The Unconscious
Phil Mollon
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Freud himself said ruefully that the unconscious was "by definition unknowable", and that the psychoanalyst was therefore "a student of what cannot be known", which does seem like a pretty good definition of futility. Nothing daunted, Mollon narrates some hoary old Freudian slips about tits before delving into the mysterious mechanics of dreams. We see that they possess thrillingly dynamic constellations or "condensations" of polyvalent meaning, although the alternative hypothesis, that meanings are projected onto dreams post facto by cunning storytellers or dull narcissists, is nowhere considered. It turns out there are new and exciting flavours of the unconscious as well, viz: prereflective, present, past, unvalidated and even an infinite unconscious, which sounds cool in a pseudoscientific sort of way. This is one of a series from Icon, defiantly entitled "Ideas in Psychoanalysis". They're cute and small enough to nestle snugly in your pocket. Oh, look, here's another couple.
Phantasy
Julia Segal
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Phantasies explain how buried fragments of emotive memory, anxieties, "unconscious magical thinking" and other subterranean stuff affect our behaviour in ways we don't fully realise until we give money to a soul-tender. They're spelled in that groovy "ph" way to distinguish them from conscious daydreams, which are clearly far more pleasant. At least, mine are. Mmmm ... Anyway, quite soon we've escaped Freud's beardy clutches and are consulting with Melanie Klein, with the usual heartwarming case studies. But Segal, an NHS counsellor, requires rather little theoretical scaffolding, having been able to smuggle in a good deal of her humane common sense instead. Relieving.
Perversion
Claire Pajaczkowska
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Ah, this is more like it. Surely now we'll finally get stripped and whipped by some fearsome Freudian femme shouting crazy jargon? Alas, it's not quite so simple. Much about anal stages and phallic phases, and some stylish glints of film theory. But too much like this: "The repeated experience of the pleasurable cathexis ('charge') of libido to the erotogenic zone leaves neural memory traces that form a mental representation of an object. This mental object is a representation of the self and is also a representation of a relationship to something that was not-self." A clever reflexive joke, I think.
