‘Lain Beside Gold’ Narrative, Metaphor, and Energy in Freud and Conan Doyle Robert W. Jones PhD Candidate Aberystwyth University Contents Chapter 1 Introduction and Methodology ............................................................................. 3 1.1 Overview .......................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Secondary Material: Literature Review ........................................................................... 8 1.2.1 Critiques of Freud’s Narrativity ................................................................................ 8 1.2.2 Other Critiques ........................................................................................................ 11 1.2.3 Royle and the Uncanny Text ................................................................................... 14 1.2.4 Holland and the Practical Text ................................................................................ 17 1.3 Approaches ..................................................................................................................... 20 1.3.1 Metaphor .................................................................................................................. 23 1.3.2 The Text World ....................................................................................................... 30 1.3.3 Text as Performative Space ..................................................................................... 36 Chapter 2 Freud, Narrative, and the Problem of Immersion ............................................... 41 2.1 Altered States ................................................................................................................. 41 2.2 Narrative Fact ................................................................................................................. 50 2.3 Analyst-Freud and Patient-Freud ................................................................................... 63 2.4 Freud and Implied Authors ............................................................................................ 72 2.5 ‘Lain Beside Gold’: Freud and Architecture, Archaeology and Film ............................ 81 2.6 Analysis 1: The ‘Emma’ case study of Project for a Scientific Psychology .................. 95 2.7 Analysis: Freud and Counter-Freud in the ‘Dream of Irma’s Injection’, The Interpretation of Dreams ........................................................................................................................... 102 Chapter 3 Freud, Energy and Metaphor ............................................................................ 112 3.1 Freud and Energy ......................................................................................................... 112 3.2 Energy as Metaphor ..................................................................................................... 117 3.3 Helmholtz ..................................................................................................................... 120 3.4 Means & Ends of Metaphor ......................................................................................... 130 1 3.5 The Development of the Energy Metaphor .................................................................. 143 Chapter 4 Freud and Arthur Conan Doyle ........................................................................ 153 4.1 The Paradox of Rationality in the Study of the Irrational ............................................ 153 4.2 Rationality and the ‘Other World’ ............................................................................... 157 4.3 Doyle’s ‘The Great Keinplatz Experiment’ (1894)...................................................... 174 4.4 ‘The Horror of the Heights’ (1913) .............................................................................. 181 4.5 ‘The Captain of the Polestar’ (1883) ........................................................................... 193 Chapter 5 Freud and Sherlock Holmes ............................................................................. 217 5.1 Detectives, Doubles and Duality .................................................................................. 217 5.2 ‘The Science of Deduction’.......................................................................................... 232 5.3 The Two Freuds as Holmes and Watson ...................................................................... 242 5.4 Polarity, Recursion, and Control .................................................................................. 251 5.5 Analysis of three examples from The Interpretation of Dreams ................................. 267 Dream 1: The ‘Clever Woman Patient’ .......................................................................... 267 Dream 2: Freud’s Father and the Magyars ..................................................................... 274 Dream 3: Non Vixit ......................................................................................................... 281 Chapter 6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 286 Bibliography 294 Primary Material: ............................................................................................................... 294 Works by Sigmund Freud: .............................................................................................. 294 Works by Arthur Conan Doyle: ...................................................................................... 296 Secondary Material: ........................................................................................................... 296 2 Chapter 1 Introduction and Methodology 1.1 Overview The ‘fictive’ dimensions of Freud’s work have often been the cause of controversy, and the paradoxical relationship between art and science within his work has drawn both the admiration and the ire of his critics. The polarised extremes are to represent Freud as either a promethean visionary, transgressing boundaries in order to provide us with a deeper insight into the human psyche than the positivistic approaches of many of his contemporaries could provide; or, as a charlatan, a deceiver whose narratives stretch the reader’s credulity. Even if more nuanced opinions fall somewhere in-between the extremes of this axis, it is difficult to develop an informed overview opinion of Freud without encountering that implicit value judgement. It would seem that Freud is a polarising figure first, a physician second, and an author third. Yet the shifts between concentration upon ‘scientific’ and ‘narrativistic’ elements of Freud’s work, are arguably what has maintained his influence and applicability across many genres of intellectual enquiry. In Freud’s use of concepts such as ‘drive’ and ‘energy’, we encounter the potential paradoxes which grant the texts a metaphorical motor force, as terms from physics are drawn to represent the intangible. We access Freud’s ability to construct himself in two polarised roles, creative author and physician. Analysing Freud’s texts as works of literature, rather than as manuals detailing the development and use of psychoanalysis is not a new discipline. That is the point of Freud’s psychoanalytical endeavour to begin with: it is a system of analysis whereby nothing is exempt from the analytical process. However, there are under-represented alternative methods for analysing his texts, which may shed light on the operations of the text beyond both scientific and narrative concerns. For example, a cognitivist critique of Freud would come from a competing discipline based – largely – on observational data rather than in-depth analysis focussing on a model of developmental phases in the psyche. 3 In the main, the cognitivist approach used in parts of this thesis explores the relationship between the abstract and the physical in Freud’s work. Using the relationships between metaphor, narrative, and Freud’s ability to ‘perform’ within his work the various relationships which are endemic to psychoanalysis, we shall examine how language may evoke constructions beyond the printed page. Freud had us explore the mind in depth, drawing complex and overlapping models to explain its inner workings, so we may now use theoretical models largely located closer to the ‘surface’ of psychology in order to analyse the depths of Freud’s work. In doing so, the hope is that this thesis will shed light on how the practical, performative, scientific and narrative techniques which characterise Freud’s work overlap and interact to create texts which demonstrate that abstracted physicality. Thus, we shall unpack the idea of Freud’s textual dynamism, and the seemingly paradoxical notion of a ‘motor’ component to the metaphorical composition of both Freud’s writing and theories. Psychoanalysis is, disputably, a school of dialogue.1 The analysand must uncritically relay information to the analyst, who is tasked with constructing an interpretation of that information and relaying it back to the analysand, so that the analysand may come to understand their symptom. Freud’s development of psychoanalysis stems largely from his contributions to 1 Disputably, in that criticism of the method is largely divided between those who praise Freud’s ability to understand his subject, versus those who describe his psychoanalyses as theoretical impositions upon patients, e.g., the polarising effect of Freud’s ‘Dora’ case (Fragments of