Part Three: Working of the Mind
CHAPTER NINETEEN
(* In 1978 the author sought support from the U. S National Endowment for the Humanities to pursue a line of research that is described here. The application was unsuccessful, but its theory appears to be worth publication, and it is to be hoped that a more sympathetic reception will follow, and possibly that another scholar may take up the theme.)
The final success of the uniformitarian over the catastrophist paradigm in the mid-19th century signaled a class of scientific restraints upon literature. Writers had to conform to a demanding science that viewed the universe as ordered and regular, old in time, only slowly and evenly changing, with a retired God, if any, with species evolving gradually in competition, and with a mankind who was mechanical and determined even though the greatest product of nature. Sudden, violent, miraculous, heroic, and divinely inspired events were reduced to a negligible place in the causative processes of the world.
Of fiction writers, some conformed to the new consensus. Their novels accordingly changed to slow and gradual process of realistic character development or a sociological account without striking change at beginning or end. But literature of the occult, of science fiction, and of mystery developed too. Most impressive of all was a literature of the inner mind and especially of the unknown and uncontrolled unconscious mind, that grew to a peak one generation after the uniformitarian triumph. In the preceding two generations the concept of unconscious arose in mystical form, was given philosophical definition by the Romantics, and then formed into a science by Freud and others. Thus, the greatest writers, such as Dostoevsky, Mann, O'Neill, Proust, Pirandello, Gide, Joyce, and Kafka, were granted a scientifically rationalized ballroom of the literary unconscious within which they could work out a number of dramatic and stylistic forms that were blocked in the external world by uniformitarian principles of science. Present indications are that the pressures of literature together with new scientific discoveries are eroding the uniformitarian paradigm and a break-out into new forms of literary and scientific behavior is imminent.
Such is the thesis here: the concept of the unconscious in literature is postulated as a reaction to the uniformitarian paradigm in science. The study intends to demonstrate that the psychological concept of the "Unconscious" originated, developed into its present form, and functioned in part so that creative writers (among others) might cope with certain burdensome restraints imposed upon literature by the Uniformitarian (U) scientific viewpoint that triumphed over Catastrophism (C) in the early nineteenth century.
That is, the Unconscious is not explainable merely as an accident of the history of psychology, nor as a necessary, pure scientific discovery coming at a certain stage of scientific development. Nor was it a mere conceit of the intellectual salons. The concept of the Unconscious was, perhaps with all of these, the product of an unconscious alliance of psychiatry and literature aimed at accommodating the new consensus of science. Specifically in literature, its a highly useful tool of the more intelligent writers who had to adjust their dramatic forms to a rather incompatible and unbending scientific scheme. The Unconscious was, almost literally, a means of their finding Lebensraum after being evicted from the heavenly and earthly spaces of pre-uniformitarian times.
The survival-service provided by the scientific theory of the Unconscious itself developed unconsciously. To this day, although there is a general appreciation of the scientific and literary value of the Unconscious, there appears to be no awareness of its role in the unceasing interplay between the science and humanities. Actually, the hypothesis might be extended, in a modified shape, to cover other forms of expression and knowledge, such as the plastic arts or areas where a subtle appreciation of human relations is demanded, such as political science and anthropology. In these areas, not to be dealt with here, as in the literature of the novel, the Unconscious played its double role as an expediter of adjustment between "the two worlds" of sciences and humanities, and as an intellectual and literary tool.
Nor shall we dwell upon the study of the occult, of science fiction, of "lost worlds," of catastrophes, or of "last survivors;" nor such changes in form as the lengthening and the "scientizing" or "sociologizing" of the novel, nor changes of substance such as the decline of the divine and tragic hero. In relation to the great scientific transformations, we deal only with the concept of the Unconscious, not with the broad spectrum of literary and intellectual changes.
As applied to literature, the Unconscious aided and abetted writers to manipulate time and space freely, to achieve sudden leaps and "catastrophes" in plot, and to reintroduce "gods and devils"; such maneuvers had formerly been readily licensed, but were no longer allowed if one wished to be considered a "serious" writer under the Uniformitarian regime. One was under pressure to conform to the Uniformitarian paradigm (or model, or Weltanschauung, or word-view, or ideology, or belief-system). How the accommodation of literature to science was accomplished is to be shown by a general historical analysis and an intensive study of the "unconscious" as employed by eight great authors. The hypothetical Table of Contents that follows this memorandum may help to clarify the purposes and procedures of the proposed research and serve as a guide to the commentary that follows. But before going into details, a statement of the significance of the project is in order.
Any illumination that the project may bring to the great particular works under analysis can be considered of some significance. The possibility of success here lies with the methodology (see below) which is expected to evolve in the course of study. We have applied the method of content analysis to materials so diverse as open-ended responses of Americans to questions about their politics, to description of hundreds of budgetary programs of the federal government, and to the varied output of enemy propaganda in wartime. We should, at a minimum, answer questions such as the following: (Addressed to a particular author) What fraction of his work occurs within the Unconscious frame? How does he move the "plot" within this frame? Is the Unconscious a substitute for, an imitation of, and a contradiction of "reality"? How does he handle transitions into and exits from the Unconscious? Do climaxes occur in or outside of the Unconscious? In how many respects are the rules of the U paradigm obeyed in the exo-Unconscious material? (Of all authors) Do they establish a consistent and complete map of the Unconscious? Does the map conform to the "scientific" map of the Unconscious used by Freud and other psychiatrists? In sum, what generally have the writers achieved in putting across their messages, in movement, in style, in dramatic excitement by the use of the concept of the Unconscious?
In a more general sense, the project has importance for understanding the genesis of the concept of the Unconscious, which may have been the crowning achievement of the human mind in the century, 1850-1950, and which may be a principal and still unappreciated source of the relativity physics of Einstein and the indeterminacy principle of Heisenberg and thence of the breakdown of Newtonian physics. (Schlipp, 1951) I intend to suggest such possibilities.
That the study postulates flatly that unconscious forces entered into the development of the concept of the Unconscious itself is not without significance. Scientific concepts, like ordinary parents, have a way of saying "Do as I say, and not as I do." In the very beginning of the period under study, Wilhelm von Humboldt, that incredibly active and resourceful explorer-scientist, coined the term "Weltanschauung" and "claimed that the science of a certain period was always unconsciously determined by its Weltanschauung." (Ellenberger, 1970, 201) This idea, which I originally obtained in 1939 from Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia, pointed me towards my first book, Public and Republic (1948, 1951), which demonstrated the unperceived connections between Weltanschauung (for which, read paradigm or ideology or world view) and surprisingly specific devices of political representation in American history (such as proportional representation and universal suffrage).
In developing its hypotheses, the study can uncover more fully the important transactional role that Freud played in the interfaces of the sciences and literature. By insisting on the scientific character of the Unconscious, in the face of disbelief, opposition, and rebellion, he built bridges among the three worlds and maintained their defenses until a generation of thinkers and writers had crossed over them.
The historiography of ideas here proposed may make some contribution methodology (see below). If the proposed "hard" component of the method - involving standardized content analysis of some 40 volumes and auxiliary materials - contributes to the final conclusions, which will depend substantially upon more conventional (no matter how delicate) methods of ideological analysis, then the methodology of literary analysis will take a step forward, and the techniques can be applied to other fields, most directly to those in which the Unconscious plays an important role, as for example political science. Here, for instance, one could hypothesize that a sociogenic route ran from Malthus to Darwin to Freud to Lasswell, with a "rational" diversionary and less productive route from Darwin to Bagehot to Wallas to Lasswell.
Still another point of significance has to do with why the investigator should propose this study only now, after 38 years of interest in the general area. Until recently, he has not known enough of the problem-area. He has long been familiar with the literary giants that constitute the "panel of respondents" for the study, Doestoevsky, Mann and the others, and used most of the tools and concepts in other areas. In the past dozen years, he has been working steadily in the history of science and its relations to religion, legend and ancient literature, and upon the origins of human nature, the results of which research have begun to appear only very recently.
Lately, he has come to think that a new paradigm of science may be imminent, one which synthesizes the uniformitarian and catastrophist Weltanschauung in futuristic terms. Within the last decade, the universe has been dubbed "explosive," the sun "inconstant," the geographical poles "tilted" and "reversed," the globe of the world "cleaved," the crust of the earth "convulsed," the civilizations of the Bronze Ages "razed" by natural forces, the species "extinguished in waves," the atmosphere "ravaged" by mutagenic radiation storms, the hominid recently transformed into a "hallucinatory" human, and Uniformitarianism reduced to "a methodological hypothesis": all of these statements have been made by "establishment" scientists of high rank.
We think that the signals of a changing major paradigm are to be found not only in science but in the arts and humanities, perhaps in the burgeoning of interest in what this study regards as other "escape hatches" of the literati: science fiction in all media, extreme violence, catastrophes, the occult in many forms, "last survivors" themes and "lost worlds." There is searching for a new paradigm in literature that would burst the bounds of "the Literary Unconscious" and flood out into the exterior world under new permissive conditions, upon the dismissal of the gatekeeper, the Uniformitarian paradigm; and literature would then be partially emptied of the Unconscious that had been elaborated in the century under discussion here. In such a case, there may be something prophetic in this "Last Hurrah" for the Unconscious, and the study may offer some theoretical and methodological possibilities to those who will be addressing themselves to the literature of the future.
At bottom, the project owes much of its importance to the contribution it may make to relations between "the Two Worlds" of science and the humanities. Indeed, we have here "Three Worlds," for we envision a three-way interaction among social sciences (psychology, sociology), the humanities, and the natural sciences. The study can reveal how far-reaching are the transactions and connections between the worlds in these large regions of intellectual movement, which, it is submitted, have not been as well explored as is generally believed.
A number of elements composed the U paradigm as it emerged victorious from its centuries of struggle with catastrophism, as the C paradigm is often called: time and space are absolute; the Newtonian laws of gravity and motion govern natural events rigidly; the heavens are constant and the universe is orderly; they operate through measurably equal units of time and through measurably equal coordinates of space; time is long and uninterrupted by sudden leaps; the surface of the earth has accumulated its features over long eons of time; nor are sudden leaps found in biology and cultural history, which have proceeded "by very short and slow steps" (Darwin); and social change is part of "cosmic evolution" (Herbert Spencer).
We have not, apparently, defined the U paradigm in its present circumscribed form (which already shows it to be on the defensive) as a mere hypothesis that rates of change in geology are to be considered as having been uniform unless proven to the contrary. Rather we take up the U idea in its broadest form as a world view, in the period of its great victory. For it was tied to two centuries of prior changes in the sciences of man and the skies. The philosopher-psychologists Locke, Hume, Fontanelle and Diderot had made of man a mechanical creature, highly determined by external forces. Hutton, the father of geological uniformitarianism, published his Theory of the Earth in 1775. Writes Mason (1962, 403), "Hutton based his view that the rock-forming agencies of the earth were constant on the by now established theory that the solar system was mechanically stable and permanently self-sustaining."
The close friendship and association of Darwin with the great U geologists adds credibility to the labeling of a U paradigm. In fact the peak prestige of the U paradigm would probably be registered around 1875, after the publication of Descent of Man. (The Origin of Species had been published and immediately sold out in 1859.) By 1875, too, Ernest Renan was widely known for his social-scientific studies of religion and myth, foreshadowing The Golden Bough of James Frazer, of whom it has been said that "Frazer seems an English Renan, so close do the two men appear at number of points both in outlook and reputation" (Vickery, 1973). The U paradigm penetrated all scientific fields, the social sciences, and social philosophy (including both Marxists and capitalists).
The criterion most commonly attributed to U is that it held man and nature to be forever undergoing a constant slow rate of change. Even if no other features of the U paradigm were unfriendly to literature, this one would be fatal to amiable concourse between science and literature. Literature has undergone great transformations from its prehistoric origins onwards, but one crowning trait has persisted: literature depends upon erratic and sudden rates of change; it demands them; its humanistic quality says, "Give me surprising and revolutionary change - I must have such concepts as the Greek 'catastrophe, ' the 'turning down point, ' and only then can I give you a story."
By contrast with U, Catastrophism, whose principles had been steadily eroding between 1600 and 1875, offered the following beliefs: the world, the species, and mankind were created abruptly; they were repeatedly subject to destruction by divine or natural forces in the skies and earth; the time spanned by these catastrophes was short, changes in temporal and spatial dimensions of the universe are brought on by divine, heroic, and natural forces that are immense and unpredictable; all the hosts of heaven -- sun, moon, stars, planets -- may change their motions and qualities; in this awful setting, measurement is less of the essence of being than miracles.
The Unconscious may be defined briefly here as those mental operations that are ordinarily not subject to awareness or recall. They exercise effects upon all life processes, including intellectual and emotional behavior. The Unconscious is variously portrayed and compartmentalized. One of the tasks of the proposed study is to compare and contrast the topology of the Unconscious as psychiatry sees it with the topology as it has been fashioned by literary figures for the purposes of their art. In literature the Unconscious was scarcely developed so long as the C paradigm prevailed. It was buried in sin and guilt, projected as the workings of gods and devil. Miracles and 'true' prophecy were accepted as movers of action. Authors could invoke seriously mysterious life forms, natural disasters, and portents. The external world could be turned upside down instantly. The skies were inhabited by a heavenly host that passed to and from the earth.
As examples, consulting the Gospels (Strauss, 1820), or Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (Wolfe, 1976), one sees how the hero, framed in the C paradigm, lived and died in company with prodigious manifestations of nature. The 'hero' in modern literature died in a way to satisfy the U paradigm. The 'hero' has managed to stay alive in politics by causing his own catastrophes, wars, and holocausts.
In the period of a century following 1870, frank expressions of catastrophism were effectively stilled in the serious intellectual world of science and literature. Literature (and indeed all art) might have been expected to show no structural and thematic changes correlative with the changes in scientific philosophy, or to exhibit changes that were in tune with the dominating world view of science. And, in fact, this was true to a certain extent of the best literature as well as continuously true of popular writing whose audience lived always in catastrophic as well as uniformitarian belief systems. Stendhal's hero of Rouge et Noir rued that he was born too late for the Battle of Waterloo, and committed murder finally to achieve drama, an indication perhaps of the reluctance of the old pre-uniformitarian world view to accept the new unglamorous world view. Manzoni's Betrothed dwelled in earlier times, endured a terrible plague, but responded to modern economic 'laws' of Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo. The popularity of the novel came rapidly, not only to please a new kind of public, but also to supply the author's need for more pages to develop stories, to embrace time, to attend to the once "insignificant." The poets, significantly, went "mad," like Baudelaire, and art and poetry went "bohemian." And we would point out that here was an escape route from the intolerable normality and statistical quality of the uniformitarian historical and world vision.
But meanwhile a major "normal" substitute formation for the dying catastrophism was occurring. It would be consonant, even if uncomfortable, with the Uniformitarian consensus. Psychiatry began its long march. Indications of "the Unconscious" began to appear. Henri Ellenberger's excellent (1970) book brings out the highlights. (It is misleadingly entitled, The Discovery of the Unconscious. A small fraction of the large book actually deals with the Unconscious, and nowhere does the work treat of the hypothesis of the presently proposed research, except by utmost indirection and as noticed by an ear cocked for it. Its subtitle of The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry is more descriptive of the contents.)
Mesmerism, spiritism, magnetism and hypnotism dominated early psychiatric circles. In literature, Edgar Allen Poe used the theories in his stories. The novelists Charles de Villers, E. T. A. Hoffman, Alexandre Dumas, and even Balzac also incorporated magnetism. "But," writes Ellenberger (p. 161), "magnetism was more exploited by popular writers than by great ones." Further, "Magnetism was condemned by the Academie and despised by Universities." (p. 160) Victor Hugo practiced spiritism. In Flaubert's Salammbo (1859) the subconscious eroticism of a maiden brings about hysterical behavior. "Hypnotism inspired a number of novels," (p. 165) such as George du Maurier's bestseller Trilby.
It is fairly obvious that these modes of psychiatry could not long confront the juggernaut of uniformitarian science. They passed and with them their literary passengers. A second wave of ideas came into psychiatry with the German romantic movement (1800-1830) -- an ideal, a yearning, a love of nature -- but then also a school of Naturphilosophie (von Schelling et al.), with a deep interest in the "soul" and the unity of man and nature. Freud and Jung were heavily influenced by Romanticism, and of course the intermediary psychiatric thinkers -- Von Schubert, Troxler, Carus, Fechner, and Bachofen as well. "Fundamentally Romantic are the concepts of unconscious, particularly as revived in Jung's 'collective unconscious' and the emphasis on dreams and symbols." (Ellenberger, 205).
According to Ellenberger, "After 1850, the philosophy of nature and Romanticism seemed to have completely disappeared. It was the period of positivism and the triumph of the mechanistic Weltanschauung. (He excepts Fechner and Bachofen.) Wilhelm Griesinger (1817-69) stands out here, a synthesizer of brain anatomopathology, neuro-psychiatry, clinical psychiatry, and dynamic psychiatry. "He proclaimed that the greatest and most important part of the psychic processes were unconscious." (p. 241)
Nietzsche is, of course, the exemplar of the Romantics in many ways and an enemy of the uniformitarian credo, with his ideas of the super-man, the will, and moral preoccupations. "Nietzsche is inexhaustible in his attempts to show how every possible kind of feeling, opinion, attitude, conduct and virtue, is rooted in self-deception or an unconscious lie. Thus, 'everyone is the farthest to himself, ' the unconscious is the essential part of the individual, consciousness being only a kind of ciphered formula of the unconscious, 'a more or less fantastic commentary on an unconscious, perhaps unknowable, but felt, text. '" (p. 273)
Theodore Thass-Thieneman (1968) reports that the concept of the unconscious was actively at work in linguistics before Freud and quotes Hermann Paul (1880, trans. 1888): "Perhaps the greatest progress by modern psychology consists in the acknowledgment of the fact that a great many psychological processes go on without clear consciousness, and that everything which has been in consciousness remains an effective motive in the unconscious. The acknowledgment of this as a matter of fact is of the greatest importance for linguistics, and it became utilized by Steinthal in great extent. All manifestations of speech are growing out of this dark space of the unconsciousness of the mind." (p. 23 of Principles of the History of Language, 1888.) Steinthal's work was contemporary with that of Paul. By 1889, Hericourt could write in the Revue Scientifique that the unconscious activity of mind was a scientific truth established beyond doubt, and claimed that Chevreul had experimentally demonstrated so. (Ellenberger, 314)
"In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the philosophical concept of the unconscious, as taught by Schopenhauer and Von Hartman, was extremely popular, and most contemporary philosophers admitted the existence of an unconscious mental life." (Ellenberger, 312). There was no absolutely new theory, but the growth was exponential: "The assumption had been held for many centuries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it attracted more attention; in the nineteenth, as one of the cornerstones of modern dynamic psychiatry. [N. B.: This term refers mainly to therapeutic as opposed to laboratory or experimental psychology, but also to Fechner and Helmholtz.] The traditional speculative approach, which was also that of the Romantics, was now supplemented by two other approaches, the experimental and the clinical." (Ellenberger, 311) Sigmund Freud, trained in neurology, attracted to hypnosis, and inspired by Romanticism, joined the scientific temper to the literary needs and produced a theory of the Unconscious that would bridge (not without strains and stresses) the chasm between uniformitarian science and creative literature. He opened up a grand ballroom of the mind, showed how its scenery could be changed instantly, depicted the wars that could be waged and the defeats suffered within it, extended its billings to include everyday life and jokes as well as tragedy, introduced the gods as the gigolos of illusion-seekers, and then, to help the literary writer more, even wrote the songs to be danced to with his ideas of symbols and languages.
A most significant contribution of the builder of the mental ballroom was his life-long pursuit of scientific respectability so that those who entered and departed would not be ashamed or endure the hoots of derision from scientists gathered at the doors. The occult, science fiction, allegories, fairy tales, and other literary devices to tell a story despite the restraints of science have been extremely popular, but have not won to their authors the kudos of the science-dominated elites. "Freud claimed... that his world was grounded in reality, perceived by scientific method." (Roazen, 18) In relation to literature, his attitude is that of a scientist who is trying to study by scientific methods the writer's advanced ideas: "... Creative writers are valuable allies and their evidence is to be prized highly, for they are apt to know a whole host of things between heaven and earth, of which our philosophy has not let us dream." (Quoted by Roazen, 16-7.)
Freud, rather than Nietzsche, became the central figure in the history of the Unconscious partly because he was a conformer to the uniformitarian ideal. By contrast, Nietzsche was in revolt against science; science "is a principle inimical to life and destructive. The will for truth could be a disguised wish for death." (Ellenberger, 273) So it came about that Nietzsche, who knew and spoke of the unconscious, of inhibitions, sublimation, repression, functional amnesia, selfdestructiveness and the "id" before Freud, and was admired by Thomas Mann, Carl Jung and a host of literati and conoscenti, was banned from the precincts of Uniformitarian science where Freud was allowed, no matter how reluctantly, to enter. Freud's striving for scientific status has governed psychiatric history over nearly a century, and the realm of the unconscious is widely regarded as one of the great scientific "discoveries" of the modern age. Thousand of practitioners in many fields of science have employed the concept. It was to this authoritative support, then, that the writer might refer when asked his credentials as a speaker of truths. It is not generally appreciated how important this was and now is to the serious writer who seeks to employ fiction in its various forms as a teacher of humanity.
Just as it has become plausible that practically every scientific canon of the U paradigm would threaten literary creativity, it may become credible that the U paradigm would provoke defense mechanisms, and particularly, the Unconscious. But we have to analyze carefully the dynamics of the events; they are quite roundabout. Here is an hypothesis of how the "scientific Freudian" would reason, using U premises.
Human behavior is animal. Animal (human) behavior was a long time is developing. What is civilized is also ancient (prehistoric, primitive [cf. Fraser]). Morality is animal and relative. It is built up in a culture, like beavers and ants and apes build their behavior patterns. Myth, language, and symbols develop either on a constant plane or curve of rationality and clarity over long periods. The evidences of catastrophism are interpreted as expressions of repressed instinctual tendencies. The developing intelligence - mechanical though it be - is given the possibility of understanding and controlling nature. Both the environment and human mind are in a "steady state." The feelings of catastrophism are attributed to the repressed traumas and anxieties of "normal" existence in civilization.
In the end, the theory of the unconscious substituted for analogous functions of pre-Unconscious psychology. Thus was filled the vacuum left by the "scientific" destruction of the latter when U took over from C.
The criticism often directed against the theory of the Unconscious, that it was non-provable, non-testable, etc., is perhaps correct, but irrelevant to the functions of the theory, which becomes in effect part of the U ideology.
Once introduced and elaborated as part of the scientific corpus, the Unconscious made its way more readily into literature. As Steiner (1967, 6) has said, "The science will enrich language and the resources of feeling (as Thomas Mann showed in Felix Krull, it is from astrophysics and microbiology that we may reap our future myths, the terms of our metaphors)... And it is precisely the 'objectivity, ' the moral neutrality in which the sciences rejoice and attain their brilliant community of effort, that bar them from final relevance."
However, by our theory, the Unconscious was not transferred as a topological field or map into the novels and dramas. Rather it was reworked. The literary Unconscious will probably be shown not to have the same geometry as the scientific Unconscious. For example, Freud's typology of regressions is not the typology adopted by novelists. No one yet knows what typology the novelists drafted and settled upon, perhaps none at all, perhaps highly idiosyncratic forms. We may discover this structure in some part. Yet, a priori, when Freud discerns a regression from conscious to unconscious, from the present to childhood, and from language to pictorial and symbolic representations, we are entitled to move with Proust's "Recovering of Lost Time," (as it is better translated) for evidences of this typology, or for additional ones or for substitutes. And so it is with a number of the mechanisms and delineations of the Unconscious; in this study, even though it is not the central issue, the comparison of literary structuring of the unconscious with scientific structuring will come naturally and one day perhaps tell us much about the nature of literary needs and inventions.
The proposed study would proceed to identify among a selected group of authors the biographical information that would indicate their awareness of and interaction with the concept of the unconscious, then to show in the work of the same authors how the concept of the unconscious is employed, and finally, to examine, by comparison with the uniformitarian "real world," how the "unconscious world" of these writers manages to satisfy the demands of scientific respectability while achieving the requirements of literary fiction. Because the spread of the uniformitarian paradigms and the development of the idea of the unconscious occurred throughout western civilization, it might be well to study writers from several countries. Further, leading writers, rather than typical authors, should such exist, were chosen, because of their influence upon the other writers, teachers, scientists, and students of their cultures, and also, I should add, because I am more familiar with their lives and work. Thirdly, authors who altogether complete the range of literary activities made possible in "the ballroom of the unconscious" were selected.
To these ends, the following authors and works were chosen: F. Doestoevsky (1821-1881) for his pre-Freudian use of the Unconscious. The Insulted and Injured (1861); Crime and Punishment (1866); The Idiot (1868); The Possessed (1871-2); The Brothers Karamozov (1879-80)
Andre Gide (1869-1951) for his stylistic mastery and methods of disclosing unconscious motives. Fruits of the Earth (1897); The Immoralist (1902); Strait is the Gate (1909); Cellars of the Vatican (1914); The Counterfeiters (1926).
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) for objectifying the unconscious by treating reality as surrealism. "Metamorphosis" and Other Stories (var. d.); The Trial (1925); The Castle (1926); Amerika (1927).
James Joyce (1882-1941) for the frank and full integration of the "stream of consciousness" (and unconsciousness) into reality settings. Dubliners (1914); Ulysses (1922); Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916); Chamber Music (1907); Exiles (1918).
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) for his frank devotion to the morality of Nietzsche and his careful, logical delineations of the unconscious vs. the rational. Buddenbrooks (1901); Magic Mountain (1927); Death in Venice (1911); Doctor Faustus (1947); The Confessions of Felix Krull (1954).
Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) for his explorations of tragic madness and the Oedipal unconscious. Strange Interlude (1928); Mourning Becomes Electra (1931); Ah, Wilderness (1933); The Iceman Cometh (1946); Long Day's Journey into Night (1955).
Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) for his superimposition of scientifically possible contradictions into plot and character. The Old and the Young (1913); Right You Are If You Think You Are (1918); Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921); Naked (1924); Tonight we Improvise (1930).
Marcel Proust (1867-1922) for his mastery of time in all of its unconscious aberrations beneath the ticking of the "clockwork universe." Remembrance of Things Past (7 vols., 1913-7).
Besides these authors, to whom distinct chapters of the intended monograph are devoted, occur other intellectual figures who are to be treated in the proposed research. They include Shakespeare, John Bunyan, John Milton, and Voltaire in Chapter I; Newton, Fontanelle, Locke and Hume in Chapter II; Hutton, Lamarck, Lyell, Cuvier, Buckland and Agassiz in IV. Boulanger, rarely mentioned, is discussed in Chapter VI; he combines scientific catastrophism (comet and flood); a theory of the origins of religion in real-world fear; a theory of collective amnesia; and the use of the myth from suppressed traumas - all in an unprecedented manner.
For some time now (one may argue) the theory of the Unconscious has been turning against the U paradigm. For it has been bringing to the fore unassimilable, uncomfortable, anxiety-producing material. Since the disintegration of catastrophic religions and political ideologies, there has been no vessel to hold its acids.
The U theory had implied that "in time" therapies would be devised to control and appease the Unconscious. Behaviorist psychologists such as Watson and Skinner have tried to turn their backs upon it. Under the U theory, all is explainable; when explainable it is controllable; when controlled, anxiety is reduced and happiness is produced. To the extent that this sequence has failed to materialize and disenchantment with the theories has occurred, the concept of the Unconscious is counter-productive for U. That is, the Unconscious (with the old C paradigm admission to "science" denied and its controlling capacities foregone) can only turn on itself in literature and art, allying itself with impressionism, expressionism, surrealism, the occult, science fiction, yoga-tao-sufi, and other modes of compatible existence. The "tragic" departs from the art and literature; the "contradictory" (irony, farce included) and "obscene reality" replace it; there are phenomena to label "tragic" but no entity to judge them to be tragedy; the tragedy is like the tree falling in the forest unheard and unobserved.
Moving along in tandem with the U and Evolutionist injunctions, the Unconscious has been revealed to affect thousands of psychological functions and social behaviors, in areas that must be designated non-instinctual or at least not wholly instinctual, and therefore human. Perhaps our historical study may generate hypotheses in answer to the questions: What will follow the U paradigm? Or, after the Unconscious, what?
The literary mind is not happy with being a "reservation Indian." A continuous bombardment of the scientists occurs. We are so used to it that we only know of its excesses. The literary mind wants the real world to have the catastrophic qualities so that it can turn its plots and characters loose upon it. This will continue to cause tension between science and literature, with science requiring literature to be 'abnormal' and literature wishing its innermost thoughts to be 'normal. ' Perhaps, as Neuman (1959, 25) has written, "the breakdown of consciousness, carrying the artist backward to an all-embracing participation with the world, contains the constructive creative elements of a new world vision."
Added note on Methodology: Types of Sources and Causal Connections Sought
The major methodological challenges of the project have to deal with gathering relevant and ample data and establishing causal relations between several critical sets of events.
a.
Writings in the History of Science, such as works
number 9, 21, 27, 28, 29, 40, 47, 78 in the
accompanying bibliography.
b.
History of Literature in general or in special
aspects, such as numbers 1, 22-4, 71, 56, 59.
c.
History of Psychology, # 16, etc.
d.
History of Ideas, such as items 8, 37, and 65.
e.
Works of Figures Prominent in Parts I and II. These
are generally available, as with S. Freud, Standard
Edition (20), Kaufmann on Nietzsche (38),
Boulanger's works (3) are rare, but have been read
at Princeton U. Library where they remain available.
f.
Works of the Panel of 8 Authors: generally available both
in original languages and in translation. An estimated 40
volumes are involved here, averaging 5 per author.
g.
Derived Data: the systematically collected information
obtained from the works of the Panel of 8 authors. The
parameters of this information, for which the collective
terms "questionnaire" and "framework of interrogation"
are used above, have to be formulated; this task is one of
the most rigorous and demanding phases of the
investigation. In a vital sense, the project is the devising of
a "framework of interrogation" for the panel of authors
and other data. Putting aside the systematic searching for
biographical connections and other material of use to the
study, the examination of the panel works to extract from
them their "geometry" and the "dynamic" of the
unconscious that they employ. There occur questions such
as: What proportion of the time in each work does Author
A deal with the Unconscious? In which of the following
psychological categories (derived from the scientific
typography) does the U action take place? (There follows
a set of categories.) If there is no easy fitting, describe the
image (map, idea, functions) of the Unconscious that the
writer is pursuing.
h.
Biographical and autobiographical writings involving the 8
authors, such as the Journals of Gide.
a.
Theory of the Unconscious in Science. Well-recorded in the sources.
b.
Between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism. Data
appears adequate and interconnections already well developed.
c.
Between (a) uniformitarianism, (b) Catastrophism, and (c)
psychology of the unconscious. Difficult (an typical of
historiography of ideas). If ab, bc, ac and abc are
identified (or distinguishable) as interacting according to
certain typical modes, then statements of their causal
connections can be deduced. If influences between and
among them are directly attributed by participants, then
causal transactions are more strongly proven.
d.
Between the psychology of the Unconscious and literature
of the unconscious. Appears solvable because both
universes (psychologists and literary figures), are in touch
abundantly, directly and through intermediaries of press,
common acquaintances and influences.
Topology of the Psychological Unconscious has not been finely drawn; existing schemes of the Unconscious may be improved by our analysis here. Topology of the Literary unconscious has to be invented almost entirely by the investigator. (This is the "ballroom of the unconscious" metaphor used above.) Even isolated gems, such as this statement from the pen of George Steiner (1967,31), are exceedingly rare: "As if aware of the fact that science had torn from language many of its former possessions and outer provinces, Joyce chose to annex a new kingdom below ground. Ulysses caught in its bright net the live tangle of subconscious life; Finnegan's Wake mines the bastion of sleep."
The topologies must then be related to the original topology of the Uniformitarian and Catastrophist paradigms.
Efforts at introducing strict logico-empirical and quantitative method into the history of new ideas are infrequent possibly because they are rarely successful. This does not mean, however, that they serve no heuristic purpose, or that they do not result in an underlying structure that produces a superior, if seemingly qualitative, work. I am not relying rigidly upon the content analysis techniques described above to disgorge neat tables; if, as is likely, they produce fairly organized heaps of data, I shall be neither surprised nor displeased, but shall fall back upon the "tried and true" styles of literary analysis employed in such works as Mario Praz' The Romantic Agony, or John Vickery's The Literary Impact of the Golden Bough. As H. T. Pledge wrote in his History of Science (p. 143) "Science should explain what we notice... not notice only what it can explain." I shall try to explain what I notice by the most exact means possible.
1. Richard F. Atnally. "The Human Trinity: The Shapings of Time in Eighteenth Century Literature" (Unpublished Paper delivered at MLA Convention, New York, 1976).
2. Marie Bonaparte. "Time and the Unconscious," 21 International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1940), 427-68.
3. Nicholas-Antoine Boulanger. L'Antiquité devoilée... ages, 3v (Amsterdam: M. M. Rey, 1977).
4. Donald Brinkmann. Probleme des Unbewussten (Zurich: Rascher, 1943).
5. F. S. Cohn. "Time and the Ego," 26 Psychoanal. Q. (1957), 168-89.
6. F. G. Crookshank. Individual Psychology and Nietzsche (London: C. W. Daniel, 1933), Pamphlet # 10.
7. Charles Darwin. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2v. (1871, many editions since).
8. __________. The Origin of Species (1859).
9. Alfred de Grazia. "An Early Mathematical Derivation of an Election System," 44 Isis (Jan. 1953), 42-50.
10. ___________. Public and Republic: American Ideas of Political Representation (New York: Knopf, 1951)
11. Sebastian de Grazia. Time, Work, and Leisure (New York: Doubleday, 196).
12. L. Dooley. "The Concept of Time in Defense of Ego Integrity," 4 Psychiatry (1941), 4: 13-25.
13. Jan Ehrenwald, ed. The History of Psychotherapy: From Healing Magic to Encounter (New York: Aronson, 1976).
14. Loren Eiseley. The Invisible Pyramid (New York: Scribners 1970).
15. Mircea Eliade. Cosmos & History: The Myth of The Eternal Return (New York: Harper, 1959).
16. Henri F. Ellenberger. The Discovery of the Unconscious (New York: Basic Books, 1970).
17. Linda Fleming. The Sub-Culture of Science Fiction (Chapel Hill, N. C.: U. of N. C., P D. Dissertation in Sociology, 1977).
18. P. G. Fothergill, Historical Aspects of Organic Evolution (London, 1952).
19. J. T. Fraser, ed. The Voices of Time (N. Y.: Braziller, 1968).
20. Sigmund Freud. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (trans. and edited by J. Strachey with Anna Freud, London: Hogarth Press, 1955-).
21. C. C. Gillispie. Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850 (1951).
22. Charles Glicksberg. The Literature of Nihilism (Lewisburg: Bucknell U. Press, 1975).
23. ______________. Modern Literary Perspectivism (Dallas: SMU Press, 1970).
24. ______________. The Self in Modern Literature (U. Park, Pa.: U. of pa. State Press, 1963).
25. Stephen Jay Gould. "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History (May, 1977), 12.
26. John C. Green. The Death of Adam (Ames: Iowa State u. Press, 1959).
27. George Grinnell. "The Origins of Modern Geological Theory," I Kronos # 4 (1976), 68-76.
28. A. R. Hall. The Scientific Revolution, 1500-1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954).
29. John Hampton. Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger et la science de son temps (Geneve: Droz, 1955).
30. Edward von Hartmann. Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869).
31. Jules Hericourt. "L'activité inconsciente de l'esprit," Revue Scientifique, 3rd series #1 (1889), II, 257-268.
32. Frederick J. Hoffman. Freudianism and the Literary Mind (Baton Rouge, U. of La. Press, 1957).
33. _____________. The Imagination's New Beginning: Theology and Modern Literature (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame U. Press, 1967).
34. Pierre Janet. Névroses et idées fixes (Paris: Alcan, 1898).
35. Carl G. Jung. Man and his Symbols (N. Y.: Dell, 1968).
36. _______________. "The Psychology of the Unconscious," in Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1955), pp. 117-130.
37. Walter A. Kaufman, ed. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (N. Y.: Meridian, 1956).
38. ____________. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton: P. U. Press, 1974).
39. Frank Kermode. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the theory of Fiction (London: Oxford U. Press, 1967).
40. Thomas Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1962).
41. Harold D. Lasswell. Psychology and Politics (Chicago: U. of C. Press, 1930).
42. _____________. Nathan Leites and Associates. Language of Politics: Studies in Quantitative Semantics (N. Y.: G. w. Stewart, 1949).
43. Nathan Leites. A Study of Bolshevism (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1953).
44. Karl Mannheim. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (1936, N. Y.: Harcourt, Brace, World, 1968).
45. Frank Manuel. The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1959).
46. Edward L. Margetts. "The Concept of the Unconscious in the History of Medical Psychology," XXVII Psychiatric Q. (1953), 115.
47. Stephen E. Mason. A History of the Sciences (Collier Books, 1962).
48. Joost A. M. Meerloo. Along the Fourth Dimension: Man's Sense of Time and History (N. Y.: John Day, 1970).
49. James Miller. Unconsciousness (N. Y.: Wiley, 1942).
50. Joseph-Marie Montmasson. Invention and the Unconscious (N. Y.: Harcourt, Brace, 1932).
51. Thelma Moss. The Probability of the Impossible (N. Y.: New Amer. Library, 1974).
52. Frederick W. H. Myers. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1903).
53. Erich Neuman. Art and The Creative Unconscious (N. Y.: Pantheon Books, 1954).
55. Marjorie Hope Nicholson. The Breaking of the Circle, Studies in the Effect of the 'New Science' Upon Seventeenth Century Poetry (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1950).
56. __________. Voyages to the Moon (N. Y.: Macmillan, 1948).
57. Shelley Orgel. "On Time and Timelessness," J. Am. Psychoanal. Assn. (1965), 102-21.
58. H. T. Pledge. Science Since 1500 (N. Y.: Harper & Bros., 1959).
59. Mario Praz. The Romantic Agony (trans. London: Oxford U., 1933).
60. Paul Roazen. Freud: Political and Social Thought (N. Y.: Vintage Books, 1970).
61. Joseph R. Royce. "Psychology at the Crossroads between the Sciences and the Humanities," in Royce, ed., Psychology and the Symbol (N. Y.: Random House, 1965).
62. Schlipp, P. A., ed. Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (N. Y.: Tudor, 1951).
63. Arthur Schopenhauer. World as Will and Representation (1814).
64. Robert Sears. Survey of Objective Studies of Psychoanalytic Concepts
65. Pitirim Sorokin. Social and Cultural Dynamics, 4 vols. (1937-41).
66. George Steiner. Language and Silence (N. Y.: Athenaeum, 1967)
67. David Friedrich Strauss. The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1820; trans. Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1972).
68. Theodore Thass-Thienemann. Symbolic Behavior (N. Y.: Washington Square Press, 1968).
69. _____________. The Sub-Conscious Language (N. Y.: Wash. Square Press, 1967).
70. Hans Vaihinger. The Philosophy of "As If" (N. Y.: Harcourt-Brace, 1935).
71. John B. Vickery. The Literary Impact of the Golden Bough. (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1973).
72. John B. Watson. "The Myth of the Unconscious," 155 Harper's Magazine (1927), 503-7.
73. Rene Welleck. "The Concept of Evolution in Literary History," reprinted in S. G. Nichols, Jr., ed., Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1963).
74. Lancelot L. Whyte. The Unconscious Before Freud (N. Y.: Basic Books, 1960).
75. J. O. Wisdom. The Unconscious Origin of Berkeley's Philosophy, International Psychoanalytic Library, #47 (London: Hogarth Press, 1953).
76. Irving Wolfe. "The Catastrophic Substructure of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, " I Kronos, #3 (1975), 31-45, #4 (1975), 37-54.
77. Walter von Wyss. Charles Darwin, ein Forscherleben (Zurich & Stuttgart: Artemis-Verlag, 1958).