Mazoyer, Anne-Valérie
The Masochism at Work in the Literary Writing of Anaïs Nin and in Adolescent Passion
- 2014.
94
Feminine creation and passion have subjective and sublimatory experiences in common, allowing us to question the link between masochism and the feminine. Anaïs Nin, both in her life and in her work, brings together a theater of masculine characters with differentiated roles, who are supposed to meet specific functions: the seductive and creative lover (Miller); the soothing and protective husband (Hugh); the overbearing psychoanalyst (Allendy) or the savior psychoanalyst (Rank); and the incestuous father. Her inexhaustible and masochistic research on sexual excitement and tempestuous passions certainly promoted her writing but damaged her sublimation capacities. After a detour via this scandalous and outrageous author, we suggest analyzing the significance of passion in adolescence by means of the following question asked during an interview: how do you deal with the emptiness forced upon you by the absence of the other, the loved one? This question enables us to consider the stakes at play in passionate love that are linked to writing (including its modern forms such as SMS) as being an essential way of developing the feminine in adolescence.