You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The author examines the impact of cancer in three figures. In the first of four chapters she discusses Freud's cancer of the jaw, which he developed in 1923 and with which he grappled for 16 years. The subject of the second chapter is the poet Audre Lorde, who developed breast cancer. In Chapter 3 Lin discusses literary theorist Eve Kosoksky Sedgwick, who likewise suffered from breast cancer. Finally, in Chapter 4, the author compares the two Freud Museums in Vienna (Berggasse 19) and in London (Maresfield Gardens). So, the main emphasis of the book is on Freud. On p. 21 she adds that she herself experienced breast cancer.
In common to all three figures is the issue of remedying cancer through prosthesis, namely, of replacing a lost part of oneself through a nonhuman object. All three also reacted by the creative endeavor of writing. In this connection, Lin speaks of “pathography.” In addition, Freud reacted to loss by collecting many antiquities, which he had started to do after the death of his father in 1896. In connection with this accumulation, Lin speaks of “fetish objects” (p. 13). However, he himself seemed to be critical of this accumulation, in appreciating the tale from Grimm of “Hans im Glück” (Hans in luck), the story of a little boy who accumulates a lot of possessions, then little by little loses them all (p. 150). In 1938 Freud suffered the additional loss of having to leave Vienna and going into exile to London. In 1939 the pain of the cancer was so great that he asked his doctor, Schur, to give him a lethal dose of morphine. As regards prostheses, in addition to several prostheses of the jaw, Freud also had a “living prosthesis,” his daughter Anna (p. 51).
Lorde, a woman of color, was also subject to racial discrimination, and reacted by political activism. Sedgwick, in addition to writing, also resorted to Tibetan Buddhism.
At a theoretical level, the author fully subscribes to Freud's drive model, with its emphasis on the death instinct. On p. 20 sh