Transferences: The Aesthetics and Poetics of the Therapeutic Relationship(Psychoanalytic Horizons)

Why are psychoanalysts fascinated with literature and other arts? And why do so many novels, plays, films, and television series feature therapy sessions? Transferences investigates the interdisciplinary attraction between psychoanalysis and the arts by exploring the therapeutic relationship as a recurring figure in psychoanalytic discourse, literature, theater, and television. In addition to close readings of psychoanalytic and critical texts, the book presents a new approach to examining psychoanalytic themes and formal devices in texts like Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, J. M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, Peter Shaffer's Equus, and the HBO series In Treatment. Transferences argues that psychoanalysts as well as writers and other artists are fascinated by the therapeutic relationship because it provides a unique site to negotiate the narrative and artistic underpinnings of psychoanalysis and reflect and reinvent the aesthetic and poetic potentiality of art.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Part I. Introduction 1 Psychoanalysis and the Arts 2 The Therapeutic Relationship Part II. Discourses in Dialogue: The Aesthetics and Poetics of Therapeutic Relationships 3 The Art of the Therapeutic Relationship: Psychoanalytic Aesthetics 4 Art as (Therapeutic) Relationship: Relational Models of Creativity, Reading, and Interpretation Part III. Reading Relationships: Therapy in Literature, Theater, and Television 5 “I'm Telling Everything”: Psychoanalytic Gameply in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint 6 “A Gap, a Hole, a Darkness”: Epistemic Desire in J. M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K 7 “To Keep the Sultan Amused”: Scheherazadian Narration in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace 8 “Act It Out, If You Like”: Anti- and Stage-Psychiatry in Peter Shaffer's Equus 9 “Locked in a Room, Listening”: Talk-Show Therapy and Co-Construction in In Treatment Part IV. In Conclusion Works Cited Notes Index

About the Author :
Maren Scheurer is a Researcher and Lecturer in Comparative Literature and English Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. She is executive co-editor, with Aimee Pozorski, of Philip Roth Studies.

Review :
Maren Scheurer has written a fascinating study of the central role of transference in the complex interactions among psychoanalysis, literature, theater, and television. She succeeds admirably in her analysis of literary and filmic representations of psychoanalysis. She writes authoritatively, yet she is never authoritarian or dogmatic. Transference is a pioneering study of the relationship between psychoanalysis and the arts. Maren Scheurer holds the theoretical, poetic, and emotional in a marvelously creative tension in this ambitious, engaging, and wide-ranging study. The central psychoanalytic concept of 'transference' is opened up to reveal the many potential transformations (and 'transferences') through and across the arts and psychoanalysis as therapeutic practice. Scheurer encourages us to think about creativity, and its crises, the anxiety of interpretation, and also of critique; above all, to enjoy the (as yet unknown) possibilities offered by relational dynamics. As the character Gina, from the TV series In Treatment, says: 'you can't observe yourself through your own binoculars.' The study will be of interest to academic researchers and clinical practitioners; but also, I think, to anyone interested in human relations, stories, and storytelling. The comparisons and contrasts that Scheurer draws between psychoanalysis and literary, theatrical, film, and television art are extensive, penetrating, and insightful. One distinctive feature of this book is the painstaking and fascinating detail the author brings to the task of showing how psychoanalysis and the above-mentioned art (which she refers to as the humanities) illuminate each other, creating a synergetic 'third' between them that furthers the legitimacy of each while reinstating the irreplaceable importance of subjective narratives. I would expect this book to excite the interests of literary and film scholars, students and critics as well as psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and professors of psychology, as it delineates several intriguing perspectives around 'story telling' and narration in general.