William Cowper's poem on the receipt of his mother's picture is a remarkable document in support of one of the tenets that are among the pillars of Freud's system, the theory of the Œdipus Complex. As is well known, Freud traced the nucleus of the psychoneuroses to an over-attachment that the patient had for the parent of the opposite sex, a fixation which was very strong in infancy but from the influence of which there had never been a healthy liberation. This fixation which is often unconscious plants the seeds of future neuroses. The victim's entire life, even his love affairs, are interfered with by this attachment. Any one who knows his Freud and has read Cowper's poem can see in it the cause of most of the latter's unhappiness and most likely his insanity. His mother died when he was a child, and many years later he was writing to her, almost with passion.
Both Stevenson's essay and Cowper's poem are self-explanatory to the disciple of Freud. If we had known nothing about the authors' lives, we would have seen beyond doubt that in the one case there was in actual life a hostility to the father, revealed by the dreamer's murdering him; and in the other case we would have known that a hysterical overattachment to the mother existed and that the writer's life would have been neurotic and that he might possibly experience an attachment to some older woman who replaced the mother.
Further, just as there are typical dreams from which alone the psychoanalyst can judge the wishes of his subject without asking him any questions about himself, so there are literary compositions wherefrom we can learn much of the author's unconscious, without probing into the facts of his life. Typical dreams in which certain objects like serpents or boxes appear, or in which the dreamer is represented as flying, swimming or climbing, have a sexual significance. Freud has shown this after having investigated thousands of such dreams and noted the symbolic language and customs of our ancestors. Literary works also speak per se for the author when they abound in similar symbolical images.
III
We now come to another species of literature that is important for the psychoanalytic critic. This is a class of writing which delineates primæval and immoral emotions. It often shows us the conflicts between savage emotions still lurking in man, and the demands of civilisation. Either force may triumph, but the real interest of these works is that they show the old cave dweller is not yet dead within us, and that civilisation is achieved gradually by suppressing these old emotions; sometimes these needs are strong and must not be extirpated too suddenly; in fact in some specific cases must be granted satisfaction. Among some of the interesting books in recent years have been tales where primitive emotions have been depicted as conquering their victims. Note Conrad's Heart of Darkness, where it is shown how the old barbarian instincts and the cry of the forest are part of us and may be revived in us. Jack London's Call of the Wild is an interesting allegory on the subject. It is well known that we are descended from forbears who were wilder than the most savage tribes of to-day. Naturally some of the emotions they felt are not altogether extinct in us. Civilisation is after all but a veneer and slight causes may stir up brutal sensations in many people. They are still in our unconscious and form for the literary man very fascinating though often dangerous material. Shakespeare understood this when he drew Caliban.
Poe once said that no writer would dare to write truly all his inner thoughts and feelings, for the very paper would burn beneath them. What he meant was that all writers, even the bravest, suppress those unconscious elements in their nature that are related to immorality, indecency, degeneracy, morbidity and cruelty. It may not be advisable for writers continually to remind the reader of the remnant echoes and memories of our primitive state, which have fortunately been made quiescent but not been completely exterminated by culture. In the confessions of criminals, in the pathological disclosures of sexually aberrated people given to physicians, in the records of atrocities committed in time of war, we have illustrations of the atavisms of our day. Often a diseased literary man ventures far in baring his soul and we get the morbid and immoral material that provides food for the unhealthy.
As a rule the author's sense of propriety and prudence act as a censor for him and hedge in his dormant savage feelings, so as not to allow them to find a direct voice in his art. Yet we can often pierce through the veil and observe exactly where the censor has been invoked and guess fairly accurately what has been suppressed.
Some authors who relax the censorship voluntarily and appear to be without a sense of shame, give us some of the immoral literature which the world publicly abhors, but which individuals often delight in reading in private. I do not refer to the really great literature which has been stamped "immoral" by prudish people, because its ideas are too far advanced for them to appreciate, and are different from the conventional morals of society. I do not refer to the hundreds of great works which give us true accounts of the natural man, books whose irresistibility cannot be evaded except by hypocrites. I do not include novels and plays wherein the authors have realised that we are exerting too great a sacrifice upon our emotions and that many souls are starved by lack of normal gratification on account of the harsh exactions of conventional society. But there is a real immoral (or rather indecent) literature where the author allows his savage instincts to come to the surface and trespass on those aspects of his personality which civilisation should have tamed. He may suffer from the vice of exhibitionism and think he is frank, when he is merely showing he has no sense of shame; and he may cater to a market merely for money, in which case he acts like a mercenary harlot. He may try to gratify himself by sexual abandon in art because he has never had the craving for love satisfied in life. He gives vent to instincts that are still ruling him because of his own atavistic or neurotic state. Psychoanalytic literature puts in a new light immoral literature, which hitherto has been dealt with from a moral, and not a psychological, point of view. This literature should be explained and its sources traced; these will be found in the infantile love life of the authors. Such writings should not be condemned offhand just because they stir our moral indignation. They must be interpreted so that we may learn the nature of their authors.
I have also made a study of so repulsive a feature in the lives of our earliest ancestors as cannibalism. It is one of the most primitive emotions. The discoveries of archæologists show that cannibalism prevailed in Europe before the dawn of history; Greek plays show its early existence in Greece; and we know that it still prevails among savage tribes to-day.