First published in 2008 by Karnac Books Ltd, 118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
Copyright © The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis for the journal format. Copyright © to the contributors for their own individual contributions.
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Edited, designed and produced by Kirsty Hall, Philip Derbyshire and Duncan Barford.
Editorial
Sitegeist is a space for thinking and questioning philosophy and psychoanalysis, which aims at a change in Geist–spirit, mind, intellect, wit, genius and morale. Emerging from the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, with its commitment to exploring the extended field of psychoanalytic thinking and engaging with the traditions of European thought, Sitegeist seeks to contribute to...
Homosexuality: Why Psychoanalysis?
The range of papers we have heard today articulates in various ways the question in the title of our conference, 'Homosexuality: why Psychoanalysis?' Joanna Ryan began by tracing the historical background to the publication of The Wolfenden Report in 1957 which led, after fierce campaigning, to limited law reform in 1967. The aim of the...
The Privacy of the Bedroom? Fifty Years on from The Wolfenden Report Reforms
The fiftieth anniversary of The Wolfenden Report–which may seem like ancient history to some–has a powerful meaning for me in the changes I have witnessed and lived through in this span of my lifetime. Furthermore, it is only forty years since the reforms recommended by The Report were implemented, with some significant amendments, in The...
Homophobia is the Patient
Introduction The idea for this paper arose one morning after seeing two patients consecutively. One was a young man of twenty-four who had had both heterosexual and gay relationships and who was now interested in having an intimate relationship with a man. However, he said, he ‘couldn't cope’ with what identifying as gay might mean...
How Not to be a Happy Homosexual
As he was entering a lift in a New York building, Slavoj Žižek ((Slavoj Žižek, for those who don’t know, is a Slovenian theorist, philosopher, and cultural critic, who interprets almost everything he sets eyes on through a Lacanian lens.)) once commented when he saw that there was no thirteenth floor, ‘you can’t fool god’ (Hanlan...
Insult and Identity
Sometimes I feel tempted to subscribe to a reading of the history of psychoanalysis, and the formation and subsequent uptake (I avoid the word development) of its main concepts as originating in Freud’s radicalism and the unwavering openness of his enquiry; followed by a gradual hardening and loss of this spirit by those psychoanalytic theorists...
Interpellation and Intensity: Thinking Homosexuality with Psychoanalysis
This paper is an attempt to link the historical shifts of homosexual culture and psychoanalysis. It is based on two assumptions about historicisation: firstly, that historical experience varies both phenomenologically and in terms of its conditions of production; and secondly, that concepts and categories of thought are historical in themselves, emerging at particular junctures and...
Review: The Temptations of Narcissism
Narcissism: A Critical Reader Ed. Anastasios Gaitanidis with Polona Curk, London: Karnac 231pp. £19.99 ISBN-13: 978-1-85575-453-9 This is a stylishly presented and well-edited collection of papers about one of the most notoriously difficult topics in psychoanalysis. The concept of narcissism cannot be understood without differentiating and disentangling it from other key concepts in the Freudian...
Review: Speaking from the Belly
Who is it that can tell me who I am?: The Journal of a Psychotherapist. (2007) London: intheconsultingroom.com Jane Haynes ISBN 9 780955 057984 One of the ways I found once to transmit to a group of trainees some sense of the phenomenological aspect of Jung’s theory was to show them postcards from the Brancusi...
Review: Our Boys Go In
The Stuff of Dreams: Fantasy, Anxiety and Psychoanalysis, Kirsty Hall, London: Karnac. ISBN 978-1-85575-496-6 ‘Our Boys Go In’–The Sun carried a headline as the war in the Falklands finally began. I was a teenage boy at the time living in former Yugoslavia and of so many things that I remember about that time one stands...
Response to Review: ‘Our Boys Go In’
The Sun always did go in for simplification. My association to the Falklands War is my experience in a Careers Office where all the staff except myself and the youth worker sat eating lunch and waving Union Jacks. I remarked, ‘Don’t you realise people will get killed as result of this?’ This broke no ice...
Notes for Future Contributors
Sitegeist is the official journal of the "Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis". Sitegeist uses a peer-review system based around electronic submission. Authors are requested to send their manuscripts (and revisions after acceptance) to our Journal Administrators, Barry Watt (briggflatts@hotmail.co.uk) or Nic Bayley (nicbayley@aol.com). The physical address for contacting the journal is: c/o 35 Manor Road, Potters Bar,...
Reviews Policy
Part of the remit of Sitegeist is to encourage new thinking in psychoanalysis and philosophy, and we see reviewing new books in those fields as a crucial way to do this. Books for review should be sent to: Barry Watt 37b Ickburgh Road Hackney London E5 8AF briggflatts@hotmail.co.uk