The Psychoanalyzing of Eugene O'Neill: P.P.S.

The Psychoanalyzing of Eugene O'Neill: P.P.S. ARTHUR H. NETHERCOT • THE QUESTION OF EUGENE O'NEILL'S KNOWLEDGE of psychoanalysis and the extent and degree of its influence on him and his plays has long concerned the critics, scholarly, literary, and journalistic, and I have made my own contribution to the discussion - which has often come close to a controversy - in certain articles in lVlodem Drama. The first of these was entitled "The Psychoanalyzing of Eugene O'Neill," and came out in two parts, in December 1960 and February 1961. This extended review of the subject was supplemented in September 1965 by a short "Postscript," prompted by the publication of the Gelbs' massive biography of O'Neill, many passages of which corroborated my earlier speculations and conclusions. Now, several years later, new discoveries and reflections call for a post postscript, which may perhaps stimulate further examination of the subject.1 As I have shown in these previous articles, the main places in which O'Neill himself made direct statements about his reading in the "new psychology" were in two letters: one to his friend and first biographer, Barrett H. Clark, and the other to a graduate student of mine, Martha Carolyn Sparrow. In the first (first quoted by Clark in the 1933 edition of his biography), O'Neill stated: "As far as I can remember, of all the books written by Freud, lung, etc., I have read only four, and lung is the only one of the lot who interests me.,,2 This admission obviously lacks specificity, but this lacuna had been to a great extent already filled in his letter to Miss Sparrow on October 13, 1929, in which he stated: "I have only read two books of Freud's, Totem and Taboo and Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The book that interested me the most of all those of the Freudian school is lung's Psychology of the Unconscious which I read many years ago." The unidentified fourth book admitted in O'Neill's later letter to Clark may well have been Freud's Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, which O'Neill and 35 36 ARTHUR H. NETHERCOT his editor, Manuel Komroff, read and discussed in March 1926,3 although this fact contradicts O'Neill's later rather tentative statement that he had read only two books by Freud - or at least testifies to his uncertain memory. Of these four only one may be found among the books from the O'Neill library which were offered to the Yale library by Carlotta Monterey O'Neill after her husband's death. This is Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Perhaps an account of this collection and its history as given me by the librarians in charge of the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale may be of general value as well as interest. Not long after O'Neill's death Mrs. Carlotta O'Neill shipped all the books from their joint library to Yale, which was allowed to select for its special O'Neill Collection and the general collection such volumes as it did notalready have, but especially any books with O'Neill's annotations. Some two hundred books were chosen in this way for the Yale Collection of American Literature, while several hundred went to the general collection. The first group has been officially listed, the second not. Unfortunately the total library was not catalogued. The books not kept by Yale were then returned to Mrs. O'Neill, who gave them to John H. G. Pell, who presented most of them to the C. W. Post College of Long Island University when he became its president. The estate of the second Mrs. O'Neill, Agnes Boulton, was the source of the purchase by Yale of a few more books that belonged to O'Neill before 1928. In addition, a small number of other books were received by bequest to Yale from Mrs. Carlotta O'Neill. Among the central O'Neill collection, in addition to Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York, 1925, translated by G. J. M. Hubback), is to be found a fourth work by Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (New York, 1925...