Description
About the Author
Donald L. Carveth is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social and Political Thought and Senior Scholar at York University in Toronto. He is a training and supervising analyst in the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis and current Director of the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis. After completing a doctorate (1977) comparing and contrasting sociological and psychoanalytic theories of human nature (a summary of which was awarded the annual Theory Prize of the American Sociological Association in 1984), he undertook clinical psychoanalytic training, graduating from the Toronto Institute in 1985. With Dr. Eva Lester and others he helped found the 'Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue Canadienne de Psychanalyse' of which he is a past Editor-in-Chief. He has published some fifty papers in this and other journals. Over the past decade his work has concentrated on issues of guilt, guilt-substitutes, and the differentiation of conscience as a fourth component of the structural theory of the mind in addition to id, ego and superego. He is in private practice in Toronto.
Reviews
'Carveth's book is a powerful challenge to rethink the ethical basis of psychoanalysis. He wants to add conscience to Freud's typology of id, ego and superego, none of which can be thought of as reified bounded entities but as dynamic dimensions of a single complex self. He sees conscience as the realm of morality, especially the requirement to love one another, something Freud himself seemed to recognize with his late conception of eros in the dichotomy between eros and thanatos. Carveth's book is not only relevant to the psychoanalytic community, which surely needs it, but to the wider public in providing a deeper context for the great insights of Freud and his followers.' - Professor Robert N. Bellah, Elliot Professor of Sociology, Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Religion in Human Evolution'What will be our moral purpose? And, how may we exceed the confines of rationality in learning to live with others? With these questions Donald Carveth's superb study integrates social theory with the history of psychoanalytic thought. With deep sensitivity to the nuances of mental life and the dilemmas theory inherits, the study proposes the psychoanalytic project as one of listening to the voice of conscience. Carveth provides insightful readings of the moral significance of guilt from a number of perspectives and argues for a shift from the superego to that of conscience. Questions of theology are placed between the cultural and clinical realms and readers encounter the modern dilemmas of tolerating mental pain as the human condition.'- Deborah Britzman, Distinguished Research Professor, York University, and author of Freud and Education'I would like to make Dr Carveth's book required reading for all psychoanalytic therapists (and recommended reading for their patients) who are working every day on issues of guilt and shame. It represents a truly extraordinary contribution to human knowledge, a contribution that deserves and will reward the reader's undivided attention.'- From the Foreword by Elio Frattaroli, MD, psychoanalyst and author of Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain
Book Information
ISBN 9781780491684
Author Donald L. Carveth
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Karnac Books
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd