PsyArt Home
Current Issue: 2000   
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008  

On Not Being Able to Write About Hamlet (abstract)
by Harvey Roy Greenberg


Metaphor and Figure-Ground Relationship: Comparisons from Poetry, Music, and the Visual Arts (abstract)
by Reuven Tsur


Shakespeare's Sonnet 129: The Joys and Tribulations of Making Love (abstract)
by Marvin Krims


First Person: Neuro-Cognitive Notes on the Self in Life and in Fiction (abstract)
by William L. Benzon


A Note on the History of Psychoanalysis in Poland (abstract)
by Pawel Dybel


Dilemmas of Psychoanalytic Interpretation (abstract)
by Pawel Dybel


Creativity and the Stock Market (abstract)
by Norman N. Holland


The Performance of Enjambments: Perceived Effects and Experimental Manipulations (abstract)
by Reuven Tsur


Hotspur's Fear of Femininity (abstract)
by Marvin Krims


Psychoanalytic Perspectives on George Eliot
Guest Editor: Bernard J. Paris

The sequence of an introduction and six papers that follows constitutes an "ebook": Psychoanalytic Perspectives on George Eliot. The editor of the collection, Bernard J. Paris, is well-known for distinguished work in Victorian literature and Horneyan psychoanalysis. He is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Florida. The articles are reproduced in PSYART by courtesy of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis' 1999 editor, Douglas H. Ingram, and Kluwer Academic/Human Sciences Press.


Introduction  
by Bernard J. Paris

Maggie and Dorothea: Reparation and Working Through in George Eliot's Novels  (abstract)
by Ignês Sodré

"I've been robbed!": Breaking the Silence in Silas Marner  (abstract)
by Laura Emery and Margaret Keenan

Conflicting Self-Perceptions in George Eliot's Romola  (abstract)
by Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone

Middlemarch Revisited: Changing Responses to George Eliot  (abstract)
by Bernard J. Paris

George Eliot--Proto-Psychoanalyst  (abstract)
by Carl T. Rotenberg

On Ideas of "the Good" and "the Ideal" in George Eliot's Novels and Post-Kleinian Psychoanalytic Thought  
(abstract)
by Margot Waddell




article 000102
On Not Being Able to Write About Hamlet
by Harvey Roy Greenberg 

       This psychoanalyst and film scholar has long fantasied making an innovative contribution to Hamlet studies. Recently, I theorized that what "cured" Hamlet's delaying might have been his sojourn with pirates. Neither critics nor text have suggested this. I had planned to use their silence as a blank screen on which I'd project scenarios of Elizabethan pirate captivity, each matching a major explanation of Hamlet's procrastination. I began drafting but blocked, fearing my theory would be "scooped"--"pirated." Why? A fascination with pirates since childhood; intimidation about inventing scenes that the great Shakespeare omitted; oedipal competitiveness with the critics whose theories--"pirated"--were to anchor the scenarios; paranoid projection of disavowed competitiveness; the grandiosity in offering a "myth of origin" for the sea change, or indeed any of Hamlet/Hamlet's complexities. This "prequel" works through the block and publishes my arguments, forestalling potential pirates.
go >>

keywords: Hamlet; pirates; criticism; writer's block; Elizabethan piracy; Hamlet scholarship
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_greenberg03.shtml

author info:
Harvey Roy Greenberg hrgsmes@aol.com

Department of Psychiatry
Yeshiva University, New York 10033 NY


Albert Einstein College of Medicine
320 West 86th St.
New York, NY 10024






article 000201
Metaphor and Figure-Ground Relationship: Comparisons from Poetry, Music, and the Visual Arts
by Reuven Tsur 

       The gestalt notion "figure-ground phenomenon" refers to the characteristic organization of perception into a figure that 'stands out' against an undifferentiated background. What is figural at any one moment depends on patterns of sensory stimulation and on the momentary interests of the perceiver. Figure-ground relationship is an important element of the way we organise reality in our awareness, including works of art. Poets may rely on our habitual figure-ground organisations in extra-linguistic reality to exploit our flexibility in shifting attention from one aspect to another so as to achieve certain poetic effects by inducing us to reverse the habitual figure-ground relationships. This flexibility has precedent in music and the visual arts. Works by Escher, Mozart, Beethoven, Dickinson, Sidney, Shelley and Beckett are examined.
go >>

keywords: gestalt; figure-ground; Emily Dickinson; P. B. Shelley; Sir Philip Sidney; Beethoven; M. C. Escher; Samuel Beckett
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_tsur03.shtml

author info:
Reuven Tsur tsurxx@post.tau.ac.il

Hebrew Literature
Tel Aviv University

Ramat Aviv 69978
Tel Aviv P.O.B. 39040 ISRAEL





article 000816
Shakespeare's Sonnet 129: The Joys and Tribulations of Making Love
by Marvin Krims 

       Problems with sexual intimacy, either difficulties which limit one's capacity for sustained romantic relationships or psychosomatic symptoms that affect performance, afflict everyone at one time or another during the life cycle and are therefore part of the psychopathology of everyday life. This essay offers a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet #129, the so-called "Lust Sonnet," as an exploration of the causes of these vexious problems. On the surface, the sonnet presents the paradox that difficulties with sexual intimacy are as central to it as its delights. I offer a close reading of the sonnet that discloses some of unconscious conflicts that create this paradox. Shakespeare's capacity to represent inner mental life with words and metaphors that resonate with unconscious conflict is the basis for this effort.
go >>

keywords: applied psychoanalysis; Shakespeare; Sonnet 129; lust; libido; orgasm
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_krims02.shtml

author info:
Marvin Krims mkrims@hms.harvard.edu

Private Practice

184 Ward Street
Newton Center, MA 02459





article 000619
First Person: Neuro-Cognitive Notes on the Self in Life and in Fiction
by William L. Benzon 

       We can think of the self as the result of interaction between subcortical systems for regulating the global brain state and largely cortical systems for representing the current body state and autobiography. The personal pronoun system is at the interface between the cortical and subcortical systems. By constructing a network model for the pronoun system that is grounded in basic machinery for social interaction we show how the pronoun system allows speakers to achieve self-reference and how this capacity engenders the illusion of a unified self. The same model allows us to see that there is no essential difference between reliving incidents from one's own past and giving life to imaginary characters in ritual and in literary works. Such imaginative experience may play a role in maintaining the coherence of the self through different emotions.
go >>

keywords: self; person; identity; neural; Damasio; Vygotsky; Piaget;McCulloch; imitation; fiction; autobiography; dissociative
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_benzon01.shtml

author info:
William L. Benzon bbenzon@mindspring.com
708 Jersey Ave. Apt 2A
Jersey City, NJ 07302






article 000806
A Note on the History of Psychoanalysis in Poland
by Pawel Dybel 

       This note sketches the history of psychoanalysis in Poland from its beginnings at the turn of the century, through the periods of Nazi and Communist domination, to 2000.
go >>

keywords: history of psychoanalysis; Poland; Bialystok
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_dybel01.shtml

author info:
Ignês Sodré pdybel@ifispan.waw.pl

Zespol Badawczy Psychoanalizy
(Team for Psychoanalytic Studies)
Institute for Philosophy and Sociology


Universytet w Bialymstoku
(University of Bialystok)
Warsaw, POLAND






article 000807
Dilemmas of Psychoanalytic Interpretation
by Pawel Dybel 

       Freud's theories, especially his ambivalence towards literature, leave three main dilemmas concerning interpretation. First, Freud thought psychoanalysis was an empirical science. He therefore gave his many interpretations of myth and literature only secondary theoretical importance. Yet he founded his his pschoanalytic theory on patients' narratives about their dreams, implying a deep affinity between psychoanalysis and literature. Second, how does one relate the individual myth of the patient, reconstructed within the psychoanalysis, to the collective myths that underlie the understanding a self in society? Third, Freud wrote about psychoanalytic literary interpretation ambiguously. Does a psychoanalytic interpretation radically change some previous way of understanding a literary text by revealing "once and forever" its hidden truth? Or does it represent only one possible interpretation among the many which belong to its "history of effects"? This article notes various theoretical resolutions of these dilemmas in post-Freudian psychoanalysis and philosophy.
go >>

keywords: psychoanalysis; literature; narration; dream; trauma; hermeneutics; interpretation; explanatory methods; classicity
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_dybel02.shtml

author info:
Ignês Sodré pdybel@ifispan.waw.pl

Zespol Badawczy Psychoanalizy
(Team for Psychoanalytic Studies)
Institute for Philosophy and Sociology


Universytet w Bialymstoku
(University of Bialystok)
Warsaw, POLAND






article 000825
Creativity and the Stock Market
by Norman N. Holland 

       Usually, we call "creativity" the ability to put something "in" a work of art that causes an aesthetic experience in its audience. This model, however, does not define the something; neither does it account for changes in experience in different eras, cultures, and individuals; nor does it acknowledge the value judgment implicit in "creative." A better model analogizes the assignment of "creativity" to artists and scientists to investors' valuation of stocks. Efficient market theory can then account for vagaries in assigning the accolade "creative," the variety of explanations of "creativity," and our inability to predict it. The analogy applies to many other psychological terms, ultimately to all top-down processing.
go >>

keywords: creativity; reader-response; reader psychology; efficient market; random walk; stock price; Freud
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_holland02.shtml

author info:
Norman N. Holland nholland@ufl.edu

Deptartment of English
University of Florida

P. O. Box 117310
Gainesville FL 32611-7310 U.S.A.





article 000601
The Performance of Enjambments: Perceived Effects and Experimental Manipulations by Reuven Tsur 

       Contrary to the received view, enjambments can be performed in such a way that both the line boundary and the run-on sentence are indicated. This can be done by having recourse to conflicting cues. Tsur (1977; 1998) and Knowles (1991; 1992) provide theoretical frameworks that, in conjunction, predict the vocal devices by which this can be done. Barney (1990) and Tsur (1998) provide ample empirical evidence that flesh-and-blood performers do, indeed, attempt precisely these solutions. Tsur also provides some empirical evidence that those vocal devices do have, indeed, the predicted effect (though this requires further, and more rigourous, experimentation ). This article added some further empirical evidence, namely, that the relevant cues could be inserted, partly at least, by electronic manipulations and achieve the predicted effect.
go >>

keywords: enjambments; empirical; experimentation; line boundary; run-on sentence; electronic manipulations
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_tsur04.shtml

author info:
Reuven Tsur tsurxx@post.tau.ac.il

Hebrew Literature
Tel Aviv University

Ramat Aviv 69978
Tel Aviv P.O.B. 39040 ISRAEL





article 001129
Hotspur's Fear of Femininity by Marvin Krims 

       In this essay, I argue that study of Hotspur offers an opportunity to examine the paradoxical quality of phallocentricity: Hotspur, the knight who helped defeat a king and usurp a kingdom, is nervous with his wife. Close reading of his words helps to resolve the paradox by revealing underlying terrors of being the gentle woman, the babe at the breast and the victim. I try to show that while Hotspur's defenses against these anxieties produces appropriate, perhaps even necessary, behavior in a fight, these same defenses impose serious limitations on him in marriage, friendship, and pleasure in the arts.
go >>

keywords: Shakespeare; 1 Henry IV; Hotspur; phallocentric; femininity; attitudes toward women
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_krims03.shtml

author info:
Marvin Krims mkrims@hms.harvard.edu

Private Practice

184 Ward Street
Newton Center, MA 02459





article 0009E1
Maggie and Dorothea: Reparation and Working Through in George Eliot's Novels
by Ignês Sodré 

       This article discusses the idea that an artistic flaw in a great work of literature may remain in the author's mind as an unresolved conflict which will seek resolution in a subsequent work. George Eliot's great novels The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch are explored to show that Maggie Tulliver's heroic death, artistically unsatisfactory because it is a wish-fulfilling, daydream-like solution is one of the reasons for creating the character of Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch. Dorothea's development from self-idealising adolescent to mature, self-aware young woman works through an emotional conflict which initially belongs to George Eliot herself, and this is seen to have a reparative function, leading to greater integration and a more artistically truthful resolution.
go >>

keywords: George Eliot; Mill on the Floss; Middlemarch; fantasy; reparation; self-idealization
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_sodre01.shtml

author info:
Ignês Sodré ignes.sodre@virgin.net

Private Practice


Flat 5, 43 Eaton Ave.
London NW3 3EP, ENGLAND






article 0009E2
"I've been robbed!": Breaking the Silence in Silas Marner
by Laura Emery 

       Psychoanalytic ideas about trauma and mastery can enhance our understanding of Silas, of his creator, and of ourselves. Because Eliot gives such detailed attention to Silas's withdrawal, we can recognize it as a common response to traumatic loss. Silas's isolation, his hoarding, and his deadened senses are attempts at mastering loss, but they keep him numbed and incapable of healing. When events repeat the trauma, however, his old wounds reopen, providing the possibility of a new outcome.Ý This time, by acknowledging--to others and to himself--the intolerable pain of loss, Silas begins to heal, initiating a return to relatedness and to life.
go >>

keywords: trauma and mastery; loss; George Eliot; Silas Marner; witnessing
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_emery01.shtml

author info:
Laura Emery emery@mail.sdsu.edu

Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies


San Diego State University
San Diego CA 92182






article 0009E3
Conflicting Self-Perceptions in George Eliot's Romola
by Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone 

       Eliot's Romola presents contrasting father-child relationships, one cold and narcissistic and the other warm and loving. Central to both is conflict, emphasized in the narcissistic relationship but denied in the other. These relationships, I argue, reflect Eliot's conflicting perceptions of her relationship to her father. Kernberg's theory of intrapsychic development combined with Bowlby's studies of attachment and loss suggest that the split between the two sets of characters reflects both the author's conflicting self-perceptions and her failure fully to mourn her father's death. Eliot's early experiences of separation and loss gave her a pattern of anxious attachment to loved ones that predisposed her to problems with mourning their deaths. Her denial of the anger in her anxious relation to her father keeps her from finishing the task of mourning, i.e., integrating positive and negative aspects of their relationship.
go >>

keywords: George Eliot; Romola; narcissism, mourning, identification
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_johnstone01.shtml

author info:
Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone 110377.2361@compuserve.com

Independent Scholar


41 Linnaean St., #1
Cambridge, MA 02138






article 0009E4
Middlemarch Revisited: Changing Responses to George Eliot
by Bernard J. Paris 

       In Experiments in Life: George Eliot's Quest for Values (1965), I subscribed to George Eliot's beliefs and saw her characters in terms of her own interpretations and judgments, as I understood them. I have subsequently come to feel that Eliot's philosophy has serious deficiencies and to perceive her characters as brilliant mimetic creations who subvert their formal and thematic roles when we analyze their psychology. Focusing on Dorothea Brooke, this essay compares my past and present readings, tries to explain why my responses have changed, and argues that George Eliot's Religion of Humanity, which Dorothea exemplifies, is a celebration of what Karen Horney describes as the self-effacing solution. George Eliot dramatizes the destructiveness of this solution, with its compulsively self-sacrificial behavior, but since she employs the solution herself, her rhetoric glorifies it as a sign of moral grandeur.
go >>

keywords: George Eliot; Middlemarch; Dorothea Brooke, character analysis; psychological approach; Karen Horney
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_paris01.shtml

author info:
Bernard J. Paris bjparis@ufl.edu

Department of English
University of Florida


1430 N.W. 94th St.
Gainesville, FL 32606-5568






article 0009E5
George Eliot--Proto-Psychoanalyst by Carl T. Rotenberg 

       In the novel, Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, George Eliot depicts essential aspects of a treatment dyad in her portrayal of the relationship between Gwendolen Harleth and Daniel Deronda. The author of this article speculates on the possible influence of George Eliot on Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalytic concepts he described decades after the publication of the novel. The attributes of the therapeutic relationship denoted by Eliot include: a listening perspective, suspension of moral criticism, attunement to shifting affective and cognitive states, tolerance of contradictions, resistance, the significance of empathic attunement, unconscious processes, and the fundamentals of transference. Eliot describes the difference between an enacted romantic relationship vs. a therapeutic relationship, in which the treater's needs are renounced for the sake of the healing effects of the relationship
go >>

keywords: Daniel Deronda; psychoanalysis; therapeutic relationship; empathy; transference
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_rotenberg01.shtml

author info:
Carl T. Rotenberg CarlRot@aol.com

Private Practice


28 Brier Brook Lane
Weston, CT 06883






article 0009E6
On Ideas of `the Good' and of `the Ideal' in George Eliot's Novels and in Post-Kleinian Psychoanalytic Thought by Margot Waddell 

       This paper draws a distinction between the role of an abstract notion of the Good-in-itself and the seeking after a good which is attainable, and in relation to which many people may usefully live their lives. Both George Eliot and psychoanalysts may be said to be engaging with the problem of truthfulness in human affairs and with the role of that truthfulness in the growth and development of the individual. In each case, where `ideal' sanctions are invoked, there is a price to be paid. In the novels it is paid aesthetically, thereby weakening the characterisations and undermining the philosophical conviction. In psychoanalytic theory it is paid at that point of abstraction where it become hard to link the concepts with the major practical and ethical problems, which lie at the heart of clinical practice.
go >>

keywords: George Eliot; novels; post-Kleinian thought; the Good; the Ideal
url: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000_waddell01.shtml

author info:
Margot Waddell adolescent@tavi-port.org

Adolescent Department


Tavistock Clinic
120 Belsize Lane
London, ENGLAND NW3 5BA


1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008  

about || note to authors || editorial process || board of editors || contributors || submissions || subscribe || contact || home

ISSN: 1088-5870
©2008 PsyArt
[bd] creative consulting