Epistemologies of the particular: psychoanalysis and Tessa Hadley’s An Abduction

Rosemary Rizq

doi:10.1080/14753634.2021.2003718

Epistemologies of the particular: psychoanalysis and Tessa Hadley’s An Abduction

Rosemary Rizq

School of Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In Tessa Hadley’s (2012) short story An Abduction, a prototypical psychoanalytic primal scene is deployed to convey the main character’s emotional journey from innocence to experience. Drawing on the Aristotelian notion of recognition and the work of the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, I develop a reading of Hadley’s story that explores the notion of cataleptic knowledge, or knowledge that is acquired through emotional suffering. I suggest that Hadley’s story illuminates emotional experience by conveying vividly to the reader what Jane’s experience is ‘like’, and conclude by discussing some of the epistemological challenges presented by the psychoanalytic case history that similarly aims to represent what psychoanalytic work is ‘like’

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1-17
Number of pages	17
Journal	Psychodynamic Practice
Volume	28
Issue number	1
Early online date	11 Nov 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/14753634.2021.2003718 https://doi.org/10.1080/14753634.2021.2003718
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 11 Nov 2021

Keywords

Clinical Psychology

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Cite this

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