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. |
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... sadism drive Hardy's novel even as they define his fictional world . Sue and Jude " seem to be one person split in two . " They play out both sides of the " pain - inducing / pain - suffering object relationship xvi Vera J. Camden.
... person out there , to whom I speak , is part of the " world " ) . It is because separation is unbearable that such a bridg- ing of the gap is so essential ; whenever we study man's and woman's relationship to the world , which amounts ...
... person , and one of its two functions is to prevent the discovery of the substitution . What consequence can this have on our reflection on the concept of meaning ? Again , what is meaning ? It seems we can now turn to the process ...
... with a question mark again , to which she replies : " No , my name is . . . . " By pronounc- ing her own name , she completes the " session , " showing what a name is and how it is attributed to one person only : On Meaning 11.
... person only : " Yes , Jane , and you ? " And to do so , she has had to teach Tarzan what difference is : No , " you " cannot be a name for him ; yes , her name is " Jane . " We can say she points the way to Tarzan , encouraging him , in ...