Lacan, Kris and the Psychoanalytic Legacy: The Brain Eater

Lacan, Kris and the Psychoanalytic Legacy: The Brain Eater examines the case of a scholar which was commented on by three leading psychoanalysts of the 20th century: Melitta Schmideberg, Ernst Kris, and Jacques Lacan.

Sergio Benvenuto unpicks the complex case history of the patient he calls "Professor Brain", a man who struggled to publish his research because of his fixation on plagiarism, and who has never been identified. Benvenuto reconstructs the case through the first-hand accounts of the patient-s analysts and Lacan and sets it in the context of mid-century psychoanalytic debate. As we progress through the patient-s story, Benvenuto explains Lacan-s theories as they apply to the case: the "foreclosure" of orality; obsessional neurosis; mental anorexia; and, above all, the reasons for his opposition to Ego psychology, of which Kris was one of the most important representatives.

This book will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in p