Books by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

Traces four prejudices through their social scientific and psychological interpretations in American history, establishing the viewpoints of both the victims and the perpetuators of prejudice, and the typically reductionist viewpoints of those who study them.

Cherishment is the emotional foundation, formed in childhood, which sustains all adult relationships--collaborations, romances, friendships. Blending the philosophical writing that has won Young-Bruehl international acclaim with Bethelard's imaginative sensibility, CHERISHMENT breaks free of tradition-bound psychoanalytic style to examine the basic human need for love.

The study of creativity is as old as western thought. In recent times any crisis of confidence is likely to involve anxiety about the loss of creativity--scientific, artistic, technological--and to set off a new search for creativity's definition. In Creative Characters, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl reflects on the long search for an understanding of creativity and offers a novel approach. She notes that studies of creativity fall into types. Some look at the act of creation, others focus on the creators, while others stress the conscious or unconscious motivations of creative people. All these approaches share certain limitations. They lack an integrative perspective and they search for a common denominator--one definition of the creative process, a single creative type--which obscures the diversity of creative people and their work. Young-Bruehl here offers an original analysis of creativity based on a theory of character. Creative people, she argues, create in the medium of their characters. They develop (usually unconsciously) an image of their characters or, in other terms, an ideal for the organization of their minds and lives, which they both aspire to and project into whatever they create. This character-ideal appears in their works, their social visions, their philosophies of nature, and also their understandings of creative processes, their own and others'. What creative people wish for themselves, for the psychic order in themselves, is what they wish for in their lives and works. Young-Bruehl suggests that there are three broad character and creative types, each comprised of many variations. She displays these ways of getting one's psychic act together or getting a product together by turning to three ancient Greek theorists of creativity--Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno--and three modern theorists--Nietzsche, Freud, and Proust. She then proceeds by clustering biographical vignettes and portraits of ideas in which she can show--rather than try to define--the creativity as well as the character ideal she has in mind. Of special interest to Young-Bruehl is what individuals say about their own creativity, especially when creativity is not explicitly their topic. Her approach is primarily psychoanalytic, but she also uses philosophical analysis, literary criticism, history of science, and biography. Psychoanalysts and psychologists will find the book not only a new approach to creativity, but a new way of doing applied psychoanalysis: there have been many psychobiographies but no effort has been made to survey them and draw conclusions. Philosophers will discover a major contribution to the theory of character, one of the most neglected subfields of philosophy. Finally, in Creative Characters biography readers will see how the study of individual lives can lead to reflection on larger questions.

A chronological selection of Freud's writings on women traces the evolution of his views and is accompanied by brief commentary.

This is the first volume to collect Freud's writing about women. Chronologically arranged, it shows clearly how his views arose, then were refined, systematized, and revised. Certain theories stayed constant such as the notion of universal bisexuality while others changed.

Over the past two decades, sweeping political changes and burgeoning new technologies have resulted in communities being increasingly defined in global as well as regional and national terms. Although the intellectual terra nova of world cultures remains largely uncharted, this anthology of sixty-two stories from around the non-Euro-American world provides what Elisabeth Young-Bruehl calls 'an introductory map to the great wealth of literary works now being produced in, at once, the particular settings of the writers' experiences and the global setting.'

An in-depth biography of political philosopher Hannah Arendt traces her life from her childhood in Germany to her years in America, discussing the events and influences that shaped her work.

This is a collection of essays on two intertwining themes: the practice of psychobiography, and the psychological and intellectual demands it makes on the biographer; and the complex and frequently conflicting relationship between psychoanalysis and feminism.

An elderly woman, one of the last surviving members of a formerly wealthy family, retreats into the past and records her memories in a journal.

Do the writings of political philosopher Hannah Arendt, so connected to the ideologies of the period of World War II and after, still have relevance in the 21st century? Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, who wrote the definitive biography of Arendt, reconsiders her mentor's work, finding its concepts and categories pointedly helpful in examining contemporary political and historical concerns, including terrorism and globalization. Young-Bruehl also finds the less explicitly political works, especially THE LIFE OF THE MIND, to be enlightening. (WHY ARENDT MATTERS is part of the "Why X Matters" series from Yale University Press).