Greene - Freud and Nabokov - Concessions
After reading such a ferocious counterattack By Prof. Greene against Vladimir Nabokov for his views about Freud and psychiatry -- as presented in an earlier post -- it comes as something of a surprise to read a number of independent concessions by different people, including Prof. Greene himself, that would almost certainly offer comfort and support to Nabokov in his dim view of psychiatry.
Over-reaching
We read Prof Greene (p.4)
"But the importance of Freud's work is not dependent on an overly restrictive conception of psychoanalysis, or of the reductive propensities that all too often characterized the popularization of psychoanalysis in America after his death."
And we find a separate sociologist, Joanne Morgan, author of
Solving Nabokov's Lolita Riddle,
independently echoing the same parenthetical thought:
"Nabokov also poked fun at the "voodooism" and psycho-babble language that was once actively promoted by the psychoanalytic movement in America throughout the 1940s to 1970s"
"
Reductive propensities that accompanied the popularization?!" "
Psycho-babble that was promoted by the psychoanalytic movement?!"
It is cold comfort that such concessions come so late, now after Nabokov's death. He might have felt some vindication for his attitudes,.......but we conjecture! Or might one go so far as to actually claim a certain prescience for Nabokov in his denunciations, ............but again we only hope and conjecture.
Truth
Conjectures aside, the question of "What is Truth?" -- which has echoed through the ages ever since Pilate's famous query in Biblical times -- surfaces also in
Freud and Nabokov (p.4)
"In his perceptive essay "The Question of Proof in Freud's Psychoanalytic Writings," Paul Riceour answered the persistent attacks that psychoanalysis was not scientifically verifiable.
"If analytic experience is desire coming to discourse, the sort of truth that best answers to it is that of saying-true rather than being-true....The truth claim of psychoanalysis can legitimately be placed within the field of inter-subjective communication."
Speaking as an amateur and a lay person, I have to say that seems too bad, because it is exactly that "being-true" that I think most people associate with the word "truth," including myself and probably Nabokov. If psychiatry advances a different kind of so-called truth ("saying-true" and "inter-subjective communication" instead of proof), then it is small wonder perhaps that Nabokov correctly noted that fact, and fairly took exception to psychiatry's legitimacy.
Artistry
The philosopher Walter Kaufman, in his book on Freud (quoted by Prof. Greene on p.6) concluded that
"one simply cannot describe fully everything that was the case. Every description involves interpretations, and all understanding and explaining depend on selection."
Prof. Greene continues that thought,
Thus selection -- what is included or omitted in a written account -- is close to artistic arrangement, a stylistic choice or tactic for presentation..... this not only applies to literary art but to the artistic component in the endeavor of psychoanalysis.
According to psychoanalyst Roy Shafer, psychoanalytic case histories
"over which analysts have labored so hard, may now be seen in a new light: less as positivistic sets of factual findings about mental development and more as hermeneutically filled in narrative structures."
Prof. Greene quickly and immediately says
"But announcing a narrative basis for psychoanalysis is a far cry from announcing its demise."
as he clearly sees the far reaching implications of the suggestion that psychoanalysis might contain more than a bit of "artistry."
And by an amazing triple coincidence, spanning posibly as many as 50 years, Prof. Greene mentions "The Wolf Man" later in his book (p.107) in connection with his own commentary on Nabokov's
Pale Fire. Part of the coincidence is that, not only have I read
Pale Fire, and Prof. Greene's book, but I have also read the story of Freud's analysis of the "
The Wolf Man" when that first appeared in public book form perhaps as many as 30-50 years ago. That case history was Freud's first analysis of a patient's current mental problems in terms of the patient's infantile (crib-age) perceptions and experiences -- a connection between forgotten infantile experiences and adult behavior that became virtually a hall-mark of Freudian analysis (and ridicule) in many people's minds.
My own reaction to the popular account then was that Freud employed extremely enthusiastic and well-written literary rhetoric in presenting his reasoning and rendering his conclusions persuasuve -- one might now call it literary "artistry" -- but that, to my mind then, there was much more in the way of supposition than of convincing proof. My opinion would hardly be worth comment, except for the fact that others seem also to have had the same reaction, as Prof. Greene just described. Freud was definitely gifted with the pen, in addition to no doubt being a very insightful observer of human behavior.
--
And at this point unfortunately, this detailed review supported by quotations from the book has to break off, because I have lost Prof. Greene's book along with all my marginal notes and highlighted passages. A Freudian wish come true, perhaps?
Suffice it to say that the book goes on to consider a number of Nabokov's typical statements and opinions that he frequently voiced and also to analyze a number of Nabokov's novels. In situations were Nabokov's words and works are at variance with selections from Freud's general commentaries on different matters, Prof. Greene raises the skeptical eyebrow and implies that Freud's thoughts are the proper way for viewing Nabokov's thoughts, even if Nabokov himself doesn't realize it. In places where it so happens that Nabokov's and Freud's observations agree with each other, then Prof Greene blandly accepts the truth of Freud's viewpoint as providing validity and understanding for Nabokov's observations and novelistic devices.
Accordingly, this is
not the book in which to find acknowledgment of the acuity, or originality, or perceptiveness of Nabokov's creativity. Or at least so it seemed to me. At some point Prof. Greene remarks that his analysis is intended as "a beginning." I would suspect that there have to be better more detailed Freudian viewpoints regarding Vladimir Nabokov, by
trained psychoanalysts, if that is one's interest. I would find it hard to think of this book as a reliable source for such material, in view of its psychiatrically untrained author and its adversarial posture.
Peder
