Signifying Pain

Judith Harris

Description

A deeply personal yet universal work, Signifying Pain applies the principles of therapeutic writing to such painful life experiences as mental illness, suicide, racism, domestic abuse, and even genocide. Probing deep into the bedrock of literary imagination, Judith Harris traces the odyssey of a diverse group of writers—John Keats, Derek Walcott, Jane Kenyon, Michael S. Harper, Robert Lowell, and Ai, as well as student writers—who have used their writing to work through and past such personal traumas. Drawing on her own experience as a poet and teacher, Harris shows how the process can be long and arduous, but that when exercised within the spirit of one's own personal compassion, the results can be limitless. Signifying Pain will be of interest not only to teachers of creative and therapeutic writing, but also to those with a critical interest in autobiographical or confessional writing more generally.

Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction

Part I. Speaking Pain: Women, Psychoanalysis, and Writing

1. The Healing Effects of Writing about Pain: Literature and Psychoanalysis

2. Violating the Sanctuary/Asylum: Freudian Treatment of Hysteria in "Dora" and "The Yellow Wallpaper"

3. Breaking the Code of Silence: Ideology and Women's Confessional Poetry

4. Fathering Daughters: Oedipal Rage and Aggression in Women's Writing

Part II. Soul-making: Conflict and the Construction of Identity

5. Carving the Mask of Language: Self and Otherness in Dramatic Monologues

6. Giotto's Invisible Sheep: Lacanian Mirroring and Modeling in Walcott's Another Life

7. Rescuing Psyche: Keats's Containment of the Beloved but Fading Woman in the "Ode to Psyche"

8. God Don't Like Ugly: Michael S. Harper's Soul-Making Music

9. Kenyon's Melancholic Vision in "Let Evening Come"

Part III. Healing Pain: Acts of Therapeutic Writing

10. Using the Psychoanalytic Process in Creative Writing Classes

11. Rewriting the Subject: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Creative Writing and Composition Pedagogy

12. "To Bedlam and Almost All the Way Back": The Image and Function of the Institution in Confessional Poetry

13. Asylum: A Personal Essay

14. Signifying Pain: Recovery and Beyond

Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Literary theory

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791487068
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

signifying pain

SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture Harry Sussman, editor

signifying pain

Constructing and Healing The Self through Writing

Judith Harris

S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2003 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever with- out written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, mag- netic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Patrick Durocher

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Harris, Judith, 1955- Signifying Pain: constructing and healing the self through writing / Judith Harris. p.cm. — (SUNY series in psychoanalysis and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5683-8 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5684-6 (pbk. : alk.paper) 1. Creative writing—Therapeutic use—Congresses. I. Title. II. Series.

RC489.W75 H37 2003 615.8'515—dc21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2002029234

For my mother, Dorothy (from the Latin, Dorothea, from the Greek doron, meaning gift + theos, meaning god)

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 Contents

Acknowledgments Preface Introduction Part I Speaking Pain: Women, Psychoanalysis, and Writing Chapter 1 The Healing Effects of Writing about Pain: Literature and Psychoanalysis Chapter 2 Violating the Sanctuary/Asylum: Freudian Treatment of Hysteria in “Dora” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” Chapter 3 Breaking the Code of Silence: Ideology and Women’s Confessional Poetry Chapter 4 Fathering Daughters: Oedipal Rage and Aggression in Women’s Writing Part II Soulmaking: Conflict and the Construction of Identity Chapter 5 Carving the Mask of Language: Self and Otherness in Dramatic Monologues Chapter 6 Giotto’s Invisible Sheep: Lacanian Mirroring and Modeling in Walcott’sAnother Life Chapter 7 Rescuing Psyche: Keats’s Containment of the Beloved but Fading Woman in the “Ode to Psyche” Chapter 8 God Don’t Like Ugly: Michael S. Harper’s Soul-Making Music Chapter 9 Kenyon’s Melancholic Vision in “Let Evening Come” Part III Healing Pain: Acts of Therapeutic Writing Chapter 10 Using the Psychoanalytic Process in Creative Writing Classes Chapter 11 Rewriting the Subject: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Creative Writing and Composition Pedagogy

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Signifying Pain

Chapter 12 “To Bedlam and Almost All the Way Back”: The Image and Function of the Institution in Confessional Poetry Chapter 13 Asylum: A Personal Essay Chapter 14 Signifying Pain: Recovery and Beyond Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

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 acknowledgments

Some of the chapters/pieces have appeared in different forms in the follow- ing periodicals and books:South Atlantic Quarterly, AWP Chronicle, College English, Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, (JPCS), After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography(Graywolf Press), MLA’s Approaches to Teaching Series: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”and Herland (Modern Language Association),andBright, Unequivocal Eye: Poems, Papers, and Remembrances from the First Jane Kenyon Conference(Peter Lang Publishers). My thanks goes out to the writers and educators who have been the guardians of my words, and have generously and most graciously advised me throughout the writing of this project. Their wisdom has been immeasurable: Jeffrey Berman, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Stephen Rosenblum, Donald Hall, Mark Bracher, Marshall Alcorn, Peter Caws, Jeanne Gunner, Jonathan Hunt, Martin Gliserman, Denise Knight, Gregson Davis, Kate Sontag, David Graham, Bert Hornback, Michael S. Harper, Pam Presser, Divya Saksena, Jane Vandenburgh, Judith Plotz, Marilyn Penney, James Peltz, Marilyn Semerad, Carolyn Betensky, Connie Shade, Christopher Sten, and my husband, Walter Kravitz.

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