Mentalization and Literary Form by Galgut, Elisa;

Short description:

This book examines the ways in which literary form facilitates mentalization and our ability to be aware of our own and others’ mental states, showing how we can use this awareness to make sense of our experiences and interactions.

Long description:

This book examines the ways in which literary form facilitates mentalization and our ability to be aware of our own and others’ mental states, showing how we can use this awareness to make sense of our experiences and interactions.

Looking at narrative, the sonnet, free indirect speech, and autobiographical memory, Elisa Galgut focuses on the ways in which literary form not only contains difficult emotions, but how it shapes and develops these emotional states. She considers how the creative mind gives form to inchoate emotions and structures and processes them in ways that allow us to experience and give name to what was previously unclear and amorphous. Looking at the work of canonical figures of English literature, such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Austen, Galgut’s focus on form – rather than content – offers the reader a novel way of understanding the ways in which literature engages our emotional lives.

Assuming no prior knowledge of complex psychoanalytic concepts, Mentalization and Literary Form is aimed at academic and graduate students focusing on literary studies and philosophy, as well as psychoanalysts interested in Literature.

‘The concept of mentalization—the ability to recruit one’s beliefs and attitudes to the purpose of understanding oneself and others—emerges from psychoanalysis in its contemporary form, although its origins are as old as Socrates. The first part of Elisa Galgut’s book explains the concept masterfully, in a textbook lesson, relying on her knowledge of psychoanalysis and the philosophy of mind. The book then finds its groove, recruiting the concept of mentalization to revisit such literary stalwarts as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Yeats, and Austen. Here the innovation is to highlight the importance of literary form. Her readings are original, indeed pitch-perfect. The book is pleasure to read, wonderfully composed, and should be widely read.’

Daniel Herwitz, Fredric Huetwell Professor, Comparative Literature, Philosophy History of Art

University of Michigan

‘In this interdisciplinary tour de force Galgut brings her philosophical, literary and psychoanalytic sensibilities magnificently together.  Readable and gently scholarly,  she argues that the formal structures of art and psychoanalysis both represent ways to contain and mentalise problematic feelings.  In her analysis of Jane Austen’s  Free Indirect Discourse she shows how the combined voice of narrator and character entail a broadening and maturation of the self and its perspectives. As in psychoanalysis the dialogue of therapist and patient intertwine to build more meaningful narratives of people’s lives, so in this lovely book Galgut summons literature and psychoanalysis into an aesthetically convincing duet. Essential reading for those interested in psychoanalysis, literature and their overlaps. In short, she, and her many insights sing satisfyingly true.’

Prof Jeremy Holmes, MD FRCPsych, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, University of Exeter, UK

Table of Contents:

1. The Structure of Mind: Narrative, Folk Psychology, and Mentalization  2. Form  3. The Sonnet  4. Free Indirect Discourse in Jane Austen 5.  The Mentalizing Function of Memory