Links in a Chain

A groundbreaking clinical and theoretical exploration of those dimensions of human subjectivity that transcend both the individual and social ties.

Every individual, Sigmund Freud claimed, "carries on a twofold existence: one to serve his own purposes and the other as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own." What are the implications of this involuntary servitude for our understanding of human subjectivity? Drawing on classic and contemporary works by Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Willy Apollon, as well as the author's own experience as an analysand and an analyst, Links in a Chain explores the surprisingly transindividual character of the human subject to which psychoanalysis gives access, from Freud's early hypothesis of a "collective mind" sustained by affects to historical examples of unconscious inheritance and transmission such as we find in moments of revolution. Tracy McNulty pushes the boundaries of clinical practice by proposing that the end of an analysis is concerned at its core with the emergence and advancement of a quest of desire that transcends the individual.