Fictionalising Psychoanalysis: Roger Kennedy´s Couch Tales: Short Stories (2009)

Abstract

This essay will approach "Couch Tales: Short Stories" by Roger Kennedy from a psychoanalytical point of view and how psychoanysis as a therapy is presented in a fictional work. The author, himself a practicing psychoanalyst, presents a series of cases of some patients and their private, emotional life as they attend therapy. These tales are based on his own experience as a therapist althogh both the stories and the psychoanalyst are fictional, a fact that is remarked in the work's "Prologue". In each case, both the therapist and the secondary characters' behavior, speech and thought alow us to witness the mental processes of some of the characters and the therapist's interpretation of those as part of the fiction itself to which we, readers, contribute our interpretation in each case. What is said and how it is, or can be, said/understood is essential for this study. Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theory will work as my fundamental theoretical tool for a detailed reading of these short stories. I will also have recourse to the contributions of later theorists such Jacques Lacan to complet the set of Freudian concepts. The interest of how emotional life is expressed in literary forms is the general frame and my inspiration to embark on this research projet