Abstract: Psychoanalysts and literary critics can each imagine that psychoanalysis is the magic lens through which fiction and memoir can be clearly revealed. The idea of approaching reading literature somewhat as a psychoanalyst engages with a patient emerged concomitantly with psychoanalysts’ struggle to find more effective ways to help their more difficult patients. Two excellent examples of wonderful literary criticism unspoiled by a heavy dose of psychoanalytic theorizing are Janet Adelman’s superb first chapter on Antony and Cleopatra and Shoshana Felman’s outstanding essay on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw as seen through Felman’s Lacanian lens. Sigmund Freud showed the way of using psychoanalysis to read fiction. But, of course, he was under great pressure to establish and validate his new psychoanalytic venture. Psychoanalysts at work try hard not to take at face value what their patients tell them.
Publication Year: 2020
Publication Date: 2020-09-10
Language: en
Type: article
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