Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry and Modernist Literature

230 Pages·2003·1.415 MB·English

by  Kylie Valentine (auth.)

Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry and Modernist Literature
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Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry
and Modernist Literature
Kylie Valentine
© Kylie Valentine 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4039-0061-6
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
First published 2003 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-349-50737-5 ISBN 978-1-4039-1936-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403919366
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Valentine, Kylie, 1970–
Psychoanalysis, psychiatry and modernist literature/Kylie Valentine.
p. cm.
Revision of the author’s thesis (Ph.D.)—University of Sydney.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. English literature—20th century—History and criticism.
2. Modernism (Literature)—Great Britain. 3. Psychoanalysis and
literature—Great Britain—History—20th century. 4. Literature—
Psychological aspects. 5. Literature—Psychology. 6. Psychiatry in
literature. 7. Psychology in literature. I. Title.
PR478.M6 V35 2003
820.9′112—dc21
2002035535
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Modernism 31
2 Psychiatry 63
3 Madness 91
4 Virginia Woolf 113
5 Hayford Hall 149
6 Beyond the Glass and The Shutter of Snow 171
Conclusion 199
Notes 203
Index 223
v
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Acknowledgements
This book is a revision of my PhD thesis, completed in the Department
of Gender Studies at the University of Sydney. My thanks to examiners
Rita Felski, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl and Moira Gatens, and to my super-
visors Denise Russell and Melissa Hardie. To Denise especially I owe
the best of this book, and the thesis that preceded it. Thanks also to
Alison Bashford, Gail Mason and Elspeth Probyn in Gender Studies
and Kate Lilley in the Department of English. Elizabeth Wilson’s
encouragement has been generous, thoughtful, and greatly needed.
Postdoctoral research was supported by a travel grant from the
Wellcome Trust. The assistance of staff at the Wellcome Institute for
the History of Medicine and at the Special Collections Department,
University of Delaware Library is gratefully acknowledged.
Unofficial, occasionally haphazard postgraduate reading groups
listened to drafts of this material well beyond the point of it being
any fun for them. I am grateful to Louise Gyler, Megan Jones, Natalya
Lusty and Kerry Sanders.
In a book about Bloomsbury and Freud it feels right to acknow-
ledge the following people, some of whom care little for either. They
each have a talent for friendship, and they make a difference to the
ways I think about, and practise, love and work. Gilly Dempsey,
Monica Dux, Suzanne Fraser, Gina Laurie, Celia Roberts and Noni
Rummery helped me through the paranoid impoverishment that is
postgraduate study. Outside university they continue to provide sup-
port, and so do my friends Diane Aw Yong, Karen Burke, Luke Chess,
Martha Chess-Phelps, Buzz Coleman, Jam Dickson, Tim Fabry, Robin
Flynn, Adam Goc, Elisabeth van der Wetering and staff of the FlexSIS
project at the University of Sydney, Nancy Griffiths, Nathan Hollier,
Kurt Iveson, John Jacobs, Hugh Kennedy, Lachlan and Winona
Kennedy, Adrian Mackenzie, Trisha Pender, Trudy Phelps, Nikki Potent,
Kevin, Joan and Simone Scalmer, Hannah Sharp, Jon Smart, Eris Smyth,
Ian Syson, Harry and Dan Syson, Patrick Tanoi, Dave Tomley, Damian
Totman; and my family Bruce, Roselyn, Shelley and Pip Valentine.
Iam especially grateful for Jon Smart’s hospitality and heart. Three
of the people whose friendship means most have also made some of
vii
viii Acknowledgements
the most important material contributions to this book. Pat Flynn
has negotiated and organised me into the kind of paid work that
leaves room for writing. Judith Smart and Rick Short shared their
house and brought London to life. They will recognise tidied-up ver-
sions of late night conversations, and I am more grateful for their
patience and faith than I can say.
My greatest debt is to Sean Scalmer. He read every word at least
twice, provided the domestic and emotional space I needed, encour-
aged me unceasingly and filled my life with love. Without him this
book would not have been written, and it is for him.
Introduction
In January 1939 Virginia and Leonard Woolf visited Sigmund Freud
at his house at 20 Maresfield Gardens in north London. The Woolfs’
Hogarth Press had been publishing Freud and other psychoanalytic
work since 1924, along with pamphlets on imperialism and econom-
ics, Fabian didactics, a swag of Russians and more typical Bloomsbury
fare. Everyone who knows of the meeting also knows that Freud gave
Virginia Woolf a narcissus, a presentation that inspires many, but
not me, to pursue arguments about Freud’s insights into Woolf’s
personality. The meeting was genial if awkward. Freud had had little
to do with Hogarth’s publishing of the International Psychoanalytic
Library, but was grateful to the Woolfs, occasional disagreements
about book titles notwithstanding. For her part, Virginia Woolf had
changed her mind about the pernicious effects of psychoanalysis, to
the extent that in 1936 she had assisted in collecting the signatures
of 350 writers and artists which were presented to Freud as an eightieth
birthday gift. She records the event in her diary and in characteristic-
ally caustic fashion:
[Freud] was sitting in a great library with little statues at a large
scrupulously tidy shiny table. We like patients on chairs. A screwed
up shrunk very old man: with a monkeys [sic] light eyes, paralysed
spasmodic movements, inarticulate: but alert. On Hitler. Gener-
ation before the poison will be worked out. About his books. Fame?
I was infamous rather than famous...Difficult talk. An interview.
Daughter and Martin helped. Immense potential, I mean an old
fire now flickering.1
1