Subject to Biography: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Writing Women's Lives - Hardcover

9780674853713: Subject to Biography: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Writing Women's Lives
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In this provocative new book, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl illuminates the psychological and intellectual demands writing biography makes on the biographer and explores the complex and frequently conflicted relationship between feminism and psychoanalysis.

A practicing psychoanalyst, a distinguished scholar, and the widely praised biographer of Anna Freud and Hannah Arendt, Young-Bruehl here reflects on the relations between self-knowledge, autobiography, biography, and cultural history. She considers what remains valuable in Sigmund Freud's work, and what areas--theory of character, for instance--must be rethought to be useful for current psychoanalytic work, for feminist studies, and for social theory.

Psychoanalytic theory used for biography, she argues, can yield insights for psychoanalysis itself, particularly in the understanding of creativity. Subject to Biography offers not simply the products of an astute mind, but an entrée into the thinking process; it welcomes the reader into the writer's workshop.

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About the Author:
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl is a psychotherapist at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. She has written two well-known biographies, one of Hannah Arendt and one of Anna Freud, as well as Freud on Women, Creative Characters, and a collection of essays, Mind and the Body, and a novel, Vigil.
Review:
A fascinating and challenging series of essays...They range from theoretical speculations on the art of psychobiography and the history of the troubled relationship between feminism and psychoanalysis to personal reflections on [Young-Breuhl's] empathetic connection to her chosen biographical subjects. (Barbara Fisher Boston Globe)

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl demonstrates how psychobiography illuminates the complex relations between the conditions of people's lives and who they become, explores the processes that mediate between the outer and inner worlds, and makes clear that the latter is no simple product of the former...Those recognising the importance of reflexivity in research can learn a lot from these essays. As knowledge producers, we can learn too about tolerating ambiguity and paradox, resisting the seduction of certainty. (Wendy Hollway The Psychologist)

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  • PublisherHarvard University Press
  • Publication date1999
  • ISBN 10 0674853717
  • ISBN 13 9780674853713
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages288

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9780674002074: Subject to Biography: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Writing Women’s Lives

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780674002074
Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2000
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Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth
Published by Harvard University Press (1999)
ISBN 10: 0674853717 ISBN 13: 9780674853713
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