freud psychopathic characters on stage

8/3/2019 Freud Psychopathic Characters on Stage

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f/~/'' . . U 4 ' - rS.f(~PSYCHOPATHISCHE PERSONEN AUF DER BOHNE(a ) GERMAN EDITIONS:

,(1905 or 1906 Probable date of composition. Not hitherto,1953, published in German.). . . . .

(b ) ENGLISH TRANSLATION:'Psychopathic Characters on the Stage'

1 91 2 P sy ch oa na l. Qyar!., 11 (4- ) , Oct., 459-464. (Tr. H. A.Bunker.)The present translation is a new one by James Strachey.

Dr. Max Graf in an article in the Psy ch oa na l, Q j Ja rl ., 11,(i~H2), ' ; 'p5, relates that this paper was written by Freud inJ !J0 '1and presented to him by its author. It was never publishedby Freud himself. There must be some mistake about this date(the ~fS, itself is undated), for Hermann Bahr's play, D ieAndere , which is discussed on p. 310, was first produced (inMunich and Leipzig) at the beginning of November, 1905,and'had itsf irst Vienna performance on the 25th of the same month.I t was not published in book form till 1906. The probability is,therefore, that the present paper was written late in 1905 orearly in 1906. Our thanks are due to Dr. Raymond Gosselin,editor of the Psychoanalyt i c OJ ia rt e r ly , for supplying us with aphotostat of Freud's original manuscript. The handwriting is inplaces difficult to decipher, which accounts for a few divergencesbetween the ;0 English translations.

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\ .. .PSYCHOPATHIC CHARACTERS

ON THE\STAGE

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..IF as has been assumed since the ' t ime' of Aristotle, the purposeofdrama is to arouse 'terror and pity' 1 and so 'to purge theemoti~ns ', we


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PSYCHOPATHIC STAGE CHARACTERS~ut the enjoyment. !Ie knows, moreover, that he has only oneMe and tha.t he' mIgh.t perhaps perish even in a single suchstruggl: ag~mst adv~fSlty. Accordingly, his enjoyment is basedn .~~ ~lUSlOn. ithat IS to say, his suffering is mitigated by the

,~'> cer~amty Ulat, fi~tly, it is ,g_omeoneother than himself who is~~ ~Ctlllg and suffenng on the stage, and, secondly, that after all itIj ' - : - > ~ pol? a game. wh~ch can threaten no damage to his ~Q~Tt:~unty. In these CIrcumstances he can.....llow himself to enjoy

cing a 'great man', to give way without a qualm to suchsupp:cssed i~pulses as a craving for freedom in religious,political, SOCIaland sexual matters, and to 'blow off steam' in~vcry direction in the various grand scenes that form part of thelife represcnted on the stage:S.cvcraI other forms of creative writing, however, are equallysubject to these same preconditions for enjoyment. Lyric poetry

~crv~ the _purpose, more than anything, of giving vent tom.tcnse [ce!mgs of,many sorts-just as was at one time the caseWIth dancm~. EpIC poetry aims chiefly at making it possibleto. fcel the enJ~~ of a great heroic character in his hour of.triumph. But l l i < ! . ! l l i t J seeks to explore emotional possibilitiesmor~ deeply and to ~ive anrCn_royab~e1shapeeven to forebQ~.~_~~~oEt~~:;for this reason It depicts the hero in his struggles,or rathc: (\\,U_1!..!I!~~~ in defeat. This reIatio~to suffcnng and misfortune might be taken as characteristic ofdran:a, whether, as happens in serious plays, it is only concern~hat ISar~used, and aft~rwa~ds allayed, or whether, as happens~n tragedies, the suffering IS actually realized. The fact thatdrama originated out of sacrificial rites (cf. the goat and thescapc?,oat) in the cult of the gods cannot be unrelated to thisme~nmg of d,r~ma.l It appeases, as it were, a rising rebellion... .gamst the dlyme regulation of the universe, which is,respon:t, ~ble for the existence oT'SU1l'enn. eroesare rst an oremorrl\rcb?1s a al~st a or a amst so e m IVlne' an easure ISms, rom re a iction of a weaker being in the

- ufeaue to masochi ti satisfaction.' vc as to direct en'o mcnt 0 a c aracter. whose reatness is ... m ~ ls tc :. . _u__~_____ _" inz. Here we have a mood likelrat of Prometheus;out afloyed with a paltry readiness to letoneself be soothed for the moment by a temporary satisfaction., 1 [T!le subj ect of the Hero in Greek tragedy was discussed by Freud ~Inhis T ot em a nd T abo o (1912-13), in Section 7 of the fourth essay.] ,

~ fJffer' g of every kind is thu~ the subject-matter of ~!ama,an .. "' __~..!JffiIin.gitp[Q..I!li.~~_jQ_giv~!heaudience"pl~~~Thus we arrive at a first precondition of this form of art: thatit should not cause suffering to the audience, that it shouldknow how to ~~I bymeans of the possible satisfactionsinvolved, for the sympathetic suffering which is aroused.(Modern writers have part icularly often failed to obey this rule.)But the suffering represented is soon restricted to ~ffer-~ for no one wants physical suffering who knows how quicklyall mental enjoyment is brought to an end by the changes insomatic feeling that physical suffering brings about. Ifwe aresick we have one wish ' only: to be well again and to be quit ofour present state. We call for the doctor and medicine, and forthe removal of the inhibition on the play of phantasy which haspampered us into deriving enjoyment even from our own.sufferings. If a spectator puts himself in the place of someonewho is physically ill he finds himself without any capacity forenjoyment or psychical activity. Consequently a person who isphysically ill can only figure on the stage as a piece of stage-property and not as a 'hero, unless, indeed, some peculiarphysical aspects of his i llness make psychical activity possible-such, for instance, as the sick man's forlorn state in thePhiloctetes or the hopelessness of the sufferers in the class of playsthat centre round consumptives.People are acquainted with mental suffering principally in

connection with the circumstances in which it is acquired;aocordingly, dramas dealing with it require some event out ofwhich the illness shall arise and they open with an exposi-tion of this event. It is only an apparent exception that someplays, such as the Ajax and the Philoctetes, introduce the mentalillness as already fully established; for in Greek tragedies, owingto the familiarity of the material, the curtain rises, as one. ,(~might say, in the middle of the play. It is easy to give an ex-

~\)\ haustive account of the preconditions governing an event of thekind that is here in question. I t must be an event involvingconflict and it must include an effort of will together withresistance. This precondition found its first and grandest ful-filment in a struggle against divinity. I have already said thata tragedy ofthis kind isone of rebell iori , in which the dramatistand the audience take the side of the rebel. The less belief therecomes to be in divinity, the more important ,becomes the human

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:308( . PSYCHOPATHIC STAGE CHARACTERSregulation ofaffairs; and ,i t is this which, with increasing insight,comes to. be he!d responsible for suffering. Thus the hero's nextstrug~le ISaga~nst human society, and here we have the classof sO~I~l t r~gedles, Yet another fulf ilment of the necessary pre.conditIOn ISto ~e found in a struggle between individual men.Such are tragedIes of character, which exhibit all the excitementof an 'a g on ' [ d yw v , conflict], and which are best played outbetween outstanding characters who have freed themselves fromthe bond of,human institutions-which;in fact, must have tw oheroes., Fusions between these two last classes with a herostrugglIng against institutions embodied in powe:ful charactersare of Course admissible without question. Pure tragedies ofcharacter lack t~e rebellious source of enjoyment, but thiseme,rgcs onte again no less forcibly in social dramas (in Ibsenfor l,nstancc) tl_1anit did in the historical plays of the Greekclassical tragedians.,Thus reli~ious ?rama, social drama and drama of characterdIffer essent,IaIl~ Inthe terrain on which the action that leadsto the suffenng ISfought out. And we can now follow the course

of ~rama on to yet another terrain, where it becomes psycho.logical drax:na. Here the struggle that causes the suffering is:ought out m the hero.'s mind itself-a struggle between differentImpulses, and one which must have its end in the extinction notof th,e hero, but, o~one of his impUlses; it must end, that is tosay, 10 ~ ~enunclatlOn. Combinations of any kind between thisprC;On?ltlOn az:d the earlier types are, of course,possible; thusInstlt~tlOns, for Instance, can themselves be the cause ofinternalconflicts: And this is where we have tragedies of love; for thesuppression of love by social culture, by human conventionsor the struggle between 'love and duty' which ' f: '1 ", , IC IS so ami Iarto u,s10 ?pera, are the start ingpoint of almost endless varietiesof situations O f conflict: just as endless, in fact, as the eroticday-dreams of rnen.But the se?es of possibilities grows wider; and psychological

/~ra~a tu~s l~to ps~chopathological drama when the source of~he suffermg ,10 which 'we take part and from which we arcmeant to derive pleasur


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PSYCHOPATHIC STAGE CHARACTERSreaching consciousness, owing toa lower resistance, while therepressed material itself is unable to do so. After all, the conflictin Hamle t is so effectively concealed that it was left to me tounearth it.I t may be in consequence of disregarding these three pre-conditions that so many other psychOpathic characters are asunserviceable on the stage as they are in real life. For the victimof a neurosis is someone into Whose 'IOnflict we can gain no

insight if we first meet it in a fully established state. But, p e rcontra; if we recognize the conflict, we forget that he is a sickj l11an, just as, if he himself recognizes it, he ceases to be ill. 11~vould seem to b!!__t~(~l_r~ induce the sa~j1Jn~~._~1l_t{ind tlUs can best be achieved if we are made tofollow the development of the illness along with the sufferer.This will be especial ly necessary Where the repression does notalready exist in us but has first to be set up; and this representsa step further than Hamle t in the Useo f neurosis on the stage.I f we are faced by an unfamiliar and fully established neurosis,wc s a e lllC Inc to sen or tellife) and pronounce the characteThis last mistake seem.":s:-t:::o:-:;:-6'::"c~eu::r~1ll:--,r.a~r:Ys~;:;;t:"'!e:-:r~n~c:":r;~e,""-:a~part.

from a seCond one which is implicit in the problem presented inthe play-namely, that it is impossible for us to put ourselveswith conviction into the position of believing that one parti-cular person has a prescriptive right to give the girl completesatisfaction. So that her case cannot become ours. Moreover,there remains a third mistake: namely that there is nothing leftfor us to discover and that our entire resistance is mobilizedagainst this predetermined condition of love which is so un-acceptable to us. Of the three formal preconditions that I havebeen diSCussing, the most important seems to be that of thediversion of attention.In general,: it may perhaps be said that the neurotic instab-

ility o[the public and the dramatist's skill in avoiding resistancesand offering fore-pleasures can alone determine the limits setupon the employment of abnormal characters on the stage.I [This play by Hermann Bahr, the Austr ian novelis t and playwright(l863-1931), was first produ"d at the end of 1905. I" plot turns upon \the dual personali ty of i ts heroine, who is unable, in spite ofevery eflort,to escape from an attachment (based on her physical feelings) to aman who has her in his power.-This paragraph was omitted from theJ 91 2 transJatiO'fl.]

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freud psychopathic characters on stage

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