Psychoanalytic Accounts of Consuming Desire

Seeks to connect the reader to the scope and majesty of Freud's vision. Most chapters focus on one of his key texts before discussing the topics more widely in relation to other authors and to consumer research. Explanations by Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan and René Girard, among others are selectively discussed in relation to a range of topics including: sexuality, aggression, narcissism, mourning, excess, lack, freedom and hysteria. While not motivated to rehabilitate psychoanalysis, a subsidiary aim is to introduce discussion of the usefulness of psychoanalytic understandings of concepts such as identification, the unconscious, mourning, narcissism, lack and hysteria in relation to consumer desire. It also aims to provide a flavour of Freud's connection to ancient philosophy through works such as Plato's Symposium and to the arts. Finally it selectively discusses how psychoanalytic ideas were interpreted by others, for better and for worse, during the twentieth century.