Paul Verhaeghe

Paul Verhaeghe is a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, psychotherapist and author. In his country, he is fairly well-known due to his three most recent books (you could almost call it a non-fiction trilogy): Identity (2012), Authority (2015) and Intimacy (2018). What follows below is a summary of these three books as well as two other titles he has published. A key concept throughout his works is the subtle, nearly invisible influence of ideology (neoliberalism) on our society and way of looking at things like love and success. According to Maxim on this wiki, he is a distinct example of an INFJ personality.

Love in times of loneliness (Liefde in tijden van eenzaamheid, 1998)
Heavily influenced by psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, this compilation of three essays offer a look into Verhaeghes ideas on men and women, love, relationships, intimacy, desire and drive. This is the most complex and intricate of Verhaeghe's books still aimed at a general audience. Key concepts: as adults, we seek out the lost pre-verbal mother-child relationship in the form of a 'romantic' relationship. The complex interplay between love and lust makes this rather complicated.

The end of psychotherapy (Het einde van de psychotherapie, 2010)
This book examines our way of treating psychological problems, and harshly criticises the increasingly medical-biological way of handling mental illness, with pills, genes and neurons being seen as more important than psychoanalysis and psychotherapy (talking about problems, reliving strong emotions).

Identity (Identity, 2012)
In a society where (visible) success and prestige become increasingly important, and individual responsibility (you are to blame for your own success and failure) is grossly exaggerated, certain psychological issues are on the rise (stress, social anxiety, 'burn-out' (overworking), depression).

Authority (Autoriteit, 2015)
Our current society has a troubled notion of 'authority'. But rather than proposing a return the paternalistic, patriarchical, oppressive societies as we knew them in the 20th century and before, Verhaeghe advocates a different, more 'horizontal' form of authority, where a group is the source of authority to people who voluntarily agree this horizontal-shared authority is a force for good, rather than an tyrannical one (ie a dictatorship) or the total lack of authority (anarchy, chaos).

Intimacy (Intimiteit, 2018)
Verhaeghe's latest book explores our relationship with our own body and our own feelings, emotions, as the basis for a solid, mutual relationship with somebody else. It strongly argues against pleonexia, a concept Verhaeghe borrows from Aristotle which roughly means: the never-ending desire for more (money/fame/sex/...). Similar to his argument in Identity, Verhaeghe notes that whereas in the early 20th century, people found themselves bad and sinful, they now find themselves 'not good enough'. The inability to live up to an impossible ideal creates unhappiness. Verhaeghe focuses on the good life, not the better or the best life.

Quotes

 * "A life fully dedicated to competition can't be a good life."
 * "The fact every disorder is measurible and quantifiable now, is a disorder itself."
 * "There is not a single rational argument to start a relationship."
 * "We are amusing ourselves to death. Yet nobody is happy."
 * "How remarkable, that a hundred years later, there are still people making it their life's work criticising or defending Freud. I don't *read those books. Waste of time."
 * "I see the consequence in the increasing diagnosis of 'autism' among youths. I believe this has little do with classical autism, but rather has to do with the increasingly prevalent social isolation, away from the all too threatening other."
 * [When asked whether a monogamous relationship is natural]: "Any biologist can tell you that we are not sexually monogamous. However more importantly, when it comes to love, we are monogamous: we expect an exclusive relationship with that one man or one woman.
 * [When asked whether mankind needs religion or not]: "If you mean by religion, the traditional western religions, then we can definitely live without those, in fact, we are better off without them. If you mean by this, do we need something above us, the transcendent, the answer is rather: yes. I think any of us, at some point, will look for something that transcends us, which we are a part of, and that we never quite understand.