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.
The condition of continued avoidance of women gives the personal
qualification, as we say, the disposition for the formation of a
delusion; the development of psychic disturbance begins at the moment
when a chance impression awakens the forgotten childhood experiences
which are emphasized in an erotic way that is at least traceable.
Awakened is really not the right term, however, when we consider the
further results. We must reproduce our author’s correct representation
in a mode of expression artistically correct, and psychological. On
seeing the relief Norbert Hanold does not remember that he has seen such
a foot-position in the friend of his youth; he certainly does not
remember and yet every effect of the relief proceeds from such
connection with the impression of his childhood. The
childhood-impression, stirred, becomes active, so that it begins to show
activity, though it does not appear in consciousness, but remains
“unconscious,” a term which we now use unavoidably in psychopathology.
This term “unconscious” we should now like to see withdrawn from all the
conflicts of philosophers and natural philosophers, which have only
etymological significance. For psychic processes which are active and
yet at the same time do not come through into the consciousness of the
person referred to, we have at present no better name and we mean
nothing else by “unconsciousness.” If many thinkers wish to dispute as
unreasonable the existence of such an unconscious, we think they have
never busied themselves with analogous psychic phenomena, and are under
the spell of the common idea that everything psychic which is active and
intensive becomes, thereby, at the same time, conscious, and they have
still to learn what our author knows very well, that there are, of
course, psychic processes, which, in spite of the fact that they are
intensive and show energetic activities, remain far removed from
consciousness.
We said once that the memories of the childhood relations with Zoë are
in a state of “repression” with Norbert Hanold; and we have called them
“unconscious memories.” Here we must, of course, turn our attention to
the relation between the two technical terms which seem to coincide in
meaning. It is not hard to clear this up. “Unconscious” is the broader
term, “repressed” the narrower. Everything that is repressed is
unconscious; but we cannot assert that everything unconscious is
repressed. If Hanold, at the sight of the relief, had remembered his
Zoë’s manner of walking, then a formerly unconscious memory would have
become immediately active and conscious, and thus would have shown that
it was not formerly repressed. “Unconscious” is a purely descriptive
term, in many respects indefinite and, so to speak, static; “repressed”
is a dynamic expression which takes into consideration the play of
psychic forces and the fact that there is present an effort to express
all psychic activities, among them that of becoming conscious again, but
also a counterforce, a resistance, which might hinder a part of these
psychic activities, among these, also, getting into consciousness. The
mark of the repressed material is that, in spite of its intensity, it
cannot break through into consciousness. In Hanold’s case, therefore, it
was a matter, at the appearance of the bas-relief on his horizon, of a
repressed unconscious, in short of a repression.
The memories of his childhood association with the girl who walks
beautifully are repressed in Norbert Hanold, but this is not yet the
correct view of the psychological situation. We remain on the surface so
long as we treat only of memories and ideas. The only valuable things in
psychic life are, rather, the emotions. All psychic powers are
significant only through their fitness to awaken emotions. Ideas are
repressed only because they are connected with liberations of emotions,
which are not to come to light; it would be more correct to say that
repression deals with the emotions, but these are comprehensible to us
only in connection with ideas. Thus, in Norbert Hanold, the erotic
feelings are repressed, and, as his eroticism neither knows nor has
known another object than Zoë Bertgang of his youth, the memories of her
are forgotten. The antique bas-relief awakens the slumbering eroticism
in him and makes the childhood memories active. On account of a
resistance in him to the eroticism, these memories can become active
only as unconscious. What now happens in him is a struggle between the
power of eroticism and the forces that are repressing it; the result of
this struggle is a delusion.
Our author has omitted to give the motive whence originates the
repression of the erotic life in his hero; the latter’s interest in
science is, of course, only the means of which the repression makes use;
the physician would have to probe deeper here, perhaps in this case
without finding the foundation. Probably, however, the author of
_Gradiva_, as we have admiringly emphasized, has not hesitated to
represent to us how the awakening of the repressed eroticism results
from the very sphere of the means which are serving the repression. It
is rightly an antique, the bas-relief of a woman, through which our
archæologist is snatched and admonished out of his alienation from love
to pay the debt with which we are charged by our birth.
The first manifestations of the process now stimulated by the bas-relief
are fancies which play with the person represented by it. The model
appears to him to be something “of the present,” in the best sense, as
if the artist had fixed the girl walking on the street from life. The
name, Gradiva, which he forms from the epithet of the war-god advancing
to battle, Mars Gradivus, he lends to the ancient girl; with more and
more definitions he endows her with a personality. She may be the
daughter of an esteemed man, perhaps of a patrician, who is associated
with the temple service of a divinity; he believes that he reads Greek
ancestry in her features, and finally this forces him to transport her
far from the confusion of a metropolis to more peaceful Pompeii, where
he has her walking over the lava stepping-stones which make possible the
crossing of the street. These feats of fancy seem arbitrary enough and
yet again harmlessly unsuspicious. Even when from them is produced, for
the first time, the impulse to act, when the archæologist, oppressed by
the problem whether such foot-position corresponds to reality, begins
observations from life, in looking at the feet of contemporary women and
girls, this act covers itself by conscious, scientific motives, as if
all the interest in the bas-relief of Gradiva had originated in his
professional interest in archæology. The women and girls on the street,
whom he uses as objects for his investigation, must, of course, assume a
different, coarsely erotic conception of his conduct, and we must admit
that they are right. For us, there is no doubt that Hanold knows as
little about his motives as about the origin of his fancies concerning
Gradiva. These latter are, as we shall learn later, echoes of his
memories of the beloved of his youth, remnants of these memories,
transformations and disfigurements of them, after they have failed to
push into consciousness in unchanged form. The so-called æsthetic
judgment that the relief represents “something of the present” is
substituted for the knowledge that such a gait belongs to a girl known
to him and crossing streets _in the present_; behind the impression
“from life” and the fancy about her Greek traits, is hidden the memory
of her name, Zoë, which, in Greek, means _life_; Gradiva is, as the man
finally cured of the delusion tells us, a good translation of her
family-name, Bertgang, which means _splendid or magnificent in walking_;
the decisions about her father arise from the knowledge that Zoë
Bertgang is the daughter of an esteemed university instructor, which is
probably translated into the antique as temple service. Finally his
imagination transports her to Pompeii not “because her calm, quiet
manner seems to require it,” but because, in his science, there is found
no other nor better analogy to the remarkable condition in which he has
traced out, by vague reconnoitring, his memories of his childhood
friendship. If he once covered up what was so close to him, his own
childhood, with the classic past, then the burial of Pompeii, this
disappearance, with the preservation of the past, offers a striking
resemblance to the _repression_ of which he has knowledge by means of
so-called “endopsychic” perceptions. The same symbolism, therefore,
which the author has the girl use consciously at the end of the tale, is
working in him.
“I said to myself that I should certainly dig up something interesting
alone here. Of course, I had not reckoned at all on the find which I
made.” (_G._ p. 92.) At the end (_G._ p. 108), the girl answers to the
announced desire about the destination of their journey, “by her
childhood friend who had, in a way, also been excavated from the ashes.”
Thus we find at the very beginning of the performances of Hanold’s
fancies and actions, a twofold determination, a derivation from two
different sources. One determination is the one which appears to Hanold,
himself; the other, the one which discloses itself to us upon
re-examination of his psychic processes. One, the conscious one, is
related to the person of Hanold; the other is the one entirely
unconscious to him. One originates entirely from the series of
associations connected with archæological science; the other, however,
proceeds from the repressed memories which have become active in him,
and the emotional impulses attached to them. The one seems superficial,
and covers up the other, which masks itself behind the former. One might
say that the scientific motivation serves the unconscious eroticism as
cloak, and that science has placed itself completely at the service of
the delusion, but one may not forget, either, that the unconscious
determination can effect nothing but what is at the time satisfactory to
the scientific conscious. The symptoms of delusion—fancies as well as
acts—are results of a compromise between two psychic streams, and in a
compromise the demands of each of the two parties are considered; each
party has been obliged to forego something that he wished to carry out.
Where a compromise has been established, there was a struggle, here the
conflict assumed by us between the suppressed eroticism and the forces
which keep it alive in the repression. In the formation of a delusion
this struggle is never ended.
Attack and resistance are renewed after every compromise-formation,
which is, so to speak, never fully satisfactory. This our author also
knows and therefore he causes a feeling of discontent, a peculiar
restlessness, to dominate his hero in this phase of the disturbance, as
preliminary to and guarantee of further developments.
These significant peculiarities of the twofold determination for fancies
and decisions, of the formation of conscious pretexts for actions, for
the motivation of which the repressed has given the greater
contribution, will, in the further progress of the story, occur to us
oftener, and perhaps more clearly; and this rightfully, for in this
Jensen has grasped and represented the never-failing, chief
characteristic of the morbid psychic processes. The development of
Norbert Hanold’s delusion progresses in a dream, which, caused by no new
event, seems to proceed entirely from his psychic life, which is
occupied by a conflict. Yet let us stop before we proceed to test
whether the author of _Gradiva_, in the formation of his dreams, meets
our expectation of a deeper understanding. Let us first ask what
psychiatry has to say about his ideas of the origin of a delusion, how
it stands on the matter of the rôle of repression and the unconscious,
of conflict and compromise-formation. Briefly, can our author’s
representation of the genesis of a delusion stand before the judgment of
science?