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Literary notes about Obsession (AI summary)

In literature, the term "obsession" is employed to capture a powerful, almost all-consuming fixation that permeates a character's inner life and the broader narrative. It is depicted variously as a pathological fixation that can both define and doom its victim—a recurring, inexplicable drive that has psychological, moral, or even national resonance. Some authors portray it as a turbulent, deeply rooted internal conflict, where the obsessive thought evolves into a dominating force, as hinted by the clinical investigations into jealousy and desire ([1], [2], [3]). In other cases, obsession is rendered as a transcendent or mythic burden that challenges personal identity or collective destiny, highlighting its potential to blur the boundary between passion and compulsion ([4], [5], [6]). This versatile usage illustrates how obsession in literature frequently becomes a lens through which characters confront both internal vulnerabilities and the external forces that shape their lives.
  1. The obsession thus attains a certain independence from the letter; it existed in the patient beforehand—perhaps as a dread; or was it a wish?
    — from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
  2. Thus the good lady suffers from an " obsession of jealousy " that is surely a distinctive characterization for this pathological case.
    — from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
  3. How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession?
    — from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
  4. " Anna Karénina shows already that fear of death which is such an obsession in Tolstoy's later works.
    — from Tolstoy by Lilian Winstanley
  5. It was an obsession so complete that there was no room in his soul for prudence or gratitude.
    — from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
  6. He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!
    — from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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