Identity Crisis: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and the Self

by Stephen Frosh

This book examines the psychological responses of people to the excitements and terrors that characterise the modern world. Beginning with a description of modernist and post-modernist accounts of contemporary life, it then moves into detailed discussions of narcissism and psychosis - two states of mind that seem to characterise the 'crises of self' to which the modern world gives rise.With an interweaving of social theory and psychodynamic explanations, this is a sophisticated and compelling text. Identity Crisis will be of interest to students in a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, psychoanalysis, politics and cultural studies.

240 pages, Paperback

First published July 6, 1991

About the author

Stephen Frosh has worked at Birkbeck from 1979, first in the School of Psychology and since 2008 in the Department of Psychosocial Studies, of which he was a founding member and first Head of Department. From 1982 until 2000 he worked part time at Birkbeck and part time as a clinical psychologist in the NHS. Throughout the 1990s he was Consultant Clinical Psychologist and (from 1996) Vice Dean in the Child and Family Department of the Tavistock Clinic, London. His academic interests are in the applications of psychoanalysis to social issues; gender, culture and ‘race’; and psychosocial studies. He was Pro-Vice-Master of Birkbeck from 2003 to 2017, first with responsibility for Learning and Teaching, then for Research and then for Internationalisation