Loving Freud Madly: Surrealism Between Hysterical and Paranoid Modernism Author(S): Jean-Michel Rabaté Source: Journal of Modern Literature, Vol
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Loving Freud Madly: Surrealism between Hysterical and Paranoid Modernism Author(s): Jean-Michel Rabaté Source: Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 25, No. 3/4, Global Freud: Psychoanalytic Cultures and Classic Modernism (Summer, 2002), pp. 58-74 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831854 . Accessed: 10/09/2014 23:13 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Modern Literature. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 158.135.1.176 on Wed, 10 Sep 2014 23:13:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Loving Freud Madly: Surrealism between Hysterical and Paranoid Modernism Jean-Michel Rabaté Universityof Pennsylvania T Ahe questionof whether Surrealism played a positiveor a negativerole in thedissemination of Freudianideas sounds rather blunt or normative,but it is a questionI wouldlike to pose less to judgeSurrealism by trying to catch it in its distortions and blind spots than to test the validity and relevanceof the "compromise formations" that have been produced in quantity during the process ofglobalization through which Freud's theories have gone in more than a century.This domain is huge,but happily the axis linking Freud to Breton has been explored,1 while excellent essays have beenrecently devoted to the Lacan-Dali2 connection. Popular culture seems to have adopted Sur- realismand Freudianism with similarly warping hyperboles. If thejocular "This is hysterical!" maybe blamedmore on Charcotthan on Freud,the phrase "This is Surrealistic"often rings as quasi-equivalentto"This is Freudian."Beyond a surprisingor shockingfaçade, one expects some readability,plus if notimmediately heavy-handed sexual symbols, at leastthe suggestion that a carefullyarranged thematic disorder will be recomposedformally so as to suggestthe hidden logicof dream images. In a tellingfashion, the 1998 exhibition on "Freud,Conflict and Culture"3 mountedby the Library of Congress, after intense controversy, made much of its display of audio- visualdocuments; beyond illegible manuscripts in Gothicscript and disappointing realia - such as a fewrings or Freud's couch floating in theair - thesewell chosen film excerpts mostly from Hollywoodclassics made the strong point that Freudianism, although contested, survives thanks to a popularculture which it has literallyshaped and permeated.Perhaps, then, the same may 1.See above all David Lomas, The Haunted Self: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity (YaleUniversity Press, 2000). 2. Oneof the most comprehensive is Hanjo Berressem, "Dalí and Lacan: Painting the Imaginary Landscapes" in Lacan:Politics, Aesthetics , ed.Willy Apollon and Richard Feldstein (State University ofNew York Press, 1996) pp. 263-93.See also Soraya Tlatli, Le Psychiatre etses poètes: Essai sur le jeune Lacan (Paris: Tchou, 2000) and the issue of Revuedes Sciences Humaines CCLII (2001), Lire Dali, ed. Frédérique Joseph-Lowery. 3. SeeMichael S.Roth, ed., Freud, Conflict andCulture: Essays on His Life, Work and Legacy (Knopf, 1998). Jean-MichelRabaté, "Loving Freud Madly: Surrealism between Hysterical andParanoid Modernism," Journal ofModern Literature,XXV, 3/4 (Summer 2002), pp. 58-74. ©Indiana University Press, 2003. This content downloaded from 158.135.1.176 on Wed, 10 Sep 2014 23:13:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Rabaté:Loving Freud Madly 59 holdtrue of Surrealism.It seemsthat its last public flowering on a largescale was linkedto the counter-cultureofthe 1960s. In France,particularly with May 1968,Surrealism colored a juvenile rebellioncreatively in morethan one way.Perhaps the hindsight afforded once we havestepped moreboldly into this still new century will show that these cultural phenomena converge without completelymeeting or that they follow a minimallycurving parallax. Bretonand Freud were from the start engaged in a waltzof avoidance and a tangoof misunder- standings.These missteps nevertheless disclose a deeperharmony, while Lacan andDalí, appar- entlythe best of friends until quite late, flaunted ideological overlappings so as toconceal a deeper rift.The firstmissed encounter between Freudianism and Surrealism was linked to the promotion ofconcepts such as psychicautomatism, unconscious dictation, the "over- determination" ofdream images(Freuďs crucial Ueberdeterminierung) andalso, perhaps more importantly, hysteria taken as a creativemanifestation. The secondencounter promoting the concept of paranoiaseems to havebeen a moresuccessful endeavor. By narrowingthe historical focus on the1920s and early 1930s,one can observe how suddenly the surrealist theory of Hysteria was transformed into a Sur- realisttheory of Paranoia. It looksas ifthe links between Breton and Freud had been marked from the start by a series ofattempts at seductionfollowed by rejection and absurd bickering, in short,by a movementthat mightcall up thevery logic of hysteria. Breton, as is well-known,began by studying psychiatry and it was in thisfunction that he servedas a medicalintern during the First World War. We knowhow closely Breton had read Freud at a timewhen most French schools of psychiatry totally ignoredhim. Having started his medical studies in the fall of 1913,Breton after the declaration of warwas sentto theneuro-psychiatric ward of Saint-Dizier in August1916. In a wardsupervised bya formerassistant of Charcot, Breton read voraciously the psychiatric literature available, which includeda summaryof Freud's ideas thanks to a compendiumprovided by Doctor Régis ( Précis de Psychiatrie)and to La Psychanalyse, written by Doctors Régis and Hesnard. Breton copied entire pagesfrom these volumes for his friend Fraenkel, among which one finds a veryaccurate synthe- sis ofthe Freudian system, along with very competent definitions of conceptssuch as resistance (Widerstand ), repression ( Verdrängung ), and sublimation (,Sublimierung ).4Even if Freud was not theonly thinker discovered by Breton at thetime, he feltthat it was hisduty to defendFreudian ideasagainst his friend's skepticism. All thistestifies to a momentof glorious discovery, as when Bretonexclaims: "I am gettingenthusiastic over psychiatry."5 He also dutifullynoted the nonsen- sicaltirades which he wouldhear from certain delirious or psychotic patients. Thus, even though Bretonsoon after joined the service of Doctor Babinski in 1917and changed his focus to address hysteria,one can believehis accountwhen he referredto Freudrather than to Myersor Janet in thefirst manifesto of Surrealism. At least this is theconclusion suggested by Marguerite Bonnet's closestudy of Breton's manuscripts, a study that contradicts an earlierthesis developed by Staro- binskiand that had been accepted until recently. On thewhole, with a wealthof detailsculled from the psychiatric literature of thetimes, Starobinskihad triedto showthat the concept of "mentalautomatism" promoted by Surreal- ismhad very little to do withFreud's theories and is derivedmore or less directlyfrom Janet or 4. QuotedinMarguerite Bonnet, "La Rencontre d'André Breton avec la Folie: Saint Dizier, août-novembre 1916,"in Folieet Psychanalyse dansl'expérience surréaliste ,ed. Fabienne Hulak, (Nice: Z'éditions, 1992), pp. 126-27. 5. Bonnet,p.121. This content downloaded from 158.135.1.176 on Wed, 10 Sep 2014 23:13:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 60 Journalof Modem Literature Myers.6However, even if Breton's debt to Babinski and his adherence to Babinskian refutations of Charcot'sthesis regarding the reality of hysteria has beenabundantly demonstrated, the perusal ofBreton's notebooks proves that it was Freud'simpact that very early led himto trustthe spon- taneousproduction of language as a keyto the unconscious. True, Starobinski is perfectly correct whenhe notesthat Freud always limits the "fundamental rule" of psychoanalysis (taking the unin- hibitedflow of language proffered by the patient to theanalyst as materialfor analysis) to a very preliminarystage and refuses to grantit more than a heuristicvalue. Nevertheless, itis clearthat Bretondecided to takethis preliminary moment seriously and to endow it with a truth-valuein a spontaneousillumination due to Freud, recalling the latter's discovery of the unconscious after lis- teningto hysterics and his own dreams: in both cases, it looks as ifa majorbreakthrough had been producedby something like beginner's luck. Thus, even if the terms used by Breton and his friends referto French classical (that is pre-or anti-Freudian) psychiatry as represented by Charcot, Janet, orBabinski, a fundamentalinsight - thatthese spontaneous utterances disclose material leading to a graspof actual psychic production - derivesfrom Freud, and Breton always pays this initial debt.Breton's narrative in the First Manifesto of Surrealism can on thewhole be trusted: Quitebusy as I wasthen with Freud at that time, and having been familiarized with his examinationmethods that I hadsomehow used with patients during the war, I decided toobtain from myself what one