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finements and complexity, criticism has derived from the Freudian
II
system much that is of great value, most notable the license and the
injunction to read the work of literature with a lively sense of its
It will be clear enough how much of Freud's thought has siglatent and ambiguous meanings, as if it were, as indeed it is, a being nificant affinity with the anti-rationalist element of the Romanticist
no less alive and contradictory than the man who created it. And
tradition. But we must see with no less distinctness how much of
this new response to the literary work has had a corrective effect
his system is militantly rationalistic. Thomas Mann is at fault when,
upon our conception of literary biography. The literary critic or
in his first essay on Freud, he makes it seem that the "Apollonian,"
biographer who makes use of the Freudian theory is no less threatthe rationalistic, side of psychoanalysis is, while certainly important ened by the dangers of theoretical systematization than he was in
and wholly admirable, somehow secondary and even accidental. He
the early days, but he is likely to be more aware of these dangers;
gives us a Freud who is committed to the "night side" of life. Not
and I think it is true to say that now the motive of his interpretaat all; the rationalistic element of Freud is foremost; before everytion is not that of exposing the secret shame of the writer and thing else he is positivistic. If the interpreter of dreams came to
limiting the meaning of his work, but, on the contrary, that of findmedical science through Goethe, as he tells us he did, he entered ing grounds for sympathy with the writer and for increasing the
not by way of the Walpurgisnacht but by the essay which played
possible significances of the work.
so important a part in the lives of so many scientists of the nine
The names of the creative writers who have been more or less
teenth century, the famous disquisition on Nature.
Freudian in tone or assumption would of course be legion. Only
This correction is needed not only for accuracy but also for any
a relatively small number, however, have made serious use of the
understanding of Freud's attitude to art. And for that understand
Freudian ideas. Freud himself seems to have thought this was as it
ing we must see how intense is the passion with which Freud beshould be: he is said to have expected very little of the works that lieves that positivistic rationalism, in its golden-age pre-Revolutionwere sent to him by writers with inscriptions of gratitude for all ary purity, is the very form and pattern of intellectual virtue. The
they had learned from him. The Surrealists have, with a certain
aim of psychoanalysis, he says, is the control of the night side of life.
inconsistency, depended upon Freud for the "scientific" sanction of
It is "to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the
their program. Kafka, with an apparent awareness of what he was
super-ego, to widen its field of vision, and so to extend the organizadoing, has explored the Freudian conceptions of guilt and punishtion of the id." "Where id was,"-that is, where all the irrational, ment, of the dream, and of the fear of the father. Thomas Mann,
non-logical, pleasure-seeking dark forces were-"there shall ego be,"
whose tendency, as he himself says, was always in the direction of
-that is, intelligence and control. "It is," he concludes, with a
Freud's interests, has been most susceptible to the Freudian anreminiscence of Faust, "reclamation work, like the draining of the thropology, finding a special charm in the theories of myths and
Zuyder Zee." This passage is quoted by Mann when, in taking up
magical practices. James Joyce, with his interest in the numerous
the subject of Freud a second time, he does indeed speak of Freud's
states of receding consciousness, with his use of words as things and
positivistic program; but even here the bias induced by Mann's
of words which point to more than one thing, with his pervading
artistic interest in the "night side" prevents him from giving the
sense of the interrelation and interpenetration of all things, and,
other aspect of Freud its due emphasis. Freud would never have
not least important, his treatment of familial themes, has perhaps
accepted the role which Mann seems to give him as the legitimizer
most thoroughly and consciously exploited Freud's idea.
of the myth and the dark irrational ways of the mind. If Freud
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discovered the darkness for science he never endorsed it. On the
and
contrary, his rationalism supports all the ideas of the Englightencall contempt. Art, he tells us, is a "su�st:�ute �ratificati�n,".
ment that deny validity to myth or religion; he holds to a simple
h · "an illusion in contrast to reality. Unlike most 1llus1ons,
as sue 1s
materialism, to a simple determinism, to a rather limited sort of
h
art is "almost always harmless and beneficent" for the
0wever,
.
.
epistemology. No great scientist of our day has thundered so arreason that "it does not seek to be anything but an illus10n. Save m ticulately and so fiercely against all those who would sophisticate
the case of a few people who are, one might say, obsessed by Art,
· 1t never dares make any attack on the realm of reality." One of its
with metaphysics the scientific principles that were good enough
.
for the nineteenth century. Conceptualism or pragmatism is anathh. f functions is to serve as a "narcotic." It shares the characteris-e ie
·
tics f
o the dream , whose element of distortion
d
Freu
11
ca s a " sort f
o
ema to him through the greater part of his intellectual career, and
inner dishonesty." As for the artist, he is virtually in the same
this, when we consider the nature of his own brilliant scientific
methods, has surely an element of paradox in it.
tegory with the neurotic. "By such separation of imagination and
ca
I "h .
From his rationalistic positivism comes much of Freud's strength
intellectual capacity," Freud says of the hero of a nove ,
e 1s
and what weakness he has. The strength is the fine, clear tenacity of
destined to be a poet or a neurotic, and he belongs to that race of
d."
his positive aims, the goal of therapy, the desire to bring to men
beings whose realm is not of this worl.
a decent measure of earthly happiness. But upon the rationalism
Now there is nothing in the logic of psychoanalytical thought
which requires Freud to have these opinions. But the
must also be placed the blame for the often nai've scientific principles
:e is a gre�t
deal in the practice of the
psychoanalytical therapy which makes It
which characterize his early thought-they are later much modified
understandable that Freud, unprotected by an adequate philosophy,
-and which consist largely of claiming for his theories a perfect
should be tempted to take the line he does. The analytical therapy
correspondence with an external reality, a position which, for those
deals with illusion. The patient comes to the physician to be cured,
who admire Freud and especially for those who take seriously his
let us say, of a fear of walking in the street. The fear is real enough,
views on art, is troublesome in the extreme.
.
there is no illusion on that score, and it produces all the physical
Now Freud has, I believe, much to tell us about art, but whatsymptoms of a more rational fear, the sweating palms, pounding ever is suggestive in him is not likely to be found in those of his
heart, and shortened breath. But the patient knows that there is no
works in which he deals expressly with art itself. Freud is not incause for the fear, or rather that there is, as he says, t10 "real cause": sensitive to art-on the contrary-nor does he ever intend to speak
there are no machine guns, man traps, or tigers in the street. The
of it with contempt. Indeed, he speaks of it with a real tenderness
physician knows, however, that there is ·indeed a "real" cause for
and counts it one of the true charms of the good life. Of artists,
the fear, though it has nothing at all to do with what is or is not
especially of writers, he speaks with admiration and even a kind of
in the street; the cause is within the patient, and the process of the
awe, though perhaps what he most appreciates in literature are
therapy will be to discover, by gradual steps, what this real cause is
specific emotional insights and· observations; as we have noted, he
and so free the patient from its effects.
speaks of literary men, because they have understood the part played
Now the patient in coming to the physician, and the physician in
in life by the hidden motives, as the precursors and coadjutors of
accepting the patient, make a tacit compact about reality; for their
his own science.
purpose they agree to the limited reality by which we get our living,
And yet eventually Freud speaks of art with what we must indeed
win our loves, catch our trains and our colds. The, therapist will
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undertake to train the patient in proper ways of coping with this
rather a series of situations which are dealt with in their own terms.
reality. The patient, of course, has been dealing with this reality all
But beside this conception of the mind stands the conception which
along, but in the wrong way. For Freud there are two ways of dealarises from Freud's therapeutic-practical assumptions; in this view, ing with external reality. One is practical, effective, positive; this is
the mind deals with a reality which is quite fixed and static, a realthe way of the conscious self, of the ego which must be made inity that is wholly "given" and not (to use a phrase of Dewey's) dependent of the super-ego and extend its organization over the id,
"taken." In his epistemological utterances, Freud insists on this
and it is the right way. The antithetical way may be called, for our
second view, although it is not easy to see why he should do so.
purpose now, the "fictional" way. Instead of doing something about,
For the reality to which he wishes to reconcile the neurotic patient
or to, external reality, the individual who uses this way does someis, after all, a "taken" and not a "given" reality. It is the reality of thing to, or about, his affective states. The most common and
social life and of value, conceived and maintained by the human
"normal" example of this is daydreaming, in which we give ourmind and will. Love, morality, honor, esteem-these are the comselves a certain pleasure by imagining our difficulties solved or our ponents of a created reality. If we are to call art an illusion then we
desires gratified. Then, too, qS Freud discovered, sleeping dreams
must call most of the activities and satisfactions of the ego illusions;
are, in much more complicated ways, and even though quite un
Freud, of course, has no desire to call them that.
pleasant, at the service of this same "fictional" activity. And in ways
What, then, is the difference between, on the one hand, the
yet more complicated and yet more unpleasant, the actual neurosis
dream and the neurosis, and, on the other hand, art? That they
from which our patient suffers deals with an external reality which
have certain common elements is of course clear; that unconscious
the mind considers still more unpleasant than the painful neurosis
processes are at work in both would be denied by no poet or critic;
itself.
they share too, though in different degrees, the element of fantasy.
For Freud as psychoanalytic practitioner there are, we may say,
But there is a vital difference between them which Charles Lamb
the polar extremes of reality and illusion. Reality is an honorific
saw so clearly in his defense of the sanity of true genius: "The ...
poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject but he
it means a response to what is not there. The didactic nature of a
has dominion over it."
course of psychoanalysis no doubt requires a certain firm crudeness
That is the whole difference: the poet is in command of his
in making the distinction; it is after all aimed not at theoretical refantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is posfinement but at practical effectiveness. The polar extremes are practisessed by his fantasy. And there is a further difference which Lamb cal reality and neurotic illusion, the latter judged by the former.
states; speaking of the poet's relation to reality (he calls it Nature),
This, no doubt, is as it should be; the patient is not being trained in
he says, "He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, even
metaphysics and epistemology.
when he appears most to betray her"; the illusions of art are made
This practical assumption is not Freud's only view of the mind
to serve the purpose of a closer and truer relation with reality.
in its relation to reality. Indeed, what may be called the essentially
Jacques Barzun, in an acute and sympathetic discussion of Freud,
Freudian view assumes that the mind, for good as well as bad,
puts the matter well: "A good analogy between art and dreaming
helps create its reality by selection and evaluation. In this view,
has led him to a false one between art and sleeping. But the differreality is malleable and subject to creation; it is not static but is ence between a work of art and a dream is precisely this, that the
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work of art leads us back to the outer reality by taking account of
that the "author cannot yield to the psychiatrist," and he warns the
it." Freud's assumption of the almost exclusively hedonistic nature
latter not to "coarsen everything" by using for all human manifestaand purpose of art bars him from the perception of this.
tions the "substantially useless and awkward terms" of clinical pro
Of the distinction that must be made between the artist and the
cedure. He admits, even while asserting that the sense of beauty
neurotic Freud is of course aware; he tells us that the artist is not
probably derives from sexual feelings, that psychoanalysis "has less
like the neurotic in that he knows how to find a way back from
to say about beauty than about most other things." He confesses to
the world of imagination and "once more get a firm foothold in
a theoretical indifference to the form of art and restricts himself to
reality." This however seems to mean no more than that reality is
its content. Tone, feeling, style, and the modification that part
to.be dealt with when the artist suspends the practice of his art; and
makes upon part he does not consider. "The layman," he says,
at least once when Freud speaks of art dealing with reality he ac
"may expect perhaps too much from analysis ... for it must be
tually means the rewards that a successful artist can win. He does
admitted that it throws no light upon the two problems which
not deny to art its function and its usefulness; it has a therapeutic
probably interest him the most. It can do nothing toward elucidateffect in releasing mental tension; it serves the cultural purpose of ing the nature of the artistic gift, nor can it explain the means by
acting as a "substitute gratification" to reconcile men to the sacrifices
which the artist works-artistic technique."
they have made for culture's sake; it promotes the social sharing of
What, then, does Freud believe that the analytical method can
highly yalued emotional experiences; and it recalls men to their
do? Two things: explain the "inner meanings" of the work of art