Freud in Oz: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Childrens Literature

(Paperback)

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Children's literature has spent decades on the psychiatrist's couch, submitting to psychoanalysis by scores of scholars and popular writers alike. Freud in Oz turns the tables, suggesting that psychoanalysts owe a significant and largely unacknowledged debt to books ostensibly written for children. In fact, Kenneth B. Kidd argues, children's literature and psychoanalysis have influenced and interacted with each other since Freud published his first case studies. In Freud in Oz, Kidd shows how psychoanalysis developed in part through its engagement with children's literature, which it used to articulate and dramatize its themes and methods, turning first to folklore and fairy tales, then to materials from psychoanalysis of children, and thence to children's literary texts, especially such classic fantasies as Peter Pan and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Reviews

"This canny and original study is far more searching, wide-ranging, and fun than its modest title suggests. Kenneth B. Kidd not only analyzes but somehow evokes for us the way the child and stories told about her drift through our dreams, literature, and culture, giving form to our finest aspirations and darkest nightmares. An essential, generous, deeply-informed book." James Kincaid, University of Southern California

Author Bio

Kenneth B. Kidd is associate professor of English and associate director of the Center for Childrens Literature and Culture at the University of Florida. He is the author of Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale (Minnesota, 2004).