'This unending trail of Freuds': literature, psychoanalysis, and the fictional Freud

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Spillman, I., 2022. 'This unending trail of Freuds': literature, psychoanalysis, and the fictional Freud. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the fictionalisation of Sigmund Freud in twentieth- and twenty-first century literature, focusing on the ways in which texts published over the past fifty years explore and illustrate the reciprocal relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the fictional status of Freud's own writing. It argues that the transferences and counter-transferences between literary and psychoanalytic registers are amplified when Freud, the principal figure associated with psychoanalytic thinking, is placed at the centre of the fiction. In these moments, Freud – in the words of Joseph Skibell (2011) in A Curable Romantic – 'recede[s] into the mirrors' staggered horizons', leaving only an 'unending trail' of infinite reflections (Skibell, 2011, 7).

Focusing on Robert Seethaler's The Tobacconist (2012), Nicholas Meyer's Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974), Rebecca Coffey's Hysterical (2014), both The White Hotel (1981) and Eating Pavlova (1994) by D.M. Thomas, and Jean-Paul Sartre's abandoned screenplay, The Freud Scenario (1958-1960 [1984]), the thesis analyses the ways in which the literary representation of Freudian interpretations of iteration, narrative, the family romance, and archivization generate fictional organizing spaces within which multiple representations of Freud may exist. These structures, the thesis proposes, enact the synergies between literature and psychoanalytic theory recognizable in the relationship between Freud the author and Freud the psychoanalyst. In making this claim, the thesis builds on research in literary criticism, psychoanalytic theory, and philosophy, including work by Peter Brooks (1984), Shoshana Felman (1977), Sarah Kofman (1974), and Jean-Michel Rey (1977). In particular, moving beyond Lars Ole Sauerberg's Fact into Fiction (1991), which offers a comparison between the representation of Freud in fiction and details of his biography, it takes into new directions Nicholas Royle's (2008) conceptualisation of the relationship between literature and psychoanalysis in terms of the 'slippage' between 'Freud's writing’ and 'Freud the man' (Royle, 2008, 120). In so doing, it extends Jacques Derrida's (1995) theorisation of the archive by arguing that the function of psychoanalysis as a composite of competing fictions remains always resistant to closure and therefore 'opens out of the future' (Derrida, 1996, 68).

Item Type:

Thesis

Creators:

Spillman, I.

Contributors:

Name	Role	NTU ID	ORCID
Jackson, S.	Thesis supervisor	ELH3JACKSS	orcid.org/0000-0003-2454-0354
Leonard, P.	Thesis supervisor	EMS3LEONAPC	orcid.org/0000-0003-4809-1944

Date:

September 2022

Rights:

The copyright in this work is held by the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the author.

Divisions:

Schools > School of Arts and Humanities

Record created by:

Linda Sullivan

Date Added:

19 Dec 2023 14:30

Last Modified:

19 Dec 2023 14:30

URI:

https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/50569