Roger Peters Copyright © 2005
JAQUES
INQUEST
QUIETUS
Inquiry into the Quaternary Evolution in Shakespearean Thought
Modern psychology
In the late nineteenth century, in response to the psychiatric demand
following the decline of the Judeo/Christian paradigm as a credible worldview,
Freud and then Jung (among others) developed their therapeutic
practices. At a time when faith in the efficacy of traditional religious insights
into psychological predicaments was failing, secular psychology was seeking
recognition as a scientific discipline.
Traditionally, biblical mythology had provided a series of dogmatically prescribed givens in which a male God created the world, where Adam the first male was created prior to the female, where procreation and death were created as the punishment for 'sin', and where the absolute, as the unknowable
'Word', assumed priority over the dynamic of true and false in language. But,
unfortunately for the unknowable Word, the critique of biblical theology by
Hume and others in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries showed the
transcendental 'He'or God was no more than a psychological preoccupation
of prophets and evangelists temperamentally at odds with the natural world.
Freud and Jung sought redress for the psychological consequences of the inconsistencies in biblical mythology by turning to archetypal expressions of psychological relations in other mythologies. For instance, Freud used the myth of Oedipus to account for the psychological consequences of
sexual dysfunction, and Jung analysed the world's mythologies to locate
archetypal symbols that might ease the post-biblical experience of psychological
alienation.
The logic of myth
To discover why Freud and Jung fell out over their division of the mythological
pie, and why neither of them could appreciate the mythic depth of
Shakespeare's Sonnet philosophy, a different attitude to mythology is required.
It is not sufficient to see the mythic either as a pharmacy for psychological
problems or as a source of cathartic symbols. The mythic level of expression
has the philosophic function of articulating the logic of expression while
expressing the logical relation between humankind and nature.
Despite the confusion of imaginative and empirical ideas in biblical mythology, biblical prophets and evangelists appreciated, at least intuitively, the logical role of a mythology. Their illogical configuration of the relationship
between nature at large and human nature unintentionally expresses
the logical limitations of the spoken or written word. Biblical writing
intuitively acknowledges that the mythic logic of human expression is erotic,
or an expression of conscious desires. It correctly represents 'God the Word'
as logically erotic and so distinct from the biological or sexual.
Even philosophers as critical of biblical theology as Hume and Kant were not prepared to explore the biological illogicality that arises when biblical myth invents a male God who in turn creates the female from the male. They
remained beholden to the prevailing Judeo/Christian worldview, which
proscribed the possibility of investigating the erotic logic of its mythology
by enshrining the status of the heavenly pantheon in self-validating
commandments and dogmatic infallibility. Biblical mythology maintained
its function as a psychological refuge in a hostile world by forbidding investigation
of its empirical inconsistencies. The long-term effect was to create
even deeper psychopathic problems that required a different approach to the
psychological when the irrationality of belief became untenable.
Freud and Jung, the differences
So Freud and Jung were faced with a double problem. Their patients
manifested the usual psychological pathologies due to inheritance or to
ingrained experience. But they also suffered from the psychological consequences
of the vacuum or abyss following the loss of faith in Judeo/Christian
mythology. Part of the confusion in the writings of Freud and Jung comes
from not appreciating the difference between naturally occurring defects of
mind and the estrangement from a discredited mythology.
Instead, Freud and Jung were responsive to different components of the Judeo/Christian mythology. Freud's disposition led him to focus primarily on sexual dysfunction and to suggest that neuroses and psychoses were
consequent on sexual issues. Jung's inclination, while initially beholden to
Freud's focus, was to see the post-biblical psychological malaise as a failure
to appreciate the archetypal significance of the signs and symbols in mythological
expression. Typically, for instance, when Freud and Jung focused on
dreams, Freud looked for symptoms of sexual significance, and Jung looked
to interpret dream imagery in terms of archetypal symbols.
The failure, then, of biblical theology to survive the philosophical investigations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had its counterpart in the fragmentation of twentieth-century psychology into competing
factions that lacked the relative unity of the more coherent and comprehensive
biblical mythology.
Freud and Jung's attempts to derive a comprehensive theoretical understanding from their analyses of specific psychological disorders prevented them from developing a consistent philosophy at the level of myth that
would correct the logical deficiencies in the Judeo/Christian paradigm. So,
predictably, they were unable to articulate a coherent mythological level of
understanding and expression to provide their twentieth-century clients with
a consistent philosophic connection at the level of the mythical to the logical
conditions of their lived experience.
Because Freud and Jung's individual inclinations led them to focus on a limited portion of the full mythical relationship between nature, sexual beings, and the dynamic of the mind, they were not able to develop an
overview of the logic of the mythic level of understanding. Without a
systematic understanding of the logic of myth within which to locate their
individual interests, they became antagonistic toward each other's intense
focus on different parts of the old mythologies. Ironically, the sectarian
conflict that typifies Judeo/Christian belief, because of its illogical inversion
of nature and myth, became a conflict across mythologies for Freud and
Jung because of their inability to determine the logic of myth.
Nothing in the above statements should be less than obvious to anyone who is aware of the collapse of traditional mythologies and the divergence of the interests of Freud and Jung. Freud's work has been continued and
critiqued by others, with sexual issues remaining central to their practice.
Similarly, Jung and his disciples have collected and investigated the various
mythologies with their associated signs and symbols, in the hope of attaining
a unified theory of mythical expression. But there are no logical insights in
the work of Freud and Jung or their followers that offer a resolution to
biblical inconsistencies, or to their personal differences.
The works of Shakespeare
To unravel the logic behind Freud and Jung's contributions and disagreements,
a systematic overview at the level of mythic expression is required.
Only when a consistent methodology is applied can their preferences for
the sexual or the symbolic be explained and their similarities and differences
reconciled.
The limitations of Freud and Jung are revealed when their analyses of Shakespeare's works are compared with the comprehensive mythic philosophy available in his Sonnets. Shakespeare is the only thinker to purposely articulate the logical conditions for any mythology and so is the only thinker
able to provide the required level of mythic logic for a systematic overview.
Freud and Jung's ignorance of the philosophy of the Sonnets meant they were
unable to comprehend the logic at the heart of Shakespeare's work and so
were prevented from finding a resolution to their own differences.
It is only necessary to examine Freud and Jung's attempts to understand the works of Shakespeare to appreciate the inadequacy of approaching the plays and poems with psychological rather than philosophic expectations.
Their psychological analyses of the motivations or disorders of key characters
lack credibility both because they are not able to contextualise the characters
in the logical framework provided by the Sonnet philosophy and because in
the absence of Shakespeare's overarching logic they commit the fallacy of
attributing to Shakespeare some of the symptoms observed in his characters.
In The Interpretation of Dreams, in the chapter 'Material and sources of dreams', (1) Freud applies his theories derived from the myth of Oedipus and other sources to the relationship between Hamlet, his mother, and Ophelia. The irony is that Shakespeare creates such characters to examine the illogical
consequence of believing that mythologies represent the world rather than
an acceptance that the role of myth is to reflect the world by articulating
the logical conditions for understanding. Because Freud's understanding is
limited by his continued adherence to aspects of the illogical mythical expectations,
he does not appreciate Shakespeare's philosophic argument for which
the dramatic characters are argument places.
In 'The Battle for Deliverance from the Mother', from The Psychology of the Unconscious, (2) Jung looks to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to support his theoretical position. His illogical expectations are already signaled, though, in the chapter heading. His premise of male flight from the 'Mother' is
contrary to the Sonnet logic where the Master Mistress learns to reconcile
himself to the biological priorities of the Mistress so he can express his
relation to the world logically. While Jung gives attention to the role of the
female in his psychological analyses, he remains a defender of the inconsistencies
of the traditional paradigm by not challenging the priority given to
the male. He expresses his prejudice when he says he prefers the 'brightness
of the ideal' to the 'dark nature of the biological'. (3)
The Sonnet logic
The templates generated in Volume 1 to represent Shakespeare's logic can
be used to show where Freud and Jung were heading in their critique of
the Judeo/Christian tradition, and why they were still unable to move
beyond its inconsistencies to a clear expression of the mythic possibility.
The Nature template derived from the Sonnet logic establishes the basis
from which to investigate the illogicality of the mind-set which Freud and
Jung were trying to move beyond. It represents the logical basis of understanding
toward which they were intuitively struggling.
Nature Template
When the template for natural logic is reordered to represent the illogical
Judeo/Christian paradigm within which Freud and Jung were educated and
from which they were attempting to liberate themselves, the resulting
template reveals the inversion and distortion to which natural logic is
subjected when a mythology is given priority over the natural world.
God template
The difference between Freud and Jung can be identified by realising
that Freud focused on the body or sexual side of the Nature template for
natural logic.
Body Template
In Freud's attempt to rectify the traditional misconfiguration of the
Nature template by recovering the priority of the body dynamic, he
imported aspects of the mind dynamic into his considerations of the sexual.
He looked for myths that could explain sexual dysfunction and, because he
was foreshortening the Nature template, thought of the sexual and the
erotic as interchangeable.
Jung's idealistic disposition led him to focus on the mind or erotic side
of the Nature template.
Mind Template
Jung correctly maintained that he did not dismiss the sexual in his rift with
Freud, but the sexual became an appendage to his traditionally sympathetic
fascination with the right hand side of the Mind template, which completes
the logical condition for mythic expression. Ironically, both Freud and Jung
felt they were justified in their selection of a portion of the Nature
template, but the effect for each was to atrophy the other side of the template.
They were right in as much as their individual concerns were warranted but
they were wrong in as much as they were ignorant of the complete dynamic
of natural logic. In the broader view, Freud's primary focus on the preconscious
mind complemented Jung's focus on the post-conscious mind.
If Freud and Jung had been successful in rectifying the illogicality of the
traditional paradigm by reformulating the corrupt Judeo/Christian paradigm
to allow their natural logic or birthright paradigm to resurface they would
have had little difficulty appreciating the brilliant philosophic achievement
of Shakespeare's Sonnets. But, because remnants of the old paradigm persisted
in their thinking, they failed to do what Shakespeare had done successfully
300 years before them.
Neither of them was able to move beyond their intuition that the
Judeo/Christian world-view was awry in representing the logical relation
between the body and the mind. Freud did sense that the old mythology
denied the body its natural priority. Because of the logic of the sexual in
human experience, Freud validly related the denigration the sexual dynamic
in biblical mythology to the sexual dysfunction and disorders he observed
in his patients.
Of the two thinkers, Freud was closest to recovering the logic of the
sexual dynamic in the Sonnet philosophy. He remained confused, though,
about the logical distinction between the sexual and the erotic. He was
unable to appreciate the difference between the sexual as the biological and
the erotic as mind-based desire. Hence he was not able to separate the logic
of human sexual persistence in nature from the logic of the operations of
the mind expressed in a culture's mythology.
Because Jung rejected the logical priority of the sexual, he was further
than Freud from appreciating the need to completely reconstitute biblical
priorities. Because he still gave priority to the mind over the body, his contribution
was limited to demonstrating that mythologies express archetypal
relations and constants. His greater idealism meant he sympathised with the
overt idealism of the biblical myth, which entails relegating the sexual to a
necessary function of the body without wishing to accord it its logical status
for the human mind within nature.
The case of Marcel Duchamp
Many art movements in the period 1910 to 1968 claim Marcel Duchamp
as their guiding light, but of particular interest is his role as an involuntary
father figure for the Surrealists. The founder of the Surrealists, Andre Breton,
attempted to recruit Duchamp to the movement but he remained aloof, only
participating occasionally in some of their events.
One of the reasons for Duchamp's wariness would have been the Surrealists
uncritical acceptance of the psychoanalytical investigations of Freud
and Jung. While Duchamp's oeuvre resists Freudian and Jungian analysis,
the deliberately symbolic works of Dali, Miro, Ernst, and Magritte are fair
game for psychological and alchemical readings. Their work, unlike
Duchamp's, remains illusive, enigmatic, or simply obscure. It is not possible
to work through their symbolism to discover a consistent expression of the
logic of art.
By contrast, an investigation of Duchamp's Large Glass, Etant donnes and
his readymades reveals ever deeper levels of philosophic coherence. Whereas
a jump from the symbolism of the Surrealists to Shakespeare's mythic
expression is unrewarding, Duchamp's aesthetic achievement leads logically
to the comprehensive mythic philosophy of the Sonnets and plays.
The inadequacy of the psychological reading for understanding the logic
of Shakespeare's plays is reinforced by the inappropriateness of applying
either Freudian or Jungian analysis to the works of Marcel Duchamp.
Because Duchamp's Large Glass has the same logical structure as the Sonnets,
psychological theories about its operation and meaning are unavailing.
When Freudian style analysis is applied to the Large Glass psychologists
inevitably attempt to account for the logic of the erotic relationship between
the Bride and the Bachelors as a symptom of sexual dysfunction in
Duchamp. They say Duchamp must have been either masturbatory or incestuous
to have created the sexual/erotic dynamic of his work.
Such psychoanalysis completely misses the logical critique Duchamp
makes of the inconsistencies of traditional mythologies through his recovery
of the logic of mythic expression. Because Freudian psychology does not
involve a logical correction to the female/male priorities, it shifts the critical
content of the Large Glass to a reflection on the mental health of the artist.
But, as a few Freudian analysts do acknowledge, Duchamp was one of the
sanest persons to have lived.
Jungian style analysis does not accuse Duchamp of sexual dysfunction.
Instead, it looks to his symbol system to discover relationships between
ancient mythological symbols and those in the Large Glass. Because Jungian
analysis is pan-mythical in outlook it is not able to consider Duchamp's
critique of traditional mythologies in the Large Glass. Instead it turns
hopefully to the formulaic symbol systems of arcane practices such as
alchemy to explain the significance of Duchamp's iconography.
Jung's lifelong fascination with alchemical practices has led his followers
to look for alchemical correspondences in Duchamp's work. But because
Duchamp's work provides a philosophic critique of such practices, which
are themselves illogical consequences of the inconsistencies of traditional
mythologies, Jungian analysis misses the logical heart of Duchamp's
achievement. Duchamp was quite explicit in rejecting attempts to associate
his work with traditional alchemy. He did not deny that it was possible to
find alchemical elements in his work but insisted that the logical function
of his work had nothing to do with such psychological practices.
The attempt to accuse Duchamp of sexual dysfunction and alchemical
interests is reminiscent of two of the typical accusations brought to the
person and the works of Shakespeare. But the accusations about
Shakespeare's sexual life are rebuffed when the logical function of the Sonnets
is revealed, and sonnet 14 specifically rejects idealistic alchemical fantasies.
The similarity of the difficulties Freudian and Jungian analysis has with
Shakespeare and Duchamp reinforces the limitations of their psychological
insights when confronted with the compelling logic of the Large Glass and
the Sonnets. Duchamp, like Shakespeare, was recovering the natural logic of
life as the context for art.
Conclusion
Freud and Jung were treating patients who were sexually traumatised and
mythologically bereft. Freud centered his work on the consequences of the
sexual and Jung's forte was in the erotic or post-sexual mind. Out of his
sexual focus Freud was unable to account comprehensively for the mythological
as an expression of the deepest human logic. Jung considered the
mythological primarily as sign and symbol, as he attempted to recover the
mythological dimension of biblical thought but for a global consciousness.
Ironically for Freud and Jung's psychological approach, the world's
mythologies became a resource for a universal psychological panacea.
Freud was correct in identifying the sexual as logically prior to and hence
constitutional of mind-based potentialities, but was wrong to put greater
emphasis on the sexual over the erotic. Jung was right in acknowledging
the importance of myth in human expression but was wrong to prioritise
the ideal over nature.
The inability of Freudian and Jungian analysis to penetrate the logic of
the works of Shakespeare and Duchamp indicates their illogical commitment
to the psychology of the tertiary methodologies that explicitly or tacitly give
priority to the ideal over nature. Only by appreciating the quaternary
achievement of the Sonnets and plays of Shakespeare and the Large Glass and
other works of Duchamp, can a logical perspective be gained to see clearly
what Freud and Jung were up to, and what is required if they were to understand
Shakespeare and his works.
References
1 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, ed. James Strachey and Alan Tyson, London Penguin, 1991. Back
2 Carl Jung, The Psychology of the Unconscious, New York, Dodd, Mead, 1965. Back
3 Carl Jung, Man and his Symbols, London, Anchor, 1964. Back
Roger Peters Copyright © 2005
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