Theology, Politics, Psychoanalysis, and the Post-Modern University (I)

Daniel Burston is a scholar at Duquesne whose fascinating work lies at the intersection of psychology and other disciplines.

Several years ago I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing his excellent biography A Forgotten Freudian: the Passion of Karl Stern. Stern, as I said in my review, was a fascinating figure whose eclipse seems to have come about in part by going in the opposite direction of all the major trends of the 20th century. A Jewish convert to Catholicism in increasingly secular Quebec, he was also a clinician formed in part by Freudian ideas as North American psychiatry was moving away from the great Viennese master.

Now Stern has a new book out, and it deserves attention for many reasons I shall discuss: Psychoanalysis, Politics and the Postmodern University (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 184pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Critical theory draws on Marxism, psychoanalysis, postmodern and poststructuralist theorists. Marxism and psychoanalysis are rooted in the Enlightenment project, while postmodernism and poststructuralism are more indebted to Nietzsche, whose philosophy is rooted in anti-Enlightenment ideas and ideals. Marxism and psychoanalysis contributed mightily to our understanding of fascism and authoritarianism, but were distorted and disfigured by authoritarian tendencies and practices in turn. This book, written for clinicians and social scientists, explores these overarching themes, focusing on the reception of Freud in America, the authoritarian personality and American politics, Lacan’s “return to Freud,” Jordan Peterson and the Crisis of the Liberal Arts, and the anti-psychiatry movement. 

I've started it, and the first chapter on authority is especially what caught my attention when I learned of the book's forthcoming publication last fall. I'll say more about it on here in the coming days.