Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

Edmundson, Mark, The Age of Guilt: The Super-Ego in the Online World. 192 pp. 2023:6 (Yale U. Pr., US) <692-675>
ISBN 978-0-300-26581-1 hard ¥5,834.- (税込) US$ 26.00 *

How Freud's concept of the super-ego can help us to understand the harsh cultural climate of the digital age Cancellation, scapegoating, raving on Twitter. How did the Internet, which began as a place for open thought and exchange, become a forum for cruelty and judgment? Can a whole culture become mentally ill? How do we understand and respond to this problem? Mark Edmundson views contemporary culture and discourse through Freud's concept of the super-ego, the moralistic and frequently irrational inner judge. The poet William Blake was attuned to this "dark pressure of self-condemnation," and Nietzsche knew its power as well. One way to mitigate (temporarily) the self-judgment of the super-ego is to aim it outward instead, judging and even punishing others for supposed infractions. Naturally these targets fight back, resulting in a cascade of bitterness and even hatred. Edmundson traces the destructive passion of the super-ego on politics, race, gender, class, education, and more, drawing on psychological studies, classroom experience, and the work of Adam Phillips and Slavoj Zizek. Edmundson proposes ways to manage the super-ego and even to transform it into an affirmative power. In The Age of Guilt, Edmundson renews the promise of Freudian theory as he explores our unique social moment with psychological insight, humanity, and erudition.

Zwingenberg, Ran, Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 304 pp. 2023:7 (U. Chicago Pr., US) <692-561>
ISBN 978-0-226-82591-5 hard ¥23,562.- (税込) US$ 105.00 *
ISBN 978-0-226-82676-9 paper ¥7,854.- (税込) US$ 35.00 *

How researchers understood the atomic bomb's effects on the human psyche before the recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In 1945, researchers on a mission to Hiroshima with the United States Strategic Bombing Survey canvassed survivors of the nuclear attack. This marked the beginning of global efforts-by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other social scientists-to tackle the complex ways in which human minds were affected by the advent of the nuclear age. A trans-Pacific research network emerged that produced massive amounts of data about the dropping of the bomb and subsequent nuclear tests in and around the Pacific rim. Ran Zwigenberg traces these efforts and the ways they were interpreted differently across communities of researchers and victims. He explores how the bomb's psychological impact on survivors was understood before we had the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder. In fact, psychological and psychiatric research on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rarely referred to trauma or similar categories. Instead, institutional and political constraints-most notably the psychological sciences' entanglement with Cold War science-led researchers to concentrate on short-term damage and somatic reactions or even, in some cases, on denial of victims' suffering. As a result, very few doctors tried to ameliorate suffering. But, Zwigenberg argues, it was not only that doctors "failed" to issue the right diagnosis; the victims' experiences also did not necessarily conform to our contemporary expectations. As he shows, the category of trauma should not be used uncritically in a non-Western context. Consequently, this book sets out, first, to understand the historical, cultural, and scientific constraints in which researchers and victims were acting and, second, to explore how suffering was understood in different cultural contexts before PTSD was a category of analysis.