Gateway To Ideas; 5; Freud and 20th Century Literature

mr gateway to ideas a new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in relation to reading today's program freud and twentieth century literature is moderated by the gene peterson noted author and critic our guests today are professor benjamin nelson who is chairman of the sociology department of the state university of new york at stony brook dr nelson has written and edited numerous wakes in the fields of the social sciences cultural history and psychoanalysis among which you've been editor of a book called freud and the twentieth century dr philip weisman a consulting analyst on the staff of the new york psychoanalytic treatment center author of many articles on clinical subjects and on the theater dr weissman has a forthcoming

book on psychoanalysis and the theater the fairest definition i know the gentleman of a classic is that nothing can ever be written after it without taking into consideration that city makes freud's wit a classic doesn't that you would agree that it is impossible to write anything today about human beings and their relations without being at least aware of how freud viewed them wouldn't you dr nelson i think that's a very well taken and that it instantly suggests to me at least we need to distinguish between works of literature of done before throwing solely through the nineteenth century and work's done since nineteen hundred the date of freud's first major classic the interpretation of dreams there are any number of writings of the nineteenth century which illustrate the battle of the sexes artist brion

the rigors above childhood but there are very few which have the distinctive for it in character when a modern writer looks around at the world of experiences himself in a set of actions he cannot be but be affected by the sense that through it has so profoundly that expressed that is the immense awareness of the importance of the unconscious the power of unconscious conflict the muffled character of motivation what would you say it would use a gentleman that the main influence of fraud her pride in post friday in literature is the subject of a tea of literature the end a man rather than the odd a man who was more characteristic of the nineteenth century or my wrong

dr weissman well i would say that foreign influence as a classic proportions has introduced a new element and made for its knowledge part of our universal language of communication to the degree that a certain amount of acceptability has taken place about the world of unconscious and conscious in a way that was never uses trickery leah's before it becomes a stand up for his contribution so that it is almost unconsciously accepted into our language i am not so sure that the literature the real literature of before and after four wade is so different with israel but only with this distinction that some people make too much of a fuss about you mean the critics and the critics bring out syllables and pointed out

friday in maps to no analytic of fashion to some degree do you would say wouldn't you got to nelson that there is a tendency all the same on the part of the modern novelist let's i did treat his hero more as a patient i don't think i do think that with and a feeling that he was once a child who in the wind critical and searing experiences that the emphasis for example is one of the hallmarks of freud's influence i should say one ever thinks any longer than a manager fifty years literally fifty we always now maliki is five or even two or three well i got on at that face by saying the child is father of the man i do think of that wordsworth did see that i understand that but i don't think he understood it in all its reaches more and any

therapist sense that he was not aware as freud was are the obstacles run by the child in the course of his growth to maturity the costs are to the child and the growing man ah the mishaps that occurred in that initial experience the immense importance of the repetition occasions and even feelings and so forth i doubt that there has been any very notable writer philosopher who hasn't grasped league awareness that a child was the father of the man but i don't know one prior to fry who documented that and actually spread before us an understanding of the charts so i suppose that begins is the only outstanding great writer the nineteenth century whose protagonist never grew up who wrote hall books about childhood obesity have a flock of them now and most of them are based on the story of the loss

of innocence on a nominee there are nearly as many losses of innocence and literature now as there are writers to write to us that brings up a very interesting point because if we would think of the possibility of dickens' writing and confining themselves to the life of the child another going beyond that one could pose that his last dollar that came on land would think of dickens' writing about intensely as the thing that preceded childhood in other words it is not enough thinking that there is a hierarchy of development and it is a naive to pay to make the subdivision of childhood and adult we have become so attuned to the idea of longitudinal development of individual reading dickens if today if you're writing would have to deal with the cultural phenomenon that was part of his education that the child was a baby it's only crossed my mind that if one could

reverse time in present the nineteenth century revisit begins with the catcher in the rye by jd salinger they might not understand what all the troubles were about after all of the troubles that beset the children begins with concrete actual outside circumstances whereas the troubles of the catcher in the rye are all internal circumstances due to his own nature and his parental influences that that it's a completely deferred so now that the nineteen fifty people would've thought it so unhappy know my feeling is somewhat different about that i'm not quite sure that it could be sold on the level that it wouldn't be understood i think it would be immediately understood and one level but objected to as incomprehensible from the point of view of that newness and it would repeat the error of freud's discoveries in which there was a dichotomy in the world those who accepted

and those who yelled but even those who yelled knew there was an ultimate truth and what was being said and it would be hard to believe that the real truth this is not true with more that the nile than an inability to respond to what was being second time would would you consider that half government instance who sidney wrote about the alienation of man from his whole society whom and his men were all completely confined within themselves and terrorized by the enmity of the world around them do you think he was influenced by fraud and i don't know about nelson because i've never read anything about after that said whether freud influenced him and it could have any chronologically i think we do know for a fact that kafka new affords work and was a way of what for was saying that it were to

our century i think of good illustrate something else though the surprising thing is that when you look at kafka's work to his father you would guess that he was saturated with roy what kafka to my waiting and you illustrate something altogether different i consider glasgow one of the first post freudian thinkers and host for indian writers and i would like to suggest that nowadays in our own time our we are confronted by some writers who are profoundly perhaps excessively influenced by trying to go about documenting him in their novels and in their place i think you have that on broadway to a great extent whereas i think that there'll be about god these days is four paws friday and not for him that posed for him and his they know his existence or where his knee and

like i deliberately go beyond him if i may i would like to say in frost your question about kafka what it means to be post freudian yes well of the yearling for it is the culmination of the nineteenth century developments great playwright simpsons gender in other novelists across dusty askey who bring to the fore the karen a lot of really so cool super ego over the ego and over the head an effort to wear a system the liberation of impulse and reason as against convention and so on and conventional morality i think of freud something that pop out in fact they gave a kind of a code you cut if it so that other writers none of the same stand as those i just mentioned i could

document in great numbers of plays in books and on broadway we have any number of plays which do document that freud's insights now in tin came from a trickier as iraqi and then it was said that that freud represents the culmination of that literally development but i would if i may like to emphasize the fact that although there were any number of anticipation for roy among literally people philosophers and psychologists freud remains of the giants in the sense that he signed typically charted the unconscious and scientifically sit down motions and documents which show did organize as it were the whole area none of the others did anyone may say that shakespeare was aware of the oedipus complex really answer is he was not he wrote hamlet but he was not aware of the oedipus complex and freud did he didn't need to be i had i would have to take issue with you on that if i may say that it is of the utmost importance not for

shakespeare that he be aware but that for all of us that we become aware of this matter but i will return to kafka if you will write our eye and say that in the case of kafka and writer subsequent to him right in his manner you see me out effort to the page and somehow to suggest away from our love what might be called the tyranny of conscience less reason the assumption it essentially had been the reason could supplants the commercial reality and to give guidance to him promotional impulse that there would be genuine liberation for mankind that was the state that it's in and it was ugly and even the face of freud but since golf or something else has come into the consciousness and that is in our everyday world is a very reasonable world family rationalized in a million ways we use the word

nationalization the day for it and what we look for is not to be liberated from emotion through reason but to be liberated from the fruits off conscience less reason that is the lesson i think of beckett and a visionary and various other writers they are intensely aware of freud what they frankly think he's a moral that if i read them correctly well as a new morality come up anew called by which to land well before i answer that question directly that dr wilson has had some really interesting things that i both agree with info should be somewhat modified about the post freudian write a documentary but this is an extremely complex problem riders who have been furloughed freud have also documented freud and they've given sense though that might sound absurd but the

documentation is merely attack that has been proven before and after it is true that the documentation that occurs and that there are many conscious remedies who in a sense of meaning conscious freud has been documented by many writers who were antagonistic to his ideas and then equally yes sir yes ma'am i'd say yes and also one of the best examples someone who has made statements of his antagonists and two for would be eugene o'neill who claimed that he didn't like drawings ideas too much maligned been too familiar with them and

showed even more of an affinity towards however a study of some of otto knows great place and it makes a tremendous contribution to have noted acknowledged for example of the process of mourning in spite of his own which will make the point that the problem of documentation is extremely complicated the art is documented in spite of his intent and sometimes cannot document when he intends to it is not dr even technically only you used methods which might be called for it means this place the situations were sick yeah trick situations and in the second place you remember how you used was it in the grey todd browning the mask the person who says what he thinks the author salman says what he really thinks i'm at the gap between the two that was the first time that had but i mean shall i think they

knew did not feel a contradiction and isn't hadn't risen to florida's use of these things which would seem as if the man was split and which direction is going the truth of the matter is that i think o'neill's saw himself as a current man and that unconscious thinking unspoken thoughts are really part of humanity wherever it came from and that it was our clothing of today and this is the way progress a play and i was wondering if neither of you would see any difference for instance that could be attributed to freud between say crime and punishment the study of rascal make us guilty in the mid air and counties default which was also a study of the late and conscience you know either and he was jewish you word girl you have presented us with a

theme for id laws and comprehensive essay which it reaches into almost every corner of the nineteenth and twentieth century i would hesitate to make a statement about this german hesitation because i don't even think we're busy had aired our ideas as to what the current writer represents in terms of the protean position and to take these two plays in an undisclosed way without these primaries will be rather wild treatment would otherwise not be wild above all in his company will you then please to say what you and yourself what you do you think the friday an effect on non contemporary literature has been if you think we haven't said anything about new well i would prefer a role in trying to remove my hesitation that this appointment says

something about what can move and gary grant writers who seemed to be so far away from freud my impression is that the changes in our current world are so great that there must be a direction for their imprint and my family is that it is not against dry but in the senate it is beyond friday and the world that we're all having a great deal of difficulty in contending with perhaps in an external way of living quarters for it represented a solution to our internal way of living and that it should appear in the literature and should exist is quite comprehensible and his ruling one amends most urgent new problems i should like to speak now i mean i think maybe the best way of putting that question would be by taking an example of a play the balcony by jonathan

day is set in a brothel and the year opening scenes depict there's girls in the brothel is man who come for the very reasons and purposes and who fought needs that are not understood basque here to perform the roles of bishop and general and that picture and so forth so when no one watches this play unfolds i did once first senses that jail is undertaking to provide a dramatization of scenarios previously written mainly by the sod or else he was taking pages out of craft a being but the failures that this will be a very experiment client one anticipates that will be a good bit of crowing here well the fact is that if you want to fly you discover

it really isn't about the science and it really isn't about oh it doesn't do is depressed and he has a lovely little to do with roy and for that matter it really isn't about the brothel it's only set in a brothel or damage has decreased it's about something altogether different and i know that when i saw the play i needed to get to about the seventh seen before i fully realize what the author was going to supply more than any i know illustrates a lot of cool lee post freudian stress of contemporary drama literature the entire theater of the absurd is so called socal picture is post free in the same way four what is the theme on the balcony it is the dilemma very terrible kind of paradox that life

presents and that is that each of us is only himself when he is closest to is feeling but then feeling has no way ever of assuming shape or form or convey meaning the significance already crystallizing any kind of identity until it becomes for so that it's all the paradox of existence and roll with in a world composers as ours which is the very center of this guy isn't even a documentation of the notions of existentialism at her senate apply exposed existential and i say the same thing exactly for beckett and falk in escrow and saw a plan and as it is the most do believe and all the documentation of the frightful tyranny of the everyday in everyone's life which is very different from for and i think dr watson as make a politician by implying that there's

no way of looking at the world connects with the immense changes that have occurred in our occurring in our own day the accelerated pace of changes are our existence and that the players are of course responding to the challenge of these changes but dr weissman wouldn't you angry at least so far as to say that for it influence is still the very apparent his hand lies heavy on contemporary literature in the sense that nearly all contemporary literature of serious nature is is about the self referring to the selfie that that there is an indian men's consciousness of of the ego in all of it and and this self lose out as the main frame of reference rather than something larger outside of the younger self is that not only influence of from i am very grateful to miss peterson for asking me

this question because this is exactly what i entertained trying to answer in some way i do believe though i made a statement that post forty in literature is embarking upon the external catastrophic and monumental changes that are going on the world i think the literature could not be exist without the fact that freud newsom and not just for audiences but modern psychology was its precursor you would seem to leave without an orientation to man psyche as for it has described that any play pleasure in a well unesco would would not be tolerated and the bases or the fact that it would i've been a strong to be psychotic person understanding of mansoor life that promotes the conditions for this type of play to be written and while the

play moves away from the problems that we're solving it moves away move the sanction of floyd that things can be expressed this way and other things that could be so dr nelson's excellent example of the beltway as much to the point where now wants to be a bishop i imagine in the eighteenth nineteenth century would have been considered absolutely psychotic illness had had some extraordinary logical collaboration but the zone was an assumption made but the man who is writing this is not crazy and he's talking at least in a new clothing of the fourteen year old men as fantasies and while the cap has used to not say everything about them and that one can begin to approach what it's all about but the new world is about from the basis of this self understanding and a

renowned much with you that in a very large overall sense this is a great occupational preoccupation with self which for years committed and it was april and i mean for the interior has made dr nelson we haven't said anything about our most outstanding promising young writers malamud roth and soul ballads have you anything to say briefly about them yes i should say that would cost to oracle subject for nominating such as this but briefly they are thoroughly aware of freud and seek in their own fashion to go beyond him through the use of his inside this i should say that they don't go nearly as far as the europeans' thank you got to nelson it would seem from this discussion that act dr weissman and dr nelson feel that the unconscious the knowledge of the unconscious that came from freud

goes on and has become part of the thinking of all of us and i want to thank them for throwing their shafts of light on what is after all rather an obscure subject thank you very much dr nelson and dr weissman you've been listening to gateway to ideas a new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in addition to reading today's program freud and twentieth century literature has presented dr benjamin nelson chairman of the sociology department at new york state university at stony brook long island who is the author of freud in the twentieth century and dr philip weissman member of the new york psychoanalytic society and author of a forthcoming book on psychoanalysis in the theater the moderator was the junior peterson noted author and critic to extend the dimensions of today's program for you a list of the books mentioned in the discussion as well as others relevant to the subject has been prepared you can obtain a copy from your local library or by writing tool gateway to ideas

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