Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric: Freud, Burke, Lacan, and Philosophy’s Other Scenes

Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric: Freud, Burke, Lacan, and Philosophy’s Other Scenes is an innovative work that places the fields of psychoanalysis and rhetoric in dynamic resonance with one another. The book operates according to a compelling interdisciplinary conceit: Adleman provocatively explores the psychoanalytic aspects of rhetoric and Vanderwees probes the rhetorical dimensions of psychoanalytic practice.

This thoroughly researched text takes a closer look at the ＂missed encounter＂ between rhetoric and psychoanalysis. The first section of the book explores the massive, but underappreciated, influence of Freudian psychoanalysis on Kenneth Burke’s ＂new rhetoric.＂ The book’s second section undertakes sustained investigations into the rhetorical dimensions of psychoanalytic concepts such as transference, free association, and listening. Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric then culminates in a more comprehensive discussion of Lacanian psychoanalysis in the context of Kenneth Burke’s new rhetoric. The book therefore serves as an invaluable aperture to the fields of psychoanalysis and rhetoric, including their much overlooked disciplinary entanglement.

Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric will be of great interest to scholars of psychoanalytic studies, rhetoric, language studies, semiotics, media studies, and communication studies.

Daniel Adleman, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Toronto. He teaches and writes primarily about the intricate interrelationships between rhetoric, psychoanalysis, media, and social change. He has recently published articles in Cultural Politics, Cultural Studies, Canadian Review of American Studies, communication +1, English Studies in Canada, and Canadian Literature. He has also published book chapters in Crossing Borders (ARP, 2020), Utopia and Dystopia in the Age of Trump (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), and Performing Utopias in the Contemporary Americas (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). In 2012, he co-founded the Vancouver Institute for Social Research, an ongoing critical theory free school held at downtown Vancouver’s Or Gallery.

Chris Vanderwees, PhD, RP is a psychoanalyst and registered psychotherapist at St. John the Compassionate in Toronto, Canada. He is the co-editor of the essay collection (with Kristen Hennessy), Psychoanalysis, Politics, Oppression and Resistance: Lacanian Perspectives (Routledge, 2022), and his writing can be found in various journals including American Imago, the Canadian Journal of Communication, the European Journal of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Discourse, and Psychoanalytische Perspectieven. He is an affiliate and research guest of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and a member of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis.