JM: It's not my
intention to convince Nabokovian scholars and lovers of the importance
of Freud's ideas or of his therapeutic methods. And yet, certain
slight, often growing mis-readings must be identified, and commented
upon, before a line of quotes from quotes authoritavely derives from
them. My arguments are insufficiently researched, but I hope they may
be of use as an inspiration to those who will to pursue the matter of
Nabokov's antifreudianism in the future.
One of the difficulties which I here
must confront lies in that specific terms which were employed by Freud
in the restricted realm of psychoanalytic theory depart
from words found in any regular dictionary, and where they
are defined in their wider sense, while their technical meaning in
psychoanalysis is not included.
For instance,
concerning Freud's dream-web and the meaning of "overdetermination and
nodal point," or, in his metapsychology, the term "resistance."
To complicate matters even
further, various translators from Freud's German originals,
have substituted Freud's terms by Greek or Latin derivatives (
Id,Ego,Superego = Es,Ich, Ueberich - Lytton Strachey's choice, as
was cathexis = Bezetzung) or, carelessly designated "Trieb" as
"Instinct" - aso.
Here are two links to the standard
French "Vocabulaire":
Those
who engage in the study of Nabokov-Freud may jump from one level of
discourse onto another, without realizing any discrepancy. For example,
in psychoanalysis, "resistance" is an expression
of "transference," and it is, always, an unconscious process.
This signification is at variance from Leland Durantaye's use of
this word in his concluding sentence of his article (meaning
"opposition"), although it remains vaguely acceptable in the first one
line:
"It is neither possible nor
necessary to judge - as so many of Nabokov's critic and defenders have
endeavored to do - whether Nabokov's resistance to Freud was
determined or overdetermined by factors or feelings of which he was not
aware. What Nabokov very consciously sought to counteract were
approaches to art that, in their aspiration to uncover the general,
neglected the particular. And this he found in Freud. For Nabokov, the
essence of art dwells in the details of a work, and any system that
encouraged the study of such details as a means to any other end than
art itself was, understandably, anathema. This, more than anything
else, motivated his resistance to psychoanalysis and its founder." .
Although I agree with Leland Durantaye's points on that "There is
a final irony in Nabokov's attacks on Freud as prophet and promulgator
of the general. In vilifying Freud Nabokov followed only the most
general lines of attack. He never criticized Freud for such things as
misunderstanding or misapplying the insights of those who came before
him, and his strictures are, in truth, never particular and always
general. And so if Freud were indeed to choose someday to rail at
Nabokov from beynd the grave, he might find no better grounds for doing
so than that his antagonist too fell prey to the ever-present and
ever-powerful seductions of the general. closing lines," * I consider
his rather favourable arguments misleading. It's because Nabokov spoke
against "generalization" in particular contexts (in the field of Art,
warns us LD)**. However, as a scientist, Nabokov neeeded to
proceed from the particular to the general in order to formulate any
scientifically valid hypothesis. Besides, he could be a great artist, a
great lepidopterologist and even so a passionate "generalizer" whenever
the subject abutted in Freud ( as Leland also points out).
There's something equally important that is often overlooked by
those who focus on Freud's "discovery" of psychoanalysis. Before Freud
began to develop his psychoanalytic edifice, he worked as a
medical scientist, published papers, failed to report two important
discoveries of his (the anaesthetic properties of cocaine; synapsis in
neural transmissions...), suffered under the pressures of publish or
perish like any regular scientist. His project to establish
Psychoanalysis as a science, contrary to what many Nabokovian scholars
assert, was not a mere passage from the particular to the general
because Freud lacked artistic insight or genius. It had nothing to do
directly with Art in the first place (inspite of the trend of applying
psychoanalysis in literary criticism and the lamentable works about
"applied psychoanalysis," such as Princess Marie Bonaparte's on E.A.
Poe - and many many others, unfortunately).
Secondly, and more importantly, Freud tried to establish the
importance of discoveries which resulted from one particular case (one
case history, for example), because its revelatory uniqueness
excludes standard research procedures that apply control groups and
statistics***.
Leland de la Durantaye's style and clear reasoning is delightful
to my mind's eyes and ears and I'm in awe by his grasp of facts and
depth of information. It is exactly the quality of his writing that
which stimulated me to set down certain observations ( derived from
almost permanent, but unfortunately idle associations) which I'd direct
initially to Nabokov and, next, to some of his anti-Freudian
"disciples," not to Leland Durantaye.
................................................................................
* p.61 "...Freud's thought is ...associated...with prison, with
pre-school, with the pre-mature and the pre-modern - it is something
that limits freedom and individuality. Among other things, Freud's
thought is branded as determinist ..He makes explicit in a French
interview.."What psychoanalysis shares with Bolschevism - and thereby
with totalitarianism - is the tendency to negate the singular in favor
of the general"..."Nabokov thus saw Freud as standing for many things
he did not like - and, conversely, as representing what he most
vehemently disliked: the generalizing of the rich particularities of
which life is made up. While lying at the heart of Freud's principle
of psychic substitution, the tendency to generalize is a phenomenon
especially pronounced in works of psychoanalytic literary criticism..."
( JM: what is "Freud's principle of psychic substitution"? Deos LD
indicate, thereby, Freud's 'primary process' mechanism of
'displacement' ?).
** p.64/65 "Is Nabokov's criticism unjust? In Freud's writing -
above all in his case histories - fantastic attention is paid to the
most minute and seemingly derisory details of his patients' lives.And
yet, he evinces an indefatigable drive to interpret these details in
the light of overarchingschemas that would be common to, depending on
the circumstance, the better part of metropolitan Vienna or all
humanity. As Nabokov's charge is made in the name of art..."
*** -ISPUB - Sigmund Freud, MD: Forgotten Contributions to
Neurology ... D Galbis-Reig - 2004 - ... Freud and Neuropathology: A
Study of the Medulla Oblongata .... his work was instrumental in
assuring that future scientists would be able to ... Freud's work on
cocaine culminated in a publication of his work on cocaine ...
www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?.../ijn/.../freud...
- ISPUB - Sigmund Freud, MD: Forgotten Contributions to Neurology ...
David Galbis-Reig M.D. Department of Internal Medicine;Aurora
Sinai Medical Center, Milwaukee,Wisconsin - citation: D. Galbis-Reig :
Sigmund Freud, MD: Forgotten Contributions to Neurology,
Neuropathology, and Anesthesia . The Internet Journal of Neurology.
2004 Volume 3 Number 1
(I only came across this one reference using search-tools from the
internet. There are others.)