Changes

Reconceptualizing [[Freud]]

Classical Freudianism was reconceptualized by four [[literary ]] theorists who argued that the [[content ]] of [[psychic ]] [[fantasy ]] was relevant to literary study as well as to [[therapy]]. Because they derived from sigmund freud evidence for extralinguistic ontologies, they are also distinguishable from strict [[Lacanian ]] theorists. For Melanie [[Klein]], [[literature ]] and fantasy reflect the [[drive]]; for Simon O. Lesser and Norman N. Holland, [[texts ]] evoke in readers intrapsychic struggles characterized chiefly by strategies of [[defense]]; for Norman O. Brown, such struggles are also observable in [[history]]. The impact of these theorists’ writings challenged the postwar [[hegemony ]] of new criticism; their [[work ]] continues to be invoked in contemporary literary debates, including those that concern [[deconstruction]].

[[Melanie Klein ]] (1882–1960) was a prominent member of the interwar "[[English ]] [[school]]" of [[psychoanalysis ]] in [[London]], which modified [[Freudian ]] [[theory ]] in significant ways. Following her intuition of a parallel between [[dreams ]] and [[children ]] at play, Klein undertook the first serious and extensive [[analyses ]] of young children, work that culminated in The [[Psycho]]-[[Analysis ]] of Children (1932). There Klein hypothesized the [[existence ]] of a pre-[[Oedipal ]] [[phase ]] (or "[[position]]" in her terminology) in which children [[introject ]] their first [[object]], the [[breast]], [[splitting ]] it into [[ideal ]] and persecutory (or "[[good]]" and "bad") modes, an [[action ]] that corresponds to the genesis of ego and [[superego]]. This [[introjection ]] and splitting presupposes the existence of a nonlibidinous [[aggressive ]] drive. Children later [[experience ]] "the depressive position," in which the final [[loss ]] of the good object becomes the prototype of all subsequent [[mourning]]. Psychic [[life ]] consists of symbiotic [[anxieties ]] (at the prospect of annihilation or loss) and defenses (expressed in mature [[love ]] as alternations between [[guilt ]] and reparation).

Aside from a posthumously published essay on The Oresteia, Klein wrote no literary [[interpretation]]; however, her modifications of Freudian theory have been of interest to contemporary critics. In challenging the supremacy of the [[Oedipus ]] [[complex]], Klein presented an alternative [[psychoanalytic ]] account of [[feminine ]] [[sexuality]]. Rather than conceiving girls as arriving at sexuality through [[deprivation ]] or [[lack]], Klein redefined [[penis ]] [[envy ]] as a defense against a more primordial [[fear]], the attack from either parent (as introjected in the nascent superego). In La Révolution du [[langage ]] poétique: L’Avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle, Lautréamont et Mallarmé (1974, [[Revolution ]] in Poetic [[Language]], 1984)julia kristeva draws on the [[Kleinian ]] theory of the drive to argue that such pre-Oedipal [[processes ]] correspond to the semiotic (27, 151–52). Toril Moi argues that hélène cixous’s [[mother ]] [[figure ]] may be based in part on Klein’s "Good Mother" (115). Kleinian theory is invoked by Margery Durham in her explication of samuel taylor coleridge’s "Christabel," and Simon Stuart applies Klein’s theories to Romantic poets, especially William Blake and william wordsworth. Alison Sinclair studies the literary theme of cuckoldry from a Kleinian perspective, arguing that [[deceived ]] husbands both deny and reenact the [[childhood ]] experience of dispossession; she concludes that literature itself may be [[understood ]] as a continuation of that [[denial]].

Defenders of Klein’s influence on contemporary [[intellectual ]] life cite her greater emphasis on the [[social ]] and [[ethical ]] implications of a [[self ]] originally grounded in [[dependence]], as opposed to the robust individualism of Freud’s paradigm. Michael Rustin described the way Kleinian [[analysts ]] in [[Britain ]] have retained [[political ]] perspectives on [[development ]] in the midst of Thatcherism and the [[passivity ]] sometimes associated with [[postmodernism]]. In the writings and therapeutic practices of Wilfred Bion and Betty Joseph, Rustin finds Kleinian responses to these trends vindicated. For such writers, Klein’s heritage makes possible a mature acceptance of the [[arbitrary ]] first experienced in the "depressive" position. On the [[other ]] hand, [[feminist ]] adaptations of Kleinian [[thought ]] have been questioned. Janice Doane and Devon Hodges describe the evolution of [[object-relations ]] [[psychology ]] running from Klein through D. W. [[Winnicott ]] to Kristeva as an increasing literalization of fantasy that now may unwittingly serve [[regressive ]] political agendas because of the promotion of the [[idea ]] of the "good enough" Mother (developed in the work of Winnicott and Nancy Chodorow). Doane and Hodges warn that this trend, which sacrifices the rich ambiguity of the mother as originally outlined in Kleinian theory, risks reinstating stereotypical models of feminine development that collapse differences among and within [[women]].

Like Klein, whom he cites with approval, Simon O. Lesser (1909–79) found in the [[developmental ]] aspects of Freudianism its greatest explanatory [[power]]. Lesser was one of the first American critics to argue that the experience of [[reading ]] and [[interpreting ]] literature should be understood psychoanalytically, as a function of the ego’s defenses against prohibited impulses, especially as these impulses are stimulated by [[fantasies ]] evoked by the [[text]]. Relying on the work of Klein, Ernst [[Kris]], and Otto Fenichel, Lesser advanced this [[thesis ]] in articles written between 1952 and 1976, collected in [[Fiction ]] and the [[Unconscious ]] (1957)and in The Whispered [[Meanings ]] (1977). There he argued the superiority of his psychoanalytic approach over the methods of New Criticism on the grounds that formalist criticism (e.g. , that of Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren) was naive in its misunderstanding of the source of the reader’s [[identification ]] with the narrators and protagonists of fiction. Lesser’s best-known demonstration of his [[case ]] is his reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," which he sees as depicting unacknowledged Oedipal and aggressive forces in its hero, Robin. Lesser contends that readers implicitly [[identify ]] with Robin’s unconscious quest for [[sexual ]] adventure and his fantasy of escape from [[authority ]] even while consciously denying any such identification. Lesser finds similar dyads of fantasy and defense in works by Sherwood Anderson, t. s. eliot, and Herman Melville. Following Klein, he sees literary [[form ]] as functioning to enable the ego to contemplate otherwise repugnant or offensive [[material]]. Hence, Lesser accuses New Criticism and other formalisms of evading the powerful [[instinctual ]] [[drives ]] expressed in literature at the [[latent ]] level. For example, Lesser repudiates Elder Olson’s interpretation of W. B. Yeats’s "Sailing to Byzantium," which he faults for ignoring the speaker’s duplicity and [[ambivalence ]] [[about ]] sexuality (see chicago critics).

Lesser’s influence on Norman N. Holland (b. 1927) has been explicitly acknowledged: the younger critic recognized his predecessor’s innovation in using the tenets of psychoanalysis to [[understand ]] the act of reading literature. Holland developed his strategy with diverse, increasingly sophisticated tactics. He began his career as a student of the drama—Reformation [[comedy ]] and Shakespeare—in books that [[analyzed ]] the function of costume, disguise, and [[role ]] in the metamorphosis of [[identity]]. With Psychoanalysis and [[Shakespeare ]] (1966)his criticism became overtly Freudian, although his objectives were still text centered. But in The Dynamics of Literary Response ([[1968]])and afterwards Holland developed a reader-response criticism that drew upon psychoanalytic and [[psychological ]] traditions of ego development (see reader-response theory and criticism). The continuity between his earliest and latest work is in his concern to elaborate some fundamental [[human ]] identity in and through the study of literature.

Holland’s argument in Dynamics was close to Lesser’s in Fiction and the Unconscious: readers experience literature as a transformation of unconscious fantasy [[materials]]. However, in later works Holland denied that the text actually "contained" as a [[totality ]] the core of fantasies that would induce readers’ [[individual]], [[partial ]] transformations of [[them]]. In works since Five Readers Reading (1975) he exchanged his earlier text-centered [[model ]] for a wholly interactive one that defines text as promptuary and the experience of reading as part of infinitely recursive feedback loops in which readers are located. In Five Readers Reading Holland saw his interactive model as part of a twentieth-century [[tradition ]] that includes Ernst Cassirer, Edmund [[Husserl]], and John Dewey and that "bridged the gap" of [[Cartesian ]] [[dualism ]] (see rené [[descartes]]); in The I (1985)identity as theme and variation is viewed less epistemologically, more as the [[construct ]] of an interpreter and an interpretee.

Holland’s [[goal ]] is to unify and synthesize reader-response criticism by articulating its affinities with [[psychiatry]], psychology, [[phenomenology]], and [[aesthetics]]. At the same [[time]], his work has accorded increasing importance to individual variations in interpretation. In "The Delphi [[Seminar]]" (1975, coauthored with Murray Schwartz)and in later works, Holland advocates a pedagogy according to which diversity of interpretation is never divorced from [[individual psychology]]. He advocates and exemplifies the view that critics must acknowledge their own anxieties, defenses, and even sociopolitical biases in dealing with texts. In his most [[recent ]] work he calls for reader-response criticism to become [[conscious ]] of such unacknowledged presuppositions by learning from questions raised by feminist, [[Third ]] [[World]], and gay critics. One example of his engagement with feminist [[discourses ]] is his dialogue with Leona Sherman on the [[nature ]] of gothic fiction. On the other hand, Elizabeth Flynn and Patrocinio Schweickart [[suggest ]] that his reader-response criticism may embody inherently [[male ]] approaches to the text (xxi–xxv). His position has also been criticized at length by David Bleich (111–21), who sees it as an attempt to reinstate objectivism. Holland distinguishes his own work from the reception criticism of [[Hans ]] Robert Jauss or the reader-response criticism of Wolfgang Iser by arguing that those theorists seek to define a more generalized receiver of texts, created by [[culture ]] or even by the text itself, whereas Holland’s "reader" is irreducibly individual and idiosyncratic (see reception theory). A [[complete ]] account of his critical position, together with his assessment of related ones, is available in Holland’s [[Guide ]] to Psychoanalytic Psychology and Literature and Psychology (1990).

Of the works discussed in this group, Norman O. Brown’s is the most idiosyncratic, but his vigorous interpretation of Freud remains influential. Brown (1913–2002) made two principal contributions to contemporary criticism: Life against [[Death ]] (1959)and Love’s [[Body ]] (1966). In Life against Death he offered a radical interpretation of Freud drawing on classical literature, Ralph Waldo Emerson, friedrich [[nietzsche]], and Continental writers of the Freudian [[Left]], especially Wilhelm [[Reich ]] and Geza Roheim. Brown argued that Freud’s importance lay in his depiction, in [[Civilization ]] and Its Discontents (1930), of a [[universal ]] [[neurosis]]; that the institution of [[repression ]] implied the seemingly permanent human subjugation to a life of [[illusion ]] and [[sublimation]]; that repression was evidenced in the fall from the [[polymorphous perversity ]] of [[infantile ]] sexuality through [[oral]], [[anal]], and [[phallic ]] [[stages ]] to the tyranny of [[genital ]] organization; that orthodox academic or [[clinical ]] [[interpretations ]] of Freud colluded with the forces of repression by emphasizing the [[necessity ]] to [[adapt ]] to societal norms that were by definition sick; and that the only [[chance ]] for some "way out" of this dilemma was to be found in Freud’s metapsychological speculations on [[Eros ]] and [[Thanatos]], the life and [[death drives ]] (or [[libido ]] and [[Todestrieb]]).

The "way out" that Brown adumbrates is set forth in the last chapter of Life against Death, "The Resurrection of the Body." There he argues that psychoanalysis must situate itself [[inside ]] the larger tradition of Occidental and Oriental [[mysticism]], which he valorizes in works of [[Christian ]] gnosticism, [[Jewish ]] cabalism, Taoism, [[Jacob ]] Boehme, Blake, Rainer Maria Rilke, and dissident psychoanalytic theorists. Such a reconceptualization will disclose that the [[dual ]] drives Freud postulated can themselves be subsumed into one [[unity]]; Brown interprets Freud’s "oceanic [[feeling]]" —from The [[Future ]] of an Illusion (1928)—to denote a [[desire ]] for union between self and world that, once recovered, can heal the divisions created by repression. (Brown sees repression itself as equiprimordial with the [[separation ]] of the [[infant ]] from the mother; hence, the "resurrection of the body" would imply the restoration of that time "before the fall" into repression. In this way he [[links ]] his "way out" with Christian eschatology.)

One of the most influential sections of Life against Death has been its fifth part, "Studies in Anality," in which Brown analyzes [[Protestantism]], the scatological poems of Jonathan [[Swift]], and the [[representation ]] of [[money ]] in literature. He argues that [[poetry ]] dramatizes the [[horror ]] of sublimation and repression. Regarding Protestantism, he holds that the Lutheran equation of the world with the devil, [[born ]] of the link between money and excrement, anticipates his own indictment of a world given over to the death [[instinct]]. He finds support for both theses in the recurrent theme of "filthy lucre" in literature.

Brown’s intent in Love’s Body is to pursue to its [[logical ]] conclusion the "way out" briefly sketched at the end of Life against Death. The path to the realization of his hypostasized absolute unity is traced through psychological, historical, and social stages, beginning with a [[perception ]] of separateness and the repression of political [[society]], through intellectual rebellion to the [[achievement ]] of fulfillment, [[freedom]], and—perhaps ominously—nothingness. The book exemplifies and urges such an inner journey or quest, but its advocacy (based loosely on the fugitive [[anthropology ]] of Freud’s [[Totem ]] and [[Taboo]], 1913 , and [[Moses ]] and [[Monotheism]], 1939) is no less idiosyncratic than its composition and style: Brown paraphrases and [[quotes ]] directly from more than 300 works in the mystical tradition he celebrates, but apart from free [[association ]] and a general relevance to his chapters’ broad rubrics, these excerpts are not otherwise connected. The result is a mosaic in which the intellectual affinities of various authors are asserted through juxtaposition. Brown’s mosaic [[technique ]] is a consequence of his attack on sequential [[logic ]] and [[rationality]], in both books, as exacerbations of repression and sublimation.

After Love’s Body, Brown persevered in the critical trajectory he always followed. Closing Time (1973)continues the mosaic technique of Love’s Body, this time juxtaposing the life and work of giambattista vico with [[James ]] Joyce’s [[Finnegans Wake ]] in an effort to disclose in each writer a cyclical eschatology that aims at the saying of some ultimate [[word]]. (It is likely that Brown was drawn to Vico in part by virtue of the latter’s ambivalent relations with the academy, a constant motif in all of Brown’s writings.) He later argued that the Western prophetic tradition must be defined as including Islamic as well as more conventional [[Judeo-Christian ]] texts and movements, in [[order ]] to locate the Blakean unity—Brown’s grail—under its apparently diverse surfaces.

[[Bibliography]]

David Bleich, [[Subjective ]] Criticism, (1978); Norman O. Brown, Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis, (1993); Norman O. Brown, Apocalypse: The [[Place ]] of Mystery in the Life of the [[Mind ]] Harper’s May, (1961); Norman O. Brown, Closing Time, (1973); Norman O. Brown, Daphne, or Metamorphosis [[Myths]], Dreams, and [[Religion ]] Joseph Campbell (1970); Norman O. Brown, [[Hermes]], [[The Thief]], (1947); Norman O. Brown, Hesiod’s Theogeny, (1953); Norman O. Brown, Life against Death, (1959); Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body, (1966); Janice Doane, Devon Hodges, From Klein to Kristeva: Psychoanalytic [[Feminism ]] and the [[Search ]] for the Good Enough Mother, (1992); Margery Durham, The Mother Tongue: Christabel and the Language of Love The (M)other Tongue: Essays in Feminist Psychoanalytic Interpretation Shirley N. Garner , Claire Kahane , Madelon Sprengnether (1986); Elizabeth A. Flynn Patrocinio P. Schweickart [[Gender ]] and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts, (1986); Phyllis Grosskurth, Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work, (1986); Norman N. Holland, The Dynamics of Literary Response, (1968); Norman N. Holland, Five Readers Reading, (1975); Norman N. Holland, Holland’s Guide to Psychoanalytic Psychology and Literature and Psychology, (1990); Norman N. Holland, The I, (1985); Norman N. Holland, Laughing: A Psychology of [[Humor]], (1982); Norman N. Holland, The Nature of Psychoanalytic Criticism Literature and Psychology Volume 12 (1962); Norman N. Holland, The New Paradigm: Subjective or Transactive? New Literary History Volume 7 (1976); Norman N. Holland, The Prophetic Tradition Studies in Romanticism Volume 21 (1982); Norman N. Holland, Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, (1966); Norman N. Holland, Twenty-five Years and Thirty Days Psychoanalytic Quarterly Volume 55 (1986); Norman N. Holland, Unity Identity Text Self PMLA Volume 90 (1975); Norman N. Holland, Murray Schwartz, The Delphi Seminar College English Volume 36 (1975); Norman N. Holland, Leona F. Sherman, Gothic Possibilities, Flynn and Schweickart, ; Melanie Klein, The Writings of Melanie Klein, 4 vols., (1984)Volume 1 Love, Guilt, and Reparation and Other Works, 1921–45 Volume 2 The Psycho-Analysis of Children Volume 3 Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, 1946–1963 Volume 4 [[Narrative ]] of a [[Child ]] Analysis ; [[Julia Kristeva]], La Révolution du langage poétique: L’Avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle, Lautréamont et Mallarmé 1974, Revolution in Poetic Language Margaret Waller, trans. , 1984; Simon O. Lesser, Fiction and the Unconscious, (1957); Simon O. Lesser, The [[Image ]] of the [[Father ]] Five Approaches of Literary Criticism Wilbur Scott (1963); Simon O. Lesser, The Language of Fiction A College Book of Modern Fiction Walter B. Rideout , James K. Robinson (1961); Simon O. Lesser, Some Unconscious Elements in Response to Fiction Literature and Psychology Volume 3 (1953); Simon O. Lesser, The Whispered Meanings: Selected Essays of Simon O. Lesser, Robert Sprich Richard Nolan (1977); Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual [[Politics]]: Feminist Literary Theory 1985, 2d ed., 2002; Michael Rustin, The Good Society and the Inner World: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Culture, (1991); Alison Sinclair, The Deceived Husband: A Kleinian Approach to the Literature of Infidelity, (1993); Simon Stuart, New Phoenix Wings: Reparation