Ruth Leys

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Ruth Leys (born 1939) is an American psychoanalyst and historian of science. She is also an author and is noted for her works on trauma; on guilt and shame; on Holocaust memory; and on affect theory. She is the Henry Wiesenfeld Professor Emerita of Humanities and Academy Professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Biography

Leys was born in 1939 in Inverness, Scotland.[1] She obtained Physiology and Psychology degrees from Oxford University in 1961. She later completed her Ph.D. in History of Science at Harvard University in 1976.[2]

Trauma

Leys is one of the scholars who believe that psychoanalysis as a discipline has failed to really understand trauma and that trauma "represents an obstacle to psychoanalysis, one that constantly threatens to overturn its basic assumptions."[3] She suggested that there is a mimetic and anti-mimetic polarity in changing interpretations of trauma.[4] When this is applied to the Freudian conceptualization of desire, the Oedipal theory of the subject and representation forms the anti-mimesis while transference is mimetic.[5] Leys also criticized Cathy Caruth, claiming she misread Freud on the concept of trauma. In this criticism, Leys outlined at least two Freudian models for trauma: the belief in the reality of the event; and, the possibility that it may just be a simulation.[6]

Concept of Affect

Leys' work on psychoanalysis holds that any affective turn fails in its interpretation of literature and works of art in the perception that they provoke meaningful feelings and not simply interpretable meanings.[7] She stated that "the fact that a novel or painting makes me feel or think a certain way may be significant aspect of my response to the work, but, simply as my response, it has no standing as an interpretation of it."[7]

Publications

  • Leys, Ruth. (2000). Trauma: A Genealogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Leys, Ruth. (2007). From Guilt to Shame: Auschwitz and After. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Leys, Ruth. (2017). The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Leys, Ruth. (2020). Newborn Imitation: The Stakes of an Idea (2000). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

References

  1. ^ "Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin: Ruth Leys, Ph.D." Ruth Leys, Ph.D. (in German). Retrieved 2023-03-23.
  2. ^ Jahrbuch. Quadriga Verlag. 2006. p. 114.
  3. ^ Stavrakakis, Yannis (2019-09-05). Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory. New York, NY: Routledge. p. 174. ISBN 978-1-138-69631-0.
  4. ^ Bird, Stephanie; Fulbrook, Mary; Wagner, Julia; Wienand, Christiane (2017). Reverberations of Nazi Violence in Germany and Beyond: Disturbing Pasts. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-4742-4185-4.
  5. ^ Campbell, Jan (2006). Psychoanalysis and the Time of Life: Durations of the Unconscious Self. London: Routledge. p. 101. ISBN 0-203-96604-X.
  6. ^ Rabaté, Jean-Michel (2014). The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-1-107-02758-9.
  7. ^ a b Steen, John (2018). Affect, Psychoanalysis, and American Poetry: This Feeling of Exaltation. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 166. ISBN 978-1-350-02154-9.

External links

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