Overview

"In a number of articles I published when I began my training as a psychoanalyst at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, now the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, I became intrigued by James Joyce's concern with mothers and maternal images. I found that writing ""Stephen's Mothers in Ulysses"" crystallized my sense that amor matris, to use Stephen Dedalus's phrase, the ambiguous ""mother love"" (a mother's love for her son or a son's love for his mother or both at once), was a way into many of the mysterious, unfathomed, even unfathomable passages in Ulysses. As I continued my training, while simultaneously teaching English literature at San Francisco State, I became more and more aware that the way I enjoyed teaching--the close, systematic textual analysis of literature, explication de texte--was dovetailing with the ways I was learning to listen to, and to muse about, my patients. In effect, I was learning that by focusing on the inner lives of patients and literary characters--on what Paul Schwaber in his psychoanalytic reading of Ulysses, The Cast of Characters (1999), calls ""minds in action""--I was doing much the same thing. I was trying to pay the closest attention to the repeated thoughts, feelings, images, and associations that make human beings unique."

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Anyone looking for a new path into the brilliant and often impenetrable literary world of James Joyce needs to read Michael Zimmerman's beautifully written book, Tyrants of the Heart. Drawing upon his years of experience as both an English professor and a psychoanalyst, Zimmerman uncovers conflicts in Joyce's characters (and indirectly in Joyce) that are inherent in love between a son and mother and that have not been addressed before. His book is an extraordinarily rich, thought-provoking analysis of Joyce's use of maternal images as Joyce explored what he called the individuating rhythm of a character's life. And in a delightfully creative and humorous Cadenza (a takeoff of a scene in Ulysses), Zimmerman depicts a literary discussion between himself, a few characters in Joyce's novels, and some Dublin literary figures, in which the author convincingly defends his psychoanalytic examination of recurrent themes, phrases and images in Joyce's writing. Diane E. Donnelly, Ph.D., Chair, Faculty Appointment Subcommittee, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. In Tyrants of the Heart, Michael Zimmerman brilliantly illuminates the interplay of self and other, parent and child, male and female as he explores the individuating rhythms of James Joyce's characters. Oscillations between deadness and vitality emerge as Zimmerman plumbs the virgin womb of the imagination where the word was made flesh. From the Holy Ghost sitting in the ink bottle, we are given a luminous portrait of Joyce's creativity and the dark underside of consciousness from which all wholeness and beauty arise. Alice A. Jones, M.D., Faculty member, Supervising & Training Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.

Anyone looking for a new path into the brilliant and often impenetrable literary world of James Joyce needs to read Michael Zimmerman's beautifully written book, Tyrants of the Heart. Drawing upon his years of experience as both an English professor and a psychoanalyst, Zimmerman uncovers conflicts in Joyce's characters (and indirectly in Joyce) that are inherent in love between a son and mother and that have not been addressed before. His book is an extraordinarily rich, thought-provoking analysis of Joyce's use of maternal images as Joyce explored what he called the individuating rhythm of a character's life. And in a delightfully creative and humorous Cadenza (a takeoff of a scene in Ulysses), Zimmerman depicts a literary discussion between himself, a few characters in Joyce's novels, and some Dublin literary figures, in which the author convincingly defends his psychoanalytic examination of recurrent themes, phrases and images in Joyce's writing. Diane E. Donnelly, Ph.D., Chair, Faculty Appointment Subcommittee, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.In Tyrants of the Heart, Michael Zimmerman brilliantly illuminates the interplay of self and other, parent and child, male and female as he explores the individuating rhythms of James Joyce's characters. Oscillations between deadness and vitality emerge as Zimmerman plumbs the virgin womb of the imagination where the word was made flesh. From the Holy Ghost sitting in the ink bottle, we are given a luminous portrait of Joyce's creativity and the dark underside of consciousness from which all wholeness and beauty arise. Alice A. Jones, M.D., Faculty member, Supervising & Training Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.

"Anyone looking for a new path into the brilliant and often impenetrable literary world of James Joyce needs to read Michael Zimmerman's beautifully written book, Tyrants of the Heart. Drawing upon his years of experience as both an English professor and a psychoanalyst, Zimmerman uncovers conflicts in Joyce's characters (and indirectly in Joyce) that are inherent in love between a son and mother and that have not been addressed before. His book is an extraordinarily rich, thought-provoking analysis of Joyce's use of maternal images as Joyce explored what he called the ""individuating rhythm"" of a character's life. And in a delightfully creative and humorous ""Cadenza"" (a takeoff of a scene in Ulysses), Zimmerman depicts a literary discussion between himself, a few characters in Joyce's novels, and some Dublin literary figures, in which the author convincingly defends his psychoanalytic examination of recurrent themes, phrases and images in Joyce's writing. Diane E. Donnelly, Ph.D., Chair, Faculty Appointment Subcommittee, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. In Tyrants of the Heart, Michael Zimmerman brilliantly illuminates the interplay of self and other, parent and child, male and female as he explores the ""individuating rhythms"" of James Joyce's characters. Oscillations between deadness and vitality emerge as Zimmerman plumbs ""the virgin womb of the imagination where the word was made flesh."" From ""the Holy Ghost sitting in the ink bottle,"" we are given a luminous portrait of Joyce's creativity and the ""dark underside of consciousness"" from which all wholeness and beauty arise. Alice A. Jones, M.D., Faculty member, Supervising & Training Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis."

Author Information

Michael Zimmerman received his BA from Columbia College and his MA and PhD from Columbia University. He has been practicing psychoanalysis for over 20 years in Berkeley after receiving his psychoanalytic training from the San Francisco Center of Psychoanalysis (formerly the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute). Simultaneously, he taught modern English literature at the University of California at Berkeley and at San Francisco State University where he is an emeritus professor of English. Currently, he is professor of English at the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco. In Tyrants of the Heart, he has enjoyed synthesizing his life-long interest in James Joyce, whose work he has taught extensively, and his fascination with the various kinds of psychoanalysis being practiced today.

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