Psychoanalysis and Literary Studies: A Review of G.D. Chaitin's "Unhappy Few"

Abstract

Professor Gilbert Chaitin's book, The Unhappy Few: A Psychological Study of the Novels of Stendhal*, is the first full-length psychoanalytic of a French writer published in the United States. In France, suprising as it may sound, there is not a single book-length of a French literary figure's works. Charles Baudouin's Psychanalyse de Victor Hugo (Geneva, 1943) is not strictly psychoanalytic but rather Jungian; it is somewhat prudish and cursory, though valuable. The only other psychoanalytic known to us is Alain Coste's new book on Albert Camus ou la parole manquante (Paris, 1973). The Unhappy Few, then, is a highly unusual and ambitious book. It was reviewed favorably by Professor William T. Starr in 'Nineteenth Century French Studies (vol.1, n02, winter 1973): Starr ably summarizes Professor Chaitin's main points and shows welcome knowledge of scholarly works on Stendhal as well as an understanding of psychoanalysis. Not wishing to cover the same ground as he does we refer the reader to intelligent analysis. Other reviews show less understanding. The French Review (vol. 46, no6, May 1973) published a derogatory review of Chaitin's book: not only is it prejudiced but it is so in an unseemingly and unscholarly way. First of all, Professor Larkin B. Price says, this book is not a psychological of the characters, nor of any other in Stendhal's work. One must surmise that a comprehensive psychological study must needs imply some psychological standpoint and is precisely what Chaitin has; psychoanalysis provides him with the only psychology which has a unified point of view, a which .has meaning in the novel as well as in us. (What, one wonders, would be t e use of a novelistic structure which would not have