Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Gross, Gloria Sybil

Title This invisible riot of the mind : Samuel Johnson's psychological theory / Gloria Sybil Gross
Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, ©1992

Copies

Description 1 online resource (x, 198 pages)
Contents 1. "Make Your Boy Tell You His Dreams": The Intrapsychic Life -- 2. Medical Psychology in the Eighteenth Century -- 3. "A Child is Being Beaten": The Early Career -- 4. The Physician of the Soul -- 5. "Wrecked By Success": Approaching Fame and Fortune -- 6. The Uses of Enchantment -- 7. Character and Culture
Summary "In This Invisible Riot of the Mind, Gloria Sybil Gross contends that Samuel Johnson was a pioneer in the development of modern psychological thought, challenging the timeworn, stilted typecasting of Samuel Johnson as the pious Christian moralist. Instead, she argues that Johnson was a daring, at times irreverent, explorer of human nature, who strenuously rejected old relics of sanctimony and repressive authority." "To make her case, Gross draws on a wide range of materials from Johnson's life and works, as well as from eighteenth-century medical psychology. Throughout, she is scrupulous in analyzing Johnson's psychological thought within the cultural idiom that would have been available to him. At the same time, she employs a classical psychoanalytic approach, that seeks to establish a coherent relationship among Johnson's life, his fantasies, and his creative work." "This reading of Johnson reveals the radical direction of his investigations of mental experience, which put him in clear prospect of the basic premises underlying Freudian psychoanalysis. Gross argues that these premises--the principle of psychological determinism, the view of the mind as dictated by forces in conflict, the concept of the dynamic unconscious, and the submerged power of desire in all human activity--pervade Johnson's writings." "Gross demonstrates not only that Johnson can profitably be read in psychoanalytic terms, but that Johnson is a psychological theorist of primary importance. This original and insightful work will be of interest to students and scholars of English literature, eighteenth-century studies, and literature and psychology."--BOOK JACKET
Analysis Authors, English 18th century Psychology
English literature Psychological aspects
Johnson, Samuel 1709-1784 Knowledge Psychology
Johnson, Samuel 1709-1784 Psychology
Psychology in literature
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-193) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve MiAaHDL pda
Print version record
Subject Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784 -- Knowledge -- Psychology
Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784 -- Psychology
SUBJECT Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784 fast
Johnson, Samuel 1709-1784 gnd
Johnson, Samuel. swd
Subject Authors, English -- 18th century -- Psychology
English literature -- Psychological aspects.
Psychology in literature.
Authors, English -- Psychology
English literature -- Psychological aspects
Psychology
Psychology in literature
Psychologie
Psychologie.
Genre/Form Biographies
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 91039482
ISBN 9781512802290
1512802298