Psychoanalytic Diary Writing and the Transformation of Self and Society

We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.

As professors we love to instruct, yet despite or perhaps because of the mounds of lecture material we convey to our students, the lengthy bibliographies we assign them to read, and the formal essays we ask them to write, we may gradually become disillusioned by how little real learning occurs in the classroom. By real learning I mean the ability to translate abstract theory into meaningful personal knowledge. We live in a highly theoretical age in which, all too often, the personal element of learning is ignored, resulting in teaching that is increasingly abstract, impersonal, and academic. We may theorize the personal, but rarely do we become personal in our discussions of literature or life. This problem seems especially acute in psychoanalytic literary criticism, where, in an effort to show how complex theories deriving from Freud, Lacan, or Derrida may be applied to literature, we lose sight of the real people who sit in our classrooms, whose everyday experiences seem worlds apart from those of master theorists.

For many years I have been trying to find ways to encourage my students to personalize psychoanalytic theory to order to increase their understanding of themselves and their world. The method of teaching I have found most rewarding involves the use of non-graded introspective diaries. Beginning in 1976, when I created and taught the first course in psychoanalytic literary criticism at the University at Albany, I have asked my students to keep a weekly diary in which they apply psychoanalytic theory to their own lives. In outlining the course, I told my students that just as we would use our class discussions to analyze fictional characters' dreams, desires, fantasies, and defenses, so would the students be encouraged to turn their attention inward and, with the help of insights acquired through readings and class discussions, engage in self-