Identity Crisis: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and the Self - Softcover

This book examines the psychological responses of people to the excitements and terrors that characterise the modern world. Beginning with a description of modernist and post-modernist accounts of contemporary life, it then moves into detailed discussions of narcissism and psychosis - two states of mind that seem to characterise the 'crises of self' to which the modern world gives rise. With an interweaving of social theory and psychodynamic explanations, this is a sophisticated and compelling text. Identity Crisis will be of interest to students in a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, psychoanalysis, politics and cultural studies.

Stephen Frosh is Pro-Vice-Master and Professor in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK, and was previously Vice-Dean of the Tavistock Clinic. He is the author of many books and papers on psychosocial studies and on psychoanalysis, including Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic, Hate and the Jewish Science: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis, For and Against Psychoanalysis, After Words, The Politics of Psychoanalysis and Sexual Difference and Identity Crisis. His most recent books are Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions and A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory.