Secret Sharers: The Intimate Rivalries of Modernism and Psychoanalysis

Secret Sharers explores the relationship between literary modernism and psychoanalysis, focusing on the rivalries and collaborations that shaped Anglo-American modernism. The key protagonists, including D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, W. H. Auden, and Vladimir Nabokov, engaged with Freudian psychoanalysis in complex ways, popularizing it while also struggling with it as an encroaching discourse. Modernists responded with arguments for aesthetic autonomy and formal self-consciousness, often ambivalently about the symptomatic style of psychoanalytic interpretation. The book suggests that modernist responses to psychoanalytic criticism anticipate recent debates about the value of symptomatic reading and the hermeneutics of suspicion.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 21 February 2023
Publisher: Fordham University Press

Secret Sharers delves into the intricate genealogy of secret sharing between literary modernism and psychoanalysis, shedding light on the productive entanglements and fierce competitive rivalries that played a pivotal role in shaping Anglo-American modernism as a field. According to Jennifer Spitzer's revelations, these rivalries unfolded through explicit criticism, inventive misreadings, and revisions of Freudian forms, ranging from D. H. Lawrence's re-descriptions of the unconscious to Vladimir Nabokov's parodies of the psychoanalytic case study. While some modernists engaged directly with Freud and Freudian psychoanalysis, employing a rivalry and critique, others grappled with Freud's legacy in more complex ways.

The central figures of this study, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, W. H. Auden, and Vladimir Nabokov, stand out for their engagement with, popularization, and revision of Freudian psychoanalysis terms, while simultaneously grappling with it as an encroaching discourse. Modernists approached psychoanalysis with a range of readings, misreadings, and refusals, often expressing anxiety about being subjected to psychoanalytic interpretations. On the other hand, analysts such as Freud, Ernest Jones, and Alfred Kuttner turned to literature and art to illustrate psychoanalytic theories, prompting modernists to counter such reductive narratives by envisioning competing formulations of the relationship between literature and psychic life.

Modernists exhibited ambivalence towards the probing, symptomatic style of psychoanalytic interpretation, leading them to double down on arguments for aesthetic autonomy, formal self-consciousness, and amateurism. Secret Sharers unveils how modernists transformed the hermeneutic and diagnostic priorities of psychoanalysis into novel aesthetic strategies, creating a rich tapestry of literary and psychoanalytic exchanges that continue to resonate today.

Weight: 342g
Dimension: 228 x 153 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781531502096