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Kafka's Prayer
''Kafka's Prayer'' is a 1947 book-length analysis of the novelist Franz Kafka and his works by Paul Goodman. Using Freudian and Reichian psychoanalysis, Goodman assesses the philosophical and religious significance of Kafka's aphoristic statements and three novels. He levels an anarchist societal critique against social institutions borne from neuroticism. Goodman used the book, published by Vanguard Press, to grapple with the religious implications of psychoanalysis and transition from a career writing on Jewish concerns to a period that would culminate in his collaboration on the founding work of the gestalt therapy movement. Many reviewers and commentators felt that Goodman overanalyzed Kafka and overextended specific symbolism, with farfetched or reductive speculation and obscure personal referents. Goodman's monograph was the first on Kafka in the English language and holds an idiosyncratic place in Kafka studies. Contents ''Kafka's Prayer'' is a book of literary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decentralization, democracy, education, media, politics, psychology, technology, urban planning, and war. As a humanist and self-styled man of letters, his works often addressed a common theme of the individual citizen's duties in the larger society, and the responsibility to exercise autonomy, act creatively, and realize one's own human nature. Born to a Jewish family in New York City, Goodman was raised by his aunts and sister and attended City College of New York. As an aspiring writer, he wrote and published poems and fiction before receiving his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He returned to writing in New York City and took sporadic magazine writing and teaching jobs, several of which he lost for his overt bisexuality and Worl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Castle (novel)
''The Castle'' (german: Das Schloss, link=no, also spelled ''Das Schloß'' ) is the last novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist known only as "K." arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle supposedly owned by Count Westwest. Kafka died before he could finish the work and the novel was posthumously published against his wishes. Dark and at times surreal, ''The Castle'' is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal. History Kafka began writing the novel on the evening of 27 January 1922, the day he arrived at the mountain resort of (now in the Czech Republic). A picture taken of him upon his arrival shows him by a horse-drawn sleigh in the snow in a setting reminiscent of ''The Castle''. Hence, the significance that the first few ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the short story "The Metamorphosis" and novels ''The Trial'' and '' The Castle''. The term ''Kafkaesque'' has entered English to describe absurd situations, like those depicted in his writing. Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the capital of the Czech Republic. He trained as a lawyer and after completing his legal education was employed full-time by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Structure Of Literature
''The Structure of Literature'' is a book of literary criticism written by Paul Goodman and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1954. Background ''The Structure of Literature'' is a work of literary criticism, a professionalized version of a genre known as ''belles lettres'', for writing that focuses on aesthetics and is associated with humanistic intellectual discussions (dialectics). The author Paul Goodman developed from this tradition. In the early 1930s, Goodman informally academic audit, audited classes taught by the Neo-Aristotelianism (literature), neo-Aristotelian Richard McKeon at Columbia University. When McKeon became a dean at the University of Chicago, Goodman accompanied him and became a humanities graduate student. In early 1934, Goodman published an article on aesthetics in the ''Journal of Philosophy'', whose main points, according to literary critic Kingsley Widmer, would become the central points of Goodman's dissertation, published 20 years la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copp Clark
Pearson plc is a British multinational publishing and education company headquartered in London, England. It was founded as a construction business in the 1840s but switched to publishing in the 1920s. Spender, J. A., ''Weetman Pearson: First Viscount Cowdray'' (London: Cassell and Company Limited, 1930). It is the largest education company and was once the largest book publisher in the world. In 2013 Pearson merged its Penguin Books with German conglomerate Bertelsmann. In 2015, the company announced a change to focus solely on education. Pearson plc owns one of the GCSE examining boards for the UK, Edexcel. Pearson has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts. History Construction business: 1844 to the 1920s The company was founded by Samuel Pearson in 1844 as a building and engineering concern operating in Yor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instinct
Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing both innate (inborn) and learned elements. The simplest example of an instinctive behaviour is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a corresponding clearly defined stimulus. Any behaviour is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience (that is, in the absence of learning), and is therefore an expression of innate biological factors. Sea turtles, newly hatched on a beach, will instinctively move toward the ocean. A marsupial climbs into its mother's pouch upon being born. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behaviour, internal escape functions, and the building of nests. Though an instinct is defined by its invariant innate characteristics, details of its performance can be changed by experience; for example, a dog can imp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ego (Freudian)
The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical constructs that describe the activities and interactions of the mental life of a person. In the ego psychology model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual desires; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic agent that mediates between the instinctual desires of the id and the critical super-ego; Freud explained that: The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that, normally, control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus, in its relation to the id, he egois like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength, while the ego us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Kropotkin
Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (; russian: link=no, Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин ; 9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist, socialist, revolutionary, historian, scientist, philosopher, and activist who advocated anarcho-communism. Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, Kropotkin attended a military school and later served as an officer in Siberia, where he participated in several geological expeditions. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1874 and managed to escape two years later. He spent the next 41 years in exile in Switzerland, France (where he was imprisoned for almost four years) and England. While in exile, he gave lectures and published widely on anarchism and geography. Kropotkin returned to Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917, but he was disappointed by the Bolshevik state. Kropotkin was a proponent of a decentralised communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Brod
Max Brod ( he, מקס ברוד; 27 May 1884 – 20 December 1968) was a German-speaking Bohemian, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is best remembered as the friend and biographer of writer Franz Kafka. Kafka named Brod as his literary executor, instructing Brod to burn his unpublished work upon his death. Brod refused and had Kafka's works published instead. In 1939, as the Nazis took over Prague, he emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, taking with him a suitcase of Kafka's papers, many of them unpublished notes, diaries, and sketches. Biography Max Brod was born in Prague, then part of the province of Bohemia in Austria-Hungary, now the capital of the Czech Republic. At the age of four, Brod was diagnosed with a severe spinal curvature and spent a year in corrective harness; despite this he would be a hunchback his entire life. A German-speaking Jew, he attended the Piarist school together with his lifel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freudian Projection
Psychological projection is the process of misinterpreting what is "inside" as coming from "outside". It forms the basis of empathy by the projection of personal experiences to understand someone else's subjective world. In its malignant forms, it is a defense mechanism in which the ego defends itself against disowned and highly negative parts of the self by denying their existence in themselves and attributing them to others, breeding misunderstanding and causing untold interpersonal damage. A bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target, or a person who is confused may project feelings of confusion and inadequacy onto other people. Projection incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping. Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection. Historical precursors A prominent precursor in the formulation of the projection principle was Giambattista Vico. In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach was the first enlightenment thinker to employ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delusions Of Reference
Ideas of reference and delusions of reference describe the phenomenon of an individual experiencing innocuous events or mere coincidences and believing they have strong personal significance. It is "the notion that everything one perceives in the world relates to one's own destiny", usually in a negative and hostile manner. In psychiatry, delusions of reference form part of the diagnostic criteria for psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia, delusional disorder, bipolar disorder (during the elevated stages of mania), narcissistic personality disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder, and even autism when under periods of intense stress. To a lesser extent, it can be a hallmark of paranoid personality disorder as well as body dysmorphic disorder. Such symptoms can also be caused by intoxication, such as from stimulants like methamphetamine. Psychoanalytic views In Sigmund Freud's view, "Delusions of being watched present this power in a regressive form, thus revealing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fixation (psychology)
Fixation (german: Fixierung) is a concept (in human psychology) that was originated by Sigmund Freud (1905) to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits. The term subsequently came to denote object relationships with attachments to people or things in general persisting from childhood into adult life. Freud In ''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'' (1905), Freud distinguished the fixations of the libido on an incestuous object from a fixation upon a specific, partial ''aim'', such as voyeurism. Freud theorized that some humans may develop psychological fixation due to one or more of the following: #A lack of proper gratification during one of the psychosexual stages of development. #Receiving a strong impression from one of these stages, in which case the person's personality would reflect that stage throughout adult life. #"An excessively strong manifestation of these instincts at a very early age hichleads to a kind of partial ''fixation'', which then constit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
