"I was a problem for which there was no solution."—Oscar Wilde, 1897 During his lifetime Oscar Wilde was praised as a brilliant playwright, novelist, and conversationalist and stigmatized as a dangerous seducer of youth. Ironically, he is perhaps best remembered now for the bravery he exhibited in 1895 during his trial in England for homosexual offenses. In the first full-length psychoanalytic biography of Wilde, Melissa Knox explores the link between little-known childhood events and figures in his life and his psychological development to explain both Wilde's creativity and his self-destructive heroism. Drawing on new information as well as on recent biographies and studies, Knox sketches the important characters in Wilde's formative years: an adoring and demanding mother, a father whose scandalous life degraded the family, and a beloved sister who died when Oscar was eleven. She describes Wilde's first daring efforts as a young man to challenge British mores; his lifelong battle with his fears of the syphilis he reportedly contracted at Oxford; his marriage and two children; his tempestuous and flamboyant love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father, the marquess of Queensberry, accused Wilde of homosexual practices; Wilde's libel suit against the marquess, subsequent trial, and two-year imprisonment; and his last years in exile, disgrace, and ill health. Uncovering the unconscious motivations beneath Wilde's surface bravado, Knox is able to explain his often puzzling actions. She also offers new interpretations of some of his works, from Salome, which she calls Wilde's most autobiographical work, to The Importance of Being Earnest, in which she sees Wilde artistically embracing his inability to resolve conflicts, to De Profundis, his attempt to salvage himself as a man and an artist.

Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide

Biographies & Memoirs

Knox, Melissa

Arts & Literature

Yale University Press

In 1891, Oscar Wilde defined 'the highest criticism' as 'the record of one's own soul, and insisted that only by 'intensifying his own personality' could the critic interpret the personality and work of others. This book explores what Wilde meant by that statement, arguing that it provides the best standard for judging literary criticism about Wilde a century after his death. Melissa Knox examines a range of Wilde criticism in English -- including the work of Lawrence Danson, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Ed Cohen, and Julia Prewitt Brown. Applying Wilde's standards to his critics, Knox discovers that the best of them take to heart Wilde's idea of the aim of criticism -- 'to see the object as in itself it really is not.' By this, Wilde appreciates Walter Pater's profound observation that everyone sees through a 'thick wall of personality' and that, therefore, objectivity as conceived by Matthew Arnold does not exist. Admiring Pater, Wilde became a prophet for Freud, his exact contemporary. Their intellectual sympathies, made obvious in Knox's exegesis, help to make the case for Wilde as a modern, not a Victorian. Melissa Knox's book Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide was published in 1994. She teaches at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

Oscar Wilde in the 1990s: The Critic as Creator (Literary Criticism in Perspective, 53)

Camden House

Psychoanalysis was her family's religion instead of wafers and wine, there were Seconals, Nembutals, and gin. Baptized into the faith at fourteen, Melissa Knox endured her analyst's praise of her childlike, victimized mother who leaned too close, ate off Melissa's plate, and thought pedophile meant silly person. Gaslighted with the notions that she'd seduced her father, failed to masturbate, and betrayed her mother, Melissa shouldered the blame. Her story of a family pulled into and torn apart by psychoanalysis exposes the abuse inherent in its authoritarianism as Melissa learns, with a startling sense of humor and admirable chagrin, that divorcing Mom is sometimes the least crazy thing to do.

Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Cynren Press

Psychoanalysis was her family's religion—instead of wafers and wine, there were Seconals, Nembutals, and gin. Baptized into the faith at fourteen, Melissa Knox endured her analyst's praise of her childlike, victimized mother—who leaned too close, ate off Melissa's plate, and thought "pedophile" meant "silly person." Gaslighted with the notions that she'd seduced her father, failed to masturbate, and betrayed her mother, Melissa shouldered the blame. Her story of a family pulled into and torn apart by psychoanalysis exposes the abuse inherent in its authoritarianism as Melissa learns, with a startling sense of humor and admirable chagrin, that divorcing Mom is sometimes the least crazy thing to do.Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysisby Melissa KnoxCynren Press book review by Barbara Bamberger Scott "She wanted me slaughtered…I imagined her drooling at the thought."With a hateful, uncaring mother, an alcoholic father, and a drug-addicted brother, it was inevitable that author Knox would end up in therapy. From her early teens through college, she talked regularly to a Freudian psychoanalyst, Dr. Sternbach, a Jew who had narrowly escaped the Holocaust. He rarely offered sympathy. When she became bulimic as a depressed young teen, he ordered her to stop vomiting; he told her repeatedly that she was masochistic and an exhibitionist. He asked her lurid questions about her sexual feelings, indicating a more than professional interest. He divulged her secrets to others while demanding that she say nothing about their sessions. And, possibly because her deranged, narcissistic mother was the one paying his fees, he sided with Mom. Near the end of his life, after she had thoroughly dispelled his influence, Sternbach insulted his former patient’s new husband. Ultimately, Knox was able to “divorce” both her mother and her therapist.Knox’s memories present in clear, intelligent prose the disturbing coming-of-age saga of an adolescent girl trying desperately to gain the respect from others that leads to self-respect, generally with no success. Hers is a painful chronicle whose humor is mostly in the form of irony and whose bright moments of respite or hopefulness are rare. The greatest relief comes at the end of the book when she reveals that, with a loving spouse and some tempered insights and advice from close friends and relatives, Knox has grown up and out of the trap of her emotionally scarring youth. Her book is also a studious examination, and rejection, of Freudian psychoanalysis, now discredited and no longer taught. Knox’s audience will include those who have lived with family dysfunction and grown beyond it, and those who, considering therapy, may wish to choose carefully among the varieties now offered.RECOMMENDED by the US ReviewDivorcing Mom is a story of horrifying and at times hilarious family dysfunction, compounded by the browbeating Freudian analyst whom Knox’s mother hired to “help” her. The pages seem to turn by themselves in this engrossing and courageous memoir, and we are left marveling at Knox’s strength of character and artistic gifts in tracing her family’s psychic trajectory from one generation to the next. Knox writes with the voice and vision that she was taught to discredit and ignore from an early age, and her book is a remarkable achievement, exploring family secrets and addressing disturbing issues of power differentials—between parent and child, doctor and patient, and men and women. Her intelligence, insight, and refreshing sense of humor are cause for celebration. —Helen Fremont, author of After Long Silence

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Books by Knox, Melissa

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

Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide

Oscar Wilde in the 1990s: The Critic as Creator (Literary Criticism in Perspective, 53)

Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis

Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis