Dystopian Fiction for Young People: Instructive Tales of Resilience

ABSTRACT

The rise and popularity of dystopian fiction in recent years is quite marked, and critics often attribute such high sales of books and box office as being linked to the impact September 11 has had on the world, especially in the United States. Although the events of September 11, 2001 saw a heightened anxiety by nations and their citizens about the fear and threat of terrorism—an anxiety that is paradoxically lowered and raised by increased surveillance practices, security checks, and warnings—other changes since the last stages of the twentieth century have also raised concerns and anxieties. The processes of globalization, immigration, and advances in technology have brought about many social and economic changes, and advances in nanobiology are redefining the very essence of life. The extrapolation of the world people currently know into the very worst of future scenarios is the subject of dystopian fiction. Dystopian narratives are diverse in their treatment of future scenarios, with some presenting a pessimistic outlook and others offering “a horizon of hope” (Moylan, 2000, p. 147).     

Monsters of Men: Masculinity and the Other in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking Series

ABSTRACT

To date, studies of gender issues in young adult dystopian novels have been dominated by a focus on constructions of female subjectivity, girlhood, and the potential for female empowerment. However, little critical attention has been correspondingly dedicated to examining how regimes of masculinity, traditional privileges of male power, and male adolescence are represented and mediated in dystopian fiction for teenagers. Patrick Ness’s exploration of normative and transgressive embodiments of masculinity in his dystopian Chaos Walking series for young adults powerfully addresses tensions between power and vulnerability, autonomy and conformity, and concepts of boyhood and manhood. Through their experiences with the possibilities of telepathy, biotechnology, and interspecies relationships, Ness’s protagonists must negotiate with the simultaneous attraction of the fragmented self and its threat to the regulation of conventional manhood, as male characters struggle to sustain their inherited understanding of themselves and the relation between self and other. Through his problematizing of the boundaries between traditional hegemonic and Other, human and alien codes, and his emphasis on the importance of non-hierarchical and inclusive co-existence, Ness proposes a receptive, expansive, and egalitarian paradigm of masculinity.     

Judgment in Fiction

Abstract

In this paper, I show that in order to gain an understanding of the facts about fiction it is more fruitful to pursue an analysis of judgment in fiction than an analysis of truth in fiction. I do so in two steps. First I take the analyses of truth in fiction which David Lewis provides in “Truth in Fiction”, which are formulated in terms of possible worlds, and provide counterpart analyses of judgment in fiction, formulated in terms of (mental) models and rules for the construction of (mental) models. In the course of discussion I identify various problems for Lewis’s account of truth in fiction and solve or dissolve them using the account of judgment in fiction. Second, I show that once we have an analysis of judgment which appeals to rules, we can extend the account of judgment by using Lewis’s account of accommodation and resistance in “Scorekeeping in a Language Game” to explain the evolution of the genres of fiction, construed as systems of rules. The result is to provide a dynamic account of judgment which does justice to modern poststructuralist observations in the philosophy of literature.     

Degrees of entrapment: living and dying in the claustrum

This paper explores Donald Meltzer’s concept of the claustrum, an unconscious phantasy of a space inside the body of the internal mother that has been forcibly entered and occupied. The author proposes that claustrophobic phenomena might be viewed on a continuum from the relatively ordinary to the severely pathological. Following a brief review of the characteristics of Meltzer’s claustral ‘compartments’, this continuum is explored through and illustrated by a psychoanalytic understanding of two films, Coraline, directed by Henry Selick and based on the novella by Neil Gaiman, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith and directed by Anthony Minghella. The degree of entrapment in a claustrophobic world and the possibility of emerging from it into a world of authentic intimate relationships is shown to be influenced by the internal relationship to a parental couple.     

MEMORY ALTERING TECHNOLOGIES AND THE CAPACITY TO FORGIVE: WESTWORLD AND VOLF IN DIALOGUE

I explore the impact of memory altering technologies in the science fiction drama (2016–2020) in order to show that unreconciled altered traumatic memory may lead to a dystopian breakdown of society. I bring Miroslav Volf's theological perspectives on memory into conversation with the plot of Westworld in order to reveal connections between memory altering technologies and humanity's responsibility to remember rightly. Using Volf's theology of remembering as an interpretive lens, I analyze characters’ inability to remember rightly while recalling partial memories of their trauma. In virtue of this examination, I contend that memory altering technologies may inhibit individuals from relational processes of healing, such as forgiveness. Consequently, I argue that this study leads to a richer understanding of the potential that memory altering technologies have for undermining humanity's ability to interact in a relational capacity, specifically in terms of forgiveness.     

Margaret Atwood and Assisted Reproduction: From Fantasy to Reality

ABSTRACT

This article raises the bewildering impact of artificial reproduction techniques (ART) for analysts, for the family, for the couple, and for their children. It explores a number of concerns, some of which include: the dissociation of sex from reproduction; the relative absence of the usual time limits that people have traditionally taken into consideration to conceive; questions about generation and age; the risk of perceiving oneself as omnipotent; the need to renovate the story of how one came to be; the impact of ART on the way the primal scene and the Oedipal complex are worked through when there is no longer only a triangle, but more people involved in procreation; the children’s identity (Who are my real parents?) and the impact on the identity of the women involved in participating in the procreation such as the egg donor or surrogate. It also addresses the impact of ART on the analyst who has to deal with situations for which he or she is not prepared either personally or professionally. It begins by exploring Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, and its present day relevance to ART. Atwood’s vision was prescient. The similarity between the lives and experiences of her Handmaids and that of today’s commercial surrogates in India is often striking. It also presents some ways in which literature and media are predicting the challenges that ART will bring in the future. It explores how what was fiction a few decades ago has become reality and how what we presently think of as fiction will perhaps be a reality in the not-so-distant future. The second part of the article presents a clinical vignette in which a couple presents with infertility in the wife, whose infertility was the consequence of chemotherapy treatment she received as a young adult. She decided to look for a donor in a European country and succeeded at getting pregnant. However, though successful, the pregnancy proved to be extremely difficult. When a second pregnancy was desired, the same donor provided with her ova. To avoid the complications of the first pregnancies, the couple accepted the wife’s sister’s offer to carry the pregnancy. Their daughters are now two and four years old.     

Locating experience in time and place: a look at young adult fiction and spiritual intelligence

Spiritual intelligence describes self-awareness and intuition, with the development of creative thinking, compassion and connectedness with others. Many researchers point to an awakening and development of spiritual intelligence that is enhanced through exploration of existential questions within the genre of young adult fiction. Such literature absorbs the adolescent reader so that they become transported into the narrative, exploring a sense of self and of others This article discusses the ways in which young adult fiction, including comparison of a novel of older context (An Episode of Sparrows) with contemporary dystopian fiction (The Maze Runner), can foster young adults’ exploration of self-awareness and cultivate the continued development of notions of connectedness, justice and responsibility. It describes current research on the relationship between spiritual intelligence in young adults and the narrative transportation effect of young adult fiction.     

HARD-BOILED ZEN: JANWILLEM VAN DE WETERING’S THE JAPANESE CORPSE AS BUDDHIST LITERATURE

ABSTRACT

Though many studies of the contemporary Buddhist literature exist, such studies often limit their purview to canonised, ‘high-brow’ authors. In this article, I read Janwillem van de Wetering’s The Japanese Corpse, a detective novel, for how it portrays Zen Buddhism. I show that The Japanese Corpse portrays Zen as non-dualist and amoral: good and bad are arbitrary categories that impede spiritual freedom. Likewise, characters’ identities are fluid, not fixed. The novel shows this by insistently associating Zen with sex and violence, and by the use of dramatic motifs. However, the novel also excludes women, particularly Japanese women, from spiritual attainment, instead essentialising them as the sexual objects of the hard-boiled detective story. As a matrix of conflicting values, The Japanese Corpse thus turns out to be a case study of Buddhist modernism, and of challenges of detective fiction as world literature.     

Capitalism and the Banality of Desire

ABSTRACT

This paper elaborates on Todd McGowan’s perspicacious, psychoanalytic explanation of capitalism’s resilience, due to its formidable ideological insinuation into the banal micro-desires of consumers. I outline his contention that capitalism’s false promise of future satisfaction is subverted by the psychical change indicated by Freud’s re-evaluation of the desire/satisfaction relationship. This is elaborated on via Lacan’s claim, somewhat underplayed in McGowan’s reflections, that desire is essentially narcissistic. Lacan’s claim raises the stakes of capitalism’s psychic appeal, but also indicates how Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a point of intervention. I briefly point to the consistency between Lacan’s conception of the actualized subject and Deleuze’s and Guattari’s articulation of desire in terms of “the process” and the complex metaphor of “desiring machines”. I finally turn to ?i?ek’s conception of the developing world as “the place of rupture” and a major fault line internal to capitalism that threatens to disrupt its operation.     

Fiction,Pleasurable Tragedy,and the HOT Theory of Consciousness

Abstract

The ‘feeling fiction problem’ asks: is it rational to be moved by what happens to fictional characters? The so-called ‘paradox of tragedy’ is embodied in the question: Why or how is it that we take pleasure in artworks which are clearly designed to cause in us such feelings as sadness and fear? My focus in this paper is to examine these problems from the point of view of the so-called ‘higher-order thought theory of consciousness’ (HOT theory) which says that the best explanation for what makes a mental state conscious is that it is accompanied by a thought that one is in that state. I examine the feeling fiction problem in light of the HOT theory and through a critique of Colin Radford's view. For example, I argue that Radford equivocates in his use of the term ‘aware’ in his response to some of the proposed solutions to the feeling fiction problem. Finally, I show how Susan Feagin's approach to the paradox of tragedy can be analysed and supported by the HOT theory.     

Introducing the Expectations and Preference Scales for Couple Therapy (EPSCT): Development,Psychometric Evaluation,and Suggested Use in Practice and Research

While it is known that client factors account for the largest proportion of outcome variance across treatment modalities, little is known about how clients’ characteristics affect the process and effectiveness of couple therapy. To further knowledge in this area, we created a brief, practice‐friendly measure, the Expectation and Preference Scales for Couple Therapy (EPSCT). Three self‐report scales assess clients’ Outcome expectations (e.g., I expect our relationship to improve as a result of couple therapy) and role expectations for Self (e.g., I expect to listen to my partner's concerns) and Partner (e.g., I expect my partner to blame me). Three Cognitive‐Behavioral, Emotionally Focused, and Family Systems preference scales use a forced‐choice format to measure the comparative strength of respondents’ preferences for interventions broadly reflective of each approach. A large item pool was developed from relevant literature and clinical experience and refined based on face and content analyses with two panels of experienced couple therapists and researchers. Across four studies with 1,175 participants, the scales’ internal consistency reliabilities were similar and their construct validity was supported with confirmatory factor analyses and significant correlations with several established measures, including expectation measures developed for individual psychotherapy and measures of attitudes toward professional help seeking and valuing personal growth. Across all studies, participants had stronger role expectations for themselves than their partners, although gender effects differed by sample. We discuss how to use the 15‐item EPSCT in clinical practice and in future research as a predictor of couple therapy processes and outcomes.     

Lewis Carroll and psychoanalysis: why nothing adds up in wonderland

Each generation of psychoanalyst has found different things to value and sometimes to censure in Lewis Carroll’s remarkable fiction and flights of fancy. But what does Carroll’s almost ‘surrealist’ perspective in the Alice stories tell us about the rituals and symbols that govern life beyond Wonderland and Looking‐Glass World? Arguing that Carroll’s strong interest in meaning and nonsense in these and later works helps make the world strange to readers, the better to show it off‐kilter, this essay focuses on Jacques Lacan’s Carroll – the writer–logician who stressed, as Lacan did, the difficulty and price of adapting to the symbolic order. By reconsidering Lacan’s 1966 homage to the eccentric Victorian, I argue that Carroll’s insight into meaning and interpretation remains of key interest to psychoanalysts intent on hearing all that he had to say about psychic life.     

Violence and the Sacred in the Fiction of Julia Kristeva

Abstract

This article examines the relatively neglected fiction of Julia Kristeva, especially her ‘gothic roman noir’ The Old Man and the Wolves, in relation to her theories of violence and abjection. It focuses on the various kinds of excitement and anxiety provoked by notions of border-crossing and metamorphosis in her fiction, and explores her critique of the banality of secular modernity and her nostalgic evocations of sacred space. I also discuss the paradox of her problematic use of detective fiction—a direct product of secular modernity—as a vehicle for this critique.     

Response to Heather B. MacIntosh’s Systematic Review of Journal Articles in Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy

ABSTRACT

I review Heather B. MacIntosh’s research on couple therapy in the analytic literature and provide a history and geography of the development of object relations couple therapy.     

Enactment as Unconscious Communication

ABSTRACT

I explore the way in which unconscious primitive and nonsymbolic experience is communicated to the analyst’s unconscious through enactment. As the analyst receives the projections unconsciously, she is encouraged to enact aspects of the patient’s internal world. The analytic work then is through the understanding of these subtle and ubiquitous enactments. I value the work of understanding enactments as a rich and subtle pathway into the deepest levels of the patient’s unconscious. I explore the nature of this work and illustrate my point with clinical examples.     

First personal modes of presentation and the structure of empathy

Abstract

I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of lacking prospective access to your future self as a problem with your capacity to imaginatively empathize with your (possible) future selves.     

George Eliot and the Authority of Preaching

Abstract

Preaching was for many centuries the domain of men, and the exclusion of women was justified on the grounds of their different nature and lack of authority. Victorian philosophical debates about the nature of women found literary counterparts in Victorian fiction. Eliot's novel Adam Bede presents a female preacher whose authority is demonstrably independent of her biological sex, despite the attitudes of her audiences. Her sermon's echoes of Mark's Gospel show how the literary contexts of both biblical and Victorian fiction may suggest that the authority of preaching in the material world comes from encounter with Christ and is entirely independent of gender.     

The Mark of Cain: Sovereign Negation and the Politics of God

Hannah Arendt calls for the “abolition of sovereignty from the body politic.” In this article I affirm some key elements of Arendt’s critique, arguing against versions of Christian ethics that try to deploy divine authorization for particular policies, institutions, goals, or virtues. But I also argue that the attempt to abolish sovereignty allows the political process itself to become a sovereign good and erodes the forms of life that can sustain the kind of vision and politics that Arendt desires. The better alternative to the usual politics of sovereignty is not the absence of sovereignty, but a changed – and negative – conception of the relationship of sovereign power to the political order. In developing this argument I contend with Arendt’s reading of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and, behind that, her reading of the biblical story of Cain and Abel. I argue that the city of Cain is made possible not by Cain’s murder of his brother, but by the mark with which God negates the legitimacy of both the murder and the violence to avenge the murder. Sovereign negation makes the polis possible.     

Groundhog day: The individual,the couple,the group and the space between

Abstract

The film Groundhog Day first came out in 1993. Five years later, it is still cited in a variety of contexts. The author proposes that this is because the film is a cultural artefact which both elucidates and frustrates the ideal of romantic love in the couple as the agent of internal change.

The author also proposes a re-viewing of the meaning of the concept of couple. The convergence of object relations theories with group analysis suggests that the mind works by repeating and externalizing internal group structures in social relationships. The couple, then, becomes an intermediary structure between the individual and the group where intimacy facilitates a re-working of group internal structures. It is the collapsing and the opening of the ‘space between’ which is the agent of change. This process creates strength, power and a feeling of wholeness. But it also implies the expression of anger, pain and disappointment. The author illustrates these points with an interpretation of the Groundhog Day film and with a clinical case study of a couple in therapy.     

Fate,Fiction and the Future

Abstract

Some fictions, it seems, represent the future as closed, in the sense that some future-tensed propositions are true in those fictions. Yet it is surprisingly difficult to accommodate this plausible thesis within an account of truth in fiction. A number of putative examples of closed fictional futures are discussed (Macbeth, Oedipus, Time and the Conways, The Time Machine) and the problems encountered in reconciling them with various accounts of truth in fiction (David Lewis', Gregory Currie's, Alex Byrne's) elaborated. Connections are drawn between metaphysical views on time and theories of fiction, and an attempt is made to show how the tenseless theory of time (roughly, the denial that time flows) can illuminate accounts of fictional truth, and in particular the issue of how there can be true beliefs about what will happen in a fiction.