Anti-psychiatry and literature : a Laingian analysis of Balzac's Louis Lambert, Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir, the Goncourts' Renée Mauperin, and Zola's L'Oeuvre

Abstract

This thesis centres on the intersection between four French nineteenth-century novels and the writings of the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, work which appeared in the 1960's and early 1970's and which has been given the label 'anti-psychiatric' because of its hostility to established psychiatric practices. The aims of this thesis are, firstly, to demonstrate that a congruence of concerns exists between the two domains in spite of the wide distance which may seem to separate them, and, secondly, to examine the extent to which Laingian anti-psychiatry may be used as an analytical framework within which to examine the de-motivated turning point of each novel - for example, why Julien Sorel attempts to kill Madame de Renal in Le Rouge et le Noir or why Claude Lantier commits suicide in Zola's L 'CEuvre. In part one, 1 lay out the founding principles of the anti-psychiatry movement as well as its many shortcomings, focussing both on Laing's writings and his involvement with the ultimately ill-fated anti-psychiatric therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall in London. I argue that although anti-psychiatric practice has today fallen into disrepute among mainstream psychiatric clinicians - in part because of the failings of Kingsley Hall - it nonetheless offers the critic a fruitful if vastly under-utilised interpretative framework within which to analyse literary texts. In the first chapter of part II, I demonstrate the relevance of anti-psychiatric theory to the four novels under consideration through analysing each novel's de-motivated turning point. I argue that the congruence of concerns shared by anti-psychiatry and the four novels centres on foregrounding notions of authenticity and on questioning received views of madness. I also outline in the conclusion to part II chapter one a series of questions which ask why the main protagonist of each novel, much like the schizophrenic as described by Laing, acts in a manner which is seemingly inexplicable and contrary to their self-interest, particularly at the moment in the text when it is least expected or least 'vraisemblable'. In the second chapter of part II, I review the approaches other critics have taken to these questions, enabling me to situate my proposed Laingian anti-psychiatric approach within the critical field. In the three chapters which make up part III, I borrow concepts proposed by Laing in his 1960 best-selling ontology of schizophrenia The Divided Self in order to analyse the existential positions of the four protagonists. I adopt a diachronic approach, analysing in chapters one and two the period leading up to their unexplained and unexpected actions. I demonstrate that the mental processes undergone by a schizophrenic - such as 'depersonalisation' and 'disembodiment' - each have their counterparts in the protagonists' lives, on both a literal and a figurative level. In the third chapter of part III, I extend this Laingian analysis to include the portion of the novels subsequent to their apparently irrational actions. I show that these actions end up enabling the protagonists to gain access to a privileged, quasi-messianic mode of existence similar to that which anti-psychiatrists believed their patients were able to reach as a result of their schizophrenic condition. I argue, in conclusion therefore, that the four protagonists can be seen as anticipating and realising within a fictional context the goals of Laingian anti-psychiatric therapy which its practitioners failed to translate into clinical reality at, for example, Kingsley Hall.