Jungian dream analysis and the prose of Jorge Luis Borges
Brant, Herbert John
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/21164
Description
Title
Jungian dream analysis and the prose of Jorge Luis Borges
Author(s)
Brant, Herbert John
Issue Date
1990
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Garfield, Evelyn Picon
Department of Study
Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Discipline
Spanish
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, Latin American
Psychology, General
Language
eng
Abstract
The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it attempts to provide the basis for an approach to literature according to the psychological theories of Carl Gustav Jung. Second, because Borgesian criticism lacks a psychological dimension, the thesis attempts to fill the gap by furnishing a psychological study of three collections of short stories by Borges: Historia universal de la infamia, Ficciones, and El libro de arena.
In order to apply specifically psychological theories to work of art, the study investigates three fundamental points of convergence between psychology and literature. The first lies in the creativity of the unconscious mind, the source of both dreams and artworks. The second point is that the unconscious mind reveals itself both in dreams and works of art by means of symbols, the only mode of expression available to it. The purpose of dreams and art is the third point of comparison.
In Borges' initial dream-texts, contained in Historia universal de la infamia, images of the Shadow archetype predominate in every dream-text. The Shadow is defined as the inferior, unadapted, amoral, darker side of the psyche.
In Ficciones, the stories reveal a deeper, more intense archetype, the Self. The Self is identified as the central, unifying archetype which represents the center of personality, encompassing both consciousness and the unconscious mind. Various Self manifestations in the stories are explored: the union of opposites; the unseen organizational order of the universe; geometric figures; and the famous Borgesian labyrinth, analogous to the compensatory Jungian mandala, the universal symbolic representation of the Self.
In Borges' final collection of stories, El libro de arena, the author retraces some of this steps and reworks some of the Shadow themes and Self themes explored in his earlier collections. However, these psychically less satisfactory reworkings of earlier themes do not prepare the dreamer for a richer life experience, but rather for the transformation from life to death. Four dream-texts, in which the preparation for death is the central feature, are discussed in detail. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)
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