Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and the Origins of Meaning

Contents: Introduction; Cavell, Klein and the Extension of Commonsense Psychology: The pattern of commonsense explanation; Marcia Cavell's reconstruction of psychoanalysis; The challenge from Kleinian theory; Unconscious phantasy and mental life: The ubiquity of unconscious phantasy; The basic nature of phantasy; How Kleinian and Freudian theory connect; From Freud to Phenomenology: The Freudian object; A Wittgensteinian approach to phenomenology; Heidegger and meaning; Pre-reflective intentionality: some consequences; Hegel and Being-in-the-World?: Hegel's doctrine of 'soul'; Hegel and madness; The pre-reflective basis of skill and habit; Wilfred Bion and the Psychoanalytic Theory of Thinking: Klein and symbol-formation; Psychosis and infancy; Doing things with words; Bion's 'empiricism'; Psychoanalysis, Psychosis and Being: 'Falling-out-of-the-World': Psychoanalysis and the pre-reflective level; Sartre's loss of meaning; Further applications; Internal Objects and Ontology: Hegel's holistic metaphysics; Internal objects assessed; Objects and universals; Hegel and Holism: Unifying pluralities, sundering unities; Unity, the universal and the internal object; Unity and holistic metaphysics; Conclusion: the ramifications of holism; Bibliography; Index.