The play of Eros: Revolutions, reveries, and reflections on the en-cased erotic in the histories of Anna O., Dora, and the Wolf Man.

Bruneau, R. E. (1998). The play of Eros: Revolutions, reveries, and reflections on the en-cased erotic in the histories of Anna O., Dora, and the Wolf Man. (Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 1998). UMI no. 9913037

This dissertation explored the legacy of the erotic encased within the Freudian theoretical histories of Anna O., Dora, and the Wolf Man. The study sought to re-spect, to take another look at, these textual bodies in order to liberate marginal readings obscured by the monolithic practices of a modernist, scientific, interpretative stance of truth. The case histories were, for the purposes of this investigation, re-placed within a subjective, aesthetic, metaphorical consciousness. As such, the case history was viewed as a dramatic rather than representational, production. The biographies of the case narratives more reconsidered to reveal the autobiographical. Countertransferential motivations were liberated allowing a fuller reading of the complex case history as additionally auto-psycho-graphical. The textual analysis of the case histories was illuminated by drawing upon the domains of theoretical and literary criticism, feminist inquiry, cultural/historical analysis, and queer theory. The dissertation sought to extend the contextual authority of the case history to the therapeutic encounter as one which doubly situates and creates meaning through language or poetry--psychotherapy as storied lives. Under these circumstances, psychotherapy, past and present, becomes a creative and collaborative act which is mutually penetrating. The politics of this creative collaboration was explored as the doubly constitutive recursive process creates our history of cases as the case history becomes articulated. Within this consciousness, the author employed several case vignettes to expand and illustrate the autopsychographical nature of the case history as aesthetic engagement. These vignettes served as parallel offerings to the classical analytic bodies under investigation. They also served as compliments to the author and subjects of the case histories, the history of cases, which have served as inspiration.