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.