Longing: Psychoanalytic Musings on Desire

Longing: Psychoanalytic Musings on Desire is a contemporary, interdisciplinary exploration of one of psychoanalysis's most foundational and fascinating areas of investigation. This anthology explores the vicissitudes and varieties of desire, its public and private, normative and transgressive, its light and dark expressions. It examines desire in its relational, cultural, clinical, physical, sexual and aesthetic forms. Collectively, these essays demonstrate an understanding of the difficulties of identifying and realizing desire, precisely because it is multiple, omnipresent, shape-shifting, ongoing and, perhaps, always ultimately unfulfillable. They question whether desire is by definition something that cannot be satisfied, and contemplate how we relate to our desires? Interpersonal psychoanalytic practice and theory understands desire not merely as an intrapsychic drive but also as a force shaped by and shaping interpersonal relationships. From within this perspective, a number of the contributors examine a broad variety of clinical manifestations of desire as it struggles for expression or suppression. The issues under examination here include important and, in some instances, under theorized, topics such as dissociated and secret desire, compulsive cross-dressing, kleptomania, sadomasochism, passion within the analytic dyad, the emotional and relational impact of menopause, and the exploration of a womans relationship to her body and its adornments.