The Empathic Reader: A Study of the Narcissistic Character and the Drama of the Self - Hardcover

Bouson, J. Brooks

9780870236785: The Empathic Reader: A Study of the Narcissistic Character and the Drama of the Self

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870236784 ISBN 13: 9780870236785

Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989

In a series of important studies, American psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut focused attention on a fundamental aspect of human behavior: the desire each person feels for a sense of relationship with and empathic responsiveness from others. This book offers the first sustained application of Kohut's work to the study of literature and sheds new light on the complex nature of interactions between texts and readers.

J. Brooks Bouson investigates nine representative "narcissistic" characters from works by Atwood, Bellow, Conrad, Dotosevsky, Kafka, Lessing, Mann, and Woolf. Combining a careful examination of individual characters and texts with an analysis of the critical commentaries they have generated, Bouson makes us aware of the narcissistic dramas encoded in texts, dramas that are often unconsciously replicated by critics in their interpretive narratives. "In an essential way," Bouson writes, "the meaning of literary work grows out of the empathic event that occurs between the reader and the text."

The book establishes a place for Kohut's self psychology in the study of literature and provides a refreshing perspective on the empathic dynamics of the reading and critical processes.

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About the Author:

J. Brooks Bouson is the Assistant Chair of the English Department at Layola University of Chicago. Her specialties are Modern British literature, psychoanalysis and literature, women's literature, and history of feminist criticism.

Review:

"Kohut's concept of empathy has proved highly influential in the clinical world of patient and therapist; J. Brooks Bouson shows how this concept is equally valuable when applied to the interrelational world of reader and text. The Empathetic Reader goes beyond what classical analysis has considered bedrock―the Oedipus complex―to confront the narcissistic anxieties latent in each text, and it shows how critics empathetically collude with authors in defending against those anxieties. this is an original provocative book that makes an important contribution to the study of literature and psychology."―Barbara Schapiro and Lynne Layton

"The Empathic Reader presents a fresh and exciting collaboration between literary criticism and psychoanalysis. Bouson brings the insights of the new psychoanalytic psychology of the self to the illumination of literary texts. The contribution made by this book extends beyond contemporary textual analysis to introducing the reader to the important advances in psychoanalysis that inform its method and spirit. The 'narcissism' embedded in nine important works is given a searching examination through a psychoanalytic lens based on Heinz Kohl's self psychology. The literary reader who wants to become familiar with up to date psychoanalytic interpretations and the self psychologist who wants to learn how clinical understanding is applied to literature will find this book a rich source of stimulation and a pleasure to read."―Ernest S. Wolf

"This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of a number of difficult major texts, but it is more than a piece of practical criticism. It analyzes the reading process in a fresh and fascinating way, and it makes psychological sense of critical fashions and controversies."―Bernard J. Paris

"Bouson's 'psychocriticism' revitalizes the technique of close reading and revalidates the notion of character as a central strategy by which the text engages the reader's response. In so doing, Bouson expands self-psychological theory in a new dimension by developing a new model of the reader/text relationship."―Margret Schaefer

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