FREUD AND LITERATURE (1940) Lionel Trilling--Abridged

 FREUD AND LITERATURE (1940)

Lionel Trilling

 

FREUD AND LITERATURE is an extract from his The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society.  Trilling was an American literary critic and teacher who brought psychological, sociological, and philosophical methods and insights into criticism.

 

Trilling believes that Freud offers “a systematic account of the human mind”. The psychoanalytical theory has a profound impact on literature.

“Yet the relationship is reciprocal, and the effect of Freud upon literature has been no greater than the effect of literature upon Freud”.

 

Influences on Freud

 

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche anticipated Freudian ideas though Freud never read their works. Trilling comments that we need not search for particular influences but deal with the whole Zeitgeist, “a direction of thought”. 

 

Freud shared some common characteristics with the Romantics:

·      The perception of the hidden element of human nature, and

·      The opposition between the hidden and the visible.

 

The Romantic Age witnessed many changes in human thoughts. The “utilitarian” ego got relegated to an inferior position, and “the anarchic and self-indulgent id” gained prominence.  The "idea of the mind" changed. It became “a divisible thing, one part of which can contemplate and mock the other”.  The profound interest in dreams was another feature of the same period. "Our dreams are a second life", said Gerard de Nerval.

 

Freud was never insensitive to art.  He spoke of it with “real tenderness, counting it one of the true charms of the good life”.  Freud regarded writers with “admiration and even a kind of awe.”

 

And yet Freud spoke of art as “substitute gratification", a “narcotic” and "an illusion in contrast to reality." Unlike most illusions, art is "almost always harmless and beneficent" as "it does not seek to be anything but an illusion”.

 

The artist is similar to the neurotic. Charles Lamb had anticipated this: "The ... poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject but he has dominion over it... The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy”. 

 

The aim of psychoanalysis, Freud said, is to control the “night side” of life. It is "to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the super-ego … and to extend the organization of the id." "Where id was,"--that is, where all the irrational, non-logical, pleasure-seeking dark forces were—"there shall ego be,"—that is, intelligence and control. "It is”, he concluded “reclamation work, like the draining of the Zuyder Zee."

 

A commoner may expect too much from psychoanalysis, but it throws no light on the two problems that bother him most. It cannot elucidate the artistic gift or explain how the artist works. The analytical method can explain the inner meanings of the work and the artist's temperament. A famous example is the attempt to solve the "problem" of Hamlet by Dr Ernest Jones, Freud’s early and distinguished follower.

 

Dr Jones tries to clear the mystery of Hamlet. He believes that Hamlet gives a clue to the workings of Shakespeare’s mind.

Why does Hamlet hesitate to avenge the murder of his father? What is the secret of the “magical appeal” of the play?

Jones believes that the “magic” is not solely on the impressive thoughts and the splendour of language. It is something beyond this.

1. Freud says, “the meaning of a dream is its intention”. Jones adds: “The meaning of a drama is its intention”.

2. According to Jones, the play has a dream-like quality.

 

The play touches on the personal and moral life as it hints at the unconscious attachment of Shakespeare to his mother.

 

Trilling reminds us that there is no single meaning to any work of art. The changes in the historical and personal mood transform it. The significance is not in the author’s intention or the effect of the work. The audience partly determines the value. Jones’ assumption that Hamlet is central to Shakespeare’s character is a purely subjective assessment.

 

Jones speaks about the “magical power” of the Oedipus motive. He seems to believe that historically Hamlet's effect had been uniform. “Yet there was a period when Hamlet was in eclipse. The French were always “indifferent” to the "magical appeal" of Hamlet”.

 

 Dr Franz Alexander and Henry IV. 

Dr Alexander attempts not to solve the problems in the drama but only to "illumine" them. Prince Hal’s struggle is the struggle between the ego and the superego. Hal is the ego, and Hotspur is the superego. Before overcoming the superego, Hotspur, Hal has to conquer his ‘id’ – Falstaff. The ‘id’ is "anarchic self-indulgence" seen through the character of Falstaff. Dr Alexander is not looking for hidden motives but simply trying to explain the drama.

 

Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

In "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", Freud puts forward a new idea supplementing the Aristotelian theory of Catharsis. The earlier notion was that dreams originate from the efforts to fulfil wishes. The pleasure principle worked in dreams. Freud reconsiders this view in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". He feels that in cases of war neurosis – shell shock– the patient recollects the experience with anguish; hence, no "pleasure principle" is involved. In psychic life, there is repetition compulsion that goes beyond the pleasure principle. This traumatic neurosis is an attempt to mithridatize.  The nightmare that a person sees is an attempt to overcome a bad situation. By repetition, he makes renewed efforts to control it.

Aristotle glossed over this function. The terror we experience when we see the bleeding sightless eyes of Oedipus has no "cathartic" effect. Seeing this painful sight of the blind Oedipus, we become immune to the "greater" pain that life may inflict on us.

Freud says that human pride is the ultimate cause of human wretchedness. Freud’s man has more dignity, he is an inextricable tangle of culture and biology. He is not simply good.  There is hell within him waiting to engulf the whole civilization. For everything he gains, he pays in equal coin.

 (995 words)

 

Dr S. Sreekumar, Retd. Professor of English

Disclaimer 

All the essays in this blog are for the undergraduate and postgraduate students of Indian Universities. They do not substitute the originals.  The students must necessarily go through the original texts. The writer hopes to help the students from the underdeveloped areas of our country.