ARGUMENTATIVE

Southland Times, Issue 18969, 16 June 1923, Page 9 (Supplement)

ARGUMENTATIVE

FREUD AND ART.

(By

“Inquisitor”)

The royal road to the interpretation of the Unconscious, Freud lays it down, is through dreams. “The dream,” says Coriat, in “The Meaning of Dreams,” “has to be deciphered because it, undergoes such an elaborate transforming process, that it must conceal itself not only the unconscious thoughts which actually give rise to it, but all the stimuli, physical and mental, which have thrown their mental mechanism into activity. The dream is a symbol of certain mental processes and it represents the fulfilment of a wish which for years may have lain dormant in the unconscious. The dream has a genetic meaning and may be used to interpret the unconscious desires of both the race and society. The unconscious is an true self, not our thinking, with its rationalisation of all our mental processes.” The dream, itself represents the fulfillment of repressed wishes which forever roam in the unconscious mind which in the process of being revealed to us, undergo many transformations in order to harmonise themselves with the restraints of modern social conventions. However, there is much that passes the “censor,” the Freudian term for the barrier set up betweeen the unconscious and the conscious. “We are all emotional volcanoes,” Coriat says, “and when \ve pride ourselves on having subdued our emotions and on not yielding to so-called vulgar feelings and temptations, neverthelhsa it is certain that, hidden within the depths of our unconscious, these repressed desires are as potent and active as though they assailed every second of our conscious life.” The whole Freduian edifice rests upon the dream and although this structure might collapse, and those with a discerning eye evidently see many cracks in it .already, great credit is due to the efforts of the great Vienna doctor to give some intelligible explanation to manifestations, which in the past have been relegated to the realms of the occult. Some of the critics who accuse Freud of having made a mountain art of a molehill seem to be under the impression that the dream is a mere adventitious happening, an occurrence without any possible relationship with anything else in the universe. But it is an elementary scientific axiom that each part of the universe is ultimately bound up with every other part. Is it therefore reasonable to suppose that dreams are an exception to this very fundamental principle, and that they are more interlopers in the otherwise orderly universe ? Therefore, Ihe world owes some debt to Freud whatever might be the fate of his “interpretations.”

Freud utilised his theory of dream interpretation to literature about twenty years ago. Literature, and other forms of art, he contends, is a sublimination of the primitive impulses of the unconscious and to show the relationship in a crude fashion with dreams we might say that all art is the result of day dreams. Consciousness only enters into art in sofar as the author or the painter is conscious of the fact that he is using his pen or brush; the driving force behind the “inspiration” remains in the unconscious. The unconscious therefore rules, ruthlessly as any autocrat can do the “content,” of the book or the painting and although the education and the training of the writer or the artist will be manifested in the technique of his work. But there is something which transcends all such puny things as style, clarity and thought, perspective or colour values which remain to tell us the inner actuating principles behind the mere physical written thing we know as the tragedy of Hamlet or the picture of a wort and small-pox-scarred face of a villainous looking individual that we know to be the masterpiece of one Diego Velasquez.

“Freud opened up a new field of dream interpretation,” says Mordell in “The Erotic Motive in Literature,” “by his discovery of rhe significance of the remark of the chorus in Sophocles’s (Edipus about men dreaming of incestuous relations with their own mothers. He saw this dream referred to the barbarous times in which such incest actually occurred, and to the infantjle affection of the child for the emother. He saw that the counter-part of this dream was in the mythical material dramatised by Sophocles of a man murdering his father and marrying his mother. dream means that one wants his mother's love.” The (Ediphus Complex, as it is called, plays rather a prominent part in psycho-analysis and may be used as a guide to the development of the individual’s mentality. The desire to possess the mother above everything else belongs to a very primitive stage in the evolutionary process, to a period antecedent to the time when incest was regarded as a crime, and where it is manifested to any great extent we should expect to discover, if there is anything in this notion at all, some evidences of grave sexual aberration. This is exactly what is found. One of the greatest tragedies in the literary world of the latter end of the last century was the terrible fall from grace of Oscar Wild, a genius perhaps not of the highest order, but certainly one.of the “bright consummate flowers,” of his time. All the biographers of Wild agree that there was an extraordinary attachment between mother and son which lasted throughout their lives. Mordell gives the example of Cowpeg as being one of the best examples of the" (Edipus Complex in English literature and cites his poem “On the Receipt of My Mother’s Picture.” as the basis for his contention. Cowper’s mother died when the poet was six years’ old. The author of “The Task” never married, but found in Mary Unwin a mother-substitute. The dim infantile memories of his mother unconsciously shaped his whole life and the poem alluded to, is a reflection in phantasy of that child-like love for his mother which half a century had not in any way diminished. "In his troubles he still looks back to her for support. He contrasts his position then with his situation now. He is suffering from depression and the memory of many griefs and his dead mother is like a barque safe in port." Mordell states that had Cowper been able to have written his poem in his twenties instead of late fifties the subliminal process of freeing himself by art from his complex might have made life more pleasant Jor him.

The poetry of Swinburne and Dowson provide ample scope for the psycho-analyst. In both we find the craving for love manifested in an inordinate degree and we know that neither ever satisfied their longings physically. This is exemplified in the deep tragedy of Dowson, whose unrequited love for the unworthy daughter of a cafe proprietress, like Keat's mad passion for Fanny Brawne, touched a chord in his fragile genius that brought into being some of the most delightful lines of their kind in the whole glorious heritage of English song. And yet a girl who eventually married a waiter inspired the poet to sing: ‘T have forgotten much, Cynara! gone with the wind. Flung roses, roses ritously with the Throng Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, all the time, because the dance was long: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. (To be continued).,

Able to sing two different notes at once, a London window-cleaner has astonished experts with his marvellous voice.