Considering Life and Death in Psychoanalysis.

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 0372630 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1573-6741 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00029548 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Am J Psychoanal Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: : Basingstoke, UK : Palgrave Macmillan
Original Publication: New York, Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.

Death* ; Life* ; Psychoanalytic Therapy*; Freudian Theory ; Humans ; Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical ; Philosophy ; Repression, Psychology

Psychoanalytic therapy is not supposed to cure man from death, nor to help him forget about it. It is supposed to deal with the soul, and it is up to the soul to deal with death. Death is actually not an issue for psychoanalytic therapy-its only problem can be the soul. On the other hand, only for the soul is death an authentic problem. Only the soul can authentically bring death into question. Psychoanalysis has indebted humanity by finding the strength and critical prudence in a crucial moment for civilization to remove the veil of prohibition and shame from sexuality, which had been repressed for centuries. Today, sexuality is no longer repressed (it may be even too present in the media for some)-but death became repressed. This paper considers death as an essential topic for psychoanalysis.

Keywords: Freud; Plato; psychoanalysis; ψυχῆς θεραπεία

Date Created: 20190510 Date Completed: 20200114 Latest Revision: 20200114

20221213

10.1057/s11231-019-09187-1

31068642