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Book Reviews
The Journal of Psychohistory V. 26, N. 1, Summer 1998
Sounding the Classics: From Sophocles
to Thomas Mann, Rudolph Binion. Westport, Conn.: Praeger
Publishers, 1997, 160 pp.; $18.95 pb
Reviewed by Lloyd deMause The Institute for Psychohistory
If psychohistory is the art of uncovering hidden themes that illuminate overt content, then this splendid new book by Rudolph Binion can be said to carry the psychohistorical task to the analysis of literature and myth in a completely new way.
The key to making a piece of literature a classic, according to Binion, is that it contains a powerful "subtext," at once a comment upon and an opposition to the overt textual theme. "My basic claim," he says, "is that such fiction draws its broad and lasting appeal not merely from its express theme, structure, or wording, but equally from that theme's traffic with a second message or meaning conveyed only tacitly." (3) The text, he says, is "expected to keep the subtext under wraps," (89) riviting our attention while allowing the author to convey his more important message unconsciously, "like a latent to a manifest dream" (148), though not as an unconscious wish. Binion's "concealed message" in his subtext is not Freud's - it refutes and illuminates the text of the classic, not the mind of the author. A classic, he says, tells a tale "with a sharp point to it that it meanwhile also implicitly rejects." (151)
In his opening chapter on the Oedipus legend, Binion finds the subtext to be a "traumatic reliving...whereby we contrive unconsciously to relive our traumatic experiences in disguise, altering them in the process mainly in that we become their perpetrator in each case rather than their victim." (8) The trauma in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is the attempted infanticide, where his father pins his feet together (oidipous=swell-foot) and gives him to his mother to kill, whereupon she gives him to a slave to be exposed. The reliving is his leaving his adoptive home in CorinthÑreversing the trip he took as an infant,Ñthe killing of his father and near-killing of his motherÑrepeating the infanticidal intentÑthe remutilation of himself in gouging out his own eyes, and even his final request that he be taken to the same spot on Mount Cithaeron where he had been initially intended to die by exposure. (Binion's tightly-packed sentences spell out so many "replayings" in each work that by the end of each chapter one's head is dizzy with texts, variants of texts and subtexts.) Binion correctly considers Freud's central focus on incest to be secondary. (Indeed, incest was no big deal in ancient timesÑa full third of nearby Egyptians and an unknown number of Greeks married their sisters without transgressing the moral order.)
The second text he examines is the Gospel of Matthew. Here Matthew invents the massacre of the innocents by Herod, who kills all male children in Bethlehem in trying to kill the newborn Jesus. Again, like the attempted infanticide of Oedipus, the theme of infanticide for Binion is purely literary and is not an echo of the actual infanticides that children in antiquity witnessed. The effect of making up the sacrifice of innocents story is to both presage Christ's sacrifice on the cross and to show, "as in a prophecy fulfilled, [that Jesus] relives in reverse his experience of surviving the children's death on his accountÑthat is, when he dies so that grown-up children might be saved." (28) The subtext was certainly not conscious to early Christians; only later artists and comentators (like Camus) were really aware that Jesus relived the innocents' death in reverse through his crucifixion. Even so, Binion speculates, since "pious Christians empathized with the suffering Christ all their lives long...through such empathy [they] could pick up on the survivor guilt latent in Matthew's Gospel." (30)
Binion follows his theme of text and subtext through ten more classic works of literature, from the Freudian castration fears of the Tristan legend to Dante's lustful Inferno, Shakespeare's Lear, Racine's Phaedra, Goethe's Werther, Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen and Mann. Each subtext as Binion exposes it seems to reach to the heart of the age it describesÑFrancesca's "lust" epitomizing Christians who blamed women for their sexual sins ("blaming the victim" in an age dominated by rape); Lear's subtext that the world was basically unlivable (especially if modernity strips one of status); Werther's subtext that if you choose to leave worldly artificiality behind for Romantic love, you're also choosing to really leave the world behind (even to committing suicide); Flaubert's subtext in "A Simple Heart" that even miserable lives have a meaningful soft core (even as our own lives do). Over and over again Binion shows how the classics he examines capture the crucial psychohistorical quandry of its time, as when he says "Werther was no less a child of the century, his sorrows no less a mal de sicle, or at all odds a cultural malady rampant in the Germanies of the 1770s as also elsewhere in Europe." (89) And as when he asks of Werther's suicide, if "he does not belong here below...is the fault his (text) or the world's (subtext)?"
Binion's subtexts turn out to be the deepest and most human questions posed by his classics: Can love be achieved here on earth? Are we really doomed to relive our traumas? Can freedom be achieved without violence to others? Can one change a corrupt society without losing oneself in the process? Does the fact that we are all condemned to death negate all of life's struggles and strivings? Does the loss of Christian eternity necessarily lead to a deep sorrow over the brevity of life? Can our common humanity prevail over our accidental position in society? Even in our current thoughtless, manic America, Binion's subtextual analyses remind us of the timeless questions of our own life if we read him on a quiet night. No more can be asked of an author.
Binion's slim volume could easily be used either in a course on the history of Western literature or one on an introduction to the history of the West. What sometimes seems like trivial texts of classics (like Oedipus barging ahead killing a man old enough to be his father and marrying a woman old enough to be his mother, or like Werther committing sickly suicide because he can't have his silly Lotte) turn out in Binion's book to be hiding inner subtexts of infinite importance to each reader, some of the most human problems of existence, problems posed at what he terms "the metaphysical gut level." For this alone, Binion's Sounding the Classics must be judged as a masterpiece of its own.
A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews, Avner
Falk. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 1996. 850pp
Reviewed by Leah G. Slivko, MSW
New Jersey Institute for Training in Psychoanalysis
"One of the reasons this book was written was my personal quest for my own history, for my roots and identity." Avner Falk, a secular Jew, clinical psychologist, and resident of Jerusalem has written this ambitious book about the Jews which covers their 4000-year journey from the time of the biblical fathers up until the murder of Yitzchak Rabin. The book is comprehensive, historically astute and weaves the interplay between the Jews and the various peoples with whom they lived.
The presentation takes the reader on not only a factual journey of the Jewish experience, but one which offers a psychoanalytic understanding of the history as well. In doing so, Falk addresses the influences, archeology, anthropology and sociology of the various periods of history beyond just Jewish history. The evolution of the Jewish people is rich with personalities, experiences, beliefs, customs, symbols, language, rituals, identity and meaning. There have been many volumes of biblical texts, commentaries, dialogues, Midrash, historical accounts and philosophical books written with the goal of achieving an understanding of the Jews. The author refers to many, shared his understanding of some and added his own psychoanalytic perspective.
Falk stresses how the Jewish people have been objects of displacement, externalization and projection throughout their long history. They were most often a sub-group of a larger group and at the mercy of various political forces. He shows that throughout their history Jews were migrants, either fleeing from violence and discrimination or being expelled from many countries for being different or strange. As a result of this ongoing rejection from the larger society, the Jews developed a realistic fear of those who were not Jewish and a wish to find a safer, secure 'motherland.' Migration which was repeated over and over again throughout Jewish history involved dealing with separation, loss and mourning. Falk suggests that perhaps Jews believe they are the 'chosen' people to compensate for the inferior status ascribed to them by various host groups.
When the author speaks of the Holocaust, the most recent European annihilation of the Jews, he highlights the enormity of the destruction and loss and how they are too painful to contemplate: "mourning is a task too terrible to perform." And yet, he states that Jews as well as non-Jews have exploited the Holocaust through the media for political gains. I am not clear on how that can be possible. It was the Jews that were exploited; the Holocaust and its effects are still burning as the tasks of "mourning" are overwhelming. Exposing and memorializing the Holocaust are means of 'performing the task of mourning,' not exploiting it.
Given the long history of the Jews, running to safer haven after being persecuted, the Jews finally were given their own country in 1948 by majority vote of the United Nations General Assembly. Israel was created as an attempt to stop the cycle of integrating into a host country. Falk voices his own ambivalence about the homeland created by the UN and hints at the possibility that Jews are in denial about the reality of the Arabs. "Modern Israel still harbors many myths and illusions. Israel needs to come to grips with the reality before a true peace." It is my psychoanalytic understanding that all peoples have to come to grips with their own reality, be open to other realities and begin an open dialogue, not with threats and weapons, but with words to work together rather than against each other to create a peace. True peace has many different connotations for all people in the region. For the Jews it may mean the right to hold onto their 'motherland' without subjecting themselves again to loss and annihilation.
In addition to theorizing about Jews in general, the author also focused on a number of individuals who have had tremendous influence on the Jewish people as a whole. In doing so he sets a pathological tone to their behavior which could be offensive. For example, he claims that David Ben Gurion sought to be reborn in Israel and his contribution to the creation of the State of Israel was his attempt to repair his early loss of his mother. While such psychoanalytic understanding may have merit, it is made here to overshadow Ben Gurion's valuable contributions to society and the dynamics and impact of his leadership. What would bring us closer to the 'person' of Ben Gurion would be to given an understanding of the strengths and coping mechanisms of the man and how he was able to make positive use of his early loss and give 'birth' to a new country.
In his extensive history Falk's psychoanalytic examination of certain events and people leaves the reader with the impression that he sees most of the leaders in Jewish history and history as a whole as being very pathological. Some doubtless were, but what about the leaders whose psychodynamics led to positive growth and development? How did he view them? Jewish history is fraught with persecution, grandiosity, annihilation and rebirth. It is also filled with strong values in family life, human and animal rights. The range of Jewish identity and culture is vast, universal, very much alive, and constantly changing. The author states that his personal view of Jewish history keeps changing. History changes. Psychoanalysis and psychohistory are ongoing. The present and the future always color our understanding of the past.
One cannot rewrite Jewish history or history in general with total accuracy. Historical facts remain. We can project our rationalizations or intellectualizations onto the facts in order to try and master what seems to be before us, and perhaps to help us better cope with the present and shape our future. Falk's psychoanalytic understanding gives us much to ponder, review, and reflect upon. Though I may not always agree with his psychoanalytic viewpoints, I admire his ability to present his interpretation of Jewish history.
Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality,
Bruce S. Thornton. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997. xviii,
282pp. $28.00 (Hardcover)
Reviewed by J. Donald Hughes
University of Denver
The history of sexuality is of primary interest to the psychohistorian, and the views of the ancient Greeks on the subject have concerned Western writers from the Renaissance onward. The study of Greek sexuality is inevitably a dialogue between modern views and a complex heritage that refuses to gratify our expectations. Thus it is with positive anticipation that one turns to this study which rejects the received opinion of the foremost modern scholars with a discerning revision.
But it with some uneasiness that we encounter a major disclaimer in the preface of the book. Thornton will not, he says, write about what the Greeks "really" thought, did, or felt about sex. He will not discuss common ordinary people. Nor will he use "vase paintings, inscriptions, statuary, and archaeological ruins" as evidence in spite of the vast amount of information these offer about sexuality. He will limit himself to what Greek literature, the product of the elite male upper class, reveals about sex.
This was the focus of most classicists before they became aware of social history. But can it be of use for psychohistorians? Perhaps as the study of a small group of politically and intellectually powerful men. But this not exactly what Thornton has in mind. He wishes to attack what he sees as the fundamental errors of modern society, the romantization of sex and the idealization of nature. These are liberal errors, of course, and Thornton's standpoint is a conservative criticism of both ancient Greeks and modern Americans.
Thornton insists that for the Greeks, sex was a force of nature which was a dangerous, irrational power. They feared nature, saw it as a falsely alluring trap for the unwary, and attempted to subjugate it to culture of man. Culture, in the forms of the state, marriage, and masculine reason must contain the elusive, threatening substance of nature. This may seem odd to the reader who remembers that Greek gods were forces of nature, to whom prayers were made for the fertility of both field and family, and that the attempt of humans to exalt their own institutions above the divine was hubris of the worst kind.
Sex is chaotic when it is an expression of a man's desire for a woman. Thornton claims that marriage was, in Greek thought, the way to keep desire under control. He insists that loss of control frightened the Greeks. The Greek attitude toward sex was deadly serious, something like that of today's Focus on the Family. No wonder he does not want to look at vase-paintings, with their cavorting satyrs chasing maenads while balancing wine cups on the tips of their erections.
If readers think that the Greeks condoned homosexuality, Thornton attempts to assure them otherwise. Their most persistent hang-up, he says, was a loathing of male-male anal penetration. He says a lot about it. In this case, Thornton even breaks his promise by examining vase paintings on the subject. His findings will surprise any connoisseur of the subject who recognizes that the painters treated the subject with humor rather than horror. But Thornton assures us that according to the Greeks it was more honorable for the "active" partner to get his pleasure "intercrurally," that is between the thighs. Such intercourse avoided the shame of penetration and avoided the charge of "outrage." At least Thornton does concede that it is difficult to tell from the vase pictures what was actually happening. Received opinion says the Greeks idealized homosexuality and portrayed it as an educational experience where an older man instructed a younger man and improved his soul. Socrates said that Eros was the guide to higher knowledge of truth, goodness, and beauty. Thornton responds to Socrates with ridicule. Diotema, Socrates' instructress in love (note that she is a woman) is, according to him, nothing more than a "ventriloquist's dummy."
Thornton's encyclopedic knowledge of the Greek sources is undeniable, but in his search for their attitude to sex, he often goes beyond ancient sources. Heracles is the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of the ancient world." Nature is "red in tooth and claw." That was Alexander Pope, not an ancient Greek. The author does not hesitate to use Lord Byron who called Eros "the very god of evil," to make his point. Elsewhere, he calls upon Marlowe, Cicero, Jeremy Bentham, Daniel Defoe, Shelly, Houseman, Shakespeare, and Don Juan to explicate the Greeks.
This book is a tract for the twentieth century, studded with barbs against environmentalism, romanticism, and homosexuality. Thornton's close acquaintance with the literary remains of ancient Greece cannot be denied. But his interpretation is fundamentally mistaken. Consider a vase painting now in the Vatican Museum that, of course, he does not mention. Two seated Greek men draped diaphanously from the waist down and a naked standing boy are looking up and pointing to the sky. The first man says, "Look! A swallow." The second replies, "So it is, by Heracles!" The boy adds, "There it goes! Spring is here!" At the least, this light hearted design does not express fear and hatred of nature. What about sex? Well, the swallow was a well-known euphemism for the female genitals.
National Character: A Psycho-Social
Perspective, Alex Inkeles with contributions by D. J. Levinson,
Helen Beier, Eugenia Hanfmann, Larry Diamond. New Brunswick:
Transaction Publishers, 1997. xvi, 392 pp. $ 49.95 (Hardcover)
Reviewed by Juhani Ihanus, Ph.D.
University of Helsinki
There was, after the Second World War, a heavy blow against research on culture and personality, and national character. Few scientists paid attention to comparative studies in those fields. While it was popular and considered entertaining to engage in casual discussion about national characteristics or cultural types, such topics were generally not considered part of serious scientific discourse.
Alex Inkeles, not surrendering to this hostile skepticism, has devoted a long career to the topic of national character. In his work, of which this book gives a selection of eleven articles written by him and his co-workers (between 1949 and 1993), Inkeles has reformulated the idea of national character. For purposes of research, he demands that we should be able to designate, via the concept of national character, some empirically distinguishable phenomena which can then be scientifically studied. We should also decide whether we are defining national character as an institutional (political, economical) pattern; as a cultural theme; as societal, cultural and historical action; as a combination of these; or even as belonging to racial (or biological) psychology.
The author would like to equate national character with a "modal personality," that is, a set of "relatively enduring personality characteristics," distributed across a population, within a given society. This conception means that modal personality cannot be equated with societal behavioral regularities (e.g., habits, customs, rituals). Inkeles is calling for the psychological analysis of representative samples of persons studied individually, rather than on the basis of collective policies, enterprises, or products.
Still, there are limits to this approach, for cross-cultural and intersocietal comparisons are difficult to carry out. Historical continuities and differences may become lost within an individually-based research scheme. In their tour de force article on "National Character" (1969), Inkeles and Levinson admit that they have perhaps unduly emphasized the study of individual personality and behavior. However, they see the emphasis on the individual as necessary in order to achieve independent analyses of modal personality on the one hand, and culture and social structure on the other.
Anthropologists such as Margaret Mead have stressed that there can be no strict formal distinctions between personality and culture in national-character studies. Psychoanalysts such as Abram Kardiner have portrayed interweavings of cultural, structural, ecological, and psychodynamic elements in social relationships. Like Kardiner, Inkeles seems to speak in favor of "multidirectional causal networks" rather than unidirectional causal sequences. No single set of determinants (be it the family, the economic power structure, or ecology) can be taken as the primary influence on the forming of (multi)modal personality.
Inkeles' work presents a compilation of different theoretical positions and research results in the controversial field of national character studies. He clearly shows the many fluctuations in the status of this area. Inkeles also gives short, thoughtful evaluations of the historical importance of previous researchers, especially in anthropology, psychology, and sociology.
However, the contribution of psychohistory is ignored, though it would have deserved notice, when Inkeles refers to the study of child-rearing practices and child care disciplines. Constructs within psychohistory such as deMause's "psychoclass," "modes of child rearing," and "social alter" offer the opportunity to revisit "national character" and to reinterpret the complex intermingling and "interimplications" of child rearing, development, personality, culture, social structure, and sociopolitical strategies. Psychobiographical analyses, individual and group fantasy analyses would also be useful for dealing with individual and collective data contained in sources such as folklore, religion, art, popular culture, and mass media.
Despite ignoring psychohistory, Inkeles offers useful discussion on methodological difficulties in national-character research. Such research has produced problematic and unfounded leaps from childhood personality dispositions to adult personality and even national characteristics. Advances in developmental, personality, and social psychology have to be taken into account critically when forming conclusions about political practices and sociocultural structures based on childhood experiences and family constellations. In this regard, psychohistory can provide further developmental, historical and psychological findings of definite use for this area of study.
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