Illusions of a Future: Psychoanalysis and the Biopolitics of Desire (Experimental Futures)

Synopsis

A Pioneering Ethnography Of Psychoanalysis, Illusions Of A Future Explores The Political Economy Of Private Therapeutic Labor Within Industrialized Medicine. Focusing On Psychoanalysis In Chicago, A Historically Important Location In The Development And Institutionalization Of Psychoanalysis In The United States, Kate Schechter Examines The Nexus Of Theory, Practice, And Institutional Form In The Original Instituting Of Psychoanalysis, Its Normalization, And Now Its Crisis. She Describes How Contemporary Analysts Struggle To Maintain Conceptions Of Themselves As Capable Of Deciding What Psychoanalysis Is And How To Regulate It In Order To Prevail Over Market Demands For The Efficiency And Standardization Of Mental Health Treatments. -- Publisher's Description. An Imaginary Of Threat And Crisis -- Analysis Deferred (or, The Talking Cure Talks Back) -- Instituting Psychoanalysis In Chicago : Two Pedagogies Of Desire -- Professionalization And Its Discontents : The Theory Of Obedience And The Drama Of Never Splitting -- The Plenty Of Scarcity : On Crisis And Transience In The Fifty-first Ward -- Narcissism: Our Own Developmental Line. Kate Schechter. Includes Bibliographical References (pages [221]-266) And Index.