Imaginary Existences

Sodré interweaves scholarly psychoanalytic knowledge and extensive clinical experience with insights derived from close readings of great literature.

Introduction. Maggie and Dorothea: Reparation and Working Through in George Eliot's Novels. Non Vixit: A Ghost Story. Who's Who? Notes on Pathological Identifications. Death by Daydreaming: Madame Bovary. Psychoanalysis and Literature. Imparadised in Hell: Idealisation, Erotisation and the Return of the Split-Off. 'For Ever Wilt Thou Love, and She Be Fair!': On Quixotism and the Golden Age of Pre-Genital Sexuality. Introduction to Iris Murdoch's Henry and Cato. Certainty and Doubt: Transparency and Opacity of the Object. Florence and Sigmund's Excellent Adventure: On Oedipus and Us. The Wound, The Bow and The Shadow of the Object: Notes on Freud's 'Mourning and Melancholia'. 'Where the Lights and Shadows Fall': On Not Being Able to Remember and Not Being Able to Forget. 'Even Now, Now, Very Now...' : On Envy and the Hatred of Love.The 'Perpetual Orgy': Hysterical Phantasies, Bisexuality and the Question of Bad Faith. Addiction to Near-Life: On Pathological Daydreaming and the Disturbing Ambiguity of Faking True-Love.