KL/MoV: The Theme of the Three Caskets by Sigmund Freud
Caius Marcius
[Note - The Theme of the Three Caskets is probably the most
unconventional - "far-out", if you will - of Freud's several
Shakespearean essays (Close Encounters of the "Third" Kind!); however,
you will note that Freud does not attempt (as he is so often accused of
doing) to "psycho-analyze" Shakespeare, or trace the roots of the plays
to the vicissitudes of the dramatist's early childhood experiences.
Except for a passing reference to the "sting of ingratitude" that the
Bard must have experienced at some point or other, Shakespeare the
individual does not figure in this essay at all. Rather (much in the
manner of Jung), Freud traces the powerful effect of Lear to its
creator's masterful evocation of archetypal and mythical roots hidden
deep within our "collective unconscious".
The conceptualization of Cordelia, "the fairest and the best" as
simultaneously representing the terrifying Death-Goddess curiously
anticipates Freud's controversial "death-instinct" theory (first put
forward in the 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle), which posits
an eternal (though perhaps illusory) bio-psychic struggle between the
constructive powers of Eros and the destructive forces of Thanatos.
And, alas, as the final paragraph of the essay makes clear, Freud is
analyzing the story's effect from the strictly male perspective - *not
that there's anything wrong with that* (and the extent of Freud's male
chauvinism is often grotesquely exaggerated by his opponents), but it
does fail to explain the powerful effect that Lear has on female
audiences/readers].
- CMC
The Theme of the Three Caskets (1913)
Sigmund Freud
Two scenes from Shakespeare, one from a comedy and one from a tragedy,
have lately given me occasion for setting and solving a little puzzle.
The former scene is the suitors' choice between the three caskets in
The Merchant of Venice. The fair and wise Portia, at her father's
bidding, is bound to take for her husband only that one among her
suitors who chooses the right casket from among the three before him.
The three caskets are of gold, silver and lead: the right one is that
containing her portrait. Two suitors have already withdrawn,
unsuccessful: they have chosen gold and silver. Bassanio, the third,
elects for lead; he thereby wins the bride, whose affection was already
his before the trial of fortune. Each of the suitors had given reasons
for his choice in a speech in which he praised the metal he preferred,
while depreciating the other two. The most difficult task thus fell to
the share of the third suitor; what he finds to say in glorification of
lead as against gold and silver is but little and has a forced ring
about it. If in psychoanalytic practice we were confronted with such a
speech, we should suspect concealed motives behind the unsatisfying
argument.
Shakespeare did not invent this oracle of choosing a casket; he took it
from a tale in the Gesta Romanorum, in which a girl undertakes the same
choice to win the son of the Emperor. Here too the third metal, the
lead, is the bringer of fortune. It is not hard to guess that we have
here an ancient theme, which requires to be interpreted and traced back
to its origins. A preliminary conjecture about the meaning of this
choice between gold, silver and lead is soon confirmed by a statement
from E. Stucken (Astralmythen, p. 655), who has made a study of the
same material in far-reaching connections. He says, "The identity of
the three suitors of Portia is clear from their choice: the Prince of
Morocco chooses the gold casket: he is the sun; the Prince of Aragon
chooses the silver casket: he is the moon; Bassanio chooses the lead
casket: he is the star youth". In support of this explanation he cites
an episode from the Estonian folk-epic Kalewipoeg, in which the three
suitors appear undisguisedly as the sun, moon and star youths ("the
eldest son of the Pole star") and the bride again falls to the lot of
the third.
Thus our little problem leads to an astral myth. The only pity is that
with this explanation we have not got to the end of the matter. The
question goes further, for we do not share the views of many
investigators that the myths were read off direct from the heavens; we
are more inclined to judge with Otto Rank that they were projected to
the heavens after having arisen quite otherwise under purely human
conditions. Now our interest is in this human content.
Let us glance once more at our material. In the Estonian epic, as in
the tale from the Gesta Romanorum, the subject is the choice of a
maiden among three suitors; in the scene from The Merchant of Venice
apparently the subject is the same, but at the same time in this last
something in the nature of an inversion of the idea makes its
appearance; a man chooses between three - caskets. If we had to do with
a dream, it would at once occur to us that caskets are also women,
symbols of the essential things in woman, and therefore of a woman
herself, like boxes large or small, and so on. If we let ourselves
assume the same symbolic substitution in the story, then the casket
scene in The Merchant of Venice really becomes the inversion we
suspected. With one wave if the hand, such as usually only happens in
fairy-tales, we have stripped the astral garment from our theme; and
now we see that the subject is an idea from human life, a man's choice
between three women.
This same content, however, is to be found in another scene of
Shakespeare's, in one of his most powerfully moving dramas; this time
not the choice of a bride, yet linked by many mysterious resemblances
to the casket-choice in The Merchant of Venice. The old King Lear
resolves to divide his kingdom while he yet lives among his three
daughters, according to the love they each in turn express for him.
The two elder ones, Goneril and Regan, exhaust themselves in
asseverations and glorifications of their love for him; the third,
Cordelia, refuses to join in these. He should have recognized the
unassuming speechless love of the third and rewarded it, but he
misinterprets it, banishes Cordelia, and divides the kingdom between
the other two, to his own and general ruin. Is not this once more a
scene of choosing between three women, of whom the youngest is best,
the supreme one?
There immediately occur to us other scenes form myth, folk-tale and
literature with the same situation as their content: the shepherd Paris
has to choose between three goddesses, of whom he declares the third to
be the fairest. Cinderella is another such youngest and is preferred by
the prince to the two elder sisters; Psyche in the tale of Apuleius is
the youngest and fairest of three sisters; on the one hand, she becomes
human and is revered as Aphrodite, on the other she is treated by the
goddess as Cinderella was treated by her stepmother and has to sort a
heap of mixed seeds, which she accomplishes with the help of little
creatures (doves for Cinderella, ants for Psyche). Anyone who cared to
look more closely into the material could undoubtedly discover other
versions of the same idea in which the essential features had been
retained.
Let us content ourselves with Cordelia, Aphrodite, Cinderella and
Psyche! The three women, of whom the third surpasses the other two,
must surely be regarded as in some way alike if they are represented as
sisters. It must not lead us astray if in Lear the three are the
daughters of him who makes the choice; this means probably nothing more
than that Lear has to be represented as an old man. An old man cannot
very well choose between three women in any other way; thus they become
his daughters.
But who are these three sisters and why must the choice fall on the
third? If we could answer this question, we should be in possession of
the solution which we are seeking. We have once already availed
ourselves of an application of psycho-analytic technique, in explaining
the three caskets as symbolic of three women. If we have the courage
to continue the process, we shall be setting foot on a path which leads
us first to something unexpceted and incomprehensible, but perhaps by a
devious route to a goal.
It may strike us that this surpassing third one has in several
instances certian peculiar qualites besides her beauty. They are
qualities that seem to be tending towards some kind of unity; we
certainly may not expect to find them equally well marked in every
example. Cordelia masks her true self, becomes as unassuming as lead,
she remains dumb, she "loves and is silent." Cinderella hides herself,
so that she is not to be found. We may perhaps equate concealment and
dumbness. These would of course be only two instances out of the five
we have picked out. But there is an intimation of the same thing to be
found, curiously enough, in two other cases. We have decided to
compare Cordelia, with her obstinate refusal, to lead. In Bassanio's
short speech during the choice of the caskets there are his words of
the lead - properly speaking, without any connection:
Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence
("plainness" according to another reading)
Thus: thy plainness moves me more than the blatant nature of the other
two. Gold and silver are "loud"; lead is dumb, in effect, like
Cordelia, who "loves and is silent."
In the ancient Greek tales of the Judgement of Paris, nothing is said
of such a withholding of herself on the part of Aphrodite. Each of the
three goddesses speaks to the youth and tries to win him by promises.
But curiously enough, in a quite modern handling of this same scene
this characteristic of the third that has struck us makes its
appearence again. In the libretto of Offenbach's La Belle Helene,
Paris, after telling of the solicitations of the other two goddesses,
relates how Aphrodite bore herself in the contest for the prize of
beauty:
La troisième, ah! la troisième!
La troisième ne dit rein,
Elle eut le prix tout de même.....
If we decide to regard the peculiarities of our "third one" as
concentrated in the "dumbness", then psycho-analysis has to say that
dumbness is in dreams a familiar representation of death.
More than ten years ago a highly intelligent man told me of a dream
which he wanted to look upon as proof of the telepathic nature of
dreams. He saw an absent friend from whom he had received no news for
a very long time, and reproached him warmly for his silence. The
friend made no reply. It then proved that he had met his death by
suicide. Let us leave the problem of telepathy on one side; there
seems to be no doubt that here the dumbness in the dream represents
death. Concealment, disappearance from view, too, which the prince in
the fairy-tale of Cinderella has to experience three times, is in
dreams an unmistakable symbol of death; and no less so is a striking
pallor, of which the paleness of the lead in one reading of
Shakespeare's text reminds us. The difficulty of translating these
significations from the language of dreams into the mode of expression
in the myth now occupying our attention is much lightened if we can
show with any probability that dumbness must be interpreted as a sign
of death in other productions that are not dreams.
I will single out at this point the ninth of Grimm's Fairy Tales, the
one with the title The Twelve Brothers. A king and queen have twelve
children, all boys. Thereupon the king says, "If the thirteenth child
is a girl, the boys must die." In expectation of the birth, he has
twelve coffins made. The twelve sons flee with their mother's help
into a secret wood, and swear death to every maiden they meet.
A girl-child is born, grows up, and learns one day from her mother that
she has twelve brothers. She decides to seek them out, and finds the
youngest in the wood; he recognizes her but wants to hide her on
account of the brothers' oath. The sister says, "I will gladly die, if
thereby I can save my twelve brothers". The brothers welcome her
gladly, however, and she stays with them, and looks after their house
for them.
In a little garden near the house grow twelve lilies the maiden plucks
these to give one to each brother. At that moment, the brothers are
changed into ravens, and disappear, together with the house and garden.
Ravens are spirit-birds, the killing of the twelve brothers by their
sister is thus again represented by the plucking of the flowers, as at
the beginning of the story by the coffins and the disappearance of the
brothers. The maiden, who is once more ready to save her brothers from
death, is now told that as a condition she is to be dumb for seven
years, and not speak one single word. She submits to this test, by
which she herself goes into danger, i.e., she herself dies for her
brothers as she promised before meeting with them. By remaining dumb
she succeeds at last in delivering the ravens.
In the story of The Six Swans the brothers who are changed into birds
are released in exactly the same way, i.e., restored to life by the
dumbness of the sister. The maiden has taken the firm resolve two
release her brothers, "an if it cost her life"; as the kings's wife,
she again risks her own life because she will not relinquish her
dumbness to defend herself against evil accusations.
Further proofs could undoubtedly be gathered from fairy-tales that
dumbness is to be understood as representing death. If we follow these
indications, then the third one of the sisters between whom the choice
lies would be a dead woman. She may, however, be something else, namely
Death itself, the Goddess of Death. By virtue of a displacement that
is not infrequent, the qualities that a deity imparts to men are
ascribed to the deity himself. Such a displacement will astonish us
least of all in relation to the Goddess of Death, since in modern
thought and artistic representation, which would thus be anticipated in
these stories. Death itself is nothing but a dead man.
But if the third of the sisters is the Goddess of Death, we know the
sisters. They are the Fates, the Moerae, the Parcae or the Norns, the
third of whom is called Atropos, the inexorable.
II
Let us leave on one side for a while the task of inserting this
new-found meaning into our myth, and let us hear what the mythologists
have to say about the origin of and the part played by the Fates.
The earliest Greek mythology only knows one Moera, personifying the
inevitable doom (in Homer). The further development of this one Moera
into a group of three sisters- goddesses - less often two, probably
came about in connection with other divine figures to which the Moerae
are clearly related: the Graces and the Horae, the Hours.
The Hours are originally goddesses of the waters of the sky, dispensing
rain and dew, and of the clouds from which rain falls; and since these
clouds are conceived as a kind of web it comes about that these
goddesses are looked upon as spinners, a character that then became
attached to the Moerae. In the sun-favored Mediterranean lands it is
the rain upon which the fertility of the soil depends, and thus the
Hours become the goddesses of vegetation. The beauty of flowers and the
abundance of fruit is their doing, and man endows them plentifully with
charming and graceful traits. They become the divine representation of
the Seasons, and possibly in this connection acquire their triple
number, if the sacred nature of the number three is not sufficient
explanation of this. For these ancient peoples at first distinguished
only three seasons: winter, spring, summer. Autumn was only added in
later Greco-Roman times, after which four hours were often represented
in art.
The relation to time remained attached to the Hours: later they
presided over the time of day, as at first over the periods of the
year: at last their name came to be merely a designation for the period
of sixty minutes (hour, heure, ora). The Norns of German mythology are
akin to the Hours and the Moerae and exhibit this time signification in
their names. The nature of these deities could not fail, however, to
be apprehended more profoundly in time, so that the essential thing
about them was shifted until it came to consist of the abiding law at
work in the passage of time: the Hours thus became guardians of the law
of Nature, and of the divine order of things whereby the constant
recurrence of the same things in unalterable succession in the natural
world takes place.
This knowledge of nature reacted on the conception of human life. The
nature-myth changed into a myth of human life; the weather-goddesses
became goddesses of destiny. But this aspect of the Hours only found
expression in the Moerae, who watch over the needful ordering of human
life as inexorably as do the Hours over the regular order of Nature.
The implacable severity of this law, the affinity of it with death and
ruin, avoided in the winsome figures of the Hours, was now stamped upon
the Moerae, as though mankind had only perceived the full solemnity of
natural law when he had to submit his own personality to its working.
The names of the three spinners have been interpreted significantly by
mythologists. Lachesis, the name of the second, seems to mean "the
accidental within the decrees of destiny" - we might say "that which is
experienced" - while Atropos means "the inevitable" - Death - and then
for Clotho there remains the "fateful tendencies each one of us brings
into the world".
And now it is time to return to the idea contained in the choice
between the three sisters, which we are endeavoring to interpret. It
is with deep dissatisfaction that we find how unintelligible insertion
of the new interpretation makes the situations which we are considering
and what contradictions of the apparent content then results. The third
of the sisters should be the Goddess of Death, nay, Death itself; in
the Judgment of Paris, she is the Goddess of Love, in the tale of
Apuleius one comparable to the goddess for beauty, in The Merchant of
Venice the fairest and wisest of women, in Lear the one faithful
daughter. Can a contradiction be more complete? Yet perhaps close at
hand there lies even this, improbable as it is - the acme of
contradiction. It is certainly forthcoming if every time in this theme
of ours there occurs a free choice between the women, and if the choice
is thereupon to fall to death - that which no man chooses, to which by
destiny alone man falls a victim.
However, contradictions of a certain kind, replacements by the exact
opposite, offer no serious difficulty to analytic interpretation. We
shall not this time take our stand on the fact that contraries are
constantly represented by one and the same element in the modes of
expression used by the unconscious, such as dreams. But we shall
remember that there are forces in mental life tending to bring about
replacement by the opposite, such as the so-called reaction formation
and it is just in the discovery of such hidden forces that we look for
the reward of our labors. The Moerae were created as a result of a
recognition which warns man that he too is a part of nature and
therefore subject to the immutable law of death. Against this
subjection something in man was bound to struggle, for rit is only with
extreme unwillingness that he gives up his claim to an exceptional
position. We know that man makes use of his imaginative faculty
(phantasy) to satisfy those wishes that reality does not satisfy. So
his imagination rebelled against the recognition of the truth embodied
in the myth of the Moerae, and constructed instead the myth derived
from it, in which the Goddess of Death was replaced by the Goddess of
Love and by that which most resembles her in human shape. The third of
the sisters is no longer Death, she is the best, most desirable and
most lovable among women. Nor was this substitution in any way
difficult: it was prepared for by an ancient ambivalence, it fulfilled
itself along the lines of an ancient context which could at that time
not ling have been forgotten. The Goddess of Love herself, who now
took the place of the Goddess of Death, had once been identical with
her. Even the Greek Aphrodite had not wholly relinquished her
connection with the underworld, although she had long surrendered her
role of goddess of that region to over divine shapes, to Persephone, or
to the tri-form Artemis-Hecate. The great mother-goddesses of the
oriental peoples, however, all seem to have been both founts of being
and destroyers; goddesses of life and fertility, and death -goddesses.
Thus, the replacement by the wish-opposite of which we have spoken in
our theme is built upon an ancient identity.
The same consideration answers the question how the episode of a choice
came into the myth of the three sisters. A wished-for reversal is
again found here. Choice stands in the place of necessity, of destiny.
Thus man overcomes death, which in thought he has acknowledged. No
greater triumph of wish-fulfilment is conceivable. Just where in
reality he obeys compulsion, he exercises choice; and that which he
chooses is not a thing of horror, but the and most desirable thing in
life.
On a closer inspection we observe, to be sure, that the original myth
is not so much disguised that traces of it do not show through and
betray its presence. The free choice between the three sisters is,
properly speaking, no free choice, for it must necessarily fall on the
third if every kind of evil is not to come about, as in Lear. The
fairest and the best, she who has stepped into the place of the
Death-Goddess, has kept certain characteristics that border on the
uncanny, so that from them we might guess at what lay beneath.
So far we have found out the myth and its transformation, and trust
that we have rightly indicated the hidden causes of this
transformation. Now we may well be interested in the way in which the
poet has made use of the idea. We gain the impression that to his mind
a reduction to the original idea of the myth is going on, so that we
once more perceive the original meaning containing all the power to
move us that had been weakened by the distortion of the myth. It is by
means of this undoing of the distortion and partial return to the
original that the poet achieves his profound effect upon us.
To avoid misunderstandings, I wish to say that I have no intention of
denying that the drama of King Lear inculcates two prudent maxims: that
one should not forego one's possessions and privileges in one's
lifetime and that one must guard against accepting flattery as genuine.
These and similar warnings do undoubtedly arise from the play; but it
seems to me quite impossible to explain the overpowering effect of Lear
from the impression that such a train of thought would produce, or to
assume that the poet's own creative instincts would not carry him
further than the impulse to illustrate these maxims. Moreover, even
though we are told that the poet's intention was to present the tragedy
of ingratitude, the sting of which he probably felt in his own heart,
and that the effect of the play depends on the purely formal element,
its artistic trappings, it seems to me that this information cannot
compete with the comprehension that dawns upon us after our study of
the theme of a choice between three sisters.
Lear is an old man. We said before that this is why the three sisters
appear as daughters. The paternal relationship, out of which so many
fruitful dramatic situations might arise, is not turned to further
account in the drama. But Lear is not only an old man, he is a dying
man. The extraordinary project of dividing his inheritance thus loses
its strangeness. The doomed man is nevertheless not willing to renounce
the love of women; he insists on hearing how much he is loved. Let us
now recall that most moving last scene, one of the culminating points
reached in modern tragic drama: "Enter Lear with Cordelia dead in his
arms." Cordelia is Death. Reverse the situation and it becomes
intelligible and familiar to us - the Death-Goddess bearing away the
dead hero from the place of battle, like the Valkyre in German
mythology. Eternal wisdom, in the garb of the primitive myth, bids
the old man renounce love, choose death and make friends with the
necessity of dying.
The poet brings us very near to the ancient idea by having the man who
accomplishes the choice between the three sisters aged and dying. The
regressive treatment he has undertaken with the myth, which was
disguised by the reversal of the wish, allows its original meaning to
appear so far that perhaps a superficial allegorical interpretation of
the three female figures in the theme becomes possible as well. One
might say that the three inevitable relations man has with woman are
here represented: that with the mother who bears him, with the
companion of his bed and board, and with the destroyer. Or is it the
three forms taken on by the figure of the mother as life proceeds: the
mother herself, the beloved who is chosen after her pattern, and
finally Mother Earth who receives him again. But it is in vain that
the old man yearns after the love of woman as once he had it from his
mother; the third of the Fates alone, the silent goddess of Death, will
take him into her arms.
Janet T. O'Keefe
In article <6jg5l9$m...@sjx-ixn11.ix.netcom.com>,
cori...@ix.netcom.com(Caius Marcius) wrote:
It' rather funny, but I find the last paragraph to be the one most
supportive of Feminist mythological studies. In it, Freud points out the
theme of the Triple Goddess, a concept extremely popular with students of
Goddess myths and Goddess worshippers today, but almost unheard of at
Freud's time. One of my female professors, who was also a practicing
psychoanalyst, pointed out that Freud's observations are almost always
accurate. It's in his interpretation that the bias of his time shows
through.
I am surprised that Freud did not make the obvious comparison to MacBeth's
three witches. Certainly the choice element was missing, but the death
aspect was extremely strong. I could probably go on for days arguing his
interpretations of Psyche and the judgment of Paris, but it's off topic.
I fear also that my newsreader cut this off part of the way through. I
would appreciate it if you could e-mail me a copy, or at least tell me in
what volume of the collected works it can be found. I'd also like to know
where to find the other essays on Shakespeare you referred to.
I think that one of the big problems with Freud is circular thinking. He
was convinced that the psychoanalytic explanation of things was the right
one, and so he may not have seen the lack of evidence in what he called
proofs. I refer here to the examples of dumbness representing death. He
merely lists fairy tales in which characters spend time dumb to protect
other characters and says that proves it means symbolic death, when the
only evidence for that is his word.
Don't get me wrong, I think Freud was a genius. But I also think he had
some severe blind spots. Specifically, he was unable to apply or accept
criticism of his theories. In regard to the sexism question, I don't
think Freud was a sexist so much as a Freudist. That is, he felt his
perceptions, observations and interpretations were universal. He was as
unable to accept that they were limited by his gender as he was to accept
any other limits. Outside of that, and in his life he was not a sexist.
He allowed his daughter to become a doctor and a psychoanalyst and he felt
that women actually made better psychoanalysts. A good portion of the
sexist elements in psychoanalysis were added after Freud's death.
I think I've wandered off topic long enough now, and psychoanalysis is a
pain to type over and over. I have to add that "Choose Death" makes a
wonderfully perverse slogan.
Janet
Xanthippe Yorick
Janet T. O'Keefe wrote:
>
> Rather (much in the
> > manner of Jung), Freud traces the powerful effect of Lear to its
> > creator's masterful evocation of archetypal and mythical roots hidden
> > deep within our "collective unconscious".
> >
> > The conceptualization of Cordelia, "the fairest and the best" as
> > simultaneously representing the terrifying Death-Goddess curiously
> > anticipates Freud's controversial "death-instinct" theory (first put
> > forward in the 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle), which posits
> > an eternal (though perhaps illusory) bio-psychic struggle between the
> > constructive powers of Eros and the destructive forces of Thanatos.
> >
> > And, alas, as the final paragraph of the essay makes clear, Freud is
> > analyzing the story's effect from the strictly male perspective - *not
> > that there's anything wrong with that* (and the extent of Freud's male
> > chauvinism is often grotesquely exaggerated by his opponents), but it
> > does fail to explain the powerful effect that Lear has on female
> > audiences/readers].
> >
> > - CMC
> >
>
> supportive of Feminist mythological studies. In it, Freud points out the
> theme of the Triple Goddess, a concept extremely popular with students of
> Goddess myths and Goddess worshippers today, but almost unheard of at
> Freud's time. One of my female professors, who was also a practicing
> psychoanalyst, pointed out that Freud's observations are almost always
> accurate. It's in his interpretation that the bias of his time shows
> through.
>
> I am surprised that Freud did not make the obvious comparison to MacBeth's
> three witches.
I like the allusion you make to the three witches, Janet. You're right,
it's ommission is curious. Don't you find an exciting parallel between
the witches and the image of the three fates, as well? There's room for
a discussion of predertimined fate, in Macbeth, certainly.
>
> I think that one of the big problems with Freud is circular thinking. He
> was convinced that the psychoanalytic explanation of things was the right
> one, and so he may not have seen the lack of evidence in what he called
> proofs. (snip)
I refer here to the examples of dumbness representing death. He
> merely lists fairy tales in which characters spend time dumb to protect
> other characters and says that proves it means symbolic death, when the
> only evidence for that is his word.
I just want to make a respectful observaton, here: What's wrong with
circular reasoning, I wonder? I'll bet that most people on the planet
probably prefer it to linear forms of thinking. (Look at its use in the
world's religions, especially the eastern ones.) I'll even go so far to
venture that any type of myhological, i.e. archetypal interpretation, of
literature is lacking in firm, empirical "evidence" and is dependent on
circular reasoning to sift out the parallels it draws up. I think that
to examine the text from this standpoint is a highly subjective
enterprise, although I personally think it is an extremely enriching
one. But you probably know much more about archetypes and mythology than
I do, Janet. I just wanted to make a defense of circular reasoning.
>
> Don't get me wrong, I think Freud was a genius.
I cut out the rest of what you said about Freud, but let me just pat you
on the back. Sometimes, Freud doesn't get enough credit. Not only that,
but enlightened men are so often taken for granted. It isn't easy to be
progressive.
What I'd like to add, about Freud, is that he focused on the unseen. His
work stems from his theory about drives, about the "zeitgeist" or
ghost, that moves us. Unlike more scientifically sound branches of
psychology, like bahaviourism, which can be measured, Freud's ideas have
to be accepted on the basis of their own rationale. You can't really
"prove" his ideas. What is remarkable about this is that SO many people,
myself included, have benefited from psychoanalysis. Maybe that's all
the proof you need.
Also, I'd like to see CMC post the information that you requested. And
in advance, CMC, thank you for being so gracious to look this stuff up
for us. I'm not lazy: I just wouldn't know where to start, it's been so
long since I thought about Freud.
** And,I would just like to say publicly, I think you are incredibly
gifted, and bright, CMC. I wish there were more like you!**
Regards,
X-
Caius Marcius
In <jtokeefe-160...@det-mi19-35.ix.netcom.com>
jtok...@ix.netcom.com (Janet T. O'Keefe) writes:
>
>
>It's rather funny, but I find the last paragraph to be the one most
>supportive of Feminist mythological studies. In it, Freud points out
the
>theme of the Triple Goddess, a concept extremely popular with students
of
>Goddess myths and Goddess worshippers today, but almost unheard of at
>Freud's time. One of my female professors, who was also a practicing
>psychoanalyst, pointed out that Freud's observations are almost always
>accurate. It's in his interpretation that the bias of his time shows
>through.
>
>I am surprised that Freud did not make the obvious comparison to
MacBeth's
>three witches.
True, though he did make passing reference to Hecate.
>I fear also that my newsreader cut this off part of the way through.
I
>would appreciate it if you could e-mail me a copy, or at least tell me
in
>what volume of the collected works it can be found. I'd also like to
know
>where to find the other essays on Shakespeare you referred to.
I found the essay in a Volume 4 of a five-volume "Collected Papers",
published in 1953 under the supervision of Joan Riviere. (I'm not sure
which of the 26 or so volumes of the complete works that it's in.
Some other Freud passages on Shakespeare (not a complete list):
Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work (1915) - a brief
description of Richard III, and a longer, quite incisive essay on
Macbeth.
In The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter V, Part D, Section b - "Dreams
of the Death of Beloved Persons" (1900) - Freud introduces the Oedipus
Complex and describes its unfolding in the Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and
in Hamlet.
The second lecture, "The Psychology of Errors", in The General
Introduction to Psycho-Analysis,(1915) Freud demonstrates how
dramatists such as Schiller and Shakespeare used "parapraxis" (i.e.,
Fruedian slips) to reveal what their characters were really thinking.
The Shakespeare example is from The Merchant of Venice.
Doestoevsky and Parricide (1928) deals again with Oedipal motifs in
literature, comparing Oedipus, Hamlet & The Brothers Karamazov.
And in an Outline of Psychoanalysis (1937), Freud briefly voiced his
support for the Oxfordian theory.
And there are brief quotes and Shakespearean allusions throughout his
writings.
>
>I think that one of the big problems with Freud is circular thinking.
He
>was convinced that the psychoanalytic explanation of things was the
right
>one, and so he may not have seen the lack of evidence in what he
called
>proofs. I refer here to the examples of dumbness representing death.
He
>merely lists fairy tales in which characters spend time dumb to
protect
>other characters and says that proves it means symbolic death, when
the
>only evidence for that is his word.
>
I basically agree - I think psychoanalysis is best thought of as a form
of criticism (whether of folklore, literature, society or individuals)
- Freud however insisted that it was a science, and his theories are
most likely to go aground when they insist on being universally applied
(which any true science, such as math or physics, has to be). OTOH, I
find in Freud a deep wisdom and humanity, and IMO the various modes of
psychology which have attempted to utilize quantification and
statistical procedures haven't made nearly as great a contribution.
- CMC
William Ryan
Friends:
So what? Can't you see that it's all just a stretch by Freud, another of
his bravura performances in pseudo-profundity? One could equally argue
that the base metal lead is chosen (in MoV) not because it somehow
represents death, but because it is eternal and incorruptible -- it was
the bearer of life-giving water in the ancient world -- and much more
valuable to men than gold, which is pretty but because of its rarity and
expense useless to life.
Freud's neglect of the three witches in MacBeth was discussed here, but he
also neglected the threes that show up in other tales. There's the Three
Little Pigs (in their case do straw and sticks portend death -- is there
some ancient Roman or Celtic source we can turn to discover the deeper
meaning of this?), and of course there's Goldilocks and the three bears.
Remember, Goldilocks ate their food and slept in their beds, now there
has to be some underlying significance to that. Of course, there's the
three Fates, the Triune Christian God, Tri-cornered hats, three-leafed
shamrocks, the French tri-color, troicas, and in this century the Three
Stooges.
Cordelia is not dumb. She speaks. Her problem is not dumbness but honesty
and sincerity. For my money she is the Just Person trying to live in an
Unjust World (see Plato) -- considering the events of this bloody century,
a much more profound symbol of the human condition than the death-goddess.
Of course she dies, Just People can't live among the unjust. Lear is a
mean old tyrant seeking to wash away the sins of his bloody and cruel life
with the final benediction of his daughters. Instead, his actions touch
off a series of events that undo everything he has built. After losing it
all and being forced to confront his own black soul, his final punishment
comes with honest Cordelia's death, and he is left in utter dispair to
wail the most mournful lament in literature. What in God's name does this
have to do with Valkeries or Valhalla or some apocryphal "death goddess"?
There is an annual "Bad Hemmingway" contest, the winner of which used to
get a trip to Italy and a drink at one of Papa's favorite bars. I'd like
to see a "bad Freud" contest, but I think there'd be a problem.
Freud-think is difficult to parody because it is grossly silly on its own.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Will
William Ryan
Suzanne wrote:
> On Sun, 24 May 1998 13:38:19 -0400, William Ryan
> <wr...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> [snipping]
> >So what? Can't you see that it's all just a stretch by Freud, another of
> >his bravura performances in pseudo-profundity? One could equally argue
> >that the base metal lead is chosen (in MoV) not because it somehow
> >represents death, but because it is eternal and incorruptible -- it was
> >the bearer of life-giving water in the ancient world -- and much more
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >valuable to men than gold, which is pretty but because of its rarity and
> >expense useless to life.
>
> I do not know what the above means. Are you referring to lead pipes
> carrying water? Is there some alchemical or mythological association
> of water with lead?
No. Lead doesn't rust. It's been used as piping at least since the Minoan
Civilization on ancient Crete. The Greeks and Romans would melt it, pour it
into sheets, cut it, then hammer it around smoothed logs to form tubes or
pipes. The top of the pipe would be crimped rather than fused or welded. If
you visit Bath, in England, and go to the Roman preserves, you'll find
2000-year-old samples of Roman lead pipe (substantial amounts) still in
relatively good shape and capable of carrying water. The Romans were truly
great water engineers. Interestingly enough, lead was replaced by cast iron --
a new technology at the time -- for water main usage in Rome during the reign
of Emperor Claudius. In any event, my point was that Lead could symbolize
immortality or incorruptibility, since it never rusts and lasts darn near
forever. That, incidentally, is why lead was sometimes used for coffins.
Freud implies that lead is a symbol of death. Yeah, maybe. But it could also
be a symbol of life or immortality or usefulness or practicality or honesty.
What makes Freud right?
>
>
> FWIW, I have always assumed the lead casket being the correct one was
> in the tradition of a lot of fairy tales. I read a lot of fairy tales
> as a child and noticed that there were a number of cases of people
> having to make a choice of gaudy things or one plain thing. (Not
> always only three total; sometimes there would be a whole room of rich
> things and only one plain one.) Caskets, rings, and in one case,
> crosses were the objects. The hero would always pick the least of the
> objects and discover that that was the best one of all. I figured the
> morals were that appearances can be deceptive and that it is a virtue
> to be contented with less--also a warning not to get greedy!
>
I agree and I think you're pristinely correct.
> I also remember a number of fairy tales would have three objects of
> gold, silver, and some other metal. Not that these were always the
> metal itself; sometimes it would just be things, such as dresses, that
> were only the color of the third metal or object. These weren't
> always objects to be chosen, like the caskets in MoV, but might just
> be objects the hero meets along the way or wears to the party.
>
> Re Lear, it is always the youngest of the three sons or daughters who
> does the exceptional thing in fairy tales. I also remember a couple
> of different fairy tales that had the specific Lear situation of a
> daughter refusing to flatter her father. (I don't know whether these
> stories were around before Shakespeare's Lear. One seemed kind of
> modern to me.)
>
You're right here, too. Even in the tale of Psyche that Freud invokes, it is
the youngest that endures the travails and finally becomes a goddess.
Interestingly enough, in a completely different tradition, the biblical Joseph
was the youngest of the brothers, wasn't he?
> >Freud's neglect of the three witches in MacBeth was discussed here, but he
> >also neglected the threes that show up in other tales.
>
> Some scholars interested in mythology (mythologists?) or in folktales
> have written on the cultural significance of threes, as have
> innumerable occultists. I don't recall any conclusions being reached,
> but they've written about it. :-) One of the notions was that our
> fascination with threes may have started with primitive
> numbering--there's me, you, and another or me, you, and others.
>
Yes, 3 and 7, the great mystical numbers. Man, woman, and child. The
triune God. The lucky three-leaved Shamrock. The ancient symbol of France,
the fleur-de-lis. Three wishes. The three communicative senses, eyes, ears,
and mouth. The Three Musketeers. Manny, Moe and Jack, the Pep Boys.
> Personally, I think it may have to do with good storytelling. If you
> tell a story or a joke where you are driving home a moral or setting
> the listener up for an unexpected punch line, you have to have some
> repetition to establish a pattern. One person doing the expected
> person doesn't set up a pattern for the star of the tale to break; you
> need at least three people for that to happen. Three is also about
> the maximum you want to avoid boring your listeners. Who wants to sit
> through the choice of the twelve caskets?
I think you're exactly right, and you've put it quite eloquently.
Will
Greg Reynolds
> Suzanne wrote:
>
> > Personally, I think it may have to do with good storytelling. If you
> > tell a story or a joke where you are driving home a moral or setting
> > the listener up for an unexpected punch line, you have to have some
> > repetition to establish a pattern. One person doing the expected
> > person doesn't set up a pattern for the star of the tale to break; you
> > need at least three people for that to happen. Three is also about
> > the maximum you want to avoid boring your listeners.
The way Jack Benny put it: Three is funnier than two.
William Ryan
Suzanne wrote:
>
>
> I do
> wonder why anyone would have wanted cast iron pipes, when iron rusts
> so easily; either they were in love with a new technology or iron was
> cheap & easy to get, I'll bet.
>
Suzanne:
Since I'm on a pedantic roll, if you'll permit me . . . Cast Iron was used for a few
reasons. It wasn't cheaper than lead, but it was a lot stronger and much more
resistant to bending, crimping, or breaking. They could keep it from rusting by
giving it a thin coat of melted lead. (A variant of this technique was used by the
Greeks. In constructing buildings, e.g., the Parthenon, certain key stones were
held together with the aid of iron tabs embedded in the stone. To keep the iron from
rusting -- rust expands inside stone and would cause a stone structure to crack and
fall -- the iron tabs were wrapped in lead, or coated with lead. It was a pretty
good technique, and kept the Parthenon in one piece until the Turks accidentally
blew it up in the 18th century.) Another reason for using cast iron has to do with
acquired water privileges. If you were rich enough and close enough to an aqueduct,
you could have a pipe hooked up to it for personal use. After a while, people with
money were drawing off so much water, the common people started to complain. The
Roman government tried to fix the problem by regulating the size of pipe that could
be hooked to the aqueduct. You'd have to have your pipe inspected and approved
before you could pay the fee and install it. Some people cheated by using pipes made
out of thick lead, which, after being approved, would then be widened by hammering
conical wooden plugs through them. Claudius stopped this by insisting that only cast
iron fittings could be used to connect to the aqueducts. Cast iron won't stretch as
lead does.
Incidentally, one of the (now discredited) theories of the Fall of Rome is that
Roman citizens poisoned themselves with lead from drinking water conveyed in lead
pipes. Supposedly, this ruined their cognitive abilities. It's not born out by
empirical evidence, however.
Will
> As for the other, I don't think Freud has to be right. Symbols can
> rarely be interpreted like a simple code--1=a, 2=b, and so on. The
> idea that it does sells a lot of "Your Dreams Explained" booklets, but
> it doesn't work very well, as you show with the lead example. If
> symbols could be interpreted that easily, they wouldn't be
> interesting.
>
> Suzanne