“through the flower,” have already evoked important changes in Hanold.
Traits of male desire, components of the libido are awakened in him,
which, to be sure, cannot yet dispense with the concealment through
conscious pretexts; but the problem of the corporeal nature of Gradiva,
which has pursued him this whole day, cannot disavow its derivation from
the erotic desire of the young man for possession of the woman, even if
it is dragged into the scientific world by conscious stress on Gradiva’s
peculiar hovering between life and death. Jealousy is an added mark of
Hanold’s awakening activity in love; he expresses this at the opening of
the conversation on the next day, and with the aid of a new pretext
achieves his object of touching the girl’s body, and of striking her, as
in times long past.
Now, however, it is time to ask if the course of delusion-formation
which we have inferred from our author’s representation is one otherwise
admitted or possible. From my experience as physician, I can answer only
that it is surely the right way, perhaps the only one, in which the
delusion receives the unswerving recognition due to its clinical
character. If the patient believes in his delusion so firmly, it does
not happen because of inversion of his powers of judgment, and does not
proceed from what is erroneous in the delusion; but in every delusion
there lies also a little grain of truth; there is something in it which
really deserves belief, and this is the source of the conviction of the
patient, who is, to this extent, justified. This true element, however,
has been repressed for a long time; if it finally succeeds in pushing
into consciousness (this time in disfigured form), the feeling of a
conviction clinging to it, as if in compensation, is over-strong and now
clings to and protects the disfigurement-substitute of the repressed,
true element against every critical impugnment. The conviction at once
shifts itself from the unconscious, true element to the conscious,
erroneous one connected with it, and remains fixed there as a result of
this very displacement. The case of delusion-formation which resulted
from Hanold’s first dream is nothing but a similar, if not identical,
case of such displacement. Yes, the depicted manner of development of
conviction in the delusion is not fundamentally different from the way
in which conviction is formed in normal cases, where repression does not
enter into play. All our convictions lie in thought-contents in which
the true and the false are combined and _they stretch over the former
and the latter_. They differentiate at once between the true and
whatever false is associated with it and protect this, even if not so
immutably as in the delusion, against merited critique. Associations,
protection, likewise, have their own value even for normal psychology.
I will now return to the dream and lay stress on a small, but not
uninteresting feature which establishes a connection between two
occasions of the dream. Gradiva had placed the white asphodel flower in
definite contrast to the red rose; the finding of the asphodel flower
again in the window of the “Albergo del Sole” becomes a weighty proof
for Hanold’s unconscious idea which expresses itself in a new delusion;
and to this is added the fact that the red rose in the dress of the
congenial young girl helps Hanold again, in the unconscious, to a right
estimation of her relation to her companion so that he can have her
enter the dream as “woman colleague.”
But where in the manifest dream-content is found the trace and
representation of that discovery of Hanold’s for which we find that the
new delusion is substituted, the discovery that Gradiva lives with her
father in the third hotel of Pompeii, the “Albergo del Sole,” which he
has not been acquainted with? Well, it stands in its entirety and not
even much disfigured in the dream; but I dread to point it out, for I
know that even with the readers whose patience with me has lasted so
long, a strong opposition to my attempts at interpretation will be
stirred up. Hanold’s discovery is given in full in the dream-content, I
repeat, but so cleverly concealed that one must needs overlook it. It is
hidden there behind a play on words, an ambiguity. “Somewhere in the sun
Gradiva sat”; this we have rightly connected with the locality where
Hanold met the zoologist, her father; but can it not also mean in the
“Sun,” that is, in the “Albergo del Sole,” in the “Sun Hotel” Gradiva
lives? And doesn’t the “somewhere” which has no reference to the meeting
with her father sound so hypocritically indefinite for the very reason
that it introduces the definite information about the whereabouts of
Gradiva? According to previous experience in the interpretation of real
dreams, I am quite sure of such a meaning in the ambiguity, but I should
really not venture to offer this bit of interpretation to my readers, if
our author did not lend me here his powerful assistance. On the next day
he puts into the mouth of the girl, when she sees the metal brooch, the
same pun which we accept for the interpretation of the dream-content.
“Did you find it in the sun, perhaps? It brings to light many such works
of art”; and as Hanold does not understand the speech, she explains that
she means the “Sun Hotel,” which is called “Sole” here, whence the
supposed antique is also familiar to her.
And now may we make the attempt to substitute for Hanold’s “remarkably
nonsensical” dream unconscious thoughts hidden behind it and as unlike
it as possible? It runs somewhat as follows: “She lives in the ‘Sun’
with her father; why is she playing such a game with me? Does she wish
to make fun of me? Or could it be possible that she loves me and wishes
me for a husband?” To this latter possibility there now follows in sleep
the rejection, “That is the most utter madness,” which is apparently
directed against the whole manifest dream.
Critical readers have now the right to inquire about the origin of that
interpolation, not formerly established, which refers to being made fun
of by Gradiva. To this _Traumdeutung_ gives the answer; if in
dream-thoughts, taunts and sneers, or bitter contradictions occur, they
are expressed by the nonsensical course of the manifest dream, through
the absurdity in the dream. The latter means, therefore, no paralysis of
psychic activity, but is one of the means of representation which the
dream-work makes use of. As always in especially difficult passages, our
author here comes to our assistance. The nonsensical dream has another
postlude in which a bird utters a merry call and takes away the lizard
in his beak. Such a laughing call Hanold had heard after Gradiva’s
disappearance. It really came from Zoë who was shaking off the
melancholy seriousness of her lower world rôle; with this laugh Gradiva
had really derided him. The dream-picture, however, of the bird carrying
away the lizard may recall that other one in a former dream in which
Apollo Belvedere carried away the Capitoline Venus.
Perhaps the impression now exists with many readers that the
interpretation of the lizard-catching situation by the idea of wooing is
not sufficiently justified. Additional support is found here, perhaps in
the hint that Zoë, in conversation with her colleague, admits about
herself that very thing which Hanold’s thoughts suppose about her, when
she tells that she had been sure of “digging up” something interesting
for herself here in Pompeii. She thereby delves into the archæological
series of associations as he did into the zoological with his allegory
of lizard-catching, as if they were opposing each other and each wished
to assume properties of the other.
Thus we have finished the interpretation of the second dream. Both have
become accessible to our understanding under the presupposition that the
dreamer, in his unconscious thought, knows all that he has forgotten in
his conscious, has in the former rightly judged everything which, in the
latter, he delusively misconstrues. In this connection we have, of
course, been obliged to make many assertions which sounded odd to the
reader because they were strange to him and probably often awakened the
suspicion that we were giving out as our author’s meaning what is only
our own meaning. We are ready to do everything to dissipate this
suspicion and will therefore gladly consider more exhaustively one of
the most knotty points—I mean the use of ambiguous words and speeches
as in the example, “Somewhere in the Sun Gradiva sat.”
It must be striking to every reader of _Gradiva_ how often our author
puts into the mouths of both the leading characters speeches which have
double meaning. For Hanold these speeches are intended to have only one
meaning, and only his companion, Gradiva, is affected by their other
meaning. Thus, after her first answer, he exclaims: “I knew that your
voice sounded so,” and the yet unenlightened Zoë has to ask how that is
possible, as he has never before heard her speak. In the second
conversation, the girl is for a moment puzzled by his delusion, as he
assures her that he recognized her at once. She must understand these
words in the meaning that is correct for his unconscious, as his
recognition of their acquaintance which reaches back into childhood,
while he, of course, knows nothing of this meaning of his speech and
explains it only by reference to the delusion which dominates him. The
speeches of the girl, on the other hand, in whose person the most
brilliant mental clarity is opposed to the delusion, are made
intentionally ambiguous. One meaning of them falls in with the ideas of
Hanold’s delusion, in order to enable her to penetrate into his
conscious comprehension, the other raises itself above the delusion,
and, as a rule, gives us the interpretation of it in the unconscious
truth which has been represented by it. It is a triumph of wit to be
able to represent the delusion and the truth in the same expression.
Interspersed with such ambiguities is Zoë’s speech in which she explains
the situation to her girl friend and at the same time rids herself of
her disturbing society; it is really spoken out of the book, calculated
more for us readers than for her happy colleague. In the conversations
with Hanold, the double meaning is chiefly established by the fact that
Zoë makes use of the symbolism which we find followed in Hanold’s first
dream, in the equivalence of repression and destruction, Pompeii and
childhood. Thus on the one hand she can, in her speeches, continue in
the rôle which Hanold’s delusion assigns to her, on the other, she can
touch upon the real relations, and awaken in Hanold’s unconscious a
knowledge of them.
“I have long accustomed myself to being dead.” (_G._ p. 70.) “For me,
the flower of oblivion is the right one from your hand” (_G._ p. 70). In
these speeches is given lightly the reproof which then breaks out
clearly enough in her last sermon when she compares him to an
archæopteryx. “That a person must die to become alive again; but for
archæologists that is, of course, necessary” (_G._ p. 102), she
continues after the solution of the delusion as if to give us the key to
her ambiguous speeches. The most beautiful symbolism appears, however,
in the question (_G._ p. 88): “It seems to me as if we had already eaten
our bread thus together once two thousand years ago. Can’t you remember
it?” In this speech the substitution of historic antiquity for
childhood, and the effort to awaken his memory of the latter are quite
unmistakable.
Whence, therefore, comes this striking preference for ambiguous speeches
in _Gradiva_? It seems to us not chance, but the necessary sequence from
the preliminaries of the tale. It is nothing but the counterpart of the
twofold determination of symptoms in so far as the speeches are
themselves symptoms and proceed from compromises between the conscious
and the unconscious; but one notices this double origin in the speeches
more easily than in the acts; and when, as the pliability of the
material of conversation often makes possible, each of the two
intentions of a speech succeeds by the same arrangement of words in
expressing itself well, then there is present what we call an
“ambiguity.”
During the psychotherapeutic treatment of a delusion, or an analogous
disturbance, one often evolves such ambiguous speeches in patients as
new symptoms of the most fleeting duration, and can even succeed in
making use of them, whereby, with the meaning intended for the
consciousness of the patient, one can, not infrequently, stimulate the
understanding for the one valid in the unconscious. I know from
experience that among the uninitiate this rôle of ambiguity usually
gives the greatest offence, and causes the grossest misunderstanding,
but our author was right, at any rate, in representing in his production
this characteristic feature of the processes of the formation of dream
and delusion.
IV
With Zoë’s entrance as physician there is awakened in us, we said, a new
interest. We are eager to learn if such a cure as she accomplishes on
Hanold is comprehensible or possible, whether our author has observed
the conditions of the passing of a delusion as correctly as those of its
development.
Without doubt a view will be advanced denying to the case portrayed by
our author such a principal interest, and recognizing no problem
requiring an explanation. For Hanold nothing more remains, it might be
asserted, but to solve his delusion again, after its object, the
supposed Gradiva, conveys to him the incorrectness of all his assertions
and gives him the most natural explanations for everything puzzling; for
example, how she knows his name. Thereby the affair would be settled
logically; as, however, the girl in this case has confessed her love,
for the satisfaction of his feminine readers, our author would surely
allow the otherwise not uninteresting story to end in the usually happy
way, marriage. More consistent, and just as possible, would have been
the different conclusion that the young scholar, after the explanation
of his mistake, should, with polite thanks, take his leave of the young
lady and in that way motivate the rejection of her love so that he might
offer an intense interest to ancient women of bronze or stone, or the
originals of these, if they were attainable, but might have no idea of
how to deal with a girl of flesh and blood of his own time. The
archæological fancy was most arbitrarily cemented into a love-story by
our author, himself.
In discountenancing this conception as impossible, our attention is
first called to the fact that we have to attribute the change beginning
in Norbert Hanold not to the relinquishment of the delusion alone. At
the same time, indeed before the solution of the latter, there is in him
an undeniable awakening of the desire for love, which, of course,
results in his asking for the hand of the girl who has freed him from
delusion. We have already shown under what pretexts and cloakings,
curiosity about her corporeal nature, jealousy, and the brutal male
impulse for possession are expressed in him in the midst of the
delusion, since repressed desire put the first dream into his mind. Let
us add the further testimony that in the evening after the second talk
with Gradiva a living woman for the first time seems congenial to him,
although he still makes the concession to his abhorrence of honeymoon
travellers, by not recognizing the congenial girl as newly married. The
next forenoon, however, chance makes him witness of an exchange of
caresses between the girl and her supposed brother, and he draws back
shyly as if he had disturbed a holy ceremony. Disdain for “Augustus” and
“Gretchen” is forgotten and respect for love is restored to him.
Thus our author has connected the treatment of the delusion and the
breaking forth of the desire for love most closely with one another, and
prepared the outcome in a love-affair as necessary. He knows the nature
of the delusion even better than his critics; he knows that a component
of amorous desire has combined with a component of resistance in the
formation of the delusion, and he has the girl who undertakes the cure
discover in Hanold’s delusion the component referring to her. Only this
insight can make her decide to devote herself to treating him, only the
certainty of knowing herself loved by him can move her to confess to him
her love. The treatment consists in restoring to him, from without, the
repressed memories which he cannot release from within; it would be
ineffective if the therapeutist did not consider the emotions; and the
interpretation of the delusion would not finally be: “See; all that
means only that you love me.”
The procedure which our author has his Zoë follow for the cure of the
delusion of the friend of her youth, shows a considerable resemblance,
no, complete agreement, essentially, with a therapeutic method which Dr.
J. Breuer and the present writer introduced into medicine in 1895, and
to the perfection of which the latter has since devoted himself. This
method of treatment, first called the “cathartic” by Breuer, which the
present writer has preferred to designate as “analytic,” consists in
rather forcibly bringing into the consciousness of the patients who
suffer from disturbances analogous to Hanold’s delusion, the
unconscious, through the repression of which they have become ill, just
as Gradiva does with the repressed memories of their childhood
relations. To be sure, accomplishment of this task is easier for Gradiva
than for the physician; she is, in this connection, in a position which
might be called ideal from many view-points. The physician who does not
fathom his patient in advance, and does not possess within himself, as
conscious memory, what is working in the patient as unconscious, must
call to his aid a complicated technique in order to overcome this
disadvantage. He must learn to gather with absolute certainty, from the
patient’s conscious ideas and statements, the repressed material in him,
to guess the unconscious, when it betrays itself behind the patient’s
conscious expressions and acts. The latter then does something similar
to what Norbert Hanold did at the end of the story, when he
re-translates the name, Gradiva, into _Bertgang_. The disturbance
disappears then by being traced back to its origin; analysis brings cure
at the same time.
The similarity between the procedure of Gradiva and the analytic method
of psychotherapy is, however, not limited to these two points, making
the repressed conscious, and the concurrence of explanation and cure. It
extends itself to what proves the essential of the whole change, the
awakening of the emotions. Every disturbance analogous to Hanold’s
delusion, which in science we usually designate as a psychoneurosis,
has, as a preliminary, the repression of part of the emotional life, to
speak boldly, of the sex-impulse, and at every attempt to introduce the
unconscious and repressed cause of illness into consciousness, the
emotional component necessarily awakens to renewed struggle with the
forces repressing it, to adjust itself for final result, often under
violent manifestations of reaction. In reawakening, in consciousness, of
repressed love, the process of recuperation is accomplished when we sum
up all the various components of sex-impulse as “love,” and this
reawakening is irremissible, for the symptoms on account of which the
treatment was undertaken are nothing but the precipitations of former
struggles of repression and recurrence and can be solved and washed away
only by a new high-tide of these very passions. Every psychoanalytic
treatment is an attempt to free repressed love, which has formed a
miserable compromise-outlet in a symptom. Yes, the conformity with the
therapeutic process pictured by the author in _Gradiva_ reaches its
height when we add that even in analytical psychotherapy the reawakened
passion, whether love or hate, chooses the person of the physician as
its object every time.
Then, of course, appear the differences which make the case of Gradiva
an ideal one such as the technique of physicians cannot attain. Gradiva
can respond to the love which is pushing through from the unconscious
into the conscious; the physician cannot; Gradiva was herself the object
of the former repressed love; her person offers at once a desirable
object to the freed erotic activity. The physician has been a stranger,
and after the cure must try to become a stranger again; often he does
not know how to advise the cured patient to apply in life her regained
capacity for love. To suggest what resources and makeshifts the
physician then employs to approach with more or less success the model
of a love-cure which our author has drawn for us, would carry us too far
away from our present task.
Now, however, the last question which we have already evaded answering
several times. Our views about repression, the formation of delusion and
related disturbances, the formation and interpretation of dreams, the
rôle of erotic life, and the manner of cure for such disturbances are,
of course, not by any means the common property of science, to say
nothing of being the possession of educated people. If the insight which
makes our author able to create his “Fancy” in such a way that we can
analyse it like a real history of disease has for its foundation the
above-mentioned knowledge, we should like to find out the source of it.
One of the circle who, as was explained at the beginning, was interested
in the dreams of _Gradiva_ and their possible interpretation, put the
direct question to Wilhelm Jensen, whether any such similar theories of
science had been known to him. Our author answered, as was to be
expected, in the negative, and rather testily. His imagination had put
into his mind the _Gradiva_ in whom he had his joy; any one whom she did
not please might leave her alone. He did not suspect how much she had
pleased the readers.
It is easily possible that our author’s rejection does not stop at that.
Perhaps he denies knowledge of the rules which we have shown that he
follows, and disavows all the intentions which we recognized in his
production; I do not consider this improbable; then, however, only two
possibilities remain. Either we have presented a true caricature of
interpretation, by transferring to a harmless work of art tendencies of
which its creator had no idea, and have thereby shown again how easy it
is to find what one seeks and what one is engrossed with, a possibility
of which most strange examples are recorded in the history of
literature. Every reader may now decide for himself whether he cares to
accept such an explanation; we, of course, hold fast to the other, still
remaining view. We think that our author needed to know nothing of such
rules and intentions, so that he may disavow them in good faith, and
that we have surely found nothing in his romance which was not contained
in it. We are probably drawing from the same source, working over the
same material, each of us with a different method, and agreement in
results seems to vouch for the fact that both have worked correctly. Our
procedure consists of the conscious observation of abnormal psychic
processes in others, in order to be able to discover and express their
laws. Our author proceeds in another way; he directs his attention to
the unconscious in his own psyche, listens to its possibilities of
development and grants them artistic expression, instead of suppressing
them with conscious critique. Thus he learns from himself what we learn
from others, what laws the activity of this unconscious must follow, but
he does not need to express these laws, need not even recognize them
clearly; they are, as a result of his intelligent patience, contained
incarnate in his creatures. We unfold these laws by analysis of his
fiction as we discover them from cases of real illness, but the
conclusion seems irrefutable, that either both (our author, as well as
the physician) have misunderstood the unconscious in the same way or we
have both understood it correctly. This conclusion is very valuable for
us; for its sake, it was worth while for us to investigate the
representation of the formation and cure of delusion, as well as the
dreams, in Jensen’s _Gradiva_ by the methods of therapeutic
psychoanalysis.