648
' SELMA
FRAIBERG
the interlocking theme of mother-son love, once mother-love is
gi:ven a strong statement in the story Lawrence cannot surprise the
emotions, and the tragedy of Paul seems a little commonplace to the
modern reader who has ripened on the psychological novel.
All of which brings up another problem in the use of psycho–
analytic insight in a literary work. Is the Oedipus complex, the
clinical syndrome, material for a tragedy?
If
we remove ourselves
for a moment from our time and our infatuation with mental
disease, isn't there something absurd about a hero in a novel who
is defeated by his infantile neurosis? I am not making a clinical
judgment here, for such personal tragedies are real and are com–
monplace in the analyst's consulting room, but literature makes a
different claim upon our sympathies than tragedy in life. A man
in a novel who is defeated in his childhood and condemned by un–
conscious forces within him to tiredly repeat his earliest failure
in
love, only makes us a little weary of man; his tragedy seems un–
worthy and trivial.
Now we can argue that the irresistible fate of Oedipus
Rex
was
nothing more than the irresistible unconscious longings of Oedipus
projected outward, but this externalization of unconscious conflict
makes all the difference between a story and a clinical case history.
We can also argue that the three brothers Karamazov and Smerd–
yakov were the external representatives of an internal conflict
within one man, Dostoevsky, a conflict having to do with father–
murder and the wish to possess the father's woman. But a novel
in which one man Karamazov explored the divisions within his
personality would scarcely merit publication in the
Psychoanalytic
Quarterly.
It is a mistake to look upon the Oedipus of Oedipus Complex
as a literary descendant of Oedipus Rex. Whatever the psycho–
logical truth in the Oedipus myth, an Oedipus who is drawn to
his fate by irresistible external forces can carry the symbol of
humanity and its archaic crime, and the incest that is unknowing
renews the mystery of the eternal dream of childhood and ab–
sorbs us in the secret. But a modem Oedipus who is doomed
be–
cause he cannot oppose his own childhood is only pathetic, and for
renouncing the mystery in favor of psychological truth he gives up
the claim on our sympathies.
