Heifetz, Samara (Author)
New York University
Physical Details: 388 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation examines the intersections between the "psychoanalytic movement," the gendered construction of the "public sphere" and the mutability of "biological thinking" in Imperial and Weimar Berlin. It begins with Karl Abraham and the founding of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society in 1908, contextualizing this group within a much broader project to develop, in theory and in practice, a new secular morality which could come to terms with and negotiate the challenges of modern urban life. Through a detailed reconstruction and contextualization of debates within the Berlin psychoanalytic community, I argue that the psychoanalytic movement is revealingly interpreted as engaged in a series of attempts to rescue rational autonomy, understood as a requirement for moral agency, in a historical moment when both appeared to many observers to be threatened on all sides. In the course of this process Berlin psychoanalysts, including Abraham, Karen Horney, Franz Alexander, Melanie Klein, and Sandor Rado, linked the capacity for moral autonomy with the development of "masculinity" and "femininity" in remarkable new ways that no longer understood these terms as epiphenomenon of anatomical parts or biological "drives," but rather, as maps of fragile selves formed within relational matrixes mediated by culture and history. By the end of the Weimar years Berlin analysts had embarked on multiple departures from early Freudian psychoanalysis that would in due course lead to new theoretical understandings of the political implications of sexual difference. These in turn would have a profound impact on contemporary Western conceptions of selfhood and social life.
...MoreDescription Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. : doc. no. 3427934.
Similar Citations
Article
Kauders, Anthony D.;
(2005)
The Mind of a Rationalist: German Reactions to Psychoanalysis in the Weimar Republic and Beyond
Book
Fuechtner, Veronika;
(2011)
Berlin Psychoanalytic: Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar Republic Germany and Beyond
Article
Kauders, Anthony D.;
(2013)
The Crisis of the Psyche and the Future of Germany: The Encounter with Freud in the Weimar Republic
Article
Kauders, Anthony D.;
(2013)
Truth, Truthfulness, and Psychoanalysis: The Reception of Freud in Wilhelmine Germany
Book
Frosh, Stephen;
(2005)
Hate and the “Jewish Science”: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis
Book
Nicholls, Angus;
Liebscher, Martin;
(2010)
Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought
Article
Buerkle, Darcy;
(2006)
Gendered Spectatorship, Jewish Women, and Psychological Advertising in Weimar Germany
Article
Killen, Andreas;
(2007)
Weimar Psychotechnics between Americanism and Fascism
Article
Meskill, David;
(2004)
Characterological Psychology and the German Political Economy in the Weimar Period (1919-1933)
Book
Daniela Finzi;
Herman Westerink;
(2018)
Dora, Hysteria, and Gender: Reconsidering Freud's Case Study
Book
Birgit Lang;
Joy Damousi;
Alison Lewis;
(2017)
A History of the Case Study: Sexology, Psychoanalysis, Literature
Article
Richard Skues;
(2021)
Freud and the Disenchantment of Telepathy: Thought-Transference Analysed and the History of an Unpublished Paper
Book
Kandel, Eric R;
(2012)
The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
Article
Silvana Vetö;
Marcelo Sánchez;
(2017)
Sigmund Freud and Alejandro Lipschütz: Psychoanalysis and Biology between Europe and Chile
Book
Sigmund Freud;
Karl Abraham;
Mario Bottone;
Riccardo Galiani;
Francesco Napolitano;
(2024)
Lettere 1907-1925. Edizione integrale
Book
Franco Fornari;
Antonio Piotti;
(2024)
Il sogno di Irma e il destino della psicoanalisi
Article
Windgätter, Christof;
(2009)
Zu den Akten. Verlags- und Wissenschaftsstrategien der frühen Wiener Psychoanalyse
Article
Galison, Peter;
(2012)
Blacked-Out Spaces: Freud, Censorship and the Re-Territorialization of Mind
Book
Schweighofer, Fritz;
(1979)
Graphology and psychoanalysis: The handwriting of Sigmund Freud and his circle. Translated by Susan Ray
Article
Savoia, Paolo;
(2010)
Sexual Science and Self-Narrative: Epistemology and Narrative Technologies of the Self between Krafft-Ebing and Freud
Be the first to comment!