The Shell and the Kernel

Abraham and Torok advocate a form of psychoanalysis that insists on the particularity of any individual's life story, the specificity of texts and the singularity of historical situations. In what is both a critique and an extension of Freud, they develop interpretive strategies with implications for clinicians, literary theorists, feminists, philosophers and all others interested in the uses and limits of psychoanalysis. Central to their approach is a general theory of psychic concealment, a poetics of hiding. Whether in a clinical setting or a literary text, they search out the unspeakable secret as a symptom of devastating trauma revealed only in linguistic or behavioural encodings. Their view of trauma provides the linchpin for new psychic and linguistic structures such as the "transgenerational phantom", an undisclosed family secret handed down to an unwitting descendant, and the intrapsychic secret or "crypt" which entombs an unspeakable but consummated desire. Throughout, Abraham and Torok seek to restore communication with those intimate recesses of the mind which are, for one reason or another, denied expression. The essays in this volume include four previously uncollected works by Maria Torok. Nicholas Rand supplies an introductory essay and commentary throughout.