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Re: Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
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I think it is fairly widely known among the reading public thta Freud commited some intellectual and scientific dishonesty and in one case may have done what is called a cover-up about a patient operated for "hysteria" by having nose surgery...( typical of what was visted on women and other patients in those dark days). I think Nabokov was familiar with scientific wirtings in many disciplinezs, including Pavlov's work on conditioning. Unmasking Freud was Masson's dramatic contribution. Nabokov was actually before his time and may have known of other :"fishy" practices by the Vienese quack........He certainly was well read in natural history and the non-social sciences as evidences by reading him. Robert MacLean's comments may not deserve the attention they are getting in this forum.
-----Original Message-----
From: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Fri, Feb 10, 2012 9:32 am
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
From: "Brian Boyd (ARTS ENG)" <b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:47:29 +1300
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
In response to what Jansy quotes from Robert (insinuation is cheap) MacLean, may I offer an antidote? Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a former director of the Freud Archive, famous among much else for The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory (1984), now lives in Auckland and featured in a cameo slot at the Nabokov Upside Down Conference last month, asking about Freud, Nabokov, and Lolita. Here's the latest entry on his blog, http://jeffreymasson.wordpress.com/:
Brian Boyd
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nabokov, Freud, and Lolita
Posted on February 6, 2012
I am no Nabokov scholar, but I have the privilege of knowing Brian Boyd, perhaps the world’s pre-eminent Nabokov pundit. In reading his comments on Lolita in his magisterial book Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, I was struck by his argument, entirely persuasive to me, that Nabokov himself fully understood the damage that Humbert Humbert did to his 12-year-old step-daughter. The book is in many ways profoundly moral; it also, I may note, give us the most complete description of an incestuous relationship in literature until that time (1954).
Before that time, the most profound accounts of the damage that can occur in child sexual abuse belong to two great psychologists, none other than Sigmund Freud, and his favorite disciple, Sandor Ferenczi. Freud had delivered a speech to a group of mocking psychiatrists in Vienna in 1896, called “The Aetiology of Hysteria” in which he caught the very essence of incest. Alas, for whatever reason, Freud seems to have lost the courage of his early years, and changed his mind. Ferenczi took up where the master dared not go, and wrote a beautiful paper in 1932, “Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child.” It doomed his relationship with Freud and just about all other analysts at the time, and Ferenczi died shortly afterward, probably of a broken heart.
Here is the paradox: Nabokov loathed Freud and psychoanalysis. He called him “The quack from Vienna,” and in an interview went so far as to insist, “Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods appears to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others.” The question I think worth further investigation is to what extent Nabokov knew Freud’s writings, and in particular, in writing Lolita, was anything of Freud’s views on child abuse available to him.
Brian Boyd points out in Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, that Nabokov’s beloved father had a fine library, and was “one of the leading Russian criminologists of his time. His study of sexual crime was the best thing on the subject in Russian.” Is there any chance that the library contained Freud’s early writings on child sexual abuse or even, say, the 1895 Studies on Hysteria which could not have failed to intrigue Nabokov, both as science and as literature?
Nabokov criticized Freud’s easy use of dream symbolism, understandably, and his equally facile views on puns. I concur. But I find it impossible to believe that he would have mocked Freud’s deep insights into the damage of incest, and it is to both authors’ eternal credit that that they made it apparent to the rest of the world for the foreseeable future, even if in the case of Freud he recoiled from his own most profound views, and in the case of Nabokov, he was widely misunderstood by his audience.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Fri, Feb 10, 2012 9:32 am
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
From: "Brian Boyd (ARTS ENG)" <b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:47:29 +1300
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
In response to what Jansy quotes from Robert (insinuation is cheap) MacLean, may I offer an antidote? Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a former director of the Freud Archive, famous among much else for The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory (1984), now lives in Auckland and featured in a cameo slot at the Nabokov Upside Down Conference last month, asking about Freud, Nabokov, and Lolita. Here's the latest entry on his blog, http://jeffreymasson.wordpress.com/:
Brian Boyd
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nabokov, Freud, and Lolita
Posted on February 6, 2012
I am no Nabokov scholar, but I have the privilege of knowing Brian Boyd, perhaps the world’s pre-eminent Nabokov pundit. In reading his comments on Lolita in his magisterial book Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, I was struck by his argument, entirely persuasive to me, that Nabokov himself fully understood the damage that Humbert Humbert did to his 12-year-old step-daughter. The book is in many ways profoundly moral; it also, I may note, give us the most complete description of an incestuous relationship in literature until that time (1954).
Before that time, the most profound accounts of the damage that can occur in child sexual abuse belong to two great psychologists, none other than Sigmund Freud, and his favorite disciple, Sandor Ferenczi. Freud had delivered a speech to a group of mocking psychiatrists in Vienna in 1896, called “The Aetiology of Hysteria” in which he caught the very essence of incest. Alas, for whatever reason, Freud seems to have lost the courage of his early years, and changed his mind. Ferenczi took up where the master dared not go, and wrote a beautiful paper in 1932, “Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child.” It doomed his relationship with Freud and just about all other analysts at the time, and Ferenczi died shortly afterward, probably of a broken heart.
Here is the paradox: Nabokov loathed Freud and psychoanalysis. He called him “The quack from Vienna,” and in an interview went so far as to insist, “Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods appears to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others.” The question I think worth further investigation is to what extent Nabokov knew Freud’s writings, and in particular, in writing Lolita, was anything of Freud’s views on child abuse available to him.
Brian Boyd points out in Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, that Nabokov’s beloved father had a fine library, and was “one of the leading Russian criminologists of his time. His study of sexual crime was the best thing on the subject in Russian.” Is there any chance that the library contained Freud’s early writings on child sexual abuse or even, say, the 1895 Studies on Hysteria which could not have failed to intrigue Nabokov, both as science and as literature?
Nabokov criticized Freud’s easy use of dream symbolism, understandably, and his equally facile views on puns. I concur. But I find it impossible to believe that he would have mocked Freud’s deep insights into the damage of incest, and it is to both authors’ eternal credit that that they made it apparent to the rest of the world for the foreseeable future, even if in the case of Freud he recoiled from his own most profound views, and in the case of Nabokov, he was widely misunderstood by his audience.
Google Search the archive
Contact the Editors
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla
View Nabokv-L Policies
Manage subscription options
Visit AdaOnline
View NSJ Ada Annotations
Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/