Camus and Psychoanalysis (original) (raw)

Intimate Strangers: Albert Camus and Absurdity in Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis, self and context, 2019

This article employs Albert Camus' concept of "absurdity" in illuminating dyadic processes that can become alienating to analysts, leading to an uncanny estrangement from patients, processes, or even theories. By use of theoretical comparisons and two case examples, I show how Camus' lyrical metaphors of facing of vast unknowns help humanize and articulate challenging analytic uncertainties. Such unknowns can appear to undermine analysts' own strivings, including hopes of helping patients, or being seen by patients (and mentors) as "good enough." Camus' poetic descriptions of our encounter with mortal finitude dovetail with Stolorow's descriptions of traumatic anxiety, which can arise for either participant, impacting the intersubjective system. Camus' use of prison metaphors parallels Brandchaft's descriptions of subjective imprisonment to enslaving thought-systems, as both champion liberation from such Cartesianized systems-even as enslaving enmeshments recur in a process devoted to emancipation. Camus helps conceptualize such intersubjective paradoxes, as Brandchaft's insistence on the commitment to free patients' distinctive perspectives parallels Camus' discussions of passion, freedom, and rebellious individuation. Finally, I look at Camus' being a "little caregiver" in childhood, like many analysts as well, as described by Atwood (2015). Participants' repetitive trauma may be provoked within the process, even by the relationship's asymmetry, in absurd contrast to participants' initial hopes. Thus crises can illuminate averted traumastates, as both participants endure the surrender of an idealized relationality. Dyads must somehow navigate the absurd tension between the repetitive agonies of unspeakable trauma or grief, coexisting with analysis' more open possibilities. Camus' (1942/1983) insistence on "giving the void its colors," in facing absurd finitude, inspires clinical creativity and passionate engagement, in striving to co-create the safe relational home patients have long been denied.

Introduction: Camus as Philosopher amongst Philosophers (Brill's Companion to Camus)

Brill's Companion to Camus, 2020

Preprint of Introduction (with Maciej Kaluza and Peter Francev) to Brill's Companion to Camus. The collection brings together twenty chapters by anglophone scholars. Part 1 features considerations of Camus in dialogue with other philosophers and philosophical authors. Part 2 involves examinations of Camus's claims on key philosophical themes and issues (including the absurd, rebellion, love, solidarity, asceticism, politics, justice, and art). This introduction addresses the metaphilosophical issues surrounding Camus's philosophical thought. We then situate Camus's thought, and this collection, in relation to contemporary events and issues, as well as the existing Camus scholarship. Summaries of each of the book's chapters follow.

Camus -The Problem of Evil and the Tragic Sense of Life

Unpubliushed - given as a talk June 28, 2023

Camus is often thought of as a radical atheist. I argue that his work is in fact characterised by a tension between two views which are both at least quasi-religious: a pantheistic sense of a normative cosmic order, and a quasi-Gnostic “metaphysical revolt” against that order on account of the suffering that pervades it. I trace the ways in which Camus looks to art – and in particular to tragedy – for our best articulation of that tension, and for some hint of how we can live within it despite the lack of a complete theoretical reconciliation between those perspectives. Comparisons are made at various points in the paper between Camus and Kierkegaard.

Thematic Concerns of Albert Camus

2013

In this paper, I have focused on the different themes of Camus. His writings reveal the themes of the irrationality of the universe, absurdity of the human existence, the meaninglessness of human life, the importance of the physical world, suicide, decay and death, the nature of human revolt, exile and redemption. As a writer, Camus fashioned a body of literature using a variety of genres and themes to express the breadth and depth of his concerns especially about moral and political issues. He was true to the active and contemplative aspects of life. It is correct that the single work for which Camus is most famous is entitled The Stranger. Meursault, the main character of the novel, exists with a sense of the world and a morality that sets him apart from human society at large. Camus’s first collection Betwixt and Between was published in 1937 while Nuptials was published two years later. The essays in both books largely reflect Camus’s love of Algeria with sensuous descriptions o...

A Possible Legacy of Albert Camus. A Critical Reading, in «Cogito», n. 2, 2014, pp. 51-59

Abstract. The critical reception of Camus in Italy, mainly underlines the Mediterranean mark of the Camusian thought. In last years several works on Albert Camus have appeared in Italy, and all of them exhibit a crucial feature: the “Thought at the Meridian”. It is a sign that crosses the entire Work of the Author, since the first works of success, as Le Myhte de Sisyphe and, of course, L’Homme révolté, in which the last chapter is entirely dedicated to this theme. One century after the birth of Camus, I would like to offer a review of these Italian critical interpretations of the French thinker, and to show some very rich points in common with other important authors contemporary to him. Keywords. Albert Camus, Mare Nostrum, Tempus Nostrum, Midì, Abend-land.