The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Attachment, Abandonment, and Reconciliation: A Psychoanalytic Review of Susan Mailer’s Memoir as Bildungsroman
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| « | The Mailer Review • Volume 13 Number 1 • 2019 | » |
In Another Place With and Without My Father, Norman Mailer
| “ | The first requisite for the use of a theory is proper conditions for observation. The most important of these is psycho-analysis of the observer to ensure that he [or she] has reduced to a minimum his [or her] own inner tensions and resistances which otherwise obstruct his [or her] view of facts by making correlation by conscious and unconscious impossible.[1] | ” |
I
The first line of Susan Mailer’s memoir In Another Place With and Without My Father, Norman Mailer reads, “MY EARLIEST MEMORY IS IN MY BELLY.”[2] This concise, aptly capitalized, one-line paragraph brings together memory and belly. This association casts a psychosomatic light on the author’s entire memoir, in which the enigma of the psychosomatic phenomena prevails. The exceptional coherence and intelligibility of the line owes much to author’s eleven years of being in psychanalysis, psychoanalytic training at Psychanalytic Institute in Santiago, Chile, and finally her experiences as a practicing psychoanalyst.
. . .
Citations
- ↑ Bion 2005, p. 86.
- ↑ Mailer 2019, p. 3.
Works Cited
- Bion, Wilfred W. R. (2005). Leaning From Experience. London: H. Karnak (Books).
- Mailer, Susan (2019). In Another Place With and Without My Father, Norman Mailer. Northampton House Press.