New Orlearis Review

New Orlearis Review LOYOLA UNIVERSITY VOLUME 11 NUMBER 21$7.00 New Orleans Review Summer 1984 Editors John Biguenet, Art and Literature Bruce Henricksen, Theory and Criticism John Mosier, Film, General Editor Managing Editor Sarah Elizabeth Spain Design Vilma Pesciallo Contributing Editor Raymond McGowan Founding Editor Miller Williams Advisory Editors Richard Berg Doris Betts Joseph Fichter, S.J. Dawson Gaillard Alexis Gonzales, F.S.C. John Irwin Murray Krieger Wesley Morris Walker Percy Herman Rapaport Robert Scholes Marcus Smith Miller Williams The New Orleans Review is published by Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, United States. Copyright © 1984 by Loyola University. Critical essays relating to film or literature of up to ten thou sand words should be prepared to conform with the new MLA guidelines and sent to the appropriate editor, together with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The address is New Or leans Review, Box 195, Loyola University, New Orleans, Lou isiana 70118. Fiction, poetry, photography or related artwork should be sent to the Art and Literature Editor. A stamped, self-addressed envelope should be enclosed. Reasonable care is taken in the handling of material, but no responsibility is assumed for the loss of unsolicited material. Accepted manuscripts are the property of the NOR. The New Orleans Review is published in February, May, Au gust and November. Annual Subscription Rate: Institutions $30.00, Individuals $25.00, Foreign Subscribers $35.00. Con tents listed in the PMLA Bibliography and the Index of American Periodical Verse. US ISSN 0028-6400. r CONTENTS POETRY AND FICTION Babies Are Cruel People fan Newman 31 The Reception Richard Easton 23 I J I I The Baker F. ]. Sypher 46 I Back Glen Pourciau 86 \ i A Dostoevskian Experience Herbert Eisenreichltr. Renate \ Latimer 67 Aubade Tom Whalen 16 j To Speak of Need Kay Ryan 85 Homecoming Nick Bozanic 89 A Consolation Steinunn Sigurdard6ttirltr. the Author and Sebastian Barry 22 The Moon Is Two Days into Scorpio Mark Nepo 44 Assassination of Simonetta Vespucci Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen/tr. Lisa Sapinkopf 73 PORTFOLIO Bestiary Jose Maria Cundin 49 THEORY AND CRITICISM Francis Ponge and the Infinite Text Welch D. Everman 27 Psychoanalytic Criticism and the Arbitrariness of Interpretation Michael Vannoy Adams 37 Watery World/Watery Words: Ishmael's Write of Passage in Moby Dick Dennis Patrick Slattery 62 Timely Pleasures: Sane and In-Sane Ihab Hassan 78 Narcissism from Baudelaire to Sartre: Ego-psychology and Cultural History Eugene W. Holland 5 FILM The French Lieutenant's Woman as Metaphor: Karel Reisz's Non-Plot Centered Editing K. L. Simmons 17 The Art of Shoeshine Bert Cardullo 74 Rejected Offspring: The Screenplay as a Literary Genre Gary Davis 90 The Camera Vision: Narrativity and Film Wheeler Dixon 57 Eugene W. Holland NARCISSISM FROM BAUDELAIRE TO SARTRE: EGO-PSYCHOLOGY AND CULTURAL HISTORY oon after the concept of the narcissistic per But there is a curious omission from Lasch's Ssonality was developed by clinical psychol anatomy of our narcissistic age: he never men ogists, it gained currency in the study of contem tions the popularity in this country of Sartre and porary culture and society .1 The work of Chris Camus, indeed never discusses existentialism at topher Lasch in particular incisively demon all. Yet existential philosophy directly addresses strated how narcissism pervades what he calls many of the issues Lasch raises in connection our "age of diminishing expectations."2 By com with narcissism, and when today we re-read paring contemporary goals and values with the Nausea or The Stranger, what we see is in fact a classical image of 19th-century values and the proto-typical narcissistic hero. If there is any re Protestant work ethic, Lasch is able cogently to cent fictional character who-to quote from unite a broad range of cultural phenomena-from Lasch's portrait-"sees the world as a mirror of business managerial styles to professional sports, himself and has no interest in external events ex from theories of education to relations between cept as they throw back a reflection of his own the sexes-under the rubric of the culture of nar image," it is Sartre's Roquentin (Culture 47). And cissism. I say the classical image of 19th-century virtually the entire catalogue of narcissistic per values and the Protestant work ethic, because sonality-traits apply: who is unable to form last Lasch' s account of the historical origins of cul ing commitments to other people and institu tural narcissism has inspired a great deal less tions, if not Roquentin? He may get excited about confidence than his description of the phenom his fits of nausea, but in relations with other peo enon itself in post-World War II society. While ple, he is as affectless, as unemotional as is his Lasch' s historical derivation of narcissism from counterpart, Meursault, at the funeral of his the decline of the family has provoked contro mother or when he shoots the Arab on the beach. versy, nonetheless few would deny that his work Roquentin may appear more anxious or bored has shed considerable light on contemporary than placid Meursault, but Camus' prose on the culture in America. other hand conveys strikingly the remarkable emptiness of Meursault's inner life. Except for 1Among the first social commentary articles were Peter their indifference as to others' opinions of them Marin's "The New Narcissism" (Harper's Oct. 1975) and Tom Wolfe's "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening" (a central tenet of existentialist philosophy), both (New York 23 August 1976). The central clinical study is Otto existentialist heroes are practically type-cast nar Kemberg's Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism cissists. (New York: Jason Aronson, 1975), along with Heinz Kohut's Moreover, existentialism achieved extraordi earlier The Analysis of the Self (New York: International nary popularity in this country at just the same Universities Press, 1971). Kemberg's formulations differ from his predecessor's (Kernberg himself addresses their differ time that narcissism was forcing itself on the at ences explicitly in Part II, Chapter 9, "Oinical Problems of the tention of the therapeutic community: in the Narcissistic Personality") in that Kemberg considers narcis 1950s. Why, then, does Lasch overlook existen sism in relation to "both libidinal and aggressive drive deriv tialism? Perhaps the important philosophical atives" (271), whereas Kohut "concentrates almost exclu movement would give narcissism a good name. sively on the role of libidinal forces" alone (xv). The resulting divergence is considerable: Kohut sees pathological narcis Or perhaps it emerges too early for his account sism on a continuum with normal, infantile narcissism, (Sartre's Nausea first appeared in the 1930's), dis whereas Kemberg considers narcissism a distinct pathology rupting the convenient contrast Lasch repeat with a structure and dynamic of its own. edly refers to-often only by implication-be tween post-war narcissism and the culture of 'Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978). solid 19th-century values and virtues he pictures This book has been the focus of several symposia: see Sal preceding it. This anomaly by itself would be far magundi 46 (1979) and Telos 44 (1980). from damning: pervasive cultural narcissism can HOLLAND 5 hardly be expected to have appeared overnight. mistakes the 19th-century nuclear family for the But if, as I shall argue, Sartre's "narcissistic" phi last bastion of pre-capitalist values and interper losophy and characters in fact derive from aes sonal relations, when on the contrary the private thetic developments of the mid-19th century, space of the nuclear family in fact arose as a prod then Lasch's account of the origins of narcissism uct of capitalist development, not an exception to in 20th-century decadence would appear very it. 6 Only by considering the so-called "demise" suspect indeed. of the nuclear family in the context of society and To raise the question of historical origins is to culture as a whole, I want to suggest, may wear pose the problem of historical causality. Many rive at a thorough understanding of the histori critics have attacked Lasch' s use of the 19th-cen cal emergence of cultural narcissism. tury nuclear family as a model and ideal stand Finally, and most important, Lasch dilutes and ard of comparison for the very different families distorts the very psychological theory upon of today, asserting for instance that the decline which his cultural interpretation is based. While of the bourgeois-patriarchal family cannot serve drawing heavily (though not exclusively) on the as grounds for condemning contemporary nar work of Otto Kemberg, Lasch refers indiscrimi cissism because such a family-type has always nately to both "narcissistic" and "borderline" been the exception rather than the rule, or be disorders in his work, without distinguishing or cause it was not a worthy ideal in the first place. 3 explaining the relation between them as Kem The family is indeed the linchpin of Lasch' s ac berg himself does with precision.7 Nearly all nar count, and not only because of his earlier study cissists are borderline, Kernberg reports, but of the family, Haven in a Heartless World. 4 For one borderline conditions are not necessarily narcis thing, even in The Culture of Narcissism, Lasch sistic-although both depend crucially on split maintains an orthodox-psychoanalytic emphasis ting as their basic defense mechanism. By ana on the family as prime determinant of psychic life: lyzing pathological narcissism in relation to the broader category of borderline conditions, Kern The emergence of (narcissistic) character berg is able to distinguish three levels of narcis disorders as the most prominent form of sistic disorder, each level manifesting more pro psychiatric pathology .

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