Singer, Isaac Bashevis - Janet Hadda (essay date 1990)
Janet Hadda (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: Hadda, Janet. “‘Gimpel the Full.’” Prooftexts 10, no. 2 (May 1990): 283-95.
[In the following essay, Hadda applies the clinical methods of “post-Freudian Self-Psychology” to a reading of Singer's short story “Gimpel the Fool.”]
This essay continues my reflection on the use of psychoanalytic theory and technique in literary analysis. Elsewhere, I have discussed both the validity of employing psychoanalytic methodology for literary elucidation and the important insights that can be gained from psychoanalytic thinking. Now, I take my argument further, showing how post-Freudian Self-Psychology, with its different view of development, yields a deeper, fuller, and more compassionate understanding of humanity than traditional Freudian psychoanalysis.1 Furthermore, the theories of Self-Psychology, when exposed to interaction with literature, provide new and more resilient...
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