I
IF the opinion of the reviewer represents in any degree the opinion of the public, psycho-analysis is becoming at once the craze and the curse of the modern novelist. The chief persons of the story, we gather, are no longer units, recognisable illustrations of acceptable and well-defined types of character, but tend to split horribly into their component parts, revealing the workings of their unconscious minds with a spiritual immodesty worthy of the immortal Sally Beauchamp. Our heroes suffer from "Œdipus complexes" with a unanimity that must appear altogether perverse to a generation reared on the works of Charles Dickens, who consistently regarded all mothers as criminal, negligible, or insane. Our heroines are become either displayed specimens of morbid pathology or increasingly middle-aged. Finally, and as a culminating horror, we occasionally come across a novel written with such a single regard for the subjective emotions that the objective personality appears only now and then as an uncompleted cast momentarily lifted, for examination, from the matrix.
Moreover, these symptoms and their like—I still adapt and condense the current opinions of the outraged reviewer—exhibit an inclination to multiply. We picture the admirer of the world's most successful novelist (Harold Bell Wright) as arching his back and spitting furiously at the first indication of a Freudian thesis. And, to conclude the indictment, it is plain that unless the novel-writing disciples of the Vienna and Zurich schools of psychology can promptly be bled to death—they have, thank God, quite miserable circulations!—their influence may permeate and vitiate that sane and admirable method which has given us an Ethel M. Dell, a Temple Thurston, or a Zane Grey.
This indictment represents, no doubt, an extremist attitude, the opinion of that multitude which must have its heroines pure and its morality undiluted; but it cannot be neglected solely on that account. And when we recognise, as we must, that authentic critics have also shown a bias in the same direction, we have established a case that demands both a literary and a scientific consideration.
Our analysis, however, must begin with certain exclusions. If we are to test the influence of psycho-analysis on the novel as an art-form we must take into account not only the effect, but also the manner of the incidence. For it is manifest that of all theories of the nature of man ever put forward by a reputable scientist, that of Sigmund Freud is the most attractive and adaptable for the purposes of fiction. It was a theory of sex, the all but universal theme of the novel; it emphasised various peculiarities of thought, feeling, and action that no observant, and, a fortiori, no introspective novelist could thereafter overlook; it gave a new mystery to the human mind; adumbrated the suggestion of a freer morality by dwelling upon the physical and spiritual necessity for the liberation of impulse; and, last temptation of the enervated seeker for new themes, provided material for comparatively unworked complications of motive.
Now, these appeals have inevitably influenced the writing of just those experimenters and opportunists whose novels I wish to exclude from our analysis. Their productions can only be indicative of a passing fashion; their value, at best, such as the future historian may find in the record of the epidemic symptoms they have documented. But since novels of this type have a particular significance, both in relation to our present purpose and to all literary criticism of this form of expression, we must in the first place arrive at a clear understanding of the quality that differentiates them from those other works which, whatever their failings, have another representative value.
Taking, then, an extreme and therefore ideal example, I submit that the essential difference is that between pure observation and pure feeling, or variously between an intellectual as opposed to an emotional response to experience. In the case of the experimenters we are considering, such a subject as psycho-analysis is studied from the surface, the facts and general teachings are memorised and then applied, more or less arbitrarily, to the invented or observed characters who figure in the story. Such a method when brilliantly used may produce an impression of truth, may even in rare cases lead to discovery, but in its essence it is mechanical, a mere collection and presentation of material that has not been assimilated, and hence very slightly transmuted by the writer.
The opposed example is that in which the study of, say, psycho-analysis comes to the understanding of the writer as a formula that interprets for him a mode of experience. He has, let us assume, been aware of and puzzled by a habit of thought or feeling which is suddenly and beautifully illuminated for him by the application of this new formula. Nor, in the truly representative instance, does the process halt at the first discovery, but continues to open resolutions of old difficulties hardly recognised as such until they fall within the scope of the new criterion. The danger that besets the young disciple in the first ecstasies of such an adventure is that he will inevitably be tempted to apply his touchstone too generally, to imagine that his formula will explain all life.
In such a case as this the manner of incidence, to which I referred, differs markedly from the first example. Here we get a sense of interpenetration and subsequent assimilation, in the former case rather of obliquity and reflection; the true difference being that one writer finds in psycho-analysis an aid to the understanding of human thought and action, the other merely a useful piece to add to his repertoire. And, finally in this connection, one has true value as evidence of the validity of the theory; the other has not.
Having thus cleared the ground by eliminating more particularly those literary experiments in applied psychology that have had such an irritant action on the nerves of the reviewer, I propose to test the applicability of psycho-analysis to fiction by a brief examination of certain aspects of the work of a writer who had not heard of Freud and never attempted to anticipate his method. Dostoevsky, in fact, from our point of view, may be regarded primarily as a patient rather than as a doctor.
Of his life up to the age of seven years we lack that information which would provide us with the last triumphant detail of proof. It is exceedingly improbable that that detail will ever be forthcoming. But it is a fairly safe inference from the later evidence that at some time in the course of those earlier years he suffered either some shock of terror or stress of misery that initiated the trauma which was later confirmed and emphasised by his experience on the scaffold. This inference is inherently probable, and since it might conceivably be confirmed by research and could not conceivably be disproved, we may assume it as a premise, although it is not absolutely essential pathologically.
For the remainder of his life we see him beyond all shadow of doubt suffering from a neurosis that, even if it were not the cause, was the accompaniment and not the result of his epilepsy. The form taken by this neurosis has been provisionally termed an "inferiority complex." In its milder and practically harmless forms it is perhaps the commonest instance of a morbid inhibition, despite the fact that—pace Dr. Freud—it depends more on the power principle of Adler than on the pleasure-pain principle so tediously insisted upon by the Vienna school. The symptoms in aggravated cases exhibit on the one side an exaggerated humility, and on the other an intolerant use of any adventitious opportunity for the use of power. Two instances of everyday experience taken from a text-book of psycho-analysis are: The driver of a heavy van brutally threatening the temporarily inferior pedestrian by the threat of running him down; and the ordinarily meek woman who takes a delight in exerting temporary superiority of position, it may be in such a trivial act as keeping anyone waiting by a pretence of inattention.
Dostoevsky, however, has himself analysed the condition so perfectly that his study might well find a place in a medical library as the ideal type of this particular neurosis. The supposed autobiographer (his name does not appear) in Notes from Underground[22] is, perhaps, too intelligently aware of his own condition, but it is evident that Dostoevsky's purpose could only be fully served by the form of a personal confession. It is, indeed, a confession that holds no reserves. In the earlier part of the story we see the assumed writer of the notes suffering agonies from the consciousness of his humiliation. This is followed by two attempts to assert himself, both futile. We then see him in a contest with his servant, Apollon, whose condition is a reflex of his own. And, finally, we get the representative instance of a brutal use of temporary superiority of position in his dealings with the unfortunate little prostitute, Liza. Moreover, the title is conclusive. The "underground" is clearly indicated as that of the mind, and if the story had been written within the last ten years the author would have been accused by the reviewers of having steeped himself in the writings of the psycho-analysts. The opening sentences, indeed, would probably have been a little too much for the sensitive, since the sketch begins: "I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me."
[22] The novels of Feodor Dostoevsky. Vol. X. White Nights and Other Stories. Constance Garnett's translations. Heinemann.
This one story would be almost sufficient testimony as to Dostoevsky's own condition, the essential part of it coming, as it does, not from observation, but from the "underground" of the writer's own mind. But if we need further evidence it can be found in almost any of Dostoevsky's novels: the valet in The Brothers Karamazov is a fine example; Prince Myshkin in The Idiot develops the theme in its less self-conscious aspect; there is more than one example in The Possessed. But the truth is that, once started on this scent, the student of Dostoevsky cannot fail to conclude that the type dominates both the characterisation and the atmosphere of all his works.
Yet if our diagnosis rested solely on this evidence the inference would be open to attack by the layman on the grounds that Dostoevsky wrote of the Russian as he knew him; and has not Russia as a country exhibited precisely the symptoms of the neurosis we have been describing? Centuries of suppression and humiliation have been at work to foster and confirm the complex which we now see in its typical expression, although passing, as did that of the French in the last years of the eighteenth century, towards its natural sublimation.
But our evidence goes beyond the examination of Dostoevsky's imaginative writings—in which, by the way, he was continually able, within certain limitations, to sublimate his own complex. Indeed, it was not by his novels but by a study of his letters that I, personally, was led in the first instance to attempt the diagnosis. In the letters we must look chiefly for autobiographical indications rather than for the emergence of the unconscious wisdom that enriches the novels, but would be checked by the realisation of addressing a particular individual.
The first of them that attracted my attention was the adulatory tone of the letters begging for patronage, written just before the release from Siberia. One regrets, in reading them, that genius could so bemean itself. The common excuse for the tone of them is that Dostoevsky was ill and over-tried by his recent experiences, but it is just in such circumstances as these that one looks for the expression of the dominant individuality. In any case I prefer the pathological explanation. Then we come to the consideration of his jealousy of Turgenev, and of the unfortunate meeting of the two men in Switzerland. All Dostoevsky's resentment and his behaviour at the meeting in question are readily explicable by the theory of his neurosis, but the need for impartiality demands that we should ask if a perfectly normal explanation is forthcoming. Personally I have failed to find one that is consistent with an unprejudiced interpretation of Dostoevsky's general character. Apart from his prepossession, he exhibits traits of gentleness, affection, and tolerance that do not appear to me consonant with his treatment of Turgenev. He did not seek to belittle his other contemporaries. But, in this instance, like the hero of Notes from Underground, he could not resist the unconscious desire to try and jostle his superior from the pavement.[23]
[23] Cf. op. cit., pp. 87, et seq.
For our present purpose, however, it is not necessary to prove that Dostoevsky himself was the victim of a particular neurosis—although the argument is slightly strengthened if that hypothesis be admitted—since it is primarily only my intention to show that certain morbid conditions of mind, now clearly indicated and with obvious limitations explained by the psycho-analysts, may be artistically treated in the best fiction. Another instance of this, which may be briefly referred to, is that afforded by the writings of D. H. Lawrence, who in all his novels has demonstrated with the passionate conviction that is a witness to his genius the strange and occasionally dissociated workings of the unconscious mind. In this case we are confronted with just such a sex obsession as delights the faithful disciples of the Vienna school, but the particular type of complex is not of any importance in this connection.