Winnicott and Labor’s Eclipse of Life: Work is Where We Start From (Psychoanalytic Political Theory) - Softcover

Gerard, Nathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1032505397 ISBN 13: 9781032505398

Publisher: Routledge, 2023

Synopsis

Nathan Gerard draws upon the pathbreaking insights of pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott to offer a new set of ideas in the novel domain of contemporary work life and its discontents.

Locating Winnicott within a broad landscape of critical scholarship that dissects work’s perils, the book positions Winnicott as both a radical critic and creative advocate for building a different kind of work life―one that might make room for the presence of self. By shuffling the discourse on neoliberal subjectivity to reclaim what Winnicott calls “unit status” of the separate self, Gerard differentiates Winnicott from the relational tradition by advocating for Winnicott’s non-relational aspects. Through such analysis, the book reveals how work and home have become two sides of the same impoverished coin, each contributing to a legitimately “bad environment” that perpetuates self-absence and annihilates one’s unique sense of “feeling real” and alive.

Winnicott and Labor’s Eclipse of Life

will be of interest to readers of Winnicott and psychoanalysis, organization and management studies, and anyone hoping to deepen their engagement with the dynamics of contemporary work life.

About this title

About the Author

Nathan Gerard is an Organizational Psychologist and Associate Professor at California State University, Long Beach, as well as a Research Associate at the Center for Psychosocial Organizational Studies. Nathan received his PhD from Columbia University with a focus on the psychoanalytic study of organizations.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032505397
• ISBN 13: 9781032505398
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 114