Psychoanalysis Catastrophe & Social Action

<p><b>Winner of the IAJS Book Award 2023 for Best Applied Book</b></p><p>This fascinating volume uses psychoanalytic theory to explore how political subjectivity comes about within the context of global catastrophe via the emergence of collective individuations through trans-subjectivity. Serving as a jumping-off point to address the structural linkage between collective catastrophe subject group and political transformation trans-subjectivity is the central tenet of the book conceptualized as a psyche-social dynamic that initiates social transformation and which may be enhanced in the clinical setting.</p><p>Each chapter investigates a distinct manifestation of trans-subjectivity in relation to various real-world events as they manifest clinically in the analytic couple and within group processes. The author builds her conceptual arguments through a psyche/social reading of Kristeva’s theory of signifiance (sublimation) Lacan’s 1945 essay on collective logic Heidegger’s secular reading of the apostle Paul’s Christian revolution and Žižek Badiou and Jung’s conception of the neighbor within a differentiated humanity. The book features clinical illustrations an auto-ethnographic study of the emergence of an AIDS clinic an accounting of trans-subjectivity in Black revolutionary events in the U.S. and an examination of some expressions of care that arose in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p>Psychoanalysis Catastrophe & Social Action is important reading for psychoanalysts psycho-dynamic based therapists psychologists group therapists philosophers and political activists.</p>