An Experiment in Dialogue
This section of the website addresses contemporary issues of a social, cultural and political nature and is co-ordinated by the Society's Psycho-social Communications Committee. An article written by a psychoanalyst from the APAS will be published and response invited from anyone interested. The article is not written in the style of a scientific paper such as one finds in a professional journal. The writer of the article intends to initiate debate and lays no claim to comprehensively cover the subject. As you read imagine you are at a dinner party and are part of a stimulating and ongoing conversation. Your contributions can be brief or lengthy but intended to add substance to the debate. Details of how to present your response can be found at the end of the paper. **
Psychoanalysis and Creative Writing
By
Maurice Whelan
The 150th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's birth (6 May 1856) is a suitable time to be examining Freud's work and its relevance to life in the 21st century. This year is likely to see the presentation of views covering all points on the spectrum, stretching from a declaration that "Freud is Dead", to the claim that psychoanalysis is one important way to understand our lives and the world in which we live.
Creative writing and psychoanalysis have long been of interest to each other. Freud himself wrote about the creative writer and was intrigued by the capacities of the writer and curious about the origins of creativity. In a recent review of Adam Philips' book The Penguin Freud Reader (Observer 19 Feb 2006) Peter Conrad wrote,
'Psychoanalysis is meant to be a talking cure. Its greatest boon, however, may be its gift to writers, who silently transcribe what they cannot or dare not say out loud, and in doing so - if they're lucky - heal themselves.'
Conrad is touching on an important issue. He suggests that psychoanalysis gives a freedom to writers and by taking hold of that freedom, and through their art of writing, they are able to heal themselves. However if we go back and read Conrad's two sentences you will find a considerable amount to think about, enough perhaps to take up a few hours of good discussion at a dinner table! I am going to put forward a number of thoughts which came to me when I read Conrad. I was also, when I read him, in the process of assembling ideas for a paper to be presented in Sydney at the State Library on 6 May 2006. The title of that paper is: Writing the Unconscious: An exploration of two related arts, creative writing and the practice of psychoanalysis. The synopsis accompanying the title is: 'In 1922 Freud wrote to the creative writer Arthur Schnitzler and told him, your deep grasp of the truths of the unconscious' moves me with an uncanny feeling of familiarity you know through intuition really from a delicate self-observation - everything that I have discovered. This paper draws a comparison between the psychoanalyst's art of speaking and the creative writer's art of writing.In May 1922 when Freud wrote to Arthur Schnitzler it was the latter's 60th birthday. Schnitzler like Freud had trained as a doctor and a neurologist but gave up both and turned to literature. This is what Freud said
I think I have avoided you from a kind of awe of meeting my "double". Not that I am in general easily inclined to identify myself with anyone else or that I had any wish to overlook the difference in our gifts that divides me from you, but whenever I get deeply interested in your beautiful creations I always seem to find behind their poetic sheen the same pre-suppositions, interests and conclusions as those familiar to me as my own - Your deep grasp of the truths of the unconscious - the way you take to pieces the social conventions of our society, and the extent to which your thoughts are preoccupied with the polarity of love and death; all that moves me with an uncanny feeling of familiarity. So the impression has been borne in on me that you know through intuition - really from a delicate self-observation - everything that I have discovered in other people by laborious work. Indeed I believe that fundamentally you are an explorer of the depths, as honestly impartial and unperturbed as ever anyone was.
Freud looked across at the work of this creative writer and saw in him and in his work characteristics similar to those of the psychoanalyst. Freud acknowledged that much of his understanding and the central tenet of his technique came from creative writers. Freud traced his practice of free association, of asking the patient to say whatever came to mind, to the influence of the Swedish writer Ludwig Borne. In 1823 Barne had written an essay called "The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days". Freud read this book as a teenager and when asked at 65 what influenced him he went to his library shelf and retrieved the little book he had first read half a century earlier. Borne's advice was:
Take a few sheets of paper and for three days on end write down, without fabrication or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head. Write down what you think of yourself, of your wife, of the Turkish War, of Goethe, of Fonk's trial, of the Last Judgement, of your superiors“ and when three days have passed you will be quite out of your senses with astonishment at the new and un-heard-of thoughts you have had. This is the art of becoming an original writer in three days.
This piece of history gives us a new context within which to think again about Conrad's observation about psychoanalysis being a gift to the writer. Is it not the case that the psychoanalyst is the recipient of the gift? Freud received and accepted the gift of Borne's advice. "Free Association", a centre piece of psychoanalytic practice was a gift from literature. To turn to the other important issue which Conrad raises. By writing, the writer, he says heals himself (if he is lucky). Putting aside the question of luck let me turn to some of the thoughts of the writers Norman Mailer and Jean Malaquais. Norman Mailer was once asked why he wrote. He said that the answer was too complicated but the question brought to mind a conversation he had with an old friend Jean Malaquais. Mailer knew that Malaquais worked very hard on his creative writing. He would spend 14 hours a day on his writing. And in that amount of time what did he produce? Two or three hundred words! Mailer could not understand this. He usually produced 1000 words in three or four hours. He put it to Malaquais: "Why do you insist on remaining a writer? With your intelligence, with your culture, you could be successful at so many things. Writing may not be a normal activity for you. You are perfectly right", said Malaquais. "I am not a natural writer. There are even times when I detest this torture. I achieve so little of my aims." Mailer pressed him further and said, "All right, why not do something else?" , said Malaquais. When pressed further to explain himself Malaquais said, "The only time I know the truth is when it reveals itself at the point of my pen." I work as a psychoanalyst. I also write creative literature. When I write creative literature I know what Malaquais is talking about. Truth becomes a living reality as the pen moves across the page, or the fingers touch the key-pad. When I have listened to a patient and when it's time for me to speak, what I say is formed in the act and moment of speaking. I may have thought about it for hours and even weeks but when spoken it speaks itself.
Time to make a note about narrowing the field? What type of creative writing are we talking about? Like the word "art" which is often stretched to breaking point, "creative writer" is a title claimed my many. Malaquais and Schnitzler belong to a class of writers, who have a deep respect for, and knowledge of, the unconscious. (They may not call it by that name). Some questions: Where does healing come in? Does a writer of this class heal themselves? Is the silent transcription of what we cannot say out loud an act of healing?
Even a quick glance at the community of creative writers suggests that some writers seem to heal themselves while other don't, their personal pain and suffering continuing unabated after their work has ceased. At this point in time the reading public is showing a greater interest in biography, auto-biography and memoir than they are in the novel itself. Perhaps others out there are asking questions similar to what I am raising here.
One comment before I conclude. Psychoanalysis may allow a writer a greater freedom to express him or herself but the removal of an external constraint is one thing. What about internal constraint? How does the writer remove them? Perhaps it's time to wait for responses and call a pause to this discussion.
How to Respond
The Australian Psycho-analytical Society's Psycho-social Communications Committee will co-ordinate contributions which are offered for publication on this site. We recommend you keep your contribution in the region of 400 words, although longer pieces, to a maximum of 800 words, will be considered.
Please classify your contribution in the "Subject" box as "Response to Experiment in Dialogue" and send by email, not as an attachment, but in the body of the email to the chair of the committee: johnboots@unwired.com.au
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