Impressions and Transformations: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Effects of Early Linguistic Disruptions, Emotional Trauma, and of Testimony through the Study of Oscar Hijuelos’ Thoughts without Cigarettes

Fernanda Carrá-Salsberg

doi:10.7565/landp.2015.002

Abstract

This article takes a psychoanalytic approach to the analysis of Oscar Hijuelos’ Thoughts without Cigarettes. Hijuelos’ memoir is studied for the manner in which offers illustrations of the developmental significance of language and of the psycho-emotional and social effects that stem from its abrupt cessation. My work examines the significance of memory, as well as the transformative effects of writing: It is a look into the way in which this late writer’s narrative conceals the paradox that embraced the affective relation he held with his first and later objects of affection, as well as with his first and second tongue. This paper studies how life-long narratives are of much significance to academics and professionals interested in the area of language and psychoanalysis. Through the analysis of Oscar Hijuelos’ memoir I highlight the manner in which written testimonials often unveil writers’ known and unknown histories of object-relations, introjections, projections, transferences, repetitions and need for reparation. Equally important, this article considers the manner in which Hijuelos’ testimonials became the medium through which he articulated the perceptions of his experiences, and how such articulation created a space for him to eventually understand, transform and even attempt to heal from the dislocations and internal void that shaped and reshaped his hidden drives, life long needs and translingual subjectivity.

Highlights

In Thought without Cigarettes Oscar Hijuelos narrates his life-experiences between his Spanish and English languages
Hijuelos begins his memoir by sharing aspects of his parents’ pre-and post-marital lives, their socio-educational differences2, and the reason for their geographic re-location from Holguín, Cuba in the 1940s.3. Spanish, the language he inherited from his parents, and spoke with his older brother and extended family, was the symbolic code of meanings that engulfed his earliest memories as an emerging subject: “...that language, Spanish, must have permeated me like honey, or wrapped around my soul like a blanked or, if you like, like a matilla, or, as my mother, of a poetic bend would say, like the sunlight of a Cuban spring” (p. 7)
If we look into psychoanalytic theories that define the affective meaning a primary tongue, we see that our first symbolic system of meanings is described as one that is intimately linked to our earliest and later developments, and “to our affective prototype” (Britzman, 2010)

Summary

Introduction

In Thought without Cigarettes Oscar Hijuelos narrates his life-experiences between his Spanish and English languages. What becomes most meaningful to this article’s discussion is that Hijuelos’ incident offers a glimpse into what occurs when a basic human need and essence are interrupted at a young age The gap Hijuelos described experiencing with his mother was linked to his childhood experience, and to his inability to relate with his mother at her linguistic level -when speaking Spanish-, and to his mother’s inability to fluently interact with her son in English, his dominant tongue Adding to their linguistic challenge(s), their void was and inevitably intensified with his schooling, through young Hijuelos’ internalization of the host language and culture. “Text reality”  refers  to  the way  in  which  writers  narrate their  stories ‐how they  use language;  “subject  reality”,  refers  to  how  events  were  perceived  by  the  writer;  and  “life  reality”  is  a  study of how things are or were; it is a look into the overall attitudes and behaviours  that influence –or influenced‐ the subject (Pavlenko, 2007, p. 166)

Interpreting the Unconscious through the Act of Writing

Conclusion

Biographical Note