Freud and Quixote

[dicentra_spectabilis_alba]

> Dicentra wrote:
> 
> > The one that stuck in my craw was how Freudians would find Freudian
> > imagery in pre-Freudian works (like Don Quixote). Or how Marxist
> > saw all texts as definitive commentary on who's kicking whom. 
> 
Dave comments: 
> I love your rant. I always hated English classes all through school. 
> The lit crit people do a great deal of nonsense. HOWEVER, once in a 
> very long while the Freudian imagery IS relevant, and I would expect 
> it to be MORE relevant to pre-Freudian works, whose authors had not 
> been tipped off.
> 
Dicentra responds:
This is assuming that Freudian imagery and Freud's theories on the
human psyche are actually true or universal or whatever.  Turns out
that contemporary psychologists don't rely on Original Freud for their
diagnoses.  He may have been the Father of Modern Psychology, but like
all modern disciplines, psychology has its roots in mystical,
mythical, and downright false premises. Such as astronomy and
astrology, chemistry and alchemy, medicine and witchdoctors (and I
know I just stepped on the toes of people who hold astrology and other
ancient practices in some regard; my apologies).

The reason it's invalid to diagnose Don Quixote from a Freudian
perspective is that Cervantes' beliefs about what makes people tick
came from a distinctively Renaissance-era model; his characters
therefore are based on those rules.  

The narrator of Don Quixote states that he read so many chivalric
novels that his brain dried up, robbing him of judgment. This was an
era when the dryness or moistness of a person's brain, or its warmth
or lack thereof, was what determined the malady.  Modern psychologists
sometimes try to diagnose Quixote, but because he's a fictional
character based on old assumptions about how the brain functions,
they're going to come up in error.  

Quixote's problem was that his brain was too dry. He couldn't judge
between reality and fiction, but in other ways he was remarkably
astute.  He doesn't hallucinate, he just misinterprets what he sees
(rather willfully, in fact). He doesn't have schizophrenia or any
other medically identifiable dementia because Cervantes controlled the
parameters of his malady to suit the needs of his story line.  And in
the end (if you've read that far), he finally comes to his senses and
renounces his chivalric ways without any Lithium interventions.

The problem is, Freud was making it up as he went along. He had no
one's shoulders to stand on, no previous research to ponder. It made
sense to him that anything that resembled a phallus should symbolize a
phallus in someone's dream, but that was his own imagination at work,
not a scientifically proven fact. Post-Freudian writers, like
Cervantes, base their characterizations on how THEY think the human
psyche works, not on how it actually works. If the author buys Freud,
then that's the shape the fictional universe will take.  Art never
mirrors reality--it just mirrors the artist.

Speaking of Quixote, I was thinking the other day that he is the first
representation of Fandom in Western literature. Previous to Cervantes'
time, there were no widely available works of art for people to obsess
over.  The chivalric novel had people sitting at their firesides,
listening to someone read, night after night. They couldn't get enough
of it.  If Quixote were real and alive today, in fact, he'd probably
be writing posts on this very board.

--Dicentra, pleased that her degree in Spanish Lit has come in handy
for once