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‘Inscribing’ Freud: A Critical Review of Celia Brickman's Aboriginal Populations in the Mind
Author(s) -
Eickelkamp Ute
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.2006.tb00049.x
Subject(s) - psyche , argument (complex analysis) , psychoanalytic theory , metapsychology , psychoanalysis , order (exchange) , epistemology , sociology , philosophy , psychology , medicine , finance , economics
Working through the particular book under review, this essay seeks to demonstrate how certain entrenched positions in postcolonial feminist writings on psychoanalysis are unproductive. Instead of advancing knowledge and understanding of the human psyche, of society or of therapeutic technique, ideas in the human sciences and psychoanalysis are shown to be appropriated and distorted in order to sustain an academic self‐referential circuitry. The central argument of Brickman's book is that current psychoanalytic practice is inherently racist because Freud's metapsychology was informed by evolutionist ideas. The present discussion attempts to uncover the techniques of bias with which the author tries to substantiate her claim.