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Autobiography
AUTOBIOGRAPHYAs a literary genre, autobiography, narrating the story of one's own life, is a variation of biography, a form of writing that describes the life of a particular individual. From the point of view of psychoanalysis, autobiography is of interest as the story told by the patient to the analyst and to himself. Autobiography in the modern sense began as a form of confession (Saint Augustine), even though there are memoirs in classical literature (Xenophon's Anabasis, Julius Caesar's Gallic wars ). Such introspective works can be considered attempts at self-analysis before the psychoanalytic discovery of the unconscious. In 1925 Freud wrote An Autobiographical Study, in which the story of his own life merges with that of the creation of psychoanalysis. According to Freud, biographical truth does not exist, since the author must rely on lies, secrets, and hypocrisy (letter to Arnold Zweig dated May 31, 1939). The same is true of autobiography. From this point of view, it is interesting that Freud framed his theoretical victory and the birth of psychoanalysis in terms of a psychological novel. The function of autobiography is to use scattered bits of memory to create the illusion of a sense of continuity that can hide the anxiety of the ephemeral, or even of the absence of the meaning of existence, from a purely narcissistic point of view. This story constitutes a narrative identity (Ricoeur, 1984-1988) but is self-contained. In contrast, the job of analysis is to modify, indeed to deconstruct, this identity through interpretation. Because the analyst reveals repressed content, he is always a potential spoiler of the patient's autobiographic story (Mijolla-Mellor, 1988). Although autobiography has been of greater interest to literature (Lejeune, 1975) than to psychoanalysis, a number of psychoanalysts (Wilfred Bion and Marie Bonaparte, among others) have written autobiographies, thus confirming the link between the analyst's pursuit of self-analysis and autobiographical reflection. Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor See also: "Autobiographical Study, An"; Jung, Carl Gustav; Literature and psychoanalysis; "Psychoanalytic Notes on the Autobiography of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia paranoides )"; Memoirs of the future. BibliographyFreud, Sigmund. (1925). An autobiographical study. SE, 20: 1-74. Lejeune, Philippe. (1974). Le pacte autobiographique. Paris: Seuil. Mijolla-Mellor, Sophie de. (1988). Suvivreà so passé. In L'autobiographie. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. ——. (1990). Autobiographie et psychanalyse. Le Coq-Héron, 118, pp. 6-14. Ricoeur, Paul. (1984-1988). Time and narrative (Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1985) |
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De Mijolla-Mellor, Sophie. "Autobiography." International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. De Mijolla-Mellor, Sophie. "Autobiography." International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3435300128.html De Mijolla-Mellor, Sophie. "Autobiography." International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. 2005. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3435300128.html |
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autobiography
autobiography in its modern form may be taken as writing that purposefully and self-consciously provides an account of the author's life and incorporates feeling and introspection as well as empirical detail. In this sense, autobiographies are infrequent in English much before 1800. Although there are examples of autobiography in a quasi-modern sense earlier than this (e.g. Bunyan's conversion narrative, Grace Abounding, 1666, and Margaret Cavendish's ‘A True Relation’, 1655–6) it is not until the early 19th cent. that the genre becomes established in English writing: Gibbon's Memoirs (1796) are a notable exception.
From 1800 onwards the introspective Protestantism of an earlier period and the Romantic Movement's displeasure with the fact/feeling distinction of the Enlightenment provided for personal narratives of a largely new kind. They were characterized by a self-scrutiny and vivid sentiment that produced what is now referred to, following Robert Southey (1809), as autobiography. Early in the 19th cent. Wordsworth gives in The Prelude (1805) a sustained reflection upon the circumstances of he himself being the subject of his own work; and in the second half of the century Newman in his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) publicly and originally reveals a personal spiritual journey. This latter, with its public disclosure of the private domain, had a dramatic and far-reaching influence upon the intelligentsia of late Victorian society. In the 20th cent. autobiography became increasingly valued not so much as an empirical record of historical events but as providing an epitome of personal sensibility among the intricate vicissitudes of cultural change. Vera Brittain achieved a seriousness of observation and affect to provide in Testament of Youth (1933) a major work on the conduct of the First World War. In the area of more domestic but no less social concerns J. R. Ackerley in his My Father and Myself (1968) constructed an autobiography of painful frankness in a disquisition upon his unusual family relations, his affection for his dog, and the tribulations of his homosexuality. More recently Tim Lott in The Scent of Dead Roses (1996) discussed the suicide of his mother and amalgamated autobiography, family history, and social analysis in a virtuoso performance of control and pathos. The truthfulness or not of autobiography is essentially a matter that must be left to biographers and philosophers. The plausibility of an autobiography, however, must find its authentication by the degree to which it can correspond to some approximation of its context. |
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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "autobiography." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "autobiography." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-autobiography.html MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "autobiography." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-autobiography.html |
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autobiography
autobiography Narrative account of a person's life, written by the subject. The modern autobiography has become a distinctive literary form. The first important example of the genre was the 4th-century Confessions of Saint Augustine. The modern, introspective autobiography, dealing frankly with all aspects of life, is usually dated from the remarkable Confessions of Rousseau (1765–72; published 1782). See also biography
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"autobiography." World Encyclopedia. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "autobiography." World Encyclopedia. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O142-autobiography.html "autobiography." World Encyclopedia. 2005. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O142-autobiography.html |
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autobiography
au·to·bi·og·ra·phy / ˌôtəbīˈägrəfē/ • n. (pl. -phies) an account of a person's life written by that person. ∎ such writing as a literary genre. DERIVATIVES: au·to·bi·og·ra·pher / -fər/ n. |
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"autobiography." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "autobiography." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-autobiography.html "autobiography." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-autobiography.html |
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autobiography
autobiography XIX. f. prec. + BIOGRAPHY.
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T. F. HOAD. "autobiography." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. T. F. HOAD. "autobiography." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O27-autobiography.html T. F. HOAD. "autobiography." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. 1996. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O27-autobiography.html |
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autobiography
autobiography see biography . |
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"autobiography." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "autobiography." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-X-autobiog.html "autobiography." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-X-autobiog.html |
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autobiography
autobiography See LIFE-HISTORY.
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GORDON MARSHALL. "autobiography." A Dictionary of Sociology. 1998. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. GORDON MARSHALL. "autobiography." A Dictionary of Sociology. 1998. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-autobiography.html GORDON MARSHALL. "autobiography." A Dictionary of Sociology. 1998. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-autobiography.html |
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autobiography
autobiography
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"autobiography." Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes. 2007. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "autobiography." Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes. 2007. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O233-autobiography.html "autobiography." Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes. 2007. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O233-autobiography.html |
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