| Course Description |
Fictional autobiography, or autofiction, forces us to question our assumptions about the links
between creativity, truth, and authenticity. Can one invent, or create, one’s own story? It is possible
to write the truth of our selves, by creating it? Intriguingly, a process much like autofictional writing
is at the heart of modern psychoanalytic technique — and research in neuroscience increasingly
suggests that the human brain’s potential to morph and adapt might be instrumental to human
mentation as we know it. Might it be possible, then, to invent our way to a healthier narrative, to a
different life of the mind, or even, perhaps, to a different neural life?
This course explores creativity and self-alteration broadly in three parallel but distinct domains:
autofiction, object-relations psychoanalysis and neuroscience. At one level, this is a course about the
theories of creativity revealed and implied by the peculiar art-form of autofictional writing, by
contemporary psychotherapeutic techniques, and by discoveries pertaining to neural plasticity. At
another level, this is a course about interdisciplinary itself. We will seek to understand when and how
these three disciplines can be used together to create a rich and multilayered understanding of the
problem of human creativity, without resorting to simplistic mergers and crude forms of
reductionism. Literary readings to include Wilfred Bion, Christine Brooke-Rose, Marguerite Duras,
Chris Kraus, Maggie Nelson, Luisa Passerini and others.
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