Brenda Webster's Blog
February 25, 2009
Freud the Patriarch and Literary Critic
Freudianism is on the wane these days with a plethera of other therapies and drugs taking its place, but an area where it still makes sense is in literary criticism. I started introducing Psychoanalysis into my work in college, mainly looking for phallic symbols. By the time I was in graduate school I had extended my reach to pre-oedipal fantasies, oral and anal images and defenses.
Though I have given up the idea of analysis as therapy—it doesn’t work-- I still believe that my psychoanalytic studies of Yeats and Blake and Sir Gawain and The Green Knight describe fantasies present in the texts and make sense of disparate and puzzling elements. (Penguin has just re-printed my essay on Gawain as an introduction to their classic translation.)
The reason psychoanalytic criticism still make sense is because Freud took much of his inspiration from literature. Sophocles provided him with the Oedipus concept and unconscious motives. While helpful for criticism, the Oedipus Complex proved dangerous for life. When Freud appears in novels like Interpretation of Murder and Henry James’ Midnight Song it is rather conventionally, as a sleuth operating in a colorfully portrayed Victorian landscape..
But Freud was dominated as much by fantasy as by reason. He saw himself as the primordial patriarch whose sons were poised to kill him. He had a strong streak of paranoia.He believed for example that his disciple Viktor Tausk could read his mind and steal his ideas. A firm believer in the Oedipus triangle, Freud re-created it in his relations with Tausk and Lou Salome and again with Helene Deutsch and Tausk. It was this Freud that I tried to do justice to in Vienna Triangle.
Though I have given up the idea of analysis as therapy—it doesn’t work-- I still believe that my psychoanalytic studies of Yeats and Blake and Sir Gawain and The Green Knight describe fantasies present in the texts and make sense of disparate and puzzling elements. (Penguin has just re-printed my essay on Gawain as an introduction to their classic translation.)
The reason psychoanalytic criticism still make sense is because Freud took much of his inspiration from literature. Sophocles provided him with the Oedipus concept and unconscious motives. While helpful for criticism, the Oedipus Complex proved dangerous for life. When Freud appears in novels like Interpretation of Murder and Henry James’ Midnight Song it is rather conventionally, as a sleuth operating in a colorfully portrayed Victorian landscape..
But Freud was dominated as much by fantasy as by reason. He saw himself as the primordial patriarch whose sons were poised to kill him. He had a strong streak of paranoia.He believed for example that his disciple Viktor Tausk could read his mind and steal his ideas. A firm believer in the Oedipus triangle, Freud re-created it in his relations with Tausk and Lou Salome and again with Helene Deutsch and Tausk. It was this Freud that I tried to do justice to in Vienna Triangle.
If Freud were a woman
Mindhacks (http://www.mindhacks.com) had some amusing excerpts today from an short parody of Freud, imagining him as a woman, Phyllis Freud. Instead of penis envy, Phyllis posits womb envy as a central concept--to my mind a very reasonable concept, and makes the penis the inferior organ, contaminated as it is by being used for urination. The penis situated as it is out in the open leads to fragility and narcissism in its owners."It discusses. As Phyllis observed...there was “yet another surprising effect of womb envy, or the discovery of the inferiority of the penis to the clitoris, which is undoubtedly the most important of all...that masturbation...is a feminine activity and that the elimination of penile sensuality is a necessary pre-condition for the development of masculinity.”
Interestingly enough, Lou Salome, Freud's fascinating disciple had many of the same ideas. She thought women were the stronger and more creative and particularly praised their fecundity. I take some of these up in my novel Vienna Triangle about Freud, Lou and Tausk.
Interestingly enough, Lou Salome, Freud's fascinating disciple had many of the same ideas. She thought women were the stronger and more creative and particularly praised their fecundity. I take some of these up in my novel Vienna Triangle about Freud, Lou and Tausk.
Was Freud lethal to his followers?
I got a letter from a friend recently suggesting that Freud wasnot only paranoid but lethal to his followers. I quote:
"I have been so immersed in the Freud material for so long I don't know how the ordinary reader would take to it but, it [Vienna Triangle:] seems to me, to work beautifully on its own as a novel. Freud was a paranoid son-of-a-bitch and what he did to Tausk was one in a long series, starting with Breuer, then going to Jung -- who came near psychosis after being dumped -- and Ferenczi, who said his death from anemia was hastened, if not caused, by Freud's rejection. The genius as serial killer." I want to open the topic to discussion. I'm tired of talking to the converted. Only a handful of analysts have been willing to talk with me. What is the point of the net if we don't discuss things. Please! Examples, cases, thoughts?
"I have been so immersed in the Freud material for so long I don't know how the ordinary reader would take to it but, it [Vienna Triangle:] seems to me, to work beautifully on its own as a novel. Freud was a paranoid son-of-a-bitch and what he did to Tausk was one in a long series, starting with Breuer, then going to Jung -- who came near psychosis after being dumped -- and Ferenczi, who said his death from anemia was hastened, if not caused, by Freud's rejection. The genius as serial killer." I want to open the topic to discussion. I'm tired of talking to the converted. Only a handful of analysts have been willing to talk with me. What is the point of the net if we don't discuss things. Please! Examples, cases, thoughts?
Psychoanalytic Fictions
Laura Gonzalez has a blog on psychoanalysis and art (http://lauragonzalez.co.uk/) and this morning she reviewed Vienna Triangle. Besides calling it a masterful account of psychoanalysis and the human weaknesses of its practitioners, I was delighted and amused by the way she identified with my heroine, Kate's ambivilent relationship with her mother. Laura found herself "perplexed at the accuracy of her (Webster's) description of encounters I have had with my own mother...the different standards within which I judge her, the guilt, the strange love that gets manifested as aggression or exasperation" to the point of having to put the book down and calm herself before going on. Having been a patient for long years, it is particularly gratifying to have someone see me as not just talking about analysis with mastery but actually doing it. Thank you Laura!
