Between Analyst and Analysand: Poe and the Psychoanalytic Critic. Revisiting “The Purloined Letter”
Between Analyst and Analysand: Poe and the Psychoanalytic Critic. Revisiting “The Purloined Letter”

Summary/Abstract: Pre-Freudian or post-Lacanian, archetypal or object-relationist, biographical or deconstructive, regardless of its form, psychoanalytic criticism repeatedly (re)turns to Edgar Allan Poe. What lies at the root of this curious affinity between Poe’s texts and the critical-psychoanalytic approach? Is the answer to be found in the author or rather in the critic? Between Analyst and Analysand: Poe and the Psychoanalytic Critic takes a closer look at the relationship between Poe and psychoanalysis, exploring the dynamics of the critical reading and the critic’s own position as analysand. Revisiting two interpretative models centered on The Purloined Letter, mainly Marie Bonaparte’s reading from The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe and Norman Holland’s Re-covering the Purloined Letter: Reading as Personal Transaction, it seeks to show how the text, while inviting, manages to eschew psychoanalytic interpretation as its reading ultimately reflects back, not on the author or the text, but rather on the interpreter.

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