Psychoanalysis and Fiction
An Exploration of Literary and Psychoanalytic Borders

Daniel Gunn's aim is to investigate ways in which psychoanalytic writing and certain kinds of creative fiction can be seen to have common concerns, objectives and procedures.

Daniel Gunn (Author)

9780521386692, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 10 May 1990

264 pages
21.6 x 13.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.33 kg

'... a subtle and in many ways an exemplary instance of a psychoanalytically informed study that wants to maintain the parity of the two fields, to consider the way in which the two areas overlap and therefore just how fragile and mutable are the borders drawn between them ... an eloquent and persuasive perspective of reading.' The Times Literary Supplement

Daniel Gunn's aim is to investigate ways in which psychoanalytic writing and certain kinds of creative fiction can be seen to have common concerns, objectives and procedures. He examines the work of various psychoanalysts from Freud through to Lacan, as well as more recent practitioners/writers such as Maud Mannoni and Serge Leclaire, together with the work of creative writers like Proust, Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and Marguerite Duras. His conclusion is that such questions as origins, ambivalence, and repetition, are presented and worked out in both types of discourse; and that the similarities and differences between the ways in which they are presented shed light on those discourses themselves, when it comes to understanding, for example, the relationship between an author and his reader, or a psychoanalyst and his patient.

Preface
Introduction
Part I. A Family Affair: 1. Fathers and sons
2. Difficult births
3. Mother tongues
Part II. Play It Again: 4. For to end yet again
5. Once is not enough
6. In the beginning
Conclusion
Notes
List of works cited
Index of names and concepts.

Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS]