Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

On psychoanalytic autobiography

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14753634.2012.719737

1475-3634

Meg Harris Williams,

Autobiographical and Biographical Writing

Abstract This article considers how one might define 'psychoanalytic autobiography', using statements from theorists of 'life-writing' and extracts from autobiographers (some of them psychoanalysts), together with their own commentaries on the genre. The focus is less on content and more on the nature of the art form, with a view to noting analogies with the psychoanalytic process. These analogies are to be found, in particular, in the qualities of transference dialogue; in the art of transformative or communicative projective identification; and in the contrast between self-indulgent and constructive types of memory. Psychoanalytic autobiography is seen as a mode of remaking the self – not omnipotently but through exploratory self-analysis, frequently following the familiar pattern of loss and rediscovery. It entails a special imagined relationship with the unknown reader, and a sense of being guided by a detached observational eye equivalent to that which Bion terms the 'third party' in a psychoanalytic situation. Keywords: autobiographypsychoanalytic processtransferencememoryself-analysisself-observation Notes 1. Dr Boswell said rather wistfully of his good friend Samuel Johnson that if all their friends had diligently joined their memories together, Dr Johnson 'might have been almost entirely preserved' (cited in Anderson, Citation2001 p. 34). In fact it was the intimacy of his personal, subjective record that gave eternal life to his subject; his Life of Dr Johnson is autobiography as much as biography. 2. This is in line with definitions of autobiography such as that of B. Mandel: 'The autobiographical consciousness is that which thinks about itself present, past and future' (Mandel, 1980, p. 49). 3. 'A manifesto for the unexpected, hidden qualities of the inner world – the conscientia' (Brown, Citation1967, p. 205). 4. For Coleridge this reflexivity implied a perspective beyond the self, as when Meltzer writes that commonsense 'cannot conceive of a realm of mind that is beyond self, as Freud has taught us to do with his discovery of the concreteness of the super-ego' (Meltzer, Citation1973, p. 150). 5. 'Autobiography is all lies' said G.B. Shaw (in Henderson, Citation1911, p. 5). 6. Keats, letter to Reynolds, 11 July 1819. 7. Coleridge's famous distinction between 'mechanical' and 'organic' modes of composition is apt here. 8. Keats, journal-letter of Feb–May 1819 to G and G Keats (Keats, Citation1970, pp. 249–251). 9. Possibly Bion was thinking of this when he said: 'Presumably a person who is a very good artist would be able to say "I'll show you", and would put a line on a piece of paper around that idea' (Bion, Citation2005, p. 18). 10. Richard Herring (Citation2009) in his comic autobiographical theatre sketch 'The Headmaster's Son' founds his irony on the fact that he came from a happy home and had nothing to complain about – except, of course, being the headmaster's son. 11. Words of the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland (Carroll, 1865, p. 34), condemning Alice's recital of 'You are old, Father William'.