The Witch's Kitchen: Freud, Faust, and the Transference

** S A B I N E P R O K H O R I S

The Witch's Kitchen FREUD, FAUST, A N D THE TRANSFERENCE with a foreword by

MONIQUE SCHNEIDER

translated from the French by G. M.

Cornell University Press

GOSHGARIAN

ITHACA AND LONDON

Originally published as La cuisine de la sorciere, © Aubier, Paris, 1988 Foreword and translation copyright © 1995 by Cornell University The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the French Ministry of Culture in defraying part of the cost of translation. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1995 by Cornell University Press. Printed in the United States of America © The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prokhoris, Sabine [Cuisine de la sorciere. English] The witch's kitchen : Freud, Faust, and the transference / Sabine Prokhoris ; with a foreword by Monique Schneider ; translated from the French by G.M. Goshgarian. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8014-3043-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Faust. 2. Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939. 3. Psychoanalysis and literature. I. Title. PT1930.P7613 1995 150.19*52—dc20 95-32835

Contents

Foreword: Freud's Haunted Writing by Monique Schneider Prologue

vii xvii

1

Exquisite Words

2

It's Easy to Do Things with Words

15

3 4 5 6

In Mephisto's Grip

25

Faust and Leonardo

55

Elective Affinities

76

7 8

1

The Fact

107

"Magireve"

131

"Bookworms"

158

Notes

171

Index

191

Foreword: Freud's Haunted Writing by MONIQUE SCHNEIDER

I \ strange scene, the one Sabine Prokhoris brings to light in The Witch's Kitchen. Two potentates, one psychoanalytic and the other literary, cross paths in it; but what goes on between these two characters is poles apart from what Freud declares he intends to do when he sets out on the undertaking called applied psychoanalysis. When analytic theory takes its place in that imperial enterprise, it is effectively treated as a foundation: it falls to the theory to clear up the mysteries concealed in the literary text. Indeed, in his Outline of Psychoanalysis, Freud goes so far as to suggest that the Oedipus complex may legitimately be regarded as antedating its thematization in literature, for he says that the "essential substance" of this complex "returns [wiederkehrt] in the Greek legend of King Oedipus." 1 A curious chronological inversion: analytic doctrines are treated as if they preceded the texts they are based on. Thus Freud refuses, in certain pronouncements at any rate, to acknowledge his debt to literary texts or to recognize their inaugural role. Should we go as far as to speak of their role as seducer, as tempter? The object of Prokhoris's study is, plainly, a return: no longer the return of analytic theory in literary works, but the resurfacing of a literary work in the construction of the theory. Freud's text is haunted, possessed, carried along by another that keeps it

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in constant motion, that speaks through it: Goethe's Faust, which Prokhoris calls Freud's "infratext" (p. 76). She keeps our eyes trained on the modalities of this return. Freud, she says, does not refer massively and directly to the themes of Goethe's work in an effort to draw out their significance; the encounter between him and Goethe is, rather, subterranean. It takes the form of an irruption of citations, as if Goethe's discourse had broken into* Freud's text without an invitation. An unpredictable irruption that may well recall the way Mephistopheles can suddenly and unexpectedly materialize thanks to his power of metamorphosis. Freud's ambiguous relationship with Mephistopheles is, in fact, precisely what Prokhoris focuses on. The lines from Faust which Freud repeatedly weaves into his work without naming the character in whose mouth they are put belong, as a rule, to Mephistopheles, whom Freud thus makes into his "spokesperson" (p. 26). It is, moreover, significant that these lines delivered by a character from Hell should have served as catalysts in the development of various elements of Freud's theory: the "vicissitudes" of the drives, the theory of repression, the place of the death drive. Might Mephistopheles be the underground theoretician who enabled Freud to take the step leading from his self-analysis to his metapsychological constructions—a theoretician who needs, for his part, to appeal to the revelations of the "Witch metapsychology" for help? The Status of the Text Prokhoris attends more closely to the texts themselves, whether Freud's or Goethe's, than to the theoretical constructs that are supposed to be based on them or claim them as the guarantors of their own legitimacy. She thus adopts an approach made possible, in France, by the work of Jacques Lacan. For the * Penetrer par effraction, which evokes the German Bahnung, the term Freud uses in his "Project for a Scientific Psychology" to describe the way the frequency or force of incoming impressions "frays a path" in the mental apparatus. (All asterisked notes are translator's notes.)

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"return to Freud" that Lacan promoted does not require, in order to be effective, that one's work be directly descended of it or that one's allegiance to Lacan be pushed to the fore. Indeed, to the extent that the "return to Freud" is understood by Lacan's disciples as having already been accomplished by the Master himself, there is today a considerable risk that the only reading of Freud recognized as valid and so retained will be Lacan's own; Freud's founding text will not necessarily be subjected to a close reading. Thus Lacan's rallying cry may be said to have had as its indirect consequence, in France, a rereading of Freud. The aim of this rereading has not been to privilege a nosography derived from psychiatry—Lacan contributed to liberating psychoanalysis from too strict an allegiance to medicine—but rather to throw the contours of the Freudian text itself into relief by putting the accent on a dimension of Freud's work Lacan did much to promote: the "letter." This highlighting of the text itself has, in France, been rendered the more striking by an encounter. Jacques Derrida has done a great deal to clear a path to Freud's text—the impact of his approach on Prokhoris's undertaking is quite obvious—by accentuating, not merely the signifier, but everything which, in writing, has to do with the mise-en-sc&ne or Darstellung that Freud shows to be at work in dreams. Via metaphor, it is the whole field of writing which, in Derrida's approach, communicates with both the formal and also the theoretical dimensions of the letter. In "Freud and the Scene of Writing," Derrida marks out the space of Darstellung as follows: "This is the first representation, the first staging of memory. (Darstellung is representation in the weak sense of the word, but also frequently in the sense of visual depiction, and sometimes of theatrical performance.)"2 Later in the same essay, Derrida suggests that Darstellbarkeit be translated "representability."*3 * Aptitude a la mise en scene. Derrida's French translation of Darstellbarkeit would seem to be patterned after James Strachey's English translation, "representability"—the word used to translate "aptitude a la mise en scene" in the English version of "Freud and the Scene of Writing."

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By thus according central status to the notion of "scene," Derrida revives a theme essential to Freud, while warning from the outset against the temptation to hypostatize this notion by assigning the "scene" a real existence that writing would subsequently be called upon to describe. The function of Darstellung is not to illustrate or express in images a meaning that precedes Darstellung and thus serves writing as, in some sense, a referent. On Derrida's description, writing emerges on the very sites of the psychic "trace." Hence the privileged status he confers upon metaphor—understood not as a figurative transcription of something that could also be apprehended in its "proper" form, but as an inscription which it would be futile to try to grasp in a hypothetical nonmetaphorical register prior to its occurrence as metaphor: "Freud, no doubt, is not manipulating metaphors, if to manipulate a metaphor means to make of the known an allusion to the unknown. On the contrary, through the insistence of his metaphoric investment he makes what we believe we know under the name of writing enigmatic."4 If the trace, as Freud situates it in the "Project for a Scientific Psychology," is itself writing prior to which one can find no experience serving to guarantee its authenticity, then the relationship of the literary to the psychic is necessarily transformed. The Passing of the Seducer What is this "scene" which Freud can bring out only by allowing either the tragedy of Faust as a whole, or else the voice that dominates all the others—Mephisto's—to "speak" in his text? By way of response, Prokhoris puts forward an astute hypothesis: she makes a connection between the fascination exerted by the diabolical seducer and the way an essential moment in Freud's itinerary, his belief in the existence of seduction scenes, is consigned to oblivion somewhere along the way. "I no longer believe in my neurotica [theory of the neuroses]."5 This confession, which Freud makes to Fliefi in a letter dated 21 September 1897, marks a decisive turning point in his theoretical no less

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than in his clinical development: it allows the Oedipal theme to emerge. The theoretical gain is undeniable, but it comes at a high price as far as the progress of Freud's self-analysis is concerned; for Freud abandons all thought of pursuing the seduction scenes he had discovered in his own personal history. Instead, he makes use of the Oedipal theme to bury (later he will use the word vergrahen, which literally means "buried") the problematic founded on the possibility that such seduction scenes might actually have taken place. The Lacanian notion of the "real" will, moreover, later rule out any such superimposition of seduction fantasies onto the real. It so happens that the seduction scenes which had an impact on the childhood of the Master are dominated by the figure of an old woman, "ugly . . . but clever," "who told [Freud] a great deal about God Almighty and hell." This seductive figure was Freud's childhood nurse; he calls her his "prime originator," spelling out, a few lines further on, that he is "grateful" [dankbar] to her for having "provided [him] at such an early age with the means for living and going on living."6 An expression of gratitude Freud's heirs are at pains to suppress: in the translation included in the Standard Edition of Freud's works, Strachey sees fit, after mentioning the Urheberin, to add, in brackets, the words "of my troubles." The trial of the seductress was thus to be continued by Freud's heirs. It is certainly true that, by calling his nurse his "teacher in sexual matters," Freud held up before his successors a strange sort of precursor and an ambiguous model. Is it not this old nurse, recalled only to find herself repudiated and "packed away" in the wake of the theoretical developments which were taking place around the time of this turning point— is it not this unmentionable figure who reappears in Freud's fascination for the "Witch," that leading specialist in matters "metapsychological"? "But what do we see emerging in Faust, if not precisely this tale of the prime originator and teacher in sexual matters who grants one access to life and knowledge?" (p. 86). To be sure, in the scene created by Goethe, the Witch is not the sole possessor of diabolic knowledge. Mephistopheles too has an ini-

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tiator's role: he is the one who ushers Faust into the eerie "kitchen." This helps Freud get over the disappointment he felt when he analyzed his own seduction scenes—a disappointment linked, as I concluded in a study of this turning point in Freud's development (Freud et le plaisir), with the sense of confusion the seducer's sex called up in Freud. On Freud's initial hypothesis, only the father could seduce; but "the old man," Freud confesses in the letter cited a moment ago, "plays no active part in my case" [dafi bei mir der Alte keine aktive Rolle spielt]. Where he expected to encounter the father, the seductive Urheberin appears. Freud thus finds himself delivered up to a feminine power he can respond to in only one of two ways: he can either globally identify with it (ich = sie)7, Or carry out a massive act of repression by abandoning his belief in seduction ("I no longer believe . . . "). Interestingly, in "A Seventeenth-Century Dembnological Neurosis," the psychic process by which one is drawn toward the devil is precisely one of "belief." The belief involved is, certainly, playful; but Prokhoris deftly throws into relief the fact that, within this playful context, belief in the devil provides a metaphor for belief in psychoanalysis: "Twice in a fairly short text, Freud draws a parallel between believing in the devil and believing in psychoanalysis. His way of doing so is highly revealing; he makes it seem as if these two kinds of belief, despite what we think we know about them, were, in the end, of the same nature" (p. no). Thus the two characters who haunt the Faustian scene— Mephisto and the Witch—surge up before Freud and bring on a return of the repressed. It is as if the seduction scene, consigned to oblivion almost from the moment Freud felt the first inkling of its existence, had resurfaced via these two figures, offering Freud the element he had been searching for but had so far failed to find: the paternal seducer. In this perspective, the literary text is not merely a catalyst in the process by which already existing memory traces resurface: it is one aspect [versant] of their origin. It is, moreover, significant that, in his essay "Family Romances,"

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Freud connects the fantasy of the "other father" the child makes up to the entrance of "books" onto the family scene. Thus, says Freud, criticism of the father and the fiction that one has a surrogate father of higher social rank "usually [come about] as a result of something [children] have read."8 Books lead to an "estrangement from [one's] parents"—Entfremdung von den Eltern, a movement of "separation" (Ent) and a "becoming strange" (fremd). The literary scene conveyed by books thus breaks into the family circle in order to seduce the child in the literal sense of the word, that is, to lead him astray (verfiihren) by transporting him far from his parents—an act of distantiation redoubled by a return—and allowing him to restructure his psychic space. With respect to Freud's real father, does Goethe not appear, thanks to the influence he had on Freud—an influence Prokhoris underscores—as the tempter who carries the child out of the closed family circle? With his power as initiator, does he not play a role equivalent to the one conferred upon Mephistopheles in Faust? Psychoanalysis and Literature, or the "Becoming-Literary" of the Literal The literary text may be perceived, then, not as a secondary translation of an experience independent of it, but as something which, in a certain sense, does violence to the child who encounters it by provoking the Entfremdung Freud speaks of. From the moment it is experienced in this way, the text must be regarded, not as the vehicle for a simple resurgence of the past—a past evoked or revived by the allusions contained in the work—but rather as the inscription of a trace. A trace whose inscription necessarily involves a certain tearing open, an effraction Derrida identifies as an integral feature of memory: "Life is already threatened by the origin of the memory which constitutes it, and by . . . the effraction which it can only contain by repeating it. It is because breaching breaks open that Freud, in de Project, accords a privilege to pain."9 Curiously, in the text in which Freud analyzes the effect of Entfremdung brought on by a child's read-

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ing, he associates the process with pain. In the opening lines of "Family Romances/' he represents this emancipation of the child as "one of the most painful results [eine der . . . schmerzlichsten Leistungen] brought about by the course of his development."10 Clearly, the pain in question is that of the parents forced to witness this kidnapping of their children by literature; but their pain cannot but affect the child himself, who is thus both the victim of the kidnapping (shades of the Erlkonig may be glimpsed here) and complicit in it. Is Mephistopheles not, then, the incarnation of the temptations of literature? So regarded, he appears as the figure who constantly disrupts, perverts, effaces an intimate domestic scene, in order to plant an "elsewhere" in its midst: a Witch's Kitchen or a Walpurgisnacht. Must we limit to the family scene the sphere which Mephistopheles, as seducer, penetrates to initiate a process of Entfremdung? There is a risk that theory, once it has become "official" and set in its ways, will itself patch up the breach created by the literary text. In a forthcoming work on Don Juan, Don Juan et le proems de la seduction,11 I argue that literary texts—in this case, Oedipus Rex—can exercise a repressive function if their movement is interrupted. When the Sphinx goes down to defeat, as the result of a deed Freud celebrates as "the solution of the mystery," a whole set of questions about seduction disappears into the void, just as Don Juan, regarded as a henchman of the Devil, disappears into the yawning gulf at the end of the play. Prior to the celebration centered on the figure of Oedipus, the analytic scene was haunted by another figure, one in constant danger of being disavowed—as if two kinds of theater were pitted against one another in a relentless struggle: the theater of truth, which foregrounds the figures of Oedipus and Hamlet, and the theater of seduction, where one glimpses, gliding through the shadows, Mephistopheles or Don Juan, the "man without a name." The latter sort of theater is fascinated by the approach to jouissance. To find one's way back to its proscribed scenes, it is essential to turn to literature. This clears a space for something I propose to call, not "applied," but "accompanied" psychoanalysis, some-

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thing which makes it possible to hear the voices of two messengers, each of whom is perpetually trying to drown out the other: the one in order to mock truth, the other to bury jouissance. By allowing both to be heard, one gives concrete form to that "twohanded machine" Derrida sees in the "mystic writing pad," whose function is to pave the way for a double operation of writing and erasure: "Traces thus produce the space of their inscription only by acceding to the period of their erasure."12 The thesis Prokhoris sets out to develop is thoroughly caught up in the undertaking made possible by this "two-handed machine." Whether it is a question of the status of analytic theory, insidiously subverted by the play of metaphor, or the space of the transference, dominated both by official values (establishing truth) as well as values rather more redolent of sulphur and brimstone (of the kind that induce one to strike a bargain with the Devil), Freud's text is repeatedly shown to be the site of operations which aim, at one and the same time, to found and to subvert. Oedipus is no longer on stage solus; he finds himself facing the seductive power that survives all attempts to abolish it. But let us give the floor to the literary text in order to observe our two protagonists, Faust and Mephistopheles, in action. They propose two antithetical versions of the fate reserved for the "mystery" (Ratsel) which must be "solved" (loseri)—expressions that haunt Freud's relationship with Oedipus. Our two characters are on their way to the Witches' Sabbath: FAUST: Da mufl sich munches Ratsel losen. MEPHISTOPHELES: Dock manches Ratsel knilpft sich auch.*u

* There many a mystery will be solved /But many a mystery will arise as well.

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xv

Prologue OEDIPUS: Night, endless night hath thee in her keeping, so that thou canst never hurt me, or any man who sees the sun. TIRESIAS: I tell thee—since thou hast taunted me with my blindness— that thou hast sight, yet seest not in what misery thou art, nor where thou dwellest, nor with whom. Dost thou know of what stock thou art? . . . This day shall show thy birth and shall bring thy ruin. —Sophocles, Oedipus Rex The question one must constantly ask oneself: from what angle and by what means is one to capture the night of dreams for men? And how can one dupe the horror that haunts them—with what supernatural stuff, what future millenarian love? —Rend Char, "Aversions"

JL/reams nestle in the secret heart of the night. Shadows conceal them from the gaze but deliver them up to language, which they reduce to its bare essence—words, cool white pebbles dropped one by one into the thick black silence, tracing a path down which psychoanalysis makes its blind way. "Art does not render the visible, it renders visible," says Klee. The same may be said of dreams, "royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind" (Freud). Psychoanalysis, then, means going to school to the night—that animated night where dreams trace their fluid arabesques while mortal creatures project their shadows in dreams. Giving oneself over, despite one's fears, to this night, source of clarity, is preSophocles is quoted here in the Richard C. Jebb translation.

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cisely what permits the clarity to emerge. But giving oneself over to it means enduring the burning sun of our human wound, means giving pain the time to ripen into clarity of vision. Means, first of all, being (a) patient. Whence the unabating urgency of a question: how is one to bear the knowledge offered by psychoanalysis? The question exactly measures the stakes of the audacious wager analysis resolutely makes: I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador—an adventurer, if you want it translated—with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort. Such people are customarily esteemed only if they have been successful, have really discovered something; otherwise, they are dropped by the wayside. And that is not altogether unjust.1 The fantasy of a megalomaniac, perhaps; it is well known that Freud found the figure of the conqueror seductive. But saying so teaches us nothing new—in what way does such an affirmation go beyond the obvious?—while threatening to obscure a question more disturbing, and, perhaps, more dangerous in its implications: what, precisely, is the light of psychoanalysis? What sort of chimera is metapsychological theory, if it is so intimately allied with the night? Does it not represent the greatest possible deracination of thought—does it not expose thought to the greatest possible risk—if it can emerge only as the knowledge, necessarily blind, of this bond with the darkness? An undoing of thought's infantile amnesia, reminiscent of something of which Hesiod sings: "Out of the Chasm came Erebos and dark Night, and from Night in turn came Bright Air and Day . . . Night bore hateful Doom and dark Fate and Death, she bore Sleep, she bore the tribe of Dreams."2 For Oedipus, Tiresias's words name the unnameable region

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where his destiny is forged.3 The destiny that calls metapsychology into being. The metaphor that founds its authority. Freud calls metapsychology "the Witch"; he has in mind the witch who must mediate between Faust and Mephisto if their bargain is to take effect. He turns himself over to the poet— henceforth the "active, restless companion" of all his voyages of discovery into the unconscious—the way one turns oneself over to the Devil. In so doing, he enables us to read analysis's founding metaphor, indicating with the greatest possible precision the place, or rather the non-place, to assign his theory. The Witch: an intermediary between Hell and someone who once believed in Heaven. Metapsychology: an act of mediation between the shadows of the unknown and the light of knowledge. Between the one and the other: an agitated interval, the very gap across which the metaphor is painfully stretched. Trace of a site in motion, of a ceaseless shuttling between two extremes: the firebrand Pascal speaks of.4 A transference—which gives birth to the bright flare, forever about to flicker and fade, of the light of the dream.

Prologue

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The Witch's Kitchen

1 Exquisite Words We understand that the English navy has a certain arrangement by which every rope in the royal fleet, from the stoutest to the finest, is spun in such a fashion that a red thread runs through it which cannot be extracted without unravelling the whole rope, so that even the smallest piece of this rope can be recognized as belonging to the Crown. Similarly, there runs through Ottilie's journal a thread of affection and inclination that binds everything together and characterizes the whole. It is this thread which turns into the peculiar property of the writer these observations, thoughts, aphorisms copied down, and whatever else is there, and makes them significant for her. Goethe, Elective Affinities

ixeading Freud, one cannot help but notice that such a red thread runs from one end of his work to the other, extending even to his correspondence—the love letters to Martha no less than the letters belonging to his scientific work properly so called. It is a slender thread, but passionate love and wistful tenderness make it a strong one. It binds the words of Freud, an untiring explorer of the depths of the psyche who early on conceived "a wish that [he] might during the course of [his] life contribute something to our human knowledge,"1 to the words of the poet, who, as Freud says in a well-known passage, "has from time immemorial been the precursor of science, and so too of Elective Affinities, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth, England, 1971), pp. 163-164.

Exquisite Words

1

scientific psychology/'2 Particularly striking is the way a few lines of verse crop up, time and again, in the odd sentence or paragraph of Freud's: often unexpectedly, sometimes even, or so one might think, incongruously Shakespeare, frequently; Goethe, constantly—Goethe who, let us not forget, himself felt boundless admiration for Shakespeare. Lines from Goethe, then, and especially from Faust, perhaps the poet's queerest brainchild, which he was endlessly in the process of bringing into the world. The quotations from Faust turn up in Freud's writing with truly disconcerting insistence. The fact that they appear so frequently is in itself odd enough to give one the impression that much more is involved here than the literary coquetry of a cultivated Austrian, or, worse, an excessive indulgence in facile rhetoric. The impression is strengthened by something else. It seems as if Freud calls the poets to his rescue whenever he senses a weak spot in his reasoning, or finds himself disinclined to proceed scientifically. This expedient appears to fill in for rational argument. It seems, then, as if we might legitimately accuse Freud—having thus caught him in the act—of exhibiting a want of scientific rigor. Indeed, does he himself not write: " 'we must call the witch to our help after all'—the Witch metapsychology. Without metapsychological speculation and theorizing—I had almost said 'phantasying'—we shall not get another step forward." Here Freud not only quotes a passage from Faust—and not just any passage, after all—but also explicitly draws attention to what he is doing: "the Witch metapsychology," he takes pains to spell out.3 A rhetorical flourish, perhaps, or just a little joke. But it is a joke worth pausing over. We would do well to inquire into what it implies about the status of Freud's discovery of the unconscious, about the invention of psychoanalysis, about, in a word, metapsychological theorization (or phantasying). The strange, persistent presence of Goethe's Faust in Freud's work is the more arresting in that Freud deliberately plants it at the very heart of his enterprise by dubbing his metapsychology "the Witch." (His way of going about this is somewhat cryptic, at

2

The Witch's Kitchen

least for the reader; for Freud, the matter would seem to be perfectly clear.) The undisguised presence of this Witch—this red thread, as it were—perplexed me. I have taken my perplexity as my guide: it might be regarded as the point of departure for this study, whose orientation and method follow from a decision to take seriously the modalities, meaning, and concrete effects of Freud's evocations of Goethe. Too frequent to be fortuitous, they nevertheless do not function as references properly so called: they do not afford us an opportunity to examine and test one particular element of a theory, nor do they put a body of possibly useful information at our fingertips. One of the lines of questioning I begin with runs, accordingly, as follows: what unacknowledgeable operations are Goethe's words called upon to carry out inside Freud's words? Metapsychology's conceptual models were assigned their respective places in a dynamic process dominated by Freud's concern to produce a body of work that would qualify as "scientific." Within this dynamic, within the force field of Freud's writing, what urgent and yet untheorized necessity does the constant appearance of the poet's words obey? How are we to conceive the exigency that, in keeping with the spirit of Freud's intellectual quest (perhaps even sustaining it), mandates these repeated quotations, which literally force themselves upon the reader, sometimes without her conscious knowledge—as if they constituted the very pulsation of the text? Between the poet's words, shooting up like exotic mushrooms in the forest of Freud's writing, and Freud's scientific project, what scene lies waiting to be deciphered? And what does this encounter between Goethe and Freud imply about the strange, ambiguous, undoubtedly problematic nature of what puts itself forward as a theory of the unconscious? Words, Words, Words . . . Let us go back for a moment to the year 1890 and the mesmerizing dawn of psychoanalysis. Metapsychology did not yet

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3

exist. Nor, for that matter, did psychoanalysis. But already, in these uncertain mornings, there was the word—the word-act. "In the beginning was the word!" we too might exclaim. A cure based on words: "foremost among such [therapeutic] measures is the use of words; and words are the essential tool of mental treatment."4 Such is the method beginning to take shape in 1890. It is, to be sure, still embryonic. The technique of free association has yet to be invented. And if Freud's first texts on clinical matters already mention love (a love Freud renounces, it is true, but with so many a sigh and such little conviction that only the firm support provided by a just barely categorical imperative prevents him from abandoning his resolve and so dooming analysis to an early death), they do not contain the slightest trace of a theory of the transference. As for repression, the key element in the metapsychological apparatus, it is no more in evidence than the transference—unless we seize on a curious remark Freud drops in a discussion of "modern mental treatment," where he speaks of a "revival of ancient therapeutic methods" that "will provide physicians with far more powerful weapons for the fight against illness."5 Weapons all the more dangerous, I am tempted to say, in that they represent the return of medicine's repressed at the very heart of the modern medical science of Freud's day— whence their explosive power. For they stand for everything medicine seems to have succeeded in radically severing itself from, in the name of a positive or even positivist rationalism. Indeed, Freud goes so far as to evoke faith healing in the conclusion to the article just cited!6 That conclusion appears the more striking if one considers the strategic place the theory of repression holds in Freud's metapsychology: striking insofar as it allows one to see "modern" therapeutic technique, retroactively [dans Vaprts-coup], as the initial inscription of something that would not be theorized until later. (It is precisely for this reason that analytic theory conveys the truth effects it does.) It follows that the science of the unconscious cannot be conceptualized on the model of the other sciences. For its method puts into practice a paradox still without parallel: the method is traversed, invested, even constituted by the very object it seeks 4

The Witch's Kitchen

to construct. Hence it cannot maintain its object at a distance from itself, since the object intimately affects both the practice and the learned discourse which seek to enframe* this object; it likewise affects the relationship between this practice and discourse. Accordingly, the theory—metapsychology—can by no means pose as a strictly conceptual construct engendered by an act of pure reason which has formalized a certain experience and so rendered it intelligible, while maintaining a perfect neutrality vis-a-vis the experience. Still less can it pose as an act of pure unveiling which makes possible a rapt contemplation of the truth. Indeed, metapsychology can only function as a metaphor for its object, because, even though it carries its object within itself, it can come into being only at the price of putting an end to this state of affairs. A metaphor, then, or else a displacement, trope, or swerve that permits new meaning to emerge and thus conveys the "absence and presence" of the unconscious; a metaphor that can, in consequence, be genuinely effective only if it is not taken for what it in fact is. A curious game of hide-and-seek, this, undoubtedly fraught with peril for those who don't know how to avoid its pitfalls: a game in which the theory can be "true" as far as its effects are concerned—in a word, operational—only at the price of what one must call, to be precise, a "false connection" \fausse liaison]? That is, the interpretations the theory permits one to make are correct even when their function is to eliminate the mistake that gave rise to them in the first place. They are the net gain made possible, as it were, by the lure constitutive of the theory. Such is the paradox that authorizes one to speak of something called metapsychology or the theory of the unconscious. If this is indeed the strange specificity of metapsychological * Arraisonner, from arraisonnernent, an equivalent for Heidegger's notion of Gestell, or "enframing/' f Fausse liaison is also a linguistic term. In French, one makes a liaison (connection) between two successive words by pronouncing at the end of the first a consonant silent in other contexts. A "fausse liaison" occurs when one connects two successive words by pronouncing a linking consonant that is not "really"—that is, in standard French—to be found at the end of the first word. Example: quatres officiers.

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theorization, two questions naturally arise. First, can one identify the anchorage points (not the foundations) of such theorization? Second, what allows one to interpret metapsychology's own statement of what metapsychology is? (This is of course not to be taken as a problem in "applied psychoanalysis.") It is precisely at the point of intersection of these two questions that we once again encounter the question of words—of the word-acts that, in a sense, fecundate Freud's theoretical discourse. Anchorage points, breaches open to interpretation, living springs and levers of metapsychological discourse: my inquiry necessarily begins under the double sign of the word-as-act and of the ardor, passion, love (transference love?) of the researcher. I should like to call it an inquiry into "what Mephisto knew." What Mephisto Knew In what sense, then, is knowledge of the unconscious— knowledge that presents itself in the guise of a theory—possible? In what sense can such knowledge exist, given the very special type of articulation between analytic practice, animated by the spoken word and bound up with the transference, and analytic theory, which claims to give a rational account of the unconscious—of something that fails to manifest itself, remaining by definition hidden? These questions define a project that can be situated within neither the history of science nor the history of ideas, but rather involves examining the curious conditions of possibility of what Freud sometimes calls "depth psychology." Accordingly, investigating Freud's scientific lineage will not be my priority here: Freud is of legitimate, respectable scientific descent, even if he seems in many ways to be the enfant terrible of the Meynerts, Breuers, and Briickes. I am much more interested in another genealogy. It is a bastard line, springing, in some sense, from an unhallowed union—one, moreover, that Freud partially disavows. Its existence is betrayed by the relations he maintains with the poets. These relations are as ambivalent as one could wish: if Freud occasionally denounces poets as vulgar

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con men, with an indignation reminiscent of Plato's/ he nevertheless also admires them, displaying a jealousy like that schoolboys show for their teachers. But the poets, it must be added, are teachers of a very special sort, inasmuch as they prefer to conceal rather than pass on the knowledge they possess: "You can't tell the striplings, after all / Hie best of what you manage to find out."8 Mephistophelean teachers, in a word. If, in a certain sense, Freud's attitude toward terrible blue-eyed Briicke recalls Wagner's toward Faust, everything changes (revealingly, one might add) when it comes to Freud's attitude toward the poets: if he doesn't want to be the humble student, he has no choice but to become Faust. Commenting on Lacan's dictum that "there is transference as soon as there is a subject presumed to know," Jean Laplanche reminds us that refusing to grant knowledge to the other, keeping it under wraps, conditions what can be called, in the strict sense, a transference.9 What, if this is so, is going on between Freud and the poets? Before taking up this question, especially as it bears on Freud's relationship with Goethe, I would like to make a little excursus on "Freud and Fliefi." Fliefi is not Brticke—far from it, given his status in the scientific community. An eccentric, solitary savant, with, perhaps, just a touch of the seer, he forged a grand, contradictory alliance between the dry rigors of mathematics and the torrential flows of the libido. To someone like Freud, who could wax lyric over the draining of the Zuider Zee,10 and who dreamed, like some latterday alchemist, of "discovering the great secret," Fliefi seemed to be little less than a modern Galileo. He was the great scientist for whom sexuality—nature's real name—was a "vast book written in mathematical language"; a few simple but hermetic and so jealously guarded formulas would eventually permit him to decipher the book of nature and thus bring nature under his control. Mage and mathematician at the same time11—that is how Fliefi's enigmatic figure must have appeared to Freud's wondering, unknowing eyes. Fliefi was accordingly in a position to appropriate and apply to himself Faust's famous words; his misfortune is

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that he failed to: "I'm called Professor, Doctor, even / And have for the past ten years been leading— / Up, and down, and hither and thither— / My students around by the nose / And I see that nothing is all we can know!"12 Certainly there can be no doubt about the fact that Fliefi was to lead Freud about by the nose*—even if, by a delicious twist, Freud applies Faust's words to himself. (What is more, he does so in a letter to Fliefi.)13 Freud was to be led about by the nose like the student in the remarkable scene with Mephisto, in which Faust, becomes, as it were, two characters: the student himself, naive, "deeply deferential,"14 with his "young blood"15—blood, that "very special juice"16—and a diabolical figure who is taken for what he is not and revered for qualities he does not possess. A scene of mistaken identity, then: the magician and initiator who is privy to knowledge beyond Faust's ken, and has just induced Faust to sign a contract in his own blood, dupes the innocent student, who, bedazzled, completely misunderstands the little game Mephistopheles is playing with him. This imposture reveals something of the hidden face of Faust's bargain with the devil. What if the answer provided by this bargain, which promises to fulfill Faust's quest, owed its magic, its efficacy, to a misunderstanding—to blindness as to the real addressee of Faust's demand? What if nothing more were involved here than a case of mistaken identity—in a word, a false connection? There can, at any rate, be no mistaking Freud's blissful blindness when it came to Fliefi. Freud had a lover's implicit trust in the esoteric knowledge he imputed to his Mephistophelean friend, confidant, and judge, the absent addressee of a copious correspondence, whom he saw only rarely at ceremonious two-man "congresses." He eagerly cast this bizarre figure in the role of master and mentor, with himself in that of ephebe. The aura with which Freud surrounded Fliefi, his schoolboy's impulse to make of him something he was not, was to provide the occasion for a transference that permitted Freud's own analysis to get underway and then * Fliefi's theory linked sexuality to the nose.

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develop. Out of this experience would arise a new discipline, psychoanalysis, which Freud would subsequently claim—after stripping Fliefi of his mystique—to have founded all by himself. Indeed, Freud would go so far as to add that he had always had a premonition of his own future genius, in a passage I cannot resist citing. Speaking of his first encounter with the sciences, "among which it seemed open to me to choose to which of them I should dedicate what were no doubt my inestimable services,"17 Freud offers this confidence: And I seem to remember that through the whole of this time there ran a premonition of a task ahead, till it found open expression in my school-leaving essay as a wish that I might during the course of my life contribute something to our human knowledge. Later I became a physician—or a psychologist, rather—and was able to create a new psychological discipline, something that is known as 'psycho-analysis/ which is followed today with excited interest, and is greeted with praise and blame, by physicians and enquirers in neighboring, and in distant, foreign lands—but least of all, of course, in our own country.18 The same article touches on the veneration a teacher's person can inspire, and the risk that, "on that account, the path to the sciences" might, for certain admiring disciples, be "blocked for good and all."19 We know what came of this risk in the case of Freud's relation to Fliefi. In the end, of the two men in question, it was Freud and not FlieS who turned out to be the sage dripping fire and brimstone, the one who, after all, really discovered something. Fliefi, in short, was for Freud the subject presumed to know (what is more, to know the truth about sex); he was therefore passionately loved. This point is generally granted: it is widely agreed that what bound Freud to Fliefi was something on the order of a transference. That is, the essence of their relationship did not consist in the pure and simple transmission of a doctrine

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or body of scientific knowledge which the one receiving it was, in his turn, to preserve and pass on unaltered—enriched, at best, by an additional discovery or two. Involved was, rather, a strange bond forged amid all the fervor and trembling of love. And love, as is known, is blind, like Oedipus. (As for Antigone, Lafontaine reminds us that her name is madness.20) The love bond between Freud and Fliefi, formed in the course of a stubborn quest for knowledge completely at variance with the standard sort of pedagogical situation, which is based on the principle that knowledge should always be transmitted as innocently, transparently, and exhaustively as possible—this bond sheds a good deal of light, in my opinion, on Freud's relationship with the poets, particularly Goethe. At the same time, it helps explain the paradigmatic role the drama of Faust played in this connection, and, consequently, in the discovery of psychoanalysis. For what happens to Faust also revolves, in one way or another, around a relationship to knowledge. Indeed, what does Freud tell us about the poets, whom he ranges alongside "antiquity," "superstition," and "the author of The Interpretation of Dreams/'21 if not, precisely, that they know? This knowledge of theirs, he adds, traces such dark, devious paths before emerging into the light that it cannot possibly be passed on in the form of "clear and distinct ideas" issuing from those "long chains of reasoning" "geometricians are accustomed to using." Nor can it be learned, not even with the help of one or another maieutic. But perhaps one is simply duped into believing that the poets are privy to it: "How was it that the author arrived at the same knowledge as the doctor—or at least behaved as though he possessed the same knowledge?"22 To act "as though he possessed the same knowledge," and thus to hoodwink not only the public, but, worse, the man of science, "the scientific psychologist," about the real value of this knowledge— to engage in this kind of mystification is to occupy Mephisto's place in the scene with the student. Yet the student's position visa-vis Mephisto doubtless reveals the truth about Mephisto's relationship with Faust. It would follow that to act the way the poets

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do is to put oneself in a position, not to reveal knowledge (the knowledge in question must remain esoteric, can never be transmitted for the very good reason that it does not exist), but to elicit a transference. Considered in this light, it can hardly be a matter of indifference that Freud's discussion of "the dream of the uncle with the yellow beard" should include a reference to poets. The uncle in question is an uncle of Freud's named Joseph, like the Old Testament figure who interprets one of Pharaoh's dreams. It is, precisely, in connection with this extremely dubious member of the Freud clan, hopelessly compromised in a counterfeiting scandal, that Freud says, "When I interpret my dreams for my readers I am obliged to adopt similar distortions. The poet [too] complains of the need for these distortions."23 There follows a quotation from Faust: "You can't tell the striplings, after all / The best of what you manage to find out."24 Like Mephisto, then—or like Faust—poets too, in a certain sense, take in all those who give in to the fascination of their seductive power. A fortiori, they take in someone like Freud, in quest of hidden knowledge which the poets, like Prospero, are believed to attain by means of their art, and then jealously guard. The art that works this poetic charm—what the poets do or know how to do—has as its instrument, precisely, the word, which opens up the space of the poem. This space is analogous, Freud insists, to that of the dream, which he calls a "poetical representation"25—a poetic metaphor for the repressed. In the dream, however, the metaphor is both intensely private and, more often than not, beyond the dreamer's ken. What happens in the transference creates a space that, as it were, redoubles the dream-metaphor, while displacing and actively transforming it; drawn out by speech, the metaphor is gradually elaborated until it takes on significance. That this can happen is owing to something Freud calls "the malleable nature of the material of speech"—in other words, ambiguity, or language's capacity to sustain "ambiguous speeches."26 Dreams, Freud tells us—like, for that matter, neurotic symptoms or paranoid delusions—arise as compromise formations between the unconscious and conscious-

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ness. Thanks to them, repressed material can cross the barrier erected by the censorship, but only on condition that it be masked or disguised. Its disguises or masks—the distorted features the unconscious displays whenever it emerges—are also what permits it to veil itself and so remain inaccessible to consciousness; because the unconscious comes forward in these unrecognizable forms, repression is ultimately maintained. No less than a dream or a symptom", discourse too can result from a compromise between the unconscious and consciousness: in the domain of words as well, it is possible to circumvent the censorship and undo repression, that is, to reestablish connections between elements repression had isolated from one another. But the way this comes about in the discursive realm depends on a sort of permeability internal to language; it is attested by the remarkable possibility that "each of the two intentions lying behind [a discourse] can be successfully expressed in the same turn of words."27 Like Harlequin, words can serve two masters without either ever finding out what is going on. (In Goldoni, it will be recalled, this permits a pair of masters to have a beautiful love affair!)* Freud develops the point at great length: "It is a triumph of ingenuity and wit to be able to express the delusion and the truth in the same turn of words." A bit later, he adds: In the course of the psychotherapeutic treatment of a delusion or of an analogous disorder, ambiguous speeches of this kind are often produced by the patient, as new symptoms of the briefest duration; and it can happen that the doctor finds himself too in the position of making use of them. In that way it not infrequently happens that with the meaning that is intended for the patient's conscious he stirs up an understanding of the meaning that applies to his unconscious.28 Using language and manipulating ambiguity in this fashion is precisely what opens up the play of metaphor and distinguishes * The allusion is to the comedy II servitore di due padroni (1745).

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the poetic dimension of language. It is also, of course, the moving force behind puns and the source of the jubilation they give rise to. Innocent demiurge, prince of the equivocal, the poet deals essentially in mistaken identities. One can thus easily see why a poet—and not just any poet, but Goethe writing Faust, an exemplary mise-en-abyme of the entire transferential situation I have just evoked—should have been Freud's master and mentor. But the master was not a very orthodox one; that is precisely what made the relationship so fertile. For the master was also a seducer destined to remain forever out of reach. But, in this matter of seduction, the roles of seducer and seduced are perhaps not distributed quite the way one supposes. Is the seducer not, at a minimum, a seducer only because he lets himself be seduced? The question posed by this study takes its significance from the foregoing, which provides a basis for the hypothesis about Freud's metapsychology that will serve as my guiding thread. How do the poet's words, "seduced" by Freud's own texts— "seduced" in the literal sense, that is, "led astray"—how do these words work in and upon the texts that cite them? My thesis might be briefly put as follows. The drama of Faust offers us an extraordinary metaphor for the effects of poetic language. But it is an open-ended metaphor that can also help us grasp what is at stake in psychoanalysis. (This is what calling metapsychology "the Witch" indicates.) For poetry is, in Freud's writing, a source of truth effects that have to do with the unconscious; poetry thus calls metapsychology into existence. This is to say that Freud's theory, or, as I prefer to put it, his theorization, appears in an unprecedented mode, one which breaks radically with everything that had earlier been taken to define the nature and function of theory in the sciences, on the one hand, and philosophy, on the other. Metapsychology is neither a serenely (and naively) totalizing vision of things, nor a set of experimentally verifiable hypotheses; it is rather a palimpsest of the unconscious, communicating, via the bridges formed by words, with dreams, the transference, and, ultimately, the drive. The relation between

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Freud's text and that which, in Freud's text, operates as "infratext"—namely, the "citations" from Faust—assures the transmission of these "palimpsest effects."29 At the same time, it serves as their vehicle, and, no less, as a kind of litmus test—almost in the literal sense—indicating their presence. The word makes the thing into a thing—it "bethings" the thing. We should like to call this rule of the word "bethinging" (die Bedingnis). . . . The poet does not explain what this bethinging is. But the poet commits himself, that is, his Saying to this mystery of the word.30 Does psychoanalysis not originate in this "mystery of the word"? And is it not this mystery which permits one to affirm, as Nicolas Abraham suggests, that "of that which has never been, is there anything other than the poem that one is?—of that which has never been, the couch preserves the memory."31

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It's Easy to Do Things with Words Business is hopelessly bad; in general, by the way, right up to the top of the profession, and so I live only for the "inner work." I am gripped and pulled through ancient times in quick association of thoughts; my moods change like the landscapes seen by a traveler from a train; and as the great poet, using his privilege to ennoble (sublimate), puts it: "Und manche Hebe Schatten steigen auf; / Gleich einer alten, halbverklungenen Sage, / Kommt erste Lieb' und Freundschaft mitherauf."* And also first fright and discord. Many a sad secret of life is here followed back to its first roots; many a pride and privilege are made aware of their humble origins. Everything I experienced with my patients, as a third [person], I find here again—days when I drag myself about dejected because I have understood nothing of the dream, of the fantasy, of the mood of the day; and then again days when a flash of lightning illuminates the interrelations and lets me understand the past as a preparation for the present. Freud, Letter to Fliefi, 27 October 1897 Today several very strange things occurred to me, which I do not yet properly understand at all. As far as I am concerned, there is no question of deliberation. This method of working moves along by fits and starts. God alone knows the date of the next thrust, unless you have figured out my formula. If more comes along, we shall scarcely be able to avoid discussion and collaboration. Wild things, by the way, some of which I already surmised during the stormy first epoch of productivity. Ihr naht Euch wieder, schwankende GestaltenS Freud, Letter to Fliefi, 11 October 1899 * Goethe, Dedication to Faust, Part 1,10-12: And many beloved shades appear; / With them, like the faint strains of some old lay, / First love and friendship draw near. + Goethe, Dedication to Faust, Part 1,1: Again you approach, you trembling forms.

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JTreud wrote these letters during a period rich in psychoanalytic discoveries—the extraordinarily productive years during which he conceived and composed The Interpretation of Dreams. They describe the process by which he created analytic theory, allowing us to observe the theory in the very act of being created, the very movement of its emergence. It is a movement which is by its nature profoundly enigmatic, even uncanny, and certainly beyond Freud's control: "The psychology is preceding in a strange manner; it is nearly finished, composed as if in a dream."1 The Navel of the Theory Something is revealed in this confidence Freud addresses to, precisely, Flie6, who was to function as a sort of relay in the process by which psychoanalysis—experience or proof of the unconscious*—took shape in Freud's mind. Should we not take the revelation seriously? Should we not, in other words, consider the possibility that the model for the work of analytic theory/ the work by which the theory was created, is to be sought nowhere else than in the dream-work? One must not forget that if dreams are, according to Freud, "the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind," and thus guides to the truth about that protean and intractable object of inquiry, they are nonetheless paradoxical guides, since they are the end products of a process of falsification, distortion, and dissimulation—of, in the final analysis, a lie. Freud's "discourse on method" is a strange one indeed: it would certainly not be disavowed by the evil genius, or a deceitful God with a penchant for practical jokes. * L'epreuve ou les preuves de Vinconscient: punning translation of a phrase, die Erfahrung des Fremden (the experience of the foreign), that Heidegger uses in a discussion of Holderlin. Epreuve means experience, test, or trial; preuve means proof or, sometimes, ordeal. f Le travail de la theorie. The French expression is patterned after the standard French translation of Traumarbeit or dream-work, le travail du rive, but has none of the clumsiness of "theory-work."

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If the way dreams are elaborated serves Freud as a model as he works out his metapsychology, the question of the nature and status of truth in his theory is posed from the outset. It is all the more urgent in that Freud, caught up in a ferment of theoretical speculation and scientific discovery, and, at the same time, the dizzying, barely controllable excitement of his own analysis, punctuates the writing that is the locus and trace of this double movement with quotations from the poets. They appear like little islands that surge abruptly up in his text from God knows what other world; their sudden, irrepressible irruption seems to mark the shadowy spot, the opaque zone where, for Freud, "self-analysis" and theorization are knotted together. In a discussion of dreams, Freud says that there is often a passage in even the most thoroughly interpreted dream which has to be left obscure; this is because we become aware during the work of interpretation that at that point there is a tangle of dream-thoughts which cannot be unravelled and which moreover adds nothing to our knowledge of the content of the dream. This is the dream's navel, the spot where it reaches down into the unknown. The dream-thoughts to which we are led by interpretation cannot, from the nature of things, have any definite endings; they are bound to branch out in every direction into the intricate network of our world of thought. It is at some point where this meshwork is particularly close that the dream-wish grows up, like a mushroom out of its mycelium.2 A bit further on, he says about the process of constructing metapsychology: "But we can console ourselves with the thought that we have been obliged to build our way out into the dark."3 What is this darkness? Does it not alert us, if it is true that the work of theorization and the dream-work proceed analogously, to something in the metapsychological enterprise that would be equivalent to the "dream's navel"? This hypothesis would provide a way of explaining the strategic position the citations from

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FaUst occupy in the economy of Freud's texts, and, consequently, the role they play in the process of theorization. What if the process of working out analytic theory—a heroic labor of elucidation that promises to furnish an instrument capable of "revealing many a secret"—could, like the formation of dreams, be traced back to an obscure point present and active at the heart of the theory itself? This point, surreptitiously exercising its effects on the theory, would be the source of the desire for the theory, and would account for the construction of the metapsychological edifice. It would follow that the beginning, or, more exactly, the point of origin of the theory, is neither external to it (a foundation), nor a stage that Freud goes through and then beyond in order to construct the rest of his theoretical edifice (like, for example, the clear principles of the Cartesian system, laid down once and for all). Rather, the source of the theory would appear to function like the "shadowy mouth"* that speaks out of its own center; it would be "a beginning that never stops beginning," to borrow Octave Manoni's nice phrase. This would further imply that the shadows surrounding the foundations of the metapsychological edifice do not lie outside analytic theory either, which, were that the case, could pose as a pure angel of light. They have rather to be conceived as actively present within it, as the "navel" is active at the center of the dream. One might describe them as a demonic, Lucifer-like force, responsible for the abrupt theoretical advances or "thrusts" which so astonished Freud, and which, like Faust, he sought to conjure up: "Again you approach, you trembling forms."4 This is precisely the experience that constitutes any and every cure: if enlightenment, the undoing of repression, and psychic healing are real possibilities, they become so only through an encounter, in the play of transference and resistance, with that which is necessarily absent from analysis. "Any and every cure" includes Freud's own. He says so * Bouche d'ombre, an allusion to Victor Hugo's poem "Ce que dit la bouche d'ombre" [What the shadowy mouth says]. The "shadowy mouth'7 is an oracular voice that wells up out of the abyss.

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as plainly as possible when he writes in a letter to Fliefi that he himself has experienced everything he has been able to observe in his patients. If, then, analytic theory (and therefore interpretation as well) have a navel just as dreams do, and if the theory is elaborated in ways analogous to those governing the elaboration of dreams or the sudden, exhilarating creation of puns, 5 it appears that the densest point in the "meshwork" of Freud's theory is constituted by the quotations from Faust. This is the place where the thread of his text becomes entwined with the thread of another discourse, forming an inextricable tangle; shooting up out of it, "like the mushroom out of its mycelium," is something which liberates but also checks Freud's theoretical £lan. It seems to me that the quotations from Faust are so many crucial moments in the explosive emergence of Freud's discovery—points of resistance which strangely resemble those Freud refers to in speaking of the dream's navel. Thus Freud, "a writer who is a man of science and not a poet,"6 nevertheless occasionally feels the need, in particularly heady moments, to echo the words of "the great poet,"7 to let Goethe speak in his stead. He yields the floor [donne la parole] to someone else, or, more exactly, allows the words of another to force their way into his text and carve out a path amid his own. This interference of a poet in Freud's affairs certainly qualifies as an act of violence directed against science. It is, perhaps, retaliation for the crime Freud commits in venturing onto the dark, forbidden shores that had hitherto lain under the ban of the sacred; retaliation for his violent attempt to secularize this domain by boldly setting out to transform it into an object of knowledge and tenaciously pursuing the paradoxical task of constructing a theory of the unconscious—a theory that seeks to meet, for such is Freud's avowed intent, exacting standards of scientificity. But perhaps this violence is compensation for damages and acknowledgment of a debt, and, as such, only serves to further the Freudian project. What happens when Freud appropriates the poet's words, in

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which truth flashes forth with startling immediacy? When the man of science has recourse to the poet's insight—a humiliating acknowledgment, perhaps, of his own submission—it is as if the poet, possessing direct and more legitimate channels of communication with the unconscious, had authorized the scientist's research. Appearances notwithstanding, this troubles Freud: And we may well heave a sigh of relief at the thought that it is nevertheless vouchsafed to a few to salvage without effort from the whirlpool of their own feelings the deepest truths, towards which the rest of us have to find our way through tormenting uncertainty and with restless groping.8 The recourse to this alien voice, this discourse radically dissimilar to the discourse of science, enables something to make itself heard there. Were this something left unspoken, the metapsychological project could only end in failure, at least if metapsychology's aim is to make possible an apprehension of the unconscious. "A thought has escaped me. I wanted to write it down, I write instead [au lieu] that it has escaped me."9 As far as Freud's theoretical project is concerned, Goethe's words do in fact mark a place where something has escaped. They thus delimit the site where metapsychological writing can arise—as something which necessarily falls short of its object. But at the same time—and, in this sense, it is indeed "easy to do things with words,"10 with the poet's, at any rate—the quotations from Goethe provide something like a set of rules for reading Freud's metapsychology. It is this which permits metapsychology to make good its wager: to be, in a word, an imaginary map of the unconscious.

"In the Beginning Was the Deed" Poetic language recurs insistently in Freud's writings. Traditionally associated with the language of oracles—that formida-

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bly efficacious language which contains secret knowledge it refuses to disclose even as it utters it—poetry furnishes Freud the Ariadne's thread that guides him safely through the dark labyrinth of his investigations. If he ultimately succeeds in turning the ancient province of the magic spell (of the word) into the secular form of metapsychology—the Witch metapsychology, let us not forget—the reason is that he never lets go of this guiding thread: the link between words and the drive, a link which makes words acts. The word which makes things happen: there is the matrix of analytic theory. It is thus a theory which reestablishes connections.with something Plato excluded from the theoretical domain when he chased the poets and other magicians out of his Republic. The presence of the poet's words at the heart of Freud's theory means nothing more nor less than a reunion between theory and these exiles from the Republic. Thus the poetry Freud appropriates bears the weight of various determinations in his text. It functions as a metaphor for analytic discourse [la parole analytique]; but it also serves as a bridge, at the heart of theoretical discourse, between the language of analytic theory and practice. Moreover, when Freud quotes lines from Goethe, he uses these very quotations to indicate what is at stake in his use of them. Here is what Freud, addressing himself to an imaginary "Impartial Person" hearing about analysis for the first time, says about the cure: Nothing takes place between [analyst and patient] except that they talk to each other. . . . The analyst agrees upon a fixed regular hour with the patient, gets him to talk, listens to him, talks to him in his turn and gets him to listen. The Impartial Person's features now show signs of unmistakable relief and relaxation, but they also clearly betray some contempt. It is as though he were thinking: "Nothing more than that? Words, words, words, as Prince Hamlet says." And no doubt he is thinking too of Mephistopheles' mocking speech on how comfortably one can get along with words. . . .

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21

"So it is a kind of magic/7 he comments; "you talk, and blow away his ailments." Quite true. It would be magic if it worked rather quicker. . . . And incidentally let us not despise the word. After all it is a powerful instrument; it is the means by which we convey our feelings to one another, our method of influencing other people. Words can do unspeakable good and cause terrible wounds. No doubt in the beginning was the deed and the word came later; in some circumstances it meant an advance in civilization when deeds were softened into words. But originally the word was magic—a magical act; and it has retained much of its ancient power.11 Several points call for attention here. First of all, one notes that the allusion to Faust does not take the form of a quotation,* but is seamlessly integrated into Freud's own text. "No doubt, in the beginning was the deed," Freud tells us, "and the word came later." This affirmation, which Freud presents as if it bore the stamp of certainty, comes up abruptly in his text. Where does it come from? The context in which it occurs suggests that to reject it would be to question the basic status of the analytic enterprise, presented in one and the same movement as a pact between doctor and patient, and a developing theory of the unconscious, inextricably bound up with that pact. Of course, what is involved here is a quotation, or, rather, a borrowing from Goethe's Faust— a borrowing we find again, in inverted commas this time, at the end of Totem and Taboo. "In the beginning was the deed": the line is taken from the scene where we see Faust, in his study, trying to produce a new, more accurate translation of the Bible. The whole of Goethe's thought is summed up there. But, above all, to the extent that poetry, welling up from the depths of the psyche, is a form of action as much as a form of knowledge—to the extent that the word is, in poetic discourse, a * The Standard Edition puts quotation marks around "in the beginning was the deed"; this is a departure from Freud's text.

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force or act—poetry fulfills a double function for Freud. First, because it is simultaneously thought and action, it forges a metaphorical bond between the language that operates within the framework of the analytic pact (emanating from the couch as well as the armchair) and the discourse which makes up analytic theory, the ongoing elaboration of metapsychological thought. Second, and for the same reasons, poetry functions within the general economy of Freud's text both as a source of truth and clarity, and as a dark power, a magic spell, a "shadowy mouth" that, as the moving force behind his writing, makes it burst forth like the mushroom shooting up out of its stalk. Thus the development of analytic theory, whose objective is clarification, would appear to be tied to these formulaic, "umbilical" utterances: the theory is grafted onto that "other" language—irreducible, saturated with the force of obscure drives, resistant to clarification— which poetry is. Freud's quotations from the poets are, then, overdetermined elements in his text. Caught up in multiple associative chains, they are the very locus of that "factory of thoughts" he evokes in analyzing the "dream of the botanical monograph." There, too, he cites Faust: A thousand threads one treadle throws, Where fly the shuttles hither and thither, Unseen the threads are knit together, And an infinite combination grows.12 The foregoing will perhaps have suggested the crucial importance, in the progressive unfolding of Freud's discovery, of the work accomplished by his quotations from the poets. This "quotation-work" is what permits the word to appear as the direct representative of the drive at the heart of Freud's theoretical writing. To put it clearly, this means that the essential, intimate core of metapsychological discourse is nothing other than the words exchanged in the cure, words which have "retained much of [their] ancient power." Poetry forges, at once symbolically and literally, an indissoluble union between the two faces of Freud's

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23

discourse: the discourse of the analyst who interprets and thus produces concrete effects, and that of the theorist whose aim is to explain and clarify. But, by virtue of the work it performs in Freud's writing, poetry shows us something else again: it reveals that even if Freud's theoretical discourse seems to found and validate his practical analytic discourse, the opposite is in fact the case. The word-act, directly invested with the energy of the drive and so linked to the unknown, makes up the kernel of the theoretical discourse, which can have validity only if it effectively recognizes the blind spot from which it springs. We are, perhaps, beginning to see why Freud will say of the Witch metapsychology that she can "tame the drive." At the same time, we can see why this "taming of the drive" should have failed so miserably in, for example, Dora's case. Discussing the case in a letter to FlieS, Freud declared that it had "smoothly opened to the existing collection of picklocks."13 In other words, it offered an openand-shut illustration of a theory which boasted that it could account for this case with perfect clarity. Yet it was precisely here that analytic theory would be stymied and then overwhelmed— in a word, put shamefully to rout—because it had failed to give due recognition to the absolute priority of practical analytic discourse.

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3 In Mephisto's Grip

Li Goethe's words are acts at the heart of Freud's text, and, at the same time, constitute what can only be called "tangles of thought" in the tissue of metapsychological elaboration, it would seem imperative to determine as precisely as possible how the conceptual labor and theoretical enterprise organized around these "umbilical" words are cathected by the drives.* More exactly, we need to ask what role the two drives, Eros and the destructive drive, play in Freud's theoretical project. We need, that is, to determine how the drives manifest their presence within the Freudian undertaking as a whole. The question is all the more delicate in that it goes hand in hand with another: how do these same drives operate in the cure, where it falls to the "Witch metapsychology" to bring about "the taming of the drive"? What is a Witch doing here? And—to continue to speak in figurative terms—what sort of relations does the "Witch" maintain with Eros, and with Mephistopheles, "spirit of perpetual negation"? In other words, how is the play of the drives in the cure linked up with the play of the (sublimated) drives in the theoretical enterprise? * Pulsion, the generally accepted French translation of the German Trieb. I have as a rule changed "instinct," the Standard Edition's rendition of Trieb, to "drive," the equivalent of pulsion.

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The Ariadne's thread in this labyrinth: the curious relationship Freud maintains with Mephistopheles throughout his work, the key, no doubt, to his relationship with Faust. An uncannily intimate relationship: this is attested by the fact that the majority of Freud's references to Goethe's Faust involve lines spoken by the character who responds to Faust's "Well, who are you then?" by introducing himself as follows: A part of that power which would Forever be doing evil, and is forever doing good . . . I'm the spirit of perpetual negation! And it's well that I am: for everything created Deserves to be annihilated: Which is why it'd be better if nothing ever came to be.1 For starters, a reminder to help situate Mephisto's appearances in Freud's work. Dr. Faust, "to whom many a secret was revealed,"2 is engaged in a quest to, as Freud puts it, "transform the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life."3 Faust thus appears as a positive, heroic figure, even if his fate is a tragic one. Simplifying for the moment—we will attend to the nuances later on—we may say that Faust is a character dominated, in Freud's view, by Eros, the life drive. But one must immediately add that Faust also figures eternally insatiable desire, and that, his association with Eros notwithstanding, he strikes a bargain with the devil. It also bears emphasizing that Mephistopheles is Faust's other self; the devil's black, grimacing face is the face of Faust's double. And if it is the identification with Faust that is, for Freud, the pleasant, narcissistically gratifying one, it is nonetheless Mephisto who most often serves as his spokesperson. What does this imply? What does Mephistopheles' uncanny, diabolical figure represent? What roles does he play? Let us note, while we are at it, that Freud very often describes his exploration of the psyche as an exploration of the infernal regions. Given the nature of the relationship between Faust and Meph-

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istopheles, the latter would appear to have a threefold function within the economy of Freud's discourse. First, as the incarnation of a "driving force," as a demon, or, to quote one of Freud's letters to Fliefi, "hobbyhorse"4—but a hobbyhorse of the sort that takes complete possession of one's being—Mephisto is the representative of the world of the drives, as Freud defines that world when he says that "the characteristic of exercising pressure is common to all drives; it is in fact their very essence."5 The second point, closely related, of course, to the first, is that Mephistopheles behaves as if he were the repressed—Faust's repressed—struggling to return. Finally, a major characteristic of Mephisto's repeatedly singled out by Freud permits us to make the foregoing more precise in one important respect: Mephistopheles incarnates not only the drives in general, but, more particularly, the drive to destroy. It is for these three reasons, in my view, that Mephisto is woven into the very fabric of Freud's thought. I propose to examine these closely related features of Goethe's devil in greater detail. Taken together, they offer a representation or illustration of what Freud was to name, significantly, the "id." The illustration is, to be sure, partial, but it is both forceful and eminently well suited to Freud's ends: determined to penetrate the secrets of the psythe, he needs the kind of prop offered by a sharply etched image that carries meaning in the domain of myth or fiction and so can serve as an analogy or "living metaphor," to adopt Ricoeur's nice expression. Example: Mephisto's Entrance and the Return of the Repressed Let us turn our attention for a moment to the scene in which Mephistopheles appears before Faust in his study, and then examine the impact it had on Freud—more or less without his conscious knowledge. Everything is swaddled in the darkness of night. Faust enters his study with a poodle. The dog will not keep quiet:

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Stop that growling, poodle! Sacred tones Compass my soul round. It's ill attuned with them, that beastly sound. A bit later, Faust picks up a New Testament: "The Spirit aids me—now I see how the line should read / And I write, comforted, Tn the beginning was the deed.'" There follows this monologue: Poodle, if this room is to be yours and mine, Don't whine, And leave off that barking, do you hear me? I can't stand having company anywhere near me As noxious as yours. I'm afraid one of us must be turned out of doors. And though it does grieve me To suspend the laws of hospitality, The door's open, you're free to take the air. But what do I see there! Can that occur in nature? Is it a shade, or a living creature? How my poodle's grown long and fat! And now he stands up, just like that! That's not a dog's body! What a spook I've brought home with me! Now he appears in a hippopotamus' guise With ghastly maw and fiery eyes. Oh, but I shall get the better of you yet. . . If I'm to confront the creature I'll need the Charm of the Four . . . None of the Four Spirits Seems to be lodged in it; It lies there quite calmly and grins up at me . . . My friend, have you fled the hell Where such as you dwell? Then behold this sign

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Before which incline The black bands! Its fur bristles, the creature expands . . . Behind the oven, where, banished, it lies, It starts to swell up; now it's elephant-size, And fills the entire room. And now what it's after Is to dissolve into vapor. Don't go climbing up into the rafters! Lie down here at the feet of your master!6 Here Mephisto enters, dressed like a student. What one sees taking form in the extraordinarily powerful images of this striking scene is the triple point of view—topical, dynamic, and economic—that metapsychology will slowly, gropingly, laboriously construct. Indeed, I would hazard the suggestion that what comes into view here, in a flash of that poetic intuition to which Freud often paid wistful tribute, is an instantaneous condensation of the patiently worked out concepts of metapsychological theory. Instantaneous and visionary—like that moment in the Witch's Kitchen when Faust glimpses, in a magic glass, the images of all the women in the world, compounded in the single image of Helen's face. An imaginative vision so complete and so precise in its details that it will function as the matrix, so to speak, of Freud's thought—its overall strategy as well as its style. One can even discern this vision, in filigree, in Freud's clinical and theoretical investigations, where it appears substantially unaltered, and, what is more, plays an active, productive role. In the scene we have just read, Faust attempts to subdue an alien force that is frightening, dangerous, bestial, protean, and uncontrollable. It surges up out of the night, overruns everything, and refuses to let itself be caught, only to end up surrendering, or so it seems, after a struggle between hopelessly mismatched adversaries. Before Mephistopheles makes his appearance in student's garb, he goes through a series of monstrous transformations; Faust, ridiculously weak and alone in the

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face of this "formless and multiform" power, nevertheless strives to bring it under his control. Let us now read, before making any sort of commentary on this scene, a number of diferent texts written by Freud in the period when he was just beginning his investigations and still working with hypnosis, and also at later stages of his career. In 1892, Freud says this: In accordance with the tendency to a dissociation of consciousness in hysteria, the distressing antithetic idea, which seems to be inhibited, is removed from association with the intention and continues to exist as a disconnected idea, often unconsciously to the patient himself. . . . It is supremely characteristic of hysteria that, when it comes to the carrying out of the intention, the inhibited antithetic idea can put itself into effect by innervation of the body just as easily as does a volitional idea in normal circumstances. The antithetic idea establishes itself, so to speak, as a "counterwill," while the patient is aware with astonishment of having a will which is resolute but powerless.7 Later in the same text, Freud describes the "counterwill" as the source of a "daemonic" trait that makes his hysterical patients "the helpless victims of their antithetical ideas."8 In the notion of counterwill, one already glimpses the outlines of what Freud will later identify, in his metapsychology, as one of the "vicissitudes" of the drive, which reappears, after repression has occurred, in the form of a "derivative of the repressed." The set of relations between the ego and what Freud calls, in 1892, the "counterwill," whether it is regarded from a topical, economic, or dynamic point of view, seems quite clearly to be a point-by-point transposition of the encounter between Faust and Mephisto that I evoked a moment ago: the counterwill is terrifying, the derivative of the repressed unrecognizable. The parallels between Freud's discussion and the scene from Faust stand out even more sharply when one looks closely at certain of Freud's metapsychological writings, notably "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes":

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Psycho-analysis is able to show us other things as well which are important for understanding the effects of repression in the psychoneuroses. It shows us, for instance, that the representative of the drive develops with less interference and more profusely if it is withdrawn by repression from conscious influence, It proliferates in the dark, as it were, and takes on extreme forms of expression, which when they are translated and presented to the neurotic are not only bound to seem alien to him, but frighten him by giving him the picture that the drives possess extraordinary and dangerous strength.9 To this one may add Freud's affirmation that "the characteristic of exercising pressure is common to all drives; it is in fact their very essence." One may also add that, in the wake of repression, the drive engenders myriad, infinitely varied, mobile derivatives, precisely so as to be able to express itself without "letting itself be caught." It thus fools the ego, which is startled by a secret, deformed, protean shadow it fails to recognize as its own. When all this is taken into account, it becomes clear that Freud's metapsychological theorization is powerfully reminiscent of the fascinating, uncanny couple formed by Faust and Mephistopheles. Imagine now what will happen if this powerless ego experiences a demand which the drive puts to it from the id, which it would already like to resist (because it senses that to satisfy it is dangerous and would conjure up a traumatic situation, a collision with the external world), but which it cannot control, because it does not yet possess enough strength to do so. In such a case the ego treats the danger represented by the drive as if it was an external one; it makes an attempt at flight, draws back from this portion of the id and leaves it to its fate, after withholding from it all the contributions which it usually makes to impulses rooted in the drives. The ego, as we put it, institutes a repression of these impulses. . . . The repressed impulse is now isolated, left to itself, inaccessible, but also uninfluenceable. . . .

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Nor does the isolated impulse remain idle; it understands how to make up for being denied normal satisfaction; it produces psychical derivatives which take its place; it links itself to other processes which by its influence it likewise tears away from the ego; and finally it breaks through into the ego and into consciousness in the form of an unrecognizably distorted substitute, and creates what we call a symptom.... the ego has made an attempt to suppress certain portions of the id in an inappropriate manner, this attempt has failed and the id has taken its revenge.10 This long, complex process is presented here by way of a careful elaboration of a metapsychological concept. Eminently suggestive, rich in imagery, the description of this process transposes into the linearity of theoretical discourse the seminal core offered to Freud's contemplation by the scene from Faust discussed above, especially by the bizarre struggle between Faust and Mephistopheles. (As such, it forcibly recalls the transformation dreams undergo when they are recounted.) Everything is to be found in this scene: the conflict between the "ego" and the "id," and also the return of the repressed which occurs after the act of repression that alienates the "id" (in the literal sense of the word "alienates"). In short, the scene from Faust depicts that "vicissitude of the drive" constituted by repression. An unconscious echo* of Faust, then—one which has just as powerful an influence on the way Freud organizes and directs his therapeutic work: If these derivatives have become sufficiently far removed from the repressed epresentative, whether owing to the adoption of distortions or by reason of the number of intermediate links inserted, they have free access to the conscious. . . . In carrying out the technique of psycho-analysis, we continually require the * Reminiscence, which, besides the usual meaning of "reminiscence," denotes, in psychology, the resurgence of a memory whose origin is unknown.

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patient to produce such derivatives of the repressed as, in consequence either of their remoteness or of their distortion, can pass the censorship of the conscious.11 Furthermore, the transference, in which the essential dynamic of the cure resides, owes its existence to that which has been the most energetically quelled, pushed back furthest into the unconscious. The object of the cure, as it is eventually conceived, will be to achieve the "taming of the drive" evoked in "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" by, precisely, concluding a pact with it, and mastering the difficult art of using it to one's own ends. This art is the "Witch metapsychology's." Elsewhere, Freud also says this: The patient is repeating in the form of falling in love with the analyst mental experiences which he has already been through once before; he has transferred on to the analyst mental attitudes that were lying ready in him and were intimately connected with his neurosis. He is also repeating before our eyes his old defensive actions; he would like best to repeat in his relation to the analyst all the history of that forgotten period of his life. So what he is showing us is the kernel of his intimate life history; he is reproducing it tangibly, as though it were actually happening, instead of remembering it. What we have here is, plainly, real theater. Freud adds: To send the patient away as soon as the inconveniences of his transference-neurosis make their appearance would be no more sensible [than evading the transference!, and would moreover be cowardly. It would be as though one had conjured up spirits and run away from them as soon as they appeared.12 To conjure up spirits, but also to do one's utmost to exorcise them, and then, when this proves impossible, to harness their energies to one's own ends: this is exactly what Faust does.

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Freud too takes up the challenge involved in striking a bargain with the blackest, most infernal, most diabolical of all the spirits. And, to "break the power" of certain "evil spirits," he learns, from the Witch metapsychology, to "tell them their name—the name which they have kept secret."13 We have thus shed some light on one of the first questions that arises about the general sense and import of Mephistopheles' insistent presence within the Freudian enterprise. Manifested now in the form of citations, now in the underlying structures of Freud's thought, Mephisto's presence—which Freud says nothing about, but is nevertheless acutely aware of—lends form to the formless, gives a name to the unnameable, puts a face on what would otherwise vanish into thin air, and enables Freud to make good his paradoxical wager: to build up, in the form of a theory, a body of knowledge about the unconscious, in order to reveal the possible contours of something that refuses to be pinned down. Precisely because Mephistopheles appears in action, at moments when things are taking a dramatic turn, and in dynamic interrelation with Faust, whom Freud admires and internalizes through a process of identification, it becomes possible for Freud to develop the triple point of view—topical, economic, and dynamic—that constitutes metapsychological explanation. Mephistopheles offers an extraordinarily apt image of the obscure forces that well up out of the deepest reaches of the unconscious; Faust's reactions to what he says and does felicitously figure the diverse facets or moments of the ego's operations visa-vis the drives. One can easily see/then, why Freud, who takes this emblematic couple as his guide, should so often punctuate the exposition of his ideas with the very words Mephistopheles pronounces in the scene with the student—a scene in which Mephisto appears, precisely, in Faust's clothing. The way Freud weaves Mephistopheles' words into the fabric of what he himself says reenacts this confusion between Mephisto and Faust: time and again, he quotes lines spoken by Mephisto in such a way as to suggest that they might also have been spoken by Faust, omitting, more often than not, to tell us who they in fact belong to.

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One might, perhaps, identify this as the key to the mystery Freud is at pains to pierce: that of the relations between "id" and "ego," which, let us recall, originally made up a single entity, according to Freud, and were subsequently differentiated only as the result of repression. The "id" agitates the "ego" without the ego's knowledge, sometimes invading the "ego" and imposing itself upon it. But it is no less true that all the energy of the "ego," the whole of the force it marshals against the "id," is nothing other than the force of the "id" itself. Therein lies the supreme ruse of the drive.14 This sheds still more light, if more be needed, on the significance of Freud's appeal to the "crafty, malicious" Mephistopheles; it allows one to interpret with considerable confidence the continual references, in Freud's writings, to the famous scene with the student.

"Life Is Its Loveliest Invention, and Death Its Artifice for Producing Life in Abundance"15 But Mephistopheles is not only a "crafty, malicious spirit" whose habit of materializing out of nowhere to cook up his plots provides a singularly apt image for the tortuous paths traced by the repressed drive. He is also—-the two things doubtless go hand in hand—a "spirit of perpetual negation." In other words, Mephistopheles represents not only the force of the drives in general, but more specifically, as Freud emphasizes, the destructive drive. The latter is one of the forms taken by the death drive, which cannot be apprehended in unmediated form: In Goethe's Mephistopheles we have a quite exceptionally convincing identification of the principle of evil with the destructive instinct: For all things, from the Void Called forth, deserve to be destroyed . . . Thus, all which you as Sin have rated—

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Destruction,—aught with Evil blent,— That is my proper element. The Devil himself names as his adversary, not what is holy and good, but Nature's power to create, to multiply life—that is, Eros: From Water, Earth, and Air unfolding, A thousand germs break forth and grow, In dry, and wet, and warm, and chilly; And had I not the Flame reserved, why, really, There's nothing special of my own to show.16 There is no more delicate question in Freud's metapsychology—the "Witch metapsychology"—than the question of the dualism of the drives, or, in other words, the idea that there exists a death drive which takes tangible form in the drive to destroy. What might the status of such a drive be? Is it possible to assign it a function, and if so, which? What kind of relations subsist between the death drive and Eros, the life drive? What, with regard to the pleasure principle, is it appropriate to call life drive, what death drive? And in what way is the Eros/Mephistopheles antithesis implicated in the antagonism between "id" and "ego"? Again, does the destructive drive come into play in the direction of the cure and the act of interpretation itself? If so, how? However shocking this last question might seem, it is not as incongruous as would appear at first blush. To convince oneself of this, one has only to consider a dream such as "the dream of Irma's injection"; the least one can say is that it is hardly calculated to allay misgivings about the therapeutic value of analysis.17 Finally, does hate play a part in that very special form of sublimation represented by the theoretical undertaking itself? If so, how important a part? A goodly number of complicated questions, then, which are, moreover, intricately interlinked. Pursuing our study of the way Mephisto repeatedly turns up in Freud's strategy will doubtless help us disentangle this snarled web. Two brief remarks to begin with. Goethe doubtless presents 36

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Mephistopheles as a negative, destructive force, a figure who incarnates what Freud calls "the general wish to negate" or "negativism," "sign of a defusion of drives that has taken place through a withdrawal of the libidinal components," which are associated, for their part, with Eros.18 But, for one thing, Mephistopheles appears from the very beginning of Goethe's play as a necessary, stimulating element in the scheme of Creation; he is thus integrated in paradoxically productive fashion into an order that promotes life. Moreover—this is my second remark—we cannot content ourselves with the observation that the bargain is struck between Mephistopheles, who incarnates the death drive (in the form of hatred), and Faust, who, animated by Eros, is a veritable reservoir of libido. For their pact, which is made after Faust has decided to put off his suicide and which doubtless dooms him to the eternal death of damnation, is nonetheless sealed with Faust's blood, a substance that represents life itself. Furthermore, the object of the pact is a union for life, a union which, while it may well be anything but harmonious, is nevertheless indestructible. Thus, by the terms of the pact, Mephistopheles devotes himself to the service of a Faust whose burning desire is to live a life that knows neither limits nor repose: Let us slake glowing passions In sensuality's abyss. . . . Let us throw ourselves into time's rush and whir, Unpredictable reality's rolling surge. . . . I consecrate myself to the fray, the most painfully pleasurable sensations, Hate steeped in love, quickening frustration. From now on my heart, cured of the rage to know, Will not be shut to any sort of woe; The portion meted out to humanity as a whole, I want to taste it in my inmost soul, To find room for the loftiest and basest in my mind, Pile on my breast the joys and sorrows of humankind, Stretch my self till it becomes that of the whole human race And like it, in the end, perish without a trace.19 In Mephisto's Grip

yj

What Faust is feeling here, in this instant before the bargain is struck—this Faustian profession of faith that Freud too, perhaps, made his when he threw himself into psychoanalysis—might well be read in the light of the following few lines: "A strong egoism is a protection against falling ill, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order not to fall ill; and we are bound to fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we are unable to love."20 We need to pause for a moment to consider Faust's character and development if we are to acquire a firmer grasp on the nature and significance of Mephisto's role in Freud's work. Once we have discovered the meaning of this metaphor, we will be in a position to understand something of the final "vicissitude" of the death drive; for it is Mephistopheles' shade which is haunting Freud when he gives himself over to metapsychological speculation—or phantasying—and elaborates his theory of the drives. Mephisto can be seen lurking behind what Freud calls the death drive, which may be defined—in part—as the drive to destroy. Let us, then, briefly review the situation Faust is in when he turns to Mephistopheles for help, since—such is my hypothesis, at any rate—this situation played for Freud, more or less without his conscious knowledge, the role of a fruitful paradigm in the process that gave birth to psychoanalysis. I showed earlier how Mephistopheles comes to represent one possible vicissitude of the drive, namely, repression. This enabled us to understand that the tie binding Mephisto to Faust is of a necessary, not contingent, nature. I also repeatedly put forward the idea that many of Freud's texts, especially the metapsychological essay "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes," owe the underlying structure of their argument to the continuing influence of Goethe's play on Freud. I will now pursue this point a bit further in connection with "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes" by analyzing the dramatic situation that leads to Mephisto's coming forward as an embodiment of the destructive drive, or unbound aggressiveness. A second possible vicissitude of the drive discussed by Freud in this essay also emerges in outline in Faust:

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the transformation of love (Eros, libido) into hate (Mephisto), the sublation of the one by the other. Like everything that touches on the death drive, this is a delicate question, one discussed, developed, arid defined more sharply in other texts by Freud. The strands I shall now proceed to weave together will enable us to map the configuration of relations between two possible vicissitudes of the drive, repression and the transformation of love into hate, with regard to the opposition pleasure/unpleasure and the dualism of the drives. The reason these two vicissitudes of the drive can be approached from this angle is that, in the fantastic model which nourishes and actively sustains Freud's theoretical imagination, the same character, the same diabolical, enigmatic figure incarnates both of them. He thus provides us a way of accounting for their intimate interconnection; his own development brings their secret to light. Before examining the pact and the circumstances leading up to it, let us turn back to the role "the spirit of perpetual negation" plays in the divine economy. For Goethe, this spirit is a life-creating force: it is the "power to create, to multiply life," as Freud spells out in the same note in Civilization and Its Discontents in which he indicates that Mephisto incarnates the drive to destroy. When he hands that "madman" Dr. Faust over to Mephistopheles, the Lord, it will be recalled, says this: Should you want to come by, don't hesitate, I've never hated those of your stripe. Of all the spirits who negate, I'm least put off by the crafty, malicious type. It's all too easy for men to bring their activity to a level Approaching absolute zero, for they love their rest, Which is why I like to send them the sort of partner and pest Who irritates and agitates and has to work like the devil.21 In his discussion of the dualism of the drives, Freud also refers to Empedocles of Agrigentum, whom he associates with "Dr. Faust":

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But the theory of Empedocles which especially deserves our interest is one which approximates so closely to the psychoanalytical theory of the drives that we should be tempted to maintain that the two are identical, if it were not for the difference that the Greek philosopher's theory is a cosmic phantasy while ours is content to claim biological validity.22 The doctrine of Empedocles alluded to here treats of the alternation and complementarity of the two principles ruling the universe: love and discord. Recast in terms of the theory of the drives, this comes out as follows: These phenomena23 are unmistakable indications of the presence of a power in mental life which we call the aggressive or destructive drive according to its aims. . . . It is not a question of an antithesis between an optimistic and a pessimistic theory of life. Only by the concurrent or mutually opposing action of the two primal drives—Eros and the death drive—never by the one or the other alone, can we explain the rich multiplicity of the phenomena of life.24 It is plain that, over and above the reference to Empedocles, Goethe's philosophy of nature casts its shadow upon this passage, by way of all the various memories of Faust that haunt Freud. This will hardly surprise us, if we recall Freud's confession of the youthful enthusiasm Goethe's essay Nature aroused in him and its decisive influence on his decision to study medicine. In Goethe's play, Mephistopheles is doubtless presented as a destructive character, but he is also shown to be involved, more or less necessarily, in an affirmation of life. He is "the spirit of perpetual negation"; he holds that "everything created / Deserves to be annihilated"; yet, despite himself, his actions are in a certain way co-opted by the forces of life, even if he sometimes vengefully evens the score. "New, fresh blood is always in circulation / And on and on it goes; it's enough to drive one mad," he exclaims.25 The upshot is that if Mephisto is forever trying to untie the bonds forged by Eros, to reduce the sound and fury of life 40

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to silence and death, his incessantly repeated efforts ultimately constitute, precisely, a triumph for Eros, because they represent, not rest or immobility, but rather a living force. It is as if we saw a veritable eroticization of the death drive taking place before our eyes. Hence Mephistopheles also incarnates what Freud will call the "beyond" of the pleasure principle. And here the scene in Faust's study swells up out of the shadows—the scene in which Faust, after selling himself to the devil, cries that he is going to give himself over to "the most painfully pleasurable sensations," "hate steeped in love." Mephistopheles, who has donned Faust's clothing for the student's benefit, offers the following commentary: That's it, hold the arts and sciences in contempt, They're humankind's supreme source of strength. Let him throw glittering sand in your eyes, With his magician's razzle-dazzle, the Father of lies. That way I'll have you under my thumb for good.— He's been given the sort of spirit by fate Which presses forward ever unsubdued, Plunges on all too eagerly, and doesn't hesitate To trample the pleasures of this world underfoot. I'll drag him through life's most savage states, Through times when everything seems flat and silly, Till he gets stuck, twists and turns, goes stiff; and while he's in these straits, I'll dangle before his insatiability Meat and drink his famished lips can't wait To devour, and let him beg in vain to eat. Yes, even if a deal with the Devil weren't there to complicate Matters, in the end he'd still go down to defeat.26 Mephisto, Faust's Servant: Pleasure Principle and Repetition Compulsion It is precisely this passionate tirade, or, more precisely, the most significant sentence in it, which suddenly makes its appearIn Mephisto's Grip

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ance in chapter 5 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Freud writes there: The repressed drive never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive formations and no sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed drive's persisting tension; and it is the difference in amount between the pleasure of satisfaction which is demanded and that which is actually achieved that provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at any position attained, but, in the poet's words, ungebiindigt immer vorwarts dringt [presses forward ever unsubdued]. The backward path that leads to complete satisfaction is as a rule obstructed by the resistances which maintain the repressions. So there is no alternative but to advance in the direction in which growth is still free—though with no prospect of bringing the process to a conclusion or of being able to reach the goal.27 The driving character which, as the name indicates, is the essence of the drive, has its locus, Freud indicates, beyond the pleasure principle. That the tension of the drive should be compulsively repeated is owing to tendencies which are both more fundamental than the pleasure principle and independent of it. This repetition compulsion beyond the pleasure principle— Freud calls it "daemonic" at several points in the text—arises as a direct consequence of two factors: first/the violent intrusion of life into the stillness of the inanimate; second, primal repression, which blocks direct satisfaction of the drive. Satisfying it would mean reducing the violent movement of life as quickly as possible to the stillness and tranquillity of the death preceding life. The repetition compulsion lies beyond the pleasure principle because it sustains tension (desire) by repeating rather than sating it (compare the speech by Mephisto that I evoked earlier: "I'll dangle before his insatiability / Meat and drink his famished lips can't wait / To devour, and let him beg in vain to eat"). This is so because the barriers thrown up by primal repression, barriers 42

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which are the basic condition for any vital process, have made true satisfaction, which is absolutely regressive, entirely impossible; the movement of the drive is accordingly constrained to repeat itself incessantly, or even to become more intense, because there will always be a gap between the satisfaction sought and that achieved. This explains why Mephistopheles finds himself, against his will, in the service of the power that creates and multiplies life ("I like to send them the sort of partner and pest / Who irritates and agitates and has to work like the devil"). Or, to put it in metapsychological terms, this is why "the concurrent action of the two primal drives" ultimately ensures the victory— after encountering many a snag, to be sure, and many a setback due to resistance—of the life drive, which uses its adversary, as it were, to its own ends. As for this adversary/it scores, when all is said and done, a partial victory at best. For if "the action of the drives as a whole serves to bring about death"—if, accordingly, the pleasure principle and this "beyond" of the pleasure principle which sustains life by seeking its opposite both tend toward extinction and death—"what we are left with," according to Freud, "is the fact that the organism wishes to die only in its own fashion," even if "these guardians of life, too, were originally the myrmidons of death."28 Thus one can derive, from the postulate that life aspires to death and the quietude of the inanimate, both the pleasure principle and, more paradoxically but no less easily, that which lies beyond the pleasure principle. Freud can therefore write: "We have no longer to reckon with the organism's puzzling determination (so hard to fit into any context) to maintain its own existence in the face of every obstacle."29 Is this to be read as straightforwardly as it seems to be presented? Or should it also be read as a denegation? For the moment, the question must remain open. A "Scientific Fairy Tale" (Krafft-Ebing on Freud's Description of the Etiology of Hysteria) Freud justifies engaging in all this speculation as follows: "It is surely possible to throw oneself into a line of thought and In Mephisto's Grip

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to follow it wherever it leads out of simple scientific curiosity, or, if the reader so prefers, as an advocatus diaboli, who is not on that account himself sold to the devil."30 Yet his line of thought follows a course exactly parallel to that taken by the evolving relationship between Faust and Mephistopheles; it is almost as if the one were directly patterned after the other. Indeed, one can say that the structure of Freud's theory of the drives, as well as the strangest, most obscure points in his theoretical speculations, automatically become clearer when put back into the context of the adventures of Faust and Mephistopheles. We are authorized to place them in that context by Freud himself: one need only make use of the keys he offers, the quotations from Faust, which come up at the most critical moments in his argument, betraying an affinity one will in any case surmise if one assembles and links these quotations while relating them to the play as a whole. In the play, Mephisto clearly appears as the "derivative" of an act of primary "repression" which has resulted in a transformation of love into hate; that is the essence of what it means to be a devil, a fallen angel expelled from the original Paradise. ("Strange son of chaos," is how Faust apostrophizes Mephistopheles.31) As an incarnation of the principle of desire, Mephisto participates, despite himself, in life's ferment. Yet he is not privy to its secret: to conclude his business with Faust, he must turn to the Witch for help. For his part, Faust, disgusted by science, does not manage to die and find peace (he doesn't drink the brown potion); in the grip of an insatiable desire, he longs to begin a new and anything but peaceful life. This is where Mephistopheles comes in: the bargain Faust strikes with him allies the destructive drive, with its sadistic aims, to Eros. It thus seals an intricate alliance between the two drives at the heart of a situation born of the process that sparked the transformation of love into hate. Here are the terms Mephisto uses to describe Faust: Truly, the fool serves you in a curious way. He doesn't eat the same stuff as other creatures of clay. His spirit bubbles and boils and drives him afar.

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He's half aware that his head's not quite right; From Heaven, he wants the most beautiful stars, And, from Earth, all the choicest delights. And nothing, whether near or far, Can fulfil his heart's wish or cure his heart's blight.32 Mephistopheles, then, appears on the scene to take possession of Faust, who, carried away by his devotion to science, has turned his back on life and love. He leads Faust to the Witch: she is an eerie feminine figure, Mephisto is "the spirit of perpetual negation." Turning back, now, to Freud's theorization, we observe that the drive to destroy, for its part, results from a complex interaction between the life and death drives. The thrust of the drive or the libido, articulated with the pleasure principle, is toward reestablishing a primordial state characterized by the absence of tension. Thus it may be metaphorically described as a movement of return to the mother. (In this sense, Eros and the death drive are one and the same.) But the drive is disappointed, or, as it were, deceived by the unbearable movement of life. The consequence is that the libido and the aspiration to die, locked in furious combat, both undergo an internal division. Eros is transformed into unbound aggressiveness (Mephisto) beyond the pleasure principle; isolated as a result of that transformation, the death drive is eroticized and transformed into a desire to destroy. The destructive drive is thus entrapped and forced to serve the libido by giving expression to it, not the pleasure principle. This is precisely the scene played out by our anything but idyllic duo, Faust and Mephistopheles. Their pact and subsequent appeal to the Witch doggedly repeat the quest for a place or state of existence in which the force of desire and the fullness of pleasure would not be irremediably separate—a quest which is inherently thwarted, Utopian, vain. It is this story which demands to be read between the lines of Freudian metapsychology. Behind the speculation that allows Freud to work out his theory of the drives and the struggle between Eros and the death drive—which he quite explicitly calls "Mephistopheles"—one

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detects the active presence of a fantastic poetic vision. What is more, this vision is cast in dramatic form; its power derives from the fact that it is inscribed in the place where dreams or fantasies—the visual—and language intersect. This place is the theater. The psyche, Freud never tired of repeating, is in essence unconscious, consciousness being nothing more than one of its contingent attributes. To the extent that one accepts this "basic shibboleth" of psychoanalysis, one must also concede that everything the conscious mind elaborates has its roots in regions which remain hidden from us, regions to which only metaphor can grant us access. Theory is no exception: thus it displays the unconscious within itself, manifests it in its very structures, signals its presence, bears what are recognizably its marks or traces. That is why a theory is the more explicit and accurate the more faithful it is to a mode of discourse and style of presentation in which the unconscious is in communication with [en prise sur] consciousness, harnessing it, perhaps, to its own ends. In other words, theory—conscious, explanatory discourse—functions like a mask (in the Nietzschean sense)33 for the unconscious—a mask and a mark. It is never more exact than when it is also metaphorical; when, in other words, it doubles the smooth, sometimes barely trembling surface of theoretical discourse with another layer. This other stratum of discourse—it may well be a bottomless abyss—represents the emergence, at once concealed and patent, of the unconscious. Hence to say that, in psychoanalysis, theory (the construction of analytic concepts) is valid because it is also metaphor, is to secure an absolute guarantee of its rigor and viability—as long as one does not lose sight of its practical, and, equally, theoretical objective: namely, to undo repression, and engage in an exploration of what Freud calls "the infernal regions of the psyche." Analysis achieves this objective when, through metapsychological speculation, it permits us to grasp something of the unconscious processes: the result is that the explanatory effects of conscious discourse are maintained, while, simultaneously, there occurs a shift of terrain that wreaks

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havoc with the conscious economy by transforming it into a vehicle or, better, an occasion for the emergence of the unconscious. This is not possible, however, without a mediating instance capable of assuming a function like Pythias's, allowing something that is radically inaccessible to take solid form, to become visible and intelligible instead of melting away. Hence the important and, indeed, indispensable role of the configurations art makes available; hence the hold the poetic images dominating Goethe's Faust have on Freud, pervading his thinking and providing constant, creative impetus for new research. This is particularly true of that central concept of metapsychology which is the theory of the drives. The vision opening up before us is a strange one—a metapsychological shadow theater, animated by the secret, founding presence of Faust. It reveals the most intimate articulations of Freud's thought—because it constitutes them.

"Day by Day, You'll Take Greater Pleasure at Wisdom's Breast" :u Rejuvenation through Love, and Sublimation What is the nature of the relationship between "thoughtwork"* and the drives? Parched by a feverish thirst for knowledge, Faust has, one might say, "come down with a case of sublimation," a cruel sort of sublimation which has gone amiss. That is what impels him to strike a bargain with the devil. Freud, for his part, devotes himself body and soul to his metapsychological investigations. Metapsychology, one recalls, is identified with the Witch in Faust: It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human * Le travail de pensee. Like "le travail de la th£orie" (see note, p. 16), this expression, which might also be translated "the activity of thinking/' is patterned after the standard French translation of Traumarbeit (dreamwork, travail de reve).

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beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development into supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization.35 This passage is followed by another—I alluded to it earlier in this chapter—in which Freud cites the lines that depict Faust as the very essence of dissatisfaction, that which "presses [us] forward ever unsubdued." Here is what Freud writes in another essay, after he has developed the idea that "the activity of thinking is also supplied from the sublimation of erotic motive forces": The transformation [of erotic libido] into ego-libido of course involves an abandonment of sexual aims, a desexualization. In any case this throws light upon an important function of the ego in its relation to Eros. By thus getting hold of the libido from the object-cathexes, setting itself up as sole love-object, and desexualizing or sublimating the libido of the id, the ego is working in opposition to the purposes of Eros and placing itself at the service of impulses rooted in the drives opposed to Eros.36 A bit further on, Freud says: After sublimation the erotic component no longer has the power to bind the whole of the destructiveness that was combined with it, and this is released in the form of an inclination to aggression and destruction.37 If hatred originates both in the need to contract the pleasureego, which fuses with and suppresses the outside world by incorporating it, as well as in a drive which pits itself against the

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libido in order to preserve the integrity of the ego properly so called,38 it follows that hatred has the primordial role in the constitution of object relations. Yet even after object relations have been established, the subject continues to feel a boundless yearning for the primitive pleasure-ego,39 that not-yet of the experience of otherness, a not-yet which is of course mythical. That said, we can return to the curious passage in which Freud makes reference to biology—or rather, to what is unmistakably a biological fantasy: From the aggregate of these experiments two facts emerge which seem to offer us a firmer footing. First: If two of the animaculae, at the moment before they show signs of senescence, are able to coalesce with each other, that is to "conjugate" (soon after which they once more separate), they are saved from growing old and become "rejuvenated."40 Freud adds that other stimulating factors can substitute for the beneficial effects of copulation—changing the nutrient solution, for example. Here is food for a fantasy about magic potions or a Witch's brew! According to what Freud says in this passage, death would have to be seen as the result of contact with the products and waste generated by one's own metabolism. But what is especially striking here, for us, is the notion of rejuvenation, which Freud links with Eros. For rejuvenation is at the heart of the drama of Faust, who "falls ill because, in consequence of frustration, he is unable to love," and finds himself in the clutches of "the spirit of perpetual negation" as a result of his dissatisfaction with life. Faust's devotion to science, rather than to love, has only aggravated this dissatisfaction, the expression of an infinite longing: So, now I've made my way through philosophy, And medicine and law, And even, alas, theology, Working feverishly, without pause. . . .

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Where am I to lay hold of you, infinite Nature? You breasts, where?—of all life the source, From which hang suspended earth and sky, Towards which the withered body steers its desperate course— You swell, you overflow—and must I go dry?41 In hopes of regaining his youth, Faust makes a pact with Mephistopheles, who incarnates the hatred spawned by dissatisfaction. The pact begins to take effect only after Faust has drunk, not the milk he passionately desires to suck from the inexhaustible breasts of nature, but the Witch's ghastly, loathsome brew. Where does Freud turn for help in his effort to vanquish neurosis, check or tame the destructive drives, and bring about a renewal of vitality? To the same "Witch," whom he christens "metapsychology." To notice this is to reveal all at once, as if by magic, one of the main paths secretly traced by Freud's thought, which certainly seems, at times, to take very peculiar detours. Freud explicitly states that he feels compelled to appeal to the Witch, adding that he is drawn to her by a passion for investigation "which presses [him] forward ever unsubdued" under the impulsion of a perpetually unsatisfied desire and the requirements of his practice. In this light, it is hardly surprising that his thinking should pass through the same stages as the Faustian drama, which leaves its dynamic imprint on Freud's work. What is more, the Freudian oppositions Eros/death drive and love/hate are clarified, in a sense, once one has made out, beneath them, the plot of Goethe's play, and, in particular, the bargain at its heart. If this is so, we have acquired a key that can be used in two ways. It allows us; on the one hand, to penetrate deeply into the "weaver's masterpiece," that "factory of thoughts," and thus to learn more about the thought processes that led to the invention of psychoanalysis; for one can make out the shade of Faust at work in Freud's dreams as well as in analytic theory. On the other hand, it paves the way for a more adequate, which is to say more analytic, understanding of that theory: it sheds light on a number of its more

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obscure points, while making us aware of the hold the unconscious maintains over a learned discourse which sets out to give an account of the unconscious, and which is doubtless, for that very reason, bound to manifest its effects. Labor of the Negative and Ruse of the Drive: Mephisto and the Witch We need to consider one further point to round off our remarks about Mephistopheles. It involves a question that might be formulated as follows. Mephistopheles conducts Faust to the Witch because she alone has the power to validate the results of the pact; is there anything in Freud that corresponds to this? If so, what may we infer about the links metapsychology (regarded as theoretical speculation) maintains with repression and the drives, particularly the death drive? Or again, where does metapsychology stand with respect to the pleasure principle? Furthermore, if "science is, after all, the most complete renunciation of the pleasure principle of which our mental activity is capable,"42 as Freud rather plaintively remarks, are we to conclude that the science called metapsychology, reeking of sulphur and (as Freud does not omit to point out43) on suspiciously cordial terms with the Devil, is itself situated beyond the pleasure principle? Let us take as the starting point for our answer Freud's 1925 essay, "Negation." This text takes up several points, notably the correlation between the possibility of the return of the repressed and the use of negation in an act of judgment. A second point bears on the relation between an act of judgment, which accepts or rejects something, and the play of the drives. Affirmation/ negation or love/hate: in what way does the first of these two oppositional pairs refer us to the second? Here is the concluding passage of Freud's essay: Judging is the intellectual action which decides the choice of motor action, which puts an end to the postponement due to thought and which leads over from thinking to acting. . . . Judg-

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ing is a continuation, along lines of expediency, of the original process by which the ego took things into itself or expelled them from itself, according to the pleasure principle. The polarity of judgement appears to correspond to the opposition of the two groups of drives which we have supposed to exist. Affirmation—as a substitute for uniting—belongs to Eros; negation—the successor to expulsion—belongs to the destructive drive. The general wish to negate, the negativism which is displayed by some psychotics, is probably to be regarded as a sign of a defusion of drives that has taken place through a withdrawal of the libidinal components. But the performance of the function of judgement is not made possible until the creation of the symbol of negation has endowed thinking with a first measure of freedom from the consequences of repression and, with it, from the compulsion of the pleasure principle. This view of negation fits in very well with the fact that in analysis we never discover a "no" in the unconscious and that recognition of the unconscious on the part of the ego is expressed in a negative formula. There is no stronger evidence that we have been successful in our efforts to uncover the unconscious than when the patient reacts to it with the words "I didn't think that," or "I didn't (ever) think of that."44 Freud here establishes a clear connection between the mental act involved in "judging" and the dynamic power of the unconscious or the drives, when he remarks that "judging . . . leads over from thinking to acting." In other words, judging is an operation through which the primacy of the deed over the word is reestablished, after having been lost as a result of constraints connected with repression and the reality principle. This restoration of the primacy of the deed is already, in a certain way, a return of the repressed. One thinks, of course, of Faust's transformation of the original Biblical formulation "in the beginning was the word" into its new version, "in the beginning was the deed." The latter phrase haunted Freud, as I have already pointed out. But above all—this is the most striking point—we read, first,

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that negation proceeds not from the unconscious or from the primitive pleasure-ego, but from the expelling reality-ego which is constituted in the wake of primary repression and which endows the dichotomy love/hate with meaning. Second, Freud says that the aggressive, negative drive which grows out of the defusion of the drives subsequent to repression is, when it finds expression in an intellectual function, precisely the agent that acknowledges the repressed material. This is so even if what is involved is not yet an undoing of repression: that is the task of analytic practice carried out with the aid of interpretations subordinated to the controlling mechanism of metapsychology (the Witch's brew). In other words, it appears that if the objective of the analytic enterprise is to "tame the drive"—which means, Freud explains, to "bring the drive into harmony with the ego"—and if this objective can be achieved only with the Witch's help, it is nevertheless negation (Mephistopheles) which guarantees that one will discover the unconscious. But the discovery can take effect only if the process of repression is undone, and this, in turn, can occur only if one passes beyond the pleasure principle: for repression is governed by the pleasure principle, even if it fails to satisfy it (whence neurotic conflict). We noted earlier how the drive to destroy—a death drive "enframed,"* as it were, by Eros—cleared a path to the beyond of the pleasure principle, without, however, accomplishing the leap to that beyond for as long as repression was maintained. Having now seen that the labor of negation (of Mephistopheles) cannot be complete or effective without the help of the "Witch metapsychology," we are in a position to understand that (infernal) metapsychology lies beyond the pleasure principle, which was for its part initially in the service of the death drive—the impulsion to return to the inanimate. This makes of the Witch a personage irreducible to the good or bad mother ("it is not the aim of science either to frighten or to console," writes Freud),45 Rather, she emerges as what Francois Peraldi calls, basing what he says on a * See note, p. 5.

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superb analysis of Freud's essay "Negation," the "maternal Other": that which causes the mother to expel.46 "Unfortunately, here as elsewhere, what our Witch reveals47 is neither very clear nor very detailed," Freud complains.48 In this perspective, one understands why Faust aspired to seize hold of infinite Nature and drink of the milk flowing inexhaustibly from her breasts: what he encounters is the Witch, who determines his fate. In essence, this means—the relationship between Mephistopheles and the Witch leads to this conclusion—that death, in some sense, comes to life; that it is a "living death," to borrow Eluard's lovely phrase, which is active at the heart of analytic theory; and that this living death, strangely enough, makes it possible for the cure to become a place of renewal, a place where an emancipated subject can come to be. Freud concludes "The Theme of the Three Caskets" with these words: "But it is in vain that an old man yearns for the love of woman as he had it first from his mother; the third of the Fates alone, the silent Goddess of Death, will take him into her arms."49 But does he not then find peace? It seems to me that the conclusion one sees emerging from Freud's analytic project, placed for this very reason under the sign of his invocation of the Witch, is precisely that the regressive quest for forbidden union with the mother is thwarted at the very moment it is fulfilled. In other words, even if the desire underlying the analytic enterprise is the desire to transgress the original, founding interdiction of incest with the mother, this desire must necessarily be cheated of its object, even if it is also fulfilled (transferentially). One encounters not infinite Nature (the mother), but the "Witch" (metapsychology): an avatar of the mother who excludes the mother for good, without eliminating one's yearning for her. That is why the analytic quest leads beyond the pleasure principle. But it is precisely there, perhaps, that the desired mother (for Faust, Nature) and the "Witch" can meet and, doubtless, fuse in the defiant challenge that both take up: to introduce disorder into the quietude of the inanimate by bestowing life, and then to dupe the pleasure principle by defending life in the face of all opposition. 54

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4 Faust and Leonardo

Behind Leonardo, Faust: Sublimation and Its Vicissitudes I he paradoxical success of psychoanalysis consists in feeding the false hope that recourse to the "Witch metapsychology" can "tame the drive"; that it can, as Freud says, master the crippling patterns of behavior engendered by our forever unfulfillable aspirations. But there is a text in which Freud voices, without the least inhibition, the boundless yearning and sense of irreparable loss that the invention of analysis both reveals and also attempts, through its very dynamic, to make up for or overcome. The text I have in mind is the lovely Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood. It is relevant to my undertaking in more ways than one. To begin with, it is, to the best of my knowledge, the only text in which Freud indicates, rapidly but explicitly, how he understands the story of Faust: Because of his insatiable and indefatigable thirst for knowledge Leonardo has been called the Italian Faust. But quite apart from doubts about a possible transformation of the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life—a transformation which we must take as fundamental in the tragedy of Faust—the view

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may be hazarded that Leonardo's development approaches Spinoza's mode of thinking.1 I also quote the next paragraph: A conversion of the force of a drive into various forms of activity can perhaps no more be achieved without loss than a conversion of physical forces. The example of Leonardo teaches us how many other things we have to take into account in connection with these processes. The postponement of loving until full knowledge is acquired ends in a substitution of the latter for the former. A man who has won his way to a state of knowledge cannot properly be said to love and hate; he remains beyond love and hatred. He has investigated instead of loving. And that is perhaps why Leonardo's life was so much poorer in love than that of other great men, and of other artists. The stormy passions of a nature that inspires and consumes, passions in which other men have enjoyed their richest experience, appear not to have touched him.2 It is striking that the evocation of the figure of Faust—one might almost call it an irruption, so sudden and sharp is the appearance of the Faust theme in the text—serves as counterpoint, in some sense, to the description of the figure of Leonardo. The page just cited is rather astonishingly put together, as a close look will reveal. It begins with a statement that fuses the two figures, or, more precisely, superimposes one upon the other. To be sure, Freud does not himself claim responsibility for this operation. But that is of small importance, inasmuch as the only thing one need take into account as far as the unconscious meaning of this passage is concerned, and therefore the only thing that matters to me here, is the sudden appearance of the image or association Faust/Leonardo. As for the judgment brought to bear on this association—whether, that is, Freud later corrects or rejects it—I leave it aside for the moment. In so doing, I am merely following advice proffered by Freud himself: "In our interpreta56

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tion, we take the liberty of disregarding the negation and of picking out the subject-matter alone of the association."3 The lines associating Faust and Leonardo are, then, immediately followed by a speculative, questioning passage in which Freud indicates what Goethe's play, a work truly emblematic of his intellectual quest, means for him. He leaves the question open in this very brief remark, all the more crucial, perhaps, in that it is brief and open-ended. Let us pause for a moment to essay a translation of what he says. This is easy enough to do, if one bears in mind that metapsychology is "the Witch." What the mysterious alchemy of the pact between Faust and Mephistopheles accomplishes is exactly what the analytic cure seeks to bring about: a transformation of the instinct to investigate (more generally, of the symptom one eventually learns something about) back into an enjoyment of life. Let us carry this through to its conclusion. The question Freud raises, in his text on Leonardo, about the concrete possibility of fulfilling the desire underlying the story of Faust actually bears on another story; here, more obviously than anywhere else, Faust's drama appears as a metaphor for the analytic enterprise itself. As a result, we may legitimately construe Freud's question to mean, simply, this: Is the analytic project viable? Can the ambition informing it be realized? Freud proceeds to separate Leonardo and Faust. But in the next paragraph, which sets out to unravel Leonardo's destiny, he does not quite manage to exorcise Faust's ghost: "He has investigated instead of loving."4 If only I could wander, at night, On mountain-tops in your [the moon's] light, Float with the spirits about some mountain-hollow, Melt slowly into your soft glow upon the meadows, Break through the sooty clouds of this knowledge that blinds, Bathe in your dew and find peace of mind!5 All theory, my good friend, is gray, And green the golden tree of life.6 Faust and Leonardo

yj

As for Freud's strange finale, with its "stormy passions" that "inspire and consume," where does it come from, if not, once again (I am simply following out the chain of associations suggested at the beginning of this long passage), Faust? "Let us throw ourselves into time's rush and whir / Unpredictable reality's rolling surge." "I consecrate myself to the fray, the most painfully pleasurable sensations, / Hate steeped in love. . . . "7 Faust, then, appears in filigree in this passage about "the great and mysterious" Leonardo, to whose "attraction" Freud confesses to "have succumbed," "like others."8 And he makes his appearance precisely when Freud mentions Leonardo's instinct to investigate, his passion for research. This passion is plainly treated as something that blocks the possibility of loving; indeed, it is all but presented as the antithesis of love. At the same time, it is described as an alienating passion that holds back Leonardo's artistic development and puts a drain on his art: the indefatigable scientist, in Freud's account, ends up sapping the artist's creative powers. Only one thing succeeds in checking Leonardo's devouring curiosity. The tender, mysterious smile he had known as a child, when he encounters it again later in his career, breathes new life into the creative genius; through its constant presence in his paintings, it allows him to recover his lost happiness, which is then recreated in his art. Thus the instinct to investigate, which makes Leonardo the "Italian Faust" (and Freud the "Viennese Faust") is associated with suffering and self-destruction in Faust's as in Leonardo's case (and in Freud's case too?). Unless it is transformed back into something else, it is crippling. At this point, let us pause to consider two remarks made by Freud. The first is this very brief pronouncement: "Happiness is the belated fulfilment of a prehistoric wish."9 Here is the second: An artist is originally a man who turns away from reality because he cannot come to terms with the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction which reality at first demands, and who allows his erotic and ambitious wishes full play in the life of phantasy.10 He finds the way back to reality, however, from this world of 58

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phantasy by making use of special gifts to mould his phantasies into truths of a new kind, which are valued by men as precious reflections of reality. Thus in a certain fashion he actually becomes the hero, the king, the creator, or the favourite he desired to be, without following the long roundabout path of making real alterations in the external world.11 This is precisely what Leonardo succeeds in doing, once he has overcome the Faustian passion which, vampire-like, drains his art of its lifeblood. And this is what neither Faust, swept up by "stormy passions" after he signs the pact, nor Freud, swept up by the psychoanalytic adventure, will ever manage to do, since it is given to neither to pursue his struggle in the realm of art. Leonardo, Freud tells us, meets Mona Lisa, who gives him back what he had lost—or, rather, the means of finding it again; his impassioned intellectual pursuit of it had only rendered, the loss the more complete. Faust is aware of the vanity of whatever science and his constantly frustrated investigations have brought him. As to the Witch, she may give him back his lost youth and woman's love, but she will certainly not give him happiness or peace. How, then, is one to interpret what Freud says when he sums up the meaning the drama of Faust has for him—a "transformation of the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life"—in the short text he devotes, precisely, to Leonardo? Before attempting to assemble the elements of an answer, let us attend to this sigh: "Nevertheless the mild narcosis induced in us by art can do no more than bring about a transient withdrawal from the pressure of vital needs, and it is not strong enough to make us forget real misery"12 A state of suffering and torment, then, is the reality of human existence. What remedy can science offer to counteract this malaise, this abiding sorrow? "It is not the aim of science either to frighten or to console," Freud affirms;13 in other words, one had better forget the idea that science might be a mother:14 Only in art does it still happen that a man who is consumed by desires performs something resembling the accomplishment of Faust and Leonardo

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those desires and that what he does in play produces emotional effects—thanks to artistic illusion—just as though it were something real.15 Art, then, succeeds in calling up the salutary yet transitory illusion of that "enjoyment" whose absence so cruelly marks the "instinct to investigate." In effect, one may say that certain works of art, at least—Leonardo's paintings among them—are subject to the pleasure principle: the greater the power of art to create a parallel reality, so to speak, the more fully it satisfies this principle. Art comes to occupy the place formerly occupied by reality; it supplants it thanks to the magic of a mysterious, irresistible, all-powerful spell, filling the infinite vacuum of desire with the infinite plenitude of pleasure. Reconversion and Blindness: Around and About a Transference But does psychoanalytic "science," which is not merely theory, but at another, perhaps more fundamental level, transference as well, not seek to alleviate suffering, certain of Freud's denegations notwithstanding? If it succeeds in doing so, does it not follow that the originality of this "science" resides in the fact that it is, in some sense, art? Does the imaginary space of the transference not refer us, as if to its double, to the imaginary space of the work of art? Let us listen in on the dialogue Freud imagines himself conducting with an "impartial person" he.is initiating into psychoanalysis. After learning that "the analyst agrees upon a fixed hour with the patient, gets him to talk, listens to him," we observe the "impartial person's" reaction: "And no doubt he is thinking too of Mephistopheles' mocking speech on how comfortably one can get along with words. . . . " The "impartial person" also says, "So it is a kind of magic; you talk, and blow away his ailments."16 There follows a passage in which Freud, haunted, as always, by Goethe's play, evokes a remote past in which deeds

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took precedence over words, only to be subsequently displaced by them. In psychoanalytic discourse, he gives us to understand, the word is then reconverted or translated back into deeds. Faust, for his part, makes a new translation of the Bible,17 displacing the word in order to restore the deed to its place at the origin of things. This is a strikingly condensed representation of the alchemy that is fundamental in the drama of Faust, according to Freud: the transformation of the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life. "Neurotics are above all inhibited in their actions: with them the thought is a complete substitute for. the deed";18 this applies to Leonardo and, in a certain sense, Faust as well. But the inhibition is removed in both cases, if in different ways. What, then, are we to conclude about the "case" of psychoanalysis? The question forces itself on our attention, inasmuch as Freud, like Faust, is led to the Witch of metapsychology—to theorization/phantasying—by a passion for investigation. Yet impassioned investigation, disarmed by art, eventually gives way to delighted, spellbound contemplation; and it does so, precisely, in A Childhood Memory of Leonardo da Vinci, a text Freud christens "a psychoanalytic novel."19 By way of the reference to Faust, that "novel" gives clear expression to the desire that founds the analytic enterprise: the desire to transform neurotic dissatisfaction—or, more precisely, the crazed devotion to investigation that motivates the researcher—back into "an enjoyment of life." At stake here is nothing less than Freud's personal position vis-a-vis metapsychology: witness the emphasis he puts on the question of the "daemon" of his research, the "hobbyhorse" or "consuming passion" represented by psychology. There exists a point beyond which investigation cannot go, which is perhaps for that very reason the limit where thought, to employ the Goethean language dear to Freud, is transformed back into action—but does action mean the "enjoyment of life"? There exists a zone of irreducible opacity, a blind spot: on different occasions, in contexts seemingly far removed from one another, it becomes possible to experience what it means to encounter it.

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Strikingly, the profoundest experiences of this opaque zone occur at two privileged moments: when one believes one has "comprehended" metapsychology, in the strongest sense of the word "comprehend" (to see, to take in one's hand),20 and when one seeks to "comprehend" the work of art.21 As to metapsychology, the least one can say is that its clarities are, at best, obscure! Is this not precisely what one experiences in the cure? Does the classic arrangement, in which the patient cannot see the analyst positioned behind him, not reveal something essential here, something that might well throw a decisive light on the question of the "transformation" or "reconversion" psychoanalytic practice aims to bring about? For what does the fact that the patient cannot see her analyst22 represent, dramatize, enact, if not precisely the idea I have just underscored—namely, that if the knowledge acquired in the course of analytic work (in the strongest sense of the term) is not to remain a dead letter, if it is to operate actively in the real world, the condition sine qua non is that it be buttressed by a zone of impenetrable darkness, a blind spot? Investigation can bear fruit only at this price: it must be sustained by a fundamental "failure to see," hence by an inherent, original insufficiency. This doubtless implies frustration of the heroic aspiration to absolute independence and clairvoyant omnipotence. But it also implies frustration of another sort, if one considers matters in terms of regression toward a primal state. It involves frustrating the desire of the infant present in all of us to relive a time when it was possible to experience supreme happiness: the period when the omnipotent pleasure-ego could abandon itself without reserve to the body of the mother; before the reality of separation had replaced this primitive pleasure-ego with a contracted ego constrained to acknowledge the internal source of certain painful sensations; before the inevitable renunciation of primal fusion with the mother (doubtless only a nostalgic fantasy) and the resulting distance from her had transformed her into an object of the gaze. With this transformation, the mother becomes a person one can see as a detached whole because one is no longer an integral part of her, because she now

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belongs to the outside world; she becomes the person one desires, which is to say that she is henceforth irrevocably lost.23 Freud identifies this as the origin of the drive to investigate and of the longing for an original state of bliss: "the antithesis ego— non-ego (external), i.e. subject—object, is . . . thrust upon the individual organism at an early stage. . . . This antithesis remains, above all, sovereign in our intellectual activity and creates for research the basic situation . . . at the very beginning of mental life . . . the ego-subject coincides with what is pleasurable; [it is, in other words, a] 'pleasure-ego.'"24 The adult's ego-feeling cannot have been the same from the beginning. It must have gone through a process of development, which cannot, of course, be demonstrated but which admits of being constructed with a fair degree of probability. An infant at the breast does not as yet distinguish his ego from the external world as the source of the sensations flowing in upon him. . . . He must be very strongly impressed by the fact that some sources of excitation, which he will later recognize as his own bodily organs, can provide him with sensations at any moment, whereas other sources evade him from time to time—among them what he desires most of all, his mother's breast—and only reappear as a result of his screaming for help. In this way there is for the first time set over against the ego an "object," in the form of something which exists "outside" and which is only forced to appear by a special action. . . . A tendency arises to separate from the ego everything that can become a source of such unpleasure, to throw it outside and to create a pure pleasure-ego which is confronted by a strange and threatening "outside." The boundaries of this primitive pleasure-ego cannot escape rectification through experience. . . . In this way, then, the ego detaches itself from the external world. Or, to put it more correctly, originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself. Our present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive—indeed, an all-embracing—feeling which corresponded

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to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it.25 Furthermore, what Freud will later identify as the passage from the mother to the father, characterizing it as a renunciation of the instincts or a decision "against direct sense-perception in favour of what are known as the higher intellectual processes/' seems exactly to correspond to the stage of development in which ego and object are separated. That separation, let us not forget, is the very source of intellectual activity and investigation.26 This finds powerful expression in the respective positions of patient and analyst in an analytic session: the invisibility of the analyst is a metaphor for the fact that knowledge which can fairly claim to be analytic—that is, in communication with the world of the drives—originates in an obscure "navel." The positioning of patient and analyst likewise stands as a metaphor for the fact that if "renunciation of the instincts" and separation from a mother consigned to the outside world inaugurate the reign of what Freud terms "intellectuality," it is nevertheless true that one can bring about the "transformation of the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life" only if one abandons the notion that thought can attain to utter limpidity. Only at the price of acknowledging one's original blindness and recalling that even the most illustrious of the heroes of "intellectuality" were initially "nourished in the darkness of a womb," later failed to distinguish themselves from the external world, and remained bound for life to the obscurity from which they emerged, is it possible to bring about the transformation of the instinct to investigate through the use of the spoken word in the cure, in which, in some sense, one carries through the revised translation of the Bible that Faust attempts. The spoken word can become a means of action if it is conceived in its relation to metapsychology—the "Witch" whose information "is neither very clear nor very detailed." But if one's longing for a state of original bliss spawns a desire to abandon oneself to the zone of darkness anterior to the formation of the self, is it not the grip of a radical

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illusion that is thus manifested, by way of a myth of paradise lost? And does the hold this illusion has over us not reveal, even as it compensates for, the radical lack characteristic of the "human condition"? This said, we are in a position to resume the line of questioning taken up earlier in the present chapter, and to understand why it should be in Leonardo da Vinci that Freud offers us, furtively, his curious remark about the drama of Faust, a rather obvious metaphor for another drama, that of psychoanalysis. Leonardo, and the effect produced by his work, exemplify a process during which investigation has to undergo a metamorphosis: it must disappear in order that something quite different, something capable of providing satisfaction, may come into being. A transformation or reconversion is involved here; it serves as a felicitous and, for that very reason, imperfect image of what psychoanalytic knowledge sets out to accomplish. Leonardo's case history thus permits us to see that art is tied in with a flagging of the activity of investigation and, at the same time, with the profound effect brought about by the irresistible power of ideas embodied in intensely fascinating images. This evocation of Leonardo expresses, in an imaginary mode, the full depth of the desire underpinning the analytic enterprise. It is related to the artist's in yet another way: if analytic investigation is not to remain sterile, it too must attain to an awareness that it is necessarily rooted in the irreducible force which finally blocks its advance. Furthermore, this "science" reestablishes a bond with something which precedes it, but which it has nevertheless to renounce: the omnipotence of thought, which takes experiential form in .the use of words as instruments of the cure. But it is essential not to misconstrue what is involved here. Doubtless belief in the inordinate power of thought—from which, Freud tells us, the magic power of words derives—is bound up with the development and overestimation of the so-called superior mental activities, and also with the turn from the mother to the father discussed in Moses and Monotheism. And, to be sure, in philosophy or theology, for example, the omnipotence claimed by

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thought (an omnipotence science, for its part, renounces) remains a dead letter, a pure and simple illusion with no effect on reality;27 it evinces a laughably childish desire to be all-powerful, and is unwilling, or even unable, to acknowledge the childishness of that desire. In art and psychoanalysis, on the other hand, the omnipotence thought lays claim to manifestly exists, and, paradoxically, produces concrete effects. The reason is simply that, in these domains, thought reestablishes ties to something it intended to repress for good and all when it claimed to be descended only of the father, in the sense of Moses and Monotheism:28 it once again makes contact with the obscure, the umbilical, "the unthinkably maternal," to use Frangois Gantheret's expression.29 That is, it reestablishes ties with the one force that can lend it reality and efficacy, but whose mystery can in no way be unravelled and explained in its turn. Let us carry this through to its conclusion. In art, this obscure force is operative because art fashions another, surrogate reality.30 In psychoanalysis, it is at the heart of reality itself that this scientific "magic" must operate, the reality which constitutes the warp and woof of our existence; it is here that the transformation "fundamental in the tragedy of Faust" must be brought about. Whence Freud's question about Faust: is this transformation possible in the real world? Freud, the "Viennese Faust" Let us pursue matters a bit further. Enraptured contemplation of the work of art is the source of a feeling of peaceful, serene plenitude. It satisfies the pleasure principle—outside the real world, perhaps—and it does so in an eminently successful manner: the drive is tamed and "brought completely into the harmony of the ego," to use the terms Freud employs in discussing what the cure can accomplish thanks to the contribution of the "Witch metapsychology." This surely permits one to put forward the idea that the processes at work in the creation as well as the enjoyment of a work of art are quite similar to, or even, perhaps, of the same nature as, those at work in the act of ana-

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lyric interpretation. It follows that the bond' this act creates between analyst and patient closely resembles that established between the artist and her audience by the work of art. Yet the one type of bond cannot simply be identified with the other. Indeed, it is precisely the difference between them that solicits our attention here. Undoing repression—but with a view to "taming" the drive—is the objective psychoanalytic knowledge sets for itself. As to the aesthetic enjoyment accompanying the creation, or springing from the contemplation of a work of art, it engenders a kind of serene euphoria, sign of the dissolution of that major source of suffering and internal division we call desire.31 This absence of desire resembles neither the prostration of despair, nor the morbid listlessness that comes from a dwindling of vitality nor yet the exhaustion of the capacity for happiness; it has to do, rather, with the tranquillity and release of tension that accompany the experience of expansive union which total satisfaction produces. In contrast, the gains made in the course of an analytic cure are more precarious; everything that is slowly and painfully constructed there—"this art demands patience"32—is infinitely more fragile and always vulnerable. Therein lies the significance, it seems to me, of the association/confrontation of Faust and Leonardo in A Childhood Memory of Leonardo da Vinci. For if the enjoyment offered by the work of art serves as a (perhaps Utopian) model or metaphor for all possible enjoyment, what lies in store for Faust after he signs the pact is anything but restful. Let us, then, try to analyze why and how psychoanalysis, even if it is Leonardo's desire that fascinates it, nevertheless recognizes its own destiny less in Leonardo's than in Faust's. To begin with, Leonardo's work consists in paintings, that is, images, which as such resemble dreams, a preverbal mode of expression halfway between the sensual or corporal and the intellectual. This pictorial work constitutes a sort of enclave within reality, where things do not behave as they do in the real world. His art, in other words, is a sort of island where the constraints imposed by the pressures of the external world have ceased to apply This makes it possible for the reality principle, a modifica-

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tion of the pleasure principle arising from the encounter with necessity, to be transformed back into the pleasure principle. In the fullness of its perfection, the work of art is immune to the vicissitudes of time. It is therefore a stranger to everything that impedes the satisfaction of desire by drawing it into the existential world of time and contingency and stamping it with the seal of frustration, thus lending the manifestations of desire and the tension typical of it the character of a process without end— Hegel's "bad infinity." For desire is, precisely, indestructible. And it is precisely this infinite character of desire—though not, it is to be hoped, a bad infinity—which marks the analytic process. "Analysis interminable," then, because psychoanalysis is designed to help subjects who are also egos and must live in the real world; egos animated by the energy of the drive and obliged to come to terms with this beast, which they would like, eventually, to press into their own service. But even if a "transformation of the instinct to investigate back into enjoyment of life" must indeed occur, even if suffering and the aspiration to happiness are the governing principles of the analytic process and the pact that permits it to operate, one may still be permitted to wonder in the name of which variant of the pleasure principle this labor of transformation is to be carried out. As the aim is to remain squarely planted in the difficult realities of the world of time and contingency, while ceasing to suffer—let us not forget that Faust wants to live again, and therefore to become young again, to rediscover the capacity to love and hate—it is first of all in the transference, which is the capacity to love and hate, that the reign of the pleasure principle must be reestablished. Of course, one cannot imagine establishing the omnipotence of the pleasure principle on a permanent basis within psychic (as opposed to external) reality. Yet the pleasure principle continues to make its demands felt, because it is indestructible; it is by no means eliminated with the advent of the reality principle. Once it has regained its liberty in the transference, it is in a position to nourish and enliven an existence impoverished by the arid demands of the reality principle. This has two implications. First, it means a

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reaffirmation of the capacity to enjoy, intermittently perhaps, experiences of fusion with another, notably in love—though this brings with it the danger of repeating the original experience of frustration. Second, it involves the risk that the ego may tire of the sometimes ungrateful and, when all is said and done, not very convincing task that falls to it. "The feeling of happiness derived from the satisfaction of a wild impulse rooted in the drive and untamed by the ego," says Freud (one thinks of Faust's experiences after he has concluded the pact), "is incomparably more intense than that derived from satisfying a drive that has been tamed."33 But it is precisely the taming of the drive that metapsychology is supposed to make possible. Ceding to the temptation to abandon that objective for satisfactions "incomparably more intense," the ego may suddenly lurch into a position that necessarily lies beyond the pleasure principle: necessarily, because we live, after all, in the real world, which bars the way to unimpeded satisfaction of the pleasure principle amid those "stormy passions that inspire and consume"—passions that represent, for "other men" (other than Leonardo, that is, Faust), their "richest experience." One therefore has the impression that Leonardo da Vinci reveals, involuntarily perhaps, something about analysis that elsewhere goes unsaid. For one finds in this text a gratuitous account, inspired by the enchanted pleasure Freud takes in Leonardo's work, of the dream of happiness that lies buried in the deepest reaches of the psyche and engenders the analytic project. And if Faust plays in this, so to speak, lovestruck text the role I have just suggested he does, then his presence points us forcefully to the following conclusion: that while analysis is undoubtedly a promise of happiness and can maintain itself only as such, it is for that very reason interminable and inherently tragic, inasmuch as it bears the marks of a finally insoluble conflict between the death drive and the life drive. Ultimately, that conflict constitutes the core of analysis. And because analysis is interminable, it retains a trait characteristic of that "instinct to investigate" which must be transformed back into something else; it thereby indicates the persistence of this instinct in

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another form, its incarnation, so to speak, in the transferential process. Let me recall here something Freud notes in his discussion of the unhappy period of Leonardo's life: Then, when he made the attempt to return from investigation to his starting point, the exercise of his art, he found himself disturbed by the new direction of his interests and the changed nature of his mental activity. What interested him in a picture was above all a problem; and behind the first one he saw countless other problems arising, just as he used to in his endless and inexhaustible investigation of nature. . . . The artist had once taken the investigator into his service to assist him; now the servant had become the stronger and suppressed his master.34 There remains a question I have so far barely scratched the surface of: the question of what is generally known as Freud's "self-analysis." If it calls for our attention here—imperatively, to my mind—it is not only because this first analysis constituted the fundamental condition for the invention of psychoanalysis, nor because, in its course, the instinct to investigate acquired peculiar status. It is also and above all because the text devoted to Leonardo is the product of a spell cast on Freud by certain paintings which had on him quite the same effect as analytic discourse can have on the patient in the cure.35 More, perhaps, than in any of his other writings—putting aside the letters to FlieB—and in a way at least as revealing as in his dreams, Freud here seems to offer us a mise-en-sc&ne of his own progress in the obscure domain of depth psychology. To be sure, it is a mise-en-scene distorted by condensation and displacement (operations that are, moreover, proper to dreams). But a story—Freud's—manages to spin itself out around the axis provided by the confrontation of Leonardo and Faust, even if it is told with gaps, equivocations, and a good deal of dissimulation, as if in a dream, that "communication made by inappropriate means," as Freud says.36 The clearest, most obvious part of this story bears, of course, on the attitude characteristic of the researcher. Nothing is plainer than

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that Freud is talking about himself in the paragraphs devoted to this question. Let us turn back for a moment to the passage in which we are given, in the course of a discussion of Leonardo, the definition of Faust's drama as a "transformation of the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life." Having provided this definition, Freud goes on to say that "the postponement of loving until full knowledge is acquired ends in a substitution of the latter for the former. A man who has won his way to a state of knowledge cannot properly be said to love and hate: he remains beyond love and hatred. He has investigated instead of loving." There follows the passage about "the stormy passions of a nature that inspires and consumes." A page further on, Freud adds: His investigations extended to practically every branch of natural science, and in every single one he was a discoverer or at least a prophet and pioneer. Yet his urge for knowledge was always directed to the external world; something kept him far away from the investigation of the human mind. In the "Academia Vinciana," for which he drew some cleverly intertwined emblems, there was little room for psychology.37 But psychology is, precisely, Freud's "hobbyhorse," the demon of a pioneer who dedicated himself to "exploring the infernal regions of the psyche." There is thus good reason to suppose that everything which is here said about the destiny of the researcher—the impersonal "one" of this text—concerns Freud no less directly than it does Leonardo. Furthermore, this discussion of research and intellectual insatiability takes off from a very brief and yet crucial remark about Faust. If one holds to a strictly associative logic, one is automatically led to place the paragraphs immediately following this remark in the perspective it sets up; that is, one is led to consider them with regard to the question of the "transformation of the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life." Indeed, for reasons I have already indicated, one cannot but think of Freud when reading this passage, and of the

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very special orientation of his own instinct to investigate. What, then, does Freud give us to understand here of his experience of the unconscious? And why was it solely on the basis of this experience—"self-analysis"—that psychoanalysis could be conceived of: psychoanalysis considered both as a theory and as the practice inextricably bound up with the theory? Let us examine a number of passages in Freud's correspondence in which he speaks very freely of his activity as a "conquistador":38 I believe people see something alien in me and the real reason for this is that in my youth I was never young and now that I am entering the age of maturity I cannot mature properly.39 Elsewhere we find this confession, which Freud makes after observing that science fills him with a certain lassitude: Strange secret yearnings in me—perhaps from my ancestral heritage—for the East and the Mediterranean and for a life of quite another kind: wishes from late childhood never to be fulfilled, which do not conform to reality as if to hint at a loosening of one's relationship to it,40 And here are two remarks Freud makes about analytic practice, whose objective he defines by saying that "every psychoanalytic treatment is an attempt at liberating repressed love which has found a meagre outlet in the compromise of a symptom":41 No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those halftamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.42 To be slandered and scorched by the love with which we operate . . . such are the perils of our trade, which we are certainly not going to abandon on their account.43

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In all of these texts, one is struck by essentially two things. First, in all that Freud lets slip about himself, one cannot fail to notice certain character traits patterned directly after Faust's: the audacity of the researcher—a kind of adventurer—the strangeness of the relationship between youth and age, the confession of aspirations to a life different from the one offered by complete and utter devotion to science. On the other hand, as far as the practice of psychoanalysis is concerned, the accent lies on the dangers faced by those who devote themselves to it, as well as on another, crucial point: that analysis is well and truly about love, and, what is more, that it is with love (but of what kind?) that the analyst operates. In other words, what emerges from these passages is the notion that the tension constitutive of the analytic enterprise is that between love and the curiosity which motivates the researcher. But it is precisely in Leonardo da Vinci that we find Freud identifying with the figure of the insatiable researcher and, concomitantly, voicing misgivings about the fate that awaits him—even as the whole of this text places itself under the sign of love. Original love, whose hoped-for form the cure reveals to be maternal; transference love, which operates upon Freud as a result, precisely, of his contemplation of Leonardo's work and inspires him to write this "psychoanalytic novel" ("like others I have succumbed to the attraction of this great and mysterious man"). But such love is impossible for someone devoted exclusively to research. "He has investigated instead of loving." "Investigation has taken the place of acting and creating as well." It is in this context that the decisive allusion to the drama of Faust takes on its full importance. The "transformation of the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life"—that is, the liberation of love—is "a transformation which we must take as fundamental in Faust." And this transformation is brought about, in Goethe's play, through the Witch's offices. For his part, Freud says that in the cure—an "attempt at liberating repressed love," but also at taming the drive—he turns, like Faust, to the Witch, the Witch metapsychology. Hence "the love with which we operate"—the love whose

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flames can "scorch" the analyst, who "cannot expect to come unscathed through the struggle" with the "most evil of those halftamed demons that inhabit the human breast"—this love leads us to the Witch. But, in Freud's case, the instinct to investigate, directed toward the "exploration of the infernal regions of the psyche," is wholly possessed by a demon: "the demon is named metapsychology." In other words, to say that Freud's self-analysis—which is carried out as much in Leonardo da Vinci as in The Interpretation of Dreams or the letters to Fliefi, and is in every instance based on transference love, so that it is always the effect of a lure, but, for that very reason, is an instance of genuine, fervent love44—to say that Freud's self-analysis gives rise to psychoanalysis comes down to defining it as the fruit of a pact concluded with the demon (Mephisto) who takes possession of the researcher's soul. And what is encountered at the end of the selfanalysis/the pact is the Witch. In a certain sense, then, the instinct to investigate is in its turn transformed: initially associated with the paternal function, as I showed in treating the question of the "blind zone," it is gradually transmuted into unsettling, uncontrollable maternal terrain,45 subject as it eventually is to the Witch. What one may call "self-analysis" is this very transformation. And the operation appears less as a process productive of well-being or joie de vivre and liberation of love than as the heavy tribute one must pay the Witch whom one discovers in this fashion and can subsequently ally oneself with. Or let us rather say that a certain sort of love is liberated—but it is love of the Witch, the love Freud uses to therapeutic ends in the cure. This infernal love cruelly burns and consumes.46 Let us not lose sight of the image of Freud being slowly destroyed, throughout so many intellectually fertile years, by a devouring cancer. In A Childhood Memory of Leonardo da Vinci the "psychoanalytic novel" which I have taken the liberty of treating as a "fragment of Freud's self-analysis," I make out, behind the enchanted pleasure that seems to engender this text, the outlines of a darker destiny. It is that of a Freud/Faust who is, in the bargain struck with Mephistopheles, at once victor and, perhaps, victim. Or, at

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any rate, of a Freud/Faust forced to pay exorbitant tribute to the Witch who enables him to realize his most secret desires. Leonardo da Vinci appears, consequently, as the expression of a resistance operating within Freud. So too does the myth the text offers us: that of a "return to the lost paradise" represented by the idyllic relationship between a mother and her baby son, which Freud says is the only human relationship devoid of ambivalence.47 (Freud claims to have been his mother's favorite child, just like Goethe.)48 To counter this myth, psychoanalysis was invented in the course of its inventor's own analytic trajectory: the trajectory of a Faust, alas, rather than a Leonardo, one involving an encounter with the Witch, not Mona Lisa. Between the two figures, a gap and a tension, mark of a ceaseless struggle to overcome the resistance Freud felt. It is displayed in highly characteristic fashion when he cites—in connection, not accidentally, with the dream of the three Fates—these lines from Faust: "Day by day, you'll take greater pleasure at wisdom's breast."49 Immediately preceding these verses are the following lines, also spoken by Mephistopheles. Freud forgets them: "Thus the infant takes its mother's breast / At first only reluctantly. . . . //50

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5 Elective Affinities

"Alchemy of the Word" L/et us now attempt to follow, step by step, "with passion and patience/' all the way to its enigmatic core, the indisputably peculiar alchemy, the nocturnal cookery of what is customarily called Freud's self-analysis, that destiny to which he devoted himself. To this point we have been flying back and forth—like the shuttles Freud, citing Faust, evokes in his interpretation of the "dream of the botanical monograph" 1 —between what one might call the "surface" or manifest content of Freud's text and the infratext or latent content that unconsciously informs it. This infratext is the drama of Faust. Its presence is indicated here and there by the appearance, at far from fortuitous junctures, of quotations. They are the "navels" of Freud's text, marks which "serve [the analyst's] purpose just as Hagen's was served by the embroidered mark on Siegfried's cloak,"2 and which may accordingly be taken as starting points for interpretation. Thus far I have shown that Freud's metapsychological undertaking, the condition for the cure, appears as a kind of foreshortened vision, or even, in certain cases, anamorphosis, of the imaginary landscape of Faust—though with the peculiarity that metapsychology also appears as a "derivative" of that landscape. The term "derivative," dear to Freud, is more or less legitimate, depending on

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the case in question; but it bears, in every instance, the profound mark of its Faustian origins. Our investigation has led, then, to a rather surprising explanation of the operations involved in putting whole sections of analytic theory in place. In the following pages, concentrating on what is usually called Freud's self-analysis, which I have already approached by way of the notion of a "transformation of the instinct to investigate back into the enjoyment of life," I will try to zero in on the actual workings of this transformation, focusing on its most secret, intimate aspects. The process at work here is revealed by the fascinating dynamic that animates Freud's writing whenever Goethe's words irrupt in it: "umbilical words" of analytic theory, yet, at the same time—perhaps solely by virtue of their "umbilical" nature—points glowing with the energy of a transference. Words in which an amorous encounter is consummated; words which fecundate the text and so precipitate its labor. Truly a strange primal scene for psychoanalysis! Not only does Freud declare that his choice of vocation, or at least the initial orientation of his "instinct to investigate," was determined by his enthusiastic response to the "immortal Goethe's" Essay on Nature; Goethe's Faust makes its presence felt with the greatest insistence—the point bears emphasizing—in the texts most commonly regarded as "self-analytic."3 Of all the lines repeatedly quoted by Freud, the most frequent are these: "You can't tell the striplings, after all / The best of what you manage to find out." They usually appear when Freud touches on matters which are troubling him, but which must remain in the dark because they involve taking on a resistance: notably, questions that have to do with his dreams, but also points which permit him to develop analytic theory. Quoted frequently, too, are lines that invoke, or, at any rate, evoke, the apparition of spirits: "Again you approach . . . "; "And many beloved shades appear. . . . "4 What part do these quotations play in Freud's self-analysis? What is at stake here? The effect Freud's relationship with Fliefi had on him is well-known. But, over and above this relationship,

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might one not argue that Goethe, whom Freud admired, helped maintain, within the general process of the "self-analysis" which spawned psychoanalysis, the massive blind spot every patient necessarily encounters, the invisible limit her utterances, emotions, silences, and cries butt up against? This blindness is also the mysterious, obscure night hollowed out behind her, the night of a dark wood or deep spring, or else of a womb; she plunges into it, in a position that reverses the one she was born in,5 in hopes of being reborn. Does Freud not ensure that he too will come up against such a blind, impenetrable limit by the use he makes of Faust—a child of Goethe's if ever there was one, but, by the same token, an emanation or even specter of his as well? Do Goethe's words not operate in the context of Freud's investigations the way interpretations do in the course of the cure? That Goethe, father of German literature, a writer of genius haunted for years by the Faust legend (whose avatars he was to multiply) which so captivated Freud—that Goethe was for this positivist and man of science a father figure, and immortal besides, is obvious. It is, however, not quite as clear how this radiant paternal power, who created meaning and bestowed it upon others, should find support and a means of self-realization in that portion of night—absence, emptiness, death—silently at work at the very sources of life. This nocturnal power finds expression, in Faust, in the figure of the Witch, veritable sublation but also naked reality of what Goethe calls "nature"—an undefinable, archaic maternal figure taken to wife in the nuptials that preside over artistic creation. That, as we have seen, is what the painful pleasures of A Childhood Memory of Leonardo da Vinci announce. Is it not this accursed or unacknowledged nocturnal power [cette "part maudite" ou non dite]* which Freud's relationship with Goethe leads him to encounter as if by surprise, via the experience of the strange passion this prince of poets arouses in him? A strange and assuredly violent passion, whose unseemly fervor * An allusion to Georges Bataille's 1949 essay on transgression, La part maudite.

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can only be understood as the reactivation, amid a storm of obscure emotions, of the most deeply buried, profoundly unsuspected love and hate: incestuous love, and the hate which teaches one to free oneself of such love to become someone else. But, above all, one can also distinguish in this fascination for a poet capable of creating a body of work that was to captivate Freud, in the gentle violence of the ravishment produced by his words, the actualization of a still more primitive fantasy It is that of fusion/incorporation/disappearance/dissolution (and therefore death) within another, unrepresentable fusion: that of a primal scene in which the participants die, destroying themselves in order to bring new life into the world. In its turn, the life thus produced differentiates itself as a new subject from what was originally one. It can constitute itself as subject only by annulling, in a movement of hatred that detaches it from what was previously a unity, the encounter which engendered it—an encounter during which the new subject's existence was, intolerably, completely unheard of. This fantasy is both terrifying and inevitable. Arising out of Freud's ardent love for Goethe, it transforms that love into the fond hope which gives Freud the strength to endure the (Faustian) trial of the process of rebirth accompanying the emergence of the unconscious—an emergence consubstantial with the invention of psychoanalysis. A love involving perdition and pure loss—that is its price and its risk; a love which, in its ecstatic, incandescent power, inaugurates the experience of the unconscious; a love which represents the furthest limit of a process of regression that is perhaps the most primitive of all, and certainly the most dangerous; an experience one undergoes in hopes of finding new sources of strength [se resourcer], of drinking the waters of the fountain of youth [Veau d'une nouvelle jouvence]* But this is nothing other than the story of Faust led on by Mephistopheles' lures. Must one not rather say, led on by transference love? Are this madness and this scandal not precisely what is instituted by the analytic pact? * Source means spring or fountain and also source. Both senses are current.

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Goethe, then, appears as someone who comes to play the role of (Mephistophelean) mediator in Freud's dealings with the Witch (metapsychology); with the help of this demoniacal figure, analytic theory maintains an umbilical link with Freud's ongoing experience of the unconscious. It follows that the intellectual labor which produces metapsychological theory exactly resembles that which engenders dreams. If dreams are "the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind/' if they show us the unconscious in action, what conclusions is one to draw about psychoanalytic theorization? Its source—the desire it springs from—is illuminated by the dream itself, which is nourished by infantile wishes, by indestructible unconscious desire; it seeks to translate this desire into terms the limited conscious mind can comprehend. But then theorization, if it is thus grafted onto the dream, is necessarily also "self-analysis." And to the extent that Goethe remains an enigmatic figure for Freud—in that Goethe too somehow eludes himself, and, in fine, procures an obscure guarantee provided by something one might call a Witch—he can serve as a support for the subtle alchemical operation that enables Freud to make the transition from dreams to scientific discourse. This transition, which is also a bond, founds analytic practice and technique: in other words, it founds the very possibility of therapeutic intervention. Goethe's Witch is interminably delivering him of this work of art he keeps returning to, which he nourishes even as he sucks sustenance from it, which he cannot quite manage to tear himself free of: the incessant, nocturnal round of the drama of Faust, which, as poetic discourse, concentrates within itself all the secret power of dreams, even while proffering the blinding clarity of a universally accessible language that rings out from our stages. A language that holds up before us one possible, plainly visible illustration of what was, for Freud, the indissoluble unity of dreams and metapsychology. It was, then, a result not only of conscious mental activity, but also of the presence/absence of the poet, that "the essential reality of the psyche," the unconscious, could be grasped in its out-

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ward manifestations: in the first instance, dreams. For the poet's words—double-entry transactions, as it were—provided Freud a point of departure for the elaboration of analytic theory, and, in the same measure, for the self-analytic procedures that gave rise to the theory. To say so comes down to assigning Goethe the opaque place of founder with respect to Freud which Freud, founding father of psychoanalysis, himself occupied for his patients and heirs. "Itzig, Where Are You Going?" "Do I Know? Ask the Horse"; or, What Goethe Knew At the end of the magisterial theoretical chapter on the psychology of the dream-processes, after insisting that "the unconscious must be assumed to be the general basis of psychical life," Freud writes: If a dream carries on the activities of the day and completes them and even brings valuable fresh ideas to light, all we need do is to strip it of the dream disguise, which is the product of dream-work and the mark of assistance rendered by obscure forces from the depths of the mind (cf. the Devil in Tartini's sonata dream); the intellectual achievement is due to the same mental forces which produce every similar result during the daytime. We are probably inclined greatly to over-estimate the conscious character of intellectual and artistic production as well. Accounts given us by some of the most highly productive men, such as Goethe and Helmholtz, show rather that what is essential and new in their creations came to them without premeditation and as an almost ready-made whole.6 And here is the sort of confession one finds scattered through the correspondence with FlieS: It [my work] completely follows the dictates of the unconscious, on the well-known principle of Itzig, the Sunday rider. "Itzig,

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where are you going?" "Do I know? Ask the horse." I did not start a single paragraph knowing where I would end up.7 The psychology is proceeding in a strange manner; it is nearly finished, composed as if in a dream.8 Let us pause for a moment over these texts, one of which explicitly refers to Goethe's experience of the creative process. One cannot fail to be struck by the way their descriptions of the processes of theoretical elaboration (or intellectual processes) and dream processes converge. Thus the first of the texts cited deals with the intellectual activity carried out by dreams, coupled with the "diabolical" activity that gives dreams their special form. Then, by way of an association, Goethe looms up as a figure emblematic—paradigmatic—of intellectual and artistic creation, which, Freud emphasizes, goes on mostly in the shadows; what is delivered up, abruptly, all at once, to the conscious mind, is simply the "almost ready-made" result of this obscure creative process. (Can creative works therefore be described, like the dream, as products of "obscure forces from the depths of the mind?") We are given to understand that intellectual activity, which organizes and establishes systems and arranges forms and meanings in patterns, could not be brought to fruition, could not produce, describe, or bring forth the intelligible, if it were not allied with powerful forces that come to one's aid only in the act of disappearing, thus defying the very power whose success they assure. In essence, Freud tells us that one finds intellectual work going on in dreams, which is to say that dreams construct and express meanings. But he also tells us—the two ideas are indissolubly linked—that one finds dream-work going on in theorization. It is this that makes the primitive but never superseded model for theory-building as such the sexual theories of children. Freud throws out these ideas in particularly conspicuous fashion, inserting a digression on Goethe's intellectual productivity in the middle, precisely, of a discussion of the psychology of the dream processes; this discussion focuses, notably, on the intellectual work performed by dreams. If one now considers those passages 82

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in Freud's correspondence in which he talks, not about dreams, but about the research and metapsychological speculation to which he has been devoting himself body and soul (or body and dreams, as it were), one notices that Freud constantly refers his correspondents, when discussing what is apparently intellectual work, to his dream life: the latter, anything but transparent, dictates the twists and turns of the former. We have, then, to do with a kind of bridge between the nocturnal realm of dreams and the daytime world of theoretical work. Holding it up is Goethe's ample bulk. It is Goethe who provides the assurance that Freud's dream production/theoretical production—recto and verso of one and the same process—deserve recognition and respect. Which metaphors allow us to glimpse or grasp this process? If it is, as my hypothesis suggests, a transferential process from beginning to end, what are the clues which indicate that it is? "You can't tell the striplings, after all / The best of what you manage to find out." "Again you approach, you trembling forms!" Hushing up something too shameful to acknowledge, conjuring up spirits and placing oneself under the aegis of the spirit world—such are the Faustian leitmotifs that punctuate Freud's text. Do the quotations from Faust not project the outlines of a monstrous, fantastic primal scene? Occasionally obscured by virtue of being so thoroughly assimilated to the thread of Freud's discourse as to be indistinguishable from it, these quotations appear at moments when metapsychological speculation is at its most fruitful—moments that might be said to involve the encounter and subsequent coupling of a phantom and a witch in the kingdom of the dead. This encounter may not give birth to life, but it does engender the process of analytic theory: a promise, anything but innocent, of life and renewal. As to its effects, the mystery veiled by the lines Freud incessantly cites ("You can't tell the striplings, after all. . . ") appears, on close examination, as something rather like the germinal process of gestation: Every now and then ideas dart through my head . . . then they are gone again and I make no effort to hold onto them because I Elective Affinities , 83

indeed know that neither their disappearance nor their appearance in consciousness is the real expression of their fate. On such quiet days as yesterday and today, however, everything in me is very quiet, terribly lonely I cannot talk about it to anyone, nor can I force myself to work, deliberately and voluntarily as other workers can. I must wait until something stirs in me and I become aware of it. . . . Since I have been studying the unconscious, I have become so interesting to myself. A pity that one always keeps one's mouth shut about the most intimate things. Das Beste was Du weifit Darfst Du den Buben dock nicht sagen [sic].9 An association follows: Freud evokes a childhood memory, a scene that reminded him of "spirits burning in hell."10 The same hell, perhaps, as that "intellectual hell" at whose "darkest core [one catches] glimpses of the contours of Lucifer-Amor";11 yet it is a hell to which Freud was hardly a stranger. Does he not, for example, exclaim: "Again you approach. . . . "? However that might be, it becomes difficult not to notice, if one follows out the thread of associations in these passages, that Freud is describing an event and a state of affairs whose features might lead one to think that what was in question was a pregnancy, if we were not already aware that Freud was talking about the discovery of metapsychology. A mental pregnancy, if one likes, but a pregnancy nonetheless ("I must wait until something stirs in me"). The fetus develops in the dark; its presence is only occasionally revealed by a sudden, uncontrollable flurry of activity, which betrays the work of creation that otherwise goes on in silence. It is, one suspects, illegitimate; its unmentionable origins, like its guilty parents, must doubtless remain concealed. "A pity that one always keep's one's mouth shut about the most intimate things." One nevertheless understands, thanks to the Ariadne's thread of very free associations running through a text unhampered by the constraints of a rigid logical structure, that what one cannot "tell the striplings" originates, very probably, in infernal regions: "At the age of three years I passed through the

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station when we moved from Freiberg to Leipzig, and the gas flames which I saw for the first time reminded me of spirits burning in hell."12 One knows, moreover, that something essential to Freud's mental life develops on the frontier between life and death. A mother/witch figure is posted there: "In my case the 'prime originator,'" Freud confides to Fliefi, "was an ugly, elderly, but clever woman, who told me a great deal about God Almighty and hell and who instilled in me a high opinion of my own capacities."13 This is followed by a reference to the first stirrings of Freud's libidinal impulses "toward matrem." Freud adds: I have not yet grasped anything at all of the scenes themselves which lie at the bottom of the story. If they come [to light] and I succeed in resolving my own hysteria, then I shall be grateful to the memory of the old woman who provided me at such an early age with the means for living and going on living. . . . Today's dream has, under the strangest disguises, produced the following: she was my teacher in sexual matters. This letter, which should t e read in its entirety, merits very close attention. For the moment, I shall only pinpoint its most significant features: an elderly "prime originator" who seems to have connections with an infernal underworld, and therefore with the kingdom of the dead, simultaneously appears in the guise of Freud's "teacher in sexual matters." Freud, in other words, is initiated into the mysteries of life and jouissance ("teacher in sexual matters") through the offices of a feminine figure who engages in sinister commerce with a realm presided over by someone a subsequent letter will call Lucifer-Amor; a feminine figure who consorts so intimately with the dead that she seems able to revive and then exile them at will, an uncannily familiar figure of a Witch/Fate who wields boundless power in their kingdom. (One thinks of the non vixit dream, where it is the dreamer, Freud, who enjoys this power; in his interpretation, Freud links the themes of immortality and revenants, once again

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citing Faust.) One may assume that the initiation into sexual matters that this "teacher" provides Freud was indelibly marked with the stamp of its origins. Indeed, Freud indicates this plainly enough when he declares later on in the letter to Fliefi that "just as the old woman got money from me for her bad treatment, so today I get money for the bad treatment of my patients."14 In short, just as children play doctor, teacher, or mummy and daddy, so Freud, a doctor and analyst immersed in his self-analysis, plays Witch and teacher-in-sexual-matters with his patients. He plays, that is, at being a "prime originator" who furnishes the "means of living and going on living," even if these means are not exactly orthodox. He therefore also plays at trafficking with spirits. A strange sort of relationship with the shades! But what do we see emerging in Faust, if not precisely this tale of the prime originator and teacher in sexual matters who grants one access to life and knowledge? This explains why Freud can never approach Faust without being profoundly troubled, without experiencing a sense of what he calls Unheimlichkeit. For in the scenario of this play, in which Freud occupies the positions of both protagonists and provides the psychic space of the stage, it is his infantile neurosis which is once again rehearsed. The Faustian fantasy informing the theoretical and practical development of analysis is a reenactment of this neurosis. Accordingly, the space in which this game is played out is the space of a transference induced by the "word-work"—in a sense analogous to that of "dream-work"—which Goethe's words perform inside Freud's. Because he is the author of Faust, Goethe figures as someone privy, by God knows what uncanny magic, to the truth of Freud's childhood history. A lure, perhaps—but a lure that authenticates, in the sense that it makes it possible for Freud's infantile neurosis to be cast in words. More—and here Goethe replaces the "prime originator" and "teacher in sexual matters"— this lure plays a fundamental role in analysis, in the development of a theory of the unconscious and of sexuality.

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Phantoms and the Transference: "And Many Beloved Shades . . . " What I have just pointed out makes it easier to see, perhaps, how crucial a role the theme of revenants or phantoms plays in the "self-analysis" and the discovery of psychoanalysis. This theme, regularly recalled and reworked by way of quotations from Faust and tied in with the figure of the Witch, finds a rich mise-en-scene in Freud's dreams. One discovers there, narrated in pictorial form, the history of the discovery and development of metapsychology, which accordingly appears as the mark or inscription of the theme of the revenant. What is essentially in question in Freud's relationship with Goethe comes to the fore via that theme. A couple of references to mark out the path opening up here. First, the non vixit dream, and Freud's commentary on it. Second, the address Freud wrote upon receiving the Goethe prize, a discourse that is illuminating in several respects. The non vixit dream takes the form of a game played with revenants, in the course of which a desire for omnipotence is given free rein, while Freud provides a mise-en-scene of his relationships, in all their ambivalence, to a number of his venerated masters. A game in which Freud exults in the exorbitant power that is his; a game whose model one can make out in the fort-da game he describes in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The "game" I discussed earlier, in which Freud plays prime originator/Witch with his patients, can be understood in these terms: for that "game" too may be conceived as opening up a space—the space of the imaginary as well as that of omnipotent love, the space of childish freedom governed by the pleasure principle-—where, in sum, the most deeply repressed material, that which was the first to be repressed, is liberated. This space is the realm of a death drive strangely combined with Eros and thus transformed into a repetition compulsion which it will later become necessary to undo. The game in question thus offers us the blueprint of a certain process. Does it not therefore appear as a possible model

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for conceiving what is at stake in the transference, understood as a variation on, or version of, the fort-da game? So conceived, transference love—Freud speaks of "Lucifer-Amor"—would be directly linked to the play of the drives, of which it would be the most direct expression (in a sense that goes beyond the rigid psychological categories of a typology of the passions). To commune with "the beloved shades" would accordingly be to enter into the process of the transference by playing this game of "appearance/disappearance." "And many beloved shades appear / With them, like the faint strains of some old lay / First love and friendship draw near": Freud cites these lines from the "Dedication" to Goethe's Faust in a letter to Fliefi in which he discusses his self-analysis and metapsychological investigations as if he were talking about one and the same thing. The same lines recur in the address he wrote upon receiving the Goethe Prize, accompanied by a gloss: "[these are ] words we could repeat for each of our analyses."15 What does this mean, if not that the transference is the place where these apparitions and encounters occur? And if one rereads the most significant passages of Freud's letter of 27 October 1897 to Fliefi, one notices that analytic theory develops by way of a similar process, that is to say, a thoroughly transferential one: And so I live only for the "inner work." I am gripped and pulled through ancient times in quick association of thoughts; my moods change like the landscapes seen by a traveler from a train; and as the great poet, using his privilege to ennoble (sublimate) puts it: Und manche Hebe Schatten steigen auf. . . . [And many beloved shades appear]. Everything that I experienced with my patients, as a third [person], I find again here—days when I drag myself about dejected because I have understood nothing of the dream, of the fantasy, of the mood of the day; and then again days when a flash of lightning illuminates the interrelations and lets me understand the past as a preparation for the present. I am beginning to perceive in the determining factors large, general, framing motives.16

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Freud goes on to work out a metapsychological point. This letter thus furnishes one of the most astonishing examples we have of the absolute, necessary imbrication of Freud's self-analysis, his analysis of his patients, and the birth of psychoanalytic theory. The way the letter proceeds forcibly invites us to notice the interconnections between these three themes: the movement of the writing generates them one from the next, arranging them, without transition, in an interlocking pattern. A bit further on, the birth of analytic theory is described—screened, however, by the "Das Beste, was du wissen kannst . . . "—in terms which indicate that the process of constructing the theory is strictly analogous with the transferential process: fort-da, shadow-play, play with the shades. No less than the "beloved shades," the ideas Freud discusses twirl and pirouette in the ballet of appearances and disappearances dominating this dance that can only go on in the shadows: "Das Beste, was . . . " This commerce with spirits and—why not pronounce the word—this love act consummated with them, this fort-da, governs the self-analysis. It is abundantly represented in Freud's dreams. And it likewise marks off the space of every analysis. That is, it clears a broad path for the transference, to cite Freud's own words, or rather Goethe's, whom Freud quotes in rather surprising fashion, leaving the impression that an irresistible force has compelled him to reproduce the poet's words—as if they had materialized from somewhere else, like the shades they speak of. This same commerce with the spirit world is in evidence—arranges its own mise-en-sc&ne, as it were—in the upsurge of ideas leading toward metapsychology, toward the "Witch" metapsychology. For metapsychology is the theoretical expression of this transference; it is what brings it to light.17 What does this imply about the uncanny Freudian theory of the absolutely originary character of the death drives? Freud speaks of their insistent presence even within the dynamic of the life drives, advancing the idea that the inanimate is anterior to the animate. To judge by what the "dream of the three Fates," for example, suggests, he seems to want to add that the animate

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proceedsfromthe inanimate, in consequence of some bizarre disorder, and is destined to return to it. Finally, he puts forward the notion—far-fetched, in one sense—that copulation has a rejuvenating effect similar to that of "fresh nutrient fluid," and perhaps is the bizarre disorder in question. Is all this not plainly a theoretical metaphor for what is staged and enacted in dreams, comes into play in the transference, and begins to make sense in the light of the quotations/interpretations that punctuate Freud's discourse? What, to put the question differently, finds expression in the disconcerting logic of the "instincts and their vicissitudes"? What is conveyed through the unsettling imbrication of Eros with the death drives which, according to metapsychological theory, governs the vital processes, rooting them in the disorder that, as it were, animates the inanimate and transforms it into the theater or expression of a merciless struggle between the two drives? What if not precisely the same thing that is expressed in the image of the game played with the revenants—a revenant being, after all, a disturbed and disturbing dead man, one whose repose, at any rate, has been disturbed, one of the living dead? Again, the analytic process, that is, the transference—identified with a game of fort-da played with those "beloved shades"—has a regenerative effect. Does this not suggest that the transference, triggered by the imaginary power [puissance imaginaire] of analytic discourse (in Freud's case, by Goethe's poetry) is that "rejuvenating act of copulation" evoked by metapsychology—a primal scene? Let us go further: thus conceived as a fertile encounter with phantoms, as an eroticization, so to speak, of the death drive, is the transference not a very faithful mise-en-scene of that close combat between life drive and death drive depicted by metapsychology, which finds its astonishing paradigm in the story of Faust? Is it not likewise a representation of the curious fact that one must discern the silent, patient labor of the death drive beneath the sound and fury of Eros, which invests the very core of the death drive even as it continues to labor in its service? It is certainly not for nothing that Freud calls metapsychology the Witch—Faust's—since in

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the final resort it is the Witch who, empowered by her knowledge, the very special knowledge of a "teacher in sexual matters," not only makes it possible for the shades to materialize, but also ensures that the transferential encounter metapsychology sets the stage for will be a fertile one. On behalf of his patients, Freud appeals to the Witch, whose revelations "are neither very clear nor very detailed"; a latter-day Mephistopheles, he uses the language instituted by the analytic pact (free association, interpretation) to lead the Fausts stretched out on his couch into her presence. For it is the Witch who makes it possible for the words which initiate the cure to become analytic, which is to say, transferential, discourse. To that same end, Freud himself becomes a phantom: his position behind the couch, which makes him invisible to the patient, renders this perfectly in spatial terms. He becomes, indeed, more than a phantom, for he unites phantom and Witch in his person. The patient's desire is drawn to this compound personage as if to a magnet, inasmuch as it can now take form not only in the private space of the (autoerotic) dream, but also in that of the transference induced by language. Language may thus be said to constitute a kind of bridge—in the sense in which Freud speaks of "verbal bridges"—between the solipsistic domain of dreams and that of a shared jouissance whose model is provided by jokes and the jubilation they give rise to.18 In Freud's own case, self-analysis paradoxically produces the absolute paradigm, the perfect blueprint for this transferential union or encounter. (That Freud should have felt the need to call metapsychology the "Witch" makes this all the more evident.) A perfect blueprint for the simple reason that the self-analysis is, by its very nature, metapsychological discovery. It is so owing to an encounter with a phantom, Goethe, whose work makes him a living presence, and a most powerful one at that; it is so owing to the poet's words, which are not only a living model or metaphor for analytic discourse, but also exemplify, with particular acuity when they recount Faust's drama, that "lie which always tells the truth" Cocteau speaks of. That is, Goethe's words offer

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Freud an image which enables him to conceive a "logic" of the unconscious, and, at the same time, to think the dynamic and significance (from the viewpoint of the unconscious, precisely) of his investigations. These "umbilical words" of Freudian theory, as I called them earlier, also act, when they come into contact with Freud's own words, as decisive catalysts in the process of his "self-analysis." In a sense, they are interpretations which permit the theory to emerge—which make possible, that is, the encounter with the "Witch metapsychology," by, as it were, fecundating Freud's dreams. Simply stated, because they are poetic words, which tap into the energy of the drives even as they are cathected by the drives—because they are words at once obscure and transparent—they open up the space of a transference. What can then unfold at the heart of that space is a mise-en-scene of the unconscious position which accounts, in the final analysis, for the logic of the Freudian discovery. A logic that works to link up dreams and theory, on the basis of a sort of primal scene between the words of the poet (and man of science) and the dreams of the man of science haunted by the figure of the poet. Let us take one more step. Immediately after recounting the non vixit dream,19 and, again, in another lengthy consideration of it some twenty pages later, Freud describes the intricate web of associations woven around this dream. They establish an indissoluble link between commerce with revenants—in connection with which there appears yet another quotation from Faust—and the immortality procreation ensures. The link is forged by way of language (the names given to Freud's children): Thus this group of thoughts was connected once again with the intermediate thought in the latent content of the dream... . "No one is irreplaceable!" "There are nothing but revenants: all those we have lost come back!" . . , From here my thoughts went on to the subject of the names of my own children. I had insisted on their names being chosen, not according to the fashion of the moment, but in memory of people I have been fond of. Their names made the children into revenants. And after all, I reflected, was not having children our only path to immortality?20 92

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Along with, let us add, writing books. We need only recall what Freud says about the "immortal" Goethe in the dream about "Goethe's attack on Herr M.";21 or what he says about himself when, in the "dream of the botanical monograph," he mentions his "own immortal works" which have yet to see the light of day,22 or, again, dreams that a commemorative plaque has been affixed to the house in which "the secret of the dream" was revealed to him.23 Astonishing, the way the interpretation of non vixit proceeds; it condenses—in the manner of dreams, one is tempted to say—children and revenants, immortality and the kingdom of the dead. The condensation is brought about by the phrase "their names [my emphasis on this astounding and rather disconcerting formulation of Freud's] made the children into revenants." In other words, these revenant-vampires are, as it were, rejuvenated: they live on the blood and the very life of the children. A morbid flight of fancy! But it also seems as if the children have come along to take the revenants' place, to replace ("nobody is irreplaceable") and, consequently, kill them. Thus copulation, whose rejuvenating character Freud emphasized,24 appears, precisely because it rejuvenates, to be lethal as well, so that Eros may be said to accomplish the designs of the death drive., Freud evokes this twofold character—at once regenerative and deadly—of the act in which all life originates in a number of formulations scattered throughout his work ("'you owe Nature a death'"; and this passage: "his mother gave him a life—his own life—and in exchange he gives her another life, that of a child which has the greatest resemblance to himself").25 It might be said to find its translation in emotional terms in the ambivalent hate/love feelings one has for one's parents; it clearly plays a part in Freud's interpretation of the non vixit dream. Transference love—Lucifer-Amor—reproduces this twinning of the regenerative and lethal, if it is true that the cure is a promise of life, the place of a rebirth, and, as such, the (imaginary) site of a primal scene conceived along these lines. It would follow that the analytic pact, like the Mephistophelean pact which cannot take effect without the Witch's help, is an anything but innocent contract which is, and must continue to be, unsettling. Elective Affinities

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Freud reveals more about his relationship with Goethe in the 1930 address. All the elements whose connections I have just brought out reappear in it in a remarkable synopsis. Let us briefly examine the superb movement of this key text.26 To begin with, Freud submits his work to Goethe's judgment. This cannot but remind us, of course, of the dream about "Goethe's attack on Herr M."; I will come back to it: Freud then proceeds to draw a parallel between Goethe and . . . Leonardo da Vinci! Goethe, he claims, succeeded where Leonardo failed: in making the "transformation of the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life," "fundamental in the tragedy of Faust." For Goethe brought off the miracle of reconciling in his person the man of science—the author of the essay "Nature," which, let us not forget, had a decisive influence on Freud—and the poet, who "is far in advance of us everyday people, for [he] draws upon sources which we have not yet opened up for science."27 The first passage Freud cites here is precisely the one he says is the inaugural citation par excellence for any analytic process; it must therefore apply to his own analysis as well: "And many beloved shades appear . . . " Freud goes on to single out a number of themes which Goethe "treat[ed] poetically" and which later take their place in the metapsychological edifice. This leads him to the question of his relationship with Goethe, which is, he confesses, a powerful, profoundly ambivalent love relationship. The confidence is framed by the acknowledgment that intellectual investigation is powerless to explain either the mystery of artistic creation or its effects, and by a restatement, cast in the following terms, of the idea that the creative process is opaque: But, I admit, in the case of Goethe we have not yet succeeded very far. This is because Goethe was not only, as a poet, a great self-revealer, but also, in spite of the abundance of autobiographical records, a careful concealer. We cannot help thinking here of the words of Mephistopheles: Das Beste, was du wissen kannst, / Darfst du den Buben dock nicht sagen.28

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The words of the poet, Goethe's words, emanate from a scene which is shrouded in mystery and appears, for that reason, as an object of desire. Indeed, the enigma of artistic creation is the other face of the besetting question that gives rise to infantile sexual theories: "Where do babies come from?" Manifestly, the poet's words have an effect on Freud—an effect both analytic and theoretical—whose source seems to him, on his own testimony, to be no less mysterious than the source of artistic creativity. This means, to put it plainly, that the effect of poetic discourse, knowledge, or theory (metapsychology), an effect which can also generate dreams, is the fruit of a scene which reproduces the original scene of artistic creation. But, if this is so, it is easy to see that the relationship between poetry and its effect on those who enjoy it has an analog in the relationship between an imaginary primal scene assumed to have really occurred, and the desired, indubitably real effect of the imaginary scene that is the transference. One understands, then, how Goethe's poetry, especially Faust, makes Freud "pregnant with theory," as it were. It opens the space of a transference onto the person of the poet, a source of clarity who is nevertheless also irreducibly opaque at one essential, "umbilical" point: that of the origin and life of his work. Analytic theory thus appears as the child, or, to use the term Freud so loved, the "derivative" of his "self-analysis": by setting the self-analysis in motion, the quotations from Faust become the "navels" of the theory. They thus enable Freud to make good his wish to be a pioneer or explorer of unknown lands, and so to become "his own ancestor." This infantile wish to be his own father29 also involves the wish to take his place beside the mother/Fate/Witch (a wish expressed in the non vixit dream as the power to exorcise ghosts at will). It is this wish that finds its fantasy fulfilment here, by way of the metamorphosis of poetic into scientific discourse, the concomitant identification with Goethe, and, finally, admission to the Witch's Kitchen (or den). One can establish a parallel between the conclusion to Freud's essay on Goethe and the following lines from The Interpretation of Dreams: "If I was to report my own dreams, it inevitably fol-

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lowed that I should have to reveal to the public gaze more of the intimacies of my mental life than I liked, or than is normally necessary for any writer who is a man of science and not a poet."30 These lines, in turn, shed an interesting light on the following statement: "When I interpret my dreams for my readers I am obliged to adopt similar distortions." But the poet works under the same constraints: "'You can't tell the striplings, after all, / The best of what you manage to find out.'"31 In other words, the model for the language of analytic interpretation is the language of poetry. And both have something to do with the distortion at work in dreams—a cunning sort of distortion that fools the censorship. Before concluding these remarks, I would like briefly to examine the dream about "Goethe's attack on Herr M.," together with Freud's interpretation of it, in order to see what the effects of the process I think I have detected look like in practice. Throughout, I will be bearing in mind Freud's confession that he subjects his own dreams to distortion when interpreting them for his readers. It will be necessary—such, at any rate, is the risk I mean to take—to calculate the impact of these distortions here, or, at least, to guess at the effects of the discretion which keeps "the best that Freud has managed to find out" under wraps. Perhaps this will give us access to what Freud is keeping secret. Here is yet another absurd dream which plays about with numbers. One of my acquaintances, Herr M., had been attacked in an essay with an unjustifiable degree of violence, as we all thought—by no less a person than Goethe. Herr M. was naturally crushed by the attack. He complained of it bitterly to some company at table; his veneration for Goethe had not been affected, however, by this personal experience. I tried to throw a little light on the chronological data, which seemed to me improbable. Goethe died in 1832. Since his attack on Herr M. must naturally have been made earlier than that, Herr M. must have been quite a young man at the time. It seemed to be a plausible notion that he was eighteen. I was not quite sure, however,

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what year we were actually in, so that my whole calculation melted into obscurity. Incidentally, the attack was contained in Goethe's well-known essay on "Nature."32 Freud traces this dream to a number of different sources. In connection with his inability to orient himself in time, he cites a case of general paralysis recently confided to his care. He mentions another recent event: a book by FlieS had been roughly taken to task in a journal. As for Goethe's essay "Nature," Freud mentions an association, disturbing, to say the least, involving the sexual sense of the word "nature": the exclamation of a patient—"Nature! Nature!"—who ended up mutilating his genitals. To conclude his discussion, Freud, with apparent reluctance ("but I have also undertaken to show that no dream is prompted by motives other than egoistic ones. So I must explain away the fact that in the present dream I made my friend's cause my own and put myself in his place"), shows, or at least claims to, how he himself is implicated in his dream. But the explanations he offers tend to leave us with a feeling of dissatisfaction, which finds an echo in Freud's favorite quotation: "You can't tell the striplings, after all. . . . " In sum, after reading Freud's rather brief interpretation, one is left with the impression that one has somehow been hoodwinked, "led about by the nose," like all those "imbeciles" evoked in yet another passage of Faust dear to Freud. At any rate, Freud here gives us leads he is later at pains to scramble; in a certain sense, he plays out with his reader the scene between Mephisto and the student. I will limit myself to making one or two remarks on this passage; they are elicited by clues Freud himself provides in his booby trap of an interpretation. One notices, to begin with, that Goethe is here a revenant whom the dream has the power to conjure up at will. Yet this power butts up against something whose presence is betrayed by the fog that envelops the elaborate reasoning which attempts to explain why Goethe should be in the dream. That mental fog permits us to make a connection between this dream and the one

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in which Brucke asks Freud to prepare his own pelvis for dissection: the link comes by way of an association, made by Freud himself, between the fact of not being able to orient oneself in time and the theme of general paralysis: "I could already see that I myself behaved like a paralytic in the dream. (I was not quite sure what year we were in.)" In the dream about Brucke, the one in which he dissects his own pelvis (one needs to be aware that this dream is a mise-en-scene of Freud's "self-analysis"), Freud is unable to walk: "at that point I really became frightened about my legs."33 Thus these two dreams intersect at a crucial point, which permits us to grasp the following: the "self-analysis" is possible only because it comes up against a blind spot that resists knowledge's desire for omnipotence. Knowledge must be stricken with paralysis (let us also recall Freud's essay on the Medusa) or get lost in the fog, because the geographical information needed to explore the terra incognita of the unconscious is in the Witch's possession, not the "conquistador's." And the information given out by the Witch (is she lurking behind the figure of the female guide who appears in the dream about Brucke?) is "neither very clear nor very detailed." Hence one is most probably justified in assuming that the darkness which necessarily envelops the dreamer's every attempt to situate Goethe, or himself vis-a-vis Goethe, indicates as clearly (!) as possible that the "self-analysis," and, with it, all of Freud's investigations, can be carried out only in the company of this unidentifiable phantom. A supplementary piece of evidence tends to confirm that hypothesis: we are given an unambiguous reference to "Goethe's well-known essay on 'Nature.'" The fundamental influence this essay had on Freud at the beginning of his career is a matter of record; moreover, Freud does not fail to remind us of it here, without adding a line of comment. Indeed, this reminder closes his speech. The ensuing silence speaks volumes: it proves, beyond a doubt, that a great deal more could be said on the subject. But the only lead given the reader is an association which is, to say the least, unsettling. On the conscious level, it

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involves a patient, taking the form of a dissociation between the essay "Nature" and the mutilation of the genitals. But we know how important a part "Nature" had in the growth of Freud's ambitions, his decision to invest his energies in the sciences/and his subsequent relationship with Goethe. We know too that "nature" is a metaphor for the mother, and that its maternal connotations are heavily reinforced by usage: to convince oneself that this is relevant to Goethe, one has only to reread the passionate speeches on the subject in Faust, while it is enough to glance at the text about Leonardo da Vinci to confirm its relevance to Freud as well. One may, then, see in the association between Nature and mutilated genitals the expression of a castration threat connected to an Oedipal conflict active in Freud's unconscious and manifested in the transference onto Goethe. One might also, perhaps, read that association as an expression of Freud's fear that he risked being fascinated by an overly affectionate mother (Nature) whose all too possessive tenderness threatened to rob him of his manhood, to confiscate his virility.34 Subsequently, discussing the group of associations that revolve around FlieS, Freud tells us that he puts himself in his friend's place in his dream. Yet he also cautions us against taking this literally by introducing the theme of reversal, of which there are "plenty of examples in the dream," as he warns. What is to keep us from concluding that there are just as many examples of reversal in Freud's interpretation of the dream? This conjecture is not only legitimate, but perhaps even necessary, if one bears in mind that Freud more than once emphasizes that the dreamnarrative, associations, and interpretations produced by the dreamer, no less than the dream itself, make use of dream-logic, simply pursuing it in a different mode. If, then, Freud puts himself in his friend's place in his dream, does he not also put himself in Goethe's? He does not say so here, for he cannot bring himself to appear "as the only villain among the crowd of noble characters who share one's life" by acknowledging his hostility towards Fliefi—which is, moreover, indissociable from the fas-

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cination he feels for him. In this connection, let us also recall what Freud says in his discussion of the non vixit dream about "the ambivalence which characterizes his emotional life": My emotional life has always insisted that I should have an intimate friend and a hated enemy. I have always been able to provide myself afresh with both, and it has not infrequently happened that the ideal situation of childhood has been so completely reproduced that friend and enemy have come together in a single individual—though not, of course, both at once or with constant oscillations, as may have been the case in my early childhood.35 If one does not forget that this friend/enemy is always, in a certain way, a revenant, then it is hardly possible to dismiss our hypothesis; it is that much less possible if one considers the way Freud's relationship to Fliefi was to evolve, reproducing as it did the "ideal situation of childhood" Freud describes. It is interesting to note, when reading this dream, how the game of hide-andseek Freud played with Goethe governed the course of the relationship, of such crucial importance for psychoanalysis, between Freud and Fliefi. "Der Herr Grofivater" This remark allows me to move on to the point with which I would like to end the present chapter; it is a point that seems to me to reveal a great deal about the subject that has been at the center of my attention over the last few pages. I have in mind the question of Freud's peculiar relationship with Jung (which I do not mean to consider from the point of view of their theoretical divergence, at least not directly), Goethe's illegitimate grandson, according to legend or "family romance."36 According to legend, it must be said, for nothing has ever been established with certainty on this question; only maternity is "certissima," "pater semper incertus."37 But little matter: is what

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counts not the fact that we find ourselves here smack in the middle of a family romance? Let us turn to this text, in particular to the passage on fantasies about the mother's "fictitious love affairs," which involve "replacing the real father by a superior one/' There we find, in connection with the fantasy of being the illegitimate child of an illustrious father, a few lines that shed a great deal of light on the possibility that we may be dealing with a reversal involving the question of legitimacy. A younger child is very specially inclined to use imaginative stories such as these in order to rob those born before him of their prerogatives—in a way which reminds one of historical intrigues; and he often has no hesitation in attributing to his mother as many fictitious love-affairs as he himself has competitors. An interesting variant of the family romance may then appear, in which the hero and author returns to legitimacy himself while his brothers and sisters are eliminated by being bastardized.38 In what circumstances does Freud mention Jung's highly romantic genealogy? The passage in which he discusses it occurs in a letter alluding to a misadventure of Jung's involving transference love: To be slandered and scorched by the love with which we operate-—such are the perils of our trade, which we are certainly not going to abandon on their account. "Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse." And another thing: "In league with the Devil and yet you fear fire?" Your grandfather said something like that.39 Let us add that, like others—even more than others, perhaps—Jung was for Freud a "revenant," an incarnation of that first nephew-figure Freud mentions in his discussion of the non vixit dream (this nephew was doubtless, in his turn, a substitute for someone else). Jung too was both friend and enemy; his rela-

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tionship with Freud reproduced, with astounding fidelity, the pattern of Freud's childhood. For in the latter case, that of the nephew Freud already had as a child, Freud's father was the nephew's grandfather. Let us read a bit more of Freud's commentary on his dream: For the purposes of dream-interpretation let us assume that a childhood memory arose, or was constructed in phantasy, with some such content as the following. The two children had a dispute about some object. (What the object was may be left an open question, though the memory or pseudo-memory had a quite specific one in view.) Each of them claimed to have got there before the other and therefore to have a better right to it. They came to blows and might prevailed over right. On the evidence of the dream, I may myself have been aware that I was in the wrong... . However, this time I was the stronger and remained in possession of the field. The vanquished party hurried to his grandfather—my father—and complained about me, and I defended myself in the words which I know from my father's account: "I hit him 'cos he hit me." This memory, or more probably phantasy, which came into my mind while I was analysing the dream—without further evidence I myself could not tell how—constituted an intermediate element in the dream-thoughts, which gathered up the emotions raging in them as a well collects the water that flows into it. From this point the dream-thoughts proceeded along some such lines as these: "It serves you right if you had to make way for me. Why did you try to push me out of the way? I don't need you, I can easily find someone else to play with," and so on.40 One could apply all of this, transposing point by point, to Freud's relations with Jung. That object whose nature is not specified, "though the memory or pseudo-memory had a quite specific one in view": is it not, if we transpose to the period of Freud's maturity, the question as to who had priority of access to the secrets of metapsychology (to the mother, the Witch)? And

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the question, again, as to who had priority when it came to winning the love, esteem, and recognition of the father/grandfather of the family romance—namely, Goethe? The question, consequently, as to who had the better right to do away with him so as to take his place? I am the true, the legitimate heir (even if I know very well that I'm in the wrong); the other claimant is illegitimate. Better: "I'm a love child, too"—to borrow the expression Freud uses in connection with his book on "the Italian Moses."41 The love child, of course, of a transference love—such that it is possible to keep up the fantasy "of a closer connection with Goethe," a "thought" that is "very tempting," Freud writes to Zweig in 193042—as is the idea of not being burdened with an "official" father, since this frees one to be one's own ancestor. The episode in which Jung was named heir apparent comes to mind here. For that act of investiture was a means of deflating Jung's pretentions to any sort of priority, without completely eliminating this "nephew" and discomfiting pretender! In a letter written shortly after the one in which he mentions Jung's "grandfather,"43 this comes to the fore with surprising vividness: It is strange that the very same evening when I formally adopted you as eldest son and anointed you—in partibus infidelium [in the lands of the unbelievers]—as my successor and crown prince, you should have divested me of my paternal dignity, which divesting seems to have given you as much pleasure as I, on the contrary, derived from the investiture of your person.44 The truly extraordinary thing here is the bone of contention, the object of the conflict between "father and son": it is nothing other than their relation to phantoms! Freud intends to maintain an exclusive monopoly over this relation, in the sense we have already seen. What is at stake here is not, of course, commerce with the spirit world, even if superstition is not a matter of indifference to Freud (for reasons that, moreover, have to do with Fliefi). What is at stake is metapsychology.

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One point in particular bears emphasizing here. Goethe/ Freud: two names, names of ancestors. Two names which had served as the "objects of . . . feeble witticisms" for which, Freud tells us, he sought "retribution."45 Freud-Freude: joy. Goethe: the Gods (Gotter), the Goths (Goten), muck (Kot) in Herder's poetry, where one also finds the image of dust.46 The dust that occurs in the "dream of the three Fates," the dust we are made of and to which we shall return. ''Kot/muck" appears as well in a poem of Heine's that leaps to Freud's mind in connection, precisely, with the non vixit dream. Here muck (Kot—Gotter—Goten—Goethe) seals an act of mutual understanding: (Nur wenn wir im Kot uns fanden / So verstanden wir uns gleich / Not til we both found ourselves in the muck / Did we promptly understand one another.)47 Understanding: the aim of the instinct to investigate. Freud the "conquistador" is motivated by a passion to understand. He dreams of the alchemy which would triumphantly transform the instinct to investigate back into joie (Freude) de vivre—"fundamental in the tragedy of Faust." An extraordinary condensation: it intertwines Goethe and Faust via the intersecting destinies of their names, somewhat as in Heine's poem. And, in so doing, it seals Jung's fate. Clearly, it is Freud who can legitimately claim to be descended of Goethe, even if he is an innovator who takes the impure—muddy—path that alone leads to the discovery of psychoanalysis: a path marked out with the verses, stolen from Faust, that dot Freud's text. To be sure, in the eyes of Jung, who imagines himself to be, precisely, a "Goth," this is perverse, scandalous, an act of force!—doubtless the same sort of act Freud resorts to in order to make Moses a foreigner among the Jews, thus depriving a people of its Great Man. Jung will later speak of the "Aryan science" proper to the "Germanic peoples," whose "profound soul" does not wallow in the "insipid mudhole fit for children" he sees "Jewish" psychoanalysis as being.48 Seduced by National Socialism, Jung (whose name means— what irony!—"young") heard in Goethe's call for regeneration,

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in his own sinister interpretation of it, exactly what he wanted to. But Goethe, in forging his theory of a world literature, had conceived regeneration in terms of a "melting pot," melange, "experience [tyreuve] of the foreign," as Antoine Berman puts it.49 As for Faust, that work Goethe was forever in the process of finishing, where does it take its inception, if not, precisely, in the "muck" of popular tradition, the tradition of the puppet theater? It comes out of a "mudhole fit for children," the mudhole of folklore, where one is not afraid to roll around in the dirt, the impurity, the filth in which the pure gold of truth lies buried. Psychoanalytic truth. Freud's essay "Dreams in Folklore,"50 in which he discusses unexpurgated popular materials, is arresting when read in this context. In that essay, very oddly, Freud employs, in developing his own analyses, the kind of coarse, dirty words one forbids children to use. The essay ends this way: Our intention in putting together this short paper was twofold. On the one hand we wanted to suggest that one should not be deterred by the often repulsively dirty and indecent nature of this popular material from seeking in it valuable confirmation of psycho-analytic views.... On the other hand, we should like to express the view that it is doing the common people an injustice to assume that they employ this form of entertainment merely to satisfy the coarsest desires. It seems rather that behind these ugly facades are concealed mental reactions to impressions of life which are to be taken seriously, which even strike a sad note—reactions to which common people are ready to surrender, but only if they are accompanied by a yield of coarse pleasure.51 This is very far from what Jung has in mind when he speaks of the "profound soul" of the "Germanic peoples." Not a trace of Animus and Anima or of grand, shining archetypes, the Teutonic knights, so to speak, of the "collective Aryan unconscious." For Freud too, the soul of the people is a treasure-house, but in a completely different sense: that of Bakhtin's "carnivalesque," car-

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nival understood as hodge-podge, vulgarity, truth in the raw.52 The muddy fountain, in other words, which Goethe draws on for Faust, and Freud for analysis. Elective affinities, then, between Goethe and Freud. Freud makes a transference onto Goethe, onto the forever opaque primal scene that permits the flowering of the work of art, and also accounts for certain of its effects. They make themselves felt in Freud's self-analysis, which in some sense reproduces, reiterates, rehearses this primal scene, translating it into a mode of action through the invention of analytic theory and practice. Which is another way of saying that inventing analysis comes down, precisely, to putting transference love to work. Moreover, if analysis is a scion of Faust's worthy of its ancestor, himself a descendant of Goethe's in the same bastard line, the reason is that it dared, in its infancy, to acknowledge the existence of transference love—and that, still a baby, it had the courage to manipulate this explosive love to its own ends. The Witch metapsychology bent over its cradle precisely in order to bestow upon it this fearful love, still hot with the flames of hell. All of which Freud explains, rather comically, in a letter to Stefan Zweig: What really happened with Breuer's patient I was able to guess later on, long after the break in our relations, when I suddenly remembered something Breuer had once told me in another context before we had begun to collaborate and which he never repeated. On the evening of the day when all her symptoms had been disposed of, he was summoned to the patient again, found her confused and writhing in abdominal cramps. Asked what was wrong with her, she replied: "Now Dr. B/s child is coming!" At this moment he held in his hand the key that would have opened the "doors to the Mothers," but he let it drop. With all his great intellectual gifts there was nothing Faustian in his nature. Seized by conventional horror he took flight and abandoned the patient to a colleague.53

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6 The Pact Besides, I abhor instruction that does not also immediately spur me to action or make me more active. —Goethe

i f psychoanalysis, as both metapsychological theory and clinical practice, clearly seems to be the child or "derivative" of Freud's transference love for Goethe; if Faust nourished Freud's theoretical imagination when his work was still in its infancy, enabling him to make his unprecedented journey to the center of the psyche and venture into the Witch's den; if Goethe's words, conveyed by the characters in his plays, are so many "navels" connecting the theoretical edifice to the "self-analysis" as if to the womb* from which it has sprung; if, as a result, one cannot help but be struck by the vital, germinative character of the process whose main lines I have tried to trace, it is nevertheless true that death is everywhere present in this process. It makes itself felt there, to begin with, in the guise of the strange, incessant activity of phantoms, with whom the closest of ties are eventually formed. Indeed, Freud declares that "the dead are powerful rulers."1 Death is also directly present at the heart of this process, in the form of a terrible, pitilessly exacting force. I have in mind the bargain which permits everything to coalesce: the hopelessly one-sided contract which stipulates that, in exchange for the * Matrice, which means both "womb" and "matrix/' Both senses are current.

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faithful services Mephistopheles renders his "master" Faust, the latter will sign over his soul, dooming it to what would appear to be eternal perdition. In a word, the pact seems to owe its existence, in the final analysis, to what Schreber so eloquently calls "soul-murder"—a term he "illustrates," Freud points out, "by referring to the legends embodied in Goethe's Faust."2 Applied to the analytic pact, this is more than a little troubling, at least if one assumes—if only because one must call on the Witch for help— that the analytic pact is modeled on the terrible bargain Dr. Faust strikes with "the strange son of chaos." In Freud's essay on Schreber, the question of the pact is bound up with another: by way of a reference to Faust, Freud associates Schreber's delusions about an approaching catastrophe and the end of the world with the processes at work in the analytic cure. He further associates them, in a note, with what occurs at the climactic moment of love-making. This is hardly a matter of indifference, if one recalls that the instrument of the cure, the means employed to restore the patient to health, is (transference) love.3 In sum, a whole cluster of questions is connected, "umbilically," with Faust. They form a tight knot that ties the (analytic) pact to the ultimate catastrophe or end of the world, the healing process, and love; or, to put it differently, to the transference and Freud's turn toward metapsychology. We are, so to speak, constrained to pay attention to these multiple connections by an enigmatic remark of Freud's to be found at the end of his essay on the Schreber case. It is cast in the form of a paradox: I had developed my theory of paranoia before I became acquainted with the contents of Schreber's book. It remains for the future to decide whether there is more delusion in my theory than I should like to admit, or whether there is more truth in Schreber's delusion than other people are as yet prepared to believe.4 Freud's theory, or the Witch metapsychology! But let us turn back, for the moment, to the bargain which 108

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requires Faust's blood and the Witch's help, to the feeling of Unheimlichkeit and the bizarre amalgam of attraction (seduction even) and unbearable malaise that it evokes. In a text entitled "A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis,"5 Freud devotes a number of close analyses to the mystery represented by a bargain with the Devil. He associates it, as least as far as the case of the painter Christoph Haitzmann is concerned, with the effects of mourning and the melancholic reaction brought on by the death of one's father. It will be recalled that Freud, in a preface to The Interpretation of Dreams, describes the loss of a father as "the most important event, the most poignant loss," of a man's life."6 (We will see in a moment to what extent Haitzmann's case is relevant to Faust.) Here is what Freud has to say about the possible motivations for Haitzmann's bargain with the Devil: His father, then, had died and he had in consequence fallen into a state of melancholia; whereupon the Devil had approached him and asked him why he was so downcast and sad, and had promised "to help him in every way and to give him support." Here was a person, therefore, who signed a bond with the Devil in order to be freed from a state of depression. Undoubtedly an excellent motive, as anyone will agree who can have an understanding sense of the torments of such a state and who knows as well how little medicine can do to alleviate this ailment. A bit further on, this vision of the Devil as therapist leaves its imprint on the very terms Freud employs: Why depart from this obvious and natural view of the matter? The position would simply be that a man, in the torment and perplexity of a melancholic depression, signs a bond with the Devil, to whom he ascribes the greatest therapeutic power.7 Freud seems to consign the theme of a bargain with the Devil to the oblivion of a dark, remote past—to the age, precisely, of that "primeval devil religion" which he confesses dreaming The Pact

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about in a letter to Fliefi.8 Yet, evidently, he takes considerable interest in the motif of the Devil as therapist—or, if one prefers, of the therapist as devil9—and therefore in the motif, as well, of the regenerative power of a pact with "the spirit of perpetual negation" who holds that "everything created deserves to be annihilated." Indeed, psychoanalysis puts itself forward in this text, in the clearest, most insistent manner, as a sublation of the motif of the pact. It is as if the fantasy of a pact with the Devil, far from being a thing of the past, were rather reactivated, renewed, and put profoundly to work in the analytic pact, which therefore appears, in some sense, as one of its avatars. Twice in a fairly short text, Freud draws a parallel between believing in the Devil and believing in psychoanalysis. His way of doing so is highly revealing: he makes it seem as if these two kinds of belief, despite what we think we know about them, were, in the end, of the same nature. Thus Freud notes that he is "writing for readers who, although they believe in psycho-analysis, do not believe in the Devil." Then, anticipating a possible objection to the interest he takes in the painter's case, he says, "there is no need for any further apology for considering [the neurotic fantasy of the bond with the Devil] psycho-analytically." He adds the following surprising lines: But anyone who does not believe in psycho-analysis—or, for the matter of that, even in the Devil—must be left to make what he can of the painter's case, whether he is able to furnish an explanation of his own or whether he sees nothing in it that needs explaining.10 Believing in the Devil or believing in psychoanalysis amounts to the same thing in the end, Freud tells us here. More: not believing in the Devil is almost more surprising than not believing in psychoanalysis. In any case, one had better believe in psychoanalysis if one doesn't believe in the Devil. As for not believing in either, that is properly speaking inconceivable, and borders on the absurd.

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It is no accident that the term Freud chooses to employ is "believe." The word points to the link between "science" or psychoanalytic knowledge and the transference, while simultaneously disallowing the obsolete and perhaps not entirely innocent myth of the "scientificity" (in the classic sense) of analysis. If the protean figure of the Devil—whose many different facets we have glimpsed in the person of Mephistopheles as he is presented in Freud's writings—wears the features of a therapist in the original pact and therefore resembles the analyst in the pact with the patient, he does so, says Freud, as a surrogate for the father. Hence one may say, once one has become aware of the full range of Mephistopheles' metamorphoses, that the Devil with whom Faust strikes his bargain embodies a truly explosive melange: he is by turns, and all at once, the repressed drive, "the spirit of perpetual negation," and, finally, a father surrogate. It does not seem to me a matter of indifference that the therapist should thus appear to partake of the nature of the very force which invades and overwhelms the beleaguered egos of those who appeal to him for help. Indeed, I think it is of considerable consequence, in a number of different respects, that the therapist should embody Father Satan, Father Saturn, and the VampireFather who feeds on his children's blood, that "very special juice" which furnishes the ink the pact is signed with. If we were briefly to sum up the strange situation brought about by the bargain with the Devil (operating as the fantasy constitutive of the analytic pact), our summary would come down to this: it is a bargain with the radically ambivalent figure of the destructive, homicidal father, but also, it must be emphasized, with the seductive father. It therefore has a therapeutic function no less radically ambivalent than is the father himself. On the one hand, it works to undo repression and liberate the drive by establishing a connection with, or access route to, the id, that "internal foreign territory,"11 as Freud calls it. ("We approach the id with analogies," says Freud; "we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations"—a phrase in which one hears a kind of echo of the Witch's Kitchen.12) On the other hand, the pact with the Devil

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serves, thanks to the "Witch," to "tame the drive."13 But what is this Devil-therapist, this Satanic or Mephistophelean father, if not, precisely, a "son of chaos"—that is to say, a living, frighteningly powerful illustration of the drive or avatar of the repressed? Given the structure of the therapeutic pact (which costs the son/patient no less than his "soul"), this remarkable trait of the therapist's betrays the massive complicity between the seething world of repressed desire and a shadowy paternal figure who is both destructive and seductive, but no longer forbidding:14 a source of confusion and bewilderment rather than a principle of order. I will now briefly consider this surprising trait: surprising, even stupefying, when one notes that it brings about the return of analytic theory's repressed. It seems to me to represent nothing less than the reemergence, at the very heart of the therapeutic activity initiated by the pact, of the famous "neurotica" or theory of the neuroses Freud abandoned in 1897:15 the theory or rather primal fantasy of seduction by the father. This is a scene analytic theory is supposed to have renounced, or, in other words, repressed. But if the pact with Mephistopheles, pivotal in the drama of Faust, is the imaginary model for the analytic pact, then analysis may be said to bring off the feat of turning the scene it must renounce or repress into the very structure or driving force—but in the guise of a fantasy16—at the origin of all analytic work. It is as if psychoanalysis had been brought into existence by the fact that analytic theory, built up around the discovery of the Oedipus complex, had succeeded in occupying the site where an imaginary, pretheoretical construction had once stood. A hasty and doubtless naive reading might construe this in Platonic terms, as the advent of truth in a place where illusion once reigned. But that is not what is involved. Nor is it a question of a dialectical (Hegelian) process of supersession/preservation of error within a higher truth. Involved here is, rather, a negative movement which provides the "strongest possible guarantee that we have been successful in our effort to uncover the unconscious," as Freud puts it in his famous essay on negation.17 Owing to this movement, analytic practice can emerge out of the (repressed) unconscious of analytic theory. That unconscious is 112

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unveiled in consequence of a pact between doctor (Devil, seductive/destructive father) and patient, a pact which operates like the return of the repressed; it then becomes the task of analysis to work over the repressed material thus brought to light. Let us put the matter differently. Analytic theory structures itself around the theme of the Oedipus complex, while repressing the seduction theory. (As is well known, the Oedipus complex appears in the correspondence with Fliefi, in Freud's letter of 15 October 1897, almost immediately after Freud abandons his "neurotica.") The relation between analytic theory, insofar as it is so structured, and the analytic practice the pact leads to may be conceived as exactly similar to the relation between the repression carried out by thought, that is, negation, and the repressed material such negation brings to light. This repressed material then returns in the form of an act, the act which initiates all analytic practice. If one wished to cultivate the paradox, one could say that analytic practice, insofar as it is founded on the pact between patient and therapist, is the symptom of analytic theory considered as the theory of the Oedipus complex. The aim of the cure is accordingly to do away with this symptom. We should, perhaps, ponder the following remark of Freud's in this context: Of all the erroneous and superstitious beliefs of mankind that have supposedly been surmounted there is not one whose residues do not live on among us to-day in the lower strata of civilized peoples or even in the highest strata of cultural society. What has once come to life clings tenaciously to its existence. One feels inclined to doubt sometimes whether the dragons of primaeval days are really extinct. Later in the same text, Freud considers what transpires when the therapist shares certain items of knowledge with her patient. This leads him to draw an analogy with the reaction observable in children when one tries to teach them the facts of life: After such enlightenment, children know something they did not know before, but they make no use of the new knowledge The Pact

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that has been presented to them. We come to see that they are not even in so great a hurry to sacrifice for this new knowledge the sexual theories which might be described as a natural growth and which they have constructed in harmony with, and dependence on, their imperfect libidinal organization—theories about the part played by the stork, about the nature of sexual intercourse and about the way in which babies are made. For a long time after they have been given sexual enlightenment they behave like primitive races who have had Christianity thrust upon them and who continue to worship their old idols in secret.18 This is a most instructive passage indeed. It authorizes the idea that the seduction theory and the image of the father it projects behave, in some sort, like the primitive dragons or ancient idols which are perhaps not as dead-and-long-forgotten as might be supposed. Oedipus may well have happened along and triumphed over the Sphinx by solving the riddle she tried to stump him with, furnishing Freud, in the process, with a metaphor that could replace the seduction theory, and so free him of it. But Oedipus ultimately succeeded only in bringing the plague down upon Thebes. Arriving for the first time in the United States, Freud, whom nobody can accuse of not knowing his classics, had this to say about analysis: "They don't realize we're bringing them the plague!"19 One can distinguish a second, rather curious motif in the pact. It is not unrelated to the one I have just singled out. The pact is concluded with the Devil, a figure antithetical to the divinity. This antithesis results, moreover, from an act of repression which splits an earlier personage, both divinity and Devil, into two separate figures.20 (One might note in passing that the text we have been referring to here is so structured as to put the Devil before God.) The bargain with the Devil inverts the covenant, discussed in Moses and Monotheism, which is made between God and his people and which sanctions the advent of monotheism; this change is accompanied, Freud points out, by

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the abandonment of magic rites. That he should insist on this point in Moses and Monotheism does not seem unimportant when one recalls that he often compares psychoanalysis to "a sort of slow magic." He notes further, in Moses, that the renunciation of magic goes hand in hand with a prohibition on graven images. What, let us now ask, occurs in the pact? To begin with, links are reestablished with the world of magic. Second, the Devil appears before his victim, whom he has chosen just as God in the Mosaic religion chooses his people. Moreover, he comes forward, as conspicuously as possible, in the guise of an image or representation, assuming many different forms: animal, man, monster, or dragon. We are thus poles apart from the severe, asexual singularity of the monotheistic God;21 we have rather to do with a teeming proliferation of forms in movement, a phantasmagoric profusion of exuberant, effervescent, living images which take visible shape in the person of the Devil. The impression produced is much closer to that of a disorderly, bickering horde (the horde of brothers Freud speaks of?) than that of a unified, transcendent individual. And, indeed, it is this protean character which identifies the devil/father/therapist, somber "son of chaos," as a representative of the drive, a force, that is, come straight out of the "[Witch's] cauldron full of seething excitations"—the cauldron of the unconscious. Earlier, I highlighted another feature of Mephistopheles/the Devil: he is "the spirit of perpetual negation," the perfect expression, according to Freud, of the destructive drive. But this is a feature one sees powerfully reemerging in the drama of the pact, in two different respects. It will be recalled, first, that the pact offers a striking illustration of the imbrication of the drives discussed, notably, in "Analysis Terminable and ^terminable," inasmuch as it offers life—rejuvenation—at the price of a "soul-murder." But something else becomes clearly visible in it as well, if one takes due note of the fact that the therapist can assume the function that is his precisely because he looms up as a diabolical and therefore destructive incarnation of the father—who is, however, also a seducer, a tempter who awakens desire and initiates

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one into knowledge of jouissance. The pact presided over by this father/therapist thus reveals something which is, according to Freud, precisely what the alliance that founds monotheism represents: namely, the unlimited dominion of the primal father as well as the struggle unto death that once pitted him against his sons and still rages in the depths of the unconscious. Accordingly, the pact brings to light two things joined by ties nothing can sever, precisely because they enter into the warp and woof of the pact itself: the repressed unconscious of analytic theory (the "neurotica") and the repressed unconscious of monotheism (the struggle unto death between the father and his sons). Monotheism's unconscious is unveiled in the theory as well, but only gradually: it emerges out of the mass of material structured around the story of Oedipus. That the pact should thus conjointly reveal the unconscious of monotheism and of analytic theory is, to my mind, far from fortuitous. The far-reaching implications of this conjunction are foregrounded in the menacing encounter it brings about. "In League with the Devil and Yet You Fear Fire!" Turning back to Moses and Monotheism, we observe that Freud there links the religious process of the institutionalization and sacralization of a divine figure with the consummation and subsequent repression of an act of murder which took that figure as its victim. Despite repression, says Freud, a memory of the murder remains active in the unconscious.22 Discussing the forgetting or even the fierce denegation of this crime in Jewish monotheism, he adds that what was repressed returns in the real—without quite becoming conscious—with the advent of Christianity. There it takes the form of the slaying of the great man, the Messiah; the interest of this figure lies in the fact that he condenses, as in a dream, the roles of both father and son. The example of Christianity makes it plain that the slaying of such a figure provides religion its point of departure. This murder and sacralization are accompanied by a veritable castration: "God be-

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comes entirely removed from sexuality." Castration, in turn, is bound up with the repression of the maliciousness and terrifying instinctual force characterizing the primal father—and the Devil. An instinctual force which is, in the true sense, indestructible and irreducible—it displays, in other words, the very traits which distinguish the unconscious. Thus the Devil appears as a resurrected primal father, or, more precisely, as living proof that the murder of the father was unsuccessful, because impossible. By way of the pact, then, the primal father returns to seek vengeance and settle accounts. This is, moreover, confirmed by Freud's construction in "A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis." The fact that the Devil makes his appearance at the very moment the painter actually begins to mourn the loss of his father shows clearly enough, it seems to me, that the Devil is not merely a substitute for the father, but the father resurrected: he cannot exist in this diabolical form, in which he is again endowed with the attributes and features of the primal father, until the venerated, adored, deified father has disappeared. Indeed, the exaltation of this latter personage was instrumental in the murder of the original, and made it easier to cast a veil of silence over the crime once it had been committed. Only when this exaltation comes to an end is the diabolical father, who had been imprisoned by the majesty of the paternal function, at last set free—just as, in certain fairy tales, a handsome prince is robbed of his true form by a magic spell that only love can deliver him from. Similarly, by confronting every possible symbolization of the body with an unbearable, irreducible real,23 the physical reality of death delivers us from the death—a false death, in some sense—maintained by the symbolic order via the institution of paternity. It is in the course of mourning that the father is truly brought back to life. One can, therefore, taking advantage of a parallel that is as sad as it is marvellously exact, apply to this father an expression borrowed from a dream of Freud's I have already discussed at some length, the non vixit dream. Non vixit—he never lived—inasmuch as his dominion, though certainly real, was that of an effigy or pure symbol which covered

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up a murder perpetrated and yet never carried through to its conclusion: for the menacing force the murderers set out to annihilate lived on in the shadow of the father's effigy. An illuminating parallel might be drawn here with a surprising passage in Nietzsche, the paragraph in The Gay Science entitled "God is dead."24 Death—the unacceptable, horrifying scandal this event represents—seems capable of tearing a breach in the economy of repression I have just described; through this gaping hole there can pour an uncontainable, churning torrent of repressed material that threatens to sweep up and carry off everything in its path. Doubtless we need to reconsider, in this connection, the question of what Freud means to say when he confesses that his book on dreams is "a reaction to my father's death."25 But let us first finish unraveling what lies concentrated within the dense node of the pact and the fantasy underlying it—concentrated in accordance with the logic of dreams and jokes, a logic whose basic operating principles bear the names "condensation" and "displacement." It ought to be clear, by now, that the pact puts a kind of anamorphosis before us, by means of which two related but counterposed scenes are condensed in one and the same image: the murder of the primal father by the horde of brothers, and the murder of the son by a cruel, all-powerful father. Indeed, each of the pact's two protagonists is capable of slipping into the role of either father or son, depending on the angle one considers him from. In one perspective—that closest to hand, and the one Freud emphasizes—the Devil appears as a substitute for the father, a resurgence of the ancestral father who, with a single gesture, both seduces the son and condemns him to death. But, in another perspective, suggested in particular by the adventures of Mephistopheles with the aging Faust, the Devil can easily seem to be playing the opposite role. In this case too, no less than when he came forward as a version of the primal father, he is situated in a primitive register. Now, however, he is in the son's position: in fact, he is, all by himself, the whole horde of sons.

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(His chaotic, protean, multifaceted character seems to me to authorize such an interpretation.) He is the horde which rises up and attacks the old scientist and scholar Faust, a paternal figure if ever there was one, but a paternal figure whom civilization has stripped of the attributes of the primal father. The pact, then, may be said to operate a kind of chiasmus. It brings to light two scenes which are counterposed and yet inseparable. Indeed, their emergence here is complementary, since only their conjunction enables one to make out the features of both father and son in their primitive state. This throws into relief a structure which Freud flattens out, so to speak, in his version of the same somber story: in his selective account of the adventures of Oedipus, the characters of father and son seem to have been toned down somewhat, at least when compared with the figures conjured up in one's imagination by Freud's portrait of the primal father or his evocation of the horde of sons. I would add, moreover, that the Oedipal version of the relations between father and son conjures away the seductive dimension of the paternal figure, retaining only the features that mark him out as a potential killer. Thus something fundamental revealed by the pact is effaced in Freud's version: the infrangible meshwork which weaves the projects of seduction and murder together in a single figure.26 For her part, the Sphinx,27 whose disappearance—not accidentally—sets in motion the chain of events that occur in Oedipus Rex, had already realized the strange, terrifying amalgam of seduction and murder recreated in the pact, or, at least, in the fantasy informing it. The same amalgam haunts Schreber's delusions, which initially set me on the path I have been following here. (It is, in places, a weirdly convoluted path: the complex architectonics of the cluster of questions it touches on forces it to make twists and turns that surprise me too, even as I try to chart them.) Might one not, then, suggest that Freud's rejection of the seductive seduction theory, the process that enabled him to tear himself free of the fascination it exerted, was, in his heroic journey as discoverer of the unconscious, the exact equivalent of Oedipus's initial triumph over the Sphinx, whom his knowledge enabled him to

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slay? Oedipus's drama, of course, occupies a conspicuous place at the center of the Freudian edifice; Faust's operates in secret. But may one not assert that, at the point(s) of articulation between the two dramas (point[s] we must eventually examine), the pact brings about something like a resurrection of the Sphinx, in the person of the Devil allied with the Witch? A hypothesis fraught with consequences: it has implications for every aspect of the problem of the kind of knowledge [savoir] analysis involves, for it forces one to pose again, in all its acuteness, the question of the relation between metapsychology and the transference, as well as to reconsider the role thought plays in analysis. Several different strands must therefore be held together here; as they are woven together, a certain landscape will gradually come into view. There is, first of all, the analytic pact, haunted by the fantasy of the pact between Faust and Mephisto (this is already strikingly confirmed, if confirmation be needed, by the fact that it becomes necessary "to call the Witch to our help"). The pact opens up the space of the transference, if it is true that the transference is something at the heart of which repression is undone. To undo repression means less to recover the content of a repressed memory than to renew it, by inducing the unconscious to manifest itself in the field of discourse and begin to operate there—so as to free the repressed material, precisely, from the confines of a symptom that immobilizes the past in petrifying repetition. But the pact, considered in its relation to one of the core elements of analytic theory, the Freudian construction of the Oedipus complex, brings about just such an "actualization" [actuation] of theory's repressed: it revives theory's infantile past in a way richly productive of new meaning, because it inaugurates a practice which sets out to discover theory's past. Yet one cannot say that the process involved is one in which the subject (that is, analytic theory) seeks to become all-powerful, in which memory sets out to appropriate the past. To put it somewhat differently: the pact is the memory of analytic theory; the practice it inaugurates puts this memory to work and is the work it does. The encounter with that theoretical barbarian, the patient, makes

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it possible for the theory's unconscious to take shape, in the confrontation created by the therapeutic situation, which has to be constructed. This enables theory to get a purchase on a clinical situation in which the unconscious, precisely, is what is centrally at stake. But what makes that possible, if not that this clinical situation comes about as a result of the hold which "repressed infantile material" gains, via the pact, over the theory—a hold that is effective even if its existence remains unknown? The pact, by exemplarily undoing repression and so providing the essential paradigm for the process by which infantile material emerges, opens up the possibility of a transference. And this transference gives us reason to believe that the material which emerges in the process of rememoration involves something other than the Oedipal conflict it seems to derive from, something silently at work beneath this Oedipal material. Why not call it the "Mephisto complex" or the "Faust complex"? The shadow of this "something else," cast by the light of the "transferential flame"28—a flame that threatens to scorch whoever tries to use it—might well be the Witch's silhouette conjoined with Mephisto's. If so, one has a better sense of metapsychology's (the Witch's) status: metapsychology, it follows, taps directly into the space/movement of the transference precipitated by Mephistopheles the moment he begins negotiating his bargain with Faust. "Fiat veritas,-pereatvita"29 What kind of activity, then, does Freud engage in when he begins exploring the unconscious and developing his metapsychology, that "Witch," or, again, "mythology"?30 The story of Oedipus, organizing principle of analytic theory, and that of Faust, buried in the depths of Freud's thought, sketch the contours of two distinct positions on knowledge. The relationship between these two stories seems to me to mark out the space of the question I have just posed. Oedipus's knowledge, which brings down the Sphinx and

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sends her toppling into the abyss, is knowledge of the universal. It betokens a victory of the concept, but is, at the same time, the prelude to a series of catastrophes stemming, precisely, from misapprehension. In other words, Oedipus's knowledge functions as an instrument of repression, one all the more frightening the more brazen and dazzling is the triumph it ensures. Faust is at the opposite extreme: he curses science for cutting him off from life. Having turned himself over to the "strange son of chaos" in hopes of transforming "the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life," he follows the Devil all the way to the Witch's den; her knowledge, occult knowledge, seals the bargain between the scientist Faust and the Devil Mephisto, which is to say that it establishes or reestablishes connections where the knowledge that represses had brought about separation and defusion. The Witch's Kitchen scene in Goethe's play is remarkable in this regard for the rather frightening vision it offers of a world seething with the most inconceivable combinations and astonishing amalgams. The Witch's knowledge, different from the brilliant but sterile knowledge of Doctor Faust, seems plainly to be the "unknown" of Faust's knowledge, founded precisely on a misapprehension of what the Witch knows. For the Witch's enchanting knowledge puts the scientist Faust in touch with that dark, chaotic part of himself he repudiates as alien, failing to recognize it when it is right before his eyes. It is no less his for that. The bedazzled student understands nothing of what is really going on when Mephisto "dons Dr. Faust's long robes" and mocks science, in a scene in which Mephisto is plainly Faust's double: for Faust's soul, after all, is sold to Mephisto (which means that Mephisto becomes Faust, or Faust Mephisto), in exchange for the restoration of Faust's youth, which time and science have deprived him of or cut him off from. Dare I say that what they have cut Faust off from is the childish part of himself? In other words, the Witch's art or science ultimately succeeds in delivering Faust up to the Devil—the personage who is, for the savant wholly devoted to the service of God (the father), the Stranger par excellence. The Devil is, moreover, a stranger fully authorized to take

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possession of Faust's soul, by a process that permits Faust, for his part, to recover his "youth"—which one could equally well call the power of the drives that constitute the unconscious. Let us note too that the desires Freud identifies as infantile (the desire for power or love) are precisely the ones expressed by Faust. The Witch's knowledge is thus inseparable from the act that undoes repression (in the final analysis, that is why metapsychology will be identified with the Witch). In this sense, it is the absolute antithesis of Oedipus's knowledge. Earlier, in discussing the relationship between the analytic pact and the construction of Oedipal theory, I emphasized that that theory served to repress a fantasy of seduction. The pact, I suggested, puts this repressed fantasy to work (which is not the same thing as repeating it); it thereby clears the way for the process of the transference, that is, opens up the space in which the unconscious can come to be. This now permits me to take the further step of identifying metapsychology as the precise articulation of thought with the transference. It follows that thinking in metapsychological terms means, within the reality of a practice, using analytic theory in such a way as to thwart the effects of the repression that necessarily presides over theory's elaboration. I have called this "resurrecting the Sphinx." For such a resurrection to take place, the absolute precondition is a transference. It must be said that this renders the status of the "concepts" or notions of analysis highly problematic. For, in a certain way, it involves activating a potential for alienation or even an alienating force at the very heart of analytic thought and the discourse which enunciates it. This is, to be sure, a paradox. It authorizes us to conceive the transference as, in some sense, a space of madness, something the pact, when all is said and done, shows fairly explicitly (Schreber knew what he was talking about).31 This paradox sheds light on a remark of Freud's that caught my attention earlier: "It remains for the future to decide whether there is more delusion in my theory than I should like to admit, or whether there is more truth in Schreber's delusion than other people are as yet prepared to believe." What does it mean to speak of the alienating power of

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thought, if this power is in some sense the prerequisite or touchstone for all thinking in the psychoanalytic register? By these terms, I mean a disposition toward the ex-centric, a movement which displaces the center of gravity of analytic thought in such a way as to render that thought literally beside itself, opening a breach in the very place where one might have expected to find thought's most solid core. Through this breach streams, precisely, everything the structure of analytic thought tends to repress. It thereby acquires a status and legitimacy very different from those which it has usually taken as the basis of its authority. By way of example, one might say that, in this perspective, the excentric center of gravity of the theory of the Oedipus complex is the analytic pact, informed by the fantasy of the bargain between Faust and Mephisto. The idea might also be translated as follows: conceiving things in metapsychological terms—for Freud, doubtless, conceiving metapsychology as such—means exposing oneself to the risks of a process that throws the domains of representation and discursivity out of kilter as soon as the weight of the transference is brought to bear on them. Yet there can be no question of simply jettisoning this weight. One should hardly be surprised, then, if analytic theory is not steady on its feet! Let us call "play" or "putting into play" this highly ludic operation by which the opening up of the space of the transference becomes the correlative of a vacuum or absence hollowed out at the heart of thought. The whole of analytic theory is deployed around this vacuum at its heart; once it acknowledges this heart defect, it keels over and in a certain sense dies, only to be reborn through the experience of the transference.32 With this we touch on the deepest, most intimate aspect of the affiliation between analytic theory qua metapsychology (articulated, as such, with the transference) and the attempted cure that a paranoid delusion represents. Hence we also touch on the question of the extreme risks that a commitment to analytic thought entails. But if the theory, thus understood as a means of undoing repression, is only a step away from madness—if, again, what comes to light at the heart of metapsychology is the kernel of truth that lies

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concealed within delusion—how can one be certain that the uncanny capacity for alienation or self-estrangement that gives rise to analytic thought/speech does not doom it to the permanent exile of delusional discourse? Let us reexamine the parallel Freud sets up between Faust's destiny and Schreber's delusion, which Freud defines as an attempted cure or reconstruction of the self, describing it with the help of an allusion to Faust: "When Faust freed himself from the world by uttering his curses, the result was not a paranoia or any other neurosis but simply a certain general frame of mind."33 What Freud fails to add is that "the result was" nothing less than the bargain with Mephistopheles, the prelude to Faust's famous adventures and, especially, his foray into the Witch's den. For Freud here abandons Faust to his fate in order to pursue his discussion of the Schreber case, bringing one whole section of his analysis of Schreber to a close with these words: "From this it may be concluded that in paranoia the liberated libido becomes attached to the ego, and is used for the aggrandizement of the ego . . . paranoiacs have brought along with them afixationat the stage of narcissism"'*

This indicates what distinguishes Faust's destiny from Schreber's. The kernel of truth in Schreber's delusion may well seem to coincide with the delirious lines in which Faust expresses his vision of the calamitous end and subsequent reconstruction of the universe; unlike Schreber, however, Faust turns to the Devil and the pact for help. In plain terms, if one does not lose sight of the fact that Faust's career serves as a paradigm for the analytic adventure, then one will understand that what preserves analytic theory from the exile of delusion is precisely that which makes it metapsychology (Witch, mythology): the (analytic) pact and the transferential framework it sets up. Let us take another look at what happens to Faust. In the pact, he encounters the Devil, not God. I have already pointed out the various ways the Devil can be characterized; in particular, I have suggested in what sense he might be regarded, especially in the scene with the student, as Faust's double, and also as someone

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who behaves as if he knew. Suppleness, mobility, play—a complete break with the fixity and rigidity that characterize God the Father, Whose word is, beyond any possible doubt, the truth, and Who tolerates no deviation on this point. It is this God Whom Schreber, for his part, encounters, by Whom he is caught and pinned down like a butterfly, or trapped in the snares of a delusion held together by the linchpin of the divine rays. What transpires between Mephistopheles and Faust is completely different. For starters, even if Faust's soul is the price he pays for what he gains by the pact, can we really speak of soul-murder here, as Schreber does in this connection? After all, if Mephistopheles takes possession of Faust's soul, consecrated to God, Faust appropriates Mephistopheles' diabolism, which is to say Mephisto's soul (the soul of a Devil, to be sure), the eternal youth that is the energy of the drives. Moreover, the pact indissolubly unites the two contracting parties and guarantees that there will be a constant exchange between them; it is thus a guarantee against the risk of exile or definitive alienation. That, precisely, is Schreber's sad fate: his soul is captured and "murdered." Faust and Mephistopheles are in a situation of, as it were, mutual abduction: cemented to one another by the pact, neither of them can run off with the "soul" of the other. Finally—this is doubtless the most important point—the two protagonists of the pact are not locked into a deadly dyad, because each must have recourse, if their pact is to be viable, to a third party whom neither can in any sense control: the Witch. This means, among other things, that the Devil—unlike God, whom Schreber can under no circumstances elude—acknowledges a limit to his power. This also means, to return to the question of analysis, that the two poles of analytic discourse acquire their meaning on the basis of a common reference to the Witch (metapsychology): interpretations are elaborated within the horizon of a metapsychology, while the discourse that comes from the couch is understood within the same metapsychological horizon, that is, within the limits of a body of thought articulated with the transference. For, in the field defined by the pact, it is metapsychology which en-

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ables the two faces of analytic discourse to come together, marking off a space where they can meet. Drawing a sharp line of demarcation between the play of representations within the analytic encounter and everything exterior to the transference, metapsychology makes it possible to avoid the delusion that would otherwise overwhelm the patient and alienate her from the truth conveyed by her discourse. It thus enables her to reconstruct a relationship—one rooted in meaning [celui du sens]—to her discourse and the world. By virtue of its opacity for the protagonists of the pact—the information it furnishes is "neither very clear nor very detailed"—metapsychology resists being "enframed";* it constrains one to listen, and so spells solipsism's ruin. Both a condition of the pact and exterior to it, metapsychology is that which enables the patient's words, floating free of their moorings amid the disconcerting reception the analyst's "evenly suspended attention" offers, to express both the absolute uniqueness of the subject and, simultaneously, the presence within her of an alterity whose irreducible structure the analytic situation allows to unfold, by means of the bond it creates.

"Forgetting Is Essential to Any Sort of Action" (Nietzsche) What has just been said puts us in a position to understand why Freud refers to "the Witch metapsychology" as "our mythology," and the drives as "mythical entities, magnificent in their indefiniteness." Involved here is a reversal of the process Freud characterizes as "an advance in intellectuality" in Moses and Monotheism. To the antithesis between the majestic figure of God the Father—unique, omnipotent, inaccessible to the senses by virtue of his exalted invisibility, and very good to boot—and the unspeakable scene between Mephisto and the Witch in the sulfurous kitchen, corresponds the antithesis between monotheistic religion (the religion of the father) and mythology The latter falls within the province of what Freud also calls, in Moses * See note, p. 5.

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and Monotheism, poetry or epic. If one attends to what is said in that text concerning the latter dichotomy (which can manifest itself as outright antagonism), it becomes clear that Moses and Monotheism is raising the whole question of memory, and, in its wake, the question of the relation between mythology—epic or poem35—and the undoing of repression. This is, in turn, an indication that a decisive issue is at stake: namely, what it might mean to speak of "truth" in psychoanalysis. The question touches, on the one hand, on the problem of anamnesis. On the other, it has to do with Freud's image of himself as a man of science: as, that is, someone in quest of "truth/' In Moses and Monotheism, after evoking the magical attraction the past exerts on the imagination, Freud goes on to say that if all that is left of the past are the incomplete and blurred memories which we call tradition, this offers an artist a peculiar attraction, for in that case he is free to fill in the gaps in memory according to the desires of his imagination and to picture the period which he wishes to reproduce according to his intentions. One might almost say that the vaguer a tradition has become the more serviceable it becomes for a poet.36 Freud often remarks the artist's powers of seduction. He speaks of the "yield of pleasure" art provides, the "incentive bonus" "offered to us so as to make possible the release of still greater pleasure arising from deeper psychical sources." The artist, he says, knows how to "arouse in us emotions of which, perhaps, we had not even thought ourselves capable."37 In Moses and Monotheism, after the digression on poetry's relation to tradition cited above, he moves on to the question of the founding of a religion. Here, he notes, the relation to tradition is quite the opposite of the one cultivated by the poets: religion reproduces, with the greatest possible fidelity, everything that has come to be included in a tradition. This kind of reproduction more closely resembles a neurotic repetition compulsion than it does genuine anamnesis; it recalls the kind of mental automatism—the surest

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means of maintaining repression—discussed in Freud's article "Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through."38 But the role of the Witch metapsychology is to make it possible to undo repression. Does this not suggest, in light of the foregoing, that Freud defines metapsychology as a mythology precisely because it seeks to arouse "emotions of which, perhaps, we had not thought ourselves capable," with a view to making the "drive" appear—freed, however, of the neurotic repetition that kept it in chains? And is metapsychology's liberating power not based on theoretical constructions in which the fantasy creations of unconscious thought find an echo? Let us not forget that Freud takes the trouble to add that the "drives are mythical entities, magnificent in their indefiniteness."39 This certainly suggests that one should proceed with caution when it comes to determining the conceptual status of the drive. In other words, what anamnesis must bring to light is nothing other than these "mythical beings." The further removed is the form they appear in from the veritable denaturation of the drive constituted by neurotic repetition, and the freer it is of the constraints imposed by the rigid, unvarying repetition of a past that seems set in stone until it is revived and rearranged in new configurations through the overcoming of infantile amnesia, the more effectively anamnesis will bring Freud's "mythical entities" to the light. But this leads to a paradox. Remembering (the drive), in the sense of undoing repression, means forgetting the lethal power which, through insistent repetition, refuses to be effaced; it means reappropriating, with the help of fantasy, the movement of the drive in its infinite malleability, together with the wealth of possibilities it opens up. But then "true" memories are, perhaps, woven of the shimmering web of fantasies. One begins to see, if one accepts what Freud says about religion, why the Witch metapsychology should be "our mythology." If (monotheistic) religion firmly establishes tradition within us, endlessly forcing us to reinscribe it, without the slightest variation, according to a pattern laid down once and for all (like the torture inflicted by the machine in Kafka's The Penal Colony), mythology, no less, emancipates us.40 For

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this daughter of desire knows how to play with memory; she can invent a thousand forms—a thousand memories—and so give free rein to those "entities magnificent in their indefiniteness": the drives.41 This gives us a most valuable indication as to what the poetic imagination and dramatic poetry, particularly Faust, represented for Freud: they were, in all probability, the Devil with whom he struck his bargain. In the transference that gave birth to analysis, they brought his dead and deeply beloved father back to life. They undoubtedly constituted the force which, by calling up unheard of emotions in Freud, enabled a strange, protean memory of the drive to crystallize in him. I mean the metapsychology.

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7 "Magireve" (portmanteau word) Notice "Magireve": a non-existent word I shall have to consent to make up. Alchemical word, magic word, dream word. Condensation; formula of a transference; infancy of the theoretical, for me, a word that brings about the bizarre encounter of two languages—the two languages in which I learned to speak, in both at the same time. Beneath the French, the Greek of my childhood, now partly lost. Magireve—portmanteau word—magie/reve—a word like a suitcase with a false bottom;* a prestidigitator's word: "magirevo," in Greek, means "cook." Magir§ve: a word which, perhaps, says the unknown that is at work in the writing I allow to unfold. Delusion, Dream, and Theory i n an article published under the title "Constructions in Analysis" in 1937, Freud once again takes up the question of delusions and the kernel of truth they contain.1 On his analysis, the dynamic process underlying delusions is identical to the one governing the production of dreams: This is after all the familiar mechanism of dreams, which intuition has equated with madness from time immemorial. . . . The * The expression translated "portmanteau word" is mot valise ("word-valise"); the idea that magireve has a "false bottom" plays on this. Rive means "dream"; magi evokes magic. "Magirive"

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essence [of this intuition] is that there is not only method in madness, as the poet has already perceived, but also a fragment of historical truth; and it is plausible to suppose that the compulsive belief attaching to delusion derives its strength precisely from infantile sources of this kind.2 Freud goes on to discuss interpretation, or, more precisely, analytical "constructions." By this he means elaborations which aim to facilitate rememoration by boldly weaving together a whole network of relations. Such constructions can then serve as a source of specific interpretations. Pondering the (for the layperson) mysterious impact an analyst's constructions can have on patients—an impact comparable to, and sometimes even greater than that the emergence of a repressed memory can have—Freud is led to describe them as "substitutes for things forgotten." Like the latter, they allow repressed material to surface; that is, they overcome infantile amnesia. Their "aptness" is attested by the reappearance in force of symptoms, as in the negative therapeutic reaction, or, in the ideal case, by a proliferation of associations and fantasies. But what is this "aptness" to be ascribed to? Though he adopts a conspicuously skeptical attitude (denegation?) concerning the scope or possible practical consequences of the theses he puts forward on this question in his conclusion, Freud nevertheless writes: I am aware that it is of small service to handle so important a subject in the cursory fashion that I have here employed. But none the less I have not been able to resist the seduction of an analogy. The delusions of patients appear to me to be the equivalents of the constructions which we build up in the course of an analytic treatment—attempts at explanation and cure, though it is true that these, under the conditions of a psychosis, can do no more than replace the fragment of reality that is being disavowed in the present by another fragment that had already been disavowed in the remote past. . . . Just as our construction is only effective because it recovers a fragment of lost

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experience, so the delusion owes its convincing power to the element of historical truth which it inserts in the place of the rejected reality.3 Equivalence between the analyst's constructions and delusions—this means, given what was brought out earlier about the dynamic processes that generate them, equivalence between such constructions and dreams. Confirmation of this equivalence is, moreover, provided by the proliferating associations that occur to a patient who has been offered an "apt" construction: they are analogous to the proliferating dream-thoughts and associative chains that radiate outward from the navel of a dream, which, just like a construction, is a "tangle of dream-thoughts which cannot be unravelled," an "intricate network" and not an "isolated point," a densely woven web of thoughts intertwined in such a way as to make sense. Only if the analyst ties her remarks in with such a construction, the way this or that dream-thought is tied in with the tangle of thoughts making up the navel of the dream, can her interventions at specific moments be called "interpretations." The partially theoretical work that goes into building up such a construction, which produces concrete effects via the interpretations it gives rise to, is analogous to the productions of dreams or delusions; it can, indeed, function like a substitute for them. It echoes them, bringing off the tour de force of displacing, translating, or providing them an access route to the narrow register of the conscious economy. This comes down to saying that the enigmatic character of the "Witch's" (metapsychology's) information, which establishes the horizon for all constructions capable of undoing repression, springs from the kernel of delusion such constructions potentially contain; it is this kernel of delusion that enables them to have the effects they do. It follows that, if it is in its articulation with the transference that theory emerges as metapsychology, this articulation, in turn, becomes effective or meaningful only within the context of another—the one which grafts metapsychology onto dreams. The second articulation accounts for the first, whose transposition, in

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a certain sense, it is. Dreams thus reveal themselves to be precisely what goes by the name of "Witch's Kitchen" in Goethe. With that, the rest of our itinerary is set for us: we need to accompany Freud, seduced by and sold to the Devil, that "strange son of chaos," to the very place where the encounter with the Witch (metapsychology) takes place: the dense, tangled depths of the book on dreams. For it is in The Interpretation of Dreams that one can most easily grasp the way metapsychology works, since it is there, in the articulation between dreams and the work of theorization, as well as in the crucible of dreams themselves, that the process by which Freud's interpretations are worked out is revealed. If The Interpretation of Dreams, written in reaction to the death of Freud's father, is indeed "a part of the self-analysis" of its author—someone seeking, precisely, "to discover the great secret of the dream"—then what unfolds there will not simply be the theory of the dream, but also, as its condition of possibility, the dream of the theory. For the situation in which the book is written is unique: the dreamer is at the same time the interpreter and the theorist. His desire to construct the theory is accordingly inscribed in his dreams, which testify to the continuity between dream and theorization. It is almost as if the status of interpretive discourse could be determined on this basis; as if theory were the continuation of dreams by other means. To put it differently, in this text where Freud analyzes his own dreams to produce a science of dreams, where, as a result, the work of making associations and then interpreting them eventually discloses "the secret of the dream," dreams themselves yield up the meaning and truth of interpretation. In a sense, they interpret it; in so doing, they "discover the secret" of the theory. In brief, one can go the other way down the path that led Freud from his dreams toward theory by way of association and interpretation; one can proceed from the theory toward the dreams, as if toward that which contains theory's meaning. But if every dream represents the fulfilment of a repressed childhood wish, what can we say about the theory? More precisely, if Freud's dreams bespeak the desire behind the theory, what is this desire? 134

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If it is interpretation which gives theory a purchase on the productions of the unconscious, whose paradigm is, for Freud, the dream, and if it is likewise interpretation which enables the founder of psychoanalysis to produce theory on the basis of his dreams, it follows that the drive can emerge as meaning (something which has a relation to language) because meaning simultaneously emerges as drive—because meaning is entirely traversed by the unconscious. Hence the act of interpretation is, in part, a revelation of this articulation between the drive or economy of the unconscious and the order of language, present at the heart of dreams, constitutive of them, secretly at work in the process that gives rise to them. It is no less active within the architecture of analytic theory. To interpret is to realize a forgotten possibility: that dreams, those freakish, savage children of the night, enamored of their mother, can sport with their brothers, who no longer know who they are because, in their jubilation over the clarity of theory, they have lost sight of the night that bore them, and so suppose they can distill into their discourse the limpid waters of pure reason. But, if this is so, interpretation is the consummation of an incestuous relationship between dreams and theory. Dreams deploy their mysterious charms to lead theory astray: they transform themselves into a magic glass/a dizzying, irresistible reflection which offers theory the fascinating image of a distant, long since forgotten past. Plunging, by way of interpretation, into the abyss of dreams, yielding to their power of attraction, theory rejoins that nocturnal part of itself which it had left behind in its self-imposed exile. This delicious, terrible union of the night with the most brilliant of its children, precipitated by the encounter between the language of dreams and that of interpretation, accomplishes the incestuous act which is known as the transference, and thus liberates the infantile.4 This means that dreams and their interpretations are inextricably intertwined. The art of interpretation sets itself apart, in the use it makes of words, from the usual procedures of conscious thought, in order to grasp and give expression to unconscious thought processes. Like jokes, interpretations seek to capture the "Magirtve"

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factor "sense in nonsense" at work in the elaboration of dreams,5 We have broached an essential point here, one that will enable us to determine how dreams can be both source and model for metapsychology: namely, the fact that the unconscious is for Freud a form of work that produces meaning—a thought process, in some sense. In other words, the unconscious represents, for Freud, the anchoring of the drives and affects in language. That the "concept" of the drive, the heart of metapsychology, should be a limit-concept between the somatic and the psychic implies nothing less than the following far from obvious postulate, which sums up the whole of the Freudian revolution: the work of thinking can go on unconsciously Dreams, which are sensory and somatic processes, and, at the same time, thoroughly meaningful mental activity, are nothing other than the unfolding of such unconscious thought processes. They may therefore be taken as a perfect paradigm for thinking the concept of the drive: one may say that the process by which dreams are elaborated is the hidden face of metapsychological elaboration. It is no accident that Freud's book on jokes should offer the most precious clarifications concerning both the nature of dreams, those representatives of the drives, and, consequently, the essence of metapsychological activity as well. In the theoretical section of that book, Freud writes this about dreams (the theory of dreams, moreover, introduces the theory of jokes, as if the former could serve as model for the latter): The dream-work, then—to which I return after this digression—submits the thought-material, which is brought forward in the optative mood, to a most strange revision. . . . But while the thoughts are being changed back into sensory images still further alterations occur in them, some of which can be seen to be necessary while others are surprising. . . . On the other hand, there is another part of the dream-work which we cannot attribute to regression, to the change back into sensory images; and it is precisely this part which has an important bearing on our analogy with the formation of jokes.6

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Freud then describes the very special thought processes the unconscious employs: condensation and displacement. In question here are no longer simply sensory images, but also, quite clearly, words. Somewhat further on in the same text, he pursues the analogy between dreams and jokes, evoking, here, the relationship between the processes he is describing and the pleasure principle: Later we inferred that the original intention of jokes was to obtain a yield of pleasure . . . from words—a thing which had been permitted at the stage of play but had been dammed up by rational criticism in the course of intellectual development. Somewhat further on: On the one hand, jokes during their development at the stage of play (that is, during the childhood of reason) are able to bring about. . . pleasurable condensations. . . . on the other hand, at higher stages they accomplish the same effect by plunging the thought into the unconscious. For the infantile is the source of the unconscious, and the unconscious thought-processes are none other than those—the one and only ones—produced in early childhood. The thought which, with the intention of constructing a joke, plunges into the unconscious is merely seeking there for the ancient dwelling-place of its former play with words. Thought is put back for a moment to the stage of childhood so as once more to gain possession of the childish source of pleasure. If we did not already know it from research into the psychology of the neuroses, we should be led by jokes to a suspicion that the strange unconscious revision is nothing else than the infantile type of thought-activity. . . . It is easier to perceive the characteristics of these unconscious thought-processes in the remarks made by sufferers from certain mental diseases. We should most probably be able (as Griesinger suggested long ago) to understand the deliria of the insane and to make use of them as pieces of information, if we ceased to ap-

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ply the demands of conscious thinking to them and if we treated them, like dreams, with our interpretative technique.7 In my view, this text, which I have taken the liberty of quoting at some length, is of major importance. It clearly links the "interpretative technique" that derives from metapsychology with the "infantile type of thought-activity." In the same vein, it suggests that metapsychology is a kind of moonlight which radiates softly outward from the dream to bathe the shadowy, unknown reaches of thought—not the blinding glare of a theoretical sun which sweeps away the darkness and night enveloping the repressed. For, by a cruel paradox, such a blaze of theoretical light could only succeed in conjuring away the object it would illuminate, at the very moment when the illusory certainty of having apprehended and mastered it was at its height. In other words, metapsychology—this is why it is a Witch and a mythology— does not break with dream-forms. On the contrary, it participates in their nature, in a sort of inversion of the Platonic schema. In Plato, one must try to escape from the cave—the world of the senses and the empty, treacherous forms of the imaginary. Only by attaining to the heaven of intelligible Forms can one avoid deception and disappointment. It will be revealed there, moreover, that a vital bond, not only epistemological but also ontological, links the sun of the Idea of the Good to the intelligible Forms, the only substantial realities. Freud's metapsychological project, in contrast, makes the cave—or the Witch's den—the very place in which truth, that is, the repressed, emerges. The shades—dreams, fantasies—have an unrestricted right to speak there. Indeed, it is dreams, those products of the night, which represent the true founding principle of analytic theory, a principle which is, as with Plato, as epistemological as it is ontological. Freudian theory participates in the drive even as it provides knowledge of it; far from effecting the distinctions called for by Plato's ascetic rejection of the world of the senses, the drive blurs the limits between the sensory and the intelligible, consummating their union. An inversion, then, of the Platonic heritage that

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weighs so heavily on the conception our culture has of itself and of what it means by thinking, when, with Descartes, it seeks to forget that reason too had a childhood. Denying this, it fails to appreciate the extent to which thought's childhood, disdained as a pure and simple absence of truth and meaning, is in fact alive and supremely active within reason itself.8 An aphorism of Nietzsche's in The Gay Science provides the exact measure of the reversal brought about by Freud: "Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings—always darker, emptier, and simpler."9

So What Does the Witch Know? The Witch's Kitchen episode in Goethe's play is a scene involving incomprehensible practices and phenomenal disorder; it confronts the spectator with a very weird spectacle, far removed from anything that can conceivably occur in waking life. All manner of talking beasts invade the stage. Amid clouds of vapor, bizarre forms float up out of a kettle where God knows what is bubbling away. One catches sight of the paraphernalia of black magic. A mirror proffers Faust the fascinating image of Helen. The sudden appearance of this reflection is an unfathomable mystery: for Faust, peering into the smooth surface of the movable mirror,* sees, not himself, but a form thrown up by the stirrings of his own desire. And then Faust is offered an unspeakable brew, accompanied by the Witch's curious incantations, a sort of seasoning. He understands nothing of what she says: "It seems the old lady has a fever, and is raving." To which Mephisto responds: I know all this well, that's how the whole book goes . . . Who wants to waste his time on fools? If people only hear words coming out of a mouth, they assume That thinking is also going on, as a rule.10 * The French word is "psyche."

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Is that not what Dr. Faust thought as he stood bent over his books? In any case, words here guarantee, however incoherent they may be, that the brew will do its work. Their meaning (but do they have one?) remains as enigmatic as the art and science that go into discovering the recipe for the elixir of eternal youth, and then making it. In short, what strikes one above all in this truly dream-like scene of the play is, on the one hand, the multiplication of absurd or obscene features, and, on the other, the passage from the optative to the present indicative that characterizes dreams as well. This is the place where all the possibles— and even the impossible—become reality. Again, the combined effect of the words the Witch pronounces (one can certainly agree with Mephisto that it is easy to do anything and everything with them) and the unappetizing concoction she gets Faust to drink (in) along with them, eludes explanation. The Witch's brew and mumbo-jumbo thus refer us to what Freud calls, in The Interpretation of Dreams, the unknowable or unconscious, whence (the Witch) metapsychology ultimately proceeds. In fine, this Witch's Kitchen, where words can, as it were, become the ingredients of a soup in order to help bring about the most improbable of metamorphoses, the most contrary to all the demands of the reality principle—this Witch's Kitchen, where mirrors reflect the face of desire, rather than the less alluring face of an old man—this kitchen, come straight out of the poetic imagination, also represents, by virtue of a sort of deformed mise-en-abyme, what the creative faculty at work essentially is—if it is true that poets are in fact miracle workers. This imaginative faculty is likewise the source of dreams: "The point is not that dreams create the imagination, but rather that the unconscious activity of the imagination has a large share in the construction of the dream-thoughts."11 Freud, it will be recalled, assimilates the poet's activity to that of a child at play.12 In his view, the equivalence of literature and play finds its culmination in the theater: The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously—that is,

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which he invests with large amounts of emotion—while separating it sharply from reality. Language has preserved this relationship between children's play and poetic creation. It gives [in German] the name of "Spiel" ["play"] to those forms of imaginative writing which require to be linked to tangible objects and which are capable of representation. It speaks of a "Lustspiel" or "Trauerspiel" ["comedy" or "tragedy": literally, "pleasure play" or "mourning play"] and describes those who carry out the representation as "Schauspieler" ["players": literally "show-players"]. As he develops this analysis, Freud introduces a new dimension: When the child has grown up and has ceased to play, and after he has been labouring for decades to envisage the realities of life with proper seriousness, he may one day find himself in a mental situation which once more undoes the contrast between play and reality. As an adult he can look back on the intense seriousness with which he once carried on his games in childhood; and, by equating his ostensibly serious occupations of today with his childhood games, he can throw off the too heavy burden imposed on him by life and win the high yield of pleasure afforded by humour.™ At this point in the text, by this unpredictable route, one comes upon Freud's reflections on jokes and dreams. Ample matter for a meditation on the "serious nature" of what psychoanalysts do for a living! Such considerations aside, these lines suggest a few remarks, notably as to the function, in Freud's thought, of an art like the theater. At the theater, words become flesh. They are transformed into characters and action—vehicles of desire, with all of desire's irresistible force. Bodies and objects leap out of the black marks on the white page to assume concrete existence. The possibilities created by the words of a play are actualized for as long as the performance lasts, just as repressed

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desires are actualized in the course of a dream. Characters, ghostly shadows of ink sleeping between the pages of a book, suddenly awaken to life on the stage in the bodies of the actors— like so many vampires who, waiting to be reborn, need only find living creatures willing to accommodate their desire by offering them a body One cannot fail to note the resemblance between all this and what Freud says in The Interpretation of Dreams when, impressively, he lays out the problematic whose main lines I am trying to retrace here: From indications derived from the psycho-analysis of the neuroses, I consider that these unconscious wishes are always on the alert, ready at any time to find their way to expression when an opportunity arises for allying themselves with an impulse from the conscious and for transferring their own great intensity on to the latter's lesser one. It will then appear as though the conscious wish alone had been realized in the dream; only some small peculiarity in the dream's configuration will serve as a finger-post to put us on the track of the powerful ally from the unconscious. Freud adds in a footnote: They share this character of indestructibility with all other mental acts which are truly unconscious, i.e. which belong to the system Ucs. only. These are paths which have been laid down once and for all, which never fall into disuse and which, whenever an unconscious excitation re-cathects them, are always ready to conduct the excitatory process to discharge. If I may use a simile, they are only capable of annihilation in the same sense as the ghosts in the underworld of the Odyssey—ghosts which awoke to new life as soon as they tasted blood. "Blood, that very special juice" were the words used by whom, if not . . . Mephisto? After this note, nothing if not instructive, Freud goes on as follows:

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These wishes in our unconscious, ever on the alert and, so to say, immortal, remind one of the legendary Titans, weighed down since primaeval ages by the massive bulk of the mountains which were once hurled upon them by the victorious gods and which are still shaken from time to time by the convulsion of their limbs. But these wishes, held under repression, are themselves of infantile origin, as we are taught by psychological research into the neuroses. I would propose, therefore, to set aside the assertion made just now, that the place of origin of dream-wishes is a matter of indifference and replace it by another one to the following effect: a wish which is represented in a dream must be an infantile one.14

This "infantile origin" is what comes powerfully to the fore in the theater, so close to the play of children (a similarity the German language, as Freud notes, has not forgotten). It is also what marks theater's affinity with dreams. I leave aside, for the moment, the curious association of the infantile or the unconscious with the paternal (the relation between the Titans, who have become shades in Hades, and the second generation of gods who have dethroned them). I will come back to it. But this text is remarkable for another reason. It allows us to understand that myth is here the language which stimulates and fecundates theoretical thought. And not just any myth/but—if Freud is alluding to the Odyssey—the paradigmatic myth! Metapsychology thus seems to mime what occurs when repression is undone: it appears as the act of vampirism that myth (together with, as we will see, dreams) inflicts upon theory. To put it another way, metapsychology appears as a revivifying translation of the one into the other.15 Let us not forget that Freud once wrote in a letter to FlieS that "a failure of translation . . . is what is known clinically as 'repression.'"16 Metapsychology is, then, an operation whereby one language, that of myth (or dream), is translated into another, that of knowledge (Freud would say "science"). Through this act of translation, the repressed desire present in the myth is gathered up and given new life in theory. It

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thus transforms theory into something that listens to or takes up both what the unconscious says and also that which "says" the unconscious. But then metapsychology is the emergence of the sexual, which is to say of the infantile as well. If it takes on form and existence in The Interpretation of Dreams, if it is—a theme sounded throughout the book—translation (of the unconscious), if it is a process of making connections [liaison], then it presents itself as . . . Eros in action. It follows, too, that metapsychology must possess the regenerative, rejuvenating power that Freud attributes, in an oracular pronouncement, to copulation.17 He thereby indicates, among other things—as we can see if we simply turn this strange, sibylline pronouncement inside out—that undoing repression or infantile amnesia (making good the "failure of translation") reveals the unconscious to be the sexual. But rejuvenation is precisely what the scene in the Witch's Kitchen is about. It is easy, then, to understand the significance of this nodal scene in Goethe's play—it is, indeed, the very core of the drama—especially when we recall that it echoes the prelude about the theater ("Enough words have been traded back and forth; / Now I want to see deeds as well! . . . / If you claim to be a poet, / Then order up some poetry! . . . / That way, on our narrow boards / You'll compass all creation in your words, / And pass, serenely, yet quicker than eye can tell / From heaven through the world to hell!").18 The Witch's art, a figure for the poet's alchemy, provides a representation of the poet's desire and activity at the precise point in the play where the hero's destiny is decided. In other words, if one holds with Freud that the theater is a cousin to the play activity of children and has an essential affinity with dreams, inasmuch as theater, play, and dreams all involve a mise-en-scene of unconscious desire (that is, repressed sexual elements or, again, the infantile), then the drama of Faust appears as nothing other than the drama of the theater itself. Like dreams, the theater doubtless is, in essence, the materialization of the infantile in its most intensely private form. But this translation of the infantile is Janus-faced, a two-sided language

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in which the unknown, radically alien language of the unconscious inscribes itself within the familiar language of conscious representation, cathecting it from one end to the other. In this perspective, the Witch's Kitchen scene is the one in which the transition from the optative to the present indicative is shown actually taking place. That transition is of course the sign, in dreams, of the fulfilment of a repressed desire, of "rejuvenation" or emergence of the infantile. Hence the uncanny character of the scene, which is also, precisely because it offers an illustration of this transition, a representation of poetic activity or the creative act. One can therefore say, in sum, that the Witch's Kitchen scene is to Goethe's play what The Interpretation of Dreams is to Freud's dreams: metapsychology's "kitchen," the place where metapsychology learns to undo repression and open its ears to the language of the drives. That is undoubtedly the sense of the dictum in which Freud refers to metapsychology as the Witch, thereby indicating, among other things, where metapsychology can go to work: at the point where the language of dreams intersects that of associations/interpretations, where one finds the navel of the dream, that "tangle of dream thoughts which cannot be unravelled." Metapsychology: a language in which the dream is gathered up, reveals or even constitutes itself as an enunciation of the unconscious. From this it follows that the dream, if it is in fact, as Freud maintains, the fulfiment of a repressed wish, plays the role of paradigm for metapsychology. Metapsychology realizes this paradigm because its objective is precisely to bring about, by means of its art, its constructions, the undoing of repression. (Similarly, the Witch enables Faust to fulfill his desires, and reveals at the same time the hidden nature of the theater.) If the dream is "the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind," "knowledge" must henceforth be understood as translation,19 and therefore also as sexual encounter, encounter with the sexual. It is surely not mere coincidence that we have thus worked our way back round to the biblical sense of the word "knowledge": "rejuvenation."

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Where Do Babies Come From? It is easy to understand, then, why the Witch's Kitchen scene, given its central place in the strategy of Goethe's play, should have made such a powerful impression on Freud. It lifts the veil on the highly mysterious operations that enable Faust to fulfill his desire for rejuvenation. In so doing, it gives expression to the mystery of the artist's creative act, that act by which words and things are transformed, renewed, commingled, even annihilated, so as to become the body and language of the drive, the vitality of the infantile. Freud repeatedly interrogated and cathected this scene, even in his dreams. Only with its help—such, at any rate, is my hypothesis—was he to succeed in thinking the articulation between metapsychology and dreams. Only with its help could the unconscious desire of the psychoanalyst who wished to explore the unconscious emerge into the clear light of day. To wish to know the unconscious, and, to that end, to invent a theory designed to fulfill this wish, is to wish to undo the repression barring access to the unconscious—in other words, to work out a system of thought capable of reestablishing a connection with the infantile. In Freud's case, the process of establishing this connection might be called rejuvenation. That is, Freud sought to construct a theory which could speak the infantile language of the unconscious and the drive, and yet be received by, gain admission to the exclusive, suspicious realm of consciousness. What was required, therefore, was a mode of thought adept at playing a double game, a shrewd, duplicitous mode of thought exactly comparable, in its strategies, to the Trojan horse. It would have to be so constructed that it could, once admitted into the walled city of conscious thought, turn loose the derivatives of the repressed in an assault on the foe; only too happy to be able to storm, at last, the barricades of repression, the invaders would eagerly occupy the tiniest nooks and crannies of the citadel "consciousness." The Witch's Kitchen scene, in which one sees Faust quaff a peculiar concoction that has the miraculous effect of stripping thirty years off his frame, constituted such a Trojan

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horse for Freud. It was, in a word, a model, of which The Interpretation of Dreams was to offer a consummate example—indeed, the perfect realization. The scene could work this way for Freud because it is the image, translation, or mise-en-sc&ne of an infantile theory of sexuality, cast in a language whose affinity to that of dreams we have already noted. "Infantile theory of sexuality" is to be understood here as a vigorous, dynamic resurgence of the repressed—the infantile and the sexual—in the form of a theory. This "infantile theory of sexuality" provides the only possible basis for understanding what Freud must mean when he speaks of the "rejuvenating character"—and this is certainly what is in question in Faust—of the sexual act. The theory of the drives on which the assertion of Freud's just mentioned depends has its roots in this infantile theory, which thus underlies the entire metapsychological edifice. By itself, this is perhaps enough to enable us to grasp what Freud is talking about when he says, somewhat mysteriously, that what is "fundamental in the tragedy of Faust" is the "transformation of the instinct to investigate back into an enjoyment of life." The metamorphosis Freud evokes here can be illuminatingly translated into other terms: thus the revelation of the desire to know can be read as a sexual desire to know, as knowledge, that is, here, nonrepression of desire—otherwise known as the sexual or the infantile. When he speaks of infantile sexual theories, "product of a vital exigency," here is what Freud emphasizes: These false sexual theories, which I shall now discuss, all have one very curious characteristic. Although they go astray in a grotesque fashion, yet each one of them contains a fragment of real truth; and in this they are analogous to the attempts of adults, which are looked at as strokes of genius, at solving the problems of the universe which are too hard for human comprehension.20 At solving the problems of the unconscious, for example? one is tempted to ask. Be that as it may, what first strikes one in the

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passage just cited is Freud's statement that these imaginative constructions contain "a fragment of real truth." These are the very terms he employs in discussing delusions, both in his analysis of the Schreber case and in "Constructions in Analysis." Furthermore, just as, in the latter essay, Freud sets up an analogy— indeed, an equivalence—between delusions and interpretive constructions, so here he establishes a parallel between infantile sexual theories and, as he puts it, "the attempts of adults, which are looked at as strokes of genius, at solving the problems of the universe which are too hard for human comprehension." "And which are not normally considered to be delusions," I would add, no more than metapsychology, a solution to a difficult problem imagined by an adult, gives itself out from the start as an infantile sexual theory. Nevertheless, if metapsychology, as a theory of the drives, realizes the project of recovering the infantile, it does so not by repressing it, but rather by letting the infantile germinate within itself, by allowing itself to be fecundated by it. Obviously, metapsychology's vocation is not to furnish knowledge of sexuality in the manner, say, of the natural sciences; again, if it aims to undo repression of the sexual, and to be, in this sense, knowledge of the sexual (repressed infantile memories), it does not purport to provide instruction or sex education. Hence it is only by allowing the "fragment of real truth" embedded in infantile sexual theories to emerge and develop within metapsychology itself that metapsychology can achieve the goal it sets itself. "Fragment of real truth" is another way of saying fragment of repressed desire or fragment of the infantile—of that which operates and expresses itself in dreams, to the extent that dreams are a fulfilment, or, in other words, an actualization, of this repressed desire. If metapsychology seeks to overcome infantile amnesia, while maintaining the character, precisely, of a theory, it must be so constructed as to allow the sexual/infantile [Vinfantile sexuel], whose language is dreams, to be taken up by and find expression in metapsychology itself. Only on this condition can analytic theory be active knowledge of the dream (I leave the passage between subjective and objective genitive

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open). Only on this condition, in other words, can theory be, in a sense, interpretation, and thus an undoing of repression. The question at the origin of infantile sexual theories—"Where do babies come from?"—and the question that inaugurates metapsychology—"What is the unconscious?"—have in common the fact that they both take the sexual as the object of their interrogation. The unconscious desire to ask the first question can thus be read in the palimpsest of the second. The solution metapsychology proposes takes the form of a theory of the drives, a theory whose function is to "say" the unconscious; if one considers it with regard to the unconscious desire it reveals, and thereby fulfills, one may treat it as the equivalent of an infantile sexual theory. More precisely, if one engages in a regressive reading (in the Freudian sense) of metapsychological theory, that is, in a reading which makes possible the return of theory's repressed, then what appears beneath metapsychology, as its "truth," is, in a sort of upside-down dialectic, an infantile sexual theory. Hence what metapsychology says is absolutely "true" in the sense in which infantile sexual theories are true, or, again, delusions, and, above all, dreams. This comes down to saying that metapsychology draws its truth from dreams. And to saying, as well, that it falls to dreams to be this regressive reading of metapsychology—to be, thus, a revelation (which in the case of dreams also means a fulfilment) of metapsychology's repressed desire. That the recognition and unconscious fulfilment of (sexual and/or infantile) desire should coincide in one and the same act is an inherent feature of dreams; but it is a feature of interpretation as well, whenever interpretation succeeds in undoing repression. In this sense, the metapsychological work underpinning interpretation is essentially of the same order as dreamwork. Hence one may speak, as does Freud in his discussion of infantile sexual theories, of "sexual curiosity,"* "curiosity," in this context, will have a

* The French translation of Freud's phrase, "d£sir sexuel de connaitre" [sexual desire to know], suits Prokhoris's purposes better than does the Standard Edition's translation.

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sexual meaning. This is in fact what Freud's dreams reveal about metapsychology; it is also what finds an echo in the Witch's Kitchen scene in Faust. A strange and familiar echo: for the scene offers us images of a primal scene taken straight from an infantile sexual theory. Faust as a whole is the actualization of this theory. It is the one, it seems to me, in which The Interpretation of Dreams originates; metapsychology is its culmination. Freud makes an extremely brief and puzzling allusion to this infantile sexual theory in his article "On the Sexual Theories of Children": "Here it is like being in a fairy story: one eats some particular thing and gets a child from it." The theory is thus cast in the language of dreams—a deformed language, like the one theory adopts when it finds expression in the drama of Faust.21 In what follows, I will focus, essentially, on two dreams which seem to me to reveal/fulfill the (unconscious /repressed) desire of metapsychology, to the extent that metapsychology constitutes itself as a theory of the drives of hunger and love, or, in a later period in Freud's career, Eros and the death drive. I believe that the Witch's Kitchen scene can be said to play an active role in these two dreams. In any case, they throw a most revealing light on what lies behind Freud's referring to metapsychology as Faust's Witch. These two dreams do not receive anything like equal treatment in The Interpretation of Dreams, which may well be why I cannot resist establishing a parallel between them. One of them Freud leaves uninterpreted, for an obvious reason that is, at first sight, disconcerting, but perhaps not without relevance to what I will have to say later on. This dream seems to me capable, in a sense, of interpreting the other. The dreams in question are the "dream of the three Fates," which Freud discusses at some length, and another dream which is never called anything other than a "dream of convenience." As such it furnishes, or so Freud claims, a good example of a "simple" or "transparent" dream: a dream devoid of mystery, of which one can say, in sum, that it doesn't call for interpretation. The latter dream is to be found in the opening pages of chap-

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ter 3 ("A Dream Is the Fulfilment of a Wish") of Freud's text, just after Freud's interpretive skills have been put to the test by the "dream of Irma's injection." By way of a condensation involving a massive cathexis of the oral zone, the "dream of Irma's injection" had touched, among other things, on the act of interpretation and also on the sexual act I now quote in its entirety the passage in which Freud gives us his account of the second dream: It is easy to prove that dreams often reveal themselves without any disguise as fulfilments of wishes; so that it may seem surprising that the language of dreams was not understood long ago. For instance, there is a dream that I can produce in myself as often as I like—experimentally, as it were. If I eat anchovies or olives or any other highly salted food in the evening, I develop thirst during the night which wakes me up. But my waking is preceded by a dream; and this always has the same content, namely, that I am drinking. I dream I am swallowing down water in great gulps, and it has the delicious taste that nothing can equal but a cool drink when one is parched with thirst. Then I wake up and have to have a real drink. This simple dream is occasioned by the thirst which I become aware of when I wake. The thirst gives rise to a wish to drink, and the dream shows me that wish fulfilled. In so doing it is performing a function—which it was easy to divine. I am a good sleeper and not accustomed to be woken by any physical need. If I can succeed in appeasing my thirst by dreaming that I am drinking, then I need not wake up in order to quench it. This, then, is a dream of convenience. Dreaming has taken the place of action, as it often does elsewhere in life.22 Unluckily my need for water to quench my thirst cannot be satisfied by a dream in the same way as my thirst for revenge against my friend Otto and Dr. M.; but the good intention is there in both cases. Not long ago this same dream of mine showed some modification. I had felt thirsty even before I fell asleep, and I had emptied a glass of water that stood on the table beside my bed. A few hours later

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during the night I had a fresh attack of thirst, and this had inconvenient results. In order to provide myself with some water I should have had to get up and fetch the glass standing on the table by my wife's bed. I therefore had an appropriate dream that my wife was giving me a drink out of a vase; this vase was an Etruscan cinerary urn which I had brought back from a journey to Italy and had since given away. But the water in it tasted so salty (evidently because of the ashes in the urn) that I woke up. It will be noticed how conveniently everything was arranged in this dream. Since its only purpose was to fulfil a wish, it could be completely egoistical. A love of comfort and convenience is not really compatible with consideration for other people. The introduction of the cinerary urn was probably yet another wish-fulfilment. I was sorry that the vase was no longer in my possession—just as the glass of water on my wife's table was out of my reach. The urn with its ashes fitted in, too, with the salty taste in my mouth which had now grown stronger and which I knew was bound to wake me.23 Speaking of the "modified" dream, Freud says, without blinking, "It will be noticed how conveniently everything was arranged in this dream," only to add, a few lines further on, that the salty taste of the water woke him up—hardly a brilliant success as far as convenience is concerned. It is, of course, this "modified" dream that has arrested my attention. It certainly has been strangely modified. For what Freud greedily drinks out of the receptacle chosen by the dream (and presented to him by his wife), with its odd, unpleasantly salty taste—the taste of ashes and dust, but also that of saltwater and mother*—is a dead man. Freud makes no further comment on the dream. In a sense— what follows will make it clear in which—there is no need for further comment. Let us therefore add nothing else for the moment. Except, perhaps, this: If the "modified" dream (which, * Gout d'eau de mer(e), a pun: the homonyms tner and mere mean sea and mother.

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however startling it may appear to be, doesn't appear to trouble Freud unduly) is a decided failure from the standpoint of convenience, one could hardly dream better or more satisfactorily as far as fulfilling a (repressed/unconscious/infantile) wish is concerned. But, for the moment, we will not worry this "modified" dream, so knowing, so savvy in its proclaimed innocence—to be sure, it has nothing to hide, and, in a sense, it tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Let us turn instead to the other dream that calls for our attention here, "the dream of the three Fates." Here is Freud's accoimt of the dream; it is followed by two pages of analysis, that is, associations and interpretations: I went into a kitchen in search of some pudding. Three women were Standing in it; one of them was the hostess of the inn and was twisting something about in her hand, as though she was making Knodel [dumplings]. She answered that I must wait till she was ready. (These were not definite spoken words.) I felt impatient and went off with a sense of injury. I put on an overcoat. But the first I tried on was too long for me. I took it off, rather surprised to find it was trimmed with fur. A second one that I put on had a long strip with a Turkish design let into it. A stranger with a long face and a short pointed beard came up and tried to prevent my putting it on, saying it was his. I showed him then that it was embroidered all over with a Turkish pattern. He asked: "What have the Turkish (designs, stripes . . . ) to do with you?" But we then became quite friendly with each other.24 This dream takes place in a kitchen that will reappear in Freud's associations as the kitchen of his childhood. From the outset, Freud associates it with hunger and love (this, then, is his first formulation of the theory of the drives), and, simultaneously, with knowledge—more precisely, with his first lessons. The kitchen is here the place where knowledge originates, where, with a single gesture, Knodel are prepared and lessons dispensed. The lessons provide an answer to the question,

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"Where do babies come from?", in this instance inseparable from the question, "What becomes of the dead?" Dust (or ashes)—that is what babies (like Knodel) are made of, and that is what the dead become when they decompose. Amid this web of associations there also suddenly appears—by way, once again, of Faust—a link between knowledge and sensuality: " 'Day by day, you'll take greater pleasure / At wisdom's breast.'"25 Let us add to all this the stranger (friend) with the pointed beard, whom Freud associates with a merchant with an "equivocal name," before weaving the carpe diem theme into the network of his associations. Do we not find in Faust, similarly, a stranger who is equivocal, to say the least, a sort of merchant, in his own way, who preaches the carpe diem—namely, Mephisto? However that may be, the first noteworthy consequence of this dream seems to me to reside in the fact that it superimposes the question which will lead to the construction of a theory of the drives onto the question "Where do babies come from?" This superimposition is brought about by means of a remarkable condensation which, starting from the gesture of a nursing mother, makes the production of knowledge appear as equivalent to the production of babies. The associations that follow very clearly show the links between the knowledge in question and the sexual and sensual. And the equivalence between the production of babies and knowledge is brought into relation with a special use and a peculiar destiny (something to be eaten?) of dust, more commonly associated with the world of the dead. But the knowledge possessed by Freud's mother, who gave him his "first lessons" and seemed to know all there was to be known about how babies (Knodel) are made, is precisely the knowledge metapsychology will one day supply: the knowledge of hunger and love, life and death, and, at the same time, the knowledge that makes it possible to be born, that is, to be reborn. For, if children come from the dust to which the dead return, it follows that they are "revenants." In their children, in a word, fathers are rejuvenated and regenerated. In this light, one can make sense of the strange connection, forged by way of the images Freud employs (shades and

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Titans, as I noted earlier), between the repressed infantile material that the Witch metapsychology makes it possible to recover and revive, and the paternal instance, the dead father. One can see, as well, the connection between the act of undoing repression and what is at stake in mourning the father. Finally, one can understand in what sense the "rejuvenating" effect of sex (which fulfills Dr. Faust's wish) is determined by the infantile theory of sexuality. But the dream of the cinerary urn will state this infantile theory for us, by bringing into play the following supplementary link in the associative chain: "For this book has a further significance for me personally—a significance which I only grasped after I had completed it. It was, I found, a portion of my own self-analysis, my reaction to my father's death—that is to say, to the most important event, the most poignant loss, of a man's life."26 What does Freud drink out of the cinerary urn? What strange mixture has been concocted in the kitchen of this dream, a striking image of which is provided by the kitchen where Freud's mother made her Knodel? And what infantile sexual theory changes the book on dreams into a child born of the death of Freud's father, thereby making this dream of the urn the expression and hence also the fulfilment (direct and transparent, certainly, but not in the sense a dream of convenience is) of metapsychology's repressed desire—making it, as well, an interpretation and, in a sense, the realization of the "dream of the three Fates"? What infantile sexual theory, indeed, if not the one spelled out earlier in the text: "Here it is like being in a fairy story: one eats some particular thing and gets a child from it." What "one eats" may well be Knodel; but if so, they are dream-Knodel. And dream-Knodel can undergo all kinds of metamorphoses. The product of one such metamorphosis may well be the Witch's brew in the cinerary urn: a brew which, in Faust, has the special power of rejuvenating those who drink it. Translated into Freudian language, "to rejuvenate" means, in conformity with the infantile theory of sex, "to perform the sexual act," "to conceive a child," and, by the same logic, "to undo repression."

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One thus sees how, by dubbing metapsychology "the Witch," Freud makes Faust perform the office of interpreting metapsychology—that is, revealing his own repressed desire—with the language of his own dreams as the basis of the operation. In other words, this act of mediation/interpretation brings out the unconscious meaning of metapsychology's relationship to dreams. In particular, it reveals the unconscious significance of this double assertion: "Every dream is the fulfilment of a wish." "The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." To grasp what this really signifies at the metapsychological level, one has to assess what it reveals about the unconscious active in metapsychology. One has, in other words, to go from metapsychology back to dreams. But as metapsychology, once it has been turned back into a dream, cannot provide an interpretation of itself, Faust must play the mediating role here—Faust as interpreter of everything which, in metapsychology, is made of the stuff of dreams [ce qui se reve de la metapsychologie]. For Freud, who must do without an analyst, this process of mediation by the theater is precious, perhaps even indispensable. For the theater is a condensation of two languages in one: the opaque, midnight language of dreams, but also the bright language of day— easily understood, proffered on a stage visible to all, and subject to the laws of conscious thought. The art of metapsychology is, therefore, already well developed in the "kitchen" of dreams, if dreams, fulfilments of repressed wishes, are the road one must take to arrive at a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind—which is to say, precisely, the interpretive art of metapsychology. Hence metapsychology's "thought factory" and that of dreams are one and the same. It is a factory that resembles a weaver's workshop quite as much as it does a kitchen. Once again, Faust is there to lend Freud the words to say this in: A thousand threads one treadle throws, Where fly the shuttles hither and thither,

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Unseen threads are knit together, And an infinite combination grows.27 Like the kitchen, weaving, whose back-and-forth movement is not without sexual connotations, belongs to woman's sphere. Freud alludes to this in a now famous text.28 One finds weaving, again, in the "dream of the three Fates," in the form of the Turkish embroideries. Weaving, thanks to which the texture of dreams excels at concealing, not a "nothing," but a "dark continent"—the mystery of whatever it is that dreams cook up in their kitchen. You can't tell the striplings, after all, The best of what you manage to find out.

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8 'Bookworms' I shall here write my thoughts without order, and not perhaps in unintentional confusion; that is true order, which will always indicate my object by its very disorder. —Pascal, Penstes

ETYMOLOGY (Mephistopheles is speaking): Ars, Ares is what the god of war is called, Ars means art; a . . .* is known to all. What mystery dwells in those miraculous tones! Language remains a pure breath from Heaven, Felt by the quiet sons of earth alone; One uses it with ease, the ground is firm and even— Where one lives is where one must learn to be at home. One is blithering with oneself when one pours out what one feels; It's a different story when the big bell peals, And all flock to the meeting as if on a sign! Kunst comes from Konnen, Schonheit from ScheinS Thus a language is gradually hammered together, And what a people has stammered together, Is law to heart and soul till the end of time. Forever in the kitchen and never at the fete! Why count up, and weigh out, and bitch and moan? None of that ever produced anything yet, Except to teach us to leave hexameters alone, Pascal, The Provincial Letters, Pensees, Scientific Treatises, trans. W. F. Trotter (Chicago 1952), p. 234. Goethe, -"Etymologic" and untitled fragment. Werke (Stuttgart, 1842), 56:28-29. * That is, Arsch, which means "ass," "arse." + Respectively, "art," "ability," "beauty," "appearance."

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Fall patriotically back into step with the times, And content ourselves with ordinary rhymes. —Goethe

i n 1873, Freud, fresh out of secondary school, wrote this in a letter to Emil Flufi: Incidentally, my professor told me—and he is the first person who has dared to tell me this—that I possess what Herder so nicely calls an idiotic style—i.e. a style at once correct and characteristic. I was suitably impressed by this amazing fact and don't hesitate to disseminate the happy event, the first of its kind, as widely as possible—to you, for instance, who until now have probably remained unaware that you have been exchanging letters with a German stylist. And now I advise you as a friend, not as an interested party, to preserve them—have them bound—take good care of them—one never knows.1 The fledgling author had no idea how prophetic his words would turn out to be! As for his lucky correspondent, he apparently did not disregard Freud's graciously proffered advice. In 1930, Freud's gifts, spotted so early on by his sharp-eyed teacher, won him the most prestigious form of public recognition of success as a "German stylist"; his work was crowned with the Goethe Prize. Understandably, he was deeply moved by the honor. Thus, though he was, in his own words, "not a poet, but a man of science,"2 Freud was, toward the end of his life, awarded a prize which is, after all, literary, and which marked him out in the eyes of all as a writer. We might do well, then, to consider more closely the place writing [ecriture] held in the strategy that guided Freud's research. The project that sustained his writing was theoretical, even, as Freud would have it, "scientific"; poetic it was not. Yet we have seen in how unorthodox a fashion lines from Faust operate in this writing. The tonality of Freud's prose is altered not so much by these quotations themselves as by the sounding of a discor-

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dant note, by a voice and a discourse—Goethe's!—foreign to Freud's theoretical project, and yet, in their very heterogeneity, eminently familiar to him. This alien note makes the scene of writing in Freud, the scene of Freud's own writing, the site of a curious operation: one which transforms the dreamer into an analyst and theoretician. This process is set in motion the moment poetic language, above all that of Goethe's Faust, begins to function like an interpretation of Freud's own relation to analytic theorization, and, by the same token, to his discovery of himself. In a certain sense, then, metapsychological writing is for Freud both couch and armchair, their "in-between." The consequence is that a text by Freud is not a rigid, imposing (funerary) monument, but the site of an experience of language dominated by orality. This experience is such that the exact moment of the encounter between desire and words becomes perceptible, and, with it, the movement by which the drive is transformed into language—but a language that contains within itself the possibility of a transformation back into the drive, into unconscious desire. This possibility is written into the text in the form of a living memory, a trace—in short, a record of whatever brought the text into being. Such a text teeters, precariously, on the edge of unconscious desire. One might even say that it is nothing other than this tension or promise, and hence that it emerges in the gap which endlessly defers its full realization.3 Should the gap be closed or the promise fulfilled, the voice of the text would be stilled. The rest would be silence, or the death of language amid the triumph of the univocal: a machine language, a root language. In other words, what seems to me to take place in Freud by way of the gesture of writing, the process that produces a text, is a mise-en-scene of the basic drama of psychoanalysis. Shattering the compact fixity of the written work, a Freudian text captures the incandescence of the spoken word in its abrupt materialization—the word as efflorescence, profusion, or limitless promise of meaning. Endlessly translatable, such language is all the more helpless before the drive in that it is the very force which takes up the struggle with it, puts the fiercest resistance in

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its path. The captivating power, in this sense, of the Freudian text, which both demands and resists translation, springs, then, from its mise-en-sc&ne of analysis, a practice whose instrument is the living word: the word, to be sure, insofar as it is inscribed in the register of the signifier, the order of word representations; but also the word as inscribed in the nonverbal register of the primary processes, the register of thing-representations (to stick to Freud's terminology). The spoken word, then, in its constitutive ambiguity; the word and nothing but the word, motor of the transference because it is also the place where resistance is encountered. Resistance to words and of words, at the critical juncture where repression is undone. Freud defines this operation as a rebuilding of "verbal bridges."4 The dream of the botanical monograph is highly significant here. Seeking to explain condensation, essence of the thoughtwork of the dream and vanishing point for the thought-work of interpretation, Freud once again turns for help, in his discussion of this dream, to Goethe's Faust: Here we find ourselves in a factory of thoughts where, as in the "weaver's masterpiece,"— A thousand threads one treadle throws, Where fly the shuttles hither and thither, Unseen threads are knit together, And an infinite combination grows.5 An extraordinary dream, both for the way Freud recounts it and for his interpretation of it, characterized by a surprising foreshortening, an exemplary condensation which shows what the fate of a text that takes up a relation with the unconscious must necessarily be—at least as far as Freud is concerned. An opportunity for us to seize, in a reading of these few pages, both the movement of Freud's writing as it unrolls before us, and, as it were, the law that governs this movement, presiding over the emergence of the text from start to finish. This law makes itself

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felt in the smallest details of the text as well as at the center of a larger ensemble. It is responsible for the fact that the text too is, like a dream, an intricate meshwork, a "weaver's masterpiece" in which countless strands are interwoven. Let us attend to what Freud has to say on this subject, in the midst of the spirited theorization that follows his analysis of the "dream of the botanical monograph": In the case of every dream which I have submitted to an analysis of this kind I have invariably found these same fundamental principles confirmed: the elements of the dream are constructed out of the whole mass of dream-thoughts and each one of these elements is shown to have been determined many times over in relation to the dream-thoughts.6 It would be easy to show that this declaration of principle could be applied, point by point, to Freud's book on dreams. Indeed, it could doubtless be applied to the ensemble of Freud's writings, particularly when one bears in mind the way the quotations from Goethe appear in them. This is one of the multiple strands it would be possible to follow out in a discussion of the dream of the botanical monograph, which, like other dreams and other strands it criss-crosses in the dense web of The Interpretation of Dreams, shows up at several different points in the backand-forth movement that makes up the weave of Freud's writing. (Does one not similarly meet again, in the weave of the dream book, the Three Fates, and, close by, the Witch?) This writing weaves associations and interpretations into the dream-narratives—together with the words of Faust. I would like to turn back for a moment to the "dream of the botanical monograph"; hewing to the surface of the text, I would like to try to read, as simply and straightforwardly as possible, the two passages in The Interpretation of Dreams that take this dream as their main theme. As Monique Schneider points out, "vegetation appears at the limit of the inconceivable in Freud's dreams." 7 Indeed, the plants

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in the monograph of the dream are dried specimens; this confers upon books the status of something deadly, and tends to make writing an arid desert where no living creature can survive, a lunar landscape in which nothing grows—at best, a tomb or lifeless memory of what once was. But, amid these associations, one comes across something that produces a fantastic effect of contrast. The first time the dream is mentioned, Freud evokes this childhood memory: It had once amused my father to hand over a book with colored plates (an account of a journey through Persia) for me and my eldest sister to destroy . . . I had been five years old at the time and my sister not yet three; and the picture of us two blissfully pulling the book to pieces (leaf by leaf, like an artichoke, I found myself saying) was almost the only plastic memory that I retained from that period of my life.8 Freud and his sister methodically tear up a picture book—between a "picture" book and a "dream" book, the distance is slight—and this activity is the source of a very sensual pleasure, a feeling of "bliss." Second childhood memory: BUcherwurm: the little worms discovered in the herbarium, the little (book) worm Freud was to become*—lively, voracious little creatures, which come crawling out of the dust (of the herbarium, of books) to devour the dry leaves. As in the "dream of the three Fates," so here too, life comes forth, strangely, from the dust. In any case, one is well advised to give short shrift to the sort of thing that is piously classified and preserved in books or herbariums. Whether the little boy blissfully gives himself over to ripping them up, or the little worms to devouring them, the precious *: Prokhoris translates the German word BUcherwurm (bookworm; "rat de bibliotheque" ["library rat"] is the equivalent French idiom) literally as "ver de livre" (the plural would be "vers de livre"). This paves the way for an untranslatable pun, since ver (worm) has a homonym, vers, which means "verse" or "line of poetry." Hence the French title of the present chapter, "Vers de livre."

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knowledge consigned to the book or herbarium is diverted from its proper end and transformed into an object of jouissance—a fate that completely undermines the dignity of its function. The second time the dream of the botanical monograph comes up in a significant way in The Interpretation of Dreams, the two memories evoked the first time are very summarily recalled, by way of an allusion.9 But this time something else looms up abruptly, without transition, as if superimposed on these childhood memories: a vision of the feverish activity of a "factory of thoughts." It is evoked by way of a few verses from Faust (in both senses of the word vers, why not?), verses which are themselves, once again, intimately intertwined with or woven into Freud's own text. This vision stands in sharp contrast to the sorrowful description of the lifeless dried flowers. It bursts forth as the result of a movement precipitated in the text by the sudden blossoming of the word "botanical"—a movement as sudden and surprising as the blooming of tropical flowers, or the sprouting of mushrooms, which, as is well known, always powerfully impressed Freud. All this seems to me to suggest that, to put it clearly, a text written by Freud is best conceived, as Pierre Fedida says,10 on the model of the mystic writing pad, not that of a mortuary inscription or a botanical monograph free of bookworms; as a living, open-ended memory of things thought and said, not the dead letter Plato denounced.11 Indeed, one may observe how, in this text, the frozen image of the botanical monograph is overwhelmed, set in motion, and then dissolved or decomposed by words, the words that initiate the activity or drive the wheel of association/interpretation/theorization. As Francois Roustang notes, Freud's texts—The Interpretation of Dreams is a particularly conspicuous example—are structured like the object they set out to describe; they thus provide a model of the mental apparatus and its activity12 Similarly, they preserve a durable trace of the impulse or process that led to their being written; this process is all the more fruitful in that it goes far beyond any vague desire to achieve omnipotence by mastering reality through reflection.13 Indeed, the way these texts develop

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derives, to a considerable extent, from similar processes active in the dream-work. In particular, the way "quotations" are employed in and assimilated into Freud's text seems to me to be of the same order as the way Freud says words work in dreams. Reading his remarks on the subject, one cannot help but be struck by the parallel: We may safely say that the dream-work does not in fact carry out any calculations at all, whether correctly or incorrectly; it merely throws into the form of a calculation numbers which are present in the dream-thoughts and can serve as allusions to matter that cannot be represented in any other way In this respect the dream-work is treating numbers as a medium for the expression of its purpose in precisely the same way as it treats any other idea, including proper names and speeches that occur recognizably as verbal presentations. For the dream-work cannot actually create speeches. However much speeches and conversations, whether reasonable or unreasonable in themselves, may figure in dreams, analysis invariably proves that all that the dream has done is to extract from the dream-thoughts fragments of speeches which have really been made or heard. It deals with these fragments in the most arbitrary fashion. Not only does it drag them out of their context and cut them in pieces, incorporating some portions and rejecting others, but it often puts them together in a new order, so that a speech which appears in the dream to be a connected whole turns out in analysis to be composed of three or four detached fragments. In producing this new version, a dream will often abandon the meaning that the words originally had in the dream-thoughts and give them a fresh one. If we look closely into a speech that occurs in a dream, we shall find that it consists on the one hand of relatively clear and compact portions and on the other hand of portions which serve as connecting matter and have probably been filled in at a later stage, just as, in reading, we fill in any letters or syllables that may have been accidentally omitted. Thus speeches in dreams

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have a structure similar to that of breccia, in which largish blocks of various kinds of stone are cemented together by a binding medium.14 This helps one grasp the full import of what Freud intends to suggest when he recalls, in a later text, "Mephistopheles' mocking speech on how comfortably one can get along with words/' 15 That the quotation should occur in a presentation of analysis as a cure brought about by words can only intensify the effect of this "breccia." Dreams, then, can serve as "the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind" only in conjunction with what decomposes them: words. Only the work of association, which, as it were, "rips up" the dream images and so prevents them from taking on a fascinating, mesmerizing, permanent immobility, enables a dream to reveal—and constitute—the structure of the mental apparatus. The dream of the botanical monograph and the accompanying commentary teach us that the same holds for a text, and a fortiori for Freud's book on dreams. In her Freud et le plaisir, Monique Schneider points out, basing what she says on Freud's essay "Negation," that the strategy deployed in Freud's writing is odd, to say the least, when considered with regard to the norms of the progressive development of a text. Schneider speaks of "an edifice which advertises, rather, the fact that it is full of holes, strangely unstable because its foundations are pulled out from under it as soon as they are laid."16 Is what she thus calls attention to not a profoundly necessary feature of any text that wishes to qualify as metapsychological? Is this not the only possible way it can proceed? Is the "right to behave inconsistently" which Freud claims for his writings at the outset of The Interpretation of Dreams17 (Schneider discusses this point too) not the indispensable guarantee enabling metapsychological writing to mime, as it were, a supposedly primitive stage of language by treating contradiction in a manner exactly analogous to that adopted by the language of dreams? On this point, I refer the reader to a short article of Freud's based on the work (far-

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fetched from a linguistic point of view) of Karl Abel. Speaking as a "philologist," Freud notes a feature he claims is peculiar to ancient languages: they often assign antithetical meanings to the same word. Even today, Freud maintains, one can find traces of this, in words like, for example, the English "without." The essay ends with this sentence: "And we psychiatrists cannot escape the suspicion that we should be better at understanding and translating the language of dreams if we knew more about the development of language." To which Freud adds, in a note: "It is plausible to suppose, too, that the original antithetical meaning of words exhibits the ready-made mechanism which is exploited for various purposes by slips of the tongue that result in the opposite being said [of what was really meant]."18 This suggests that language had mythical status for Freud, who, it seems to me, deserves to be questioned and analyzed, rather than subjected to worshipful exegesis. Doubtless what he does here is cover up—that is, conceal/reveal—the fact that there exists, precisely, a nonlinguistic domain before [en-degd. de] language: the domain of the primary processes. (With this in mind, Lacan's thesis that the unconscious is structured like a language might well be reexamined.) Language, then, is assigned a mythical status behind which I detect something like a will to mastery. In brief, language—which derives from the secondary processes—would on this conception have been there from the beginning, even if it originally appeared in primitive form; it would consequently be sufficient to give this primitive figure a shave and a haircut in order to gain access to a suddenly unveiled unconscious. The corollary, of course, is that the operation of undoing repression, conceived as a rebuilding of verbal bridges, would leave no "remainder" capable of frustrating the desire to know. The will to mastery involved here thus belongs as much to Freud the analyst as to Freud the theoretician. But it is, perhaps, a will to mastery coupled with something like the (utopian?) dream that language might succeed in representing numerically, by a kind of hysterical identification, something that does not belong to its domain. The notion of a prim-

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itive stage of language would thus permit language to appropriate that which defies it—but at the risk of being cheated, in the end, of the wished-for mastery. At any rate, this makes it easier to understand the role played in the overall dynamic of Freud's investigations by the written text, a text "oralized," one might say, in the close encounter with Goethe's words. It also enables one to understand better why Freud's strategy and style had to put themselves forward, even if his project of theorization was to fall short of its goal, as a resurgence, as the manifest truth of the unconscious. An "oralized" writing, I said a moment ago, one which literally incorporated Goethe's words into Freud's text. Indeed, Goethe's way of appropriating the basic elements of the Faust legend—a legend rooted in folklore and the puppet theater that is part of everybody's childhood—is not unrelated to Freud's way of appropriating fragments of Goethe in the process of inventing psychoanalysis. Freud let himself be seduced, troubled, haunted by the poet's words. By fragments of Faust, the poem of Goethe's that was, more than any other, an integral part of himself, a poem he kept writing and rewriting to the end of his life. But Faust was perhaps also the poem of Goethe's which obliged him to confront the most radical form of dispossession, the one that makes one's mother tongue also seem, uncannily, to be a foreign language. A form of dispossession that provides access to the poetic essence of language; that shows it to be an endless effort at translation, with, for its starting point, the violent encounter with the untranslatable in all its brutal nakedness, the irreducible bedrock and truth of language.19 A bedrock which nevertheless makes possible the emergence of what Goethe calls "the most beautiful metempsychosis: that in which we see ourselves reappear in another." Resistance; transference—rebirth. Speaking of Faust, precisely, that most German of all poems and the one most intimately his, Goethe wrote that, although he no longer enjoyed reading it in German, "it seems much clearer and to the point in French, a language which makes everything seem more gay, while accommodating both observation and understanding. The

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[dreary] impression the work generally made on me is almost dissipated/'20 Goethe was to devote a poem to translation. It ends this way: The tiny heads popped up and looked round, And the stems and leaves glowed green, All as healthy as if they'd been On maternal ground. So it was for me when I heard my song sung— Wondering, amazed—in a foreign tongue.21 Faust certainly was a "kitchen" Goethe was "forever in"; and for Freud, the "bookworm," it was also most assuredly a feast of words, made so by the force of what may truly be called a devouring passion! As such, it was not only a source for the book on dreams, the book of a writer who, as he wanted to be a "man of science," or, at least, a discoverer, could not but be violated by the poet. It was, no less, a source for a theory of the unconscious articulated with, tied firmly to, the practice of psychoanalysis. For that is what is ultimately in question here. The "metempsychosis" Goethe speaks of in connection with the test we occasionally risk undergoing when we confront the other, the stranger, the foreign—is this very test not the central stakes of psychoanalysis? Between Freud, enamored of Faust, and Goethe, something is cooking, something involving desire. What are we to say of the strange child born of these elective affinities—the invention of analysis? Is it not a knowledge of the unconscious, and a putting into practice of this knowledge, only to the extent that Freud's text is proof and experience of desire (to borrow the phrase Barthes uses in speaking of the pleasure of the text)?* Is it not this experience of desire that makes us spellbound readers of Freud and captives of psychoanalysis, which, once it has caught us in its devilish grip, truly "never lets go"? * See note, p. 6.

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Notes

Foreword 1. Freud, Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940), Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth, 1953-74) [hereafter SE], 23:187. Translation modified. 2. Jacques Derrida, "Freud and the Scene of Writing," in Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, 1978), p. 201. 3. Ibid., p. 219. 4. Ibid., p. 199. 5. Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliefi 1887-1904 (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), Letter of 21 September 1897, p. 264. 6. Ibid., Letter of 3 October 1897, p. 268. 7. Ibid., Letter of 15 October 1897, p. 271. 8. Freud, "Family Romances" (1909), SE 9:238. 9. Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 202. 10. Freud, "Family Romances," SE 9:237. 11. (Paris: Aubier, 1994). 12. Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 226. 13. Goethe, Faust, Part 1,4040-4041. All translations of Goethe are by G. M. Goshgarian unless otherwise noted.

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Prologue 1. Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Trend to Wilhelm Pliefi 1887-1904 (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), Letter of 1 February 1900, p. 398. 2. Theogony, in Theogony and Works and Days, trans. M. L. West (Oxford, 1986), p. 6, p. 9. 3. See Conrad Stein, "Oedipe selon Freud," preface to Marie Delcourt, Oedipe ou la legende du conquirant (Paris, 1981). 4. "I do not admire the excess of a virtue as of valour, except as I see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas, who had the greatest valour and the greatest kindness. For otherwise it is not to rise, it is to fall. We do not display greatness by going to one extreme, but in touching both at once, and filling all the intervening space. But perhaps this is only a sudden movement of the soul from one to the other extreme, and in fact it is ever at one point only, as in the case of a firebrand. Be it so, but at least this indicates agility if not expanse of soul." Blaise Pascal, Pensees, in The Provincial Letters, Pensees, Scientific Treatises, trans. W. F. Trotter (Chicago, 1952), p. 234.

1. Exquisite

Words

1. Freud, "Some Reflections on Schoolboy Psychology" (1914), Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth, 195374) [hereafter SE], 13:242. 2. Freud, Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva (1907), SE 9:44. 3. Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (1937), SE 23:225. Freud quotes Faust, Part 1, 2365: "So mufi dann doch die Hexe dran." 4. Freud, "Psychical (or Mental) Treatment" (1890), SE 7:283. 5. Ibid., p. 302. 6. See Jean-Martin Charcot, "La foi qui gu£rit," in Charcot and Paul Richer, Les demoniaques dans Vart (Paris, 1984), pp. 111-123. English version: "The Faith That Heals," The New Review 8, no. 44 (1893): 18-31. 7. Notably in "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming" (1908), SE 9:143-153.

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8. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 1840-1841: Das Beste, was du wissen kannst, I Darfst du den Buben doch nicht sagen. 9. Jean Laplanche, "La transcendance du transfert," Psychanalyse a VUniversite 9 (1984): 543-597, 580. 10. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933), SE 22:80.

11. See the poem Freud sent Fliefi on 29 December 1899, on the occasion of the birth of Fliefi's son. Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliefi 1887-1904 (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 393-394. This very Faustian poem recalls the scene in Faust, Part 2, in which Mephistopheles gives Faust the key to the Mothers; a bit later, before Mephisto goes to the laboratory where Homunculus is created, we see him wrapped in a thick fleece. Maria Torok notes that Vlies (German for "fleece") and Fliefi are homonyms. 12. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 360-364: Heifle Magister, heifie Doktor gar, I Und ziehe schon an die zehen Jahr / Herauf, herab und auer und krumm Meine Schiller an der Nase herum— / Und sehe, dafi wir nichts wissen konnenl 13. Freud, Letter of 27 September 1898, Letters to Fliefi, p. 329. 14. Goethe, Faust, Part 1,1869: Und komme voll Ergebenheit. 15. Ibid., 1876-77: Ich komme mit allem guten Mut, / Leidlichem Geld undfrischem Blut. 16. Ibid., 1740: Blut ist ein ganz besonderer Soft. 17. Freud, "Some Reflections on Schoolboy Psychology," SE 13:241. 18. Ibid., p. 242. 19. Ibid.

20. Cf. Jean de la Fontaine, "Love and Folly": "The decision, at last, of the high court above / Was to sentence Folly, with no appeal, / To serve henceforth as a guide for Love." The Complete Fables of Jean de la Fontaine, trans. Norman B. Spector (Evanston, III, 1988), p. 637. 21. Freud, Gradiva, SE 9:7. 22. Ibid., p. 54; Ren£ Descartes, Discourse on Method, trans. F. E. Sutcliffe, in Discourse on Method and The Meditations (Harmondsworth, England, 1968), pp. 41, 58. 23. See Alain de Mijolla, "'Mein Onkel Joseph' a la une!" Etudes freudiennes, no. 15-16 (1979): 183-192.

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24. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), SE 4:142. 25. Freud, Gradiva, SE 9:60. 26. Ibid., pp. 84-85. 27. Ibid., p. 85. 28. Ibid., pp. 85-86. 29. I have taken this expression from Jacqueline Rousseau-Dujardin, Tu as change*. . . (Paris, 1987), p. 67. 30. Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York, 1971), p. 151. 31. Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, Vecorce et le noyau (Paris, 1978), p. 3372. It's Easy to Do Things with Words

1. Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliefi 1887-1904 (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), Letter of 20 June 1898, p. 318. 2. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), SE 5:525. 3. Ibid., p. 549. 4. See the second epigraph to this chapter. 5. See Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), SE 8:167: "A joke has quite outstandingly the characteristic of being a notion that has occurred to us 'involuntarily/ . . . We have an indefinable feeling . . . which I can best compare with an 'absence' [in French in Freud's text], a sudden release of intellectual tension." 6. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:xxiv. 7. Freud, Letter of 27 October 1897, Letters to Fliefi, p. 274. 8. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), SE 21:133. 9. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, in The Provincial Letters, Pensees, Scientific Treatises, trans. W. F. Trotter (Chicago, 1952), p. 237. 10. Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis (1926), SE 20:187. Translation modified. 11. Ibid., pp. 187-188. 12. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:283. The quotation is of Faust, Part 1,1924-27: [Wo] ein Tritt tausend Faden regt, / Die Schifflein heriiber hiniiber schiefien, / Die Faden ungesehen fliefien, / Ein Schla tausend Verbindungen schlagt. The translation, by Bayard Taylor, is that cited in the Standard Edition. 13. Freud, Letter of 14 October 1900, Letters to Fliefi, p. 427.

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3- In Mephisto's Grip 1. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), SE 21:120. Freud quotes only a part of Mephisto's response, omitting the words in brackets below. Faust, Part i, 1335-37, 1338-44: Bin Teil von jener Kraft, I Die stets das Bbse will und stets das Gute schafft. . . [Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint! / Und das mit Recht:] denn alles, was entsteht, / Ist wert, dafi es zugrunde geht; / [Drum besser war's, dafi nichts entstiinde.] 2. Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (1937), SE 23:245. 3. Freud, "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood" (1910), SE 11:75.

4. Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliefi 1887-1904. (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), Letter of 25 May 1895, p. 129. 5. Freud, "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes" (1915), SE 14:122. Translation modified. 6. Goethe, Faust, Part 1,1202-1315, passim: Knurre nicht, Pudel! / Zu den heiligen Tdnen, / Die jetzt meine ganze Seel umfassen, / Will der tierische Laut nicht passen. / . . . Soil ich mit dir das Zimmer teilen, / Pudel, so lafi das Heulen, / So lafi das Bellen! / Solch einen storenden Gesellen / Mag ich nicht in der Nahe leiden. / Finer von uns beiden / Muf die Zelle meiden. / Ungern heb ich das Gastrecht auf, / Die Tilr ist offen hast freien Lauf / Aber was mufi ich sehenl/ Kann das natiirlich geschehen?/ Ist es Schatten? ist's Wirklichkeit? / Wie wird mein Pudel long und breit! / Er hebt sich mit Gewalt, / Das ist nicht eines Hundes Gestalt! / Welch ein Gespenst bracht ich ins Haus! / Schon sieht er wie ein Nilpferd aus, /Mit feurigen Augen, schrecklichem Gebifi. / Oh! du bist mir gewifi! / . . . Erst zu begegnen dem Here, / Branch ich den Spruch der Viere:/... Keines der viere / Steckt in dem Tiere. / Es liegt ganz ruhig und grinst mich an . . . / Bist du Geselle / Ein Fluchtling der Hplle? / So sich dies Zeichen, / Dem sie sich beugen, / Die schwarzen Scharen! / Schon schwill es auf mit borstigen Haaren . . . / Hinter den Of en gebannt, /Schwillt es wie ein Elefant, / Den ganzen Raum fullt es an, / Es will zum Nebel zerfliefien. / Steige nicht zur Decke hinan! / Lege dich zu des Meisters Fiifien! 7. Freud, "A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism" (1893), SE 1:122.

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8. Ibid., pp. 126, 127. 9. Freud, "Repression," SE 14:149. Translation modified. 10. Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis (1926), SE 20:202-203. Translation modified. 11. Freud, "Repression," SE 14:149-150. 12. Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis, SE 20:226-227. 13. Freud, "The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy" (1910), SE 11:148. 14. In the sense in which Hegel speaks of the ruse of reason. 15. Goethe, "Die Natur," Gedenkausgabe (Zurich and Stuttgart, 1949), 16: 923: "Leben ist ihre schonste Erfindung, und der Tod ist ihr Kunstgriff, viel Leben zu haben." 16. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, SE 21:120-121. Freud cites Faust, Part 1,1339-1345 (see n. 1 to this chapter) and 1374-1378: Der Luft, dem Wasser wie der Erden / Entzvinden tausend Keime sich, / Im Trocknen, Feuchten, Warmen, Kalten! / Hatt ich mir nicht die Flamme vorbehalten, / Ich hatte nichts Aparts fur mich. The translation, by Bayard Taylor, is that cited in the Standard Edition. 17. Monique Schneider, "Ftre, ne vois-tu pas . . . ?": Le pire, le maitre, le spectre dans L'interpretation des reves (Paris, 1985). 18. Freud, "Negation" (1925), SE 19:239. Translation modified. 19. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 1750-1775, passim: Lafl in den Tiefen der Sinnlichkeit / Uns gliihende Leidenschaften stillen! / . . . Sturzen wir uns in das Rauschen der Zeit, / Ins Rollen der Begebenheit! / . . . Dem Taumel weih ich mich, dem schmerzlichsten Genufi, / Verliebtem Hafl, erauickendem Verdrufi. / Mein Busen, der vom Wissensdrang geheilt ist, / Soil keinen Schmerzen kiinftig sich verschliefien, / Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugeteilt ist, / Will ich in meinem innern Selbst geniefien, / Mit meinem Geist das Hochst' und Tiefste greifen, / Ihr Wohl und Weh auf meinen Busen haufen I Und so mein eigen Selbst zu ihrem Selbst erweitern I Und, wie sie selbst, am End auch ich zerscheitern. 20. Freud, "On Narcissism: An Introduction," SE 14:85. 21. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 336-343: Du darfst auch da nur frei erscheinen; I Ich habe deinesgleichen nie gehafit. / Von alien Geistern, die verneinen, / Ist mir der Schalk am wenigsten zur Last. / Des Menschen Tatigkeit kann allzu leicht erschlaffen, / Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh; I Drum geb ich gem ihm den Gesellen zu, / Der reizt und wirkt und mufi als Teufel schaffen. Compare what Freud writes in Civilization and Its Discontents, SE

176

Notes

21:76: "One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be 'happy' is not included in the plan of 'Creation/ " 22. Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable/' SE 23:245. Translation modified. 23. The negative therapeutic reaction. 24. Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable," SE 23:243. Translation modified. 25. Goethe, Faust, Part 1,1372-1373: Und immer zirkuliert ein neues, frisches Blutl I So geht es fort; man mbchte rasend werdenl 26. Ibid., 1851-1867: Verachte nur Vernunft und Wissenschaft, / Des Menschen allerhbchste Kraft, /Lafi nur in Blend- und Zaubenverken / Dich von dem Lugengeist bestarken, / So hab ich dich schon unbedingt- / Ihm hat das Schicksal einen Geist gegeben, / Der ungebandigt immer vorwartsdringt / Und dessen iibereiltes Streben / Der Erde Freuden uberspringt. / Den schlepp ich durch das wilde Leben, / Durch flache Un bedeutenheit, / Er soil mir zappeln, starren, kleben, / Und seiner Unersat tlichkeit / Soil Speis und Trank vor gier'gen Lippen schzueben, / Er wird Erquickung sich umsonst erflehn, / Und hatt er sich auch nicht dem Teuf ubergeben, / Er miifite doch zugrunde gehnl 27. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), SE 18:42. Translation modified. 28. Ibid., p. 39. Translation modified. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., p. 59. 31. Goethe, Faust, Part i, 1384: Des Chaos wunderlicher Sohn. 32. Ibid., 300-307: Filrwahr! er dient Euch aufbesondre Weise. /Nicht irdisch ist des Toren Trank noch Speise. I Win treibt die Garung in die FerneJEr ist sich seiner Tollheit hdlb bewufit; / Vom Himmel fordert er die schbnsten Sterne / Und von der Erde jede hbchste Lust, / Und alle NUh un alle Feme / Befriedigt nicht die tiefbewegte Brust. 33. "Whatever is profound loves masks." Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1966), p. 40. 34. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 1892-93: So wird's Euch an der Weisheit Brilsten / Mit jedem Tage mehr geliisten. 35. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, SE 18:42. 36. Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923), SE 19:45-46. Translation modified. 37. Ibid, pp. 54-55.

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38. See Freud, "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes," SE 14:138: "The true prototypes of the relation of hate are derived not from sexual life, but from the ego's struggle to preserve and maintain itself." 39. Doubtless it is this nostalgia which impels Freud to write the following sentence, which we have already had occasion to comment on: "A strong egoism is a protection against falling ill, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order not to fall ill, and we are bound to fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we are unable to love." "On Narcissism," SE 14:85. 40. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, SE 18:48. 41. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 354-357, 455-459: Habe nun, achl Philosophie, I Juristerei und Medizin, / Und leider auch Theologie! / Durchaus studiert, mit heifiem Bemtihn . . . Wo fafi ich dich, unendliche Natur? / Euch Bruste, wo? Ihr Quellen alles Lebens, I An denen Himmel und Erde hangt, I Dahin die welke Brust sich dr'dngt— / Ihr quellt, ihr trankt, und schmacht ich so vergebens? 42. Freud, "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men" [Contributions to the Psychology of Love, 1] (1910), SE 11:165. 43. Especially in the letters to Fliefi. 44. Freud, "Negation," SE 19:238-239. Translation modified. 45. Freud, "On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love" [Contributions to the Psychology of Love, 2] (1912), SE 11:190.

46. Francois Peraldi, "Voyages dans l'Entre-deux-morts," Frayages [no volume number] (1984): 19-38. 47. Ibid., p. 23. "Is it the mother who expels? Does the mother generate the deadly force which is requisite for the birth of the subject—which is, indeed, its very condition? Is this force not rather that which is in the woman but belongs to the Real, and which accordingly ensures that she is not-all (if we are to believe Lacan)—not entirely immersed in the Symbolic? . . . Let us take the Real to be whatever escapes symbolization." 48. Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable," SE 23:225. 49. Freud, "The Theme of the Three Caskets" (1913), SE 12:301. 4. Faust and Leonardo 1. Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (1910), SE 11:75. 2. Ibid. Translation modified. 178

Notes

3- Freud, "Negation" (1925), SE 19:235. 4. Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, SE 11:75. 5. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 392-397: Achl kbnnt ich doch auf Bergeshohn / In deinem lieben Lichte gehn, / Um Bergeshohle mit Geistern schweben, / Auf Wiesen in deinem Dammer weben, / Von allem Wissensaualm entladen, / In deinem Tau gesund mich baden! 6. Ibid., 2038-2039: Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, / Und griin des Lebens goldner Baum. 7. Ibid., 1754-1755,1766-1767. See chapter 3, n. 19. 8. Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, SE 11:134. 9. Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliefl 1887-1904 (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), Letter of 16 January 1898, p. 294. 10. Wishes expressed by Dr. Faust as well. 11. Freud, "Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning" (1911), SE 12:224. Translation modified. 12. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), SE 21:81. 13. Freud, "On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love" [Contributions to the Psychology of Love, 2] (1912), SE 11:190. 14. As to mothers, let us note that the science of metapsychology is a Witch whose "consolations" never lose their frightening character. 15. Freud, Totem and Taboo (1913), SE 13:90. 16. Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis (1920), SE 20:187. 17. In this connection, consider the importance translation had for Goethe, and, in this perspective, the value he attached to the German language. For Goethe, the model translation was Luther's German version of the Bible. See Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany, trans. S. Heyvaert (Albany, N.Y., 1992), pp. 23-24. The act of translation provided Freud too with a metaphor that played an important role in helping him conceptualize what was involved in undoing repression. See John Forrester, Language and the Origins of Psychoanalysis (London, 1980), pp. 53-54. 18. Freud, Totem and Taboo, SE 13:161. 19. Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, SE 11:134. 20. Cf. the Stoics' metaphor for "understanding"—a clenched fist. 21. On metapsychology: "If we are asked by what methods and means this result is achieved, it is not easy to find an answer. We can Notes

179

only say: 'So mufi denn dock die Hexe dranl' [We must call the Witch to our help after all!]—the Witch Metapsychology Without metapsychological speculation and theorizing—I had almost said 'phantasying'—we shall not get another step forward. Unfortunately, here as elsewhere, what our Witch reveals is neither very clear nor very detailed." Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (1937), SE 23:225.

In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud similarly emphasizes that "we have been obliged to build our way out into the dark." The point is made even more strongly in the passages about the "navel" of the dream that I have already cited. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 5:549. On the work of art: "If in making these statements I have provoked criticism, even from friends of pyscho-analysis and from those who are expert in it, that I have merely written a psycho-analtyic novel, I shall reply that I am far from over-estimating the certainty of these results. Like others I have succumbed to the attraction of this great and mysterious man, in whose nature one seems to detect powerful instinctual passions which can nevertheless only express themselves in so remarkably subdued a manner. . . . Instincts and their transformations are at the limit of what is discernible by psycho-analysis. . . . Since artistic talent and capacity are intimately connected with sublimation we must admit that the nature of the artistic function is also inaccessible to us along psycho-analytic lines." Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, SE 11:134 and 11:136. "Precisely some of the grandest and most overwhelming creations of art are still unsolved riddles to our understanding. We admire them, we feel overpowered by them, but we are unable to say what they represent to us." Freud, "The Moses of Michelangelo" (1914), SE 13:211. 22. In a manner more or less overtly metaphorical, does not the position of the patient in a psychoanalytic session—whether on the couch, or face-to-face with the analyst—always create an impression of strangeness and alienation? 23. On this point, see Monique Schneider, Freud et le plaisir (Paris, 1980), pp. 35ff. 24. Freud, "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes" (1915), SE 14:134136. 25. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, SE 21:66-68.

180

Notes

26. "An advance in intellectuality consists in deciding against direct sense-perception in favor of what are known as the higher intellectual processes—that is, memories, reflections, and inferences. It consists, for example, in deciding that paternity is more important than maternity, although it cannot, like the latter, be decided by the evidence of the senses." Freud, Moses and Monotheism (1939), SE 23:117-118.

27. On this point, see Kant's discussion of the antinomies of reason. 28. And in the sense which finds expression in the mythological figure of Athena. See Nicole Loraux, The Children of Athens: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes, trans. Caroline Levine (Princeton, N.J., 1993), especially chapter 1. 29. Frangois Ganteret, Incertitude Eros (Paris, 1984), p. 119. 30. Yet quite capable of having concrete effects—in the theater, for example—as a result of the lifting of censorship. 31. See Kant on the "disinterested" nature of aesthetic contemplation. 32. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 2371: Geduld will bei dem Werke sein. 33. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, SE 21:79. Translation modified. 34. Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, SE 11:77. 35. On this point, see Monique Schneider, Freud et le plaisir (Paris, 1980). 36. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933), SE 22:9.

37. Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, SE 11:75-77. 38. "I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador—an adventurer, if you want it translated—with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort." Freud, Letter of 1 February 1900, Letters to Fliefl, p. 398. 39. Ernst L. Freud, ed., Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, trans. Tania and James Stern (London, 1961), Letter of 2 February 1886 to Martha Bernays, p. 214. 40. Freud, Letter of 30 March 1922 to Sandor Ferenczi, cited in Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. 3 (New York, 1957)/P-84. 41. Freud, Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva (1907), SE 9:90.

Notes

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42. Freud, "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" (1905), SE 7:109. 43. William McGuire, ed., The Freud-Jung Letters, trans. Ralph Manheim and R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, 1974), Letter of 9 March 1909 to Carl Jung, p. 210. 44. "Love is an illusion, I grant you, but its reality consists in the feelings it awakes, in the love of true beauty which it inspires. That beauty is not to be found in the object of our affections, it is the creation of our illusions. What matter!" Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or Education, trans. Barbara Foxley (London, 1911), p. 354. 45. In the sense in which Freud employs these notions in Moses and Monotheism in particular. 46. Compare Faust, who dedicates himself to "the most painful pleasure, hate steeped in love, quickening frustration" (Faust, Part 1, 1766-67: dem schmerzlichsten Genufi, verliebtem Hafl, erquickendem Verdrufi.) 47. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, SE 21:113. 48. Freud, "A Childhood Recollection from Dichtung und Wahrheit" (1917), SE 17:145-156. Goethe, though he was his "mother's undisputed darling," nevertheless "came into the world as though dead!" (ibid., p. 156). 49. See chapter 3, n. 34. 50. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 1889-90: So nimmt ein Kind der Mutterbrust / Nicht gleich im Anfang willig an. 5. Elective Affinities 1. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), SE 4:283. 2. Ibid., SE 5:515. 3. The Interpretation of Dreams, the letters to Fliefi, and, finally, Leonardo da Vinci, where matters are presented somewhat differently. 4. Especially in the letters to Fliefi we have already cited. 5. I have in mind the positions of the two bodies in the space marked out by the spoken word in psychoanalysis. 6. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 5:613. 7. Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliefi 1887-1904 (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), Letter of 7 July 1898, p. 319. 8. Ibid., Letter of 20 June 1898, p. 318.

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Notes

9. Ibid., Letter of 3 December 1897, pp. 284-285. 10. Ibid., p. 285. 11. Ibid., Letter of 10 July 1900, p. 421. 12. Ibid., Letter of 3 December 1897, p. 285. 13. Ibid., Letter of 3-4 October 1897, p. 268. 14. Ibid., p. 269. 15. Freud, "Address Delivered in the Goethe House at Frankfurt" (1930), SE 21:209. 16. Freud, Letter of 27 October 1897, Letters to Fliefi, p. 274. 17. As we have seen, texts like "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes," and, perhaps even more obviously, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, may be read as if they were diagrams. The psychoanalytic, which is to say transferential, dynamic of these texts provides the animated version, as it were, of the "diagrams." The texts, in turn, account for the psychoanalytic dynamic. 18. See Monique Schneider, "La derision du propre," Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, no. 24 (1981): 187-204. 19. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 542iff. 20. Ibid., pp. 486-487. 21. Ibid., pp. 439ff. 22. Ibid., p. 453, where Freud discusses a dream in which he saw himself dissecting his own pelvis. 23. Freud, Letter of 12 June 1900, Letters to Fliefl, p. 417. 24. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), SE 18:50. 25. Freud, "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men" [Contributions to the Psychology of Love, 1] (1910), SE 11:173. 26. Freud, "Address Delivered in the Goethe House at Frankfurt," SE 21:208-212.

27. Freud, Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva (1907), SE 9:8. 28. Freud, "Address Delivered in the Goethe House at Frankfurt," SE 21:212.

29. Freud, "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men," SE 11:172-173.

30. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:xxiii-xxiv. 31. Ibid., p. 142. 32. Ibid., SE 5439ff. 33. Ibid., pp. 453-454. 34. On this point, see Freud's remarks in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (1900), SE 11:116-117. See also Monique

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183

Schneider, "L'ombre de la s£ductrice," in Freud et le plaisir (Paris, 1980), pp. 119-124. 35. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 5:483-485. 36. In this connection, one might reflect upon Oedipus' "family romance" and the question of legitimacy. Does legitimacy not always bring a risk of death in its wake? 37. Freud, "Family Romances" (1909), SE 9:239. 38. Ibid., pp. 240-241. 39. William M. McGuire, ed., The Freud-Jung Letters, trans. Ralph Manheim and R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, 1974), Letter to Jung of 9 March 1909, pp. 210-211. Freud quotes Faust, Part I, 2585-86: Bist mit dem Teufel du und du / Und willst dich von der Flamme scheuen? 40. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 5:483-484, 41. Ernst L. Freud, ed., Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, trans. Tania and James Stern (London, 1961), Letter of 12 April 1933 to Edoardo Weiss, p. 412. 42. Ernst L. Freud, ed., The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig, trans. Elaine and William Robson-Scott (New York, 1970), Letter of 21 August 1930, pp. 8-9. 43. McGuire, ed., The Freud-Jung Letters, Letter of 9 March 1909 to Jung, p. 211. 44. Ibid., Letter of 16 April 1909 to Jung, p. 218. 45. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:207. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., SE 5:513. Freud cites Heine's "Die Heimkehr," from the Buch der Lieder. 48. Cited by Hans-Martin Lohmann and Lutz Rosenkotter, "La psychanalyse dans l'Allemagne de Hitler," in Jean-Luc Evard, ed., Les annees brunes: La psychanalyse sous le IIIe Reich (Paris, 1984), p. 65. 49. Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany, trans. S. Heyvaert (Albany, N.Y., 1992). 50. Freud and D. E. Oppenheim, "Dreams in Folklore" (1957, written in 1911), SE 12:180-182. 51. Ibid., p. 203. 52. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington, Ind., 1984). 53. Ernst L. Freud, ed., Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, Letter of 2 June 1932 to Stefan Zweig, pp. 408-409.

184

Notes

6. The Pact 1. Freud, Totem and Taboo (1913), SE 13:51. 2. Freud, "Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paronoides)" (1911), SE 12:44. [The "Schreber case."] 3. Ibid., pp. 69-70. 4. Ibid., p. 79, emphasis added. 5. Freud, "A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis" (1923), SE 19:67-105. 6. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), SE 4:xxvi. 7. Freud, "A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis," SE 19:81 and 19:83. 8. See also everything Freud says in his letters of 17 January and 24 January 1897 to Fliefi, in Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliefi 1887-1904. (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 224-229. See further Monique Schneider, De Vexorcismeftla psychanalyse (Paris, 1979). 9. Ibid., Letter of 24 January 1897, p. 227. 10. Freud, "A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis," SE 19:84 and 19:88. 11. Freud, New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis (1933), SE 22:57. 12. Ibid., p. 73. 13. Which is something other than repression. 14. See the letters to Fliefi in which Freud speaks of "LuciferAmor." 15. Freud, Letter of 21 September 1897, Letters to Fliefi, p. 264. 16. See Jean Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, "Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 49 (1968): 1-18. 17. Freud, "Negation" (1925), SE 19:239. 18. Freud, "Analysis Terminable and mterminable" (1937), SE 23:229, 23:234. 19. Cited in Jacques Lacan, "The Freudian Thing," in Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977), p. 116. 20. Freud, "A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis," SE 19:85. Let us note in passing that Freud similarly says that the ego and the id were originally one and the same, and that the ego comes into being only as the result of an act of repression.

Notes

185

21. Freud, Moses and Monotheism (1939), SE 23:118-119: "God, however, becomes entirely removed from sexuality and elevated into the ideal of ethical perfection." In this connection it is worth noting that, in one of the letters Freud wrote to Fliefi immediately after abandoning the seduction theory, he says that "sexual excitement, too, is no longer of use for someone like me." Letter of 22 October 1897, Letters to Fliefl, p. 276. 22. Ibid., p. 101: "Men have always known . . . that they once possessed a primal father and killed him." 23. The 'Real' in Lacan's sense of the word. 24. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1974), p. 181. 25. Freud, Preface to the second edition of The Interpretation of Dreams (1908), SE 4:xxvi. 26. See also, for the connection between seduction and the theft of virility, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, SE 11:58-137; for the connection between seduction and psychic murder, the Schreber case, SE 12:1-82. Here one finds another discussion of the question of hypnosis, a practice that psychoanalysis, precisely, broke with. 27. Marie Delcourt, Oedipe ou la legende du conquerant (Paris, 1981), pp. 110-116.

28. William M. McGuire, ed., The Freud-Jung Letters, trans. Ralph Manheim and R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, 1974), Letter of 9 March 1909 to Jung, pp. 210-211.

29. "Let truth prevail, though life perish." Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, England, 1983), p. 78. 30. "The theory of the drives is so to say our mythology Drives are mythical entities, magnificent in their indefiniteness." Freud, New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis, SE 22:95. Translation modified. 31. Except that Schreber, trapped in the realm of the unequivocal (the root language, the divine rays) is well and truly murdered. It follows that meeting up with the Devil is a lesser misfortune than meeting up with God, "sovereign source of truth" (Descartes)! 32. On this point see Pierre F£dida, L'absence (Paris, 1978). 33. Freud, "Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paronoides)," SE 12:72.

186

Notes

34- Ibid. The myth of Narcissus makes it clear that Narcissus dies of his desire to melt into his reflection. Without a relationship to the other, in the absence of the interior gap which in itself constitutes desire, psychic death is inevitable. In this sense, the bird captivated by the terrifying, lethal gaze of the serpent furnishes the prototype for hypnosis, the psychic equivalent of murder. 35. In this connection Freud invokes Homer. See Moses and Monotheism, SE 23:71. 36. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, SE 23:71. 37. Freud, "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming" (1908), SE 9:153, 9:143. 38. Freud, "Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through" (1914), SE 12:145-171. 39. Freud, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis," SE 22:95. 40. Mythology as it appears in epic and is later transformed in folklore. 41. Religion and mythology simply constitute two different modes of belief, as Paul Veyne demonstrates, with the bracingly sardonic wit that is his hallmark, in a splendid little book, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? (Chicago, 1988). 7. "Magireve" 1. Freud, "Constructions in Analysis" (1937), SE 23:255-269. 2. Ibid., p. 267. 3. Ibid., p. 268. 4. See Monique Schneider, La parole et Vinceste (Paris, 1980). 5. Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), SE 8:172. 6. Ibid., pp. 162-163. 7. Ibid., pp. 169-170. 8. See the critique of phenomenology in Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, trans. Nicholas Rand (Chicago, 1994). 9. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1974), p. 203. 10. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 2553, 2555, 2564-66: FAUST: Mich diinkt, die Alte spricht im Fieber . . . MEPHISTOPHELES: Ich kenn es wohl, so

Notes

187

klingt das ganze Buchl / . . . Wer will sich mit den Narrn befassen? / Gewohnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hort, / Es miisse sich dabei doch auch was denken lassen. 11. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), SE 5:591-592. 12. Freud, "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming" (1908), SE 9:141-153. 13. Ibid., pp. 144-145. 14. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 5:553. 15. On the "regenerative" nature of translation, see Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Tradition in Romantic Germany, trans. S. Heyvaert (Albany, N.Y., 1992), especially pp. 5368. See also Marco Focchi, La langue indiscrete: Essai sur le transfert comme traduction (Paris, 1984). 16. Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliefi 1887-1904 (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), Letter of 6 December 1896, p. 208. 17. See p. 49 above. 18. Goethe, Faust, Part 1, 214-215, 220-221, 239-242: Der Worte sind genug gewechselt, / Lafit mich auch endlich Taten sehn! / . . . Gebt ihr euch einmal fur Poeten, / So kommandiert die Poesie! /... So schreitet in dem engen Bretterhaus / Den ganzen Kreis der Schbpfung aus I Und wandelt mit bedachtger Schnelle / Vom Himmel durch die Welt zur Holle! The last line is cited by Freud in a letter of 3 January 1897 to Fliefi (Letters to Fliefi, p. 220); it was to serve as the epigraph to the chapter on sexuality in Freud's projected work on psychology. 19. See Berman, The Experience of the Foreign, pp. 107-108. 20. Freud, "On the Sexual Theories of Children" (1908), SE 9:213, 9:215. 21. Ibid., pp. 215, 212, 220, 226. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud says that the rejuvenating effect of copulation may also be obtained by placing the protozoa in "fresh nutrient fluid" (SE 18:48). 22. Cf. "in the beginning was the deed." 23. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:123-124. 24. Ibid., p. 204. 25. We have already had occasion to note what Freud leaves out in citing this passage: "Thus the infant takes its mother's breast / At first only reluctantly. . . . " See chapter 4, n. 50. Though Freud "forgets" these words, they are nevertheless silently at work, it seems to me, throughout his argument here.

188

Notes

26. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:xxvi. 27. Ibid., p. 283. The translation, by Bayard Taylor, is that cited in the Standard Edition. 28. Freud, 'Teirtininity/' New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933), SE 22:132. 8. "Bookworms" 1. Ernst L. Freud, ed., The Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, trans. Tania and James Stern (London, 1961), pp. 22-23. 2. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), SE 4:xxiv. 3. On these questions see Marco Focchi, La langue indiscrete: Essai sur le transfert comme traduction (Paris, 1984) and Shoshana Felman, The Literary Speech Act: Don Juan with J. L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983). 4. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:283; "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" [1905], SE 7:92. 5. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:283. 6. Ibid., SE 4:284. 7. J. Frecourt, P. Rebuffat, J. Rousseau-Dujardin, and J. G. Trilling, "Le champ du laboureur," Psychanalystes, no. 11 (April 1984): 64. 8. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:172. 9. Ibid., SE 4:282. 10. Pierre F£dida, "La table d'£criture," Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, no. 16 (Autumn 1977): 97-118; reprinted in FSdida, Uabsence (Paris, 1978), pp. 13-38. 11. "Phaedrus," in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton, 1961), pp. 475-525. 12. Francois Roustang, "Du chapitre VII," Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, no. 16 (Autumn 1977): 65-97. 13. See what Freud confided to Fliefi on this matter while he was writing The Interpretation of Dreams: "The psychology is proceeding in a strange manner; it is nearly finished, composed as if in a dream and certainly, in this form, not fit for publication, nor intended for it, as the style shows. I feel very timid about it." "[My work] completely follows the dictates of the unconscious, on the well known principle of Itzig, the Sunday rider. 'Itzig, where are you going?' 'Do I know? Ask the horse/ I did not start a single

Notes

189

paragraph knowing where I would end up. It is of course not written for the reader; after the first two pages I give up any attempt at stylization. On the other hand, I do of course believe in the conclusions. I do not yet have the slightest idea what form the content will finally take." Jeffrey Masson, ed., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliefi 1887-1904. (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), Letters of 20 June and 7 July 1898, pp. 318-319. 14. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 5:418-419. 15. Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis (1926), SE 20:187. 16. Monique Schneider, Freud et le plaisir (Paris, 1980), p. 142. 17. "The right to behave inconsistently" granted by common sense. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4:96. 18. Freud, "The Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words" (1910), SE 11:153-161.

19. Walter Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator," in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1968), pp. 69-82. 20. Goethe, Werke (Hamburg, 1949), 12:355. 21. Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Tradition in Romantic Germany, trans. S. Heyvaert (Albany, N.Y., 1992), p. 67. Die Kopchen hoben sich empor, / Die Blatterstengel im grUnen Flor, / Und allzusammen so gesund / Als stunden sie noch auf Muttergrund. / So war mir's als ich wundersam I Mein Lied in fremder Sprache vernahm. Goethe, Gedenkausgabe (Zurich and Stuttgart, 1949), 21:794.

190

Notes

Index

Abel, Karl, 167 Abraham, Nicolas, 14 Alienation, in transference, 123-24 Analysis. See Psychoanalysis; Self-analysis " Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (Freud), 33, 115 Analyst: constructions of, 132-33; as Devil, 110, 115-16; relationship between patient and, 21-22, 60, 62, 64, 67, 78, 86, 113-14. See also Psychoanalysis; Self-analysis Analytic discourse, 21, 24, 91 Analytic practice, 21; and analytic theory compared, 6,112-13, 120-21; objective of, 72 Analytic theory: alienation required by, in transference, 123-24; creation of, 16-20; as derivative of self-analysis, 95; development of, 22-24; and dreams, 148-49; repressed unconscious of, 116; as transference, 8889, 90-91, 93. See also Psychoanalysis; Self-analysis Anamnesis, problem of, 128,129 Animate, the, 89-90 Art, 60-62; Freud on, 58-59, i8on.2i;

and psychoanalysis, as analogous pursuits, 65-70 Association, 134; and the dream of the three Fates, 153-55 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 105 Berman, Antoine, 105 Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud), 42, 87, i83n.i7 Briicke, Ernst Wilhelm von, 7, 98 Castration, 117 Christianity, repression of the unconscious in, 116-17 Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud), 39/ i76-77n.2i Cocteau, Jean, 91 Condensation, 118,137 Consciousness, 11-12, 46, 47, 80-81; dissociation of, 30 "Constructions in Analysis" (Freud), 131,148 Copulation, i88n.2i; as rejuvenation, 90/93 Counterwill, 30 Creative process, 94, 95. See also Art Curiosity, sexual, 149-50

Index

191

da Vinci, Leonardo, 65, 75, 99; and Faust, 55-59, 67-71; and Goethe, 94 Death: of the Father, 117-18; role of, in the Faustian pact, 107, 108 Death drive: character of, 89; destructive drive as form of, 35, 36, 38; and Eros, 87, 93, 150; Mephistopheles as, 45; metapsychology and, 90 Deeds, reconversion of words into, 6061 Delusions, 131-33, 148 Descartes, Rene, 139 Desire, 134, 169; character of, 67, 68; and dreams, 143-45; and infantile theory of sexuality, 149; as source of psychoanalytic theorization, 80 Destructive drive: and Eros, 44, 45, 53; as form of death drive, 35, 36, 38; role of, in Freud's theoretical project, 25-27 Devil: as primal father, 117; psychoanalysis as analogous to belief in, 110-11; as the Stranger, 122-23; a s therapist, 109-10. See also Mephistopheles Disorientation, 98 Displacement, 118, 137 Dissociation, in dreams, 30, 99 "Dream of convenience," 150-53, 15557 "Dream of Irma's injection," 36, 151 "Dream of the botanical monograph," 161-64, 166 "Dream of the three Fates," 150, 15357, 163 Dreams, 32, 91, 141; and the Faustian pact, 118; Freud's, 89, 96-100, 102, 165; metapsychology and, 16, 17, 133-40, 146; and the unconscious, 11-12, 80-81, 82, 142-45; and undoing repression, 148-50; words and, 13, 165, 166-67 Dream-thoughts, 17, 133 Dream-work, 17, 81-82; described, 165-66; metapsychology and, 149 Drive, the, 47, 69, 88, 115, 135-36, 146; conversion of, 56, yj) and judgment, 51, 52, 53; and the pleasure principle, 42-43, 45; theory of, 147, 148, 153, 154; vicissitudes of, 30-35, 3841; words and, 13, 21, 23, 24. See also Death drive; Destructive drive; Eros; Repression; Unconscious, the

192

Index

Ego, 30, 48, 69, 125, i85n.2o; antagonism between id and, 31-36; and reality principle, 67-68; separation from object of, 62-64. See also Pleasure-ego Empedocles of Agrigentum, 39-40 Epic. See Poetry Eros, 48-49, 52; and the death drive, 87, 93, 150; and the destructive drive, 44, 45, 53; Mephistopheles and, 36-41; metapsychology and, 90, 144; role of, in Freud's theoretical project, 25-27 Fantasy, 38, 58-59, 101, 112, 129. See also Dreams Father, 155; relations with son, 119; theory of seduction by, 112,114 Faust, 22, 51, 52, 6i, 65, 68, 91, 104, 182^46; and analytic pact, 121; character development of, 38-39; drama of, as transformation, 66, 71; and Eros, 37, 41; and Faustian pact, 118, 126; first encounter with Mephistopheles of, 28-32, 35; influence of, on Freud, 72-75; and Leonardo da Vinci compared, 55-59, 67, 70, 71; and rejuvenation, 49-50; relationship with Mephistopheles, 8, 26-27, 44-46; sublimation of, 47-48; and Witch's Kitchen, 139-45, 146, 150 Fedida, Pierre, 164 Fixation, of paranoiacs, 125 Fliefi, Wilhelm, 19, 70, 97, 103, 110, 113, 173n.11, i88n.i8; Freud's letters to, 24, 27, 81-82, 85-86, 88, 143, i86n.2i, 189-90^13; Freud's relationship with, 7-10, 15, 16, JJ, 99100

Flufi, Emil, 159 Fort-da game, 87-90 Freud, Sigmund, 1, i8on.2i; as author, 159-69; as Faust, 72-75; and Fliefi, 7-10, 15, 16, 99-100; influence of Goethe on, 2-3, 18, 44, yj, 87, 93-95, 104; on jokes, 136-37, 141, 174^5; letters to Fliefi, 81-82, 88, 143, i86n.2i, 189-90^13; and Mephistopheles, 26-27; and poets, 6-7, 1014; self-analysis of, 70-81, 83-86, 96-100, 102; use of first encounter between Faust and Mephistopheles by, 28-35; use of poetic language by,

Freud, Sigmund (continued) 20-24; a s m e ''Viennese Faust," 6677. See also Analytic theory; Dreams; Metapsychology; Psychoanalysis Gantheret, Francois, 66 Gay Science, The (Nietzsche), 118,139 God: and antithesis of monotheism and mythology, 127-28; and Faustian pact, 125-26 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 2, 21, 22, 39-40, 50, 73, 82, 86, 97; appearance of in Freud's dreams, 96-100; Freud's quotations of, as points of resistance in analytic theory, 19-20; influence on Freud, 78-79, 83, 87, 89, 91-95,103-7,160-62,168,169; presentation of Mephistopheles by, 36-37 Goethe Prize, 159 Haitzmann, Cristoph, 109 Hate, 48-49, 56, 68; role of, in metapsychology, 36, 37; transformation of love into, 39, 44, 45 Heidegger, Martin, 5n Heine, Heinrich, 104 Helen (Faust), image of, 29,139 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 104 Hesiod, xviii Homunculus, 173n.11 Hypnosis, 30, 187^34 Hysteria, 43-47 Id, i85n.2o; analogies for, 111-12; antagonism between ego and, 31-36; Goethe's devil as representation of, 27 Imagination, as source of dreams, 140 Inanimate, the, 89-90 Infantile, the, 143-46; sexual theories, 95, 147-50, 155 Infantile amnesia, 132,148 "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes" (Freud), 30-31,187^17; structural influence of Goethe in, 38-41 Intellectuality, 64, i8m.26 Interpretation, 132-33,134,151; analytic theory as, 148-49; of the dream of the three Fates, 154-55; and theory !35-36 Interpretation of Dreams, The (Freud), 10, 16, 109, 162, 164, i8on.2i; discus-

sion of the unconscious in, 140,142; infantile theory of sexuality in, 14750; language of poetry as a model for, 95-96; and nature of metapsychology, 134, 144,145; structure of, as analogous to psychoanalysis, 164-66 Investigation: and art, 61, 94; instinct for, 37, 60, 62-63, 71, 72, 77,104; and love compared, 73, 74; and psychoanalysis, 65; separation of ego and object as source of, 64 Jokes, 91,141, i74n.5; and dreams, 136-37; and the Faustian pact, 118 Judgment, 51-53 Jung, Carl Gustav, 100-105 Kitchen, in the dream of the three Fates, 153-54/ *55~57 Knowledge: da Vinci's passion for, 58, 59; Freud's positions on, 121-27; m metapsychology, 143-45; nature of, 6,10-11; self-analysis and, 98; and sensuality, 153-54; OI" m e sexual, 147-50 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 43-47 Lacan, Jacques, 7, 167 Language, 91, 92,136,150, 160-69; poetic, 20-24, 95-96. See also Words Laplanche, Jean, 7 Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (Freud), 65, 75, 78, i8on.2i; Faust in, 55-60, 67; as psychoanalytic novel, 61, 69, 73, 74 Libido, 37, 39, 48-49, 85-86, 125 Life drive. See Eros Literature, and play, 140-41, 143 Love, 4,10, 39, 56, 58, 68, 69, 79; and investigation compared, 71, 73, 74. See also Transference love Lucifer-Amor. See Transference love Manoni, Octave, 18 Mephistopheles, 37, 60, 79, 118; and analytic pact, 120-22; as father surrogate, 111; and Faustian pact, 12226; Fliefi as, 8; Freud as, 91; Freudian characteristics of, 26-27, 34~36; Goethe's presentation of, 37-43; relationship with Faust, 44-46, 50; as

Index

193

Mephistopheles (continued) the Stranger, 154; as student, 10, 2830, 31, 32; and the Witch, 25, 51-54, 127; in Witch's Kitchen, 139-45 Metaphor, 4-6, 12 Metapsychology, 31, 179-80^21; and analytic pact, 120-21, 123-27; comprehension of, 61-62; core of, 23-24; development of, 17-20, 87, 94; and dreams, 133-40, 146; and dualism of the drives, 36, 39-40, 90; infantile theory of sexuality and, 147-50; and Jung, 102, 103; knowledge and, 14344, 154; as metaphor, 4-6; as mythology, 127-30; origins of, 83-84; and the pleasure principle, 51-54; poetic influence in, 13, 45-46; triple point of view of, 29-30, 34; the unconscious in, 156-57; the Witch as, 2-3, 21, 47-48, 50/ 55, 57, 66, 73-74, 80, 89-92, 106 Mona Lisa, 59, 7^ Monotheism, 114-16, 127-28 Moses and Monotheism (Freud), 65-66, 114, 116; memory in, 128-30 Mother, 179^14; libidinal impulses toward, 85-86; Nature as, 54, 99; separation from, 62-65 Murder, in Faustian pact, 116-21. See also Death Myth, and theory, 143-45 Mythology, 187^41; metapsychology as, 121, 127-30 Narcissism, 125, 187^34 National Socialism, 104-5 Nature: FlieB on, 7; significance of, for Freud, 96-97, 99 "Nature" (Goethe), 40, 77, 94, 97-99 Negation, 51-54, 57, n o , 112 "Negation" (Freud), 51-54, 166 Neurotica, 112-13, 116 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 118, 139 Non vixit dream, 85-86, 92, 100-101, 104, 117-18 Object relations, 49 Oedipus, xviii; knowledge of, 121, 122, 123 Oedipus complex, 112-14, 116, 120, 124 Oedipus Rex, 119

194

Index

Pact, analytic, 108, 120-21, 126-27; Devil-as-therapist motif in, 110-14; and fantasy of seduction, 123-25. See also Analytic practice; Analytic theory; Psychoanalysis Pact, Faustian, 120-23, 125-26; as analogous with death of the father, 11718; Devil-as-therapist motif in, 10914; dual interpretations of, 118-19; renunciation-of-magic motif in, 11416; role of death in, 107, 108 Paralysis, in dreams, 98 Paranoia, 108, 125 Pascal, Blaise, xix Patient: Faust as, 91; relationship with analyst, 21-22, 60, 62, 64, 67, 78, 86, 113-14 Penal Colony, The (Kafka), 129 Peraldi, Francois, 53 Phantoms, 87-91, 107. See also Revenants Plato, 7, 21, 138-39 Play, and literature, 140-41, 143 Pleasure-ego, 48-49, 53, 62-63 Pleasure principle, 39, 41-43, 45, 60, 87; and metapsychology, 51-54; retransformation of, in transference, 68-70 Poetry: in Freudian metapsychology, 45-46; in Freud's writing, 20-24, 164; as model, for analytic language, 95-96; mythology and, 128 Poets, Freud's relationship to, 6-7, 1014, 78-79. See also Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Primal father, 117 Primary processes, 167-68 Prime originator, 85-87 Psychoanalysis, 14, 33, 36, 57, 104, 114, 128; and art, 65-70; belief in the Devil as analogous to, n o , 111; constructions in, 131-33, 148; defined, xvii; importance of words in theory of, 21-23, 64, 92; origins of, 3-4, 9, 16, 38, 50, 168; phantoms in, 87-91; structure of Freud's texts as analogous to, 164-66. See also Self-analysis; Unconscious, the Reality principle, 67, 68 Reconversion, 62, 65; of words into deeds, 61

Rejuvenation, 49-50, 146, 154, 155; copulation as, 90, 93; in metapsychology, 144, 145 Religion, 18711.41; as repetition compulsion, 128, 129 Rememoration, 120, 132 Repetition compulsion, 41-43, 87,12829 Repression, 4, 27, 30, 33, 53, 67,11213,122-23, 133, i85n.2o; dreams and, 11-12; ego and, 31-32, 34-35; and metapsychology, 143-44; an^ the pleasure principle, 42-43; undoing, 120, 124-25,128-30,132,146, 148-50,167; as vicissitude of the drive, 38-39 Revenants, 87, 90, 97; children as, 9293, 154. See also Phantoms Ricoeur, Paul, 27 Roustang, Francois, 164 Schneider, Monique, 162, 166 Schreber, Daniel Paul, 108, 119, 123, 125-26, 148, i86n.3i Seduction, 112, 114, i86n.2i, i86n.26; fantasy of, 123-25; role of, in Faustian pact, 116-21 Self-analysis, 95,107; of Freud, 70-81, 83-86, 92, 96-100, 102, 105-6; importance of phantoms in, 87-91; The Interpretation of Dreams as, 134 "Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis, A" (Freud), 109, 117 Sexual, the: knowledge of, 147-50; the unconscious as, 144,145 Sexuality, 7, 86; infantile theory of, 95, 147-50,155 Sphinx, 121,123; Oedipus and, 114, 119-20

Spinoza, Baruch, 56 Sublimation, 47-48, ^ Teacher/student relationship, 9, 10 Theater, 140-44 Theory, 46,136; as metapsychology, 133-34; and myth, 143-45; anc^ truth, 138-39 Therapist. See Analyst Thought/ as omnipotent, 65-66 Tiresias, xviii Torok, Maria, 173n.11 Transference, the, 4, 7, 33,123-24,135;

analytic theory as, 88-91, 93; and dreams, 11, 95; between Freud and Fliefi, 8-9; in metapsychology, 13, 126,127; psychoanalysis as, 60-66; role of analytic pact in, 120-21; role of pleasure principle in, 68^70. See also Transference love Transference love, 84, 88, 93,103, 106, 108; Jung and, 101 Transformation, 62, 65, 66, 71 Translation, 179x1.17, of myth and knowledge, 143-45 Truth, 17,128, 138-39 Unconscious, the, 92, 98,137,140; activity engaged in when exploring, 121-27; desire for knowledge of, 6, 146-50; dreams as road to, 11-12, 80-82,135; and judgment, 51-53; in metapsychology, 156-57; psychoanalysis as experience of, 16, 46-47; role of, in dreams, 142-45; role of, in undoing repression, 120; as seat of the drives, 115-16,136; theory of, 4-5/ 86 Understanding, 104 Unheimlichkeit, 86,109 Vampire-Father, therapist as, 111 Vegetation, in Freud's dreams, 162-63, 164 Veyne, Paul, 187^41 Vicissitudes, of the drive, 30-35, 384i

Witch, the, xix, 25, 45, yj, 59, 78, 87, 98,126,162; knowledge of, 122-23; and Mephistopheles, 51-54; as metapsychology, 2-3, 21, 47-48, 50, 55> 66; 73-74, 80, 89-92,106 Witch's Kitchen, 28, 95, 122, 146,150; as dream, 134, 140-45. See also Witch, the Word-act, 6, 24. See also Words Words, 3, 12, 13, 92, 137,140, 160; as cure, in psychoanalysis, 4, 21-23, 64; precedence of deeds over, 60-61; significance in Freud's writing, 16169; and theater, 140-42,143 Word-work, dream-work and, 86 Zweig, Stefan, 103,106

Index

195