Posttraumatic Joy: A Seminar on Nietzsches Tragicomic Philosophy of Life

Posttraumatic Joy presents the major themes and ideas of Nietzsches corpus from a continental and psychoanalytic perspective with a particular bent toward how they might illuminate ways of coping with and living beyond trauma and suffering. Through a series of transcribed and edited lecturesoriginally delivered as a part of the Nietzsche for Clinicians workshop run through the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston Collegethis work traces the genesis of such fundamental psychoanalytic concepts as repression, the death drive, and the Oedipus complex to the works of one of philosophys most audacious and original thinkers. Reading Nietzsche not as a philosopher in the traditional sense, but as a proto-psychoanalyst, a precursor to Freud and Lacan, this work explores his understanding of the origins of morality, the value of sublimation, the movement from mourning to melancholiaor, in Nietzsches terms, from trauma to tragedyand the possibility of a life lived in affirmation and self-overcoming.

This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners whose work intersects with continental philosophy and theoretical and philosophical psychology. This includes any psychotherapist, social worker, psychoanalyst, or pastoral counselor with an interest in understanding the deeply psychological philosophy of one of historys greatest thinkers.