Maren Scheurer

Erik Grayson

Amputation in Literature and Film: Artificial Limbs, Prosthetic Relations, and the Semiotics of Loss explores the many ways in which literature and film have engaged with the subject of amputation. The scholars featured in this volume draw upon a wide variety of texts, both lesser-known and canonical, across historical periods and language traditions to interrogate the intersections of disability studies with social, political, cultural, and philosophical concerns. Whether focusing on ancient texts by Zhuangzi or Ovid, renaissance drama, folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm, novels or silent film, the chapters in this volume highlight the dialectics of loss and gain in narratives of amputation to encourage critical dialogue and forge an integrated, embodied understanding of experiences of impairment in which mind and body, metaphor and materiality, theory and politics are considered as interrelated and interacting aspects of disability and ability. Erik Grayson is Associate Professor of English at Northampton Community College, USA. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of English at Wartburg College, USA, and Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Luther College, USA. He has published essays on J.M. Coetzee, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Don DeLillo, and Jamaica Kincaid, among others. Maren Scheurer is Researcher and Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She is the author of Transferences: The Aesthetics and Poetics of the Therapeutic Relationship (2019) and co-editor, with Susan Bainbrigge, of Narratives of the Therapeutic Encounter: Psychoanalysis, Talking Therapies and Creative Practice (2020). With Aimee Pozorski, she serves as executive co-editor of Philip Roth Studies.

Artificial Limbs, Prosthetic Relations, and the Semiotics of "loss"

Amputation in Literature and Film

Susan Bainbrigge

This collection of essays explores the ways in which talking therapies have been depicted in twentieth century and contemporary narratives (life-writings, fiction and poetry) in French. This vibrant corpus of francophone literary engagements of therapy has so far been widely unexplored, but it offers rich insights into the connections between literature and psychoanalysis. As the number of autobiographical and fictional depictions of the therapeutic encounter is still on the rise, these creative outputs raise pressing questions: why do narratives of the therapeutic encounter continue to fascinate writers and readers? What do these works tell us about the particular culture and history in which they are written? What do they tell us about therapeutic and other human encounters? The volume highlights the important role that the creative arts have played in offering representations and explorations of our minds, our relationships, and our mental health, or more pressingly, ill-health. The volume’s focus is not only on the patient’s experience as expressed via the creative act and as counterweight to the practitioner’s “case study”, but more specifically on the therapeutic encounter, specifically the relationship between therapist and patient. The contributors here engage with ideas and methodologies within contemporary psychoanalytic thought, including, but not limited to, those of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, André Green, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, and Donald Winnicott, highlighting the dynamic research culture that exists in this field and maintaining a dialogue between the humanities and various therapeutic disciplines. Narratives of the Therapeutic Encounter combines the analysis of psychoanalytic and fictional texts to explore the implications that arise from the space between the participants in therapy, including creative and aesthetic inspirations, therapeutic potentials, and ethical dilemmas.

Maren Scheurer

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