In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER FOUR Literary Patients I know that’s a secret for it’s whispered everywhere. —Congreve, Love for Love “The psychiarist who takes it upon himself to attempt a character study of an individual whom he has never met is engaged upon a project which is full of risk.”1 With these words the eminent British psychiatrist Anthony Storr expresses his reservations at the opening of his study, “Churchill’s Black Dog, Kafka’s Mice, and Oher Phenomena of the Human Mind.” He goes on to elaborate on the difficulty of assessing a person (Churchill) whom he never actually met: “In the exercise of his profession, the psychiatrist has an unrivaled opportunity for the appraisal of character, and may justly claim that he knows more persons deeply and intimately than most of his fellows. But, when considering someone who has died, he is deprived of those special insights which can only be attained in the consulting room, and is, like the historian, obliged to rely upon what written evidence happens to be available” (3). Storr’s astute speculations about Churchill have an illustrious precedent in Freud’s “Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen über einen autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)” (1911; “Psychoanalytic Notes upon an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia [Dementia Paranoides]). Like Storr with Churchill, Freud never met the lawyer, Daniel Schreber, who published his Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken (Memoirs of a Neurotic) in 1903. Freud is not even sure whether Schreber was still alive in 1911; he appears to have made no attempt to follow up personally on Schreber, basing his analysis exclusively on the written evidence Schreber had left behind. Yet Freud evidently feels a certain need to justify his psychoanalysis of this patient he had never seen, just as Storr does in regard to Churchill. He points out that a physician like himself who is not attached to a public institution does not have long-term 53 access to cases of paranoia. But he believes it is “nicht . . . unstatthaft”2 (not inadmissible) to practice an analytic interpretation on Schreber because he had written and published his own case history.3 The English translation of “nicht . . . unstatthaft” as “legitimate” (104) is far more positive than Freud’s formulation, a double negative that projects a certain hesitancy. Although both Freud and Storr reflect on the risks innate to probing a patient who cannot be and has not been present in the customary faceto -face situation in the consulting room, both decide nonetheless to go ahead, substituting written evidence for the direct encounter. Storr, who also draws on testimony from Churchill’s family and friends, emphasizes that “what I have to say must be regarded as tentative” (4). He illustrates “the possibilities of error” by referring to the “disastrous study of Woodrow Wilson” (4) by Freud and William Bullitt. These caveats must arouse apprehensions in the literary critic who embarks on a psychiatric reading of a figure in a novel or a play. Storr is concerned about dealing with a person who has died and Freud with one who has disappeared, whereas the literary critic examines a character who has never actually lived. However, psychological studies of characters in literature are already well established as an effective way of analyzing the protagonists ’ motivations as well as the dynamics among the figures.4 What is more, psychological interactions including decision conflicts, family strife, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and depressive feelings are part of everyone ’s life and may escalate almost imperceptibly from a normal to a debilitating level.5 Still, the critic who sets out to examine psychosomatic disorders in literary works must weigh the risks against the rewards of considering literary figures as patients. ❖ ❖ ❖ The risks are more readily apparent than the rewards. The very fictitiousness of the characters seems a primary stumbling block. Unlike Churchill and Schreber, literary patients have never existed and have left no written evidence of their own on which to base an interpretation. The only real quality that a fictional character can authentically be said to possess is an essentially literary one, such as appearing in chapter 3. When Dickens describes Mrs. Gamp as being fat, it is a property that he has invented and ascribed to her. Our belief in her fatness depends on one of the fundamental conventions of reading. Coleridge’s phrase, “a willing suspension of disbelief for the moment”6 is frequently cited, although in regard to realistic works it is more pertinent to speak of readers’ willingness to pretend belief...

Share