Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2023.2221624
Christopher W. T. Miller
ABSTRACT In Twelfth Night (1601–02), the pressure to enforce a comedic ending competes with problematic and overtly abusive behaviors towards certain characters, particularly the steward Malvolio, who is identified as a target for scapegoating by a persecuting group. As Malvolio is subject to mounting pressures to take in the projections of the group, the mistreatment levied against him gains in cruelty, culminating with his imprisonment in a dark room. While the “pranksters” seek to drive him mad, the figures in power ensure their own narcissistically satisfying ending, at the expense of those stripped of control and dignity. The role of the audience becomes a complex matter by the end, as applauding a problematic play meant to be funny invites a degree of collusion with those who would enforce scapegoating dynamics.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2023.2221628
Elisabeth Waugaman
ABSTRACT This article addresses Abel Lefranc’s analysis of Love’s Labor’s Lost. Lefranc was a member of the Académie française, a highly respected Renaissance specialist, who published Behind the Mask of William Shakespeare in 1918. Nothing in Shakespere of Stratford’s hundreds of business records or will (the only records we have) reveal any knowledge of French. He never travelled abroad. He was a teenager in Stratford when the events in the play take place. He possibly began to learn French when he roomed with a French Huguenot family in London at the age of thirty-eight in 1602; however, Hamlet, based on an untranslated French source, was presented in 1593. Love’s Labor’s Lost (1594–98) reveals a detailed knowledge of historical events at the French court of Nérac from 1578 to 1582 and presents important, as well as minor French historical characters, and even a suppressed scandal – a wealth of knowledge not available to the general public. There is no known primary source for the play. Whoever wrote the play knew in great detail what was happening at the court of Nérac between 1578–1582. Lefranc did a phenomenal amount of research to reveal the forgotten history behind the play – the lived experience and its pan-European vision. Restoring the history reveals the play’s rich psychological depth.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2023.2221623
R. Waugaman
Are fictional characters real people? Of course not. By definition. Even when they’re partially inspired by one or more actual people. But if they’re not real, why do we care about them enough to read fiction? Further, why has there been such a profound disconnect for the past several decades between general readers’ reactions to fictional characters, and those of many literary theorists, who tell us such characters are merely words on the page, and that it is absurd to speculate about their psychology, or their backstory? In college, I took a comparative literature seminar on novels that openly or – more often – subtly alluded in their plots to the life of Jesus. That is, the novels’ protagonists had the life of Jesus as a salient backdrop, adding depth to their characters. Our teacher later published a book based on the topic of our seminar (Ziolkowski, 1972). That course sensitized me to the possibility that a fictional character can have an important backstory – including one of literary allusion – that will enrich our experience with the book. This issue was inspired by a book review. Evan Kindley of Pomona College, in the March 25, 2021 New York Review of Books, wrote an essay titled “The People We Know Best” (Kindley, 2021). Below the title appeared these provocative and generative statements: “Readers love fictional characters almost as if they were real people. Literary scholars are just starting to take them more seriously.” This tapped into longstanding concerns I have had about the direction that literary theory has taken, downplaying the roles of actual writers and readers of fiction. In the process, it has weakened its previously robust connection with a truly psychoanalytic view of the mind. After citing a wide range of opinions about the nature of fictional characters, Kindley concludes, “A strange fact about academic literary criticism is that this . . . view [that of L.C. Knights, who wrote that fictional characters are ‘merely an abstraction . . . in the mind of the reader’] – that literary characters don’t even exist – has been the predominant one for almost a century, despite being the least intuitively satisfying and attractive one to most people. Indeed, literary critics have been strict about policing readers (and one another) when it comes to talking about character” (accessed online September 17, 2022). Psychoanalysts are bound to a have special interest in studying in depth what fiction and fictional characters mean to readers, including readers who are our patients (for example, Novey, 1964). Ours is a developmental theory, so we would expect to find a developmental line of our experiences with stories, beginning with being read to by a parent; reading picture books, then chapter books as a child; then encountering adult fiction as an adolescent and beyond. Children spend much time in the world of their imagination (Selma Fraiberg, 1959, The Magic Years). Fraiberg contends that “language originates in magic” (p. 112),
{"title":"Prologue: Fictional Characters: Psychoanalytic and Literary Perspectives","authors":"R. Waugaman","doi":"10.1080/07351690.2023.2221623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2023.2221623","url":null,"abstract":"Are fictional characters real people? Of course not. By definition. Even when they’re partially inspired by one or more actual people. But if they’re not real, why do we care about them enough to read fiction? Further, why has there been such a profound disconnect for the past several decades between general readers’ reactions to fictional characters, and those of many literary theorists, who tell us such characters are merely words on the page, and that it is absurd to speculate about their psychology, or their backstory? In college, I took a comparative literature seminar on novels that openly or – more often – subtly alluded in their plots to the life of Jesus. That is, the novels’ protagonists had the life of Jesus as a salient backdrop, adding depth to their characters. Our teacher later published a book based on the topic of our seminar (Ziolkowski, 1972). That course sensitized me to the possibility that a fictional character can have an important backstory – including one of literary allusion – that will enrich our experience with the book. This issue was inspired by a book review. Evan Kindley of Pomona College, in the March 25, 2021 New York Review of Books, wrote an essay titled “The People We Know Best” (Kindley, 2021). Below the title appeared these provocative and generative statements: “Readers love fictional characters almost as if they were real people. Literary scholars are just starting to take them more seriously.” This tapped into longstanding concerns I have had about the direction that literary theory has taken, downplaying the roles of actual writers and readers of fiction. In the process, it has weakened its previously robust connection with a truly psychoanalytic view of the mind. After citing a wide range of opinions about the nature of fictional characters, Kindley concludes, “A strange fact about academic literary criticism is that this . . . view [that of L.C. Knights, who wrote that fictional characters are ‘merely an abstraction . . . in the mind of the reader’] – that literary characters don’t even exist – has been the predominant one for almost a century, despite being the least intuitively satisfying and attractive one to most people. Indeed, literary critics have been strict about policing readers (and one another) when it comes to talking about character” (accessed online September 17, 2022). Psychoanalysts are bound to a have special interest in studying in depth what fiction and fictional characters mean to readers, including readers who are our patients (for example, Novey, 1964). Ours is a developmental theory, so we would expect to find a developmental line of our experiences with stories, beginning with being read to by a parent; reading picture books, then chapter books as a child; then encountering adult fiction as an adolescent and beyond. Children spend much time in the world of their imagination (Selma Fraiberg, 1959, The Magic Years). Fraiberg contends that “language originates in magic” (p. 112), ","PeriodicalId":46458,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Inquiry","volume":"43 1","pages":"311 - 314"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41840352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2023.2221627
Jehanne M. Gheith
ABSTRACT As a hospice social worker and tenured professor of Russian literature, I have seen how the stories we tell and re-tell affect how patients, caregivers, and medical professionals live with many different diseases. My essay explores one aspect of this: how the stories we tell about dementia shape our understanding and treatment of cognitive decline. Through an analysis of the novels Still Alice (by Lisa Genova) and The Kukotsky Case (by Liudmila Ulitskaia; English translation by Diane Nemec Ignashev, 2016), I show how telling a story about the possibilities of dementia can help us to reshape our conception of dementia and that, in turn, can change the experience of caregivers, patients, and medical professionals. I argue that fiction can be a powerful agent of transformation, both personal, and, in time, societal. A deep dive into two novels and one condition reveals more than a broader analysis would as these two novels demand close readings. The implications of the essay are larger as I invite medical professionals to think about story and narrative skill in understanding all kinds of disease-and indeed, how “medicalizing” and/or pathologizing conditions such as dementia can work against deeper connections and engagement.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2023.2221626
P. Cohen
ABSTRACT The article traces the evolution of literary theory, beginning in the 1970s when it moved away from the New Criticism that saw the text as removed from the life of its readers toward Reader-Response Theory, where readers are encouraged to see themselves in what they read. I argue that this theory of reading leads to an awareness of how literature helps us fashion a coherent self. I use three examples – the Bible, Shakespeare, and certain nineteenth-century novels – to argue that great literature is great because it gives us the material we need to do this well.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2023.2221625
Fred L Griffin
ABSTRACT There are many perspectives from which the origins of fictional characters may be explored. In this essay the author draws from the voices of a selected group of creative writers who openly describe the manner in which their life experience and personal psychology play important roles in the creative process giving rise to their fictional characters. For some writers whose experience of loss or trauma informs this process, the ongoing act of writing is felt to be essential.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2023.2221630
R. Waugaman
The story goes that some learned medieval monks were debating the question of how many teeth horses had, a seemingly crucial issue, on which Aristotle was silent. Overhearing the debate, an illiterate lay brother suggested that he could go outside where a horse was tied up, and count its teeth. The monks naturally rebuked him for his effrontery. Similarly, English literature scholars have many debates about novels and whether it’s legitimate to connect them with their authors. Fred Griffin is clearly not illiterate, and I’m not aware he’s ever been attacked for his efforts to provide answers to some of these literary debates, but, like the lay brother, he decided to investigate some of these questions empirically, “letting the authors speak for themselves,” rather than to treat theory reductionistically as a “Procrustean bed.” Griffin notes the “therapeutic potentials” of writing fiction, citing Virginia Woolf’s comment that writing To the Lighthouse helped her grieve her mother’s death. Griffin learned from personal experience that transforming painful experiences into fiction allows enough emotional distance to deepen one’s understanding of trauma. After writing of similar themes in the works of William Maxwell, Arnost Lustig, Elizabeth YoungBruehl, and Colin Toibin, Griffin presents his fascinating interview with the novelist and short story writer Sheila Kohler. In some ways, Christopher Miller’s entire essay persuasively glosses Malvolio’s final words in Twelfth Night, which bring the mirthful audience up short: “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.” Miller probes deeply into the play’s complexity, since Shakespeare never fully separates comic from darker, tragic themes in his dramas. Miller skillfully shows how we, the audience, implicitly collude in scapegoating Malvolio, as other characters in the play – whom Miller compares with “pack animals” – projectively identify some of their “despised elements” such as self-love onto him, and limit our empathy for Malvolio. Mistreating Malvolio, through the dynamics of groupthink (“the group’s mindset”), gives the other characters – as well as the audience – a sense of cohesive group identity. Miller reads Shakespeare’s words closely, just as we try to listen closely to our patient’s words. He refers to Malvolio’s temporary “descent into hell,” as he’s locked in a small room and gaslighted. We might remember that ancient heroic figures such as Odysseus, Orpheus, and Jesus also visited the underworld and, like Malvolio, returned from it. Toby may be alluding to purgatory in claiming that Malvolio is in the dark room for his “penance.” Paula Marantz Cohen’s highly compressed article opens with a sad tale of an irrational putdown of her sophomore essay from her theory-obsessed college English professor, accusing Cohen of “confusing fictional characters with real people.” She quickly learned to write what her teachers wanted, rather than allowing her own heart to inspire her. She takes us on a to
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Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2023.2221629
R. Waugaman
ABSTRACT For a century, prevailing literary theories have amputated authors from their fictional works, reducing characters to merely words on the page. Many of us who love reading literature are puzzled by the disconnect between our subjective assumptions about it and those of literary critics, who reject common-sense understanding of the vital role of the author, and of the interaction between our imagination and fictional characters. A major but unacknowledged reason for this counterintuitive trend has been efforts to buttress the traditional but increasingly dubious legend about who wrote the works of William Shakespeare. Since the late 1500s, there have been doubts as to the identity of the real Shakespeare. His name was often hyphenated as Shake-speare in early years, when hyphenated last names in England were rare then. But assumed names in plays were sometimes hyphenated. Sir Sidney Lee was one of the most prominent and influential Shakespeare scholars at the turn of the 20th century. He looked for biographical clues about Shakespeare in his Sonnets. But he quickly did an about-face in reaction to the bisexuality of these Sonnets. Lee’s reversal was pivotal in literary critics’ subsequent dogma that Shakespeare’s works, and fiction in general, need to be separated from the author. This irrational dogma was also applied to fictional characters, in part in reaction to reductionistic uses of psychoanalytic theory to “analyze” literary characters. The close study of this history may help free us from misconceptions about the real Shakespeare, and from misguided literary theory.
{"title":"The Origins of Modern Literary Theory in the Repudiation of Autobiographical Readings of Shakespeare’s Sonnets","authors":"R. Waugaman","doi":"10.1080/07351690.2023.2221629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2023.2221629","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For a century, prevailing literary theories have amputated authors from their fictional works, reducing characters to merely words on the page. Many of us who love reading literature are puzzled by the disconnect between our subjective assumptions about it and those of literary critics, who reject common-sense understanding of the vital role of the author, and of the interaction between our imagination and fictional characters. A major but unacknowledged reason for this counterintuitive trend has been efforts to buttress the traditional but increasingly dubious legend about who wrote the works of William Shakespeare. Since the late 1500s, there have been doubts as to the identity of the real Shakespeare. His name was often hyphenated as Shake-speare in early years, when hyphenated last names in England were rare then. But assumed names in plays were sometimes hyphenated. Sir Sidney Lee was one of the most prominent and influential Shakespeare scholars at the turn of the 20th century. He looked for biographical clues about Shakespeare in his Sonnets. But he quickly did an about-face in reaction to the bisexuality of these Sonnets. Lee’s reversal was pivotal in literary critics’ subsequent dogma that Shakespeare’s works, and fiction in general, need to be separated from the author. This irrational dogma was also applied to fictional characters, in part in reaction to reductionistic uses of psychoanalytic theory to “analyze” literary characters. The close study of this history may help free us from misconceptions about the real Shakespeare, and from misguided literary theory.","PeriodicalId":46458,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Inquiry","volume":"43 1","pages":"364 - 382"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46572250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The gut-liver axis is a complex bidirectional communication pathway between the intestine and the liver in which microorganisms and their metabolites flow from the intestine through the portal vein to the liver and influence liver function. In a sterile environment, the phenotype or function of the liver is altered, but few studies have investigated the specific cellular and molecular effects of microorganisms on the liver. To this end, we constructed single-cell and spatial transcriptomic (ST) profiles of germ-free (GF) and specific-pathogen-free (SPF) mouse livers. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) revealed that the ratio of most immune cells was altered in the liver of GF mice; in particular, natural killer T (NKT) cells, IgA plasma cells (IgAs) and Kupffer cells (KCs) were significantly reduced in GF mice. Spatial enhanced resolution omics sequencing (Stereo-seq) confirmed that microorganisms mediated the accumulation of Kupffer cells in the periportal zone. Unexpectedly, IgA plasma cells were more numerous and concentrated in the periportal vein in liver sections from SPF mice but less numerous and scattered in GF mice. ST technology also enables the precise zonation of liver lobules into eight layers and three patterns based on the gene expression level in each layer, allowing us to further investigate the effects of microbes on gene zonation patterns and functions. Furthermore, untargeted metabolism experiments of the liver revealed that the propionic acid levels were significantly lower in GF mice, and this reduction may be related to the control of genes involved in bile acid and fatty acid metabolism. In conclusion, the combination of sc/snRNA-seq, Stereo-seq, and untargeted metabolomics revealed immune system defects as well as altered bile acid and lipid metabolic processes at the single-cell and spatial levels in the livers of GF mice. This study will be of great value for understanding host-microbiota interactions.
{"title":"Single-cell and spatiotemporal transcriptomic analyses reveal the effects of microorganisms on immunity and metabolism in the mouse liver.","authors":"Ruizhen Zhao, Wei Cheng, Juan Shen, Weiming Liang, Zhao Zhang, Yifei Sheng, Tailiang Chai, Xueting Chen, Yin Zhang, Xiang Huang, Huanjie Yang, Chunqing Song, Li Pang, Cuoji Nan, Yangrui Zhang, Rouxi Chen, Junpu Mei, Hong Wei, Xiaodong Fang","doi":"10.1016/j.csbj.2023.06.020","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.csbj.2023.06.020","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The gut-liver axis is a complex bidirectional communication pathway between the intestine and the liver in which microorganisms and their metabolites flow from the intestine through the portal vein to the liver and influence liver function. In a sterile environment, the phenotype or function of the liver is altered, but few studies have investigated the specific cellular and molecular effects of microorganisms on the liver. To this end, we constructed single-cell and spatial transcriptomic (ST) profiles of germ-free (GF) and specific-pathogen-free (SPF) mouse livers. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) revealed that the ratio of most immune cells was altered in the liver of GF mice; in particular, natural killer T (NKT) cells, IgA plasma cells (IgAs) and Kupffer cells (KCs) were significantly reduced in GF mice. Spatial enhanced resolution omics sequencing (Stereo-seq) confirmed that microorganisms mediated the accumulation of Kupffer cells in the periportal zone. Unexpectedly, IgA plasma cells were more numerous and concentrated in the periportal vein in liver sections from SPF mice but less numerous and scattered in GF mice. ST technology also enables the precise zonation of liver lobules into eight layers and three patterns based on the gene expression level in each layer, allowing us to further investigate the effects of microbes on gene zonation patterns and functions. Furthermore, untargeted metabolism experiments of the liver revealed that the propionic acid levels were significantly lower in GF mice, and this reduction may be related to the control of genes involved in bile acid and fatty acid metabolism. In conclusion, the combination of sc/snRNA-seq, Stereo-seq, and untargeted metabolomics revealed immune system defects as well as altered bile acid and lipid metabolic processes at the single-cell and spatial levels in the livers of GF mice. This study will be of great value for understanding host-microbiota interactions.</p>","PeriodicalId":46458,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Inquiry","volume":"39 1","pages":"3466-3477"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10751235/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"54154735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-19DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2023.2193541
J. Paddock
ABSTRACT In this article, I write of an 11-year odyssey with a patient who despite our best efforts, remained mired in emotional deadness, anomie, and depersonalization. The journey led me to question my core assumptions about co-creating an effective therapeutic alliance as well as my competence as an experienced psychotherapist-psychologist, well-trained in empirically validated treatments. What I realized was a failed treatment, that led me to pursue psychoanalytic training. In the process, I grew to understand that our parallel traumatic life histories, and my inadvertent and unconscious reluctance to acknowledge my own countertransference, kept me from joining with him in the intersubjective experience of profound grief – that which, in retrospect, I believe would have made all the difference in his treatment.
{"title":"Dead Men Walking","authors":"J. Paddock","doi":"10.1080/07351690.2023.2193541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2023.2193541","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, I write of an 11-year odyssey with a patient who despite our best efforts, remained mired in emotional deadness, anomie, and depersonalization. The journey led me to question my core assumptions about co-creating an effective therapeutic alliance as well as my competence as an experienced psychotherapist-psychologist, well-trained in empirically validated treatments. What I realized was a failed treatment, that led me to pursue psychoanalytic training. In the process, I grew to understand that our parallel traumatic life histories, and my inadvertent and unconscious reluctance to acknowledge my own countertransference, kept me from joining with him in the intersubjective experience of profound grief – that which, in retrospect, I believe would have made all the difference in his treatment.","PeriodicalId":46458,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Inquiry","volume":"43 1","pages":"290 - 299"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47699201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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