Litteraturens anamnese. En psykoanalytisk lesning av terapien i F. Scott Fitzgeralds Tender is the Night og Siri Hustvedts The Sorrows of an American.

Literature has long been the scene of the study of human unconsciousness. In Tender is the Night and The Sorrows of an American, this is explicitly expressed through these novels’ prime motive, the therapy. By utilizing Freud's psychoanalytic theories, I want to explore the interaction between therapist and patient, with particular emphasis on the linguistic aspect: the dialogue, the patient's ability to create a narrative, and the ability of the therapist to interpret this narrative. The therapy room, however, presents a number of challenges, which both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Siri Hustvedt problematize in their respective novels. By using Peter Brooks’ narrative model, I will also examine the role therapy play as a structural element in the two novels. In both novels we meet traumatized patients who, due to their trauma lose their capacity to communicate and thus have trouble organizing the traumatic event into a coherent narrative. On a content plan, I want to investigate how creating a narrative can have a therapeutic effect on the patient, and how the lack of a coherent story can make the therapeutic development difficult. Trauma can appear in different ways, and without proper treatment, it can be expressed through somatic symptoms, false connections, and compulsive actions. These are all repetitive in their form and create a backward motion where the present meets the past. Peter Brooks finds these movements particularly interesting in his study of the plot structure. My question for this thesis will be if the novels could be read as stories of sickness, and as a kind of literary anamnesis