Self-destructive behavior: Hopelessness, control issues, language, and failure of Erika Kohut in Elfriede Jelinek's Die 'Klavierspielerin'

It has widely been accepted that Erika Kohut in Elfriede Jelinek's Die Klav ierspielerin is a victim of her mother and cannot resist the overwhelming p ower of her-who represents the patriarchal system. Erika's Self-Cutting wit h razors and needles has been interpreted as masochistic behaviour. The pre sent paper applies Tilmann Moser's technique of Clinical reading to examine Erika's failure as an attempt to survive (self-cutting as a technique to e scape dissociative situations; masochistic phantasies as reinscenations of childhood trauma). It sees the end of the novel (Erika returns to her mothe r) as her failure to establish contact with the child within herself-and he nce as the only possible way to survive in this situation. With respect to Jelinek's use of language, it is argued that the misuse of words and prover bs and the intertextual allusions in 'false' circumstances show how Jelinek tries to gain power over e.g. out of language in a similar way as Erika Ko hut tries to escape dissociative and overwhelming situations: by hurting bo undaries.