sions of many schizophrenic people have the intense appearance of
today that neurotic symptoms are substitutive formations for certain
creativity and an inescapable interest and significance. But they are
repressive acts which must result in the course of our development
not works of art, and although Van Gogh may have been schizofrom the child to the cultural man, that we all produce such subphrenic he was in addition an artist. Again, as I have already sugstitutive formations, and that only the amount, intensity, and disgested, it is not uncommon in our society for certain kinds of neutribution of these substitutive formations justify the practical conrotic people to imitate the artist in his life and even in his ideals and ception of illness
.... " The statement becomes the more striking
ambitions. They follow the artist in everything except successful
when we remember that in the course of his study Freud has had
performance. It was, I think, Otto Rank who called such people
occasion to observe that Leonardo was both homosexual and sexuhalf-artists and confirmed the diagnosis of their neuroticism at the ally inactive. I am not sure that the statement that Leonardo was
same time that he differentiated them from true artists.
not a neurotic is one that Freud would have made at every point
Nothing is so characteristic of the artist as his power of shaping
in the later development of psychoanalysis, yet it is in conformity
his work, of subjugating his raw material, however aberrant it be
with his continuing notion of the genesis of culture. And the prac
from what we call normality, to the consistency of nature. It would
tical, the quantitative or economic, conception of illness he insists on
be impossible to deny that whatever disease or mutilation the artist
in a passage in the Introductory Lectures. "The neurotic symptoms,"
may suffer is an element of his production which has its effect on
he says, " ... are activities which are detrimental, or at least useevery part of it, but disease and mutilation are available to us allless, to life as a whole; the person concerned frequently complains life provides them with prodigal generosity. What marks the artist
of them as obnoxious to him or they involve suffering and distress
is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.
for him. The principal injury they inflict lies in the expense of
At this point, with our recognition of life's abundant provision of
energy they entail, and, besides this, in the energy needed to combat
pain, we are at the very heart of our matter, which is the meaning
them. Where the symptoms are extensively developed, these two
we may assign to neurosis and the relation we are to suppose it to
kinds of effort may exact such a price that the person suffers a very
have with normality. Here Freud himself can be of help, although
serious improverishment in available mental energy which conit must be admitted that what he tells us may at first seem somesequently disables him for all the important tasks of life. This rewhat contradictory and confusing.
sult depends principally upon the amount of energy taken up in
Freud's study of Leonardo da Vinci is an attempt to understand
this way; therefore you will see that 'illness' is essentially a practical
why Leonardo was unable to pursue his artistic enterprises, feeling
conception. But if you look at the matter from a theoretical point of
compelled instead to advance his scientific investigations. The cause
view and ignore this question of degree, you can very well see that
of this Freud traces back to certain childhood experiences not differwe are all ill, i.e., neurotic; for the conditions required for symptoment in kind from the experiences which Dr. Rosenzweig adduces to formation are demonstrable also in normal persons."
account for certain elements in the work of Henry James. And when
We are all ill: the statement is grandiose, and its implicationshe has completed his study Freud makes this caveat: "Let us exthe implications, that is, of understanding the totality of human pressly emphasize that we have never considered Leonardo as a
nature in the terms of disease-are vast. These implications have
neurotic. . . . We no longer believe that health and disease, normal
never been properly met (although I believe that a few theologians
and nervous, are sharply distinguished from each other. We know
have responded to them), but this is not the place to attempt to
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Art and Neurosis
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meet them. I have brought forward Freud's statement of the esdisease. The psyche of the neurotic is not equally complacent; it sential sickness of the psyche only because it stands as the refutation
regards with the greatest fear the chaotic and destructive forces it
of what is implied by the literary use of the theory of neurosis to
contains, and it struggles fiercely to keep them at bay. 8
account for genius. For if we are all ill, and if, as I have said, neu
We come then to a remarkable paradox: we are all ill, but we are
rosis can account for everything, for failure and mediocrity-"a very
ill in the service of health, or ill in the service of life, or, at the very
serious impoverishment of available mental energy"-as well as for
least, ill in the service of life-in-culture. The form of the mind's
genius, it cannot uniquely account for genius.
dynamics is that of the neurosis, which is to be understood as the
This, however, is not to say that there is no connection between
ego's struggle against being overcome by the forces with which it
neurosis and genius, which would be tantamount, as we see, to
coexists, and the strategy of this conflict requires that the ego shall
saying that there is no connection between human nature and
incur pain and make sacrifices of itself, at the same time seeing to it
genius. But the connection lies wholly in a particular and special
that its pain and sacrifice be as small as they may.
relation which the artist has to neurosis.
But this is characteristic of all minds: no mind is exempt except
In order to understand what this particular and special connecthose which refuse the conflict or withdraw from it; and we ask tion is we must have clearly in mind what neurosis is. The current
wherein the mind of the artist is unique. If he is not unique in
literary conception of neurosis as a wound is quite misleading. It inneurosis, is he then unique in the significance and intensity of his evitably suggests passivity, whereas, if we follow Freud, we must
neurosis? I do not believe that we shall go more than a little way
understand a neurosis to be an activity, an activity with a purpose,
toward a definition of artistic genius by answering this question
and a particular kind of activity, a confiict. This is not to say that
affirmatively. A neurotic conflict cannot ever be either meaningless
there are no abnormal mental states which are not conflicts. There
or merely personal; it must be understood as exemplifying cultural
are; the struggle between elements of the unconscious may never
forces of great moment, and this is tru� of any neurotic conflict at
be instituted in
the first place, or it may be called off. As Freud
all. To be sure, some neuroses may be more interesting than others,
says in a passage which follows close upon the one I last quoted,
perhaps because they are fiercer or more inclusive; and no doubt
"If regressions do not call forth a prohibition on the part of the ego,
the writer who makes a claim upon our interest is a man who by
no neurosis results; the libido succeeds in obtaining a real, although
reason of the energy and significance of the forces in struggle within
not a normal, satisfaction. But if the ego . . . is not in agreement
8 In the article to which I refer in the note on page 163, William Barrett says
with these regressions, conflict ensues." And in his essay on Dostoevthat he prefers the old-fashioned term "madness" to "neurosis." But it is not quite ski Freud says that "there are no neurotic complete masochists," by
for him to choose--the words do not differ in fashion but in meaning. Most literary
people, when they speak of mental illness, refer to neurosis. Perhaps one reason
which he means that the ego which gives way completely to masofor this is that the neurosis is the most benign of the mental iJls. Another reason is surely that psychoanalytical literature deals chiefly with
chism ( or to any other pathological excess) has passed beyond
the neurosis, and its symptomatology and therapy have become familiar; psychoanalysis has far less to say
neurosis; the conflict has ceased, but at the cost of the defeat of the
about psychosis, for which it can offer far less therapeutic hope. Further, the neurosis is easily put into a causal connection with the social maladjustments of our ego, and now some other name than that of neurosis must be given
time. Other forms of mental illness of a more severe and degenerative kind are not
so widely recognized by the literary
to the condition of the person who thus takes himself beyond the
person and are often assimilated to neurosis
with a resulting confusion. In the present essay I deal only with the conception of
pain of the neurotic conflict. To understand this is to become aware
neurosis, but this should not be taken to imply that I believe that other pathological
mental conditions, including actual madness, do not have relevance to the general
of the curious complacency with which literary men regard mental
matter of the discussion.
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Art and Neurosis
171
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him provides us with the largest representation of the culture in
our powers, not by the nature of the powers themselves. The Philocwhich we, with him, are involved; his neurosis may thus be thought tetes myth, when it is used to imply a causal connection between
of as having a connection of concomitance with his literary powers.
the fantasy of castration and artistic power, tells us no more about
As Freud says in the Dostoevski essay, "the neurosis . . . comes into
the source of artistic power than we learn about the source of
being all the more readily the richer the complexity which has to
sexuality when the fantasy of castration is adduced, for the fear of
be controlled by his ego." Yet even the rich complexity which his
castration may explain why a man is moved to extravagant exploits
ego is doomed to control is not the definition of the artist's genius,
of sexuality, but we do not say that his sexual power itself derives
for we can by no means say that the artist is pre-eminent in the
from his fear of castration; and further the same fantasy may also
rich complexity of elements in conflict within him. The slightest
explain impotence or homosexuality. The Philoctetes story, which
acquaintance with the clinical literature of psychoanalysis will sughas so established itself among us as explaining the source of t�e gest that a rich complexity of struggling elements is no uncommon
artist's power, is not really an explanatory myth at all; it is a moral
possession. And that same literature will also make it abundantly
myth having reference to our proper behavior in the circumstances
clear that the devices of art-the most extreme devices of poetry, for
of the universal accident. In its juxtaposition of the wound and the
example-are not particular to the mind of the artist but are characbow, it tells us that we must be aware that weakness does not preteristic of mind itself.
clude strength nor strength weakness. It is therefore not irrelevant
But the artist is indeed unique in one respect, in the respect of his
to the artist, but when we use it we will do well to keep in mind
relation to his neurosis. He is what he is by virtue of his successful
the other myths of the arts, recalling what Pan and Dionysius sugobjectification of his neurosis, by his shaping it and making it gest of the relation of art to physiology and superabundance, reavailable to others in a way which has its effect upon their own membering that to Apollo were attributed the bow and the lyre,
egos in struggle. His genius, that is, may be defined in terms of
two strengths together, and that he was given the lyre by its inhis faculties of perception, representation, and realization, and in ventor, the baby Hermes-that miraculous infant who, the day he
these terms alone. It can no more be defined in terms of neurosis
was born, left his cradle to do mischief: and the first thing he met
than can his power of walking and talking, or his sexuality. The use
with was a tortoise, which he greeted politely before scooping it
to which he puts his power, or the manner and style of his power,
from its shell, and, thought and deed being one with him, he conmay be discussed with reference to his particular neurosis, and so trived the instrument to which he sang "the glorious tale of his own
may such matters as the untimely diminution or cessation of its
begetting." These were gods, and very early ones, but their myths
exercise. But its essence is irreducible. It is, as we say, a gift.
tell us something about the nature and source of art even in our
We are all ill: but even a universal sickness implies an idea of
grim, late human present.
he has in common with his fellow mortals, the one part of him that
is healthy, by any conceivable definition of health, is that which
gives him the power to conceive, to plan, to work, and to bring his
work to a conclusion. And if we are all ill, we are ill by a universal
accident, not by a universal necessity, by a fault in the economy of
----
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-· -·
�--
The Sense of the Past
173
_.,_ .. --·--·-·-·-··-··-·-·-·-·-··-·-··-··-·-··-·-·-·-··-·!
that active power by which literature is truly defined. All sorts of
studies are properly ancillary to the study of literature. For example,
the study of the intellectual conditions in which a work of litera
The Sense of the Past
ture was made is not only legitimate but sometimes even necessary
to our perception of its power. Yet when Professor Lovejoy in his
influential book, The Great Chain
of Being, tells us that for the
study of the history of ideas a really dead writer is better than one
whose works are still enjoyed, we naturally pull up short and wonder
if we are not in danger of becoming like the Edinburgh body
I
snatchers who saw to it that there were enough cadavers for study
N recent years
in the medical school.
�he study of lit�rature in �ur un�vers1t1es has
again and agam been called mto quest10n
Criticism
, chiefly on the
made its attack on the historians of literature in the
ground that what is being studied is not so much literature
name of literature as power. The attack was the fiercer because
itself as the history of literature. John Jay Chapman was perhaps the
literary history had all too faithfully followed the lead of social
first to state the case against the literary scholars when in 1927 he
and political history, which, having given up its traditional condenounced the "archaeological, quasi-scientific, and documentary nection with literature, had allied itself with the physical sciences of
study of the fine arts" because, as he said, it endeavored "to express
the nineteenth century and had adopted the assumption of these
the fluid universe of many emotions in terms drawn from the study
sciences that the world was reflected with perfect literalness in the
of the physical sciences." And since Chapman wrote, the issue in
will-less mind of the observer. The new history had many successes
the universities has been clearly drawn in the form of an opposition
and it taught literary study what it had itself learned, that in an
of "criticism" to "scholarship." Criticism has been the aggressor,
age of science prestige is to be gained by approximating the methods
and its assault upon scholarship has been successful almost in proof science. Of these methods the most notable and most adaptable portion to the spiritedness with which it has been made; at the
was the investigation of genesis, of how the work of art came into
present time, although the archaeological and quasi-scientific and
being. I am not concerned to show that the study of genesis is harmdoc�mentary study of literature is still the dominant one in our ful to the right experience of the work of art: I do not believe it is.