Skip to main content
Log in

The Haunting of Hill House: psyche, soma, and destiny

  • Article
  • Published:
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis Aims and scope

Abstract

Fairy tales and horror stories inhabit the realm of terrible truths, affording opportunities to survive and work through them from the safe distance of displacement. Psychoanalysis, too, provides spaces to enter into that enigmatic realm of imagistic, oneiric meanings and explore possibilities beyond the concrete manifestations of daily life, to penetrate the mysteries and discover the patterns. I will use various lenses of theory alongside literature and screen portrayals of a haunted house, to investigate the realm of the uncanny and explore ways in which we are haunted by truths we fail to face.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abraham, N., & Torok, M. (1994). The shell and the kernel. N. T. Rand (Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Arnold-de Simine, S. (2016). The body in the pool: Reflections on David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 17(1), 73–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bachelard, G. (1937). The poetics of space. M. Jolas (Trans.) (1964). New York: Penguin Group. 1964.

  • Bion, W. R. (1965). Transformations.

  • Bion, W. R. (1970). Attention and interpretation. London: Tavistock Publications.

  • Bion, W. R. (1973–1974). Brazilian lectures. London & New York: Karnac. 1990.

  • Bion, W. R. (1977). Seven servants. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bion, W. R. (1980). Bion in New York and São Paulo. F. Bion (Ed.). Perthshire: Clunie Press.

  • Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. New York: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, J. (1988). The power of myth. New York: Viking Press.

  • Carrington, V. (2011). The contemporary Gothic: Literacy and childhood in unsettled times. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 12(3), 293–310.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cassirer, E. (1929). The phenomenology of knowledge. In The philosophy of symbolic forms. Vol. 3. London: Oxford University Press. 1957.

  • Charles, M. (2002). Patterns: Building blocks of experience. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

  • Charles, M. (2003). Dreamscapes: Portrayals of rectangular spaces in Doris Lessing’s “memoirs of a survivor” and in dreams. Psychoanalytic Review, 90, 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Charles, M. (2010). When cultures collide: Myth, meaning, and configural space. Modern Psychoanalysis, 34, 26–47.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charles, M. (2015a). Psychoanalysis and literature: The stories we live. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

  • Charles, M. (2015b). Fragmenting foundations. Annual of Psychoanalysis, 38, 105 –118.

  • Charles, M. (2019). The dream and the image: Creative transformations in psychoanalytic space. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(2), 174–195.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Charles, M., Frank, S. J., Jacobson, S., & Grossman, G. (2001). Repetition of the remembered past: Patterns of separation-individuation in two generations of mothers and daughters. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 18(4), 705–728.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Domínguez-Rué, E. (2014). Nightmares of repetition, dreams of affiliation: Female bonding in the Gothic tradition. Journal of Gender Studies, 23(2), 125–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eigen, M. (1995). The destructive force within. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 31(4), 603–616.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elsaesser, T. (1987). Tales of sound and fury: Observations on the family melodrama. In C. Gledhill (Ed.), Home is where the heart is: Studies in melodrama and the woman’s film (pp. 43–69). London: British Film Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emerson, R. W. (1836). Nature and other essays, pp. 43–69. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. 2009.

  • Erdinast-Vulcan, D. (2008). The I that tells itself: A Bakhtinian perspective on narrative identity. Narrative, 16(1), 1–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feigelson, C. (1993). Personality death, object loss, and the uncanny. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 74, 331–345.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flanagan, M. (Director) (2018). The Haunting of Hill House (Television Mini-Series). FlanaganFilm, Amblin Television, Paramount Television, and Netflix USA.

  • Freud, S. (1919). The ‘uncanny’. Standard Edition, Vol. 17, (pp. 217–252). London: Hogarth.

  • Gadamer, H.-G. (1975). Truth and method. New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallese, V. (2009). Mirror neurons, embodied simulation, and the neural basis of social identification. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 19(5), 519–536.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Green, A. (1972). The dead mother. In On private madness (pp. 142–173). London: Routledge. 1997.

  • Grotstein, J. S. (2004). The seventh servant: The implications of a truth drive in Bion’s theory of ‘O’. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 85(5), 1081–1101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hillman, J. (1968). Peaks and vales: The soul/spirit distinction as basis for the differences between psychotherapy and spiritual discipline. In Senex & puer: Uniform edition of the writings of James Hillman, Vol. 3 (pp. 67–90). Putnam, CT: Spring Publications. 2005.

  • Hillman, J. (1975). The dream and the underworld. New York: HarperCollins. 1979.

  • Jackson, S. (1959). The haunting of hill house. New York: Viking Press.

  • Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jung, C. G. (1958). Psychology and religion: West and east. R. F. C. Hull (Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Jung, C. G. (1959). The archetypes and the collective unconscious. R. F. C. Hull (Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books.

  • Kahane, C. (1985). The Gothic mirror. In S. N. Garner, C. Kahane, & M. Sprengnether (Eds.), The (m)other tongue: Essays in feminist psychoanalytic interpretation (pp. 334–351). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 27, 99–110.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kurrik, M. (1975). The novel’s subjectivity: Georg Lukács’s Theory of the Novel. Salmagundi, 28, 104–124.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lacan, J. (1974–1975). Seminar XXII: RSI, C. Gallagher (Trans.). Retrieved from: www.LacaninIreland.com

  • Lacan, J. (1977a). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. In Écrits: A selection, A. Sheridan (Trans.) (pp. 1–7). New York: Norton.

  • Lacan, J. (1977b). The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis. In Écrits: A selection, A. Sheridan (Trans.) (pp. 30–113). New York: Norton.

  • Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laplanche, J. (2019). Should we burn Melanie Klein? Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 67(5), 825–838.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martin, A. (2018). Mysteries of cinema: Reflections on film theory, history and culture 1982–2016. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

  • Massé, M. A. (1990). Gothic repetition: Husbands, horrors, and things that go bump in the night. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 15(4), 679–709.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Modell, A. H. (2005). Emotional memory, metaphor, and meaning. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 25(4), 555–568.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Modell, A. H. (2009). Metaphor—The bridge between feelings and knowledge. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 29(1), 6–11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moers, E. (1976). Literary women. New York: Doubleday.

    Google Scholar 

  • Savitz, C. (1991). Immersions in ambiguity: The labyrinth and the analytic process. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 36(4), 461–481.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, A. (2007). Gothic literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2013.

  • Spooner, C. (2006). Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion.

  • Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. London: Tavistock Publications.

  • Winnicott, D. W. (1974). Fear of breakdown. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 1, 103–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright, J. M. (2017). American Gothic television. In J. Faflak & J. Haslam (Eds.), American Gothic culture: An Edinburgh companion (pp. 129–144). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marilyn Charles.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Charles, M. The Haunting of Hill House: psyche, soma, and destiny. Am J Psychoanal 82, 1–21 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-022-09333-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-022-09333-2

Keywords

Navigation