1st Edition

Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Power in Contemporary Fiction Malice, the Victim and the Couple

By Rossella Valdrè Copyright 2017
156 Pages
by Routledge

156 Pages
by Routledge

156 Pages
by Routledge

Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Power in Contemporary Fiction psychoanalytically examines contemporary fiction portraying the female in a reversal of the stereotyped victim role. The recent popularity of powerful female characters suggests that literature is ahead in its understanding the desires, fantasies and unconscious emotions of the public. This book explores a form of... Read more

Foreword by Donatella Lisciotto

Introduction– Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

I - Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Deceit and idealisation

II - The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison

The power of silence

III - Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent

Splitting and masks

IV – Hell Hath No Fury by Ingrid Noll

Who is the victim? The locus of power

V – The new feminine.

Psychoanalytic incursions into literature and cinema: cruelty, reversal, trauma and vengeance

…. An impossible conclusion

Biography

Rossella Valdrè is a psychiatrist and a full member psychoanalyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and the International Psychoanalytical Association, based in Genoa. Her fields of interests include cinema and psychoanalysis, the extension of psychoanalysis into the world of culture, art, literature and society, always focusing in the light of psychoanalytic theory and Freudian metapsychology revisited in contemporary life. She has authored several books, articles and reviews on cinema and psychoanalysis.

From the Preface: "Through these novels: Gone Girl-Gillian Flynn, The Silent Wife-A.S.A. Harrison, Unravelling Oliver-Liz Nugent and Hell Hath No Fury-Ingrid Noll, Rossella Valdrè’s describes an overturning of the ill-treated and the abusive and malicious women sides. She combines cultural, experiential and psychoanalytic details showing critical marriage aspects: the mutual idealizations, the subsequent illusions and unconscious projections. She looks at truth that remains unsaid, ordinary women, like us: they need to be placed in the contemporary world, to look at things widely, with awareness. Her books always intercepts emotions, unconscious aspects of her and her unconscious profundities."-Donatella Lisciotto, Full Member of the International Psychoanalytic Asssociation.