What can contemporary psychoanalysis bring to the understanding of Generation X, a cohort for whom the trivialization of a dizzying array of possible experiences teamed with the pressure to lead spectacular lives often leads to diffuse feelings of confusion, depression, and disorientation. The Designed Self chronicles Strenger's therapeutic encounters with five extraordinarily gifted young adults for whom the ideal of authenticity long associated with the Baby-Boom generation was supplanted by the need to experiment endlessly with the self. Perpetual self-experimentation, constantly reinforced by the media, came to encompass everything from career choice, to hair color, to body shape, to gender identity. In compelling clinical stories, Strenger introduces us to patients for whom the project of shaping the self had become a cultural imperative no less than an expression of individuality. At once insightful and cautionary, The Designed Self investigates how psychoanalysis must change if it is to claim cultural relevance and therapeutic effectiveness in The Age of the Designed Self.
Carlo Strenger is Chair of the Clinical Graduate Program of the Department of Psychology at Tel Aviv University. He serves on the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism of the World Federation of Scientists, the Seminar of Existential Psychoanalysis in Zurich, and the Scientific Board of the Sigmund Freud Foundation, Vienna in addition to maintaining a part-time practice in existential psychoanalysis.
Strenger has published seven books including The Designed Self, The Fear of Insignificance and Israel: Einführung in ein schwieriges Land. He regularly writes political commentaries in his blog 'Strenger than Fiction' at www.haaretz.com, in the Huffington Post, The Guardian, Germany's Die Welt, and The New York Times.
His work has been reported on, and he has been interviewed by among others, in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Time Magazine as well as hundreds of newspapers and websites in more than twenty languages.
Carlo Strenger's website: http://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/carlo/
'Strenger than Fiction, Carlo's blog is at www.haaretz.com/strenger
Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Strenger
Blogginheads Interview on Fear of Insignificance: http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/35518
SAT 3 Interview on Israel's current situation: http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/?mode=play&obj=27474
