Split Self Research Articles

The Identity Construction and Split Self of Eliza in Pygmalion: a Psychoanalytic Perspective

This paper tries to explore the identity construction and the split selfhood of Eliza in Pygmalion from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic perspectives. George Bernard Shaw has often been labeled “unpsychological” by critics. However, the notion has been reexamined. Some critics have de-emphasized the traditional psychological emphasis on childhood and sex to focus instead on Freud’s preoccupation with language. And Lacan is most famous for his post-structural rereading of Freud. There are two observations that are relevant to Eliza’s identity: the purpose of analysis is to bring the unconscious to consciousness—or, in postmodern terminology, making the new self real through the transference process. Higgins’s “analysis” consists of bringing the underdeveloped and hidden “other” Eliza to light, so that she can make her way in the world. In this sense, he just brings Eliza’s unconscious new self into consciousness. The second useful observation is that analysis begins with a repetition. Higgins, acting as a Lacanian mirror for Eliza, reveals the new identity concealed beneath her ragged dress and dirty face, which is a repetition of the identity construction process of her mirror experience as a small child when she first developed the awareness that she was a separate human being. However, Eliza’s talking cure is, perhaps, less than a complete success, for it is clear that she experiences emptiness and loss even after completing the “treatment”. Eliza never completely resolves her inner and outer conflicts. Equally problematic for her is the deepening of the inner split that we all first experience in the mirror stage described by Lacan: the realization that we can never close the gap between essence and expression and, even worse, that we deepen the split as we become more articulate. Therefore, the identity problem discussed by Shaw has got postmodern characteristics. Key words: psychoanalysis, identity construction, split self Resume: Le present document tente d'etudier la construction de l'identite et l’autodivision d'Eliza dans Pygmalion d’apres la perspective psychanalytique freudienne et lacanienne. George Bernard Shaw a souvent ete marques im-psychological par les critiques. Toutefois, la notion a ete reexamine. Certains critiques n’ont plus souligne l’importance psychologique traditionnelle sur l'enfance et le sexe au lieu de se concentrer sur la preoccupation de Freud avec la langue. Et Lacan est le plus celebre pour sa relecture post-structurelle de Freud. Il y a deux observations qui sont pertinentes sur l'identite d’Eliza: le but de l'analyse est de mettre l'inconscience a la conscience-ou, dans la terminologie postmoderne, ce qui rend le nouveau soi reel a travers le processus de transfert. L’analyse de Higgins consiste a apporter l’«autres» d'Eliza sous-developpee et cachee a la lumiere, afin qu'elle puisse faire son chemin dans le monde. En ce sens, il apporte juste la nouvelle soi inconsciente d’Eliza en conscience. La deuxieme observation utile est que l'analyse commence par une repetition. Higgins, agissant comme un miroir lacanien pour Eliza, revele la nouvelle identite dissimulee sous sa robe en lambeaux et son visage sale, qui est une repetition du processus de construction de l'identite de son miroir experience en tant qu'une petite enfant quand elle a developpe la premiere fois la conscience qu'elle etait une etre humain distincte. Cependant, la cure de parler pour Eliza est, peut-etre, moins d'un succes complet, car il est clair que son experience est vacante, meme apres l'achevement du «traitement». Eliza resout jamais completement son interieur et exterieur conflits. De meme problematique pour elle est l'approfondissement de la division interieure que nous avons tous la premiere experience dans l’etape de miroir decrite par Lacan: la realisation que nous ne pourrons jamais combler le fosse entre l’essence et l'expression et, pire encore, que nous approfondissons la division comme nous devenons plus articules. Par consequent, le probleme d'identite discute par Shaw a des caracteristiques postmoderne. Mots-Cles: psychanalyse, construction de l'identite, autodivision

The Writer's Double: Translation, Writing, and Autobiography

Self-translation is generally considered as something marginal, a sort of cultural or literary oddity, as a borderline case of both translation and literary studies. Recent research in the history of this particular area has shown that self-translation has a long tradition, continues to be a widespread phenomenon in several cultures, and is closely linked to the representation of self. In this context, this paper seeks to explore the links between creative writing, self-translation, and autobiography through a reading of Francesca Duranti's novels. The first part of the essay gives a brief overview of her fictional representations of the 'split self'; the second part focuses on the production of a 'double text': Sogni mancini (1996), and the English self-translation, Left-handed Dreams (2000). It is argued that the process of self-translation is often associated with the problematization of identities, and that bilingualism is sometimes used as a way to regenerate writing. This type of writing is explicitly associated with the movement of the writer him/herself as is the case with Duranti, who draws on her own experience as a migrant from one culture to another to reflect on what it means to be 'translated' both geographically and textually. Translation becomes an integral part in the creation, embodiment, and voicing of meaning and identity.

Representation Crisis: History, Fiction, and Post Martial Law Writers from the “Soldiers' Villages”

This article centers on Zhu Tianwen, Zhu Tianxin, and Zhang Dachun, writers who were born and brought up in the “solders' villages” and have cultivated a condition of marginality that allows them to position themselves as nonbelievers—those who question the truth of any totalizing narrative. The main argument is about what I call a “representation crisis,” the deep feeling that both language and narrative have lost their referent in the post-martial law cultural state in Taiwan. I point out that these writers' mistrust of official histories leads to an inward turn toward personal experiences, whereas the inability to grab a unifying self results in the questioning of language as a useful means to convey meaning; language or narrative as a signifier of an external referent is put into question. I demonstrate how these writers put into relief the fictional quality of both fiction writing and history making and how the intricate network of intertextuality in their stories highlight the parallel between a split self and the failure of the referentiality of language. The end of the paper analyzes the movie A City of Sadness as the epitome of the concept of representation crisis.

Split Selves and Situated Knowledge

Grounded within Donna Haraway's theory of feminist objectivity that foregrounds split selves, embodied vision, and situated knowledges, the author tells of his experiences with the medical practitioners who performed his hip replacement surgery. The story unfolds in three episodes: the first highlighting the trickster, a second his conversion into a cyborg, and the third a trickster/cyborg hybrid. Reflecting back on the story, he suggests how Haraway's feminist vision might well be enhanced by laughter, vulnerable feelings, and evocative storytelling.

Working With Men Who Please Too Much: Gaining Clinical Momentum

This paper outlines a self-psychological approach to working with men who please too much. These men feel stuck in enacting patterns of compliance and defiance. Because they feel required to please others, they resort to addictive acts of substance use and unfaithful sexuality to break out of their deadening accommodation and to express their disavowed rage and their thwarted ambition. Reviewing an illustrative case, the author demonstrates how empathizing with each side of these mens' “split selves” and reaching for their disavowed affect facilitates a process of self-integration that improves their ability to assert themselves. Here, the patient responded to the therapist's sustained empathic inquiry by experiencing this disavowed affect and better understanding the meanings of his addictive behavior. His increased self-understanding enabled the therapist to make a momentum-building interpretation that fostered the patient's integration and his willingness to depend on the therapist for self-regulation....

Another Half and/or Another Individual: Representation of Twins in Manga

Who am I? Is there anyone who loves me as I am? A quest for ‘individual identity’ is a major topic in manga (and anime) texts, which combine visual art forms with strong narrative-driven structures that portray a diverse range of social phenomena. This paper examines the characterisation of ‘twins’ in manga and anime, paying particular attention to ‘identical twins’ in girls’ manga, in terms of the following: the fashioning of self and the individual’s quest for / negotiation of subjective forms of agency through their struggles with actual and/or internalised pressures for social conformity. As De Nooy (2005) claims, tales of twins figure as a significant motif in contemporary culture and these narratives continuously evolve to respond to the place and the period of their (re)telling, often representing an account of an ambiguous self and/or ‘other self’ in relation to issues of gender and sexuality. Twins in manga (and anime) are the same, yet such characters are often created by female artists for female readers as embodiments of personal, psychological struggles for individual independence rather than as a gendered girl, unlike western novels, plays and films. Perhaps reflecting the general impression of ‘twins’ as the identical, Japanese twins in manga (and anime) are generally limited to the identical (same sex) or male/female twins with similar appearances. Male/female twins tend to represent the strong, affectionate, (mythic) bond, with incestuous overtones. It can deconstruct pre-determined gender roles but only lightly, as exemplified by the first twin manga, Tezuka Osamu’s ‘Futago no kishi’ (Twin knights) from 1958. In contrast, tales of identical twins often focus on their rivalry and their conflict, where jealousy plays a critical role. It explores psychological issues, in which the twins may be interpreted as dramatisations of the self and the mirrored self, the split and fragmented self, and the internal conflict between unconsciousness and the social self or the ego and the super-ego. Many identical twins narratives in manga revolve around deep-seated anxieties and uncertainties about individual identity, especially that of girls. As Fujimoto (2001) sums up: twin tales in the 1950s demonstrate a recovery of lost wholeness, which end with the happy reunion of twin girls who grew up separately, followed by darker and more suspenseful stories, entwined with jealousy, rivalry and conflict between twins with contrasting nature (e.g., the good and the bad). From 1985, along with a general interest in ‘identity’, twin narratives of both girl twins and boy twins flourished, with a specific focus on psychological issues, such as inner conflict; conflict between the self and the expected self, which also closely related to other narratives (e.g., clones, multiple personalities and reincarnations), all of which relate to issues concerning individual identity. In recent manga publications twin tales are increasingly characterised by playfulness, lightness and positive tones in their depiction of identical twins’ development of independence from the double to two individuals as exemplified by Minako Narita’s Cipher.

Split Self Affairs and Their Treatment

SUMMARY The Split Self Affair is a long-term serious relationship. The split being played out in the affair reflects an internal split between doing things “right” and the emotional self. Treatment for those involved centers on understanding the origins of the internal split and on reclaiming the neglected emotional self. Long term individual therapy is the treatment of choice, augmented by other modalities.

What Kitty Knew

Framed by sensational Ripper stories that turned fact into �ction and lurid murder into gripping reading matter, the extraordinary popularity of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), George du Maurier's Trilby (1894), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) clearly indicate that the �n de si�cle was a time enthralled by the concept of split selves and sadistic impulses, of insidious male desires metaphorically and literally inscribed on the body of unconscious, hysterical, or hypnotized women. With his John Norton narratives of the late 1880s to mid 1890s, George Moore made a signi�cant contribution to this important cultural preoccupation in late-Victorian literature and culture. In this essay we trace the development of the theme in Moore's A Mere Accident (1887), Mike Fletcher (1889), and "John Norton" (which appeared in his collection Celibates, 1895). We read Moore's stories in the context of the emerging discourses of psychoanalysis and its reliance upon and relation to earlier work on the theories of the "double brain" and "multiplex personality". We also draw on works of late-nineteenth-century sexology-Havelock Ellis's Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897-1910) and Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis (�rst published in German, 1886)-in order to explore the psycho-sexual nature of the malaise that af�icts the Norton character and highlight his ambivalent role in the "accident" that befalls the vicar's daughter, Kitty Hare. In addition, we pay close attention to the proto-Freudian language of dreams that haunt Kitty in the aftermath of her assault, arguing that in his "John Norton" narratives Moore engaged with the evolving concept of trauma. These stories, we argue, re�ect an important and hitherto neglected aspect of late-Victorian narrative explorations of hysteria and sexual pathology.

Love Sick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction (review)

276Fourth Genre word paragraph: "But now." She goes on to admit her desire to finger over this growing baby wanting "slower unfoldings and unaUoyed shifts. . . . The time I have, I take to look at him ... I need not move toward any task, at that moment, past gazing on the face ofmy child." The phenomenon of motherhood puts the author in connection with the world in a new way. Her reflections include a kinship with mothers and babies everywhere, including the animal world. She is suddenly close to and part of the most elemental and primitive instincts known in the life of animals and humans. She sees her friendships with women anew; the pain and tenderness with which she describes her parting from a close friend who is moving away is one of the more overtly emotional passages in the book. In view ofthese hymns to friendship, it then seems rather strange that her partner in procreation, the baby's father, is but a shadowy presence in the book, and his response to the adventure seems oddly missing. The occasional mention is natural and positive; stiU, there could be more ofhim without losing the focus of the mother's experience. Although the book is implicitly emotional, the intense love felt for the child is more like a bouquet that rises from page after page of clear detail and real things. As Purpura declares in one reflection, "Awe is not precious; it looks to be spent, to be shot away whole, that it might renew." Awe is one of many things a reader can gain from reading Increase. Here we are in the hands of an original-thinking Madonna, one who sees honeycombs in the playpen mesh and bathwater as a silver scarf. She reminds us that the miracle ofbirth is real to someone aU the time, and that everyone, even the murderous terrorist on the evening news, started out as somebody's baby. Reviewed by Susan Lilley Love Sick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction by Sue William Silverman W W Norton & Company, 2001 288 pages, cloth, $24.95 "Liquid hot steel night wild dark ice steaming, voice dying, like you could melt glass bone hard, devour a blue universe, prisonerfor eternity. " This, for Sue Silverman, is the language of intoxication. It is how she responds when directed to describe her "addict" self, to examine that selffor what it is. It is the language ofa powerful addiction. The heart ofSflverman's Book Reviews277 new book, Love Sick, is the way that addiction leads to a split self, and the way she ultimately finds a unified self again. Silverman deftly weaves the story of her addiction into the story of her recovery. Her drug of choice was not alcohol or marijuana, heroin or LSD. It was neither an "upper" nor a "downer." It was not even, exactly, a noun. Silverman's drug was, perhaps, better characterized as a verb: an action, a doing, a having: Sue Silverman was addicted to having sex with dangerous men. In the final throes of her addiction, Silverman, while married, spent everyThursday at noon having sex with Rick, a married man, in room 213 of the Rainbow Motel. On one fateful Thursday, however, the ritual was threatened when Rick's son came down with the flu. Silverman met Rick at his house instead ofthe motel, and, while the sick child slept in his room, the two lovers got down to business. When the child started to cry, Silverman struggled with a desperate maternal urge to comfort him, but gave in to her addiction and continued her encounter with Rick. Through this devastating encounter, Silverman realized that her "self"—her very being—had split in two. There was the sober half-—the kind, inteUigent, clear-headed Sue—and there was the addict half—the part of her who would pursue sex with dangerous, unavailable men at any cost. Almost immediately Silverman entered a month-long, in-patient treatment program where she explored and confronted her divided identity among other women fighting similar battles. Love Sick chronicles her experiences in this program: we foUow Silverman through her stormy emotional upheavals, her newfound friendships, her insights, her progresses, her...

Group Psychotherapy as the Century Turns: Toward a Philosophy of Care

A futuristic essay should be written by two persons so as to invoke Bion's “basic assumption pairing” (Bion, 1964) with its connotations of hope, no matter how irrational. Accordingly, I split my self in two parts, one, the hard-headed realist, and the other, the prophetic visionary. As idealized identities, neither comes easily to me. But, perhaps heeding the two has permitted the articulation of some presentable notions about group psychotherapy and its evolving fate.

The Wise Baby as the Voice of the True Self

Sandor Ferenczi wrote about a typical dream of the “Wise Baby” and later used this figure to represent the child who is traumatized into precocious wisdom, who becomes “the family psychiatrist.” We discuss Ferenczi’s theory of traumatization and the “split self,” noting how it was taken up in D. W. Winnicott’s “True Self/False Self” conceptualization. We then present three patients’ wise baby dreams to show how these trauma theories can be used in dream interpretation and how dream interpretation can support them.

A Letter to Mr. Kim Chi-Ha; or, The Pain of the Split Self

Other| February 01 1997 A Letter to Mr. Kim Chi-Ha; or, The Pain of the Split Self Suh Kyung-sik Suh Kyung-sik Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google positions (1997) 5 (1): 315–320. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-5-1-315 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Suh Kyung-sik; A Letter to Mr. Kim Chi-Ha; or, The Pain of the Split Self. positions 1 February 1997; 5 (1): 315–320. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-5-1-315 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll Journalspositions Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 1997 by Duke University Press1997 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Fictions of the internal object

This paper examines internal objects in their role as theoretical constructs which analysts use to make sense of human experience. Object relations theory is based upon a vision that the personality is divided or split into parts. Clinical experience reveals that such splits are commonly expressed in the language of our analysing. However, a lexical reality is not a thing‐in‐itself, but a way of organizing and understanding experience. Jung's vision of the dynamics of the split self encompass a unique ‘object relations theory’ that is both similar and yet quite different from the object relations theories of Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott and Thomas Ogden A clinical example is used to examine the way in which these different theoretical views explain the same clinical phenomenon. The last section of the paper is devoted to a narrational analysis of the place of internal objects in analytic theory. The split self, dynamic is seen as a narrative device ‐ one that makes sense and provides coherence, but is neither the only view of psychic reality nor necessarily an accurate reflection of the nature of the internal world.

Posting Signs on the Bog: Fixing and Unfixing H.D. Imagiste

This article aims to reassess the modernist poet H.D.'s early poetry and to challenge certain critical readings of the early poetry in relation to H.D.'s expression of self. It argues that H.D.'s Sea Garden should not be dismissed as a “false start,” as a place where H.D. was trapped in a restrictive imagist aesthetic, but that the dramatic lyric as used in this collection of poetry enabled her to explore her bisexual self in multiple and multiplying (not split) selves, as both in a state of flux and as enduring through time. It examines H.D.'s work alongside other writers such as Tennyson and Woolf, drawing out common metaphorical structures and patterns and suggests that Woolf and H.D. in particular, were producing literary forms and representations which provide a radical challenge to processes of categorization—a challenge to the notion of category itself.

The Autobiographical Novel of Co-Consciousness: Goncharov, Woolf and Joyce

In a comparative study, Galya Diment draws a novel comparison between two giants of Modernism and a relatively obscure 19th-century Russian Realist, claiming that three writers all re-invented idea of duality in literature. Focusing on Woolf's To Lighthouse, Joyce's Ulysses and Goncharov's Common Story, she introduces and redefines idea of as mechanism that allows each work to transcend genre of autobiographical bildungsroman and classical tradition of duality, represented by doppelganger. Defining co-consciousness as means by which writers fictionalise what appear to be equally conscious sides of their personalities, she argues that this concept is telling distinction between these three divided-they-stand writers and divided-they-fall approach of other celebrated masters of double. A crucial feature of three writers is their tendency to tolerate split personality as an inevitable yet not life-threatening condition. Diment presents strong evidence that fictional split self often functions not only as an expression of a writer's inner conflicts but also as a powerful and conscious artistic tool. For Woolf, Joyce and Goncharov, she writes, fictional alter ego appears to act as a critical buffer between writers themselves and their autobiographical material. The author discusses at some length extent to which concept of simultaneous consciousness is psychologically valid, and she pays considerable attention to dual nature of periods that formed each writer's sensibilities. She ends main part of book with Ulysses, she says, because she believes that in this novel the co-conscious split autobiographical self has found its perfect home.

Religious totalism, violence and exemplary dualism: Beyond the extrinsic model

This study presents an alternative psychological model to the ‘extrinsic model’. The latter emphasizes the external imposition through brainwashing of a pattern of depersonalization facilitating the enslavement of participants in totalist sects. An alternative approach can be extrapolated from the writings of Robert Lifton and more particularly, Erik Erikson's original conception of totalism. We suggest that contemporary cultural fragmentation exacerbates patterns of identity confusion and narcissistic ‘split self dynamics. Some young persons voluntarily attempt to resolve identity confusion through identification with messianic leaders and their apocalyptic absolutist mystiques. The ‘Exemplary Dualist’ worldviews of such groups facilitate ‘contrast identities’ which project disvalued elements of self onto ‘enemies’ including unbelievers. Emergent projective systems are unstable and may require reinforcement through appropriate interactions with outsiders, for example, converting them. Other vicissitudes ...

The Viewing Self and the World We View: Beyond the Perspectival Illusion

This paper approaches the question of how we see (and know) by investigating the historically changing nature of the self that views. Recognizing that viewing in geometrical perspective requires the self to combine two different fixed views, it traces the history of what it therefore sees as a doubling or splitting of the self. It first shows how the perspectivally viewing self is made possible by an earlier medieval splitting and immobilizing of the self, and that it remains thereafter in its essence split. It then points to an internal evolution in this split self in the late 18th century, as it comes alive as the self-examining self. It links the development of both the medieval and 18th-century reconstructions of the self to changes in the practices through which humans learn. It concludes by reflecting on the relation between this modern pygmalion-like form of the self and the viewing of the world as `organ'-ized.

Bells and Cupolas: The Formative Role of the Female Body in Marina Tsvetaeva's Poetry

Like many other Russian women writers, Marina Tsvetaeva did not merely include women's language and physical experience in her poetry; they were central to her concern with poetry and poetic creation. These elements of her work have in recent years evoked an interest from women readers and feminist scholars of Russian literature which is reflected in the number of studies devoted to aspects of her work. Antonina Gove discusses the presence and chronological development of female roles in Tsvetaeva's poetry; Anya Kroth illustrates the importance of gender and specifically androgyny in Tsvetaeva's construction of a dichotomous world-view. Barbara Heldt's landmark study of women in Russian literature, Terrible Perfection, devotes several pages to Tsvetaeva as an autobiographer and a woman poet liberated from the “split selves” of her predecessors.

On Forcing Individuals to Be Free: T.H. Green's Liberal Theory of Positive Freedom

Berlin argues that Green's positive freedom, at odds with his liberalism, justifies an oppressive society. Berlin's argument proceeds in three steps. The first embraces a shift from negative freedom to rational self-mastery, which is underpinned by a metaphysics of a split self. Then it is claimed that positive freedom is realizable only in a certain kind of society which, thirdly, it is argued, is oppressive. Green takes the first two steps but they do not commit him to the totalitarian conclusion, not least because he grounds positive freedom in a view of a unitary self and his society does not leave empty the institutional framework which makes possible the realization of freedom. Green's society is not oppressive in the name of freedom, but rather enabling in the name of freedom.

Vägen till terapeutisk allians -konfrontationens roll vid psykoterapi med borderlinepatienter

The “borderline” disturbance of mental functioning is considered as a developmental malfunction of the ability to create and hold on to a genuine relationship with other persons. developmental disturbance is described in terms of development of object relations according to Mahler's theoretical work.The development of object relations is based on the “dialogue of development” between mother and child. The author's concept of this dialogue is one of a feed-back model of ongoing emotional mother-child dialogue. As a result of this “dialogue of development” comes the evolution of an instrument of inner reference, whereby the psychic representations of self and objects permit judgement of the world, forming of relationships etc.The borderline patient with his split object and self representations has great difficulty in relating to other persons. His split object representations of either hostile or rewarding qualities will be alternatively projected and accordingly will distort the representational world of ...