Proust and Parricide: Literary, Biographical, and Forensic-Psychiatric Explorations

Overture

Several years ago I bought a used copy of what was then called Remembrance of Things Past (1981). Based primarily on knowledge of Proust's reputation, I had decided that my literary education could no longer exclude this work, published between 1913 and 1927, regardless of its length. A couple of years passed while the black-bound, boxed volumes patiently waited on a library shelf. Then, in the spring semester of 1999, there was an opportunity to read the original version, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (1987), in a graduate course on Proust and his work at the University of Kansas taught by Professor Ted Johnson. I jumped into Proust with blissful ignorance.

As part of our introductory material we studied Proust's Pastiches et mélanges (1919). Although it was not on our syllabus, as a psychiatrist who does forensic work I was drawn to an article in the volume entitled "Filial Sentiments of a Parricide" (1907). As happened some years earlier when a footnote about the death of a child plaintiff in a United States Supreme Court case attracted my attention and eventually resulted in a publication (Lacoursiere 1983), the reading of "Filial Sentiments" led to some initial explorations for which the phrase "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" might be apropos. My ignorance was abetted by the relative inconspicuousness of key Proustian materials at that time, when the primary English biography was still that of Painter (1959; 1965).

In the years since 1999, the formidable boxed set has sent me on a research quest that has not had the circumscribed focus of a forensic psychiatric case. To begin with, the primary literature itself is vast. There are twenty-one volumes of Proust's correspondence, edited by Philip Kolb between 1970 and 1993, with new letters still being discovered. Furthermore, we seem to be experiencing a resurgence of interest in Proust, signaled by an avalanche of critical works and the appearance in English of the now more appropriately retitled In Search of Lost Time (1998-1999). There have been books aimed at wide audiences (de Bottom 1997; Bowie 1998; Shattuck 2000; Bales 2001), no fewer than three new biographies available in English (Tadié 1996; White 1999; Carter 2000), mentions of Proust and his magnum opus in the popular media (Gopnik 1999), and numerous web sites. In particular, the recent biographies by Tadié and Carter are so outstanding that one hesitates to venture into this territory.

No longer able to take refuge in the ignorance of the fool, and certainly without the wisdom of an angel, I resolved to proceed in these explorations.

Introduction

Proust, the son and brother of physicians, is primarily known for his soundings of the various manifestations of love and jealousy, and of the place of involuntary memory in emotions and creativity, in his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. Before the publication of the first volume of this work, Swann's Way (1913), Proust published a number of writings, including "Filial Sentiments of a Parricide," in which, while discussing a case of matricide followed by a suicide committed by an acquaintance, I believe that he tells us something about his own "filial sentiments" and about parricide in general.

Except in rare circumstances, as with a severely abusive parent, parricide is a vile act. Yet parental murder accounted for 1.7% of murders in the United States in 2000, the last year for which such statistics are available. This amounts annually to almost one parricide per one million inhabitants. Of 220 total parricides, 55% were patricides and 45% matricides. These statistics on the ratio of patricides to matricides in the U.S. are fairly consistent for the last several years (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2000; Table 3.141). French statistics document a higher incidence of parricides, at 2.5%-3% of all murders; this holds true also for studies conducted around the time of Proust's 1907...