Applied psychoanalysis in Slavic Studies

Thu Mar 23 21:44:13 UTC 2006

23 March 2006

Dear Colleagues,
There have been many questions raised, and they deserve a response here, 
even though most of them have already been answered elsewhere in the 
literature on applied psychoanalysis.

Alina Israeli wrote:

What I don't understand is this: if Onegin is gay (or exhibits latent
homosexual tendencies, whatever is the correct term), how come he fall in
love with a woman at the end of the novel?

Bisexuality is a well known phenomenon.  There exist real people who are 
capable of falling in love with people of either sex.  If so, why not 
fictional people too (like the fictional males in _Brokeback 
Mountain_)?  In Onegin's case, though, explicit homosexuality is not 
shown, partly because it would have been forbidden, partly because 
Onegin is so in love with himself (in psychoanalytic terms: exaggerated 
narcissism, manifested by the culture of Dandyism, all those hours in 
front of a mirror, etc.).  The symbolic (Peirce would say iconic) 
clincher, however, is Onegin's plunging his dlinnyi nozh into the body 
of Lenskii.

George Mitrevski writes:

Also, to do any
kind of justice to a psychoanalytic study of a character (real of
fictional), wouldn't one need to have some practical experience in the
field, at least an advanced degree in the field and some clinical
practice with real individuals? Are you trying to convince me that the
typical student or scholar  of Russian Literature has enough practical 
experience in the field to do psychoanalysis?

"Advanced degree?"  Does education stop upon the receipt of a degree?  
Freud said that clinical practice was only one of the applications of 
psychoanalysis (and of course he had no training whatsoever in 
psychoanalysis; his advanced degree was in neurology).  And who said 
that only the mentally ill have a psyche?  The only reason we tend to 
associate psychoanalysis (or psychology generally) with the clinical 
situation is that that is where the money is.  Everybody has a psyche, 
and everybody is psychoanalyzable, but is is when a psyche goes awry 
that money changes hands, institutions are created, degrees are 
awarded...  By the way, it is standard practice in the psychoanalytic 
institutes to assign readings in Dostoevsky.  What many of Dostoevsky's 
characters say is just the sort of thing you will hear on the couch.

Yes, you do have to educate yourself in the basics of psychoanalysis if 
you want to apply it (to literature, to film, to non-Western cultures, 
to gender studies, etc.).  Besides Freud's _Interpretation of Dreams_ 
(the founding work of psychoanalysis), one should learn about all the 
other movements as well: Jungian depth-psychology, object-relations 
theory (Klein, Winnicott, etc.), attachment theory (Bowlby), 
self-psychology (Kohut), and so on.  It is hard work, but rewarding.

George Mitrevski further writes:

>A student turns in a paper
>to me that is a psychoanalysis of some literary character. Wouldn't it
>be appropriate for me to ask: "Excuse me, but, do you have a degree and
>practical experience in psychoanalysis? If not, then how did you come up
>with the notion that character X suffers from Y and Z?" And let's assume
>for a moment that the student is qualified to do all this. I, not being
>qualified in psychoanalysis, have absolutely no clue if the findings in
>the student's paper are valid or not. In such a situation I, too, would
>"not even consider the matter further." 
>
Assuming that you do in fact have zero knowledge of psychoanalysis, then 
you should be sure that the student demonstrates his or her knowledge of 
the subject by making sure the student quotes the relevant sources and 
develops the argument with close reliance on those sources.  I myself 
had to do this when a student knew more than I did, for example the 
engineering student who demonstrated for me that the mathematics 
propounded by D-503 in Zamyatin's _We_ is faulty.  I gave him an A.  
Similarly, if a student offered you a coherent argument - based on 
footwork in the library and searches on the internet - that the behavior 
of Boris and Gleb in the Skazanie about them was masochistic in essence, 
then you would have to recognize such work as legitimate.

George also writes:

>I'm wondering, does the Journal of the American
>Psychiatric Association publish articles by literary scholars that are
>based on the psychoanalytic study of fictional characters? Is research
>on fictional characters considered valid in their profession? Is a
>literary scholar who has written several volumes on psychoanalytic
>analysis of fictional characters actually qualified to get a license to
>practice psychotherapy? If not, then how can I trust that his/her
>psychoanalysis of a character (fictional or real) is valid? 
>

The answer to the first two questions is Yes.  (I think you mean 
_Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association_, or JAPA).  I 
myself have published in psychoanalytic journals (in English, Russian, 
and French), though I have no "advanced degree" in psychoanalysis per 
se.  As for the third question, clinical experience is required for 
people who wish to get a "license" to practice psychotherapy in this 
country.  Keep in mind that clinicians are people who want to cure 
people, and it makes sense that they learn something about how to 
interact with patients face-to-face, when to resort to medications, 
etc.  I myself have no interest in curing people and, unlike many 
psychoanalysts I know, I refuse to believe that EVERYBODY is mentally 
ill.  So I have taken the trouble to learn psychoanalysis, spend time on 
the couch, do self-analysis in a diary - but I have no need for a 
clinical degree, given that I do not treat patients.

In post-Soviet Russia, by the way, there are psychoanalysts who have set 
up a practice on their own, with no prior clinical experience or 
training.  I am acquainted with such people.  I am also acquainted with 
analysts there at the other extreme, that is, who have had a full 
training analysis with Russian-speaking analysts in the West and have 
returned to Russia to practice.

Frederick H. White writes:

>I would like to argue in favor of such interdisciplinary
>work.  If we are going to be restricted so that literary critics only
>talk about books and psychiatrists only talk about patients, then what
>do we do with authors like Sylvia Plath who talks about her illness
>experiences in her literature?  There is a movement in the medical
>humanities that suggests that medical people can learn from the
>humanities and vice versa.  There is a journal called Literature and
>Medicine which does try to cross this boundary.
>

I agree.  And the contributors to this journal come not from just one 
field, but from many.

Chris B. Clough asks:

>Just out of curiousity, when we talk about the psychoanalysis of
>literary characters, is there any aspect of the "analyzer" putting a
>teaspoonful of whatever ails him into his own analysis?
>

Yes there is.  I have argued that "It takes one to know one," somewhere 
in the self-analysis volume.  This argument has even been used against 
my work.  But it is true, you do need a motive for getting to work on an 
analytic project.  Same as with fiction.  They say, "Write what you 
know!"  That's why there is so much of Tolstoy himself in _War & 
Peace_.  But there is much else too.  Same with psychoanalytic study of 
literature.  Just a "teaspoonful."

Enough for now.

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

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