Lacan in the End Times: In the Name of the Absent Father

by Rob Weatherill

Overview

This book explores themes around the Father, His absence in modern society and the decline of mental health. The nature of this decline can be uniquely psychoanalytically theorised, in both the corresponding ferocity of the internal object and exposure to the Real.

The first part of this book underlines what psychoanalysis and psi-sciences continue to overlook: who now provides what Lacan called the “narrow footbridge” between anxiety and death? What terror(ism) must replace the father? How can reality be stabilised once more? The second part follows the atomised world as it turns towards extremism and utopian dreams: in Ireland via Hanaghan’s radical psychoanalysis; in Levinasian ethics; in Gnostic belief in an evil world; and in the clinic of the death drive. The conclusion turns finally to the God beyond God, and the overwhelming evidence for God’s presence in the world.

Lacan in the End Times will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, counsellors, social workers, and scholars in critical theory, philosophy, cultural theory, literary theory, and theology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032125275
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/21/2022
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rob Weatherill is practising and supervisory analyst in Dublin, Ireland, a member of two psychoanalytic groups (IFPP (Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy) and ICP (Irish Council for Psychotherapy)) and a founding member of APPI (Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland). He has a master’s degree in psychotherapy from St. Vincent’s University Hospital as well as a European Certificate in Psychotherapy. He taught psychoanalysis in post-graduate courses at University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and the Milltown Institute of Philosophy and Theology. He currently convenes two supervision groups that meet fortnightly. He has published five books internationally and edited one other.

Table of Contents

Part I 1. Do You Believe in Reality? 2. Where Have All the Fathers Gone? 3. Loving the Father into Life. 4. Being (not) in the World without a Father Part II 5. The Mystical Origins of Psychoanalysis in Ireland. 6. Hanaghan Returns. 7. Is it Righteous to Be? 8. Tired to Death in an Evil World. 9. The Irreducible Datum. Part III 10. The Evidence.