You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The task of this collection is set out in the editors' introduction (p. 15): to present the widespread psychoanalytic thinking in Finnish academia, to make known the various reflections of psychoanalytic thinking in everyday life, and to respond to some of the recent criticisms targeted at psychoanalysis in Finnish public discourse. Thus the editors take up quite a challenge: the book is to serve as an explication of some of the contemporary scholarly uses of psychoanalytic concepts and, at the same time, it is to help in popularizing psychoanalysis and in defending psychoanalysis.
The authors come both from clinical practice and from academic research; a number of them have their feet in both worlds. I should say that the authors and the editors manage rather well the triple task they have taken up. In what follows, I will assess the three tasks - to popularize, to explicate, and to defend - each in turn, starting from the task of popularizing.
The line between good popularization and skilful exposition of theoretical ideas is not very sharp: skilful exposition of ideas may involve also good popularization. While all the contributions of the book speak to non-specialist readers, some of the chapters are particularly successful in conveying core psychoanalytic ideas in a clear and accessible way. Stig Hägglund presents some of the key tenets of the theory of drive, illustrated with extracts from film and literature. Leena Klockars gives an overview of the key developmental theories in psychoanalysis, supported by short clinical vignettes. Jussi Kotkavirta, while discussing the import of Freudian ideas for moral philosophy, also explicates Freud's structural model in a succint way.
The second task of the collection is to explicate the contemporary scholarly uses of psychoanalytic theories and concepts. Most of the contributions deal with this task. Three chapters on the interface between neuroscience and psychoanalysis stand out. Ari Juutilainen sets the scene with a hi