Since literature is often depicting struggles and conflicts with our evil instincts, it deals directly with the material of the unconscious; for the unconscious that psychoanalysis is concerned with is that which springs from repressions forced upon us by society as well as by fate. In literature the unconscious appears under various symbols and disguises, just as it does in dreams. The devil, for example, is but our unconscious, symbolised. He represents our hidden primitive desires struggling to emerge; he is the eruption of our forbidden desires. His deeds are the accomplished wishes of our own unconscious. We are interested in the devil because he is ourselves in our dreams and unguarded moments.
The fascination that the villain has for us is because our unconscious recognises in him a long-forgotten brother. True, our moral sense soon prevails, and we rejoice when the rascal is worsted, but he represents the author's unconscious as well as our own. Any one who has read of the thoughts and conduct of Raskolnikoff in Crime and Punishment, or of Julian Sorel in Red and Black, or of George Aurispa in The Triumph of Death, will see that much of the authors themselves, or rather their unconscious selves, is drawn in these criminals. Dostoievsky, Stendhal and D'Annunzio all said to themselves in writing: "I too might have ended like these characters. I did think their thoughts and a slight circumstance could have led me to the crimes they committed."
The man who hates a vice most intensely is often just the man who has something of it in his own nature, against which he is fighting. The author sometimes punishes himself in his novel by making the character suffer for engaging in the course of life that the author himself followed. There is always a suspicion, when a writer raves most furiously against a crime or act, that he has committed that deed in his unconscious.
III
The reason La Rochefoucauld, author of the Maxims, is called a cynic is because he reveals the unconscious, at the bottom of which is self-love. He knows that there is great egotism, nay something akin to depravity, at the root of our emotions. He shows us much in our psychic life that many of us never suspected was there. When he brings it forth we grow indignant and yet say to ourselves, "How true!"
Let us examine a few of these maxims at random and note the insight into the unconscious that the author displays. He understood that repression was at the basis of our unconscious. Take the following sentence: "Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity." This saying anticipates Freud's analysis of wit in his Wit and the Unconscious. The Frenchman digs up in a sentence the hidden strata of the unconscious. La Rochefoucauld recognised that we must curb our primitive instincts, repress our private wishes, and leave our innermost thoughts unexpressed in order to adapt ourselves to people. The world moves by concealing for charity's, and often decency's, sake its unconscious. "Men would not live long in society," says the Maxims, "were they not the dupes of each other."
He knew that our primitive instincts could be subdued only when they were not too strong, and that virtue was practised when it was not difficult to do so. "When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves with the idea we have left them." "If we conquer our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength." "Perseverance is not deserving of blame or praise, as it is merely the continuance of tastes and feelings which we can neither create nor destroy."
He understood the great part played by vanity in the unconscious. The most modest of us are, in our unconscious, vain. "When not prompted by praise we say little." "Usually we are more satirical from vanity than malice." "The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice."
La Rochefoucauld was aware of the unconscious "immoral" instincts in virtuous women. Though we may dislike him for some of his remarks, he, however, gave utterance to a truth when he asserted that women do not want their love or sex feelings repressed any more than men do. "There are few virtuous women who are not tired of their part." "Virtue in woman is often love of reputation and repose." Freud went a step further and showed that women usually have neurosis from repressed sex.
The Frenchman also understood the rôle played by the unconscious in friendship, and that is the reason he made his well-known statement, "In the adversity of our best friends we always find something which is not wholly displeasing to us." He might have been less brutal had he stated his meaning directly in words to the following effect: When we strive for the same goal as our friend and he reaches it and we do not, his success hurts our vanity and we would almost prefer that he too had failed. We are pleased by his success only if we would profit thereby.