Main description:

This book provides a psychoanalytic reading of works of literature, enhancing the illuminating effect of both fields.

The second of two volumes, The Birth of a Political Self: The Jean-Max Gaudilliere Seminars 2001-2014 contains seven of the "Madness and the Social Link" seminars given by psychoanalyst Jean-Max Gaudilliere at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris between 2001 and 2014, transcribed by Francoise Davoine from her notes. Each year, the seminar was dedicated to an author who explored madness in their depiction of the catastrophes of history. Surprising the reader at every turn, the seminars speak of the close intertwining of personal lives and catastrophic historical events, and of the possibility of repairing injury to the psyche, the mind and the body in their wake.

These volumes expose the usefulness of literature as a tool for healing, for all those working in therapeutic fields, and will allow lovers of literature to discover a way of reading that gives access to more subtle perspectives and unsuspected interrelations.

Contents:

1. Seminar 8: 2001-2002 Wilfred Bion (1897-1979): Questions of memory 2. Seminar 9 (2004-2004) Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Vasily Grossman (1905-1964), W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) and Eric Kandel (1929-): The history of wars in War and Peace, Life and Fate, Austerlitz and In Search of Memory 3. Seminar 10 J. W. von Goethe (1749-1832): Madness against cognitive distortions 4. Seminar 11 Robert Musil (1880-1942): The birth certificate of phantoms 5. Seminar 12 Francois Rabelais (1483-1553) and Yvette Guilbert (1865-1944): Mirroring madness 6. Seminar 13: 2011-1012 Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) On the Road 7. Seminar 14: 2013-2014 Kurt Vonegut (1922-1969) Timequake: the hard reality of fiction