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Spinoza’s Announcement of Psychological Practice

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Abstract

Following Freud’s admission of his own ‘dependence on Spinoza’s doctrine’, the present paper extends psychoanalytic discernment of a bright line from Baruch Spinoza’s natural philosophy across the evolution of natural and social sciences to Freud’s development of psychoanalysis and forward, to contemporary psychoanalytic thinking. The lens through which these developments unfold is a close reading of Spinoza’s first, incomplete methodological statement, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Tracking both the developing form and textual literary context from which this Spinozan inquiry proceeds, we recognize specific anticipations of contemporary psychoanalytic phenomena.

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  1. Kilmainham Congregational Church, Inchicore Rd., Dublin 8, Ireland

    Ian S. Miller

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Ian S. Miller, Ph.D., Associate Editor, American Journal of Psychoanalysis; Member, Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; Chartered Psychologist, Psychological Society of Ireland.

Address correspondence to Ian S. Miller, Ph.D., Kilmainham Congregational Church, Inchicore Rd., Dublin 8, Ireland.; E-mail: driansmiller@gmail.com.

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Miller, I.S. Spinoza’s Announcement of Psychological Practice. Am J Psychoanal 80, 259–280 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-020-09257-9

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