Intimacies /
"Two gifted and highly prolific intellectuals, Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, here present a dialogue about the problems and possibilities of human intimacy. Their conversation takes as its point of departure psychoanalysis and its central importance to the modern imagination - though equally i...
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| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Chicago :
University of Chicago Press,
©2008.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
Full text (Emmanuel users only) |
| Summary: | "Two gifted and highly prolific intellectuals, Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, here present a dialogue about the problems and possibilities of human intimacy. Their conversation takes as its point of departure psychoanalysis and its central importance to the modern imagination - though equally important is their shared sense that by misleading us about the importance of self-knowledge and the danger of narcissism, psychoanalysis has failed to realize its most exciting and innovative relational potential." "In pursuit of new forms of intimacy they take up a range of concerns across a variety of contexts. To test the hypothesis that the essence of the analytic exchange is intimate talk without sex, they compare Patrice Leconte's film about an accountant mistaken for a psychoanalyst, Intimate Strangers, with Henry James's classic novella The Beast in the Jungle. A discussion of the subculture of barebacking - gay men intentionally engaging in risky sex - delineates an intimacy that rejects the personal. Even serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the Bush administration's war on terror enter the scene as the conversation turns to the way aggression thrills and gratifies the ego. Finally, in a reading of Socrates' theory of love from Plato's Phaedrus, Bersani and Phillips call for a new form of intimacy which they term "impersonal narcissism": a divestiture of the ego and a recognition of one's non-psychological potential self in others. This revolutionary way of relating to the world, they contend, could lead to a new human freedom by mitigating the horrifying violence we blithely accept as part of human nature."--Jacket |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (viii, 125 pages) |
| Format: | Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. |
| ISBN: | 9780226043562 0226043568 |
| Reproduction Note: | Electronic reproduction. |
| Source of Description, Etc. Note: | Print version record. |
| Action Note: | digitized |