In this provocative book, C. Fred Alford examines the possibility that the insights into human needs and aspirations offered by the great Greek tragedies are more profound than psychoanalytic theory. Drawing on the work of Melanie Klein, R. J. Lifton, Jacques Lacan, and others, Alford presents his own psychoanalytic interpretation of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. "A book that will be of intellectual profit, professional interest, and delight to mental health professionals of all disciplines as well as to non-clinical readers."-Ellen Handler Spitz, author of Art and Psyche. "A...

In this thoughtful and lucid book, C. Fred Alford shows how the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein can be extended to groups and culture and thus can illuminate issues of social theory and moral philosophy of the sort considered by the Frankfurt School. He then applies this expanded theory to the politics of large groups, the appeal of works of art, and the psychological sources of reason. "Alford's ideas are interesting and well worked out. The book is good reading for the intelligent layman as well as for the Freudian psychoanalyst."-Elise W. Snyder, M.D., Yale Medical School "Regularly...

C. Fred Alford interviewed working people, prisoners, and college students in order to discover how people experience evil in themselves, in others, and in the world. What people meant by evil, he found, was a profound, inchoate feeling of dread so overwhelming that they tried to inflict it on others to be rid of it themselves. A leather-jacketed emergency medical technician, for example, one of the many young people for whom vampires are oddly seductive icons of evil, said he would "give anything to be a vampire."Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Alford argues that the primary experience of...

Group identifications famously pose the problem of destructive rhetoric and action against others. Cynthia Burack brings together the theory work of women of color and the tools of psychoanalysis to examine the effects of group collaborations for social justice and progressive politics. Burack's discursive analysis suggests the positive, identity-affirming aspects of group relational life for African American women. One analytic response to groups emphasizes the dangers of these identifications and exhorts people to abandon or transcend them for their own good and for the good of others....

Group identifications famously pose the problem of destructive rhetoric and action against others. Cynthia Burack brings together the theory work of women of color and the tools of psychoanalysis to examine the effects of group collaborations for social justice and progressive politics. Burack's discursive analysis suggests the positive, identity-affirming aspects of group relational life for African American women. One analytic response to groups emphasizes the dangers of these identifications and exhorts people to abandon or transcend them for their own good and for the good of others....

This book examines the use and abuse of the term 'freedom'. Based on interviews with people concerning the nature of freedom, the author compares what the people he talked with said about freedom with what writers and thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Herbert Marcuse, and Iris Murdoch have to say about freedom. He concludes that the 'political' is not the answer, and that most of the people interviewed for the book and those like them would be better served by learning the political and social skills necessary to carve out small spaces of freedom in a rationalized world.

In this investigation of the contemporary notion of evil, C. Fred Alford asks what we can learn about this concept, and about ourselves, by examining a society where it is unknown where language contains no word that equates to the English term "evil." Does such a society look upon human nature more benignly? Do its members view the world through rose-colored glasses? Korea offers a fascinating starting point, and Alford begins his search for answers there.In conversations with hundreds of Koreans from diverse religions and walks of life students, politicians, teachers, Buddhist monks,...

The Holocaust marks a decisive moment in modern suffering in which it becomes almost impossible to find meaning or redemption in the experience. In this study, C. Fred Alford offers a new and thoughtful examination of the experience of suffering. Moving from the Book of Job, an account of meaningful suffering in a God-drenched world, to the work of Primo Levi, who attempted to find meaning in the Holocaust through absolute clarity of insight, he concludes that neither strategy works well in today s world. More effective are the day-to-day coping practices of some survivors. Drawing on...