The importance of disappointment

This book explores the nature of identity in late modern society. The author, a sociologist and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, brings together the insights of both disciplines to argue that 'late, modern' society seems to present new possibilities of living that are in fact illusions. We come to believe that we can create ourselves; that we have 'rights' to aspects of life such as happiness, a 'fulfilling relationship', parents who love us unconditionally; we come to believe that we can find a 'real self' or alternatively we believe that we can be anything that we want to be as the occasion arises. Craib shows this through examining modern theories of death and mourning, contemporary ideas of masculinity, and notions of the self espoused by modern therapies. Psychoanalysis too gets caught up in these illusions, offering ideals which are unrealisable, attempting to mould the personality in such a way that it fits late modern society, paradoxically reinforcing the conditions which lead people to seek help in the first place. Against this, Craib points to the 'negative' strands of psychoanalysis: Freud's insistence on 'normal human misery', Klein's insistence on envy and the death…

Издательство

Routledge

Год

1994

Страниц

205

Язык

английский

ISBN

9780415093828