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4 - The walking cure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2009

Celeste Langan
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Summary

THE THERAPEUTIC SUBJECT

I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those, who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration of mankind, and are sinking into an almost epicurean selfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles of domestic attachment and contempt for visionary philosophes. It would do great good, and might do for a part of “The Recluse”, for in my present mood I am wholly against the publication of any small poems.

(S. T. Coleridge to W. Wordsworth, 10 September 1799)

Did Mr Wordsworth really imagine, that his favorite doctrines were likely to gain anything in point of effect or authority by being put in the mouth of a person accustomed to higgle about tape, or brass sleeve-buttons?

(Francis Jeffrey, review of The Excursion)

Perhaps the image of psychological man presented here is the one most appropriate and safe for use in this age. It is the self-image of a travelling man rather than a missionary. Unfortunately for culture and good taste, the salesman always cruelly parodies the preacher–without being able to help doing so, for his cultural history has dictated to the salesman the rhetorical style of the missionary.

(Rieff, “Introduction” to Freud: Therapy and Technique)

When Philip Rieff identifies the subject of Freudian analysis as the “isolated individual and defaulting citizen,” he restores to critical attention the historical relation of the psychoanalytic subject of desire to the political subject of the discourse of rights. By describing the psychoanalytic subject as a “defaulting” citizen, Rieff suggests that the therapeutic subject emerges as a consequence of the hegemony of the private over the public sphere.

Type
Chapter
Information
Romantic Vagrancy
Wordsworth and the Simulation of Freedom
, pp. 225 - 271
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1995

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  • The walking cure
  • Celeste Langan, University of California, Berkeley
  • Book: Romantic Vagrancy
  • Online publication: 19 October 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511553509.006
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  • The walking cure
  • Celeste Langan, University of California, Berkeley
  • Book: Romantic Vagrancy
  • Online publication: 19 October 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511553509.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The walking cure
  • Celeste Langan, University of California, Berkeley
  • Book: Romantic Vagrancy
  • Online publication: 19 October 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511553509.006
Available formats
×