On Not Being Able to Sleep: Psychoanalysis and the Modern World

Jacqueline Rose

Published by Princeton University Press 2003

On Not Being Able to Sleep

Psychoanalysis and the Modern World

Jacqueline Rose

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691225654

Overview
Contents

About this book

In these powerful essays, Jacqueline Rose delves into the questions that keep us awake at night, into issues of privacy and writing, exposure and shame.

Do women writers--Christina Rossetti, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath--have a special talent for self-revelation? Or are they simply more vulnerable to the invasions of biography? What ethical questions are raised by Ted Hughes's role in Plath's writing life? What do Adrienne Rich and Natalie Angier reveal about the destiny of feminism? In its affinity with modernist writing, what can psychoanalysis tell us about the limits of knowledge--both about the most intimate components of experience and the most hallucinatory reaches of the mind? Have psychoanalytic writers today and the very institution of psychoanalysis remained faithful to the most potent and disturbing aspects of Freud's vision?

Finally Rose addresses some of the most dramatic public performances of our times--the cult of celebrity with its contrasting obsessions with Princess Diana and the child murderer Mary Bell; and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission which, in a stirring last essay, allows Rose to explore the ethical and political responsibilities of thought and speech in times of historical crisis.

Moving deftly with style, force, and clarity between our public, political, and private, unconscious worlds, On Not Being Able to Sleep, forges a unique set of links between feminism, psychoanalysis, literature, and politics. The result is a book well worth staying up late to read--one that exposes the uncomfortable borderland between our desire to speak out and be silent, between the stage of the world and of the mind.

Author / Editor information

Renowned as a literary critic and writer, Jacqueline Rose is Professor of English at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, and the author of several books, including the award-winning The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, States of Fantasy, and her recent novel, Albertine.

Reviews

"Jacqueline Rose has no peer among critics of her generation. The brilliance of her literary insights, the lucidity of her prose, and the subtlety of her analyses are simply breathtaking. On Not Being Able to Sleep strikes me as a rare amalgam of her thought about literary and psychoanalytic issues, accomplished with remarkable poise and unfailing interest."—Edward W. Said

"This is an extraordinarily intelligent and engaging piece of work, extremely well written throughout and pursuing a range of timely, indeed urgent topics."—Michael Wood, Princeton University

"

A readable, witty text full of insights and challenges for all serious
readers. . . . Rose is brilliantly perceptive and wisely humble at the same time. . . . In addition to poetry, Rose brings moderate feminism, ethical principle, social conscience, and wide reading to the task. She ties the package together with common sense and clarity.

"---E. James Lieberman, ForeWord

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: ‘Shame’ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I: Writing for their lives
‘Faking it up with the truth’: Anne Sexton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
‘Undone, defiled, defaced’: Christina Rossetti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
‘Go, Girl!’ Adrienne Rich and Natalie Angier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
Sylvia Plath – Again Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
Birthday Letters Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
The Journals Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
Virginia Woolf and the Death of Modernism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	72
Bizarre Objects: Hallucination and Modernism – Mary Butts and Elizabeth Bowen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
II: Border crossings
‘On Not Being Able to Sleep’: Rereading The Interpretation of Dreams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
Freud in the Tropics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
Of Knowledge and Mothers: On the Work of Christopher Bollas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
What Makes an Analyst? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
III: Modern times
The Cult of Celebrity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Apathy and Accountability: The Challenge of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to the Intellectual in the Modern World Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	216
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239