Book description
The title of this book, Irony Through Psychoanalysis, reveals its
double register in which the psychoanalysis and irony are respectively
the object and the means (or the viewpoint) or vice versa. Thus, the
first chapter reviews the modern concepts of irony through the
psychoanalytic lens, whilst the two central chapters examine clinical
psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theorization from the perspective of
irony. Making extensive use of detailed personal material, Chapter Two
looks at how the concept of irony might be broadened to include
preconscious and unconscious aspects, and how we might speak of latent
irony, even in those who are emitting the message. This contrasts with
the position of Freud as a student of irony, who claimed that irony does
not require involving the unconscious. It corresponds, however, much
more closely to Freud's position as ironist, which is examined in
Chapters Three and Four. Chapter Four in particular also traces back the
reasons why Freud (with the exception of his article on humour) did not
return to his work begun with Jokes and Their Relation to the
Unconscious. Another of the book's aims is to make analysts more aware
of the usefulness of the possibilities of perceiving the analsand's and
the analyst's own ironic messages, especially the preconscious ones.
