Obsessional neurosis is an old refrain of psychoanalysis. It doesn't have the reputation of brilliance, of inventiveness, of surprise, that hysterical neurosis has.
Obsessional Neurosis gathers essays from Lacanian analysts on a diagnostic category that has drawn less attention than hysteria. Edited by Astrid Gessert for the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and published in 2018, the collection sets the structural account of obsession against the contemporary medical framing of obsessive-compulsive disorder, then traces the concept from Freud through Lacan.
Contributors including Pierre-Henri Castel, Darian Leader, Moustapha Safouan, Charles Melman, Michel Silvestre, and Vincent Dachy take up the mechanisms that mark obsessional structure: the inhibition of desire, the weight of debt and guilt, and the obsessional's relation to action. Charles Melman rereads Freud's Rat Man, and Castel situates OCD within the history of psychiatric classification.
For the clinician, the book offers a structural vocabulary for distinguishing obsessional neurosis from symptom-led OCD, and for thinking about the direction of treatment with obsessional patients.
About the authors
Astrid Gessert
Astrid Gessert is a psychoanalyst based in the United Kingdom and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (CFAR) in London and of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. Working within the Freudian and Lacanian tradition, she has practised for many years in the NHS, in private practice, and as a supervisor, and contributes regularly to CFAR's public lecture and training programme. She edited two volumes in the CFAR Library: 'Introductory Lectures on Lacan' and 'Obsessional Neurosis: Lacanian Perspectives'.
Astrid Gessert
Astrid Gessert is a psychoanalyst based in the United Kingdom and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (CFAR) in London and of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. Working within the Freudian and Lacanian tradition, she has practised for many years in the NHS, in private practice, and as a supervisor, and contributes regularly to CFAR's public lecture and training programme. She edited two volumes in the CFAR Library: 'Introductory Lectures on Lacan' and 'Obsessional Neurosis: Lacanian Perspectives'.
Details
- 2018
- Routledge
- Routledge
- 162
- 9781782204589