leading researcher into ‘flow states.’” — Newsweek) reveals what leads to these moments—be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab—so that this knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on nearly one hundred interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists, to politicians and business leaders, to poets and artists, as well as his thirty years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous flow theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the "tortured genius" is largely a myth. Most important, he explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world.

Despite creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, capitalism has many passionate defenders—but not because of what it withholds from some and gives to others. Capitalism dominates, Todd McGowan argues, because it mimics the structure of our desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. People from all backgrounds enjoy what capitalism provides, but at the same time are told more and better is yet to come. Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.