Speaking Desires can be Dangerous

Elizabeth Wright was formerly at Girton College, Cambridge.

"The extraordinary achievement of Wright's book is that it inverts the standard psychoanalytic approach to art, which consists in bringing to light the unconscious pathological complexes that underlie the work of art - for Wright, and in the best Lacanian tradition, it is the poetics, the rhetorical strategies of language itself, that provide the key to the formations of the unconscious. The consequent deployment of this insight makes the book an instant classic that will stay around for decades." Slavoj Zizek "Elizabeth Wright provides a "how-to" handbook on reading literary texts through psychoanalytic theory. She carefully and intelligently presents a compact description of a psychoanalytic reading, defines "discourse", as well as the "clinical case". These are the three core concepts for any understanding of a psychoanalytic approach to literature and language. They are well illustrated by insightful and comprehensible examples from Shakespeare to the German expressionist Alfred Kubin and the American writer Robert Coover and by examples from pyschoanalysts Julia Kristeva, Joyce McDougall and Wilfred Bion. An indispensable guide for student and critic alike." Sander Gilman "With an acute eye Speaking Desires seamlessly weaves together psychoanalytic theory and literary criticism as only one equally at ease in both discourses can do." Psychoanalytic Studies

• Acknowledgements viiIntroduction 1Part I Psychoanalysis and Literature: Freud 111 What is a psychoanalytic reading? 132 The uncanny and its poetics 183 The vagaries of fantasy: Alfred Kubin’s The Other Side 314 Maladies of the soul: the poetics of Julia Kristeva 41Part II Psychoanalysis and Language: Lacan 595 What is a discourse? 616 The indirections of desire: Hamlet 777 Inscribing the body politic: Robert Coover’s Spanking the Maid 868 What does Woman want?: The Double Life of Véronique 104Part III Patients and Analysts: Readers and Texts 1159 What is a clinical ‘case’? 11710 The rhetoric of clinical discourse: Dialogue with Sammy 13211 The rhetoric of clinical management: Bion and Minuchin 14012 Out of tune: Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher 154Conclusion 165Notes 169Bibliography 186Index 193