Iakov Levi
Nietzsche, Caligula and the
Horse
Nov. 12, 2005
Each man in his time plays many parts (Shakespeare, As You Like It, II.vii)
I recommend
to read the essay
by: KYLE
ARNOLD AND GEORGE
ATWOOD, NIETZSCHE'S MADNESS in
http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=psar.087.0651a
In my opinion, it is the best article ever written on
Nietzsche: It deals with the philosophy of the great man as an
expression of his
unresolved paternal complex.
The two American psychoanalysts analyze Nietzsche’s
writings and reach the conclusion that his final collapse was due to
the
internal conflict between two internalized psychic instances: the child (himself) and his father. N
introjected the
paternal image as a mechanism of defense against the devastation of the
loss. At
the same time, lacking his father’s presence, relating to which the
process of
identification is worked out, he was frozen into that child’s condition
which precedes the process of
identification with the paternal instance. As a consequence of the abortion of this pivotal psycho-sexual stage, one part of him remained
an
eternal child. The internal conflict between N – the Father and N – the
child (love
and aggressiveness dwelling in the same person) resulted in the psychic
collapse:
…This
paradoxical, circular structure of father and son represents the effect
Nietzsche's adoption of the father-identity had on his self-experience.
He is
not quite one, yet not quite two. The father identity and the son exist
in a
tension, in an irreducible paradox that incessantly spins out the
vicious
circles that we have seen…
…The
son rebels against the father, but the son is the father. Therefore, in
trying
to destroy the father, he is also attempting to annihilate himself. If
he wins,
he loses…
…It was this kind of tangled, self-defeating way of being, we
want to
suggest, that eventually led to Nietzsche's mental breakdown.
Then, the authors remind to us: "This
breakdown
-from which Nietzsche never recovered- happened in 1889, when Nietzsche
emotionally fell to pieces after seeing a cab driver whip his horse
violently.
Nietzsche ran to the poor animal, and, wrapping his arms around its
neck, fell
to the ground sobbing".
Namely,
the external event which triggered
the collapse was the scene of a driver whipping his horse. Being
confronted
with the external representation of his own aggressiveness towards his
Father,
symbolized by the horse, triggered the emotional reaction of the loving
instance: The outburst of two so conflicting emotions resulted in the
collapse
of the personality.
What
the two authors do not mention is
that Freud has dealt in details with the image of the horse as a
paternal imago
in: Analysis of a Phobia in a Five -
Year - Old Boy, 1909
(the case of little Hans”). Freud tells
of a child who displaced the emotional ambivalence, love – hatred,
toward his
father into a horse, of which he was terrorized. Freud
tells of a similar case in: History of
an Infantile Neurosis 2, 1914, otherwise known as "The Wolf Man case history".
The two cases confirm Freud’s assertions on the return of totemism in
children
[1].
The
story of the Roman emperor Caligula,
who made his own horse Senator is well known. The little child dwelling
in
Caligula expressed the internal ambivalent discourse with his father
image
nominating his own horse to Senator, or - as others report- consul and priest (Suetonius,The Lives of Twelve Caesars, Life of Caligula 55; Cassius Dio, Roman History LIX.14, LIX.28). Moreover, Suetonius reports that senators were degraded by being forced to wait on him and run beside his chariot ( op.cit., 26) In the odd behavior, the
ambivalence
towards the paternal imago found its expression, too. On one hand, the
nomination
to senator expressed the appreciation and the valuation for his own
father
image: Senators were the noblest among the Romans. Moreover, they were
called Patres Conscripti,
which means “Fathers”. They were indeed considered the “fathers” of the
Roman
people. On the other hand, the mockery connotation is obvious, too.
Mockery and
despise toward the “Fathers”, and appreciation towards his own horse.
The horse
– Father is as valuable as a Senator, and the Senators – Fathers are as
animal
as a horse. In the same condensation the two conflicting poles of the
ambivalence found their expression. Caligula, “little boots”, an
eternal child
in conflict with his father image found
a way to affirm his superiority on “the Fathers”. It is like saying: I,
the
child, am more powerful than you “Fathers”, and you are no better than
my
horse, which is an animal. In the same condensation, he upgraded his
horse –
Father to Senator.
Like
Nietzsche, Caligula was considered
mad because of this horse affair. But was he?
At
difference with Nietzsche, Caligula did
not collapse because of his ambivalence toward his father imago. He
found a way
to express his hatred without letting the other pole to disturb him too
much.
The Roman emperor was a maniac, namely, he could “exile” his love and
his Super
Ego into a province from which they could not be able to interfere with
his
instinctual sadistic needs. It seems to me that he enjoyed pretending
to be
mad, in order to satisfy his unrestrained lust for mockery of the
paternal
instance. As Freud explained in his writings, Super Ego formation is
dependent
on the child’s need of paternal love and protection. A child gives up
his
aggressive instinctual needs, in order to be compensated by paternal
love and
appreciation.
Nietzsche
could not work out the process
successfully, because of the physical absence of his much beloved
father.
However, his love and nostalgy induced him to internalize the paternal
image to
the point of maintaining it untouched and unscathed: the result was a
mastodontic Super Ego. The exact opposite of Caligula, who
lacked a Super Ego altogether. Caligula was
not mad: He was a pervert.
More on horses
In his article A Preference for Horses: Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Luis de Carvajal el Mozo’s Autobiography, Norman Simms writes:
Whenever
Joseph came to a monastery, he was provided with lodging and offered
food; but
ever mindful of the Law and commandment of his Lord God, he refused the
food to
avoid defiling himself, saying that he had already eaten. It often
happened,
when he left the company and board of those men whom he loathed, that
he went
to eat his bread among the beasts, thinking it better to eat among
horses in
cleanliness than in uncleanliness at the tables of his well-bred enemies
As Freud has shown in Totem and Taboo, eating with
someone means to eat
the body of the common assassinated father. Eating together the same
father’s
body is the substance of the Communio, through which the
cohesiveness of
the group is obtained, and the common sense of guilt is resolved
through
identification. Eating the father condenses with eating with
the
father: it is the substance of Eucharisty and every Communio.
Joseph
identifies with the horse (the Father), and he eats him and with
him. Therefore he refuses to eat with Gentiles, because he does not
identify
with them.
In the Bible, we find that eating with someone means
sharing his evil
deeds: “The man of God said to the king, If you
will give me half your house, I will not go in with you, neither will I
eat
bread nor drink water in this place; for so was it charged me by
the word
of Yahweh, saying, You shall eat no bread, nor drink water, neither
return by
the way that you came…” (1 King 13:8-23)
The man of God was not allowed to eat and drink with the
Israelites
because eating and drinking with them meant identification with their
evil
deeds.
In
the same article, Simms quotes from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels :
…during
the first year I could not endure my wife or children in my presence,
the very
smell of them was intolerable, much less could I suffer them to eat in
the same
room. To this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread, or
drink out
of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one of them take me by
the
hand. The first money I laid out was to buy two young
stone-horses, which
I keep in a good stable, and next to them the groom is my greatest
favourite; for
I feel my spirits revived by their smell he contracts from the
stable. My
horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them, at least
four hours
every day. They are strangers to the bridle or saddle; they live
in great
amity with me, and friendship to each other
In
this paragraph from Gulliver’s Travels we find a disdain of
the woman in favour of horses, namely a regression from the Mother (at the genital level) to
the
Father. The same woman’s renunciation that we find very much in
Nietzsche’s
life, too. His only attempt to reach some kind of intimacy with a woman
(Lou
Salome) was much publicized, but aborted at its very timid trial. Most
interesting, there is a photo, that
Nietzsche supposedly
choreographed, in which Lou kneels in the front of a small farmer's
cart,
holding a whip, while Paul Ree and Nietzsche stand in front of the
cart, linked
to Lou's hand by ropes.
It
is obvious that Nietzsche identifies
with the horse, posing in the animal’s role. He, too, prefers the
companionship
of another horse (Paul Ree), than the companionship of the woman.
In
The Chariot of the Sun and the Messiah, I sustain that the image of the rider Apollo - Jesus Christ, represents the Son. Now we can see that the horses represent the Father. Through the process of identification, eventually the two condense in one image. However, the instinctual drive common to all children to gain the supremacy on the father is very intensively expressed in the representation of the chariot of the sun, in which the tone is indeed dictated by the rider: the Son.
Now, back to the article by Arnold and Atwood :
[1]
It is worth mentioning the film Equus, by director Sidney Lumet, an adaptation of the play by Peter Shaffer, telling the story of a psychiatrist who takes on an unusual case: the savage blinding of six horses with a metal spike in a stable in Hampshire, England. The atrocity was committed by an unassuming seventeen-year-old stable boy named Alan Strang, the only son of an opinionated but inwardly-timid father and a genteel, religious mother. Their sessions reveal that the boy has a quasi-religious fetish for horses and he rides them in the dead of night, experiencing an ecstasy.
[2] Cf. Then little children were brought to him, that he should lay his hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, "Allow the little children, and don't forbid them to come to me; for to such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 19:13-14)
Apollonian and Dionysian
For Nietzsche, the image of the horse-and-rider was a familiar one. Plato and Schopenhauer, who had both been closely read by Nietzsche, use metaphors of the horse and rider to express their views of human nature; the horse symbolizes the animal instincts, and the rider refers to the conscious mind responsible for taming and controlling them.
Now, to the most interesting part. Freud compares the Id, which contains the passions, to a horse, and the Ego to his rider:
It is tempting, then, to assume that Nietzsche's horse signified the instinctual, Dionysian child-self, and the rider embodied the controlling Apollonian father-self. Both literally and figuratively, Nietzsche had spent his life trying to be a horseback-rider, trying to be his father. The act of grasping the mistreated horse by the neck and breaking out in tears suggests a shift in identification from father-self to child-self. We might conclude, then, that at the moment of his breakdown, Nietzsche ceased to feel himself as his father, and instead was engulfed by the experience of loss and invalidation contained within his child-self.
Yet if the rider is the father-self, then what of the jester who seems his symbolic equivalent? Surely, as was noted, the jester seems more of a Dionysiac than an Apollonian. How could the jester be a jester, a motley creature of spontaneity and humor, and still embody the wise-moralizer identity of the father-self? He could not, but did so nevertheless. For in the very act of appropriating the horse-and-rider metaphor, Nietzsche deconstructed it. Not only was Nietzsche like a horse being ridden by a false identity, but he was also riding on the back of that inflated identity, using its energy to take him through life while shirking the duty of actualizing an authentic self. In a mind such as Nietzsche's, there can be no horse-and-rider, only HORSE/rider of RIDER/horse. Presumably, this binary too would be deconstructed into HORSE/Rider//RIDER/Horse or HORSE/Rider//RIDER /Horse, moving on towards eternal return.
The Ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the Id, which contains the passions…The functional importance of the Ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in relation to the id it is like a man on a horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the Ego uses borrowed forces. The analogy may be carried a little further. Often a rider, if he is not to be parted from his horse, is obliged to guide it where it wants to go…
(The Ego and the Id, 1922, II)
In New Introductory Lectures in Psycho-Analysis [1932], Freud returns on the same concept:
The Ego’s relations to the Id might be compared with that of a rider to his horse. The horse supplies the locomotive energy, while the rider has the privilege of deciding on the goal and of guiding the powerful animal’s movement. But only too often there arises between the Ego and the Id the not precisely ideal situation of the rider being obliged to guide the horse along the path by which it itself wants to go
(Lecture 31, page 96 of the paperback edition of the S.E.)
At this point is worth mentioning that the name of Caligula’s horse was Incitatus, which means “exited” “spurn”. It fits Freud’s similitude between a horse and the Id.
So far, it seems indeed that Dionysian is equivalent to the Id, and Apollonian is equivalent to the Ego.
However, I have sustained that the horse is the symbol of the father. If the father represents the inhibiting instance, how can we straighten this contradiction?
Arnold and Atwood propose a symbiotic identification father – rider and son-horse. In Nietzsche’s mind the two instances Nietzsche – father – Apollonian rider and Nietzsche – son – horse Dionysian instance condense in one. When the binary resolution is deconstructed, Nietzsche’s personality collapsed.
It seems to me that this is the reason why they refrained to mention Freud’s work on the case of the little Hans, where it is obvious that the horse is the symbol of the Father, and not of the Son.
Moreover, it ought to be mentioned that Apollo, the rider of the Chariot of the Sun, like the Christ, in Western culture represents a filial instance, and not the symbol of the Father. Apollo is protector of the youngsters and the patron of the young heroes competing in the Pythian games ( Ovid, Metamorphoses I.425-435). He is the vicar and the delegate of the sons, and these are the ones craving to be the drivers, just like little children and even pubertal boys crave to drive their father’s cars (now we are dealing with cars, but in a not too distant past we were dealing with horses). The instinctual drive finds its expression in the image of the Chariot of the Sun.
If the driver is the son, how can he also be the inhibiting instance, which the authors called “Apollonian”? Is Apollo the father and Dionysus the son, as stated by Arnold and Atwood, or may be the other way around, or may be both?
I anticipate that Dionysus represents the primal Father, as I have sustained in John the Baptist; Father and Lover (An analysis of eating disorders)
In order to straighten this contradiction, we must take a step back.
In the Bible, horses were associated with monarchy, the most despised of the ancient Hebrews institutions. In the Book of Deuteronomy we read:
When thou art come to the land which the Lord gives thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell in it, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are about me; then thou mayst appoint a king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose...But he shall not multiply horses to himself...Neither shall he multiply wives to himself...neither shall he greatly multiply himself silver and gold
(Deut. 17:14-20)
Here there is also an association between horses and women (= unrestrained lust). The Bible warns against the possession of many horses…and many wives.
Namely, the horse is the unrestrained instinctual drive, associated with power and kingdom, in contrast to the "moral" inhibiting instance, this time associated with the primal forms of equality and democracy of the group: To have a king is not in the interest of the tribe. In this instance, "moral" means "the interest of the brotherhood horde".
In Samuel and the Prophets, we find the same negative attitude toward the monarchy, and again associated to horses:
This will be the custom of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself on his chariot. And he will appoint for himself captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to plough his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters for perfumers, and cooks and bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your best oliveyards, and give them to his servant.
( I Sam. 8: 11-18).
Kings are perceived as tyrants, whose unrestrained lust for women and property will impose a heavy joke on the children of Israel. Salomon, the most celebrated of Israel’s kings, was also perceived as the most lustful, owning a Harem of hundreds of women:
Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites […] He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.
(1 Kings 11: 1 - 3). And he owned also a great quantity of horses and chariots (1 Kings 10:26). It seems that for the ancients political power and sexual potency - lust were strictly associated.
In the history of mankind, in the beginning kings are elected as first among equals, and as vicars of the brotherhood horde, like Saul, the first Israelite king. However, very soon they assume the peculiarities of the tyrannical Father they came to substitute. From the first forms of tribal democracy, the one who emerged to lead the horde commands to himself more and more power… and more and more women.
In ancient tribes, at the beginning kings represent the vicar of the sons, primus inter pares (first among equals), which is the linear unfolding from the primal victory of the brotherhood horde on the image of the Father.
However, In the unfolding of civilizations, the image of the vicar of the son condense with that of the primal tyrannical father. From the original situation of tribal primitive democracy, step by step kings assume the tyrannical connotation of the primal father of the horde they came to substitute.
As it happened in Egypt with the image of Paraho, who as Horus represented a Son-god, he became the Father of his people, and in the underworld condensed with Osiris. In Rome, primal tribal kings gave way to a republic, only to return again in force in a much more tyrannical form as despotic emperors. The same process unfolds again and again: prima tribal democracy, kingship of the first among equals, and then the return of the tyrannical father as absolute kings and emperors.
Henceforth, the symbol of the horse represents the Father (like in the case of little Hans), absolute power and unrestrained lust, in the same condensation.
The children of Israel admired but also resented their almighty lustful king, who from vicar of the Sons, had become the very image of the tyrant: the dispatched primal Father. The peoples transfer into their absolute almighty kings the same condensation of emotional ambivalent contents, which the brotherhood horde, and little children, feel toward their father: admiration for his power and potency, awe, and resentment.
Now, let us check what Freud has said on the father of the primal horde:
“
The members of the group were subject to ties just as we see them to day, but the father of the primal horde was free [from instinct inhibitions]” (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, 10).
Namely, the unconscious image of the father is that of unrestrained power, potency and lust, just like the horse mentioned by Plato and Freud, in association with the Id. The father is the only one who is not submitted to the inhibiting instance. The inhibiting instance is the rider, which is Apollo – the Christ – the Son – the Ego.
Now we can also understand why Apollo, who is a Son – god, is also the patron of the young novices. With his bow and arrows, he endures the heroic deed of liberating mankind from the menace of the terrible Python ( Ovid, op.cit. I.425-435), just like the other young heroes of western mythology, retracing the heroic deed of the novices in the bush. Then he is the prototype of the lads competing in the Pythian games.
However, with his very same bow and arrows, he terrorizes the Acheans around Troy’s wall, as the adults terrorize the young novices in the bush, before instructing them on the laws of the clan. Like the Christ, vicar of the Sons [2], who came “in the name of the Father”, he mediates between the Father and the Sons. At the end of the process the two condense in the Communio of identification. Eventually, a Son – god is the one holding the reins of the chariot. In the same condensation, he submits the Father, and channels the instinctual drives (the Id) to the will of the Ego (himself). In the image of the Son, who is the rider, condense the taming of the Father and of the instinctual drive. The Deed – Id –instinctual drive transform into the Logos (The Word) - Ego.
The Gospel of John tells us that in the beginning there was the Logos (The Word). The Word represents the end of the process of transformation of the instinctual energies of the Id into the energies of the Ego. And the Ego is the Son, the Rider, the tamer of wild instinctual needs.
Christianity turned the process of evolution upside down, anticipating the later overlay to the beginning, because Christianity represents the victory and the supremacy of the Son on the Father, through the condensation and Communio of the two. Now the Son becomes the Pantokrator and the Last Judge, assuming the role that hat been the role of the Father. However, as the French say, Noblesse oblige: assuming the role of the Father, the Son must also assume the role of the inhibiting instance. After all, the very Father that the Son came to substitute represented both unrestrained lust and the inhibiting instance.
In "The Puberty Rites of Savages" Theodor Reik writes: “…the myth of the suffering, death and resurrection of the Saviour, i.e the account of the Passion (Passio Domini), can be denoted as a complex of the puberty rites. A characteristic common to all son – gods is worth notice. They are redeemers and bringer of culture” [3].
...bringer of culture, namely they bring the Law. The new Law, the Law of the Brotherhood Horde, in contrast to the Law of the tyrannical primal Father. And, at the same time, so similar. And we should not wonder, because it was the vicar and leader of the Sons - from Prometheus to Moses - , who ascended the sacred mountain in order to castrate the Father, to capture his penis - Law - Woman, in the same condensation, in order to deliver them to his brothers waiting at the foot of the mountain. Paternal penis (potency), Law, and Woman, in the extraordinary capacity of condensation of our unconscious are indeed one thing. (Cf.
Maestri and Disciples )
NOTES
The plot unfolds in a slightly different way the same emotional ambivalence of love - hatred toward the horse, who represents a father – image, as that described by Freud in the case of the little Hans. As in the story of Oedipus, blinding symbolizes castration. Oedipus self - castrates as a retaliation for having killed (castrated) his own father. In the plot of the film the boy blinds (castrates) the horses. The source of little Hans’s anxiety was his own unconscious drive to castrate his father. He was anxious because he was expecting his father’s retaliation. In the film, the homoerotic component of the aggressive drive toward the father finds its expression, too, just like in the case of Nietzsche, who emotionally fell to pieces after seeing a cab driver whip his horse violently. Nietzsche ran to the poor animal, and, wrapping his arms around its neck, fell to the ground sobbing. His own aggressive drive toward the horse – father was displaced into the driver, and his homoerotic loving sentiment was expressed by wrapping his arms around the horse’s neck.