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Psychoanalyzing the Prepsychoanalytic Subject

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Cynthia Marshall
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Extract

But look more carefully […]. [T]here is something other, some strewn matter, that does not absorb […].

—Adam Thorpe, Ulverton

Declaring Psychoanalysis “Finally Dead and buried” is “one of the seasonal rituals of our intellectual life” (Žižek 7). In the latest salvo of this battle, Lee Patterson rehearses the argument that debunking the scientific base of Freudianism renders the theory useless to the humanities, and he objects particularly to the application of psychoanalytic models to medieval texts—an exercise, for him, in anachronistic reasoning. Patterson's claim recalls earlier rounds led by Stephen Greenblatt and, a decade before that, in a more totalizing vein, by Frederick Crews. My title indicates my interest in the dispute: where Patterson calls psychoanalysis an “ambulance” or “hearse” (656), I argue that the theory is less a vehicle to be abandoned or replaced and more something organic and renewable—an evolving body of ideas that provides techniques for reading. However, in this short essay I will not construct an apologia for psychoanalytic theory generally but take on the more limited task of characterizing recent uses of the theory in critical engagements with early modern texts. Salient qualities of this work have been overlooked by those who demonize psychoanalysis (a habit suggested by Žižek's image) or are allergic to anything linked to Freud.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 117 , Issue 5 , October 2002 , pp. 1207 - 1216
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2002

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