The Deceptions of Desire

Regular readers of my other blog, and especially my book Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power, will be aware of how indebted I am to the Spanish Jesuit psychoanalyst Carlos Dominguez-Morano and his landmark and brilliant book Belief After Freud. That book remains, far and away, the most theologically sophisticated, compelling, and important engagement of Freud for decades. 

Well, to my enormous excitement, I see that Lexington Books is bringing out another of his books in translation next month: The Myth of Desire: Sexuality, Love, and the Self, trans. Veronica Polo Torok (Lexington, November 2020), 254pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

In The Myth of Desire: Sexuality, Love, and the Self, Carlos Domínguez-Morano draws on psychoanalysis to explore the broad and complex reality of the affective-sexual realm encompassed by the term desire, a concept that propels individual aspirations, pursuits, and life endeavors. Domínguez-Morano takes a global perspective in order to introduce a methodology, examine the present sociocultural determinations affecting desire, review the main stages in the evolution of desire, and reflect on affective maturity. Domínguez-Morano further explores the five basic expressions of desire: falling in love and being a couple, homosexuality, narcissism and self-esteem, friendship, and the derivative of desire by way of sublimation. Scholars of psychology, philosophy, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

You can be sure I will have rather a lot to say once I get my hands on this book!  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amish Sexuality: An Interview with James Cates

I heard a great lecture in August by Dr James Cates on his pioneering clinical work with the Amish in northern Indiana, and I was instantly fascinated by his experience, and even more so by his two main books on the topic.  In 2014, Johns Hopkins University Press published his Serving the Amish . And then Serpent in the Garden: Amish Sexuality in a Changing World  was published just a few weeks ago (JHU Press, 2020), 224pp. I reached out to him by e-mail to interview him about the book, which I read on a lovely weekend in mid-September sitting outside in near-perfect weather. It is an elegantly written and deeply interesting study, making all sorts of unexpected connections, and I sent him some questions about it. Here are his thoughts: AD: Tell us about your background JC: That question almost always prompts me to say, “I’m a clinical psychologist,” and start with my history in the mental health field. That background contributes to this work, but my love of writing predates my intere
Read more

Wilfred Bion on Memory and Desire

I've read rather a lot in British object relations theory, and of the psychoanalysts associated with the Middle/Independent "school" in the United Kingdom--those who refused in the main to get drawn into the "Controversial Discussions" resulting from the split between the Kleinians and the (Anna) Freudians in the early 1940s. But one figure of significance, who wrote a considerable number of dense books I have not yet read, remains on my list of those to explore: Wilfred Bion . (I've found the book by the Symingtons, The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion , a very helpful place to start. There they emphasize the overriding lesson to therapists from Bion is:  Think and speak from your own heart and mind. ) I have, however, read a couple of Bion's essays on Memory and Desire , and seen one passage from them quoted in many places over the years: the therapist must approach each session with the same patient "without memory or desire." I admit I w
Read more

Summer 2024: An Omnium Gatherum

Introduction: Can it have been eight months since I last posted on here? It is not for lack of materials, as you shall presently see! I read as greedily and voraciously as ever, rapidly eviscerating some books while with others slowly meandering through them repeatedly as I soak in their wisdom. Instead, I have been busy with all the usual aacademic and clinical duties, and all spare energies have gone into writing not one but two books of my own this year. With one of them done, I have come up for breath and can say something brief about both (before reviewing books devoured this year to date).  1) The first has morphed in my mind countless times. But now it has coherent shape, and would have been done this summer but for the unexpected instrusion of book #2, noted below. This first book will be more 'meditative' (for lack of a better word) and gives me a chance to develop some things I have been thinking about for thirty years now. The tentative title is On Being a Psychiatri
Read more