'This is an important and timely book...(it) presents a powerful indicment of modern psychology, which is in dire need of reconstruction if it is not to fall woefully short of its potential' - Changes 3 Stephen Frosh compares the approaches of psychoanalysis and psychology across a range of issues central to contemporary views of individuals and the forces acting upon them. The book covers apparently 'internal' events - models of mind - and moves through developmental theories to work on gender difference and on racism. He shows how much psychoanalysts can learn from psychologists about clarity of ideas, the complexity and power of cognitive processes, and methodological stringency. Psychologists, however, have more to learn from psychoanalysis' ability to ask questions about personal meanings and subjectivity, questions traditionally outside the scope of academic psychology.

Author Biography

Stephen Frosh is Pro-Vice-Master and Professor in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK, and was previously Vice-Dean of the Tavistock Clinic. He is the author of many books and papers on psychosocial studies and on psychoanalysis, including Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic, Hate and the Jewish Science: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis, For and Against Psychoanalysis, After Words, The Politics of Psychoanalysis and Sexual Difference and Identity Crisis. His most recent books are Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions and A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory.