Cultures of Fetishism [Hardcover]

In her latest book, Dr. Louise Kaplan, author of the groundbreaking Female Perversions , explores the fetishism strategy, a psychological defense that aims to tame, subdue, and if necessary, murder human vitalities. Through an exploration of such cultural phenomena as footbinding, reality television, and the construction of robots, Kaplan demonstrates how, in a technology-driven world, an understanding of the fetishism strategy can help to preserve the human dialogue that is the basis of all human relationships. Kaplan writes from the heart as well as from the intellect.Fetishism and the Fetishism Strategy Unravelling Freud on Fetishism Footbinding and the Cultures of Fetishism that Breed it The Body of a Woman: Making Films Writing on the Skin Archive Fever: Writing Lives Unfree Associations: The Training of Psychoanalysts The Fetishism of Commodities Robots and Humans: Silicon and Cabon Cultures of Fetishism

A weird, wonderful, scholarly book packed with heady ideas about robots, biography, tattoos, psychoanalytic training, footbinding, filmmaking, sex, death, and the different ways people kill the emotional confusion of being alive. Louise Kaplan brings together a rich and dizzying set of subjects, and nobody who reads her will be able to use the word 'fetish' or its variants quite so casually again. - Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters

Louise Kaplan, one of our most persuasive psychoanalytic writers, is a thought-provoking companion as she uncovers fetishism in a startlingly wide range of behavior and imagery. I found myself agreeing here, dissenting there, but always absorbed and stimulated by the intellectual journey. One of her main themes, the threatening vitality of female sexuality, is as vexing and important today as when she first started writing about it, and her chapter on archive fever is a revelation. - Molly Haskell

Louise Kaplan writes about our psychological complexities with exceptional lƒ]