The Destructive Element: British Psychoanalysis and Modernism

by Stonebridge,Lyndsey

• ISBN13: 9780415921602
• ISBN10: 0415921600
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-10-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Freud's account of the sublimated drives at work beneath the surfaces of "advanced" societies, alongside the modernist fictions of Joyce, Proust, Kafka, Woolf and others, both reflected and inaugurated a strain of modernism preoccupied with the darkest elements of the human psyche. InThe Destructive ElementLyndsey Stonebridge examines the career and legacy of British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein as a lens through which to examine the 20th century's fascination with death drives, the sublimation of civilization's "discontents" and the socialization of children--fascinations that would surface throughout the cultural production of the West. At once cultural history and psychoanalytic theory, and a bold reformulation of the legacies of modernism,The Destructive Elementis an essential contribution to our understanding of the Western tradition.

Table of Contents

Preface	viii	(3)
Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction From Bokhara to Samarra: Psychonalysis and Modernism	1	(21)
Chapter 1 Sticks for Dahlias: The Destructive Element in Literary Criticism and Melanie Klein	22	(24)
Chapter 2 Is the Room A Tomb? Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry and the Kleinians	46	(33)
Chapter 3 Rhythm: Breaking the Illusion	79	(29)
Chapter 4 Stone Love: Adrian Stokes and the Inside Out	108	(34)
Chapter 5 Frames, Frontiers and Fantasies: Nasty Ladies Within'- Marion Milner and Stevie Smith	142	(31)
Notes	173	(21)
Selected Bibliography	194	(8)
Index	202