Peter Ellingsen

Literature and psychoanalysis share an interest in neurosis. Many great

novels are a study of neurotic character. From Emma Bovary to Holden
Caulfield we are in the world of neurotics, that is, people who, to some
etent, misconstrue their surroundings, particularly their relationships.
Emma, the Madame Bovary of Flau!ert"s novel, sees her #$
th
century life
through a fantasy of her misplaced desire and desira!ility, Holden
Caulfield, the young protagonist of %. &. 'alinger"s Catcher In the Rye
views his #$()s *ew +or, with an engaging chip on the shoulder. Both
fail, as we all must, !ut are unforgetta!le !ecause the mechanisms of that
failure are hinted at !y the novelist. -e read them, not only !ecause they
are artfully forged, !ut !ecause we glimpse shadows of ourselves in them.
*eurosis originally meant a disease of the nerves, !ut since Freud"s
discovery that one of the neuroses, hysteria, is a disorder of the
personality and not of the nerves, it has !een used to descri!e a disorder
of the personality. Personhood, of course, cannot help !ut !e disordered.
that is the result of having minds, initially at least, made for us. -e are
!orn into epectations and ecitations. they live / in our parents / !efore
we do and, unless grasped, determine destiny. Emma"s romantic fantasies
are not genetic wilfulness, !ut the way a !eautiful child attempted to
touch the perfection that the nuns who trained her suggested was her due.
0he odd thing is that most of the time, neurotics don"t actually realise that
they are misreading their lives. 1 clever young man li,e Holden Caulfield
,nows in a peripheral sort of way that his !randing of nearly everyone as
a 2phoney3 has something to do with his all4too4successful parents. But,
as Freud said, we have the eerie a!ility to ,now and not ,now something
at the same time. 0hat is how neurosis wor,s. it creates symptoms, such
as Emma"s romantic illusions, !oth from what we ,now 4 our ,nowledge
of our wishful thin,ing 4 and what we don"t / how we defend against it.
'o, clever as we may !e, we are in the dar, a!out ourselves, which is why
literature, which eplores the hidden recesses, and therapy, which tries to
epose them, have their uses. 0he pro!lem is that, while it was possi!le to
say that the 5uestion of #$
th
century literature was 6how are we to live, the
5uestions of this century is more to do with lifestyle. 0he word lifestyle
was coined in #$7$ !y former Freud follower, 1lfred 1dler, who wanted
to reclaim free will from the psychological determinism of Freud. 1dler
could not accept that human su!8ectivity is programmed !y childhood,
and argued for the power of personality to affect change. 0his he called
9lifestyle9, the values, passions, ,nowledge, actions and oddities that
ma,e up a uni5ue individual. 1 century later, the life 1dler tal,ed a!out
has !een su!ordinated to the style he did not even consider, and we are
left with an epression that has come to mean the clothes we wear, the
wor, we do, how we en8oy and the nature and 5uantity of our toys. 0hat
is why we have so many pu!lications that are not !oo,s !ut style guides
for living. 0his fetish for setting down rules as if life were a fashion to !e
followed, rather than an am!ivalence to !e eperienced, has also touched
psychotherapy, as the fad for manualised, measured treatments testifies.
'tyles, of course, change. 0hey must. 0hat is how fau novelty is created
and new o!8ects sold. %ust loo, at the profusion of diagnoses in &'M #:.
;n literature, however, novelty is nowhere near enough. Fashions change<
-hen Flau!ert wrote a later novel, Sentimental Education in #=>$, he
lin,ed good loo,ing with 2plump3, !ut that style difference is incidental.
Change for the sa,e of it has nothing to do with what real writers put on
the page or analysts and therapists say or do not say in the session. 0heir
tas, is to recognise the otherness of those they write of and listen to, not
ma,e them over in their own li,eness or image. ;t is the reverse of what
happens with those addicted to lifestyle, as the popularity of 6ma,e4overs"
shows Lifestyle is !urying yourself in the commercial whim of another.
0he ecuse is that newness is originality and communicates something /
your clothes?car spea,s for you, as if epanding the means, in this case,
the wardro!e?garage, leads to epanding the mind. Flau!ert, who decried
the epansion of the rail line !etween Paris and his home in @ouen / he
thought it would give people more time to say nothing / saw the fallacy.
Communication, which was also a !uAAword in his time, he ,new, was
dependent on the eccentricity of the self to itself, not on a manualised
effort to !reach the gap / either !etween us or !etween Paris and @ouen.
0his urgency to iron out the ,in,s, essentially eliminate the individual
su!8ect in pursuit of an imagined predicta!ly, is a severe neurosis of its
own. ;t infects writing / the weasel words of spin and soap operas / and
psychotherapy, 8ust as it does !usiness and government. ;t mas5uerades as
science and so4called communication !ut is in fact a pathological urge to
seal the gaps that constitute human su!8ectivity. -hat is so feared that we
have to nail ourselves down with conforming num!nessB 0he writer
FranA Caf,a, a great admirer of Flau!ert, saw what was at sta,e. 20hose
who !uild new media to eliminate the spectral elements !etween people,3
he o!served, 2only create more ample !reeding grounds for the ghosts.3
ends