American Literature and Therapeutic Cultures

"This dynamic collection offers a kaleidoscope analysis of American literature and therapeutic culture from the early twentieth century to the present day. Moving beyond familiar psychoanalytic accounts of the emergence of the modern self, it brings to the fore the pluralistic, every day and often eccentric therapeutic coping mechanisms pursued by major American authors and laypeople alike. A superb synthesis of the state of therapeutic scholarship today, this volume is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the rich literary prehistory of our own therapeutic times." – Beth Blum, Harvard University

"Who wouldn’t long for literature to supply repair in an age of interminable calamity? This authoritative volume invites us to historicise that longing, asking us to think again before idealising literature’s curative utility. By foregrounding the mutual imbrication of American writing and therapeutic cultures, it offers a vital resource for resituating the socio-affective valences of literature from the early twentieth century onwards – giving renewed primacy to the collective over the individual, while being unafraid to encompass literature’s complicities as much as its possibilities. From William Carlos Williams to Colson Whitehead, from postwar poetry to contemporary autofiction, American Literature and Therapeutic Cultures offers an essential guide to the creative, institutional and intellectual terrains that have contested as much as fostered the reparative capacities of, and enduring hopes for, the experience of literature in an unravelling world." – David James, University of Birmingham 

American Literature and Therapeutic Cultures explores the myriad interactions between American literature and psychological discourses in the United States, from self-help to alternative health practices to psychotherapeutic approaches. Spanning the 1940s to the 2020s, it sheds light on the development and conceptualization of therapeutic culture during a century in which it has oscillated between clinical and cultural domains. Bringing together an intergenerational group of scholars from France, the UK and the US, the collection examines authors as varied as William Carlos Williams, Lionel Trilling, Sylvia Plath, Philip Roth, Colson Whitehead, Daniel Suarez and Ottessa Moshfegh. Moving beyond the conventional focus on psychoanalysis, the eleven contributors foreground how American literature is animated by broader therapeutic modes and trajectories. At stake are not only literature’s historical links to psychological theories and institutions, but the neoliberal framing of literary texts as tools for personal restoration.

• Traces the evolving relationship between American literature and therapeutic cultures across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
• Highlights the ongoing dialogue between literature and therapeutic cultures throughout modern and contemporary American literary history
• Shows how American literary texts both reflect and challenge therapeutic practices and ideologies
• Moves beyond simplistic views of literature’s relationship with psychology to reveal complex interdisciplinary interactions
• Explores the hazards and benefits of literature’s role as a restorative tool for the self that have become widespread in neoliberal societies
• Addresses how Black and women authors in particular critically engage with the therapeutic literary space
   

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 Contributors

 Introduction: American Literature and Therapeutic Cultures

Nicholas Manning and Martin Halliwell

Part I: Late Modernism to Mid-Century

1. 'Art was Williams’s Therapy': William Carlos Williams’s Maieutic Process in Paterson
Samantha Lemeunier

2. Public Displays of Disaffection: Lionel Trilling and the Power of Neurosis
Timothy Aubry

3. From Resistance to Reconnection: Sylvia Plath Under the Lens of New Therapeutics
Aubrey Jones

Part II: Literary Legacies of Postwar America

4. Curing the Collective? Postwar Experimental and Performance Poetry as Social Therapy
Célia Galey

5. Diagnosing the Lyric: Therapeutic Cultures and Gender in Postwar American Poetry
Juliette Bouanani

6. Pathogenic Culture and Therapeutic Discipline in Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys and Black American Literature
Jean-Paul Rocchi

Part III: Contemporary Cultural Directions

7. Catharsis Unbound: Mythopsychosis in Jerome Charyn’s Autofictions
Michaëla Cogan

8. Science Fiction and the Emotional Choreography of Postgenomic Life Cultures
Martin Halliwell

9. ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’: Vulnerability and Therapeutic Imaginations in Ottessa Moshfegh's Contemporary Fiction
Alwena Queillé

Epilogue: Therapeutic Fictions and Democratic Futures
Peter Boxall

General Bibliography

Index