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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  and
Mark Bracher
Marshall W. Alcorn Jr
Affiliation:
Iowa State UniversityAmes
Mark Bracher
Affiliation:
Iowa State UniversityAmes
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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
Information
PMLA , Volume 100 , Issue 3 , May 1985 , pp. 342 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1985

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