Word: woolf
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...power and that their extraordinary capabilities can act as a form of therapy. In A Beautiful Mind, for instance, Nash claims to “solve” his schizophrenia with the same part of his brain that he uses to solve mathematical puzzles. In her psychoanalysis of Virginia Woolf, Dalsimer provides a thoughtful, elegant exploration of the idea that a creative outlet can enable an artist to escape her inner life...
...Becoming a Writer, Dalsimer constructs a psychological portrait of Virgina Woolf by analyzing Woolf’s own work, fictional and non-fictional, and inferring Woolf’s emotional state from her writings. In weaving together analysis of Woolf’s major novels, To The Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, with excerpts from Woolf’s letters and diaries in which she describes her feelings at the time that she was writing, Dalsimer provides a solid framework for her subtle literary inferences. She draws on an impressive compilation of Woolf’s writings, from the weekly newspaper...
Dalsimer chooses to focus her psychoanalysis specifically on Woolf’s adolescence, when Woolf first decided to become a professional writer. This choice is predicated on two assumptions which are central to the picture of Woolf that emerges from Dalsimer’s analysis: First, that the manic-depressive disorder that afflicted Woolf for most of her life, ultimately leading her to suicide, was primarily formed by the traumatic losses she suffered at a young age. Woolf’s mother died when she was 13. Before she reached age 25, she had lost her sister, father and brother...
...second major assumption that underlies Dalsimer’s account is the claim that Woolf’s decision to become an author is central to her psychological development. Dalsimer sees Woolf’s love affair with books as an internal drive that Woolf is incapable of controlling. In Dalsimer’s analysis, Woolf’s voracious desire to read as a child and her subsequent decision to become a writer are “medicine” for Woolf’s depression. Woolf reads to distract herself from the pain she feels and she writes...
...Dalsimer’s construction, Woolf’s decision to become an author functions as a form of therapy. By finishing To The Lighthouse, for example, Woolf is finally able, in her own words, to stop “obsessing” over her mother’s death. In this way, Becoming a Writer gives credence to the idea that extraordinary talent can be an effective remedy for mental disease...