BOOKS
475
finds that "the characteristics that make schizophrenic stories unlike the
standard narrative form are much the same as the stories that differentiate
traditional from modernist literature in general." And in their modernist
versions, Sass notes, artistic and literary productions are fictions which
break down the sense of causal coherence. Inevitably, Sass comments on
Schreber: on the menacing character of his illness, his inner voices, and
on his bizarre actions during his psychotic periods. Again, Sass ends up
understanding this madness "as the expressions of a quintessentially mod–
ern frame of mind - a condition depicted in Foucault's
Discipline and
Ptmish,"
citing the latter's conceptions of panopticism and of body and
soul.
Sass realizes that questions about the insanity of the artist, and about
the creativity and authenticity of the madman, have been raised since an–
tiquity. However, he distances himself from these debates by evaluating
judgments about forms of hyperreflexivity and detachment, asking
"whether
these
qualities should be viewed as a source of insight or of illu–
sion, of life or of deadness. Do they express or do they betray the deepest
truths of the human spirit?" As Sass contrasts, for instance, romanticism,
modernism and postmodernism, and differentiates among types of
schizophrenics, he makes clear that he does not cast the schizophrenic as
the modernist hero. Nor does he offer any concrete judgment about "this
condition of obscure origins and no established aetiology, pathogenesis
and pathology." His erudition and range are as impressive as his analyses
of types of schizophrenia. But I still am not convinced of its causal links to
modernism. Had it been fashionable to write books about "tradition and
madness" in "traditional" times, I wonder, would
that
have been the con–
nection to excite the imagination of scholars? True, modernism and
postmodernism alone have encouraged experimentation with minimal
and fractured texts, and explicitly zeroed in on the blank spaces between
words. But we're no closer than Freud, than all the poets and writers
throughout civilization, to fathoming the depths of the human uncon–
scious and its relation to art. My own (unanswerable) concern, therefore,
is not whether modernity and schizophrenia are Siamese twins, but why
Freud's admittedly dated ideas continue to captivate not only psychoana–
lysts such as Lothane and Sass but also the bevy of readers who claim to
reject psychoanalysis. Is it because you can't keep good history down, or
because, as Freud said, "the voice of the intellect is a soft one, [that] does
not rest until it has gained a hearing"?
mlTH KURZWEIL
