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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.
List of contents
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
About the author
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.
Summary
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.
Additional text
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.
