The Destructive Element: British Psychoanalysis and Modernism

by Lyndsey Stonebridge

Overview

Freud's account of the sublimated drives at work beneath the surfaces of advanced societies, alongside the modernist fictions of Joyce, Proust, Kafka, Woolf and others, both reflected and inaugurated a strain of modernism preoccupied with the darkest elements of the human psyche. In The Destructive Element Lyndsey Stonebridge examines the career and legacy of British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein as a lens through which to examine the 20th century's fascination with death drives, the sublimation of civilization's discontents and the socialization of children—fascinations that would surface throughout the cultural production of the West. At once cultural history and psychoanalytic theory, and a bold reformulation of the legacies of modernism, The Destructive Element is an essential contribution to our understanding of the Western tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415921602
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/20/1998
Edition description:	ANN
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

LYNDSEY STONEBRIDGE is a Lecturer in English in the School of English and American Studies at the University of East Anglia. She is the editor (with John Phillips) of Reading Melanie Klein.

Table of Contents

Introduction: From Bokhara to Samarra: Psychoanalysis and Modernism; 1: Sticks for Dahlias: The Destructive Element in Literary Criticism and Melanie Klein; 2: Is the Room a Tomb? Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry and the Kleinians; 3: Rhythm: Breaking the Illusion; 4: Stone Love: Adrian Stokes and the Inside Out; 5: Frames, Frontiers and Fantasies: ‘Nasty Ladies Within’ – Marion Milner and Stevie Smith