Books like Écrits

In Žižek’s view, philosophy as we know it today does not well and truly begin until the late-eighteenth century, with Kant’s critical-transcendental “Copernican revolution.” The Critique of Pure Reason inaugurates this revolution. It insists on the ineliminable centrality of the structures and dynamics of minded subjectivity for the constitution of what we experience as objective reality. Moreover, on Žižek’s psychoanalytic rereading of Kant’s epoch-making 1781/1787 masterpiece, Kant anticipates, among many other things, Lacan’s idea of an internally divided subject as the ultimate unconscious condition of possibility for how we humans register and understand ourselves and our world. Moreover, the Kant of the first Critique is crucial for Žižek as the inspiration for the entire tradition of post-Kantian German idealism so central to Žižek’s own philosophical program.

Schelling’s 1809 Freiheitschrift is one of Žižek’s favorite philosophical works of all time. Schelling therein strives to develop an account of evil as a positive ontological reality unto itself, rather than a negative rendition of it as a simple privation of goodness. In so doing, he is led to elaborate a metaphysics in which determinism, à la a Spinoza-inspired ontological monism, and freedom, à la the self-legislating subject of German idealism, are rendered compatible. As part of this vision, Schelling distinguishes between “ground” and “existence”—with free subjectivity depicted as the resurgence, within the pacified, stable reality of existence, of the unruliness of shadowy, primordial ground. Žižek’s repeated recourses to quantum physics for ontological insights are heavily reliant on this Schelling in particular.

By Žižek’s own admission, Hegel is as important to him as Lacan. And, Hegel’s mature Logic, spelled out in greatest detail in his hulking Science of Logic, sits at the very center of the entire Hegelian system in all its sprawling, encyclopedic scope. In the Science of Logic, Hegel elaborates and explores at great length the basic categories most fundamental to the very intelligibility of anything whatsoever. In addition to delineating the various conceptual contents contributing to reality being knowable, Hegel also provides, in the Science of Logic, a virtuoso display of the ways of thinking peculiar to his (in)famous speculative dialectics. One cannot fully appreciate Hegel without appreciating his Logic. Likewise, one cannot fully appreciate Žižek without appreciating Hegel.

Of all Freud’s writings, 1920's Beyond the Pleasure Principle occupies a special place in relation not only to Žižek’s conception of psychoanalysis but also to his philosophical/theoretical framework as a whole. This is the text in which Freud introduces his audacious and controversial hypothesis of the “death drive” (Todestrieb). It is not until 1920 that Freud fully brings to light tendencies within the psyche disrupting and disobeying the pleasure principle, forces of negativity able to suspend (if only momentarily) the psyche’s usual pursuits of gratification, satisfaction, well-being, and the like. Žižek repeatedly insists that his core intellectual agenda ultimately is to demonstrate an underlying equivalence between the Cogito-like subject of German idealism and the death drive as per Freud and Lacan.

For me, Žižek is the most brilliant and insightful, even if controversial, philosopher of our times, and this work is largely considered his masterpiece.

Drawing on popular culture (movies, jokes, science fiction), it provides a psychoanalytic view of ideology, exploring the unconscious foundations of such phenomena as totalitarianism, capitalism, and racism.

Žižek beckons us to pay close attention to any ideology that attempts to present reality as unified or harmonious (e.g., “Make America Great Again,” or “happy shopping”), as it most often hides (“disavows,” in psychoanalysis) its many contradictions (e.g., how “greatness” is often built on a history of colonialism or slavery; or how consumerism most often depends on the exploitation of workers, many of whom are women and racialized people working under sweatshop conditions). 

Tomšič basically identifies why psychoanalysis is an anti-capitalist technique and how it emerged in response to the social structure of capitalist society. Psychoanalysis counters resistance to psychic change and to social change, a resistance that manifests itself in capitalism. Tomšič very nicely sees how the neurotic suffering that psychoanalysis treats is the result of one’s integration into the capitalist system, which is why treating it requires an anticapitalist method.  

Beyond Sexuality is the most consequential psychoanalytic intervention in queer theory.

Much of queer theory has used Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality to reject or downplay psychoanalysis. Dean argues that psychoanalysis, particularly in the writings and seminars of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, offers a far more useful theoretical model.

Such theorists as Judith Butler misconstrue sexual desire by focusing on identity, rather than language and its effects. Desire, according to psychoanalysis, does not arise from our identifications—not even our gender identifications—but from the failures of identity. Desire is not constructed in language but manifests precisely where language breaks down.

Beyond Sexuality also offers a psychoanalytic reading of HIV/AIDS in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis.

This book gives an excellent overview of Freud’s thoughts about human psychology, and also shows the way he thought. Freud’s brilliance shines through. I hasten to say most, though not by any means all of his hypotheses are wrong. I read this book at 15 and knew when I finished it I was going to be a psychologist. Some of my work gives strong support to a few of his hypotheses about the unconscious. Ironically, Freud himself didn’t believe his ideas could be tested by psychology experiments.

This will be one of my more controversial picks – there are plenty of people who disagree with Campbell as a folklorist, a mythographer, and with his depiction of the Hero’s Journey. But, what is important about Campbell is his exploration of why the elements that appear in stories have the impact they do on our psyche, and how they fit together. One may not agree with all of Campbell’s conclusions, but I don’t think there’s a writer out there who won’t benefit from his exploration of the subject. I know I did.

I consider this book to be THE book for delving deep into the realm of symbolism and unveiling the hidden meaning behind visions, dreams, memories, myths, and art.

In this classic, Jung explores the more profound—not just pragmatic—aspects of the human psyche. Through Jung’s thought-provoking concepts, I gained significant insights into the unconscious mind.