Hello and welcome back to yet another lecture
on this series on Literary Theory.
During the course of our previous two lectures
we have familiarized ourselves with most of
the key ideas informing Freudian psychoanalysis.
In today’s lecture we will discuss how these
key ideas can be brought together to produce
a general understanding of literary creativity.
Now, in our previous lecture we have mentioned
that psychoanalytic literary criticism primarily
proceeds through the critic engaging with
a piece of literature, in order to uncover
the drama of repressed desires and fears seething
underneath the surface.
Now, instances of such an approach to literature
can be found in Freud’s own writings.
So, for example, if we read Freud’s 1907
publication titled “Delusion and Dream in
Jensen’s Gradiva”, we find an analysis
of Wilhelm Jensen’s novel Gradiva from a
psychoanalytic perspective.
Freud shows through his reading of the novel,
how the hero suffers from psychological complications
which arise out of his repressions, and how
those psychological complications gradually
gets cured as the novel progresses.
Apart from this psychoanalytic profiling of
fictional characters appearing in novels and
plays, psychoanalytic theory can also be used
to profile authors or creative artists.
One of the finest examples of this approach
where a piece of artistic creation is used
to delve deep into the recesses of the creator’s
mind is Freud’s 1910 psycho-biography titled
“Leonardo de Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood”.
In this particular piece of work, Freud relates
how Leonardo de Vinci’s repressed childhood
sexual fantasies animate his creative work
in later life.
And though Freud accesses the unconscious
of the creator Leonardo de Vinci via an analysis
of one of his paintings and not any piece
of literature per se, but we can use the same
method that we find in this particular essay
and apply them to literature to understand
the author’s repression and how those repressions
and repressed desires create a particular
literary piece.
In this lecture, however, we will not take
up for discussion Freud’s psychoanalytic
readings of specific literary characters or
creative artists, rather we will focus on
Freud’s views on literary creativity in
general and see how we can connect them with
the intricacies of human psychology.
One of the best pieces through which we can
study Freud’s interpretation of literary
creativity in general is his essay “Creative
Writers and Day-Dreaming”.
Now, this was first delivered in 1907 as an
informal lecture at the house of the bookseller
and also a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic
Society, Hugo Heller.
And this particular lecture was later published
under the title that I just mentioned “Creative
Writers and Day-Dreaming” in 1908.
Now, this essay broadly divides itself into
two parts; the first part works out the relationship
between child’s play, fantasy, and day-dreaming
and the second part connects this relationship,
or this network of relationships, with the
process of literary creativity.
And in our lecture today we will follow the
pattern laid down by the essay because that
will help us understand the chains of equivalent
relationships through which the argument progresses.
Now, to begin with Freud draws our attention
to the aura of uniqueness that usually surrounds
the creativity of a writer.
Some of us can author wonderful stories, wonderful
poems, or other literary pieces while others,
like me for instance, we can’t do that.
So, within almost every society creative writers
are regarded as special beings, they can do
something special which others can’t.
And as Freud writes, “we layman […] always
[remain] intensely curious to know […] from
what sources that strange being, the creative
writer draws his material, and how he manages
to make such an impression on us with it and
to arouse in us emotions of which, perhaps,
we had not even thought ourselves capable.”
Now, please note here that in this particular
quotation which I just read out, Freud focuses
on two aspects of the creative writer.
The first aspect is the way in which the creative
writer creates his literary product by drawing
upon certain kinds of materials.
And the second is the way in which that literary
product influences the readers by arousing
in them strong emotional responses.
We will have to come back to each of these
aspects later on, but for now let us follow
how the essay develops.
Freud in order to study this unique phenomenon
of literary creativity tries to equate it
with a more mundane and more universally occurring
psychological phenomenon, so that it becomes
relatable to everyone.
He finds this universal phenomenon in the
play of children, and he discovers in the
psychological dynamics underlying the mind
of a child at play, the equivalence of an
author’s creative energy.
Let me quote here from the essay:
(“Should we not look for the first traces
of imaginative activity as early as in childhood
the child’s best-loved and most intense
occupation is with his play or games.
Might we not say that every child at play
behaves like a creative writer, in that he
creates a world of his own, or, rather re-arranges
the things of his world in a new way which
pleases him?”)
For the child at play, this imaginative recreation
of a world of its own is not a jest.
As Freud observes, the child is, in fact,
quite serious when it is playing with the
things around him and he treats the world
created by him through his imagination with
utmost earnestness.
A child’s play is therefore, not to be contrasted
with its other activities performed in seriousness.
Rather in Freud’s words, “The opposite
of play is not what is serious but what is
real.”
Now, this distinction that Freud draws between
child’s play and reality brings us to the
already familiar terrain of wish fulfillment.
As we have noted in our previous discussions
on hysteria, for instance, or on dreams, or
on parapraxes, one of the crucial aspects
of Freudian psychoanalysis is a study of how
those wishes are engaged with and at least
partially satisfied which cannot be enacted
or even admitted in reality.
These wish fulfillments, therefore, always
proceed by creating a cleavage with reality
and opening up a zone of fantasy.
Now, if you have followed the previous lectures
carefully, you will know that fantasy is defined
from within the field of Freudian psychoanalytic
studies as the creation of an imaginary scene.
It is an imaginary scene which allows one
to live out the repressed wishes that cannot
be fulfilled in reality, because our mind
is too inhibited to even acknowledge them
in public.
Freud explains that a child’s play is an
early form of fantasy or rather I should say
it the other way around.
Freud says that fantasy is the adult substitution
for the child’s play.
Now, this needs some explanation, so we will
proceed slowly step by step.
A child, as we will know from our own experience
of having watched them, usually wants to be
like the adults that he sees around himself.
Now, the way in which the child fulfills this
wish is through creating an imaginary scene
in the form of play in which the child enacts
out his desire of being an adult.
If for instance a child has seen his father
driving a car then in his play he might create
an imaginary scene in which he assumes the
role of a driver, and he will keep zooming
around the room sitting on a chair and pretending
that that chair is his car.
Now, this fictional situation that the child
plays out produces for him a high yield of
pleasure which is otherwise denied in reality.
Now, Freud argues that as the child grows
up such mechanism of wish fulfillment through
playing games are no longer available to him,
yet, the pleasure that the playful creation
of an imaginative scene of wish fulfillment
offered someone as a child cannot be very
easily forfeited by him as an adult.
So, rather than completely giving up playing,
what the adult does is he transforms it into
an activity of creating fantasies.
Let me read some lines from the essay to make
this point clear:
(“As people grow up, […], they cease to
play, and they seem to give up the yield of
pleasure which they gained from playing.
But whoever understands the human mind knows
that hardly anything is harder for a man than
to give up a pleasure which he has once experienced.
Actually, we can never give up anything; we
only exchange one thing for another.
What appears to be a renunciation is really
the formation of a substitute or surrogate.
In the same way, the growing child when he
stops playing, gives up nothing but the link
with real objects, instead of playing, he
now phantasies.
He builds castles in the air and creates what
are called day-dreams.”)
So, here we encounter the word “day-dreams”,
which will be one of our key terms in understanding
literary creativity through the lens of Freudian
psychoanalysis.
But before we can take up the concept of day-dream
for further discussion, let us dwell a little
longer on the transformation that happens
between the child’s play and the adult’s
fantasy.
Freud observes that one of the key distinctions
separating child’s play from fantasy is
that the imagined objects and situations that
constitute the former, that is a child’s
play, are often linked with tangible and visible
things in the real world.
Thus, for instance, the child trying to fulfill
his wish to be a driver like his father might
make use of a real chair and pretend that
that chair is his car.
In case of fantasy, however, no such linkages
with real tangible objects can be observed.
Indeed, the adult very carefully protects
his fantasies from any external manifestations,
so much so, that if asked an adult would even
deny the existence of his fantasies.
This is however sharply different from how
a child plays because a child may not have
any desire to exhibit his play in front of
the adults but then again he does not make
any special effort to hide his play from anyone.
A child at play is in other words indifferent
to whether someone else is observing him at
that particular point of time or not.
This contrast between the child’s indifference
to observer’s spying on his play and the
adults desperate attempt to keep his fantasies
a secret is, however, not very difficult to
understand.
The wishes that the child enacts in his imaginary
world while playing are not particularly repressed
wishes because the entire mechanism of repression
and repressing desires only gradually develops
as one grows up.
However, for an adult the mechanism of repression
is already well established and consequently
the imaginary engagement with wishes that
cannot be fulfilled in reality becomes an
embarrassing fact.
These imaginary engagements or fantasies are
pleasurable for an adult but they represent
a form of guilty pleasure which the adult
needs to keep hidden.
Thus, as Freud notes the form of fantasy which
he identifies as day-dream is rarely admitted
by anyone in spite of it being almost a universal
phenomenon.
And this gives us a clue as to what kind of
wishes and desires constitute our day-dreams.
But before we can move on to these wishes
and desires, let us focus on the term day-dream
for a moment, and let us focus on its relationship
with the other kind of dream, with night dream
for want of a better word, that we experience
while asleep.
Well as we have already discussed, dreams
which arise from within the limbo between
consciousness and unconsciousness manifests
our libidinal desires and they allow us to
engage with these libidinal desires.
Now, since these are desires which an adult
person has come to regard as shameful, they
appear in the dream only after being sufficiently
distorted by the mechanism of dream-work.
We have already discussed this.
Now, the fantasies of a day-dream are also
similar engagements with “shameful desires”,
with the only difference being that in day-dreams
these desires are engaged in the woken state
itself.
The stigmas associated with these desires,
nevertheless, remain very strong even in a
day-dreaming adult and consequently it becomes
very difficult to make a person who day-dreams
confess his fantasies.
Indeed, as Freud notes, it is often easier
to make a person confess his misdeeds than
confess the fantasies that plays out in his
day-dream.
Now, let us come to the contents of the fantasies
that constitute our day-dreams.
So, we already have a number of clues as to
what the content might be of our day-dreams,
but let us look at it more elaborately.
Well Freud states that the nature of day-dreams
differ from person to person and it depends
for instance on the person’s sex, on the
person’s character, circumstances, and a
number of other things.
But irrespective of these individual variations,
day-dreams, according to Freud, primarily
fulfill two different kinds of wishes.
The first Freud calls ambitious wish and the
second he calls erotic wish.
Now, ambitious wish relates to a person’s
desire to be regarded as socially elevated
and powerful, whereas, erotic wishes relate
to a person’s repressed sexual desires.
According to Freud, in the day-dreams of young
men the ambitious wishes mostly surface, whereas,
a young lady’s day-dream is more likely
to be dominated by erotic wishes.
And this distinction also makes clear the
motives of concealing ones day-dreams, because
as Freud explains a young lady is allowed
only a minimum of erotic desires by the patriarchal
bourgeois society.
Therefore, any excess of erotic desire has
to be repressed by her and engaged with only
in the private imaginative space offered by
day-dreams.
And this is very important to remember that
repression has a social angle to it.
For instance, when Freud is talking about
the repression of erotic desires in young
women he is talking from within the context
of a patriarchal bourgeois society.
So, does that mean that if the society changes,
if the societal norms change, the contents
of the day-dreams will also change?
If, for instance, a young lady is no longer
supposed to repress so deeply her erotic wishes,
will that create different kinds of day-dreaming
in her?
Well, this is a question that I will leave
hanging in the air for you to consider.
But let us move on with the essay and Freud
contrasts the day-dreams of a young lady with
the day-dreams of a young man.
And he says that in case of a young man what
he needs to do is he needs to and I quote,
“suppress the excess of self regard which
he brings with him from the spoilt days of
his childhood, so that he may find his place
in a society which is full of other individuals
making equally strong demands.”
But having made this distinction, Freud also
goes on to point out that the distinction
does not mean an absolute opposition, or any
kind of a rigid compartmentalization.
And this is because often the day-dreams overlap
both the wishes; overlap ambitious wish with
erotic wish.
Thus, for instance, a young man, who in his
day-dreams fantasize about performing some
heroic exploits is actually trying to fulfill
an ambitious wish, but in that same day-dream
the young man might also imagine himself to
be performing these exploits to win the affection
of his ladylove which then connects with his
erotic wish.
And, therefore, as we can see in the same
day-dream both of these wishes can be juxtaposed.
Now, we need to note one thing here, which
is that though day-dreams might have at their
core either ambitious wish or erotic wish
or a mixture of the two, the mise-en-scene,
which means the setting of the day-dream of
each individual person differs and it changes
from one day-dream to another.
This is because and I am quoting from the
essay here:
Day-dreams “fit themselves in to the subject’s
shifting impressions of life, change with
every change in his situation, and receive
from every fresh active impression what might
be called a ‘date-mark’’’.
To explain this, Freud gives the example of
a possible day-dream that a poor orphan might
indulge in on his way to meet a prospective
employer.
Now, in his day-dream this poor orphan boy
might imagine himself as meeting the employer,
then getting the job from him, and then the
boy might also imagine himself performing
brilliantly, and wonderfully succeeding in
the job that he has got, and then winning
the trust of the employer, and finally, getting
accepted within his family.
In his day-dream the brilliant carrier might
culminate in the boy’s marrying the charming
young daughter of the employer and then, finally,
inheriting the business after the death of
the employer.
Now, note here that the setting of the day-dream
is almost entirely influenced by the poor
orphan’s present situation.
He is on his way to meet a prospective employer
and, therefore, his day-dream is about getting
the job and about doing exceptionally well
in that particular job.
But what happens when we look beneath the
surface of the story that plays out in this
particular day-dream and that is, of course,
shaped by the unique situation of the moment.
Well, we find the same cluster of ambitious
wish and erotic wish that provide the universal
content for all day-dreams.
Thus the exceptional career that the poor
orphan imagines, fulfills his desire for social
elevation, whereas, the part about his getting
married with the charming young daughter of
the employer, fulfills is erotic wish.
So, a day-dream, just like a usual dream,
a night dream, or like parapraxes, presents
us with a narrative.
And if we analyze that in additive, if we
look deep into that narrative, we can interpret
it from the psychoanalytic perspective and
that will reveal to us the presence of some
very deep seated desires.
Now, while elaborating on the example of this
possible day-dream of a poor orphan, Freud
draws our attention to the sequence of time
that underlines the fantasy.
In Freud’s words, “The relation of a fantasy
to time is in general very important.
We may see that it hovers, as it were, between
three times - the three moments of time which
our ideation involves.
Mental work is linked to some current impression,
some provoking occasion in the present which
has been able to arouse one of the subject’s
major wishes.
From here it harks back to a memory of an
earlier experience (usually an infantile one)
in which this wish was fulfilled; and it now
creates a situation relating to the future
which represents a fulfillment of the wish.”
This comment becomes easier to understand
if we go back to the example of the day-dream
of the poor orphan.
Now, that particular day-dream is, of course,
integrally connected to the orphan’s present
situation.
As I explained just a few moments ago, the
orphan’s day-dream is about a job because
he is at present on his way to a prospective
employer.
But this event that informs the present of
the orphan boy, triggers a day-dream precisely
because it strongly harks back to a memory
of an earlier experience.
And in case of the poor orphan it might be
the memory of his family and the affection
that he used to receive while his parents
were still living.
The reason the present event triggers this
past memory is because the future holds a
prospect of his regaining his position within
an affectionate family, in this case, the
family of his prospective employer.
So, what the day-dream does, for the orphan
boy, is to allow him in his imagination of
the future a chance to regain what he has
lost in the past.
In other words the day-dream strings together
the three times of the past, the present,
and the future.
But the obvious question is that what has
all of this got to do with our understanding
of literature or literary creativity?
Well, Freud argues that just like the fantasies
or the day-dreams are transformed forms of
child’s play, popular novels, romances,
and short stories are transformed forms of
day-dream.
So, here we reach at the culminating point
of the chains of equivalent relationships
that Freud has been creating throughout his
essay.
So, from child’s play we come to day-dream
and from day-dream we now come to creative
writing.
Now, here it is important to note that Freud
begins his discussion of literature and literary
creativity in the second part of the essay
by making a distinction.
He says that his focus in this particular
essay will be on popular novels, romances,
and stories, which are entirely products of
their author’s imagination.
And he will not focus on literature produced
either by critically acclaimed writers, or
on ancient epics, and dramas, which use readymade
materials to build their story.
So, does that mean psychoanalytic literary
theory can only be applied to certain kinds
of literature and not to certain other kinds
of literature?
Well, this is a question that I will leave
open for you to decide, but while considering
this question do not go by only what Freud
has written in this essay.
You also need to consider the kind of literary
work which Freud himself engages elsewhere.
And I think you will find him engaging not
only with a lot of critically acclaimed literary
pieces, he engaged with Shakespeare for instance,
but also with ancient literature; think about
his use of the Oedipus myth.
But anyway moving on with Freud’s essay,
the argument that is being made here by Freud
is that popular fiction produced by authors
are similar to day-dreams produced by each
one of us.
Thus just like a day-dreamer the creative
writer too gets inspired by a strong experience
in the present which triggers in his mind
some earlier childhood memory.
This childhood memory appears in the present
as a desire or a wish, which then finds fulfillment
in the creative work.
In other words, just like a day-dream, a creative
work too is underlined by its author’s desire
for wish fulfillment, and again just like
a day-dream, the creative work to strings
together the past, the present and the future.
Moreover, popular creative writings like novels,
romances, and short stories also resemble
day-dreams in having ambitious and erotic
wish at their core.
Thus, for instance, the hero of a popular
romance or a novel seldom comes to any harm
or seldom dies even if he is found to be injured
or in deep trouble at the end of a chapter,
he is seen recovering or making an escape
soon enough mostly even in the next chapter.
Now, this is a manifestation of the ambitious
wish in which the subject always imagines
himself as supremely powerful and as absolutely
invincible.
Think here, for instance, of all the run of
the mill Bollywood scripts where even if the
hero is beaten black and blue, even if he
falls from a high rise, even if he is caught
in a car crash, he comes out of it unscratched,
almost like a divine figure.
The erotic wish also plays an important part
in popular creative writing and if you come
to think of it also in popular Bollywood scripts
as well, in these stories we see the hero
being imbued with such charm that it becomes
irresistible for all the young beautiful women
around him, and they can’t stop falling
in love with him, and this clearly connects
to the subject’s repressed sexual fantasies.
But having pointed out these similarities
between day-dreaming and creative writing,
Freud brings up for discussion at the very
end of his piece a crucial difference between
the two.
Now, he points out that our day-dream is a
fantasy of an individual and is associated
with the fulfillment of his personal desires.
And Freud also notes that if we were to tell
our day-dreams to others, our narration would
most probably repel them or at the very least
leave them cold.
This is a not very difficult to understand
in fact, because imagine one of your friends
telling you of his day-dream in which he performs
great heroic acts and in which he saves the
world from destruction and in which he ends
up marrying a young beautiful woman.
Now, this day-dream though it yields a high
degree of pleasure to your friend would leave
you uninspired because, it does not fulfill
any of your desires or wishes, that is to
say your friend’s day-dream does not make
you feel heroic.
Yet, a popular novel or a romance or a short
story in spite of being akin to the day-dream
of its author, seems to yield pleasure to
the reader as well.
Now, how does this happen?
Well, Freud argues that a creative writer
allows others to participate in his day-dreams
and to reap pleasure from them by two different
ways.
The first way is that the creative writer
uses his ability to write and to structure
his narrative beautifully, and this formal
beauty of the creative writing attracts the
reader and for it calls this the “incentive
bonus” or the “fore-pleasure”.
This fore-pleasure experienced through the
literary form, leads the reader to experience
a still greater pleasure from the content
of the creative writing.
A reader can experience this pleasure from
the content because the creative writer is
able to, and I am quoting, “soften the character
of his egoistic day-dream by altering and
disguising it.”
In other words, the creative writer narrates
his own day-dream in such a way that it loses
its private or personal character and it allows
the reader to participate in that day-dream.
The personal fantasy of the author is, in
fact, sufficiently altered and disguised for
us readers to be able to project our own images
on to the hero of the fiction, and thereby
fulfill our ambitious and erotic desires through
him.
And since through literature we can indulge
in these wishes, ambitious wishes and erotic
wishes, more openly than through our day-dreaming,
you remember that we need to very closely
guard our day-dreams as a top secret.
But when we read literature we can indulge
in these wishes more openly and therefore,
Freud sees that we feel liberated from the
tensions of our minds.
That is to say that the feeling of shame that
is attached to day-dreaming is gone when we
engage with literature.
Yet in both cases, in the case of day-dreaming
and in the case of literature the goal remains
the same, as far as Freud is concerned, which
is the fulfillment of our repressed desires.
So, as you can see here Freudian psychoanalysis
can help us create not only an author-centered
literary theory, but also a reader-centered
literary theory.
And indeed, as Freud tells us in his essay
approaching literature through the lens of
psychoanalysis and through psychological phenomenon
like day-dreaming, brings us to the threshold
of new interesting and complicated enquires.
We will continue with these new and complicated
enquires in our next lecture, when we take
up for discussion the work of the psychoanalyst
Carl Jung.
Thank you.
