Murdoch «vs.» Freud: A Freudian Look at an Anti-Freudian

by Jack Turner

This first book-length discussion of the Iris Murdoch-Sigmund Freud connection shows her resistance to his theories to be based on her essential mysticism, her participation in an anti-rationalist trend ("New Age"), and her apparent need both to venerate and figuratively castrate her father. Her feud with Freud leads to a dialectic between religion and science in her novels, with Freud her favorite straw man, even while she employs his ideas to predict and provoke desired reader responses. Freud is a threatening father figure to Murdoch, though she learned important parts of her discourse from him. Thus, the theories of Jacques Lacan are also important to a complete analysis and understanding of Murdoch's philosophy and fiction. A detailed look at the situation offers a new hermeneutic for reading Murdoch, a great but didactic writer.

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1993