ABSTRACT
Throughout the book, the psychoanalytic exploration of the literary texts reveals the potentially significant transformative power of the reading experience. The movement between the different forms and levels of identification as the vivid platform for the creation of the reader’s experience offers a kind of practice in laboratory conditions that enables the mind to ‘train’ in the conduct of relations, psychic solutions and existential coping, whereas in the circumstances of normal life there isn’t the opportunity for such free movement.
‘The transitional subject of reading’ can freely ‘use the literary object’ in ways impossible in real life. At the same time the reader is afforded the chance to look into the ‘other’ from various new vantage points, thus promoting different perspectives of the other. Altogether, this process broadens insight, reflexivity, as well as concern, empathy and ethical progress. Also described are the reader’s art of mourning, his special journey through time and his use of reading as inspiration. The grammar and narrative of the literary text pave the way toward inspiration – allowing the reader to travel beyond his usual self and then back again – returning the same and yet somewhat different.
