Compromise Formations: Current Directions in Psychoanalytic CriticismVera J. Camden These essays are collected from the Fourth International Conference on Literature and Psychology held at Kent State University, 7-9 August 1987. In selecting the essays for this first collection to emerge from the varied conferences now being sponsored by the Kent State University Center for Literature and Psychoanalysis, Vera Camden has brought together representative contributions from two major contemporary schools of psychoanalytic criticism: object relations and Lacanian theory. These essays define the questions which emerge when both schools are brought into the kind of association engendered by this conference, offering not so much a resolution to opposing positions as a fuller articulation of the space each occupies and a fluidity of discussion which has characterized psychoanalysis since Freud's earliest discoveries. Each contributor is concerned with the place of the unconscious in the determination of the human subject and its representations. Whether the approach is primarily clinical or literary, each identifies and analyzes the anguish of the incomplete self--a sell which looks to construct, identify, regain, or even deny meaning. A crucial difference emerges among these authors as to how the experience of human alienation and the quest for identify is to be analyzed. Some would suggest, after Jacques Lacan, that the task of analysis is to recognize the illusion of the unitary self and to reconcile the individual to that state. Others would contend the task of analysis is to recover, by the transference relationship, the lost unity missing in childhood and reflect in adult object-relations. These essays range from clinical perspectives in psychosis and creativity to critical readings of Joyce and Shakespeare to recent applications of brain research to traditional psychoanalytic notions of the human subject. The richness and variety in this collection bear witness to the continuing impact of psychoanalysis on literary and cultural studies. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 52
... gives these notions a personal interpretation . 8. Again , this is not new . Cf. Chervel's observation : “ Le signe des Idéologues [ au début du XIXe siècle , en France ] , c'est donc à la fois un son et une relation " ( 6 ) . ( “ The ...
... gives rise to the conflict between ambivalent feelings of love and hatred which leads to guilt , Guntrip's inability to recall and hence to mourn his brother's death is indicative of arrest at a more primitive stage of emo- tional ...
... far as to say : " You too have a good breast . You've always been able to give more than you take . Doing your analysis is almost the most reassuring thing that happens to me . The chap before you makes me Redefining the Revenant 19.
... give a summary of this letter , then cite several passages from it . Initially , Freud reports upon the continuation of his self - analysis and in the process begins to talk about his old nursemaid , who was discovered to be a thief and ...
... give me support . Only the grave historical interruption of this , one must add , somewhat playful and rather magical game , showed me that there must be more to quoting from literature than self - confirmation . In the United States ...