From Freud To Kafka: The Paradoxical Foundation of the Life-and-Death Instinct

by Philippe Refabert

Overview

This book takes the reader on a captivating journey leading from an erroneous founding assumption inherited from Freud, to the proposal of a principle better suited to allowing the psychoanalyst to accompany the patient out of his impasse. The founding assumption of the book, already questioned by many analysts among whom Sandor Ferenczi figures as a brilliant forerunner, was the author's starting point in re-examining the basic precepts of psychoanalysis. Reading Kafka made the author conclude that this masterful storyteller describes borderline situations, so familiar to him, better than anyone. An avid reader of Freud, Kafka suggests that the human capacity to bear a paradoxical position between life and death is not given to the child naturally, at birth. Kafka seems to say that giving life is easy, but that giving it the necessary support in the form of the trace of death is more problematic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367102685
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/21/2019
Pages:	142
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.00(d)

Table of Contents

Part 1 , A misunderstanding between Freud and the man from the country , Oedipus’ answer to Freud’s enigma , A presumed paradoxical endowment , Sketches of the paradoxical system in Freud’s work , A transitional psychic matrix , An origin between absorption and expulsion , Destruction of the paradoxical system: murder of the other in the self , Part II , Failure of the paradoxical system (1): before the Law , Failure of the paradoxical system (2): The Silence of the Sirens and Josephine the Singer , Absorption—expulsion: The Vulture , The vicarious system of the man-from-the-country , The paradox of the birth of the artist: The Judgment , The resolution of a misunderstanding , Schreber’s transsexuality as catastrophic healing and method of survival after the destruction of the paradoxical system

Editorial Reviews

"Philippe Réfabert confronts Freudian theory with his trauma-related clinical experience. He observes that, at times, trauma is the result of the insidious "soul murder" committed by the parental couple with respect to the child. Réfabert reminds us that in the sphere of pain, the psychoanalyst's work is akin to the poet's constant receptivity to astonishment. For therapists, this book is a work of reference; for all of us, it is a joy to read."—Heitor O'Dwyer de Macedo, psychoanalyst and author of De l'amour à la pensée

"What a pleasure to be guided through the chaos of our daily meanderings by the firm footsteps of Philippe Réfabert, whose clinical experience throws its fascinating light on Kafka's short stories. The tools he places at our disposal go beyond those granted to us by Freud, while reaffirming the latter's conviction that there is more psychoanalysis in works of literature than in theoretical treatises."—Françoise Davoine, co-author of History Beyond Trauma and psychoanalyst; professor

"I find this book fascinating. Its serious questioning of Freud introduces an innovative perspective on an essential matter and provides a perspective both convincing and brilliant on Kafka and the origin of literature. Kafka crossing the Freudian line of closure is an immensely fertile idea."—Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, philosopher, literary critic, and translator

"This book is a rare event: truly good news for budding psychoanalysts and for many other people. I am thinking particularly of all those kept alive, but captive, by 'catastrophic healing'. The author dares to say out loud about homosexuality what our culture strives to prevent from being even faintly glimpsed. He has the courage to propose a radically new perspective: he dares to say that there is no third sex, but only people who have been evicted from their 'bodies'."—Marie Balmary, psychoanalyst and author

From the Publisher