Academic literature on the topic 'Psychoanalysis in literature'

This essay argues that psychoanalytic literary criticism has largely failed because it has assumed that literature and psychoanalysis share common analytical ground. It contends that psychoanalytic approaches necessarily deform literature, that literary readings deform psychoanalytic theory, and that the assumption of commonality between poetics and psychoanalysis causes psychoanalytic literary criticism to go astray. Advocating the opposite approach, the essay sets poetics against psychoanalysis, contending that where their mutual tension and disfigurement is recognized and investigated, psychoanalysis and literature can become genuinely available to one another.

This research continues the methodological discussion between psychoanalytically-oriented therapists and their colleagues, who understand the point, the process and the influence of psychotherapy through a CBT-oriented lens. The central point of research is the question of connections between psychoanalysis and literature, or even, of psychoanalysis itself as a kind of literature. The key features of a psychoanalysts mode of thinking is to be found in the plane of aesthetics. It is proposed, that, unlike a CB-therapist, who mainly goes by the rational principles of cognition, a psychoanalyst is prone to experience the reality of psychotherapy in terms of literary aesthetics, and their attempts to verbalize their understanding of the patient is based on a literary perspective. There exists certain similarity between a writers work, as he tries to embody an imaginary character onto a page, and an analysts work, as he tries to incorporate his analytic intuition into a psychodynamic hypothesis and create a psychological portrait of the patient. Thus, the article is focused on the empirical exploration of therapeutic texts, made by therapists based on viewing an unstructured first-session interview, executed by therapists with different levels of psychotherapeutic education, experience and predisposition to psychoanalytic thinking. (For measuring said predisposition an adaptation of the Comparative Psychotherapy Process Scale(CPPS) has been carried out, its inner coherence and diagnostic validity have been established. The results of simultaneous independent criterion-based analysis of the produced texts by literary experts and psychoanalytic supervisors have shown, that the literary aesthetic is an a priory feature of the descriptions of psychoanalysts, and the more so, the higher the analysts therapeutic quality. This does not so much concern the artistic value of the descriptions, but the artistic taste: the ability to distinguish kitsch and artistic form, and the ability to integrate them into new gestalts on basis of sensual harmony. Thus, the evidence supports the claim, that artistic taste is a fundamental feature of a psychoanalysts therapeutic cognition. It is particularly the aesthetic ability of the analyst, which allows for the specific non-goal-oriented approach to his therapeutic influence, which gives room to the development of the true Self according to Winnicott, and further separates the therapeutic process from the goal-oriented therapeutic learning. Thus it is concluded, that the analytic process from the position of aesthetics may fall under the risk of devolving into forms of kitsch practices.

AbstractIn recent years, a connection between psychoanalysis and neuroscience has been sought. The meeting point between these two branches is represented by neuropsychoanalysis. The goal of the relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience is to test psychoanalytic hypotheses in the human brain, using a scientific method. A literature search was conducted on May 2015. PubMed and Scopus databases were used to find studies for the inclusion in the systematic review. Common results of the studies investigated are represented by a reduction, a modulation, or a normalization of the activation patterns found after the psychoanalytic therapy. New findings in the possible and useful relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience could change the modalities of relating to patients for psychoanalysts and the way in which neuroscientists plan their research. Researchers should keep in mind that in any scientific research that has to do with people, neuroscience and a scientific method cannot avoid subjective interpretation.

IntroductionPhilosophy and psychoanalysis have mutually influenced each other in many ways. Ancient Greek philosophers, Socrates and Plato were frequently cited by Freud in his works and the origins of certain psychoanalytic concepts can be found in their works. The philosophical works of Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl, Sartre and many others had a significant impact on the development of psychoanalytic ideas. The intersection of philosophy and literature was best depicted in Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of the metaphysical novel.ObjectivesThe goal of this presentation is to perform a comprehensive historical review of the relationship between psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature.MethodsDifferent philosophical schools from ancient philosophy to classic German philosophy and philosophy of existentialism have been explored in their relationship with psychoanalysis and world literature. Among world literary classics, we selected only those who best represent the role of psychoanalysis in the modern literary critics and on the other hand the influence of philosophy on literature.ResultsEarly origins of the relationship between philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature can be found in the text of ancient philosophers and writers. The great Sophocles’ tragic drama Oedipus the King was the foundation for Freud’s concept of Oedipus complex. The Socratic dialogue, a technique best elaborated by his student Plato was the antecedent of modern psychotherapy. Later in history philosophical works of Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and many others had a significant impact on the development of psychoanalytic ideas. There is a number of other philosophical fictions in the world literature written by Sartre, Camus, Kafka, Proust and many others and some of these literary woks may have characteristics of psychological novel as well. Literary critics is an important field for the application of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic theory has been always in forefront of Shakespearean studies. Marcel Proust is a writer who gave a significant contribution to modern literary studies. He wrote about the interactive process between the reader and text and emotional impact of reading. Proust recognized the similar psychological processes that we can see in psychoanalytic setting.ConclusionsThis comprehensive historical review of the relationship between psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature demonstrates that all these disciplines have much in common, particularly in their intention to approach truth from different angles. Psychoanalysis is a science and applies scientific methodology in its theory and treatment. Certain branches of psychoanalysis like Jung’s analytic psychology are sometimes closer to philosophy and art than to science. Philosophy as a humanistic discipline has always been in between science and art.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

The article is devoted to the development of the psychoanalytic movement in Bulgaria between the 1920s and the 1940s, when it reached its apogee. After this period, the communist regime came to power in Bulgaria and it banned all philosophical currents other than Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Psychoanalysis was also banned and it was declared to be a “bourgeois and unscientific doctrine”. The meta-analysis of the work of the Bulgarian Freudians makes it possible to distinguish the following main problem areas in which they worked: philosophical and methodological issues of psychoanalysis; the topic of religion; the “reading” of socio-political and social phenomena; issues of education and training; psychopathology and abnormal personality development; and the application of psychoanalysis as a methodology of artistic creation. This text examines the application of psychoanalysis as a methodology of artistic creation and its possibilities for analyzing the personality of the author and the literary works. It presents the interpretations of Bulgarian psychoanalytically oriented authors of the literary works of the poets Hristo Botev and Peyo Yavorov, as well as their reflections on some problems of art and aesthetics.

In consultation with Sigmund Freud, the Viennese psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1940) treated the first Jewish cleric known to undergo analysis, in 1903. According to the case history, published in 1908, a forty-two-year-old rabbi suffered from aBerufsneurose, an occupational neurosis associated with the pressures of his career. Stekel's case history forms an indelible portrait of a religious patient who submitted himself to the highly experimental treatment of psychoanalysis in the early years of the discipline. However, scholars never integrated the rabbi's case into the social history of psychoanalysis, more as a consequence of Freud's professional disparagement of Stekel than of the case history's original reception. Psychoanalytic historiography has largely dismissed Stekel's legacy, resulting in a lack of serious scholarly consideration of his prodigious publications compared to the attention paid to the work of some of Freud's other disciples. Stekel's most recent biographers, however, credit him as the “unsung populariser of psychoanalysis,” and claim that he is due for reconsideration. But in his published case history of the rabbi, Stekel also warrants introduction to the field of Jewish studies, not only because of the literary treatment of the rabbinical profession by a secular Jewish psychoanalyst, but also because the rabbi incorporated aspects of that experience into his own intellectual framework after treatment.

In this study we critically review the formal research literature pertinent to the outcomes of psychoanalysis and the factors influencing these outcomes. Our inquiry was conducted from a psychoanalytic perspective. We found the research yield consistent with the accumulated body of clinically derived psychoanalytic knowledge, e.g., patients suitable for psychoanalysis derive substantial therapeutic benefit; analyzability and therapeutic benefit are relatively separate dimensions and their extent is relatively unpredictable from the perspective of initial evaluation among seemingly suitable cases. The studies all contain clinical and methodological limitations which are no more substantial than in other forms of psychotherapy research, but they have not substantially advanced psychoanalytic knowledge. This raises challenges for the further development of formal research strategies native to psychoanalysis.

A two-factor theory of clinical psychoanalysis is proposed. In accordance with the predominant position of the structural-adaptational (“classical”) approach in psychoanalytic theory, the power of interpretation and insight in clinical psychoanalysis has received ample attention in psychoanalytic literature. There seems, however, to be a growing awareness among analysts that not all the facts of an analytic treatment can be accounted for by this approach alone. A second factor is increasingly recognized: the power of adequate support provided by the analyst and resulting in a specific experience by the analysand. In the application of the developmental (“postclassical”) approach of psychoanalytic theory, the importance of this support-experience factor in the treatment of ordinary neurosis by means of ordinary psychoanalysis is emphasized. The relative neglect of this aspect of clinical psychoanalysis may be indicative of the present-day dilemma of how to translate advances in theoretical knowledge of mental development into the therapeutic praxis of psychoanalysis. There may, however, be another important reason. Support and experience are phenomena often occurring on the nonverbal level. In contrast to interpretation and insight, they are usually not voiced, let alone distinctly and loudly expressed. They are the silent power of psychoanalysis.

Freud’s psychoanalytic approach has been one of the most controversial approaches to many fields of interest. Relating to education and educational psychology, this approach plays a significant role in modifying and enhancing one’s behavioral relationship among the educational elements like educators, parents, and students. Therefore, in many things, this approach has contributed a lot of inspiration in the development of education. In literary works, there seems to be a mutual fascination between psychoanalysis and literature whereas theory and approach, psychoanalysis explains literature and literature itself exploits psychoanalysis for creative purposes and works. Here, as a creative work, movie is considered literature because it can be interpreted and analyzed just like other written works of literature. As a learning instrument, movie evokes an affective domain that leads to changes in learning behavior and attitudes. Experiencing certain-themed movies can trigger particular reflective memories and reference toward events occurring on a daily basis and it can further strengthen the foundation for learning complex concepts like psychoanalysis.

Foucault’s remarks concerning psychoanalysis are ambivalent and even prima facie contra-dictory, at times lauding Freud and Lacan as anti-humanists, at others being severely criti-cal of their imbrication within psychiatric power. This has allowed a profusion of interpretations of his position, between so-called ‘Freudo-Foucauldians’ at one extreme and Foucauldians who condemn psychoanalysis as such at the other. In this article, I begin by surveying Foucault’s biographical and theoretical relationship to psychoanalysis and the sec-ondary scholarship on this relationship to date. I pay particular attention to the discussion of the relationship in feminist scholarship and queer theory, and that by psychoanalytic thinkers, as well as attending to the particular focus in the secondary literature on Fou-cault’s late work and his relationship to the figure of Jacques Lacan. I conclude that Fou-cault’s attitude to psychoanalysis varies with context, and that some of his criticisms of psychoanalysis in part reflect an ignorance of the variety of psychoanalytic thought, partic-ularly in its Lacanian form. I thus argue that Foucault sometimes tended to overestimate the extent of the incompatibility of his approach with psychoanalytic ones and that there is ultimately no serious incompatibility there. Rather, psychoanalysis represents a substantively different mode of inquiry to Foucault’s work, which is neither straightforwardly ex-clusive nor inclusive of psychoanalytic insights.