The Development of Contemporary Literary Therapy Genre Yen-Chi Huang Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Taking its starting point from a critical dialogue with literary therapy writings and psychoanalytic theories, this paper explores thematic development and representation of psychoanalysis and therapeutic experience in contemporary literary therapy genre. To begin with, it is often considered that literature reflects the zeitgeist of an epoch. From the case of how different types of literary genres have developed within their specific epochs, one can reflect such developmental process from historical, sociological and literary perspectives. In the case of literary therapy genre, when it comes to its origin, we have to consider the historical development of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and how this development is documented in different literary forms throughout the time. Because the development of literary therapy genre and the public reception of psychiatry and psychoanalysis are very often synchronized, how this genre transforms from early form of objective medical documentation to the contemporary diverse literary therapy genre demonstrates an important shift of zeitgeist of psychoanalysis and literature. Furthermore, in the last decades, with the change of public reception and popularity of psychoanalysis, the contemporary forms of literary therapy writings also have changed. In contemporary literature, we have seen many different types of works which focus on the subject of psychoanalysis or therapeutic experience. Nevertheless, how literary therapy genre has been generated and evolved and finally comes to its own has not been fully researched by scholars so far. Thus, this thesis aims to investigate this shift of conceptualizing psychoanalysis in contemporary literary therapy genre. In order to define the manifold of the literary corpus, I premise my argument that after the gradual-changing process in psychotherapy methods and pharmaceutical revolution along with the popularity of psychoanalytic notions in contemporary culture, the infrastructure of literary therapy genre also diversifies. In addition to the emergence of different writing strategies, more and more new therapeutic issues are also covered in contemporary literary therapy genre. Therefore, we start to describe contemporary forms and components of literary therapy genre by following questions: (1)What is the definition of literary therapy genre? (2) How can psychoanalytic concepts be theorized in literary therapy genre? (3) How this genre is shaped and generated via varied thematic forms? And what is the targeted audience of the genre? I will focus on literary therapy writings written by both analysts and analysands about psychoanalytic experiences from the 1990s to the present by authors 1
and textual strategies. Because psychoanalysis is never a one way street, a comparison from analysts and analysands’ perspectives will show a very different representation of psychoanalytic experience in literary therapy genre. Also, I want to specifically stress the autobiographical narratives of psychological trauma and therapeutic encounter written by analysts or patients or literary authors. Because the narratives demonstrate the author’s ideological position toward the therapeutic encounter and relationship, and autobiographical narratives, whether fictional or non-fictional, can be regarded as a way of taking/writing cure and the cores of autobiographical narratives are the life stories of those who recount. An overall analysis of the representation of therapeutic moments in the autobiographic narratives will bring in a deeper understanding of how therapeutic encounters are represented in therapy writings. I.
The Definition of Literary Therapy Genre Over the last few decades, a large number of studies have been made on discourses of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and their various implications. There is a long list of contemporary literature focusing on mental disorders, psychiatric healing process and correlated phenomena. Nevertheless, the contemporary shape of the literary therapy writings has not been fully examined as a genre in itself (Bowie 1987; Williams 1995; Wright; 1998; Winter 1999). Hence, an overall analysis of the evolution of the literary therapy genre is needed here. Unlike the theoretical discourses of psychoanalysis, literary therapy genre is a type of creative writings concerning the subject of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis written either by psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, analysands or by authors who are neither psychoanalysts nor analysands. How psychoanalysts, analysands and literary authors turn psychoanalytic knowledge and experience into literary therapy writing via different approaches will be the focus of the research. In addition, following the development of literary therapy genre, I identify my research on the three areas specifically: (1) psychoanalysts-turned-authors and their literary therapy writings (2) analysands as authors and their writing of the therapeutic experience and (3) other literary writings concerned therapeutic issues written by non-psychoanalyst/analysand authors. Moreover, special attention will be given to the question of under what circumstances do psychoanalysts turn to creative writing, especially literary therapy writing. What is reflected in the corpus of literary therapy genre? Where does this urge of literary creativity come from and what is the effect on the reader? Added to this, what are the publishing strategies and general reception of literary therapy genre? While psychoanalytic discourse focuses on theories and clinical cases, with a diversity of narratives, the literary therapy genre describes the psychoanalytic process and the 2
therapeutic interaction between psychoanalyst and analysand. I explore literary therapy writings that address the issue of psychoanalysis because psychoanalysis and literature are often regarded allies on the basis of the importance of narrativity and discourse in the talking cure. In this respect, how different psychoanalytic conceptions result in different styles of literary therapy writings, and how psychoanalytic concepts and therapeutic experience have been appropriated, transformed, or complicated by agents of varied fictional narratives in contemporary literary therapy genre need to be clearly described. II. Psychoanalysis and Literary Therapy Writings before Freud Historically speaking, there were very little documentaries and literary records of psychotherapeutic narratives before Freud, because psychoanalysis as such did not exist. The human condition of mental disorder or psychiatric illness has its ancient history since the time of ancient Greeks. The written records of the insane can be found in historical documents. However, what are typical of the situation of those mentally ill subjects before the emergence of psychiatry and psychoanalysis? A nuance needed to be made here to distinguish the treatment and attitude toward the insane. Before 18th century, in early modern, the insane was often excluded by family, rural community and society due to the public fear of the insane’s deviation of the norm. (Shorter 1997, p.36) There was the alternatives such as to put the custodial responsibility to the insane’s family so the insane would receive home treatment or to accommodate the insane in madhouse, poorhouse or asylum. All in all, they were the measures to make sure that the insane would be guarded and excluded from the public sight.1 According to Edward Shorter, the birth of psychiatry means “the history of psychiatry began as the history of the custodial asylum, institutions to confine raging individual who were dangerous to themselves and a nuisance to others. It was the discovery that these institutions could have a therapeutic function that led to the birth of psychiatry as a discipline. ” (Shorter 1997, p. 7-8) Upon examination, when it comes to the origin of literary therapy genre, before the late nineteenth century, insanity and the insane were considered as the failure of physical wellness rather than psychological illness regardless that even the rigorous treatment of the patient’s body failed to cure the insane. As for therapy writing, excepting from medical documents, one of the earliest forms of therapy writings is automatic writing. It is used a way of getting to the heart of unconscious and self-disclosure of the patient. Pierre Janet (1895-1947) made his patients to engage in automatic writing in order to understand the patients’ fear.2 Nevertheless, since Freud, the tenet of psychoanalysis focuses on For example, in France, the public sector only started to involve in the treatment of the insane when Louis VIV’s general hospice project (Hôpitaux Généraux) began to accommodate those in need. 2 See Henri F. Ellenberger’s The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic 1
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various forms of psychoanalytic narratives and how they can play a major role in psychiatric healing process. Very early on, analysts like Groddek and others have experimented with the novel and short story form. Simultaneously, the interest of literary authors in psychoanalysis has been well documented and is especially clear in the genre of the psychological novel. The legacy of Freud and his contemporary psychoanalysts was contributed to the new treatment they proposed to treat the patients. By exploring the patient’s unconscious and psychic textures, these psychoanalysts tried to discover the root of mental illness. Unlike the traditional treatment of the insane or merely physical inspection, psychoanalysis emphasized the patient’s subjectivity and the interpersonal analyst-analysand relationship by bringing in the talking cure and free association in therapeutic session. Hence, the patient’s language and speech would always be the focus of analysis and was related to the formation of the patient’s subjectivity and root of the psychological problems. II.
Freud’s Case Studies and the Origin of Literary therapy Genre In reading Freud’s case studies, we can observe not only what it was like to be considered as the patients of hysteria and neurosis in late nineteenth century, we can analyze also the development of psychoanalytical discourses and the encounter between psychoanalysis and literature. These Freudian case studies have put forward the transitional moments in the history of psychoanalysis and literature. In Freud avec les erivains, J.B. Pontalis argues that the strong link between psychoanalysis and literature is more intimate than other artistic creations, for example, such as that of painting and music. (Pontalis 2012, p.11) Because very similar to the narrativity of literature, psychoanalysis itself also consists of mixed narratives, both are based on the analysis of the contents of narratives. Furthermore, Pontalis also comments on Freud’s role as a writer “car, ne l’oublions pas, il ne s’est pas contenté d’écounter, sa vie surant, ses patients, d’interpréter leur rêves et de déchiffrer leur symptômes, il n’a cessé, sa vie durant aussi, d’écrire — des livres, des articles, d’innimbrables lettres.” (Pontalis 2012, p.11) The image of Freud as an analyst-writer can be further verified from the fact that Freud acts as the catalyst for the transitional moments in the history of psychoanalysis and literary therapy genre. From neuropathology to psychoanalysis, Freud goes through a radical shift of professional focus. In 1895, while studying under Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-93) in Paris, Freud observed Charcot’s approach of hypnosis and visual examination of the insane. Nevertheless, Freud holds a different interpretation regarding to the causation of hysteria. Unlike Charcot’s visualization and examination of the insane, Freud draws a line among hypnotic techniques and suggestions and psychoanalysis. Through the research of Psychiatry. (New York: Basic book, 1969.) 32. 4
hysteria, Freud reconstructs the epistemology of the diseased body, alias hysteria. Nevertheless, the concept of this diseased body is very different from that in neurology and pathology. It is not an empirical diseased body and there is no superficial lesion to be cured by medicine. Rather, it is a conceptual diseased body with a different system of rules and symptoms and as a result, it also needs to be treated with different approaches. It is a type of psychological conception which requires new corresponding interpretation systems to decode its signs and symptoms. Thus, Freud’s epochal discovery is to coin the new psychoanalytical language to accommodate this conceptual disease body and to suggest a new pathway of treatment in psychoanalysis. Freud focuses on the psychic factors and develops his own method of talking cure from clinical experiences with the patients, in which he finds the great potential of free talks and associations. Freud asserts that the cure of the patients lies on the key to verbal utterance via talking cure. Then the next question is, how Freud, being a writer and psychoanalyst, applies psychoanalysis to literature? Apart from his own case studies writing, how he firstly examines literary works that focus on psychoanalytic and therapeutic experience? For the answer, one can refer to his very first published analysis of a literary work, Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva (1907)3. For Freud, Wilhelm Jensen’s Gradiva provides an example per excellence of psychosis case study, in which the repressed wishes, dreams elements, love, lost, cure and analyst-analysand relationship are all entangled in this single story. Hence, even though Gradiva is not a “true” story, Freud treats it no less than a true case study. His narrative shifts among psychoanalyst, investigator, literary critic and most of all, an archeologist aiming at uncovering the truth amid ruins of clues. (Pontalis 2012, p.218) As Lis Møller points out in “Gradiva: Textual Archaeology and the Ghost of Fiction,” Freud’s reading of is Gradiva is “a piece of psychoanalytic literary criticism and a contribution to psychoanalytical literary theory,” and “an archaeological psychoanalytic process.” (Møller 1991, p.88) In other words, Freud reads fictional Gradiva as a psychoanalytic case study waiting to be discovered its hidden meaning. What is more, Freud also tries to compare the psychological symptoms of characters in Gradiva to his own research of hysteria. As Freud proposes in Delusion and Dream of Jensen’s Gradiva that “The procedure which our author has his Zoë follow for the sure of the delusion of the friend of her youth, shows a considerable Wilhelm Jensen’s short story “Gradiva” (1903), is about the story of an archaeologist, Norbert Hanold who has crush on his childhood friend Zoë Bertgang , but he refused to acknowledge the love of her and his own sexuality. When he grows up, he was fascinated by a roman female sculpture, and names her “Gradiva.” With his growing fascination, he dreamed of meeting Gradiva in Pompeii before Vesuvius eruption. In order to fulfill his dream wish, Hanold left for Pompeii and met with Gradiva, who was actually his childhood friend Zoë. How he overcame his displacement of love between the imagined Gradiva and real Zoë was the focus of the story. The protagonist suffers from psychosis such as the denial of reality and splitting of the ego. Freud first analyzed the story in 1907’s Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva. 3
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resemblance, no, complete agreement, essentially with a therapeutic method which Dr. J. Breuer and the present writer introduced into medicine” (Freud 1907, p.207). Here Freud is referring his and co-author Joseph Breuer’s Studies on Hysteria (1895). Therefore, Gradiva serves firstly as a fictional psychoanalytic text that Freud applied his psychoanalytical theories to investigate the archeologist-protagonist-Hanold and Zoë-Gradiva. Secondly, Gradiva, the novel itself and how Freud interprets it also suggest the possibility of how literary dreams and characters can be analyzed. (Wright 1998, p.28)4 As for Freud’s own writing of psychoanalytic literature, apart from theories of psychoanalysis, Freud published a series of his case studies. From Studies on Hysteria (1895), Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905), Analysis of a Phobia in A Five-Year-Old Boy (1909), Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis (1909), Psycho-Analytic Notes Upon An Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (1911), and From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (1918), in which these patients, under the pseudonyms of Dora, Rat man, Wolf man, and Little Hans, are depicted in the short-story style narratives accompanied by Freud’s psychoanalytic interpretations and comments. The point is, this type of case reports could be regarded as one of the earliest literary therapy writings produced by the psychoanalyst himself. It indicates one of the earliest interplay between analyst and his analysands. Furthermore, to consider Freud’s case studies as one of earliest publication of literary therapy genre shall enhance further discussion on the development of literary therapy genre. To bear the following issues in mind: (1) what are the archetypal literary elements which render Freudian case studies literary works? (2) How Freudian case studies differ from other later works of literary therapy genre? From neurologist to psychoanalyst and writer, Freud demonstrates that his case studies are not merely medical observation, but rather, tales of complex transferences and countertransferences among writer, analyst and patients. In addition, Freud also illustrates his new therapeutic observations in his own case study writings, proving the necessity to turn the focus from physiological to psychological treatment. In reading Freud’s case studies, we observe not only what is to be considered as hysteria and neurosis in late nineteenth century but also the burgeoning process of psychoanalytical concepts. One may argue that these Freudian case studies serve as the first fictionalization of psychoanalysis. In Studies on Hysteria, Josef Breuer and Freud documented five clinical cases of treating their patients who suffered from different symptoms of hysteria. Freud In other occasions, Freud also published his analysis of historical characters: “Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his Childhood” (1910); “Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia” (1911); “The Moses of Michelangelo” (1914) 4
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contributed “The Psychotherapy of Hysteria,” in which he described his theoretical and clinical foundation of psychoanalysis. Before Freud’s “free association,” Breuer had invented “cathartic method” to bring the patients back to the origin of traumatic moments when their hysterical symptoms had occurred by recalling and reexperiencing these traumatic moments in the therapeutic session. 5 For Freud, after trying hypnosis and suggestions, he developed free association as a method to release and identify the patients’ repressed memories and resistance, as he describes the effectiveness of this new method “We found to our great surprise at first, that each individual hysterical symptom immediately and permanently disappeared when we had succeeded in bringing clearly to light the memory of the event by which it was provoked and in arousing its accompanying affect, and when the patient had described that event in the greatest possible detail and had put the affect into words” (Freud and Breuer 1893, p. 6). Josef Breuer also narrates his observation of therapeutic encounter from the perspective of a psychoanalyst on one of his patients, Bertha Pappenheim, in “Fräulein Anne O” in Studies on Hysteria. Anna O is arguably the first patient of psychoanalysis that has been documented. This case study even touches upon the relationship between the analyst and analysand as Anna O eventually develops a strong transference love towards Breuer and as a result, she has phantom pregnancies which lead to Breuer’s termination of treatment. It is also in this book that the term “talking cure” is coined. Both Freud and Breuer’s writings are more than empirical documentation of clinical case studies; on the contrary, they are like short stories entwined all sorts of clues that invite the reader to mentally calculate the assumption behind the talking cure of the patients. In other words, the process of reading Freud and Breuer’s case studies is like the analytical process of disclosure (Berman 1985, p.8). The same can be compare to the effect of reading detective stories, in which the reader seeks the answer to the mystery and reach the conclusion along the way. Hence, what needs to be analyzed here is the literary elements demonstrated in theses case studies and the way they formulate the archetypal issues such as talking cure, mental trauma, transference and countertransference and analystanalysand relationship which become recurring themes in later literary therapy genre. They are important thematic elements to distinguish literary therapy genre from other type of genres. It also clarifies the structure and style of literary therapy genre. As Freud states that “I have restored what it missing, taking the best models known to me from other analyses; but, like a conscientious archaeologist, I have not omitted to mention in each case where the authentic parts end and my constructions begin” (Freud 1905, p.12) It is also between these “authentic parts” and “constructions,” that one try to map out Freud’s traces of literary writings of 5
“Preliminary Communication, ” Studies on Hysteria (1893) 7
psychoanalysis. How Freud elaborates his constructions based on the authentic parts of case studies? From the following two examples of Dora and Little Hans, one can analyze Freud’s way of connecting his psychoanalytic knowledge to literary writings. Firstly, moving further from previous talking cure and childhood memory and dream approach, in Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905), Freud reports a new phenomenon of transference. What makes this “Dora” case important is that this case study reveals how Freud encounters resistance and transference in his threemonth psychoanalytic sessions with Dora. According to Freud’s diagnosis, Dora’s hysterical symptom of nervous cough is the result of sexual origins such as “eroticization of the oral cavity” and “psychic bisexuality” conflict (Quinodoz 2004, p.66). Although Freud later redefines the concept of transference gradually, it is in Dora’s case study that he first recounts the significance of transference and the power of displacement of transference.6 Secondly, “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy” (1909) is arguably the first published psychoanalytic case study of a child, “Little Hans.” Unlike Dora’s case study, Freud does not conduct psychoanalytic sessions himself in this case study. Following by little Hans’s father’s observation of his son who suffers from horse phobia, Freud comments on the treatment process and analyzes the importance of infantile sexuality and Oedipus complex and infantile neurosis with the support of his previous published theoretical essays on children’s sexuality.7 What is special about this case study is that Freud supervises little Hans’ father to conduct the therapeutic treatment of the boy. In other words, apart from one co-session with the father and little Hans, Freud’s account and analysis of this case study is mostly based on the father’s notes of treatment process. What can be drawn from these two examples is that they are all written from the analyst’s perspective with forms of prefatory remarks, description of symptoms and analyst’s comment and postscript. In addition, the content of two case studies both touches upon the “medical confidentiality” and “clinical phenomena” issues (Berman 1985, p.5). Freud’s case studies are not mean to be written or read as literary writings, but by the end, they are indeed a hybrid form of psychoanalytical literature. When one reads Freud’s case studies, one is in the position of evaluating Freudian discourse just as how Freud evaluates his patients’ speech and dream contents and hence asserts his psychoanalytic hypothesis.8 The aim is not only to evaluate how psychoanalysis can apply to the interpretation of literature, but how psychoanalysis itself can be viewed 6
See “The Dynamics of Transference” (1912), “Remembering, Repeating and Working –Through ” (1914), “Observations on
Transference-Love ” (1915), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) “”The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy (1910) 7
“The Sexual Enlightenment of Children” (1907) and ‘On the sexual Theories of Children” (1908)
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In “Freud’s Rat Man and the Case Study,” Susan Wells proposes how to examine the genre of psychoanalytic case studies from textual representation and social linguistics.
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as a kind of literature, or rather how psychoanalyst’s literary writings can reach to a wilder audience, to enhance the understanding of psychoanalysis itself in the context of literature.( Møller, 1991, p. 26) IX. The Development of Literary Therapy Genre after Freud. Literary therapy genre before 1990s As I proceed along with my exposition, in this section, I am going to discuss “literary therapy genre before 1990s” and “literary therapy genre after 1990s.” Although many of Freud’s contemporaries also published writings on the subject of psychoanalysis, but as far as the literary therapy writing is concerned, after Freud, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), a first-person-narrative of how one woman suffered from postpartum depression was driven to insanity by strict rest cure imposed by her physician husband, could be regarded as one of the earliest literary therapy writings since the rising of psychoanalysis in late nineteenth century. During the turn of the century and after the outbreak of World War I, more and more psychological novels and fictional narratives of war trauma emerged. Writing with the war in mind, Ford Madox Ford created the protagonist, Christopher Tietjens who suffered from memory loss and emotional numbness after the war in Some Do Not (1924). Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) depicted the trauma and suicidal attempt of the shell-shocked veteran, Septimus Warren Smith. Meanwhile, modernism also influenced the literary therapy writings in European Literature. This modernist viewpoint of individual’s perceived reality and stream of consciousness narrative were shown in Georg Groddek’s The Book of It (1923) and Italo Svevo’s The Confession of Zeno (1923), which were originally published in respectively German and Italian. While Groddek took the epistolary form of thirty-three psychoanalytic letters to address the issue of unconscious and the individual, Svevo’s work unfolded the unreliable narrator, Zeno Cosini’s self-examining memoir and put the reader in the position of Zeno’s psychoanalyst while reading the book along. Nevertheless, with the popularity of psychiatry, the narratives of the experience of being “lunatic” and being admitted into asylums and receiving treatment of mental illness bloomed in the 1940s to 1980s. The change of therapeutic modes and the increasing of mental institutions change the demography of psychotherapy in the early 20th century. Psychotherapy is no longer an exclusive upper middle class treatment as it was in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is no loner the time consuming and expensive private treatment, but a versatile mode of treatment which seeks the effective drugs to achieve quick fix and positive result in therapeutic process. First, there was a growing trend of fictional narratives of hysteria, depression and modern 9
psychiatric asylum. Janet Frame’s Faces in the Water. (1961) and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) touched upon the issue of female depression and creativity and madness. In addition, the rise of the 1960s’ feminist movement and its appeal to go against the designated female stereotypes and the rediscovery of female individuality and subjectivity contributed to the reevaluation of the representation of female hysteria and madness in literature and media. Jean Rhys’ classic Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) was the example par excellence. Meanwhile, the different receptions of psychiatric treatment and the subject of institutional abuses were also shown in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), which criticized the manipulation of individuals in the mental institution. Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) revealed the cruel status quo of being ethic minority and discriminated in the mental institution. There is still another type of literary therapy writing focused on a more sensational subject of identity disorder. Flora Rheta Schreiber’s Sybil (1973) discussed the protagonist’s multiple identity disorders of sixteen alter egos and the process of learning how to integrate them in co-consciousness. Similarly, Daniel Keyes’s The Minds of Billy Milligan (1980) was based on a true case of multiple personality disorder and how it turned to crime commitment. The novelty of the subject and sensational plot made abovementioned two books the then bestselling books. Literary therapy genre after 1990s. Even after the 1980s, the tradition of autobiographical writing of therapeutic experience still continues, though with more thematic variation based on contemporary issues. Susanna Kaysen’s memoir Girl, Interrupted (1993) depicted her experience of board line personality disorder and asylum. Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation (1994) is another “tell-all” autobiography which detailed her state of depression and the influence of taking Prozac. Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (1999) discussed her eating disorder issue and psychological problem. In contrast to autobiography based on personal experiences, fictional autobiography is a different type of literary therapy writing which often blurs the reality and literary imagination. What is more, the contemporary literary authors of literary therapy writing often “insert” themselves into the writing, hence the fictional autobiographical narrative often consists of the blend of memoir, the reality and the fictional psychoanalytic and traumatic experience. Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993) depicted Philip Roth, the fictional protagonist’s mental breakdown and multiple plot twists of doppelgänger and identity. Siri Hustvedt in The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves (2010) explored her experience of 10
search the root of her mysterious seizure disorder. In addition, while David Lodge’s Therapy (1995) narrated the male midlife crisis and cognitive therapy process, Hanif Kureishi’s Something to Tell You (2008) focused on a fictional analyst’s midlife crisis and therapeutic encounters with his patients. Meanwhile, when psychoanalytic terms and notions become wildly-recognized in contemporary culture and media after the 1990s, the forms of literary therapy writings also transform to wilder issues. In Just Talk Narrative of Psychotherapy (1999), Lillian R. Furst discussed narrative discourse of psychotherapy in literature and literary representation of psychotherapy from the angle of patients. While focusing on the narratives of psychotherapy, Furst further argues that instead of following the Freudian case history tradition which focuses on the narrative of therapists, such therapeutic encounters should also be examined from the perspectives of patients. (Furst 1999, p. 9) Thus, different from the literary tradition of confessional writings which often comes as epistolary form consisting of confession to an acquaintance, a friend or an intended reader, the talking cure using in psychotherapy is based on the “professional distance” between patients and therapist. The rising of the patients’ voice in literature comes in the latter half part of 20th century in “fictional and autobiographical forms.” However, Furst observes the discrepancy between the narratives of healing process and outcome. It seems that most of these fictional and autobiographical writings of psychotherapy focus on the “negative side” of psychotherapy rather than give a detail account of the healing process and how to achieve the healing outcome. (Furst 1999, p.7) However, different parties experience psychotherapy from different perspectives. There was a different type of literary therapy writing in which the analysts and therapists themselves embarked on literary writing. If we take the autobiographical writing of therapy as a form of “writing cure,” what about the other interlocutor in therapeutic encounter? What are therapist and analyst’s fictionalization of therapeutic experience? This type of therapy writing in which authors themselves are also psychoanalysts bloomed since the 1990s. In fact, more and more psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, whether of English or French culture, devoted themselves to literary writing, even though not all of them paid attention to the same subject of therapy. They respectively adapted very different writing strategies and literary forms to broach the subjects. For example, psychoanalysts Julia Kristeva and Bruce Flink both turned to detective novels and placed psychological device as the centre of plot development. 9 Even based on clinical practice and the self experience of being psychotherapists or psychoanalysts, there are still different types of fictional narrative of telling the therapeutic tales of therapist and patient: all written by therapists or analysts, Stanley Siegel’s The Patient 9
The Old Man and the Wolves (1994), Murder in Byzantium (2006), and Possessions (1998).
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Who Cured His Therapist (1999) and Deborah Anna Luepnitz’s Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy and Its Dilemmas (2003) and Roger Kennedy’s Couch Tales (2008) and Kevin Chandler’s Listening in: A Novel of Therapy and Real Life (2009) and John Marzillier’s The Gossamer Thread: My Life as a Psychotherapist (2010) and D. Stephenson Bond’s Healing Lily (2010) and Stephen Grosy’s The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Our Selves (2013) respectively presented the therapeutic encounters from very different perspectives. However, to evaluate from the amount of quality and publications and influence, among these Anglophone psychoanalysts-turned-authors, Irvin Yalom is one of the most prolific psychoanalyst-author. With the characteristic of combination of psychotherapy and philosophy and historical figures and literature, he has been publishing a series of literary therapy writings of therapeutic encounters since 1974. 10 In his works, by using varied narrative strategies, he explores the analyst-analysand relationship from the manifold perspectives. What is more, Yalom often utilizes historical figures such as Breuer, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Spinoza as his fictional characters. For the type of literary therapy writing which foregrounds the historical figures as the protagonist, one of the examples is Peter Michalos’s Psyche: A Novel of the Young Freud (1993) which featured young Freud and his therapeutic encounter with Lucy. O. Another work which takes historic figures as protagonists is Christopher Hampton’s play, The Talking Cure (2002). It was based on John Kerr’s A Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein (1993). Moreover, it has been adapted to the film A Dangerous Method by David Cronenberg in 2011. Another type of therapy writing is about the impact of neuroscience. In the field of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Oliver Sacks’ writing of neurological patients and clinic tales discussed the neurological impact on the essential being of the patient and the subjectivity itself. These works demonstrates the different transition from the old form of literary therapy genre to the contemporary one. By this preliminary analysis, we notice that unlike the older form of therapy narratives or psychological literature which often focus on the dark, negative side of mental suffering and the wrong treatment or abuse applied by the psychiatric institutions, or personal struggles between sanity and madness, the contemporary literary therapy writing demonstrates diversity of narratives, focuses but not limits on psychoanalytic issues: It not only delves into the interwoven relationship between analyst and analysand, and the new interpretation or new treatment of metal illness but also provides a reexamination of the meaning of psychoanalysis in contemporary 10
Irvin Yalom’s fictional writing includes Every Day Gets a Little Closer (1974), Love's Executioner and Other Tales of
Psychotherapy (1989), When Nietzsche Wept (1992), Lying on the Couch(1996), Momma and the Meaning of Life(1999), The Schopenhauer Cure (2006), Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death (2008), I’m Calling the Police (2011), Spinoza Problem (2012).
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context. By contemporary context, I mean that when Lacan proposed “return to Freud,” little was aware of what the future could offer: the 1990s’ pharmaceutical revolution and its impact on the psychoanalysis. While the medication seems to be able to provide the quick drug fix and instant relief of mental illness, what is the meaning and function of traditional psychoanalysis in contemporary sense? Furthermore, when talking cure is simply overlooked, can a quick drug fix truly replace the lengthy, time-consuming, narrative-oriented psychoanalysis? Among contemporary psychoanalysts-turned-authors, Christopher Bollas, who published literary therapy writings since 2000, gave acutely portraits of such “limitation of psychoanalysis” via the dialogues between the psychoanalyst and analysands in his novels. He asserted that only by acknowledging the limitation of psychoanalysis that one could establish a “truthful relation” in psychoanalytic encounter. What makes Bollas stand out from the crowd is that he not only established his own theoretical language of psychoanalysis, but also transformed it into his literary therapy writing. Instead of limiting to the subject of personal inner struggles and therapeutic problems, Bollas further pushed the issue to the level of what can psychoanalysis do about personal inner catastrophe as well as the impact of outer catastrophe. He proposed the bigger question of how we can resituate Freud’s psychoanalysis in contemporary postcatastrophe context in his writings. That is to say, at the juncture of the late twentieth and early twentieth-first centuries, how should one re-evaluate the intellectual development and challenge confronted by psychoanalytic concepts? In addition, how psychoanalytic concepts are reshaping and how such re-evaluation is shown in contemporary cultural realm? Among various discourses, literary therapy genre provides one of the dynamic and continual movements to explore this long process of reshaping and re-evaluation of psychoanalytic concepts. The following chapters of this thesis will demonstrate how psychoanalytic concepts are interwoven and intermeshed in the process of “becoming” literary therapy genre. We investigate how literary therapy writing reveals about therapeutic encounter and mental healing process, and how different analysts and analysands experience in therapeutic encounter and how psychoanalysts and literary authors turn to literature in order to render the experience of psychoanalysis.
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