Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T17:02:47.396Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Literature, Psychoanalysis, and the Re-Formation of the Self: A New Direction for Reader-Response Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Marshall W. Alcorn Jr
Affiliation:
Iowa State UniversityAmes
Mark Bracher
Affiliation:
Iowa State UniversityAmes

Abstract

An examination of the similarities between the experience of reading and the transference process of psychoanalysis demonstrates that, by activating the mechanisms of projection and identification, reading literature can function to re-form the self. After outlining the general workings of the self, we look at those elements that are called into play by engaged reading, showing how reading can serve to alter both cognitive structures and the deep structures of the self. Like successful psychoanalysis, a literary text often evokes grandiose aspiration and later frustrates the most unrealistic avenues of that aspiration, thereby decommissioning those routes of desire and behavior. And just as psychoanalysis develops more fulfilling patterns of desire and action through the patient's identification with new ego ideals offered by the analyst, so reading can promote such structural changes through identification with characters and personae of literary texts.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Beres, David, and Arlow, Jacob A.Fantasy and Identification in Empathy.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 43 (1974): 2650.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blake, William. Letter to Dr. Trusler. 23 Aug. 1799. The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Ed. Erdman, David V. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982. 702–03.Google Scholar
Blanck, Gertrude, and Blanck, Rubin. Ego Psychology II: Psychoanalytical Developmental Psychology. New York: Columbia UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. “Literature as Equipment for Living.” The Philosophy of Symbolic Form. Berkeley: U of California P, 1973. 293304.Google Scholar
Carton, Evan. “On Going Home: Selfhood in Composition.” College English 45 (1983): 340–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chasseguet-Smirgel, J.Some Thoughts on the Ego Ideal: A Contribution to the Study of the ‘Illness of Ideality.‘Psychoanalytic Quarterly 45 (1976): 345–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorpat, T. L.Internalization of the Patient-Analyst Relationship in Patients with Narcissistic Disorders.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 55 (1974): 183–91.Google ScholarPubMed
Eisnitz, Alan J.The Organization of the Self-Representation and Its Influence on Pathology.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 49 (1980): 361–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eliot, T. S.Religion and Literature.” Selected Essays. New York: Harcourt, 1932. 343–54.Google Scholar
Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Fingarette, Herbert. The Self in Transformation: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and the Life of the Spirit. New York: Harper, 1963.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953-74.Google Scholar
Harding, D. W.Psychological Processes in the Reading of Fiction.” Aesthetics in the Modern World. Ed. Osborne, Harold. New York: Weybright, 1968. 300–17.Google Scholar
Holland, Norman. Five Readers Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Holland, Norman. Poems in Persons. New York: Norton, 1973.Google Scholar
Holland, Norman. “Unity Identity Text Self.” PMLA 90 (1975): 813–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horace. “The Art of Poetry.” Trans. Blakeney, Edward Henry. The Complete Works of Horace. Ed. Casper J. Kraemer, Jr. New York: Random, 1936. 397412.Google Scholar
Hymer, Sharon M.The Therapeutic Nature of Art in Self-Reparation.” Psychoanalytic Review 70 (1983): 5768.Google Scholar
Iser, Wolfgang. “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach.” New Literary History 3 (1972): 279–99.Google Scholar
Kernberg, Otto. Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. New York: Aranson, 1975.Google Scholar
Kernberg, Otto. Internal World, External Reality. New York: Aranson, 1980.Google Scholar
Kernberg, Otto. Object Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis. New York: Aranson, 1976.Google Scholar
Klein, Melanie. Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works, 1921-1945. New York: Delacorte, 1975.Google Scholar
Kohut, Heinz. The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders. New York: International Universities, 1971.Google Scholar
Lichtenberg, Joseph D.The Development of the Sense of Self.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 23 (1975): 453–84.Google ScholarPubMed
Lichtenstein, Heinz. “The Dilemma of Human Identity: Notes on Self-Transformation, Self-Objectivation, and Metamorphosis.” Journal of the American Psychological Association 11 (1963): 173223.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lichtenstein, Heinz. “Identity and Sexuality: A Study of Their Interrelationship in Man.” Journal of the American Psychological Association 9 (1963): 179260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lichtenstein, Heinz. “The Role of Narcissism in the Emergence and Maintenance of a Primary Identity.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 45 (1964): 4956.Google ScholarPubMed
Lichtenstein, Heinz. “Toward a Metapsychological Definition of the Concept of Self.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 46 (1965): 117–28.Google Scholar
Mehlman, R. D.Transference Mobilization, Transference Resolution, and the Narcissistic Alliance.” Paper presented to the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, 25 Feb. 1976.Google Scholar
Meissner, W. W. Internalization in Psychoanalysis. New York: International Universities, 1981.Google ScholarPubMed
Moore, Burness E., and Fine, Bernard D. A Glossary of Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts. New York: American Psychoanalytic Assn., 1967.Google Scholar
Ogden, Thomas H. Projective Identification and Psychotherapeutic Technique. New York: Aronson, 1980.Google Scholar
Poulet, Georges. “Phenomenology of Reading.” New Literary History 1 (1969): 5368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roland, Alan. “Imagery and the Self in Artistic Creativity and Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism.” Psychoanalytic Review 68 (1981): 409–24.Google ScholarPubMed
Schafer, Roy. “Narration in the Psychoanalytic Dialogue.” Critical Inquiry 7 (1980): 2953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlessinger-Vaccaro, Renee. “A Relationship between Piaget's Notion of Conservation and the Transference Phenomenon: A Clinical Example.” Psychoanalytic Review 70 (1983): 8394.Google Scholar
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “A Defense of Poetry.” The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Ingpen, Roger and Peck, Walter E. 10 vols. New York: Gordian, 1965. 7: 109–40.Google Scholar
Sidney, Sir Philip. An Apology for Poetry. Ed. Shepherd, Geoffrey. London: Nelson, 1965.Google Scholar
Siomopolous, Gregory. “Poetry as Affective Communication.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 46 (1977): 499513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skura, Meredith Anne. The Literary Use of the Psychoanalytic Process. New Haven: Yale UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Trans. Fitts, Dudley and Fitzgerald, Robert. New York: Harcourt, 1949. Rpt. in Masterpieces of the Drama. Ed. Alexander W. Allison et al. 4th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1979. 3560.Google Scholar
Sophocles. Oedipus Tyrannus. Trans. Berkowitz, Luci and Brunner, Theodore F. New York: Norton, 1970.Google Scholar
Tennyson, Alfred. In Memoriam. Ed. Ross, Robert H. New York: Norton, 1973.Google Scholar
Wolfson, Susan J.The Illusion of Mastery: Wordsworth's Revisions of ‘The Drowned Man of Esthwaite,‘ 1799, 1805, 1850.” PMLA 99 (1984): 917–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wordsworth, William. The Prelude. 1850. Ed. Ernest de Selincourt. 2nd ed. Rev. Helen Darbishire. New York: Oxford UP, 1959.Google Scholar
Yeats, William Butler. The Poems of W. B. Yeats. Ed. Finneran, Richard J. New York: Macmillan, 1983.Google Scholar
Zetzel, Elizabeth R. The Capacity for Emotional Growth. New York: International Universities, 1970.Google Scholar