Jeffrey Berman | |
---|---|
Born | January 16, 1945 |
Occupation(s) | Literary scholar, author, and editor |
Academic background | |
Education | B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in English Literature |
Alma mater | State University of New York at Buffalo Cornell University |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University at Albany,SUNY |
Jeffrey Berman is a literary scholar,author,and editor. He is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the University at Albany,SUNY, [1] He is the author or co-author of over twenty books and one hundred and fifty articles,book chapters,and reviews,including Dying to Teach:A Memoir of Love,Loss,and Learning,and Cutting and the Pedagogy of Self-Disclosure. His research interests include literature and psychoanalysis,trauma theory,love and loss,death education,and self-disclosure pedagogy. [2]
Berman holds editorial appointments on several journals,including Psyart,and American Imago . [3] He was the Series Editor for Literature and Psychoanalysis for New York University Press from 1991 to 1997. He served on the editorial board of SUNY State University of New York Press from 1995 to 2001. [2]
Berman graduated with a B.A. in English literature from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1967. He then enrolled at Cornell University to pursue an M.A. in English literature,and later completed his Ph.D. there in 1971. [4] Subsequently,he became a Research Scholar at the training institute of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis from 1980 until 1983.
Berman started his academic career at Cornell University as a Teaching Fellow in 1968. This was followed by an appointment as a lecturer in English. He held an appointment as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Albany in 1973,was promoted to associate professor in 1979,and became a professor in 1988. [5] As of 2007,he is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the University at Albany,SUNY. [6]
Berman's research works span the fields of literature and psychoanalysis,with a particular focus on the pedagogy of self-disclosure,suicide,trauma,grief,love,and loss,as well as the twentieth century novels. [7]
Berman has taught numerous courses on love and loss,and recovery and encouraged students to write about their losses. Having characterized the current culture as death denying,he established a classroom environment in which students are allowed to write about their experiences. In his article The Talking Cure and the Writing Cure, he discussed how writing about hopelessness,eating disorders,and suicide could aid students in developing their academic and psychological breakthroughs as well as their ability to recognize conflicts and solve them. [8] In addition to that,he suggested that if instructors understood that death education is primarily about life education,they would be more inclined to permit personal discussions about death in the classroom. [9]
Berman also investigated if literature could work as a trigger and if a student's identification with a sick or dying character in a story is so strong that it jeopardizes his or her health. According to his research,teachers need to develop a responsible pedagogy of risk that is aimed at enabling students to deal with distressing or shameful subjects while keeping them from being anxious,depressed,or suicidal. [10] Later,his research work,Surviving Literary Suicide, examined how suicide is portrayed in the works of six authors,four of whom ultimately committed suicide. In each instance,he analyzed the writer's developing attitude toward suicide,critics' inclination to romanticize fictional suicide,and the influence of writing about suicide on the artist's own life. [11]
Berman's works have provided a psychoanalytic perspective on twentieth century novels. In his 1985 book The Talking Cure:Literary Representations of Psychoanalysis,he showed how Philip Roth's discussion of psychoanalysis in Portnoy’s Complaint and My Life as a Man was based on his own analysis with Hans J. Kleinschmidt,who had written about Roth without permission. [12]
Berman addressed the literary and cultural analysis of caregiving in the arts in his writings by focusing on fictional stories like The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy,and memoirs such as Mary Gordon's Circling My Mother,and Ending Ageism. Elaborating on the reasons for the scholarly silence on the art of caregiving,he indicated that either caregivers are too exhausted to write about their experiences,or refuse to reflect on the caregiving experience. In a Times Union interview,he stated that "artistic works of film and literature can often take you to dark places and really show what caregivers are thinking and feeling". [5] His research shows that psychoanalysis can not only aid in our comprehension and management of difficult situations,but it also teaches us that we are accountable for our actions and not our ideas or dreams. [13]
Berman also researched how other memoirists handle the loss of a spouse,particularly by identifying the theme of love and loss in the fictional and nonfiction writings of five memoirists,including C.S. Lewis,and John Bayley. Furthermore,his work,which draws on psychoanalysis,indicated that the memoirists not only paid tribute to their spouses' memories,but also dealt with the terrible feelings associated with losing the person who meant the most to them with writing. [14] Using his personal example,he addressed how,while trying to comprehend his own feelings,he continued to speak about his first wife,Barbara,to his students,and wrote a book about her. This made him disagree with Freud's view on loss and sorrow,according to which mourning must come to a spontaneous end. He believes that everyone has a different foci for love and should not be made to let go. [15] He remarried in 2011.
Matthew Broome in Times Higher Education called Berman's Mad Muse:The Mental Illness Memoir in a Writer’s Life and Work a "fascinating book," one that "masterfully brings together the writings of seven memoirists of mental illness,and lets the complexity,contrasts and inconsistencies,in their life,work and illnesses,remain." [16]
Sam Meekings noted that Berman's Writing Widowhood:The Landscapes of Bereavement "makes an important contribution to the field in that it defines and examines a new genre:'the widowhood memoir'" due to its complete focus on female authors. [17]
Daniel W. Ross commended the use of psychoanalysis in his review of Berman's book,The Talking Cure:Literary Representations of Psychoanalysis, and said,"What makes this book especially valuable is the thoroughness with which Berman examines each writer's work." [18]
Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind,and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud,whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedia article,he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes,the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance,the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung),although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers,such as Erich Fromm,Karen Horney,and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis,a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche,through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst,and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
Psychoanalytic literary criticism is literary criticism or literary theory that,in method,concept,or form,is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.
The State University of New York at Albany,commonly referred to as the University at Albany,UAlbany or SUNY Albany,is a public research university with campuses in Albany,Rensselaer,and Guilderland,New York. Founded in 1844,it is one of four "university centers" of the State University of New York (SUNY) system.
Jane Anne Gallop is an American professor who since 1992 has served as Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,where she has taught since 1990.
Richard A. Isay was an American psychiatrist,psychoanalyst,author and gay activist. He was a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and a faculty member of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Isay is considered a pioneer who changed the way that psychoanalysts view homosexuality.
Mordechai Geldman was an Israeli poet,non-fiction writer,artist,art critic and curator,and psychologist. His poems were translated into many languages,including the collection Years I Walked at Your Side published in 2018 by SUNY Press. He received awards including the Bialik Prize for his life achievements.
Adam Phillips is a British psychoanalytic psychotherapist and essayist.
Shoshana Felman is an American literary critic and current Woodruff Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Emory University. She was on the faculty of Yale University from 1970 to 2004,where in 1986 she was awarded the Thomas E. Donnelly Professorship of French and Comparative Literature. She specializes in 19th and 20th century French literature,psychoanalysis,trauma and testimony,and law and literature. Felman earned her Ph.D. at the University of Grenoble in France in 1970.
Juan-David Nasio,is an Argentinian psychiatrist,psychoanalyst and writer. He is one of the founders of Séminaires Psychanalytiques de Paris.
Daniel R. Schwarz is Frederick J. Whiton Professor of English Literature and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University,where he has taught since 1968. He is the author of eighteen significant books and numerous articles,many of which have appeared in prestigious journals and collections of essays. His recent book is Endtimes? Crises and Turmoil at theNew York Times:1999-2009 (2012) speaks to both scholarly and general audiences. He has directed nine NEH seminars and has lectured widely in the United States and abroad,including a number of lecture tours under the auspices of the academic programs of the USIS and the State Department. He was a founding member of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature and served as its President from 1990 to 1991. He has held three endowed visiting professorships. He was a guest Fellow for short periods at Oxford (Brasenose) and Cambridge (Girton) in the UK. He has been the President of the Cornell Phi Beta Kappa chapter since 2009.
A lay analysis is a psychoanalysis performed by someone who is not a physician;that person was designated a lay analyst.
Brenda Webster is an American writer,critic and translator. She is the author of five novels,including The Beheading Game (2006) and Vienna Triangle (2009),which appeared on bestseller lists in both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times. Her most recent novel,After Auschwitz:A Love Story,published in 2013,is a story of an elderly man dealing with the early stages of dementia as he struggles to hold on to his memories and cope with his changing relationship to his wife.
Deborah P. Britzman is a professor and a practicing psychoanalyst at York University. Britzman's research connects psychoanalysis with contemporary pedagogy,teacher education,social inequality,problems of intolerance and historical crisis.
Hermine Hug-Hellmuth was an Austrian psychoanalyst. She is regarded as the first psychoanalyst practicing with children and the first to conceptualize the technique of psychoanalysing children.
Norman N. Holland was an American literary critic and Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Emeritus at the University of Florida.
Jon Mills is a Canadian philosopher,psychoanalyst,and clinical psychologist. His principle theoretical contributions have been in the philosophy of the unconscious,a critique of psychoanalysis,philosophical psychology,value inquiry,and the philosophy of culture. His clinical contributions are in the areas of attachment pathology,trauma,psychosis,and psychic structure.
William Egginton is a literary critic and philosopher. He has written extensively on a broad range of subjects,including theatricality,fictionality,literary criticism,psychoanalysis and ethics,religious moderation,and theories of mediation.
Bruce Fink is an American Lacanian psychoanalyst and a major translator of Jacques Lacan. He is the author of numerous books on Lacan and Lacanian psychoanalysis,prominent among which are Lacan to the Letter:Reading Écrits Closely,The Lacanian Subject:Between Language and Jouissance (1995),Lacan on Love:An Exploration of Lacan's Seminar VIII and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis:Theory and Technique.
Alan Jeffrey Lizotte is an American criminologist and Distinguished Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)