Our Last Great Illusion - Imprint Academic

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RE-ISSUED WITH INDEX. 'Therapy may be mad,' declares Rob Weatherill in this outspoken volume. Therapy here means particularly psychotherapy and counselling, but should be also taken to signify the universal logic of the post-modern therapeutic culture of well-being, happiness and enjoyment. More and more people want to believe in therapy who have lost belief in anything else. Counselling and therapy increasingly inform all human interaction. The dominant ethos is a holistic one. This book aims to refute, primarily through the prism of modern psychoanalysis and key theorists like Baudrillard, Levinas, Lyotard, Paz, Steiner, Reiff as well as Žižek, the fashion for a return to a pre-Cartesian ideal of harmony and integration. On the contrary, there is something monstrous, something excessive, that Freud termed the death drive, at the heart of the Real upon which ordinary reality, so to speak, rests. Enlightenment thought, in which we in the West in particular are caught, is entirely incapable of going beyond the ideal humanist version of man – our last great illusion.
Source: Scientific and Medical Network

Credit: Richard House

"This breathtaking little book was a veritable roller-coaster of a read... destined, I believe, to provoke very extreme reactions from pretty much anyone who reads it... this book really is an absolute must, and not to be missed on any account."

Credit: Professor Svetislav M. Jaric (Serbia)

"Dramatic insight into the spirit of our contemporary reality."

Source: Culture Wars

Credit: Patrick Turner

"'Illuminating and witty... Weatherill's use of Freud to draw a radical distinction between the agonistics of loss and intimate experience in the crucible of family life, and the futile blandishments of therapy, is particularly compelling."

Credit: Richard House, author of Therapy Beyond Modernity

"…radical, uncompromising, and brilliantly intelligent - someone who habitually thinks outside of many boxes (often all at the same time)… Perhaps the nearest comparison to Weatherill's quarry is in the work of the prolific Lacanian theorist Slavoj Žižek."

Source: Network

"Psychologists and therapists will find the thesis challenging but well worth the engagement with the author's deep understanding of postmodern trends."

Source: The Irish Times

Credit: John Waters

"A very important book. Deserves to reach a wide audience."
Paperback
- Publication Date: 06 July 2004
- ISBN-13: 9780907845959
- Extent: Main content page count : 128
- Code: 907845959
- Dimensions: 13.5 x 21 x 0.8 cm
- Weight: 200 grams
- List Price: £8.95
- ONIX Version 2.1, Version 3

Details

Title: Our Last Great Illusion
Subtitle: A Radical Psychoanalytical Critique of Therapy Culture
Author: Rob Weatherill
Collection: Societas
Language: English
Publisher: Imprint Academic
Imprint: Societas

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