Psychoanalysis between literature and folklore
https://doi.org/10.28995/2658-5294-2025-8-2-64-106
Abstract
The purpose of the article is to apply a folkloristic approach to understand psychoanalysis’s genesis, canon and function. The situation of a psychoanalytic session is viewed as a communicative event of a special kind, in many ways analogous to the relationship between the folklorist and the narrator. This approach allows us to compare psychological and folklore concepts: narrative authenticity, authorship, genre, literariness and parody. It is shown that the analysand, like the folklore performer, is not its author, but its performer. In this case, the function of the psychoanalyst realized in therapy turns out to be dual: in the course of a session he works as a folklorist, and in personal therapy, using secondary folklore, he becomes a narrator. Using the example of the psychoanalytic understanding of the Oedipus complex, it is shown how the psychoanalytic plot displaces the Sophoclean plot, becoming a part of fiction, the denotation of which is not the truth or falsity, but only its meaning. The thesis is put forward according to which psychoanalytic literature, in its content and functioning, is both a theory of psychoanalysis and fiction. In this vein, its genre can be defined as a medical legend.
Supporting agencies: The author thanks M. Gavrilova, A. Zinevich, V. Kagan, A. Kirzyuk, S. Raskin, and N. Petrov for valuable comments, additions, and disagreements with him.
About the Author
J. M. ZislinIsrael
Joseph M. Zislin, MD, independent researcher
Тzur Hadassah, 9987500
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Zislin J.M. Psychoanalysis between literature and folklore. Folklore: Structure, Typology, Semiotics. 2025;8(2):64-106. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.28995/2658-5294-2025-8-2-64-106
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