Chen, H: Dreaming, Writing, and Confessing

This book is devoted to examining the implicit relationship between De Quincey and the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater from a psychoanalytical point of view, with the hope to understand the latent reasons behind De Quincey‘‘s writing. Considering creation as a process of self-interpretation and re-interpretation, this book aims to probe into the internal relationship between the writer De Quincey, and the writing of the Confessions, which centres very much upon dreams. De Quincey‘s autobiographical Confessions brings us to understand that writing should not merely be considered as a way of communicating with the outer world, because writing also unveils, for the writer, some parts of the self that are always outside of the conscious and rational perception. Therefore, my thesis will endeavour to uncover the psychological significance of writing, and how writing makes the knowledge of the self accessible.