TUM Library

"What are the unconscious processes involved in reading literature? How does literature influence our psychological development and existential challenges? A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature offers a unique glimpse into the unconscious psychic processes and development involved in reading. The author listens to the "free associations" of various literary characters, in numerous scenarios where the characters are themselves reading literature, thus revealing the mysterious ways in which reading literature helps us and contributes to our development. The book offers an introduction both to classic literature (Poe, Proust, Sartre, Semprun, Pessoa, Agnon, and more) and to the major psychoanalytic concepts that can be used in reading it - all described and widely explained before being used as tools for interpreting the literary illustrations. The book thus offers a rich lexical psychoanalytic source, alongside its main aim in analysing the reader's psychological mechanisms and development. Psychoanalytic interpretation of those literary readers opens three main avenues to the reader's experience: 1) The transference relations toward the literary characters 2) the literary work as means to transcend beyond the reader's self-identity and existential boundaries and 3) mobilization of internal dialectic tensions towards new integration and psychic equilibrium. An Epilogue concludes by emphasising the transformational power embedded in reading literature. The fascinating dialogue between literature and psychoanalysis illuminates hitherto concealed aspects of each discipline and contributes to new insights in both fields"-- Provided by publisher.

Cover; Half Title; Series Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Table of Contents; Preface; Acknowledgements; Permissions acknowledgements; Introduction: reading the reader; Sister disciplines: literature and psychoanalysis; From the death of the author to the birth of the reader; The reader as an active partner in establishing meaning; Reading as an encounter; The therapeutic aspects of reading; The reader's couch and the analyst's couch; The Freudian approach to literary research; Psychoanalytic research discovers the literary reader

The influence of postmodernism on psychoanalytic literary studyAcceptable methodologies in reader study: an inherent 'catch'; The reading experiences of the literary characters; Notes; References; Further reading; PART I: Transference relations of the literary reader; 1. The distancing paradox; A brief introduction to Jorge Semprún's Literature or Life; Fear of disintegration and the transitional phenomena; Notes; References; Further reading; 2. The bestowal of meaning; Four prominent aspects of the establishment of meaning; Notes; Bibliography; Further reading

3. Seven types of identificationIdentification: apsychoanalytic perspective; 1 Internalized identification; 2 Projective identification; 3 Extractive identification; 4 Identifications belonging to the primitive edge of experience: adhesive and objectifying identifications; 5 Raw identification; 6 Intrusive identification; 7 Chimeric identification; Notes; References; Further reading; 4. Resistance to reading; Resistance; Surrender; The false self; False reading in Marcel Proust's writings; Detached reading in Proust and Agnon; References; Further reading; 5. The idealization of the author

Paranoid-schizoid idealizationDepressive idealization; The depressively idealized poet as acontainer; Idealization of the writer as sublime; Notes; References; 6. Mutual witnessing; Areturn to Semprún's book Literature or Life; References; 7. Reparation of the ethical position; The ethical covenant; References; PART II: Reading literature as a means of transcendence; 8. Transcendence beyond self-identity; Identity: apsychoanalytic perspective; Identity, Fernando Pessoa and The Book of Disquiet; Identity, Pessoa and reading literature; Notes; References; Further reading

9. Transcendence beyond the boundaries of human vulnerability and mortalityDeath anxiety: apsychoanalytic perspective; Death anxiety: aphilosophical perspective; The fear of death and symbolic immortality; Reading literature as atranscendence beyond symbolic death; The reading of literature as atranscendence towards 'symbolic timelessness'; Redemptive literature: areligious quality; Realistic transcendence in reading literature; Literature's precedence over life; Notes; References; Further reading; PART III: From psychic equilibrium to psychic change: the dialectic forces of literature

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.