FR_EDERICK FEIRSTEIN
437
While working
wi
th him, I came across a book
(Interpretation oj
Langl/age),
now out of print, by an author quite brilliant and obscure
named Theodore Thass-Thienemann who had found and proved in two
volumes that etymology is another royal road to the unconscious. In a sec–
tion entitled "Sound Association and Rhyme," he says:
When there is an association of sounds, there will also be an asso–
ciation of meanings ... If one inspects ... one or another treatise on
rhyme, one will find again and again an unwi tting affirmation of the
psychological interpretation through philological data....
Sound associations elicit some pleasure from the store of narcissis–
tic echolalia as experienced by the small child. It springs up from the
earliest unconscious layer of language. It is genuine with the forgot–
ten language of unconscious fantasies. The analytical interpretation
tries to translate the language of unconscious fantasies into the com–
mon spoken language. The rhyme is one of the characteristics of this
almost forgotten and unknown language of fantasies.
Thass-Thienemann is only one of many psychoanalytic writers who
use terms from poetry to explain how the psyche works, both to create
pathology and health. There are four (Susan Den, Laurence Kubie, Henry
Krystal, and Joyce McDougall) who are particularly interested in describ–
ing how deficiencies in the use of symbols lead to pathology, and how a
£1uid use of symbols within the psyche and between the psyche and the
outer world helps create health. Den's model of health is the artist in the
act of creation. When we are "healthy" the preconscious shuttles symbols
back and forth between unconscious and conscious processes. When we
become "unhealthy," it is because the preconscious has become too rigid–
ly attached either to reality or
to
unconscious processes. Instead of
negotiating inner and outer life with resonant symbols, the preconscious
relies on cliches and signs which cut off affect or merely discharge it in ran–
dom action.
So, for example, when severe or repeated trauma occurs, there follows
such a gross inability to symbolize affect that the shocked psyche comes
to
rely almost totally on signs. A Vietnam Veteran I treated would try to read
other people for emotions so he could guess at making the right response to
situations. His manner of speech was what Krystal calls "aprosodic"-almost
totally devoid of cadence. When I'd ask for associations to his dreams (which
were few and minimal), he'd mechanically tell me more details without
rhythmic coloring, much as a small child will tell the plot of a movie.
Joyce McDougall's second book is called
Plea For A Measure OJ
