Autobiographies: Psychoanalysis and the Graphic Novel

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE GRAPHIC NOVEL PARASKEVI LYKOU PHD THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE JANUARY 2014 ABSTRACT This thesis explores the conjunction of the graphic novel with life- writing using psychoanalytic concepts, primarily Freudian and post- Freudian psychoanalysis, to show how the graphic medium is used to produce a narrative which reconstructs the function of the unconscious through language. The visual language is rich in meaning, with high representational potential which results in a vivid representation of the unconscious, a more or less raw depiction of the function of the psychoanalytic principles. In this project I research how life-writing utilises the unique representational features of the medium to uncover dimensions of the internal-self, the unconscious and the psyche. I use the tools and principles of psychoanalysis as this has been formed from Freud on and through the modern era, to propose that the visual language of the graphic medium renders the unconscious more accessible presenting the unconscious functionality in a uniquely transparent way, so that to some extent we can see parts of the process of the construction of self identity. The key texts comprise a sample of internationally published, contemporary autobiographical and biographical accounts presented in the form of the graphic novel. The major criterion for including each of the novels in my thesis is that they all are, in one way or another, stories of growing up stigmatised by a significant trauma, caused by the immediate familial and/or social environment. Thus they all are examples of individuals incorporating the trauma in order to overcome it, and all are narrations of constructing a personal identity through and because of this procedure. The presentation of the characters’ childhood is a (re)construction of their family history and an emergence of their own sense of the self, as this sense has been defined in the late modernity. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract 2 List of Illustrations 4 PREFACE On Freud and the Freudians 6 Acknowledgments 12 Declaration 13 INTRODUCTION 14 CHAPTER ONE Constructions in Psychoanalysis; Why Autobiography? ii. Versions of Self 20 iii. Reality and boundaries 26 iv. Autobiography: Theorising the Self 31 CHAPTER TWO Maus: Managing the Transgenerational Trauma 38 CHAPTER THREE Epileptic: A Visual Pathography 70 CHAPTER FOUR Blankets: Religiously and Socially Constructed Constraints 104 CHAPTER FIVE Persepolis: The Ever Foreign 139 CHAPTER SIX Fun Home: Familial and Internal Conflict 168 CONCLUSION 198 Bibliography 209 3 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page PLATE I.1: Ethel & Ernest, pp. 34-35 18 PLATE 2.1: The Complete Maus, p. 34 47 PLATE 2.2: The Complete Maus, p. 35 49 PLATE 2.3: The Complete Maus, p. 165 51 PLATE 2.4: The Complete Maus, p. 201 54 PLATE 2.5: The Complete Maus, p. 296 59 PLATE 2.6: The Complete Maus, p. 230 60 PLATE 2.7: The Complete Maus, p. 231 (detail) 63 PLATE 2.8: The Complete Maus, pp. 274-275 66 PLATE 3.1: Epileptic, p.1 76 PLATE 3.2: Epileptic, p. 4 (detail) 78 PLATE 3.3: Epileptic, p. 8 (detail) 79 PLATE 3.4: Epileptic, p. 8 (detail) 81 PLATE 3.5: Epileptic, p. 16 84 PLATE 3.6: Epileptic, p. 40 87 PLATE 3.7: Epileptic, pp. 83-84 92 PLATE 3.8: Epileptic, p. 275 94 PLATE 3.9: Epileptic, p. 18 97 PLATE 3.10: Epileptic, pp. 151-152 100 PLATE 3.11: Epileptic, p. 302 101 PLATE 4.1: Blankets, pp. 15-16 105 PLATE 4.2: Blankets, p. 29 110 PLATE 4.3: Blankets, p. 31 111 PLATE 4.4: Blankets, pp. 51-52 114 PLATE 4.5: Blankets, pp. 59-60 115 4 PLATE 4.6: Blankets, p. 91 120 PLATE 4.7: Blankets, pp. 145-146 125 PLATE 4.8: Blankets, p. 312 127 PLATE 4.9: Blankets, pp. 581-582 137 PLATE 5.1: Persepolis, p. 3 147 PLATE 5.2: Persepolis, p. 103 150 PLATE 5.3: Persepolis, p. 104 151 PLATE 5.4: Persepolis, p. 40 154 PLATE 5.5: Persepolis, p. 42 155 PLATE 5.6: Persepolis, p. 51 159 PLATE 5.7: Persepolis, p. 52 (detail) 160 PLATE 5.8: Persepolis, p. 153 163 PLATE 6.1: Fun Home, p. 1 175 PLATE 6.2: Fun Home, p. 27 176 PLATE 6.3: Are You My Mother?, p. 95 (detail) 181 PLATE 6.4: Are You My Mother?, p. 96 (detail) 182 PLATE 6.5: Fun Home, p. 44 186 PLATE 6.6: Fun Home, pp. 123-124 187 PLATE 6.7: Fun Home, p. 125 (detail) 189 PLATE 6.8: Are You My Mother?, pp. 32-33 196 PLATE C.1: Asterios Polyp, pp. 6-7 202 PLATE C.2: Asterios Polyp, pp. 14-15 203 PLATE C.3: Asterios Polyp, pp. 44-45 204 PLATE C.4: Asterios Polyp, pp. 57-58 206 5 PREFACE On Freud and the Freudians The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated by James and Alix Strachey who have been members of the Bloomsbury Group (particularly active in the first half of the 20th century) and the Psychoanalytic society (which started in the early 1900s in Freud’s house to expand to an international psychoanalytic movement within a couple of decades), is a work generally acclaimed and is regarded as a quite magnificent achievement, a work that introduced formally and determinatively psychoanalysis to the world and defined its future in the western, Anglophone world. Translations prior to the Stracheys (e.g. A. A. Brill’s attempts) had been insufficient, ‘casual and at times fearfully inaccurate’,1 so the new translation, of which Freud and Ernest Jones were aware, proved to be ‘a momentous event in the diffusion of psychoanalytic ideas: the set of papers quickly established itself as the standard text for analysts unlettered in German’.2 But this momentous work did not come without some flaws. The main problem as understood by many theorists (from Bettelheim to Lacan and a number of post- Freudians) was what Zaretsky compendiously defines as “the drive towards medicalization”: One casualty was Freud’s use of everyday language. Freud used the term Ich, “I”, to refer to both psychic structure and the experience self, thus giving it a double meaning. Strachey’s translation of Ich as “ego” eliminated this duality. Strachey’s preference for classicized terms, itself a medical bias, deepened the problem. “Good” became “appropriate”, “need” became “exigency”, “at rest” became “in a state of quiescence”. Affect-laden, active, and dynamic constructions gave way to neutral, passive, and static ones. Freud’s present tense, often 1 Peter Gay, Freud : A Life for Our Times (London: J.M. Dent, 1988). p. 465. 2 Ibid. p. 466. 6 integral to his effort to capture the timelessness of the unconscious, was replaced with the simple past. The adoption of a standardized glossary underlined Anglo- American dominance over analysis. To this day, the Strachey translation remains the international standard. 3 The above paragraph describes the impression I formed reading Freud in English for the first time after having experienced reading most of his work from a Greek translation, and it can constitute the starting point for an argument about the development of psychoanalysis in the Anglo-Saxon world. Furthermore, the 1982 monograph by Bruno Bettelheim, on Freud and Man’s Soul, a fierce argument against the Strachey translation, brings forth even more considerations on the matter. Bettelheim’s essay is a critique of the standardisation of the Standard Edition, pointing out in illuminating detail all the aspects of the translation that have created a different understanding of Freud and psychoanalysis, than the one perceived by the German reader (and consequently the one Freud himself was intending). Bettelheim starts off apologetically, trying to prove that his understanding of not only the German language and psychoanalysis, but Freud himself is sufficient to allow him to pursue the polemics that are to follow: ‘As a child born into a middle-class, assimilated Jewish family in Vienna, I was raised and educated in an environment that was in many respects identical with the one that had formed Freud’s background’.4 His account is rather sentimental, exasperated, at times furious; possibly with the translators, but maybe merely with the turn of events. He argues far and long, with strong language and persistence, in an account that to an English speaker who did not have the experience of reading Freud in German or in a different translation may seem overly emotional and without credit. For me, drawing from my experience, his account is transparent and justified, fulfilling his initial goal which was to ‘correct the mistranslations of some of the most important psychoanalytic concepts; and to show how deeply humane a person Freud was, that he was a humanist in the best sense of the 3 Eli Zaretsky, Secrets of the Soul : A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis, Repr. 2004 ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005). p. 295. 4 Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Man's Soul (N.Y.: Knopf, 1983). p. 3. 7 world’.5 Bettelheim debates the supposedly scientific status of psychoanalysis – or the possibility of a “human science” that does not follow the model of the natural sciences. His position on this debate is firmly towards seeing and presenting Freud as a Humanist. Bettelheim’s conviction that ‘the translators’ clumsy substitutions and inexact use of language are all the more damaging to his ideas’,6 is something that I have had to deal with extensively during this thesis, and without claiming that my interlinguistic experience lends me some higher knowledge, it is true that frequently my understanding of Freud and the understanding of my peers (tutors and fellow students alike) was largely conflictive.

Load more