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Lust
Lust is arguably the most basic of human desires. It determines much of our behavior and our culture, but is it understood? Building on his groundbreaking work in Ecstasy and Rage, Michael Eigen confronts lust, mining the history of psychology and religion as well as the literary depths of the Symposium, the Iliad, and the book of Genesis. He also takes us into his own sessions as a psychoanalyst to show how lust expresses itself in the daily lives of real people. This comprehensive and accessible account of a still-taboo subject includes lust's inescapable ties to reproduction and its ultimate resolution in death. The author uses contemporary and historical examples to show how lust is simultaneously a positive force and potentially destructive. In championing the life-affirming aspects of lust, Eigen's conclusions are thought-provoking, illuminating, and ultimately healing.
136 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2006
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August 9, 2009
**This was an impulse grab in the library -- how can one's eye not be caught by a black-bound book with "LUST" in sparkle-y red letters. (Plus, as an after thought, the spine says 'Eigen Lust', which is author + title, but in German looks something like 'self-interest' or thereabouts.)
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I've never read anything else by Michael Eigen, so I don't know how representative this book is of his others, but this one was structured in a very odd way, to the point where it doesn't really have a structure. The guy is a long-time(?) psychiatrist and professor of psychology, and this is a near-stream-of-consciousness meditation on the meaning of Lust. Some of it draws on cases he's seen in practice, some on research (lots of Freud, Lacan, Jung, etc.) and some on personal reflection.
There were a few interesting bits in the book, but without chapters or much hint of structure it's hard to go back and find them short of making a list or bookmarking pages. (Eigen kind of "warns" that's how the book will be in the forward, too. He says that, for most people, only certain parts of the book will really resonate, but due to the random ordering, you have to read the whole book to find those bits. Admittedly, it's only ~110 pages, so not too much to ask, but still...)
Some bits in the book are shorter; some, longer. Some are reminiscences of poems Eigen read in school; some are pages-long case histories. There's little rhyme or reason I could discern for the ordering of them all. Nor is there an index, by the way, to assist in going back to find something interesting or (hypothetically) to synthesize the different sections on related topics.
Long story, short: If you're hurting for something to read or are between long books and want a change of pace, and if you feel like reading a slew of ruminations on the reasons and effects of lust, then proceed. If not, then go to the next thing on your list.
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I've never read anything else by Michael Eigen, so I don't know how representative this book is of his others, but this one was structured in a very odd way, to the point where it doesn't really have a structure. The guy is a long-time(?) psychiatrist and professor of psychology, and this is a near-stream-of-consciousness meditation on the meaning of Lust. Some of it draws on cases he's seen in practice, some on research (lots of Freud, Lacan, Jung, etc.) and some on personal reflection.
There were a few interesting bits in the book, but without chapters or much hint of structure it's hard to go back and find them short of making a list or bookmarking pages. (Eigen kind of "warns" that's how the book will be in the forward, too. He says that, for most people, only certain parts of the book will really resonate, but due to the random ordering, you have to read the whole book to find those bits. Admittedly, it's only ~110 pages, so not too much to ask, but still...)
Some bits in the book are shorter; some, longer. Some are reminiscences of poems Eigen read in school; some are pages-long case histories. There's little rhyme or reason I could discern for the ordering of them all. Nor is there an index, by the way, to assist in going back to find something interesting or (hypothetically) to synthesize the different sections on related topics.
Long story, short: If you're hurting for something to read or are between long books and want a change of pace, and if you feel like reading a slew of ruminations on the reasons and effects of lust, then proceed. If not, then go to the next thing on your list.
Displaying 1 of 1 review