Littercure? Psychoanalysis as literary form: an aesthetic interpretation surmised

• Grant number: 13/50929-6
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants - Publications - Books published in Brazil
• Start date: March 01, 2014
• End date: April 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Fernanda Sofio Woolcott
• Grantee: Fernanda Sofio Woolcott
• Host Institution: Instituto de Saúde e Sociedade (ISS). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Baixada Santista. Santos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

I begin describing the theory of the analogous reign (Herrmann, 2006) in order to consider psychoanalysis, as literary form. According to this theory, every man of science removes himself to a field of knowledge analogous to his own, in order to produce knowledge in his particular field. Physicists, for example, remove themselves to the realm of mathematics, and human and social scientists to that of literary fiction, as they produce theory creatively. In my view, it is by the theory of the analogous reign that it has become possible to propose literary fiction as the raw material of psychoanalysis their building blocks. Nevertheless, it is with Brazilian literary critic Candido (1957/2009) that psychoanalysis may most definitively be contemplated as pertaining to the field of aesthetics, by use of his literary concepts function, structure and aesthetic unit. In other words, it becomes conceivable that psychoanalyses be aesthetically defined in the realm of literature, when a harmonious relationship between a psychoanalysis function and structure is encountered. It must be added that: whether the structure of a particular psychoanalysis functions well are poorly is less the question of this dissertation, than to determine whether it is possible to consider this matter in these terms. My research analyses these hypotheses in four of Herrmann's denominated Freudian fictions (2002) and two case studies of my own. (AU)