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Vol. 40 No. 2 (2020)
Revista Portuguesa de Psicanálise

Arts, Literature and Humanities

Morte e Sonhos nas Confissões de Thomas De Quincey

https://doi.org/10.51356/rpp.402a5

Published 2020-12-31

  • Leila Barreira
    • ,
  • Carlos Farate
    • ,
  • Henrique Vicente

Leila Barreira
Instituto Superior Miguel Torga

Carlos Farate
Portuguese Psychoanalysis Society

Henrique Vicente
Instituto Superior Miguel Torga

Abstract

Confessions of an English Opium Eater is a literary work written by Thomas De Quincey and published in book format in the year 1822, about the experience of opium addiction and its influence on dreams. This paper explores the connection between the author’s autobiographical accounts exposed in this work, Freud’s concepts of death drive and repetition compulsion, and Bion’s conceptualization of alpha-dream-work.

This paper is divided into three segments: collection of biographical data of the author, both through the work under dissection and other biographical works; exploration and analysis of the confessional narrative; finally, the association of biographical data and the analysis of the work with the aforementioned psychoanalytic concepts.

Several indications were found, in the author’s words, of a psychic functioning under the influence of the death drive, in which the repetition compulsion operates by reenacting the traumatic experience of the original loss. The fictional dreamlike activity constitutes a mythical attempt, secondarily symbolized in alpha-dream-work mode, to psychically elaborate past recurrent traumatic experience. Thomas De Quincey’s dreams do, in fact, seem to reenact the original trauma in a way that is sometimes innovative, and constitute, from this point of view, an intuitive fictional attempt to psychically elaborate non-mentalized elements. Through the psychodynamic analysis of an autobiographical narrative almost two hundred years old, in a sense close to free association in an analytical setting, it was possible to explore the mental functioning of a simultaneously creative and addictive personality.

Keywords

Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Thomas De Quincey, Dreams, Death drive, Repetition compulsion, Alpha Dream Work

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Author Biography

Leila Barreira

Mestre em Psicologia Clínica, ramo de especialização em Psicoterapia Psicodinâmica, Instituto Superior Miguel Torga (ISMT).

Carlos Farate

Psiquiatra e Psicanalista. Professor Associado do Instituto Superior Miguel Torga. Membro Titular, com funções didáticas, da Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicanálise (SPP) e da Associação Internacional de Psicanálise (IPA). Membro da Comissão de Ensino da SPP. Diretor da Revista Portuguesa de Psicanálise.

Henrique Vicente

Psicólogo Clínico e Psicoterapeuta. Professor Auxiliar convidado do Instituto Superior Miguel Torga (ISMT). Investigador do Centro de Estudos da População, Economia e Sociedade (CEPESE).

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