A mini-essay which illuminates the idea of Phantasy in psychoanalysis and its relationship to the way people lead real lives. It is jargon-free and includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, poerty and literature.
A mini-essay which illuminates the psychoanalytical concept of perversion and its relationship to the way people lead real lives. It is jargon-free and includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, poetry and literature.
This biography of Walter Benjamin encompasses political, philosophical and artistic events of the 20th century. He was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, lived in Moscow and Paris while engaging with leading modernists artists, and committed suicide after fleeing the Nazis.
This work examines the origins of Fascism in the 19th century, and the path leading to the "logic" of the Holocaust.
A mini-essay which illuminates the psychoanalytical concept of guilt and its relationship to the way people lead real lives. It is jargon-free and includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, poetry and literature.
A mini-essay which illuminates the psycoanalytical concept of anxiety in psychoanalysis. It relates, according to Freud, not to everyday worries but to a threat to the Ego and to our sense of self. It includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, and literature.
Does postmodernism, with its relativism and claims that historical study is little mor than a discourse of political power, promote and defend thinking that denies the occurrence of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany? This book argues not.
For Jean-Francois Lyotard, the cyborg is a symbol of fear Mankind must be aware that it has transgressed the boundaries between the organic and technological, inhabiting a world which views machine implantation in humans as normal and necessary. It implies a future, Lyotard warns, which may dangerously negate the value of humanity itself.
The 'selfish gene' is one of the most controversial subjects in modern genetics, and one with a major bearing on the nature vs. nurture debate – the chief subject of the so-called 'Darwin wars'.
This book summarises Chomsky's recently published views on Globalisation and the New World Order. His position is an unusual one.
Freud mapped the superego as the introjection of infantile parental authority, the adult manifestation of the sublimated Oedipus complex. The Superego examines recent historical and media events from Freud's perspective, making us aware of the dynamic but tenuous associations between ourselves and our surroundings.
This book illuminates the individual and social nightmare world of phobic phenomena. Jargon-free and wriiten by an expert in the field, it unravels the recognisable but enigmatic language of psychoanalysis.
Traces the manifestation of this universal psychological phenomenon from Ted Hughes' OVID to Freud. Jagon-free and written by a leading figure in the field, it unravels the recognisable but enigmatic language of psychoanalysis.
Jargon-free and written by an expert in the field, this fascinating book unravels the recognisable but enigmatic language of psychoanalysis.
The history of the computer is entwined with that of the modern world and most famously with the life of one man, Alan Turing. How did this device, which first appeared a mere 50 years ago, come to structure and dominate our lives so totally? An enlightening mini-biography of a brilliant but troubled man.
Affect refers to the strange emotions we often centre on external objects, and the corresponding system of values we create by these attachments. Through consideration of the media spectacle and mass emotion of events like Princess Diana's death, Affect challenges the view that emotion is a private affair, distinct from our public personas.
Copernicus sowed the seed from which science has grown to be a dominant aspect of modern culture, fundamental in shaping our understanding of the workings of the cosmos. John Henry reveals why Copernicus was led to such a seemingly outrageous and inplausible idea as a swiftly moving Earth.
The tale of William Harvey's momentous discovery – that the blood vessels form a closed system, carrying blood pumped rapidly around the body by the heart – is one of ingenuity, imagination and perseverence, and remarkable use of experiment, observation and skill.
For Thomas Sebeok, semiotics not only addresses human verbal communication but embraces the study of all sign activity – which is indeed, Sebeok argues, the very definition of life in the universe. What does Sebeok's vision say, though, about ethics or the arts?
Said famously argued in 'Orientalism' that the West developed, at the peak of colonial expansion, a body of knowledge that imperialists could use to gain power. Walia investigates the need for alternative 'subaltern' histories and the influences – Foucault, Gramsci – that inspire them.
