Psychoanalysis and Novels/Short Stories

Which one are you thinking of?

Both Hermann Hesse and DH Lawrence were hugely influenced by Freud and both wrote essays on him. Can't think of any fictional accounts of psychanalysis in their work, but the influence definitely permeates their stuff at a deeper level.

aren't there some musil-freud connexions

i find myself thinking of terrible HEY LOOK FREUD characterisation in jim thompson novels and shit now

Maybe Georg Groddeck? I know nothing about him.

If you extended this to strange prose/poetry hybrids, The Orators by Auden would be there, I think.

portnoy's complaint - roth

Groddeck sounds interesting, if I can find anything.

Since Musil is about everything, he would have a bit of Freud in there, too.

Thanks!

Bumping this thread because it'd be interesting to hear more examples of this. I'd add to this list:

Anything by Beckett (he was Bion's patient for two years)
Alison Bechdel - Are You My Mother?

There are actually a ton of other graphic novels using psychoanalysis, but this is the most pronounced example. It seems that the comic form is more frequently exploring the therapeutic encounter than other types of fiction, perhaps because of the unparalleled way it can depict multiple levels of internal and external communication. It's a fairly difficult discipline to capture...

I've heard good things from a colleague about Mishima's 'The Music' too, but I don't actually think there's an English translation.

As it happens I just - this exact minute - finished a short story called “therapy”, it’s by Lydia Davis

It is of course characteristically brief and doesn’t go into the process so much as the character’s state of mind before and after therapy and their relationship with the doctor. It’s great, and sad

That sounds enticing! I’ve been meaning to check out her collected short stories for a while.

Yeah same. I bought her novel and then decided I wanted to read the stories first so got it from the library. I’m on the first collection and love it absolutely.

This is great too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Glas

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

Pat Barker, Regeneration, about the pioneering use of psychoanalysis to treat shell-shocked first world war soldiers. Based on real events and a very compelling mix of history, psychology, and politics. There are two sequels but they're less historically grounded, more fictional, heavier on the psychoanalysis. I don't rate them as highly but ymmv.

Jonathan Lethem: GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC (1994): Freudians are the equivalent of Jehovah's Witnesses.

PKD, The Simulacra

That looks wonderful! Will buy today if I can find it. Was PKD big into psychoanalysis in general? From the synopsis of this, it sounds quite Winnicottian. I've only read Do Androids...

Was PKD big into psychoanalysis in general

the short answer is sort of

he was certainly interested in psychology and that's reflected in the work. And while characters are always psychoanalyzing each other, I can't think of a single appearance of an actual professional psychoanalyst, and it's p clear that he generally distrusted it as a sham, or a racket to be manipulated.

Haha ah. I guess that’d fit with the whole anti-psychiatry movement of around that time.

There are way fewer positive depictions. Regeneration (as mentioned above) is quite an anomaly in that regard.

the whole anti-psychiatry movement of around that time

in sf, this obviously intersects with John W. Campbell/L. Ron Hubbard/Scientology

If I remember right, Dr. Egon Superb is depicted sympathetically.

Menaker, The Treatment

(^ first half)

the authority figures in some of anna kavan's fiction seem to be informed by her dealings with psychiatry etc... she also collaborated with one on a piece of fiction, though haven't read that. actually found my copy of asylum piece in the psychology section of a bookshop (maybe the only work where she deals explicitly with this?)

I bought the first book in this thread because it was the only one of these that the bookshop stocked, and the preface amused me and answered the questions I had reading the blurb (What psychoanalyst would ever recommend writing a diary?). I'm excited to start reading fiction and not pure psychoanalysis in two days' time when my course ends.

Not a novel, but https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18888853-a-young-girl-s-diary is very interesting: a diary of a young Viennese woman published under Freud's auspices

It seems that the comic form is more frequently exploring the therapeutic encounter than other types of fiction, perhaps because of the unparalleled way it can depict multiple levels of internal and external communication. It's a fairly difficult discipline to capture...