preliminary reading

 

This course is about the theories of three writers and therapists, Freud, Jung, and Lacan, and the application of those theories to works of literature.

It is really essential that before you begin the course you read carefully and thoroughly my six lectures on Freud, Jung, and Lacan. They are here. If you have any questions about these lectures or about the course feel free to email me.

Highly recommended further reading is as follows.

The best introduction to Freud is Freud's own Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Freud is a writer of amazing clarity and precision: these are fascinating, and will give you a solid grounding in his extraordinary ideas.

No-one would accuse Jung of precision, but he writes very well: intuitively, powerfully, and with what many take as wisdom. See what you think: read his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

Jung has become strangely fashionable recently, though largely without explicit acknowledgement. Apparently if you want to write movie scripts for Hollywood nowadays you are nowhere unless you have read Vogler, The Writer's Journey (I was told that by a BBC producer, so it must be true). This book is heavily dependent on Jung. As is the recent, extraordinary The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, by Christopher Booker (there is now one copy of this big expensive book in the library). It summarises and analyses a very large number of works of literature (very readably and skilfully) in order to demonstrate that there are, really, only seven basic stories. You have to be careful with this, because misuse or simplification of it can be very crass (a trap that Booker falls into himself) but with that caveat you will find in this book a dramatically different way of being a literary critic that could stand you in very good stead.

And Lacan? Don't read Lacan. He makes no sense until you have some idea of what he's actually on about; even then, he makes no sense. It's very frustrating, in fact infuriating. Nonetheless I have to say that from a position of fifteen years ago of simple fury at this irresponsible French charlatan, I have now moved, slowly and painfully, to a place where he is more influential on my writing and thinking than either of the other two.

The best books I know on Lacan are by Bruce Fink: A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance.

Further reading is here.