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Cristian Bodea, Delia Popa (eds.) – Describing the Unconscious. Phenomenological Perspectives on the Subject of Psychoanalysis (Zeta Books, 2020)

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This collective volume aims at contributing to an in depth understanding of the  relationship between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, drawing on research that renews  and complements the area of discussion opened by recent publications on this interdisciplinary  approach. Coming from the field of phenomenology, the authors participating in this volume  examine the various ways in which phenomenology has become interested in what  psychoanalysis has to offer, both as a practice and as a theoretical perspective. While  psychoanalysis provides an understanding of the unconscious which is derived directly from  practice, the psychoanalytical practice itself appears to be a form of transcendental  intersubjectivity put at work in such a way that it sheds light on the meaningful life of  experience phenomenology strived so much to describe from Husserl to Henry and further on.  The book is divided in three sections: “Phenomenological Approaches to the Concept of  Unconscious”, “Phenomenological Ambiguities of the Psychoanalytic Subject” and  “Phenomenological Resources from Husserl to Henry”. The first section begins by defining the  multiple functions of the unconscious (Tamás Ullmann) and by situating the common ambition  of phenomenology and psychoanalysis in the attempt to go from self-evidence to “the  birthplace of meaning” (Dorothée Legrand). After revisiting the status of the “second  phenomenology” generated within the psychoanalytical practice (Virgil Ciomoș), the specificity  of the phenomenology’s contribution to the psychoanalytic practice is discussed (Gunnar  Karlsson). The second section focuses on the problem of subjectivity as it emerges both from  psychoanalytical theory and phenomenology, in relation to loss and melancholia (Delia Popa)  and to nostalgia (Dylan Trigg), bringing it ultimately to a body that makes sense (Cristian Bodea)  thanks to a transcendental transposition at work in our imagination (István Fazakas). The last  section discusses the descriptive resources psychoanalysis can find in the field of  phenomenology understood as descriptive psychology (László Komorjai), such as the theory of  habits and passive synthesis in Husserl (Luciana Priolo), the theory of the illeity in Lévinas (Livia  Dioșan), and the phenomenology of life in Henry (Max Schaefer).

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CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Phenomenological Approaches to the Concept of Unconscious

Tamás Ullmann:  Les modí¨les de l’inconscient

Dorothée Legrand:  Speaking and Hearing Infinite Unconsciousness

Virgil Ciomoș:  Phénoménologie et psychanalyse. Pour une nouvelle architectonique du phénomí¨ne

Gunnar Karlsson:  The Function of Phenomenology for Psychoanalysis

2. Phenomenological Ambiguities of the Psychoanalytic Subject

Delia Popa:  Subjects of Desire. Time, Mourning, and Melancholia

Dylan Trigg:  Phantoms in the Mirror. Nostalgia Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis

Cristian Bodea:  The Body Makes Sense. A Phenomenology of Ego and I in Conjunction with Psychoanalysis

István Fazakas:  Le Labyrinthe d’air. La structure des fantasmes dans l’anthropologie phénoménologique de Marc Richir

3. Phenomenological Resources from Husserl to Henry

László Komorjai:  Phenomenology as Descriptive Psychology  

Luciana Priolo:  Husserl’s Account of Habits: Between Primordial and Secondary Passivity

Livia Dioșan:  Psychic Reality and the Name of the Father. Emmanuel Lévinas’s Phenomenology between Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan

Max Schaefer:  A Psychoanalysis of Individuation: The Affective Heart of Repression in Michel Henry  

Index

Contributors