1st Edition

Celebrity Mad Why Otherwise Intelligent People Worship Fame

By Brett Kahr Copyright 2020
138 Pages
by Routledge

138 Pages
by Routledge

This short book by Professor Brett Kahr provides a psychoanalytic understanding of fame and celebrity in the early twenty-first century, building upon the bedrock foundations of the Freudian corpus. The book is divided into six chapters. Chapter One explores the psychology of the celebrity, questioning narcissistic and exhibitionist psychopathology, while Chapter Two examines the psychological... Read more

Introduction. "Oh, They Have All Outstripped Me in Fame": Sigmund Freud’s Struggle with Celebrity".; Chapter One. "Envied and Adored, and Most Wretchedly Unhappy": Are All Celebrities Mad?; Chapter Two. "A Mass Masturbation Orgy": The Celebrity Worship Syndrome.; Chapter Three. "I Woke Up the Next Morning and Found Myself Famous": Towards a History of Notoriety.; Chapter Four. "Mama Getting Out of the Bathtub in the Nude": The Roots of Celebrification.; Chapter Five. "Drag the Sublime into the Mud": Towards a More Comprehensive Theory of Celebrity.Chapter Six. "I’m a Celebrity and I Don’t Even Know It": On Becoming Famous in One’s Own Household.; Notes.; Acknowledgements.; References.; Index.

Biography

Professor Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health field for over forty years. He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London and Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health at the Centre for Child Mental Health in London. A Trustee of the Freud Museum London and of Freud Museum Publications, he has written or edited fourteen books, and he has served as series editor for more than fifty-five other titles. He is Consultant Psychotherapist at The Balint Consultancy and works full-time with individuals and couples in London.