Delusion and Dream : an Interpretation in the Light of Psychoanalysis of Gradiva

by Sigmund Freud; Wilhelm Jensen

II

It was really our intention to investigate with the aid of definite analytic method only the two or three dreams which are found in the tale Gradiva; how did it happen then that we allowed ourselves to be carried away with the analysis of the whole story and the examination of the psychic processes of the two chief characters? Well, that was no superfluous work, but a necessary preparation. Even when we wish to understand the real dreams of an actual person, we must concern ourselves intensively with the character and the fortunes of this person, not only the experiences shortly before the dream, but also those of the remote past. I think, however, that we are not yet free to turn to our real task, but must still linger over the piece of fiction itself, and perform more preparatory work.

Our readers will, of course, have noticed with surprise that till now we have considered Norbert Hanold and Zoë Bertgang in all their psychic expressions and activities, as if they were real individuals and not creatures of an author, as if the mind of their creator were absolutely transparent, not a refractory and cloudy medium; and our procedure must seem all the more surprising when the author of Gradiva expressly disavows the portrayal of reality by calling his tale a “Fancy.” We find, however, that all his pictures copy reality so faithfully that we should not contradict if Gradiva were called not a “Fancy,” but a study in psychiatry. Only in two points has Wilhelm Jensen made use of his license, to create suppositions which do not seem to have roots in the earth of actual law: first, when he has the young archæologist find a genuinely antique bas-relief which, not only in the detail of the position of the foot in walking, but in all details, the shape of the face, and the bearing, copies a person living much later, so that he can consider the physical manifestation of this person to be the cast endowed with life; second, when the hero is caused to meet the living girl in Pompeii, whither his fancy has transported the dead girl, while he separates himself, by the journey to Pompeii, from the living girl, whom he has noticed on the street of his home city; this second instance is no tremendous deviation from the possibilities of life; it asks aid only of chance, which undeniably plays a part in so many human fates, and, moreover, makes it reasonable, for this chance reflects again the destiny which has decreed that through flight one is delivered over to the very thing that one is fleeing from. More fantastic, and originating solely in the author’s arbitrariness, seems the first supposition which brings in its train the detailed resemblance of the cast to the living girl, where moderation might have limited the conformity to the one trait of the position of the foot in walking. One might then have tried to let one’s own imagination play in order to establish connection with reality. The name Bertgang might point to the fact that the women of that family had been distinguished, even in ancient times, by the characteristic of a beautiful gait, and by heredity the German Bertgang was connected with those Romans, a woman of whose family had caused the ancient artist to fix in a bas-relief the peculiarity of her walk. As the individual variations of human structure are, however, not independent of one another, and as the ancient types, which we come upon in the collections, are actually always emerging again in our midst, it would not be entirely impossible that a modern Bertgang should repeat again the form of her ancient forbear, even in all the other traits of her physique. Inquiry of the author of the story for the sources of this creation might well be wiser than such speculation; a good prospect of solving again a bit of supposed arbitrariness would probably then appear. As, however, we have not access to the psychic life of the author, we leave to him the undiminished right of building up a thoroughly valid development on an improbable supposition, a right which Shakespeare, for example, has asserted in King Lear.

Otherwise, we wish to repeat, Wilhelm Jensen has given us an absolutely correct study in psychiatry, in which we may measure our understanding of psychic life, a story of illness and cure adapted to the inculcation of certain fundamental teachings of medical psychology. Strange enough that he should have done this! What if, in reply to questioning, he should deny this intention? It is so easy to draw comparisons and to put constructions on things. Are we not rather the ones who have woven secret meanings, which were foreign to him, into the beautiful poetic tale? Possibly; we shall come back to that later. As a preliminary, however, we have tried to refrain from interpretations with that tendency, by reproducing the story, in almost every case, from the very words of the writer; and we have had him furnish text as well as commentary, himself. Any one who will compare our text with that of Gradiva will have to grant this.

Perhaps in the judgment of the majority we are doing a poor service for him when we declare his work a study in psychiatry. An author is to avoid all contact with psychiatry, we are told, and leave to physicians the portrayal of morbid psychic conditions. In reality no true author has ever heeded this commandment. The portrayal of the psychic life of human beings is, of course, his most especial domain; he was always the precursor of science and of scientific psychology. The borderline between normal and morbid psychic conditions is, in a way, a conventional one, and, in another way, in such a state of flux that probably every one of us oversteps it many times in the course of a day. On the other hand, psychiatry would do wrong to wish to limit itself continually to the study of those serious and cloudy illnesses which arise from rude disturbances of the delicate psychic apparatus. It has no less interest in the lesser and adjustable deviations from the normal which we cannot yet trace back farther than disturbances in the play of psychic forces; indeed, it is by means of these that it can understand normal conditions, as well as the manifestations of serious illness. Thus the author cannot yield to the psychiatrist nor the psychiatrist to the author, and the poetic treatment of a theme from psychiatry may result correctly without damage to beauty.

The imaginative representation of the story of illness and its treatment, which we can survey better after finishing the story and relieving our own suspense, is really correct. Now we wish to reproduce it with the technical expressions of our science, in doing which it will not be necessary to repeat what has already been related.

Norbert Hanold’s condition is called a “delusion” often enough by the author of the story, and we also have no reason to reject this designation. We can mention two chief characteristics of “delusion,” by which it is not, of course, exhaustively described, but is admittedly differentiated from other disturbances. It belongs first to that group of illnesses which do not directly affect the physical, but express themselves only by psychic signs, and it is distinguished secondly by the fact that “fancies” have assumed control, that is, are believed and have acquired influence on actions. If we recall the journey to Pompeii to seek in the ashes the peculiarly-formed foot-prints of Gradiva, we have in it a splendid example of an act under the sway of the delusion. The psychiatrist would perhaps assign Norbert Hanold’s delusion to the great group of paranoia and designate it as a “fetichistic erotomania,” because falling in love with the bas-relief would be the most striking thing to him and because, to his conception, which coarsens everything, the interest of the young archæologist in the feet and foot-position of women must seem suspiciously like fetichism. All such names and divisions of the different kinds of delusion are, however, substantially useless and awkward.[^[2]]

The old-school psychiatrist would, moreover, stamp our hero as a dégénéré, because he is a person capable, on account of such strange predilections, of developing a delusion, and would investigate the heredity which has unrelentingly driven him to such a fate. In this, however, Jensen does not follow him; with good reason, he brings us nearer to the hero to facilitate for us æsthetic sympathy with him; with the diagnosis “dégénéré,” whether or not it may be justifiable to us scientifically, the young archæologist is at once moved farther from us, for we, readers, are, of course, normal people and the measure of humanity. The essential facts of heredity and constitution in connection with this condition also concern the author of Gradiva little; instead, he is engrossed in the personal, psychic state which can give rise to such a delusion.

In an important point, Norbert Hanold acts quite differently from ordinary people. He has no interest in the living woman; science, which he serves, has taken this interest from him and transferred it to women of stone or bronze. Let us not consider this an unimportant peculiarity; it is really the basis of the story, for one day it happens that a single such bas-relief claims for itself all the interest which would otherwise belong only to the living woman, and thereby originates the delusion. Before our eyes there is then unfolded the story of how this delusion is cured by a fortunate set of circumstances, the interest transferred back again from the cast to the living girl. The author of the story does not allow us to trace the influences because of which our hero begins to avoid women; he only suggests to us that such conduct is not explained by his predisposition which is invested with a rather fanciful—we might add, erotic—need. We learn later also that in his childhood he did not avoid other children; he was then friendly with the little girl, was inseparable from her, shared with her his lunches, cuffed her, and was pulled around by her. In such attachment, such a combination of tenderness and aggression, is expressed the incomplete eroticism of child life, which expresses its activities first spitefully and then irresistibly and which, during childhood, only physicians and writers usually recognize as eroticism. Our author gives us to understand clearly that he has those intentions, for he suddenly causes to awaken in his hero, with suitable motive, a lively interest in the gait and foot-position of women, an interest which, in science, as well as among the ladies of his home-city, must bring him into disrepute as a foot-fetichist, and is to us, however, necessarily derived from the memory of his childhood playmate. The girl, to be sure, was characterized, as a child, by the beautiful walk with her foot almost perpendicular as she stepped out, and through the portrayal of this very gait an antique bas-relief later acquired for Norbert Hanold great significance. Let us add, moreover, immediately, that the author of Gradiva stands in complete agreement with science in regard to the derivation of the remarkable manifestation of fetichism. Since the investigations by Binet we really try to trace fetichism back to erotic impressions of childhood.