Ebook: Origins and ends of the mind : philosophical essays on psychoanalysis

Tinneke Beeckman, University of Brussels
Ray Brassier, Middlesex University, London.
Justin Clemens, University of Melbourne, Australia
Andreas De Block, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Marc de Kesel, Radboud University Nijmegen, Jan van Eyck
Academy, Maastricht, and the Arteveldehogeschool, Ghent
Philip Derbyshire, Birkbeck College, University of London
Brian Garvey, Lancaster University
Tomas Geyskens, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Christian Kerslake, Middlesex University, London
Stella Sandford, Middlesex University, London
Philippe Van Haute, Radboud University Nijmegen and Belgian School for Psychoanalysis

In Origins and Ends of the Mind, a collection of theoretical essays by philosophers and psychoanalysts, encounters are arranged between Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis on the one hand and attachment theory, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy of mind on the other. Psychoanalysts claim that states of mind are inexorably structured by children's relationships with their parents. But the theory of attachment, evolutionary psychology, and contemporary philosophy of mind have all recently reintroduced the claim that mental development and pathology are to a large degree determined by innate factors.

Today, Lacanian psychoanalysis most vigorously defends psychoanalytic theory and practice from the encroachment of the biomedical and cognitive sciences. However, classical psychoanalytic theories--the Oedipus complex, primary and secondary repression, sexual difference, and the role of symbols--are being dismantled and reintegrated into a new synthesis of biological and psychological theories