This is an interesting and stimulating book. The author is an academic who works as Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in the University at Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has held numerous other positions at prestigious universities alongside her permanent post. What is extraordinary about her, however, is the sheer breadth of her knowledge and interests. Much if not most of her work stems from her study of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lacan's take on love and sexual relationships forms the basis for her books Lacan and Love and (Per)versions of Love and Hate and the essays 'I can't love you unless I give you up' in Gaze and Voice as Love Objects and 'Love and Sexual Difference: Doubled Partners in Men and Women' in Sexuation both of which books she co-authored. She is intensely interested in the arts from a Lacanian perspective hence the book Was sie immer schon über Lacan wissen wolten und Hitchcock nie zu fragen wolten. Her book (Per)versions of Love and Hate also contains sections on artists and she co-authored a book on Jenny Holzer. Finally, she has an overriding interest on how the fall of communism and the spread of hyper-capitalism has affected women — hence her book The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Ideology after the Fall of Socialism.

On Anxiety is based upon the author's study of Freud, especially the later Freud with his ideas about anxiety being the expectation of danger and neurotic anxiety being about an unknown danger, and Lacan with his idea of the anxiety the subject feels in her/his relationship with the big Other. The chapter on 'Anxiety at Times of War' is an illuminating study of this approach to the situations soldiers find themselves in and the ways in which they react. This chapter is extremely thought-provoking and well-worth reading by anyone interested in what has to be done to soldiers in order to get them to kill.

The chapter on 'Success in Failure: How Hypercapitalism Relies on People's Feelings of Inadequacy' is  based on Freud's insights into guilt and Lacan's concept of anxiety as being provoked by the lack of a lack and anxiety's central position between desire and what he calls jouissance. The author deftly shows how capitalism has evolved to exploit these anxieties which in turn compounds them.

The chapter on 'Love Anxieties' is beautifully researched and written but, unless one wholeheartedly accepts the Lacanian underpinnings, perhaps a little far-fetched at times. On the other hand, the chapter 'Anxieties of Motherhood' is very relevant and wholly believable despite some of the gruesome case studies with which she illustrates the chapter.

The final chapter, barring the conclusion, 'Can Testimony Offer a Cure for Anxiety?' is an intriguing discussion of the arts and the role they can play for the participants and the viewers/readers in the way they deal with anxiety.

The book as a whole is beautifully written and proof-read. There are superb endnotes with full bibliographical references and an excellent index. The book alternates between being a very easy read and being quite difficult to grasp but it is always intensely stimulating and thought-provoking — a rewarding read.

© 2007 Kevin M. Purday

Kevin Purday is a consultant in international education working mainly in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. His main focus is on helping schools to set up the International Baccalaureate Middle Years and Diploma Programs. He has taught both philosophy and psychology in the I.B. diploma program.

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology