Psychoanalysis,Psychiatry and Modernist Literature

Download or read book Psychoanalysis,Psychiatry and Modernist Literature written by K. Valentine and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-01-22 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two developments during the modernist period - the consolidation of psychiatry as a medical speciality and the emergence of psychoanalysis - affected the representation of madness in literature. They also influenced the ways psychic distress was experienced, narrated, and understood. Literature and criticism in turn affected the formation of the modern psychological self. Presenting detailed readings of both canonical and non-canonical modernists like Virginia Woolf and Emily Holmes Coleman, this book argues that modernist madness can be understood as experience, clinical discourse and cultural representation.