Psychoanalysis Is Good at Explaining Components of Everyday Life, Like Desire and Love

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Psychology is good at explaining, like any psycho analisis specific, is really excellent at explaining a various components of everyday life. This is how i hook my students right away. I stopp talking about desire and love, and their life, oh please give us. Give us more drama, loss, alienation, mourning, melancholy, depression. And also, importantlya the way in which we tend to repeat hurtful patterns of behavior, even when we really don't want to repeat them. We tell ourselves that we cannot change our way of doing things, but somehow we can’t. That was one of the criticisms of freud in particular, is that he really, e really

Neuroscience has given us great insights into how our brains work. But there is still room for purely humanistic disciplines to help us think through our thoughts and emotions, not to mention the meaning of our lives. Mari Ruti is a professor of English literature, with expertise in critical theory, gender studies, and psychoanalysis, especially the work of French theorist Jacques Lacan. We talk about the psychological drive that is motivated by what Lacan calls “lack,” which is related to “desire.” We use this as a way to think about such essential human experiences as mourning, creativity, and love. (We don’t talk about love enough here on the podcast.)

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Mari Ruti received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of critical theory and gender and sexuality studies at the University of Toronto. She is the co-editor of the Psychoanalytic Horizons book series for Bloomsbury.

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