Explores the therapeutic uses and effects of writing in a post-Freudian age.

Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self through Writing (Psychoanalysis and Culture)

Literature & Fiction

Harris, Judith

History & Criticism

State University of New York Press

Explores the therapeutic uses and effects of writing in a post-Freudian age. A deeply personal yet universal work, Signifying Pain applies the principles of therapeutic writing to such painful life experiences as mental illness, suicide, racism, domestic abuse, and even genocide. Probing deep into the bedrock of literary imagination, Judith Harris traces the odyssey of a diverse group of writersJohn Keats, Derek Walcott, Jane Kenyon, Michael S. Harper, Robert Lowell, and Ai, as well as student writerswho have used their writing to work through and past such personal traumas. Drawing on her own experience as a poet and teacher, Harris shows how the process can be long and arduous, but that when exercised within the spirit of ones own personal compassion, the results can be limitless. Signifying Pain will be of interest not only to teachers of creative and therapeutic writing, but also to those with a critical interest in autobiographical or confessional writing more generally. “Signifying Pain is one of a growing number of books that explore the parallels between the ‘talking cure’ and the ‘writing cure.’ It is perhaps the most impassioned of these books, written by a poet and scholar with a linguistic brilliance that few can match.” — American Imago “…Harris is a thoughtful and insightful scholar of literature and psychoanalysis, and relates her thoughts on the intersection of them with eloquence. She also has a personal story to tell that supports and furthers her thesis with an immediacy that academic writing, alone, cannot always accomplish.” Clio’s Psyche “…Harris’ book represents a provocative link between the act of creative expression and the signification of pain and healing … Pain is both thematic and universal to Harris, and recovery from pain is one of the primary uses of communication.” Psychoanalysis, Culture &amp; Society “Harris’s style is poetic throughout, and although that is a rewarding feature and one of the book’s strengths, it is her tenacious scholarship and intellectual rigor that will impress readers the most … some individuals like myself will find her work invaluable, not only in work with clients and students, but for themselves. Signifying Pain is an important addition to the literature exploring the concept of writing to heal.” — John F. Evans, Psychiatry: Interpersonal &amp; Biological Processes "This is an extraordinary booksensitive, intelligent, and profound." Marshall W. Alcorn, author of Changing the Subject in English Class: Discourse and the Constructions of Desire "Signifying Pain will play an important role in the growing literature on psychoanalysis in education and in the college classroom, as it both shows and tells what a psychoanalytically informed sensibility can bring to understanding poetry. To be able to signify pain is a human triumph; to write about the signifying is, too." Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, coauthor of Cherishment: A Psychology of the Heart "Judith Harris's Signifying Pain presents a compelling argument for the profound healing that personal writing can provide for psychological suffering. This wise and compassionate book will provide inspiration and guidance not only for teachers and students of writing but also for individuals struggling to find relief from mental anguish or to repair a damaged self." Mark Bracher, editor of the Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society

Atonement: Poems

Poetry

Louisiana State Univ Pr

Atonement is Judith Harris' poetic family album, a scrapbook filled with remembrances of a suburban Jewish upbringing and reflections on motherhood and family life. In its pages are pieces about family members; violin, drawing and horseback riding lessons; fishing; a child's tea party; a babysitter who does a striptease. And there are darker verses about her mother's breakdown and her father's cancer diagnosis. Harris' compact, narrative verses will delight the uninitiated reader as well as seasoned lovers of poetry. In her book Atonement, Judith Harris escorts us through a garden of poetry. Her words are leaves falling in sunlight. Through lyrical shrubbery and vines a memorable elegance emerges from this book. Harris remembers her family and childhood.

LSU Press

The Bad Secret takes readers on a dark yet sometimes comic sojourn through the undercurrents of a life suddenly unmoored by grief, and then to the subsequent rise of the spirit to recovery. Tough-minded and intellectual, Judith Harris's poems are also distinguished by brilliant images close to metaphysical. They reflect on childhood, nature, mental and physical illness, the loss of a mother, and the levity of being simply human. In a voice entirely her own, Harris confronts life's secrets with their hidden meanings inspired by guilt and redemption, offering a music of tenderness and hope. I watch it gutter down, over the pine's edge,over the pink and orange sunset,diving into the abyss,with its wings perpendicular to the ravine.By now, I have broken offfrom the rest, pretending I'm an orphan -- my eyes fixed on the unseeable destructionof my ghost in that suicidal machine. "Hush," I say, as if hatred was a sound,as if I could make the negative positive, but nature itself has given up on the picture of my happy family, and pretends not to look at the box with the rolled-up Kodak filmtumbling over the ledgegathering more weight and velocity.-- "My Father Throws His Camera Down the Grand Canyon, 1968"

The Bad Secret: Poems

The Bad Secret takes readers on a dark yet sometimes comic sojourn through the undercurrents of a life suddenly unmoored by grief, and then to the subsequent rise of the spirit to recovery. Tough-minded and intellectual, Judith Harris's poems are also distinguished by brilliant images close to metaphysical. They reflect on childhood, nature, mental and physical illness, the loss of a mother, and the levity of being simply human. In a voice entirely her own, Harris confronts life's secrets with their hidden meanings inspired by guilt and redemption, offering a music of tenderness and hope. I watch it gutter down, over the pine's edge,over the pink and orange sunset,diving into the abyss,with its wings perpendicular to the ravine.By now, I have broken offfrom the rest, pretending I'm an orphan -- my eyes fixed on the unseeable destruction of my ghost in that suicidal machine. "Hush," I say, as if hatred was a sound,as if I could make the negative positive, but nature itself has given up on the picture of my happy family, and pretends not to look at the box with the rolled-up Kodak filmtumbling over the ledgegathering more weight and velocity. -- "My Father Throws His Camera Down the Grand Canyon, 1968"

Poppies

Washington Writers' Pub. House

Poetry. "Judith Harris creates tableaux of memory and shines a keen light on the particulars of the natural world in these poignant, carefully observed, and scrupulously written poems that ache with mortality. NIGHT GARDEN is an illuminating book."—Edward Hirsch "In her exquisitely disquieting third book, Judith Harris addresses the most ordinary matters and events with a brooding clarity that leaves the reader with shivery recognitions. Memories of youth, stark yet appreciative observations of garden and nature, and the trials of the body are combined to form a complete vision of a life in middle age. She remembers her mother 'tucking children into bed, / stroking a forehead / or a cheek, / then, closing the door / on what will keep.' In NIGHT GARDEN, the daughter now asks and praises what will keep in a world of anguish and struggle. While peering at mortality and tracing evanescence, these poems create the sound of yearning for life, and speak with both modesty and candor. The poetry is a victory over its most imposing adversaries."—Ron Slate

Night Garden

Tiger Bark Press

The Monster in the Closet: A Bumpy Ride Down the Genealogy Trail, by Judith Harris 
 When Rome-based journalist and author Judith Harris set out on her roller coaster ride deep into the past, she had barely a handful of names, and nothing more. She ended up discovering pirates and Puritans, steamy sex exposed in a l7th century court in New England and even a close family connection to Abraham Lincoln. Settlers who arrived from England on a Winthrop ship in 1630, the Harrises were among the founders of Boston, where they ran the first ferryboat service.
 In the early l8th century a descendant became a successful Manhattan manufacturer before setting out for the prairies of Illinois. Thanks to land grant purchases he was a founder of Tremont, a town near Peoria. This prairie pioneer's young grandson built his own airplane and became a barnstormer at county fairs. A pioneer in American aviation, he was a pluri-decorated major who fought the world's first air war in World War One France. In civil life he was a prestigious architect in the steel-rich Cleveland of the Van Sweringen brothers, and helped to build one of America's most handsome suburbs, Shaker Heights. Very little of this fascinating detail was known to anyone in the author's family. But the Age of the Internet has made the search for family roots possible as never before. Volunteers everywhere are scanning distant church records and the minutes of town meetings held centuries ago. Magazines of genealogy churn out advice. Websites introduce complete strangers across continents who may turn out to be distant cousins. Professionals are there to keep the amateur on track. Today's post-pedigree genealogy, which is among the world's top hobbies and the second most popular among all Internet searches, goes beyond the personal. While providing an exciting and personalized gateway into history, the electronic portal has sweep that extends beyond the personal into the shared past.

The Monster in the Closet: A Bumpy Ride Down the Genealogy Trail

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

American History Press

The Poetry of Loss: Romantic and Contemporary Elegies presents a renewed look at elegy as a long-standing tradition in the literature of loss, exploring recent shifts in the continuum of these memorial poems. This volume investigates the tensions arising in elegiac formulations of grief through detailed analyses of seminal poets, including Wordsworth, Keats, and Plath, using psychoanalytic precepts to reconceptualize consolation through poetic strategies of inner representation and what it might mean for personal and collective experiences of loss. Tracing the development of elegy beyond extant readings, this volume addresses contemporary constructs of mourning and their attendant polemics within the wider culture as extensions of elegiac longings and the tendency to refuse consolation and cede to the endlessness of grief. Furthermore, this book concludes that contemporary elegies break with conventions of poetic structure and expression; rather than the poets seeking resolution to grief through compensation, they often find themselves dwelling within the loss rather than externalizing and transcending it. The Poetry of Loss: Romantic and Contemporary Elegies examines these developing psychoanalytic concepts pertaining to a poetics of loss, providing readers with a new appreciation of mourning culture and contemporary attitudes towards grief.

The Poetry of Loss (Routledge Studies in Literature and Health Humanities)

Routledge

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Books by Harris, Judith

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Harris, Judith. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self through Writing (Psychoanalysis and Culture)

Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self through Writing (Psychoanalysis and Culture)

Atonement: Poems

Atonement: Poems

The Bad Secret: Poems

The Bad Secret: Poems

Poppies

Night Garden

The Monster in the Closet: A Bumpy Ride Down the Genealogy Trail

The Poetry of Loss (Routledge Studies in Literature and Health Humanities)