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(1999). American Imago, 56:221-235

Foundations and Problems of “Textoanalysis”

Jean Bellemin-Noël and Michael Davidson

Translated by:
Henk Hillenaar

When we speak about literature, we think not only of thousands of books but also of two disparate literary groups: those few who write or wrote and the huge majority of those who read. Psychoanalysis can be interested in the tasks and/or the pleasures of both these populations. But a “textoanalyst” is only interested in the reading of the text, and should ignore the problems which arise from the creative activity.1 The process of reading includes two aspects. One can try to describe what happens to the “naive” readers, who don't see or hear themselves reading. One might think, for instance, of the intense affective reactions of little children, of any age, when listening to fairy tales. One can also theorize about the reception of literary works, by translating into a psychoanalytical language what Wolfgang Iser wrote down in phenomeno-logical terms. However, those are not aspects I am interested in. Like Freud's interpretation of King Oedipus, my research examines the listening of a literary critic whose aim is to measure that listening while reading, and to communicate his deductions to the public. That small public includes those who are interested in literature, and in the unconscious.

The history of textoanalysis originated with the rejection of the first endeavors of Freud and his disciples in what could be described as psychobiography, the attempt to psychoanalyze artists by viewing their work as an equivalent of the discourse that is normally delivered day after day on the couch. Charles Mauron also rejected this approach. He denounced such an

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