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Freud and the Scene of Trauma

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Freud and the Scene of Trauma Freud and the Scene of Trauma John Fletcher !"#$%&' ()*+,#-*./ 0#,-- 1,2 3"#4 5678 Copyright © 5678 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro- duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other— except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the per sis- tence or accuracy of URLs for external or third- party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Fletcher, John, 79:; January 5- author. Freud and the scene of trauma / John Fletcher. — First edition. p. ; cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9<;- 6- ;585- =:=9-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 9<;- 6- ;585- =:>6-> (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Title. [DNLM: 7. Freud, Sigmund, 7;=>– 7989. 5. Freudian Theory— history. 8. Hysteria— psychology. :. Medicine in Art. =. Medicine in Literature. >. Stress Disorders, Traumatic—psychology. WM :>6.=.F9] RC=85 >7>.;='5:—dc58 567865:8>= Printed in the United States of America 7= 7: 78 = : 8 5 7 First edition In Memoriam Jean Laplanche (!"#$– #%!#) This page intentionally left blank E*/%)/%0 List of Figures ix Ac know ledg ments xi Preface xiii Prologue: Freud’s Scenographies ! "#$% &: '() "*+)$ *, -.)/)0 1 !. Charcot’s Hysteria: Trauma and the Hysterical Attack !! 2. Freud’s Hysteria: “Scenes of Passionate Movement” 34 "#$% &&: 5)6*$7#8 9#/%#07)0, 9#/%#06#%7. 5)6*$7)0 :; 3. The Afterwardsness of Trauma and the Theory of Seduction :1 <. Memory and the Key of Fantasy == :. The Scenography of Trauma: Oedipus as Tragedy and Complex !23 "#$% &&&: -.$))/ 5)6*$7)0 #/> %() ?)%@$/ *, -)>@.%7*/ !:3 4. Leonardo’s Screen Memory !:: ;. Flying and Painting: Leonardo’s Rival Sublimations !=A "#$% &B: "$*%*%CD)0 #/> %() "$76#8 2A3 =. The Transference and Its Prototypes 2A: viii Contents 1. The Wolf Man I: Constructing the Primal Scene 22A !A. The Wolf Man II: Interpreting the Primal Scene 2<= "#$% B: '$#@6# #/> %() E*6D@807*/ %* ?)D)#% 2;; !!. Trauma and the Genealogy of the Death Drive 2;1 !2. Uncanny Repetitions: Freud, Hoffmann, and the Death- Work 3!4 Epilogue 3<= Bibliography 3:! Index of the Works of Freud 3:1 General Index 34! !"#$%&' ( Leda and the Swan, Francesco Melzi after Leonardo da Vinci ()* + Leda and the Swan, Cornelis Bos engraving after Michelangelo (), * Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (-( , Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist (-, . Leonardo da Vinci, St. John the Baptist (-) / The Plea sure Principle: Fechner and Freud +)/ 0 Fechner’s Principle of Constancy +)0 ) Freud’s ‘strange chiasmus’ *(* ix This page intentionally left blank ()*+,- ./01 2/+34 To Iain Bruce for four decades of love and companionship, generosity and cordon bleu cooking, without whom this book might not have had a consistent referencing system, an index, or any illustrations. To Nicholas Ray, a fellow ‘Laplanchean,’ and collaborator, for his help- ful comments on an early draft, his intellectual comradeship, resourceful- ness, and staying power in hard times. To Judith Butler and Peter Fonagy, who very kindly read various drafts and versions of this book, my gratitude for their support and encouragement. To generations of students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, who took courses with me on Literature and Psychoanalysis, Freud’s Metapsy- chology, Psychoanalysis and Cultural production or wrote dissertations and theses in the ! eld, many of whom were enthusiastic, some of whom claimed it changed their lives, and some of whom swore never to do it again. The project for this book ! rst emerged, backwards and unexpected, out of a research term funded by the old Arts and Humanities Research Board to enable the writing of a theoretical introduction to a collection of my es- says but which turned into something else. They wanted immediate prod- uct, upfront, and were not best pleased. Ten years later, here it is. Thinking and writing take time. Thanks to the University of Warwick for two periods of research leave to work on and complete this project. A previous version of Chapter " appeared as “The Scenography of Trauma: A ‘Copernican’ Reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King,” Textual Practice #$, no. $ (#%%&): $&– '$. A previous version of Chapter $# appeared as “Freud, Hoffmann and the Deathwork,” Angelaki &, no. # (August #%%#): $#"–'$ . xi This page intentionally left blank "#$%&'$ This book is a study of the central role of trauma in Freud’s thought. It ar- gues that it is Freud’s mapping of trauma as a scene, the elaboration of a scenography of trauma, that is central to both his clinical interpretation of his patients’ symptoms and his construction of successive theoretical mod- els and concepts to explain the power of such scenes in his patients’ lives. This attention to the scenic form of trauma, and its power in the determi- nation of neurotic symptoms, presides over Freud’s break from the neuro- logical model of trauma he inherited from Charcot. It also helps explain the af! nity that Freud and many since him have felt between psychoanalysis and literature (and artistic production more generally) and the privileged role of literature at certain moments in the development of his thought. A number of alternative theoretical models are to be found in Freud’s work: traumatic seduction, screen memory, inherited primal fantasy (Ur- phantasie), the individually constructed originary fantasy (ursprüngliche Phantasie). All involve the analysis of sequences of scenes layered one upon the other in the manner of a textual palimpsest, with claims to ei- ther material or psychical reality. The notion of a ‘primal scene,’ a central term for this study (which argues that it has been misconstrued by later generations of psychoanalysts), designates the site of a trauma that depos- its an alien and disturbing element in the suffering subject. These signify- ing traces of the seductive or traumatizing other person resist assimilation and binding into the ego’s narcissistic structures and personal archives; they function as an internal foreign body and so give rise to deferred or belated aftereffects. Trauma, involving the breaching of psychical bound- aries by an excessive excitation and leading to an unmasterable repetition, characterizes both Freud’s ! rst encounter with sexuality under the sign of xiii xiv Preface seduction and with the death drive under the various forms of the com- pulsion to repeat, from the negative clinical transference to shell shock and war trauma. The book begins with the ! gure of Charcot and the role of key psycho- logical elements in his predominantly neurological model of trauma and traumatic hysteria. It was Freud’s encounter with Charcot and his treat- ment of hysteria, in Paris in ())*– )+, that turned him from a career that had been based on laboratory dissection, the anatomy of the central ner- vous system in the lower animals (eels and cray! sh) to a concern with hysteria as a psychological condition based on traumatic shock and the op- eration of unconscious ideas, although he continued throughout the(),-s to do highly regarded neurological work on infantile brain diseases. Freud was to break from Charcot to develop a properly psychological theory of hysteria (and, by extension, all psychopathology) based on the operation of traumatic memories and their affects. The problem, both clinical and theo- retical, that confronted Freud was the status of the ‘scenes’ that his patients reproduced, either through recall and association or through acting out. His model of traumatic causality gains in complexity in the texts of (),*– ,., especially through the elaboration of a traumatic temporality with the concept of Nachträglichkeit (deferred action/afterwardsness). At the same time it is progressively narrowed to a sexual etiology of seduction/abuse in childhood, Freud’s notorious ‘seduction theory.’ Along with the problems of his clinical practice, the development of a concept of fantasy internal to the model of traumatic seduction precipitates the crisis or turning point of September (),., in which Freud privately rejects his seduction theory in a letter to Wilhelm Fliess. Freud falls silent in public, but in his correspon- dence with Fliess and his self-analysis he oscillates between the model of traumatic memory and its repudiation in a turn to an emergent model of infantile sexuality. Here he proposes as a ‘universal event’ an emotional con! guration that is not until (,(- labeled the ‘Oedipus complex,’ but which in the crisis months of late (),. is outlined through a brief commen- tary on Sophocles’s Oedipus the King and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This turn to tragedy as a model of male subjectivity is more fully elaborated in The Interpretation of Dreams ((,--). It crystallizes a shift in focus from symptom to subjectivity, from the narrower ! eld of psychopathology to a concern Preface xv with psychical structure and a developmental model of sexuality as such in the Three Essays of (,-*. This book also examines a second crisis or turning point, that of (,(,– /-. Here the turn to literature (E. T. A. Hoffmann and the associated
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