ABSTRACT
I suggest the term ‘the distancing paradox’ to describe the following phenomena: When reading a book, the literary reader believes and feels that he distances himself from his inner struggles and anxieties by visiting the far and imaginary world of the literary scenery and characters. This illusion is accompanied by releasing his defences and allowing himself to identify and get involved in the ‘there and then’ of the story. But the literary story is always the reader’s story. It is about universal human struggles. Through the transference relations to the text’s characters, the reader can, paradoxically, get closer to his inner threats, anxieties and conflicts in the relatively safer literary setting. This provides the reader with an opportunity to work through psychological elements that he had previously found to be too overwhelming to be faced directly. This process is demonstrated in Jorge Semprún’s book Literature or Life (1994) in which he chronicles his memories as a prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp. The memoir cites numerous literary texts to which Semprún turns in moments of great distress, offering him a close enough story to allow for the beginning of some working through and psychological recovery.
