Riassunto analitico
The purpose of this thesis is to start from the literary output of Patrick McGrath to research the psychological, psychiatric and behavioural pathologies present in his fiction and to give a detailed explanation of the disorders described therein.
McGrath has dedicated most of his works to the theme of patients with mental illnesses: his autobiographical matrix as the son of a chief psychiatrist, raised in close contact with the medical environment, provides the starting point for this research. Furthermore, we analyse his use of the Leitmotif of mental illness in relation to the Gothic and Neo-Gothic tradition.
We have chosen to analyse his novels Asylum, Dr. Haggard's Disease, Trauma and Spider, as they are particularly interesting from the point of view of the many severe disorders they describe. Moreover, we examine the figure of the clinical professional, the relationship between doctor and patient, and the effectiveness of therapies described by McGrath.
Various psychiatric, psychological and behavioural problems emerge from the analysis of the characters’ behaviours and actions: e.g., schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, PTSD, personality disorders, etc. In order to examine them in depth, we have availed ourselves of databases such as Pubmed and Apa PsycNet and medical manuals concerning individual pathologies, and numerous interviews released by the author. The main aim of this study is to understand the conditions and problems McGrath describes in his novels by analysing them not only from a literary perspective, but also from the point of view of their actual pathophysiological bases.
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