YALE KRAMER, M.D. :DOES BIOGRAPHY NEED AN ANALYST?
Does every biographical subject need “psychoanalytic treatment?” No, no more than every individual needs psychoanalytic treatment. For any one, contrary to the view prevalent back in the post-war golden age of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic treatment should be the treatment of last resort. Because it is so expensive, time consuming, and labor intensive it is much better if one can get by without it. The same general principles apply to its use in the fields of biography and history.
What are the biographical situations in which psychoanalytic understanding may be useful or desirable? First there is the subject in which overt and extensive psychopathology exists without question; Vincent Van Gogh would be one of the most obvious cases. In such cases one wants to know not only about the nature of the illness and its causes but the relation between the subject’s illness and his art.
Then there are examples of biographical subjects whom some might wish to refer to an analyst—an intermediate group—who are creative and able to function more or less but who seem quite miserable. Such as Poe and Coleridge struggling with their addictions; Charles Darwin, paralyzed with fear about presenting his ideas and obsessed with his crippling psychosomatic symptoms; Herman Melville, lost to his alternating depressive and manic moods.
Most biographical subjects, though, do not require serious treatment—the treatment of last resort. They may have a quirk or two like Gladstone’s nightly prowls through the streets of London looking for young prostitutes to save. Or someone like Chuck Knoblauch, the past Yankee star second baseman who, out of the blue one summer, developed a fear of throwing the ball to first base on the usual ground ball play. Everything else with this guy was great. He caught flies, hit, ran, bunted—everything but pegging to first. What was wrong with this guy? Do you send him to a shrink?
Or perhaps someone like Bram Stoker, who had a horrifying nightmare during the early summer of 1895 about a vampire king rising from the tomb to go about his ghastly business. By the end of summer he was writing his first draft of Dracula a book that has never been out of print since its publication in 1897 (to say nothing of its countless stage productions and a dozen or more movies).
Or perhaps Winston Churchill. On Friday, April 22, 1904 Winston Churchill rose in the House of Commons—his fourth year as a member of the Conservative party—to deliver a speech on the desirability of recognizing the rights of trade unions. This “Radicalism of the reddest type…” the Daily Mail called it, was, of course, anathema to his own party leaders. Churchill, then only 29, had been speaking to the House for forty-five minutes without notes, as was his custom, and was approaching the fiery climax of his speech when calamity struck. He was about to smash his right fist into his left palm, clinching his argument, when his mind went completely blank. He had just said: “It lies with the Government to satisfy the working classes that there is no justification…” His voice trailed off. He groped. He began again: “It lies with them….”He frowned, looked confused, and fumbled in his pockets as though looking for notes. There were none. Some members cheered encouragingly, but it was no good. He sat down abruptly, buried his face in his hands, and muttered: “ I thank the honourable members for having listened to me.” The next day a headline shouted: MR. CHURCHILL BREAKS DOWN, DRAMATIC SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.”
During that weekend he was depressed and disconcerted, and discussed with his friends whether to undertake a course in Pelman’s memory training system. But by the end of the weekend he was in good spirits and himself again, even though the experience left a kind of psychological scar which lasted his whole life. From that time on he never again spoke in Parliament without completely memorizing his speeches—every comma, pause, gesture, audience response, everything was written down and rehearsed for hours on end. He would also carry notes with him but never referred to them, thus making it seem as though he were extemporizing.
Of course we don’t really want to refer people like Churchill or Bram Stoker for analysis, they’re normal, more or less, and besides we all know analysts who are a lot worse off psychologically. But perhaps Psychoanalysis Lite for a few days—maybe a walk in the Prater with your analyst the way Freud walked with Bruno Walter when he cured the conductor of a hysterical paralysis of his conducting arm.
In the end, my continuing experience in reading biographies as well as writng patient biographies has convinced me that psychoanalysis has only a supportive connection to the work of the biographer. Just as there is variation in the quality of work of artisans, surgeons, and psychoanalysts, there is variation in the work of biographers. And I believe that the best biographers have or acquire an intuitive capacity to find out the right amount about the inner life of their subjects, and the right depth that will satisfy their reader’s scoptophilic interests.
Those who err on the side of a deficiency of fantasy and emotion will write desiccated accounts of an individual who never comes alive. Those who err on the side of excess of fantasy and emotion will write overly complex, far fetched, and ultimately tiresome stories of their subjects because no one really wants to know another that well. I do it because it’s my job.
Despite the discrepancy between the data that is available to the analyst and the biographer, the biographer often has available enough data to make quite close approximations—highly educated guesses—that are consistent and consonant with data from other sources. One example will illustrate the strengths and limitations of such a circumscribed probe.
Churchill’s major biographers made little of this “breakdown” incident beyond describing the bare facts. And eventually it was lost in the hectic excitement of his later political and military life. An analytic approach to understanding the incident would start by understanding Churchill’s emotional predicament around the time that this micro-neurosis occurred. At the time he was deeply embattled with the leaders of his party, the Conservative party. He had been deeply insulted and enraged a few weeks earlier when in the midst of one of his speeches attacking his party leader, Balfour, Balfour’s lieutenants, and all the rest of the Conservatives rose and left the chamber as one. Worse than anything, far worse than opposition, Churchill had been disregarded. As he himself said in a letter to a friend after his snub: “I would rather have been rudely interrupted, for I might have placated that kind of opposition, or at worst, laughed at it. But the feeling of the whole audience melting behind one, and being left with…an absolutely empty Government side was most disconcerting.
Thus his emotional state at the time of his breakdown was characterized by intensely ambivalent feelings; he was enraged at and embattled with Balfour, presumably over the issue of Free Trade, but matters had gotten personal, and Churchill had not yet achieved his mature political toughness. He was also leaving the party of his Father, most of his friends, and his family—about to become a turncoat.
The next step in an analytic solution to the mystery of his “breakdown” would be to find out what “making speeches” meant in Churchill’s emotional life.
Churchill’s mother, Jennie, a beautiful, seductive, intelligent woman, who became an important social asset for her prickly husband, loved the “smart set” in late Victorian London where she was welcomed and sought after. Both she and her husband were clever, articulate, and in the circle of Prince Edward VII—the most important society—engaged the best minds and conversationalists in England. She loved brilliant and powerful men and he—Randolph—was developing a reputation as a politician to watch and a formidable speech-maker in Parliament.
Although they had been married for twenty years, the marriage and Jenny’s intimacy with Randolph was burdened by his chronic syphilis. It is not surprising then that Jennie had many lovers probably including Prince Edward, but none with men who were not important, handsome, engaging, and witty. One of these was Bourke Cockran whom Jenny met in Paris a month after Randolph died, demented, of his disease. Cockran was an attorney and Congressman from New York. Immensely charming, charismatic, and with a mythic reputation for his wit and oratory. Their affair was brief but their friendship remained warm and affectionate, and Winston, who was just twenty at the time, became the beneficiary of Cockran’s wisdom and interest. Young Churchill saw him many times, visited and stayed with him in New York, and enjoyed a regular correspondence with him.
Much later when Adlai E. Stevenson asked Churchill whose example had helped fashion his oratorical style, Churchill replied, “It was an American statesman who inspired me…and taught me how to use every note of the human voice like an organ,” and then Churchill quoted long excerpts from speeches made by Bourke Cockran sixty years before. “He was my model,” Churchill said.
After graduating from Sandhurst Churchill became a Sub-altern in the Fourth Hussars, a dashing cavalry regiment stationed in India. It soon became apparent to him that the military life, besides being dull, would not afford him either rapid advancement or much glory. Struggling with this problem for a time he came to the conclusion that he would enter politics like his father. He decided to stay in the army for a while longer during which time he would distinguish himself as a brave soldier and educate himself at the same time. While in India he filled his time with polo and reading all the things that he thought would make him a better politician and orator—Macaulay, Gibbon, his father’s speeches, the proceedings of the House of Commons.
During this time, too, the plot and characters for a novel began to take shape in his mind. In a letter to his mother in 1897—he was twenty-three—he writes: “My Dearest Mama….The novel is getting on excellently. There are now nine chapters written….The hero, the great democratic leader, is a fine character. A man full of romance, sentiment & nerves [courage], who can talk to anyone on their own pet subject, can electrify a public meeting, and by his charm win any heart, male or female. In strong contrast is the president—a pure materialist….The struggle fought out in the book between the two is one between sentiment and materialism. The prize is not only political supremacy but as appears in the story “the most beautiful woman in Europe.” [A phrase Churchill frequently used to characterize his mother in their correspondence.]
In a nutshell the hero, whose name is Savrola, (the setting is a small Mediterranean country) is a morally strong, philosophical, wise, charming, autodidactic, polymathic statesman and man of action. He falls in love with Lucile, “the most beautiful woman” and who happens to be the Wicked Dictator’s wife. In the end Savrola causes and leads a revolution which results in the death of the Dictator a return of freedom to the country and, through a twist, in the self-exile of the hero who takes with him the beautiful Lucile. Sound familiar? Young man triumphs over old man, gets the old man’s wife and then exiles himself.
At the same time that Churchill was struggling with his novel he had also undertaken to write something called The Scaffolding of Rhetoric, which begins this way, “Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king….” It is a brief didactic essay that discusses the principles and uses of diction, rhythm, analogy, etc. It was never published, but was worked into the novel which was published in 1898 as “Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania.”
In the middle of the novel Savrola is called on to make a speech before the confused and agitated people of the country. Lucile desires to hear him and in disguise goes alone to the auditorium. He is at first met with hostility and jeers, but coolly pursues his aims:
“Lucile listened, spellbound. When he had risen, amid the groans and hisses of that great crowd, she had sympathized with him, had feared even for his life, had wondered at the strange courage which made him attempt the seemingly impossible task of convincing such an audience. As he had progressed and had begun to gain power and approval, she had rejoiced; every cheer had given her pleasure….He had held their enthusiasm back for an hour by the clock. The steam had been rising all this time. All were searching in their minds for something to relieve their feelings…. There was only one mind throughout the hall. His passions, his emotions, his very soul appeared to be communicated to the seven thousand people who heard his words….Then at last he let them go. For the first time he raised his voice, and in a resonant, powerful, penetrating tone which thrilled the listeners, began the peroration of his speech. The effect of his change of manner was electrical. Each short sentence was followed by wild cheering. The excitement of the audience was indescribable. Everyone was carried away by it. Lucile was borne along, unresisting, by that strong torrent of enthusiasm…. His sentences grew longer, more rolling and sonorous. At length he reached the last of those cumulative periods which pile argument on argument…. and when the last words fell, they were greeted with thunders of assent.
“….The strain had been terrific. He was convulsed by his own emotions; every pulse in his body was throbbing, every nerve quivering; he streamed with perspiration and almost gasped for breath.”
Now is this porn-oratory or what?
It doesn’t take much imagination to infer that oratory, for Winston Churchill, had become incorporated into his fantasy life—part of his personal myth—the orator can become a king—powerful, sexually attractive, able to dominate men’s minds. For Churchill it was the essence of manly strength.
Thus his need to give long and powerful speeches is in order to evoke awe, manly admiration, even submission on the part of his listeners. This scenario does not emerge from a benign wish to help, or illuminate, or teach others. On the contrary, without Churchill’s conscious awareness, it is a deeply egocentric act like that of an evil magician or hypnotist who wishes to enslave another’s will.
This suggests that his speech on that day of his so-called breakdown, made in the context of intense and bitter resentment towards the elders of his party, was made with an UNWITTING hostile motive—perhaps to show what a fool his rival was—perhaps too intensely hostile, forcing him—without conscious awareness—to put on some inner brakes, forgetting his argument. This, in turn, led to intense feelings of shame and mortification as one who has been exposed as a naked fraud.
Of course this one event and our hypothetical analytic solution, even if it were correct, does not define the fullness of Churchill’s unconscious fantasy life. It is an attempt to understand one small component of a very long and complex history. However, If one links the facts of his early life—his wish to charm his mother by being as verbally powerful as his mother’s lovers, and the conscious fantasies which Churchill created for his own pleasure in the novel Savrola then we might be able to infer something about one component of his life-long motivation, namely, the personal myth—to become an orator-king—which he was at last able to achieve in 1940 after 66 years of trying.
My clinical experience has reinforced my experience of every-day life and literature and confirmed my long-standing prejudice that the writing of lives is an art form which is distinct from both psychoanalytic writing and history writing, but requiring some of the technique of both. It requires the biographer to possess an affection for and interest in both the outer and the inner life of an individual. And like a writer of fiction, the gifted biographer seems to know intuitively the right admixture of inner and outer that will give the reader both pleasure and illumination.
Finally, I invite you to judge for yourselves the value and utility of the speculative explanation I have suggested to account for Churchill’s micro “breakdown” in the House of Commons in 1904. Some of you, I am sure, found it interesting, some even of value in understanding Churchill a little better, and some will say “so what,” what do we know now that clarifies Churchill’s place in history or history itself. In any case—for good or ill—psychology can do no more than this sort of thing outside of the consulting room.
Comments are closed.
