Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative is the first
book to explore the implications of the psychoanalytic theory of
the phantom for the study of narrative literature. A phantom is
formed when a shameful, unspeakable secret is unwittingly
transmitted, through cryptic language and behavior,
transgenerationally from one family member to another. The
"haunted" individual to whom the "encrypted" secret is communicated
becomes the unwitting medium for someone else's voice--and the
result is speech and conduct that appear incongruous or obsessive
in a variety of ways. Through close readings of texts by Conrad,
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Balzac, James, and Poe, Esther Rashkin
reveals how shameful secrets, concealed within the unspoken family
histories of fictive characters, can be reconstructed from their
linguistic traces and can be shown not only to drive the
characters' speech and behavior but also to generate their
narratives. First articulated by the French psychoanalysts Nicolas
Abraham and Maria Torok, the theory of the phantom here represents
a radical departure from Freudian, Lacanian, and other
psychoanalytic approaches to literary interpretation. In Rashkin's
hands, it also provides a response to structuralist and
poststructuralist critiques of character analysis, an alternative
to deconstructive strategies of reading, and a new vantage point
from which to consider problems of intertextuality, "authorship,"
and the formation and origins of narrative.
Originally published in 1992.
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