Psychic trauma is one of the most frequently invoked ideas in the behavioral sciences and the humanities today. Yet bitter disputes have marked the discussion of trauma ever since it first became an issue in the 1870s, growing even more heated in recent years following official recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In a book that is bound to ignite controversy, Ruth Leys investigates the history of the concept of trauma. She explores the emergence of multiple personality disorder, Freud's approaches to trauma, medical responses to shellshock and combat fatigue, Sándor Ferenczi's revisions of psychoanalysis, and the mutually reinforcing, often problematic work of certain contemporary neurobiological and postmodernist theorists. Leys argues that the concept of trauma has always been fundamentally unstable, oscillating uncontrollably between two competing models, each of which tends at its limit to collapse into the other. A powerfully argued work of intellectual history, Trauma will rewrite the terms of future discussion of its subject.
In recent years, emotions have become a major, vibrant topic of research not merely in the biological and psychological sciences but throughout a wide swath of the humanities and social sciences as well. Yet, surprisingly, there is still no consensus on their basic nature or workings. Ruth Leys’s brilliant, much anticipated history, therefore, is a story of controversy and disagreement. The Ascent of Affect focuses on the post–World War II period, when interest in emotions as an object of study began to revive. Leys analyzes the ongoing debate over how to understand emotions, paying particular attention to the continual conflict between camps that argue for the intentionality or meaning of emotions but have trouble explaining their presence in non-human animals and those that argue for the universality of emotions but struggle when the question turns to meaning. Addressing the work of key figures from across the spectrum, considering the potentially misleading appeal of neuroscience for those working in the humanities, and bringing her story fully up to date by taking in the latest debates, Leys presents here the most thorough analysis available of how we have tried to think about how we feel.
Why has shame recently displaced guilt as a dominant emotional reference in the West? After the Holocaust, survivors often reported feeling guilty for living when so many others had died, and in the 1960s psychoanalysts and psychiatrists in the United States helped make survivor guilt a defining feature of the "survivor syndrome." Yet the idea of survivor guilt has always caused trouble, largely because it appears to imply that, by unconsciously identifying with the perpetrator, victims psychically collude with power. In From Guilt to Shame, Ruth Leys has written the first genealogical-critical study of the vicissitudes of the concept of survivor guilt and the momentous but largely unrecognized significance of guilt's replacement by shame. Ultimately, Leys challenges the theoretical and empirical validity of the shame theory proposed by figures such as Silvan Tomkins, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Giorgio Agamben, demonstrating that while the notion of survivor guilt has depended on an intentionalist framework, shame theorists share a problematic commitment to interpreting the emotions, including shame, in antiintentionalist and materialist terms.
This is a study of the history of the formulation of the notion of 'survivor guilt' after Auschwitz, the debates over the usefulness of the notion of survivor guilt, and its recent displacement by notions of shame.
Bring Hope, Faith, and Love to Your Relationships. The biblical character of Ruth was striking in her capacity to bring life to her relationships. Even in the midst of tragedy and difficulty, her presence blessed and influenced friends and strangers in her community, the man she grew to love, her children, and her in-laws. This six-week Fisherman Bible Studyguide uses Ruth's story to help you reflect on your own relationships and the ways in which God might be inviting you to move different ways--ways that will lead you into life-giving patterns of relating with others. Fisherman Bible Studyguides offer: * Penetrating questions that generate discussion * Flexible format for group or individual needs * Helpful leader’s notes * Emphasis on daily application of Bible truth
Bring Hope, Faith, and Love to Your Relationships. The biblical character of Ruth was striking in her capacity to bring life to her relationships. Even in the midst of tragedy and difficulty, her presence blessed and influenced friends and strangers in her community, the man she grew to love, her children, and her in-laws. This six-week Fisherman Bible Studyguide uses Ruth's story to help you reflect on your own relationships and the ways in which God might be inviting you to move different ways--ways that will lead you into life-giving patterns of relating with others. Fisherman Bible Studyguides offer: * Penetrating questions that generate discussion * Flexible format for group or individual needs * Helpful leader’s notes * Emphasis on daily application of Bible truth
Newborn imitation has recently become the focus of a major controversy in the human sciences. New studies have reexamined the evidence and found it wanting. Imitation has been regarded as a crucial capability of neonates ever since 1977, when two American psychologists first published experiments appearing to demonstrate that babies at birth are able to copy a variety of facial movements. The findings overturned decades of assumptions about the competence of newborns. But what if claims for newborn imitation are not true? Influential theories about the mechanisms underlying imitation, the role of mirror neurons, the nature of the self and of infant mental states, will all have to be modified or abandoned if it turns out that babies cannot imitate at birth. This Element offers a critical assessment of those theories and the stakes involved.
In a retelling of the story of Ruth, this book offers an opportunity to see the Scriptural truth in our own lives and to value the sanctity and depth of each human life, with each chapter ending with a prayer that emphasizes the theme of human love being the root of all that is good.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.
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