Abstract
This article considers some of the affinities between postmodern literary theory and the psychoanalytic theories concerned with intersubjective phenomena. Postmodern literary theory is described briefly, and it is argued that one of its major concerns is the nature of, and the political and cultural influences on, subjectivity and identity. Despite that, postmodernism generally, and literary postmodernism in particular, can be said to lack a theory of the psychological and interpersonal dimensions of the experience of self. This article contends that the more relational schools of psychoanalytic theory can provide an example of the construction of selfhood that is of importance to contemporary and postmodern literary criticism. The academy has, to a considerable extent identified ‘psychoanalysis’ with the work of Jacques Lacan, but since the 1980s the work of such theorists as Jane Flax and Jessica Benjamin, building on the work of Nancy Chodorow, have increasingly opened up the possibilities of relational and object relations theory for literary studies. The relational psychoanalytic theories operate in the same epistemological universe as postmodern literary criticism, congruent with the postmodern idea of ‘truth’ as constructed and relational, and selfhood as shifting, contingent, and always-in-process. Particular attention is paid to the work of Wilfred Bion, whose understanding of self provides an account both of the failure of meaning, and of the development of mind. Some examples of a relational approach to literary analysis are provided.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barker, P. (1996). The Regeneration Trilogy, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Baynard, P. (1999). Is it possible to apply literature to psychoanalysis? (Trans. by R. Bourgeois). American Imago 56:207–219.
Benjamin, J. (1990). The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. London: Virago.
Benjamin, J. (1998). Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.
Bion, W.R. (1989). Two Papers: The Grid and Caesura. London: arnac Books.
Bion, W.R. (1993). Second Thoughts: Selected Papers on Psycho-Analysis. London: Maresfield Library.
Bollas, C. (1987). The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. New York: Columbia University Press.
Brooks, P. (1994). Psychoanalyis and Storytelling, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Casement, P. (1990). Learning from the Patient. New York: Routledge.
Chodorow, N. (1978). The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Eagleton, T. (1983). Literary Theory: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell.
Eagleton, T. (1996). The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Elliot, A. (1996). Subject to Ourselves: Social Theory, Psychoanalysis and Postmodernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Esman, A.H. (1998). What is “applied” in “applied” psychoanalysis? International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 79:741.
Fish, S. (1980). Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Flax, J. (1990). Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fonagy, P. (1999). The process of change and the change of processes: What can change in a “good” analysis. Keynote address to the American Psychological Association, http://psychematters.com/papers/fonagy/htm.
Gay, P. (1995). The Freud Reader. London: Vintage Books.
Greer, G. (1971). The Female Eunuch. London: Paladin.
Griffiths, M. (1995). Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Holland, N. (1975). Five Readers Reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. New York: Verson, 1991.
Klein, M. (1930). The importance of symbol formation in the development of the ego. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 11: 724–739.
Knights, L. C. (1946). How many children had Lady Macbeth? In Explorations. London: Chatto and Windus.
Laplanche, J., and Pontalis, J.-B. (1973). The Language of Psychoanalysis. (Trans. by D. Nicholson-Smith). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
Lear, J. (1998). Killing Freud. In Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lucy, N. (1997). Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Maynard, J. (1984). Charlotte on the couch: The perils of posthumous analysis. In Charlotte Bronte and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Meltzer, D. (1985). The Kleinian Development. Perthshire: Clunie Press.
Millet, K. (1971). Sexual Politics. London: Rupert Hart-Davis.
Mitchell, J. (1975). Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.
Mitchell, S.A. (1997). Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis. New York: The Analytic Press.
Olds, S. (1996). The Father. New York: A.A. Knopf.
Rose, J. (1993). Why War? Psychoanalysis, Politics, and the Return to Melanie Klein. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rossner, J. (1983). August. London: Jonathan Cape.
Roustang, F. (1990). The Lacanian Delusion. (Trans. G. Sims). New York: Oxford University Press.
Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus.
Sedgwick, E.K. (1993). Tendencies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Shapiro, B.A. (1994). Introduction. In Literature and the Relational Self, pp. 1–28. New York: New York University Press.
Stern, D. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology. New York: Basic Books.
Wrye, H.K. (2000). Review of The Shadow of the Other. Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, http://www.dspp.com/review/wrye/htm.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Souter, K.T. The Products of the Imagination: Psychoanalytic Theory and Postmodern Literary Criticism. Am J Psychoanal 60, 341–359 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1002042814341
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1002042814341