Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The connection between literature and psychoanalysis is as old as psychoanalysis itself. For the psychoanalytic critic, the elements, structures and themes that constitute the ‘make-believe’ world of the literary text speak to the desires and fears of both authors and readers. To be an adult is to know the distinction between fantasy and reality, passionate longings and pragmatic limitation. And yet, as adults we give up nothing of infantile wishes: we simply become more cautious, more crafty in shaping those early desires into forms that are acceptable to ourselves, and which may even be applauded by our societies.Using condensation, displacement and various representational modes as tools, we carefully rework our desires into the stuff of dreams, in which we can safely experience what we do not want to acknowledge in waking life. In day-dreams and neurotic symptoms, we use the mechanisms of defence to construct systems that satisfy basic desires while still letting us function adequately in the ‘real’ world. Dreams and day-dreams are stories written by ourselves for ourselves, though. In literature, we weave the beautifully elaborated fabric of language that lets us articulate what could not otherwise be known or said, not only for ourselves but for others also.Freud and others in psychoanalysis's first generation drew upon literature both for examples of psychoanalytic insight ... log in or subscribe to read full text