Psykoanalyse og litteraturvidenskab

Abstract

In this article the relationship between psychoanalysis and the study of literature is concretely related to the dimensions and levels of the literary text. It is shown how the mimetic level of the text may be described from a psychoanalytical point of view, and how its mythical and fantasmatic levels are analyzed in the same way. A psychoanalytical approach to the study of the narrator and the voices of the text is sketched, and so is an approach to the author. It is claimed that a general feature of literature is the tension between narcissistic fantasies of omnipotence and those of impotence and guilt, the latter being occasioned by the transformation
of objects and emotions into a fixed verbal form. As addressed to an audience literature attempts to establish a libidinal bond between author and reader. Finally, it is claimed that the reading of literature is strongly cathected emotionally, because literature offers multiple possibilities for identification with different elements and structures provoking desire and anxiety. Thus reading contains a "turning round upon the subject's own self'.