Speaking Desires can be Dangerous

This new book is a lively and original study of psychoanalysis and its relations to the arts.

Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Part I Psychoanalysis and Literature: Freud 11 1 What is a psychoanalytic reading? 13 2 The uncanny and its poetics 18 3 The vagaries of fantasy: Alfred Kubin’s The Other Side 31 4 Maladies of the soul: the poetics of Julia Kristeva 41 Part II Psychoanalysis and Language: Lacan 59 5 What is a discourse? 61 6 The indirections of desire: Hamlet 77 7 Inscribing the body politic: Robert Coover’s Spanking the Maid 86 8 What does Woman want?: The Double Life of Véronique 104 Part III Patients and Analysts: Readers and Texts 115 9 What is a clinical ‘case’? 117 10 The rhetoric of clinical discourse: Dialogue with Sammy 132 11 The rhetoric of clinical management: Bion and Minuchin 140 12 Out of tune: Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher 154 Conclusion 165 Notes 169 Bibliography 186 Index 193