Murdoch and psychoanalysis

Things take a surprising turn half-way through Iris Murdoch's The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) as two-timing husband, Blaise, giddy w relief as his ridiculously placid wife, Harriet, not only forgives him for his 9-year affair but determines that they must continue to support his mistress and to welcome his out-of-wedlock son, Luca, into their family- and, buoyed by her understanding and fidelity to their marriage Blaise runs off w mistress (Emily) and determines he's going to commit to her. Any reader can see that it's obviously a mismatch on numerous levels and that in short order they will quarrel and be sick of each other - pretty much as they were before B confessed the affair to H. In fact B writes a long and insipid letter breaking off w H for good and soliciting her understanding. Fat chance. At last she show some spine and says to hell w him. A cascade of proposals and confessions ensue, as H professes her love to their next-door neighbor, a famous mystery writer in mourning for his late wife who tells her he cannot respond to her love - he's possibly the only one w his head on straight in this novel.
Meanwhile writer's friend, Edgar, a seriously troubled alcoholic who amazingly is a dean at Oxford professes his love for H, whom he hardly knows. This may sound like an Elizabethan comedy when summarized like this, but that misses the mark; these are troubled souls who drink far too much and are in the process of hurting one another - tho we suspect there will be some kind of reconciliation based on a possibly developing relationship between B's two sons. Murdoch's style still quite evocative of H James w one exception: Murdoch repeatedly includes accounts of her characters' dreams, which to me is a tired and trite plot device that slows down this already tortoise-paced narrative. The 70s were perhaps the height of artistic reverence for psychoanalysis , but today all these dreams seem forced, engineered by the author rather than emerging from the characters themselves - she would have done better giving us more info about B's practice as a psychotherapist (sans medical degree), though this is just my quibble.

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