Psychoanalysis, Law, and Society explores the connections between psychoanalysis and law, arguing that these are required not only for conceptual or theoretical needs in both fields, but also for the vast range of practical implications and possibilities their association enables.
The book is divided into four parts, each addressing a unique example of the interaction of legal and psychoanalytic work. It begins with matters that are as global as they are local: the challenge of caring for and aiding migrants, refugees, families, and individuals; the question of planetary survival; of the mistreatment and violence in military and secular conflicts; and the projects and processes of international governance. The middle two parts focus on the very wide-ranging problems of social violence as these target women and people of diversity. Then, on the penetration of law into the most intimate aspects of family life: adoption, divorce, child custody, and complex parental arrangements. In the last part, the contributions use this double vision (legal and psychoanalytic) perspective to explore basic processes in social and legal life.
Psychoanalysis, Law, and Society will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as legal scholars.
About the Author: Plinio Montagna, MD, is a psychoanalyst and past president of the Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis of São Paulo and the Brazilian Federation of Psychoanalysis. He is the chair of the Committee of Psychoanalysis and Law for the International Psychoanalytical Association and former member of its Board of Representatives. He also works as a psychiatric and psychoanalytic expert in family courts in São Paulo.
Adrienne Harris, PhD, is a faculty member and supervisor for the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. She is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and of Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and she is on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Inquiry and American Imago. She publishes in the areas of gender and development.
