Ivan Ward

Freud's discovery of the unconscious was revolutionary. Psychoanalysis shocked the world of his contemporaries -- it is still controversial today -- but it was inextricably part of the grand, ambitious project of modernity. No detail of his patients' lives, however banal, was irrelevant to diagnosis; yet psychoanalysis could be employed in the most sweeping comments on culture or politics. From family relations and sexual dysfunction to the mass hysteria of dictatorship, psychoanalysis had something to say. Today that vision is often forgotten. On a Darkling Plain seeks to reinstate psychoanalysis as a valid, exciting and original language with which to comprehend our troubled and unstable world. Each of the ten essays included here takes as a keynote a psychoanalytic term, exploring its relevance in clinical practice but also its contribution to the understanding of our culture. Using a kaleidoscopic array of examples from art, music, popular culture and everyday experience, the authors remind us that Freud's perennially intriguing ideas are still invaluable tools in navigating the maze of ourselves and our environment. Ivan Ward is Director of Education at the Freud Museum, London… (mais)

Ivan Ward is director of education at the Freud Museum, and a part-time lecturer at London Guildhall University. He is the series editor for "Ideas in Psychoanalysis" and author of "Introducing Psychoanalysis", also published by Icon/Totem.

Excerpted from Phobia by Ivan Ward:

Suppose you are crossing Hungerford Bridge in London with someone who suffers from Gephyrophobia - a fear of crossing bridges. As you walk from Embankment underground station and ascend the stone steps which take you onto the bridge, your companion starts to talk nervously abput the prospect of crossing it. You arrive on the bridge and his body begins to stiffen, his head held very still as he stares straight ahead. After a few steps he begins to sweat and holds on to your hand, clutching it...

We all experience phobias of a mild or severe kind, crystallising our fears or aversive behaviour around a particular object or situation. Certain typical phobias may be regarded as a normal part of childhood - fear of the dark, of wild animals, of intruders.

Ivan Ward guides us through the array of explanations about phobia. The behaviourists see it as a conditioned response to a frightening experience; the genetic explanation sees phobia as the evolutionary legacy of real environmental threats - snamkes, spiders, lightning and so on. But the experience of severe phobia also contains something intensely irrational - why such overwelming anxiety at the sight of a bird's feather, or the thought of crossing a bridge? It is around this perplexing core that a psychoanalytic explanation comes into its own. Using common experiences, horror stories, the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the cultural history of racism, this book illuminates the nightmare world of phobic phenomena in the individual and in society.… (mais)