Click Here to Purchase: Libido, Culture, and Consciousness: Revisiting Freud’s Totem and Taboo by Daniel S. Benveniste from IPBooks.net
“Dr. Benveniste has taken on a daunting task with elan and intellectual energy, examining Sigmund Freud’s cultural contributions to the discipline he created in the late 19th century through a 21st century lens that is informed by anthropology; biological evolution; scientific interest in the natural world; world cultures; art, literature, mythos; over a century of developments in the field of psychoanalysis, and more. He is a true polymath, with broad interests and the ability to synthesize encyclopedic knowledge with focus and exuberance. A spirit of delight prevails in his scholarly writing and his informed, rigorous theorizing.” Merle Molofsky, book review published in The Psychoanalytic Review, Volume 110, Number 3, September 2023, pp. 351-354.
Libido, Culture, and Consciousness: Revisiting Freud’s Totem and Taboo takes us back to the phylogenetic project of psychoanalysis, leaves behind Freud’s psycho-Lamarckian assumption, and sets out in search of analogous relations between psychosexual development, psychopathology, prehistoric cultural evolution, myth, and ritual toward a unified theory of human development. Benveniste considers human social instincts in relation to primatology and Hominin evolution and finds theirmanifestations elaborated in the artifacts of prehistoric culture after the human symbolic function achieved its modern level of sophistication fifty thousand years ago. These analogous relations are schematized in four stages of “psychomythic development.” The stages are informed by psychosexual development and illuminate how human psychology has projected mythic thought into the world and out onto the walls of the universe throughout our cultural evolution.
Daniel S. Benveniste, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in Sammamish, Washington; an Honorary Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association; the author of The Interwoven Lives of Sigmund, Anna, and W. Ernest Freud: Three Generations of Psychoanalysis (2015); and Visiting Professor of Clinical Psychology in Wuhan, China.Daniel Benveniste’s new book is a tour de force that emerges from his life-long study of psychoanalysis including his eleven years of living and working in Venezuela. He possesses a rare gift for understanding the workings of the mind individually and in groups of all sizes. I don’t know of anyone in the field of psychoanalysis or anthropology to have written so beautifully and passionately about such a vast range of human experiences. In his new book, Benveniste proposes that when primate instincts are processed through human symbolic function, they give rise to metaphors that are co-created in the space between the individual and the culture. He proposes a new dimension of human development, the psychomythic, and a new way of looking at psychopathology, both of which are inseparable from the cultural and the mythic dimensions of human experience. This is a book not to be missed.—Thomas H. Ogden, MD, author most recently of Coming to Life in the Consulting Room: Toward a New Analytic Sensibility and Reclaiming Unlived Life.
Daniel, having read your new book, Libido, Culture and Consciousness: Revisiting Freud’s Totem and Taboo, I couldn’t help but remember the early years of your work with Rollo. He prophesied you would contribute fresh and fascinating ideas to the field. I know Rollo would have loved your book. You were always one of his favorite students. I wish you success with this book and the ones to follow.
Fondly,—Dr. Georgia L. May