AUGUST STRINDBER - forgottenbooks.com · 6 AUGUST STRINDBERG comparatively narrow limits of the Freudian Theory of Sex (now somewhat invalidated through the results of the study of

AUGUST STRINDBERG

A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY WITH SPECIAL

R E F ERENCE TO THE O ED I PU S COM PLEX

BY

JOHAN UPPVALL

BO STON

RICHARD G . BADGER

THE GORHAM PR ES S

TO

wi

lliam mm, !Es q-

umOF ARLINGTON,

MASSACHUSETTS

NOBLE FRIEND AND GENEROUS BENEFACTOR

THESE PAGES ARE DEDICATED

BY THE AUTHOR

PREFACE*

This dissertation represents an effo rt on the part of the writerto approach Strindberg

’ s exceedingly comp lex persona lity from a

psychoanalytic point of View.

It claims , of course , none of that excellence, originality andcompletenes s characteristic of the works of Freud Abraham

Hitschmann Jones (3 Pfister SadgerSperber Zoepf (79) and others . Compared W ith them it is amere statement of a few but fundamentally important facts, uponthe basi s of which a comp lete analysis may be achieved .

While the writer is in no sen se so entirely committed to anyone of the p sychoanalytic theories as to be blind to the merits ofthe others

,even a casua l perusa l of this analysis W il l show that

it ha s been worked out mainly along Freudian l ines . Thisdoes not neces sarily mean, however, that the writer accepts themost radi cal Freudian teachings with reference to sex, such a sthis

,fo r instance , that

Whoever would be really free and,therefore

,happy in his love-life ,

must needs give up respect for women and adapt himself to the idea ofincest with mother and sister. 1

On the contrary, the W riter has in the course of his study ofthe New Psychology become more and more convinced of thetruth expressed by Jung and repeatedly emphasized by PresidentHall in his insp i ring lectures on Psychoanalysis , The Psychologyof War

,Gla‘ndula'

r Psychology (Pawlow) and the Psychologyof Nutrition (Turr6) that the theories of Freud and Adler areexceedingly one-s ided , neither one of them being of suffi cientscope and flexibility to do justice to the almost numberless andtan talizingly comp lex p roblems of p sychic life .An analysi s of Strindberg

,or of any other individual for that

matter,would

, therefore , in order to be able to claim at least app roximate comp letenes s and validity

,have to tran scend the

*Refer to bibliography at end of article for numerical and page references .

’ Beitrage zur Psychologie des Liebesleben . Jahrb . f. psychoanalytische und paychopathologi sche Forschungen. Bd. IV, Heft I , p . 46.

6 AUGUST STRINDBERG

comparatively narrow limits of the Freudian Theory of Sex (now

somewhat invalidated through the resu lts of the study of shell

shock and war p sychoses in general) , the strictly personal Un

conscious,and the Adlerian I chm

'

eb and exp lore the immeasurably

greater realm of the Co llective or Absolute Uncon sciou s postu la ted

by Jung,a concept which , roughly speaking, corresponds to the

Race or Folk-Soul of G . Stan ley Hall . This would be to attack

the problem from the truly genetic point of View. For,as Jung

says

The contents of the Absolute Uncon scious are not merely the residueof archaic human function s , but also the residue of function s of theanimal ancestry of mankind , whose duration of life was indeed vastlygreater than the relatively brief epoch of specifically human exi s tence .

Yet with the full knowledge of the many obj ection s raised

again st the Freudian Theory, the writer has chosen to app ly its

fundamental p rincip les to Strindberg . The main reason s for thi s

may be stated a s follows : First of all , Freud’ s Theory is stil l

the foundation of all p sychoanalysi s . Secondly, its simp l icity

as compared with the anagogic interpretation of p sychic pheno

mena by Jung,Silbererz, Maeder

3

,and others

,natural ly appeal s

strongly to the inexperienced analyst.

And finally,the sexual element in Strindberg seemed—and

still seems— to the writer so con sp icuous , to such extent is the

great Swedish Author a Frendian-Adlerian type, that no one

could j ustly be accu sed of being biassed in favor of the School of

Vienna for app lying its p rincip les to him in an attempt to inter

p ret his uncon sciou s motivation s— the very woof and web of hisalmost tragic exi stence—in terms of the Oedipu s Comp lex .

The writer wishes to take this Opportun ity to exp res s his deepgratitude to al l who have in any way facili tated his work . He

is especially indebted to Karl Johan Karlson,Ph .D .

,Profes sor

William H . Burnham, Ph .D ., and above all to his chief in structor,2Silberer, HerbertProblem: ofMyrticirm and it; Symbolism. Transl. by S. E. Jellifie , NewYork ,Mofi

'

at

Yard Co . , 19 17 . 45 1 p .

8Maeder, Alphonse E .

Gue'

riron at Evolution dam la vie ale 1’amt , etc. Zurich , Rascher, 19 18. 69 p .

A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY 7

Pre si dent G . Stan ley Hall , Ph D . , LL.D . , for hi s unfailing kindness , con structive criticism and helpful suggestion s in the pre

pa ra tion of this dis sertation , which , had it not been for hisguid an ce and encouragement, would never have seen the light ofday .

AUGUST STRINDBERG“

A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY WITH SPECIALREFERENCE TO THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

BY AXEL JOHAN UPPVALL

I ch liebe rie, liebe rie, ro wie rie rich mir beim Abrchiedofim bart hat, and die Erinnerung an die errten Tageunrerer Verbimlung steigt in mir auf, wie rig

, Weib mi dMutter zugleich, ranft and zartlich mick wie ein kleiner Kindliebkort a nd hatrchelt.

Und J'

O liebe ich,begehre rie gluhend zum Weibe.

I rt day ein widerna iltrlicher Trieb? Bin ich day Produkt cine: Naturrpielr? S ind meine Gerfiihle entartet, wei li ch ja meineMu tter bef itze? I I t do; unbewurrte B lutrchandedef Herzem ?

Die Beichte f ine; Thoren.

OHAN August Strindberg was born in StockholmJanuary 2 2

,1 849 , as the fourth son of Oscar Strindberg ,

a merchant and shipp ing agent, and Ulrika Eleonora néeNorling . The marriage of the parents had been legalizedbut a short time before the birth of the boy, and ac

co rding to hi s own op in ion , he wa s not a welcome additionto the family . At the age of five he was sent to the kindergarten .

From there he pas sed to the elementary schools and en tered theLyceum in 1 86 1 . In 1 862 he lost his mother and the fo llowingyear he entered the Gymnasium

,wa s confirmed in 1 864 and

graduated from the Gymnasium in 1 867 at the age of eighteen .

In the fall of the same year he went to the Un iversity ofUpp sala , but remained there only one term, partly because of lackof funds and partly because of the slow pedantic methods whichwere distasteful to his impatient, critical and neurotic na ture .

Re turn ing to the cap ital he secured a position as teacher in ClaraSchool , where he had formerly been a studen t . Soon di scoveringtha t he had missed his calling, he decided to study medicine .

Bu t finding this even a s little to his taste as school teaching andfeeling the crea tive artist stirring within his soul

,he turned his

attention to histrionic arts . After six months of the mo st ener*A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Clark Univ ers ity, Worcester, Mas s . , in

partia l fulfilment o f the requ irements for the degree ofDoctor of Philo sophy, and acceptedon the recommendation ofG . Stanley Hall.

10 AUGUST STRINDBERG

getic p reparation s , unspeakable tu rmoil of soul, and dreams offame he made his debu t at the Dramatic Theatre in Bjornson ’ sMaria Stuart with one solitary line to recite . This was in 1 869 .

It was an insult to him and two months later he demanded to beheard in a classical role . He was granted a trial, but failed, andwas advised to enter the school of dramatic acting . To him whohad felt since early childhood that he was ever being held back,this was an unbearable blow and he went home fully determinedto take his own life . To this end he swallowed an Opium tablet,but a friend who happened to cal l persuaded Strindberg to go ou t

with him . He did so and in a n ight of revelries he drowned h issorrow and escaped the effects of the poison .

The following day was a memorable one for the young poet.The strained relation s with his father and s tepmother had longweighed heavily upon him and while lying on the sofa in his roomhe tried to devise a scheme through the instrumentality of whichhis s tepmother might reconcile him with his father . In twohours he had visualized a comedy in two acts , and in four days the

p lay was complete . It was refused but he felt that his honor wassaved , inasmuch as it drew some comp liments from the theatricalauthorities .He was now seized with a veritable pass ion for writing and

in les s than two months he had completed two comedies and atragedy called Hermione . The latter was later accepted and

p layed . It wa s now suggested to him that since he had givenevidence of the powers of literary creation he should return toUppsala and read for a degree, s ince literary succes s dependedvery largely upon such an education .

But his second term at the University was largely Spent inthe company of his friends and at the

“Runa ” Club,and devoted

,

not to his academic studies , but to the writing of p lays . The

p lay called In Rome wa s then produced and sent to the DramaticTheatre in Stockholm

,where it was accepted and p layed in

August 1 870. Shortly after, he produced The Outlaw,in which

he showed, for the first time, rea l o riginal ity and exceptional

powers . This play was al so accepted and performed at theRoyal Theatre in the fall of 1 87 1 .

In the fall of that year he returned to the Un iversity aftera violent quarrel with h is father, without a dollar in his pocket,and no prospects of obtaining any funds . But fortune favoredthe brave

,almost despairing young author . K ing Charle s XV

had been present at the performance of The Outlaw,and the

A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY 1 1

Vik ing play had appealed to him to such an extent that he commanded the author to appear before him . Strindberg

,after some

hesitation, fearing foul play, put in appearance and was offereda scholarship of 800 Crown s per annum which was gratefullya ccepted .

Now he returned to Uppsala once more feeling somewhatel ated and contented for the first time in his l ife . He took up hiswork in earnest . The year 1 87 1 closed very favo rably for him,

for in addition to his recogn ition by the theatrical authorities andthe king

,he also became the recip ient of honorable mention from

the Swedish Academy on account of his Greek drama Hermione.

But desp ite his succes s he soon began to chafe under the a cademicwork, and when for some reason or other

,the scholarship was

withdrawn in the Spring of 1 872 he left Upp sala .For a few months he tried to glean a living from newspaper

work . But the creative impulse left him no rest and finally bebought a few quires of paper and started for a smallis land in the Stockholm archipelago . Here in his twenty-thirdyear he created his first mas terp iece Ma:ter Olaf. Highly deserving a s it was , an epoch-making play from every point of view,it was refused by the theatrical authorities and was not produceduntil seven years later

,in the year of 1 880.

Again he had to resort to newspaper work and thus barelysucceeded in keeping body and soul together . Then fortunesmiled upon him once more . In 1 874 he received an appointmenta s amanuensis in the Royal Library in Stockholm . Now heimmediately p lunged into the study of the Chinese language.A treatise which he wrote on the subj ect of some o ld manuscriptsearned h im medals from,

and membership in, many learned so

cieties, and recognition from the French Institute soon followed .

In the midst of all this good fortune he met his evil gen ius .He was introduced to and fell in love with Baroness Wrangel , néev on Es sen

l,whom he married on December 3 1 , 1 877 . This new

life revived in him the creative impulse and when he left Swedenin 1 883 in a rather se rious physical and mental condition, he hada score of recogn ized works to his credit, such as:From Fja

'

rdingen

a nd Svartba'

cken, The Red Room,From the Sea , Here and There

,

The Secret of the Gui ld, Sir Bengt’

: Wife, The j ourney of LuckyPeter, Studie: in the Hirtory of Culture, the Swedi:h People, TheNew Kingdom and Poem: in Ver5 e and Pro:e.

’Her full maiden name was Sophia Mathilda Elizabeth Von Es sen. She is oftenreferred to by writers as Siri , and in The Fool’: Conjemion Strindberg speaks of her asMaria .

1 2 AUGUST STRINDBERG

In France he joined a cosmopolitan group of painters at Grez

par Nemours . During his stay abroad between the years of 1 883and 1 889, res iding alternately in France , French Switzerland,German Switzerland

,Bavaria and Denmark, he published a

number of famou s works,the most important of which a re :

Married, Real Utopiar, his Autobiography in four volumes, TheFather, Lady j ulia and Comrade:.

In the year of 1 889 Strindberg returned to Sweden with theintent ion of settling down permanently . Bu t in 1 892 he againturned his back to his na t ive land . Ever since his stay in Switzerland the relat ion s between himself and his wife had beenunbearable . According to Uddgren (72 p . 1 54) a Swis s womanhad forced herself between them and did not even leave themalone in Sweden . The result was that he sought divorce inJanuary 1 89 1 . The history of this exceedingly unhappy unionof fifteen years is related in A Fool’: Confers ion, published in 1 893 .

The divorce p roceedings which followed and dis solved themarriage in 1 892 are touchingly described in his drama The Link,published in 1 897 .

During the years of 1 89 1-92 he led the life of a hermit on theisland of Kymmendowhere he wrote and painted a large numberof canvases

,which at the time received cons iderable attention

and recogn ition . In the fall of the same year he started forGermany and settled down in Berlin where he delved into thestudy of the natural sciences .

His reception in Germany was extraordinary . RichardDehme l greeted him with a poem called An Immorta l. In theshop windows his photograph hung alongs ide that of the I ronChancel lor, and his p lays were on the reperto ire of the foremosttheatres all over the continent.It was during this stay in Germany that Strindberg became

the centre of attraction Zum Schwarzen Fer/eel. This important

period in Strindberg’ s life has been p resented in a sympathetic

manner by Dr . Schleich (53 p . 25 ff. ) in his Erinnerungen an

Strindberg.

It was in 1 892 also that he met Frida Uhl, a young Austrianwriter

,to whom, after a great deal of hes itation , he was married

in the spring of 1 893 .

The so called Inferno period , p roperly speaking , begin sshortly after Strindberg’ s arrival in Berlin if

,indeed

,it may not

be said to have begun earlier . Be that a s it may, the sp irit ofWilliam Blake had cast a Spell over the whole of artistic Eu rope


and spiritism had been rep laced by theosophy . Schleich (0p .

cit. p . 1 2 ff. ) tells u s that Strindberg, when he first met him,ad

hered to a mechan istic Weltanrchauung, but adds that he wasfa st drifting towards mysticism and that he had already at thattime ( 1 892 ) developed demonological notions . The same au

tho rity also intimates that S trindberg at this time wa s alreadyintimate with Swedenborg ’ s Arcana Coele:tia

,Jacob Boehme and

Paracelsus . To this period also belongs his play To Dama:cu:,

a lthough it was not published until 1 898 .

After his m arriage to Frida Uhl the coup le went to Englandand settled down in Gravesend . Owing to the confiscation of

Die Beichte eine: Thoren ,they had to return . Strindberg left

his law suit in the hands of an attorney in Berlin and he and hiswife went to her home in Ardagger near Arm stadten on theDanube .

In the fall of 1 894, after a few months’ stay in Berlin

,Strind

berg and his wife left fo r Paris where he intended to study chemistry . Here the theatres were p laying his dramas , and tran slation sof his novels were being printed in various periodicals . NoSwedish author had ever before achieved such succes s in theF rench capita l where even Ibsen had been able to create but amoderate interest .

As though the su rpass ing of the great Norwegian dramatisthad been Strindberg ’ s only pu rpose, he now turned h is back onhis literary achievements and enormous success and shut himselfup in the laboratories of the Sorbonne .

Deep ly absorbed in his scientific experiments he now becameoblivious of his young wife and secretly wi shed to be relieved ofher . In November 1 894 he accompanied her to Gare du Nord;osten sibly she was going home to care for their child who was ill ,but in rea lity they parted for life . Shortly after this theirmarriage was dis solved.

In July 1 896 Strindberg returned to Sweden after having

passed through al l the horrors so graphically described in hisI nferno. At first he sought and obtained refuge in the home of afriend in Ystad, Dr . Eliason . About two months later he ac

cepted an invitation to vis it his Austrian parents-in—law and to

see his little daughter . After a stay there of nearly three monthshe returned to Lund, Sweden , where he began the study of

Swedenborg in earnest. The fo llowing year in May his mentalequ ilibrium was so far restored that he could take up his literarywork once more . On May 3 , 1 897 he began to write his Inferno


which was ready for publication on June 2 5th of the same year .Immediately upon the comp letion of this work he began hisLedgen:, which work was published in 1 898 .

In the fal l of 1 897 he again visited Paris where he spent thewinter

,returning to Sweden in the spring of 1 898 .

His health was now completely restored and with the celebration of his fiftieth birthday his la st and greatest creative

period began . Between the years of 1 898 and 19 1 2 , when hedied

,he produced between fifty and s ixty different works

,great

historical p lays , p lays of realistic symbolism in a Swedenborgiansp irit, sagas , poetry, novels , autobiographical works, dramaturgy,speeches , historical and philosophical essays .

From Lund he removed to Stockholm and in 1 901 he marriedfo r the third time , a young Norwegian actress , Harriet Bosse .This marriage also ended in a divorce in the year of 1904 .

In 1 906 the so called Intima Teatern, under the direction ofAugust Falk, began to present Strindbergian plays . They metwith unqualified success: During the presentation of Ladyj u lia the other theatres in the cap ita l were almost deserted .

Thus his recognition had come at last . About this time hisname was the by—word of the entire Scandinavian North as wellas that of continental Eur0pe .

The following excerpt from a leading Stockholm periodicalmay truly be said to have voiced the sentiment of the nation

(66, p XX)

For over thirty years he has dis sected us from every point of view;during that time his name has always been consp icuous in every bookshop window,

and his books gradually pushed out the others from ourshelves . Every night his plays are produced at the theatres;every conversation turns on him ,

and his is the name the pygmies quarrel overdaily. The cry is heard that he has become hysterical, sentimental, outof his mind

,but the next one knows he is robustness itself

,and enduring

beyond belief,desp ite great need, enmity, sorrow. One hour one is

angry over some great extravagance which he has allowed himself, thenext captivated by one of his p lays , stirred, melted, strengthened anduplifted by his sublime genius .

On January 22 , 19 1 2 , the Swedish nation celebrated Strindberg’ s s ixty-third birthday . It was in the eleventh hour of hisstormy existence . All the Stockholm theatres performed Strindbergian p lays that n ight and gigantic torch-l ight process ion s fi led

past the Blue Tower . With bowed head and tears in his eyes hebeheld the thronging multitudes and heard the deafening cheers

,


vhich to him meant far more than either a literary Nobel prize>r membership in the Swedish Academy. On the same occa sionie received a purse of fifty thousand crowns from the Swedish>eople , but although he was practically penni less he gave thenoney to the poor .OnMay 14, 19 1 2 , his eyes closed in death . His last wish was

hat the Bible and a Crucifix should accompany him on his lastourney, that he should be buried during the early hours of thelay and not among the wealthy .

Thus ended the p ilgrimage of a man whose whole life hadreen devoted to the search for truth , of a soul that had doubted ,vla sphemed

,despaired and suffered more intense psych ic tor

ments than most human beings , and who finally cou ld write,

with a fair amount of conv iction (70, p .

Pray but work,suffer but hope, keeping both the earth and the stars

nview. Do not try to settle permanently, for it is a p lace of p ilgrimage,lO t a home but a halting place . Seek truth for it i s to be found

,but only

nHim,who Himselfis The

*

Way, tlle Truth

=11nd the Life . ”

The genealogy of the Strindberg family ha s been studied inleta il by several authors ( 14, p . 8;72 , pp . 17-20; During theatter part of his life Strindberg himself showed a lively interest11 the history of the family .

In the first Volume of his autobiography (69 , p . 9) he writes

There was an old genealogical table in the family which showed nob lencestors on one side, from the seventeenth century. Since then thevaternal ancestors—all coming from Jamtland—had been ministers, ofJordic

, perhap s of Finnish blood. In the course of time it had becomenixed . His paternal grandmother could trace her origin to Germanynd a carpenter

’ s family. His grandfather was a grocer in Stockholm ,

Zhief Commander of the City Volunteers (Borgerskapets Infanteri) ,high mason and an ardent admirer of Charles XIV.

2

One of the members of the family, Major Zakarias Akerfelt,

married a young woman by the name of Scheffel, from Wismar,md from her the artistic tendencies are supposed to have come .‘hese tendencies thereupon remained dormant for many years.ntil they again revealed themselves in Strindberg ’ s grandfather,he above mentioned grocer and Chief Commander of the City'olunteers , Zakarias Strindberg .

’Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadette, founder of the present dynasty and king of Sweden

318-1 844 .


Already as a young man he seems to have had a taste fordramatic sketching

,but in all probability business and other cir

cumstances preven ted him from developing his talent .The three brief plays which he left to posterity do not herald

the famous grandson . Uddgren says (72 , p . 19)

All they show,is that the worthy major possessed a good deal of

feeling and a sense of humor and that he tried in so far a s he was ab leto go his own ways .

Concerning the above mentioned Za karias Strindberg , Esswe in (14, p . 9) makes the following statement :

His portrait shows in the formation of the forehead and the eyebrows ,which point to a pas sionate and at the same time highly differentiatedcharacter

,a striking likeness to the features of the poet (August Strind

berg) .

It would seem from the several studies of Strindberg ’ s remoteancestors that they were physically and mentally sound . Thesame is largely true of his parents . His father was undoubtedlyof a rugged physique and mentally as sound as the average man .

The son characterizes him as a man of great reserve and will

power whom busines s fa ilures and conjugal unhappiness hadturned into an uncommun icative

,melancholy solitaire

,who had

a wound which he wanted to concea l and to hea l,but who had not

given up the h0pe of rising i n the world once more . He died in1 883 .

By far the wea kest link in Strindberg ’ s hereditary chain isthe mother . She died from tuberculosi s in 1 862 at the age ofthirty-n ine . We are informed by Strindberg himself (68, p . 84)that she was of a very high strung temperament and that hernervousnes s in creased toward the end of her life . She wa s mo regiven to moods ,

” he writes,

“ than before,and contradiction s

would set her cheeks aflame .

” On one occasion during a disputewith her brother “ she took fire

,

” he says,

“ and suffered anattack of hysteria .

From the point of View of heredity, therefore, Strindbergentered the race of life somewhat handicapped . Undoubtedlyhe is correct in his as sumption that he inherited his temperamentfrom his mother

,for his was very largely that febrile respon se to

stimuli,that activity

,restless versatility and sen s itivenes s to

impressions , which Havelock Ellis ( 1 3 , p . 1 82) con s iders socharacteristic of the con sumptive .

https://www.forgottenbooks.com/join


s ion,John grew sturdy and tall . His p layground was the court

yard which he aptly describes a s the stone paved bottom of a wellinto which the sun never shone . A cracked garbage bin with aflap

-cover stood by the wall . Slop s and sweep ings were emptiedinto it and through the cracks its promiscuous contents flowedinto the yard . The other s ide of the yard was lined with woodsheds and cabinet: The atmo sphere of. this yard wasone of dampness , gloom and evil odor . Bu t not even in such anabominab le mi lieu was John permitted to p lay unmolested .

Concern ing the educational influence of the home he makesthe following statement (0p . cit. p . 14)

The education consi sted of scolding,hair-pulling and exhortations to

obedience . The child heard only about his duties,nothing about his

rights . Everybody’ s wishes carried weight,his were suppressed . He

could undertake nothing without doing wrong,go nowhere without being

in the way,utter no word without di sturbing someone . At last he did

not dare to move . His highest duty and virtue was to sit on a chairand be quiet . It was continually dinned into him that he had no willof his own

,and so the foundation of a weak character was laid .

Later on the cry was : What will the peop le say ? And thus his willwa s broken so that he could never be true to himself

,but wa s forced to

depend on the wavering op inion of others , except on a few occasion swhen he felt his energetic soul work independently of his will .The child was very sensitive . He

'

wept so often that he received aspecial nickname for doing so . He felt the lea st remark keenly and wasever in a State of fear lest he should do something wrong . He was veryawake to injustice and while making great demands upon himself henarrowly watched the failings of his brothers . When they escapedpunishment he felt deeply injured . When they were undeservedlyrewarded his sense of justice suffered . He was accordingly con sideredenvious .

In due time he entered Clara Schoo l where the discip line wasexceedingly severe . Mere tardines s was subj ect to corporal

pun ishment . A s ingle illustration will suffi ce to show why,in

later years , Strindberg avo ided everything that might remindhim of his childhood Inferno, and forced him to declare that hisworst n ightmare was to dream himself back in school .Once he was the unfortunate latecomer (op . cit . p 3 3 )

With a slow step he entered the hall . Only the porter is there wholaughs at him and writes his name on the blackboard under the heading“ Late .” A painful hour follows , and then loud cries are heard in thelower school and the b lows of a cane fall rapidly. It is the headmasterwho has made an onslaught on the tardy ones

,or takes his exercise on

them . John bursts into tears and tremb les from head to foot—not from

A PSYCHOANALYT IC STUDY 19

fear of pain, but from a feeling of shame to think that he should be fallenupon like an animal doomed to slaughter, or a criminal .

It was here that he became convinced that school l ife was

preparation for hell rather than for life, and that life itself was

penal in stitution for crimes committed befoof which he went about with a perpetualmoreover

,he first felt the whole crushing weight

tinction . It was a school for the well-to-do . John wore leatherM s and greased leather boots which smelled of oil and blacking

,on which account the boys who wore velvet j ackets refused to

sit near him .

Neglect of his studies and rebellion against his teachers earnedhim poor marks . Thereupon his father removed him to Jacob

’ sschool . Here the boys were p oorly dressed, had sores undertheir noses

,ugly features and smelled badly. In this school

,

which formed a sharp contrast to Clara school in that it waslargely frequented by children of the poor, John undoubted lyacquired that sympathy for the lower classes which is so stronglyreflected in his satirical and socialistic works . The conditions ofthis school as well as those of a large percentage of the pup ilsattending it are well illustrated by the fol lowing episode told byStrindberg himself . In the schoo l in question there was a boywho wa s always untidy, who smelled badly and had a dischargefrom the ear. He was scolded and beaten by the teacher andavoided by the schoolmates . On account of absence from classesJohn was sent to investigate the cause and to report his findingsto the teacher . What did he find ? He found conditions somewhat similar to those of his own home . The boy was tending hisl ittle s ister

,the grandmother carried a baby in her arms

,and

the parents were out work ing . In this single room—the homeof the family—there was an odor of sulphur fumes from the coalfire and a strong smell of human excrements . Here clothes weredried, food cooked, paint stuffs ground, putty kneaded . In thisenvironment young Strindberg discovered the fundacause for his schoolmate’ s immorality.

The rebellion against p rescribed studies characteri stic ofhis terms in the Clara and Jacob ’ s Schools continued in the Lyceum and the Gymnasium which he entered in 1 861 and 1 863respectively. When he graduated from the latter institution in1 857, at the age of eighteen , he was a man and had passed throughall the severe crises incident to puberty . They had sha ken his


p syche to its very foundation and left an indelible imp ress ionupon his later life .

The death of his mother had marked the inception of a religiou s crisis which took the form of a mild anxiety neurosis .One is tempted to seek its origin first of all in the loss of his mother,the p ietistic atmosphere in which he had moved du ring his child1hood and early youth , and the promise which the mother exactedfrom the thirteen-year-old boy on her death bed, to live close toGod—a promise which he failed to keep . But while all thesefacts undoubtedly stand in a close causative relation to his stateof mind, the real source of his Welt:chmerz must be sought in thedeeper strata of his uncon scious mind .

The reader of The Son of a Servant, which is the h istory ofthe development of a soul, cannot fail to notice that the youngboy even from the earliest childhood struggled with melancholiawhich was but another expres sion of his morbid fears and h is inten se and persistent feeling of guilt.

A guilty con science is unthinkable without a cause or causes .Psychoanalysis has demonstrated beyond a shade of doubt thatthe consciousnes s of guilt is in every case a product of repres sion .

Pfister says (45 , p .

One of the most frequent sources , where it appears with great forceand m conjunction with anxiety, is masturbation .

With reference to the same perverse practice, Bleuler (9)has made the following significant statement :

I know of only one source as yet of the feeling of guilt, which onemight call religious or tran scendental : onanism or some similar sexualtransgres sion . Where I could analyse such feelings of guilt I came uponsexual self-reproach .

Moreover,cl in ica l experiences have confirmed Sadger in his

belief that youthful preoccupation with and worship of Virtue isa lways an over compen sation for this very common and seriouschildhood s in of masturbation . The individual ’ s unsatiabledemands for parental tenderness , h is morbid longingand confidence

,his excessive need of confiding in and bei

stood by his parents , brothers, sisters and friends ,curios ity and abnormal intellectua l activities

,shyness

,

stuttering,blinking

,obstinacy

,enviousness—al l a re 3

of secret indulgence in masturbatory practices .


This had been clearly demonstrated in a very large numberof clin ica l cases and ordinary analyses of which v on Kleist (52)is a brill iant examp le , to mention no others . It is a lso interestingto know that ordinarily the malady breaks out only when theonanism previously practiced without restraint or hesitation issudden ly stopped , because of threatening warnings (45 , p .

Again,Freud (23 , p . 98) has pointed out

,and it has been

fully borne out by analyses tha t premature intellectual development and sexual precocity go hand in hand . This would beamp le proof in Strindberg

’ s case had we no other evidence of thefact that he was given to perverse p ractices , but thanks to his umusual cando r we need not resort to any hypothetical statements .After having described his experiences at Mariefred he says

68)

The whole matter sca rcely seemed to have any connection with thehigher sexual life , for the boy had been in love with a girl at the age ofeight when the sexual impulse was a s yet completely dormant .

Consequen tly he concluded that this inciden t formed noturn ing point in h is p sychic life, for he wa s born a brooding spi ritand his new thoughts only made him a recluse .

Besides,he soon quit the vicious habit when he came across a book

that frightened him . Bu t then there ensued in its p lace a fight again stdesires which he cou ld not conquer, Since they attacked him in the formof dream illusions when his powers of resistance were at an end, and quietsleep he was not permitted to enjoy until at the age of eighteen whenhe had estab lished connection with the opposite sex.

The book which fell into his hands he describes as a terrible

p iece of l iterature . He fairly devoured it . His knees trembledand the blood receded from his face , his pulses froze . He wasthus condemned to death or lunacy at the age of twenty-fiv e . Hisspinal marrow and the brain would disappear, his hair would fa llou t

, his hands tremble . And the cure ? Wa s there one ? YesJesus

.But He could on ly cure the soul , and the only thing for

him to do was to save it from eternal damnation .

Later on he came across another book intended to counteractthe dangerous work referred to above , but for an entire year hefound no word of conso lation . Accordingly he began to studythe pietistic literature left by the mother where he made a newacquaintance with Jesus and prayed and suffered agony . He feltlike a crimina l and humbled himself. In going through the


streets he would step out of the way of peop le . In this way hecrucified himself daily

,in the expectation of soon entering into

the joy of the Lord .

Lack of space forbids my going into further detai l a s regardsthis uniquely important phase of his development, to which hehimself has given so much attention in hi s autobiography . Icanno t res is t the temptation , however , of giving a concrete example of how furiously he fought against the on slaught of hisawaken ing sexual life during the storm and stres s of puberty

(64 Ch .

His mother had been dead two years and the time had comefor his confirmation . Under the tremendous weigh t of his moralconflict he one day found himself in a motley crowd of catechumen supon whom the d iscourse on the wounds and precious b lood of

Chris t had no effect whatever . Here he avows tha t for the firsttime in his l ife he became fully conscious of the two worlds

,the

spiritual and secular . The promise he made to his mother wasuppermost in h is mind (op , cit . p .

He had a dim notion that once upon a time a terrible crime had beencommitted which it was now everybody’s business to hide by practicingcountless deceptions .

The minister brought up the question of immorality . I t waslargely a rehearsal of the old subj ect . The unpardonab le s in wasbound to result in death and there was only one remedy;completesurrender to Christ . When John came home he felt degraded

,

touched no food, went to his bedroom and read a book which theminister had lent him . I t wa s on the subj ect of the vanity of

reason . Reason was s in for it questioned God ’s exi stence and

tried to understand what was no t meant to be unders tood . Theb oy surrendered . He read Arndt, recited the creed, the Lord

’ sPrayer and the Blessing, wen t to bed, fell asleep , awoke in themiddle of the n ight dreaming of a champagne supper in companywith a girl . He sprang out of bed, threw the bedclothes on

.

thefloor and lay down uncovered on the mattress . He was cold and

hungry,bu t he felt that the devil had to be subdued . He re

peated the prayers . Finally he fell a sleep and dreamed thatlovely forms appeared before him . He heard low voices

,stifled

laughters,soft music and saw sparkling wines , cheerfu l faces and

candid eyes . Presently a curtain was drawn apart, a charminglittle face looked in between red silk draperies , her s lender throatwas bare

,the beautiful slop ing shou lders reminded him of Greek

A PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY

sculpture . She held out her arms and he drew her to his throbbingheart.

Frightened almost to death he sprang out of bed once moreand kneeled on the bare floor

,fervently praying God for strength .

After the prayer he removed the bedclothes and slept on the barespring . The fo l lowing morning he awoke with a high fever andwas then confined to his bed for six weeks . Medica l attendance

,

p lenty of food and rest , restored his strength and the strugglebegan with renewed vigor .To unders tand the boy’ s religious conflict we must bear in

mind th at parallel with the p ietistic movement there ran a strongreactionary current known as the New Realism

, and that the boywas familiar with and con sciously and uncon sciously influencedby its doctrines .

Chap ter VI II of The Son of a Servant i s an indisputable proofof my contention . It shows that he was seriously concerned withquestion s of grave philosophical content such as Fa te versusReason , Freedom of the Will, Predestination , and a host of othermore o r les s unprofitable queries . Already at the tender age offifteen he was exceedingly well read . In the field of Belle: Lettre:and the drama he had discovered Byron , Walter Scott, Tasso ,Zola

,Dickens

,Eugéne Sue, A lexandre Dumas , and according

to h is own statemen t he had devoured the comp lete works ofShakespeare in Hagberg

’s tran slation .

But the most pronounced influence came from other quarters .In the Gymnasium he had read Renan ’ s Life of f em : and Cramer’ sFarewell to the Church. Just to what extent he wa s familiar withBos trém

’s Doctrine of Hell, Rydberg , Krummacher

,Norbeck

,

Darwin,Mo leschott and other authors whom he quotes or men

tion s is difli cult to say . But it i s safe to as sume that these andsimila r works fo rmedmew s of his skepticism .

M W

Now while 1n this state of high psychic ten sion he chancedto meet a young engineer who se arguments further underminedhis tottering faith

,and finally when Theodore Parker

’ s sermon swithout Christ and hell fell into his hari s , t e ogmatic founda

tion of his religiou s belief collap sed . But his con science still stoodbetween him and the harm onious life for which his childish soulyearned

,and he was now in greater need of a guiding hand than

ever before . His Virgil soon appeared in the person of a Sophisticated school-mate . One day the latter proposed that theytake lunch together . Strindberg agreed and thi s incident became a memorable event in his life . A square meal with beer

AUGUST STRINDBERG

and brandy d ispelled the gloom of life and from that day Strindberg was a changed man . It wa s a solid p leasu re he tell s u s

(68 p . 146) to feel the red blood course through half-empty arteries , which were to nourish the nerves fo r the struggle of life .It was a p leasure to feel spent strength return and lax s inews ofa half-cru shed will stretched again . Hope was awakened, themist became a rosy cloud and the friend made him see gl imp se sof the future a s it wa s formed by friendship and youth .

1 During his last year in the Gym nas ium he became the ringlleader of a number of rebel lious classmates and in sp ite of threatsand exhortation s on the part of the Rector of the in stitution , herefused to attend morn ing p rayers . His realization of God innature rep laced the des ire to worship Him in temp le s made by theh ands of men . He was a freethin ker

,a rationalist

,in whose rest

less and revolutionary mind the variou s conception s of life pres ented themselves in the p rofoundest argjthgseg As such hee ntered the Un ivers ity and soon found himself in a greater conflict with self

, God.

and human ity than ever before . A p sychoanalytic irfij

’

uirjfi r

/

i to thm s“

of this , his life long confl ict, i sth e purpose of the fol lowing pages .

In the preceding pages I have presented a brief ou tline ofStrindberg ’ s eventful life . I have a lso discussed in such detai la s seemed to me no t only desirable bu t necessary for an understand ing o f the analys is , his ancestry, parentage , home en

v ironment,his life and experiences in school and Gymnasium ,

andthe crise s incident to puberty and adolescence . It now remain sfo r me to consider the most important aspect of his life and dev elopment—his relation to h is parents .

From his autobiography we know that like a ll other childrenhe was weak and that he craved maternal affection in an unusua ldegree . In this work as well a s in many others he has exp ressedhimself in the most unequivoca l terms with reference to this veryimportant matter .

In speaking of his gloomy home and h is father’ s divers ion s

,

one of which was to cultivate flowers in window boxes,John tells

us that he specialized in pelargon iums but that he , at that time ,could not understand why . Later, however, when the motherwas in her grave and John had vision s of her, he imagined that he



nes s and longing for his mother, he affi rms , followed him a llthrough life . He could never understand why, but wonderedwhether he had not come too early and incomp lete into the world .

What could hold him so closely bound to his mother ? Thisquestion he could never find an answer to either in books or inl ife . But of one thing he felt certain :he never became himself

,

he was never liberated,never a comp lete individuality, and so he

compared himself to a mistletoe, a climbing p lant that must havesupport.The mother was not a lways just and loving (op . cit. p .

but for the children she played the part of Providence itself. Shecut ingrown nails, bandaged injured fingers

,always comforted

,quieted

and soothed when the father punished, although she was the officialaccuser.

While away from home on the said vacation he spent much ofhis time p in ing for the mother, or else he was in extremely highsp irits and indulged in risky amusements . He characte rizedhimself (op . cit. p 45) as,

alternately timid and daring, overflowing with spirits, or brooding, but/without the proper balance.

And again (op . cit . p 46)

After he had parted from his mother and felt himself surrunknown threatening powers, a p rofound need of havingsome p rotecting powers awakened in him .

Not being able to flee to his mother he turned to God in

prayer . He writes (op . cit. p . 46)

He said his evening prayers with a fair amount of devotion , but 1n themorning when the sun shone and he wa s well rested, he did not feel theneed of it.

This dependence upon and constant longing back to themother, which is more or le s s basic in every human l ife , i s veryconsp icuou s in Strindberg . Uncon scious ly he “yearn s retro

gres s iv ely from the struggles of life towards the safehaven of childhood,

”(34 p . 149) and the failure to rea lize th is

ardent desi re i s the main source of his p sych ic conflict.In the first chapter of Married (64 p . 9 ff) he gives a very

sympathetic description of h imself and his mother—the mother


who thought on ly of heaven and the ch ildren,who had always

been her husband’ s truest friend,the on ly human being who had

never been j ealou s or envious and who had never contradicted him .

During the twelve month s of her illness,he tell s us

,he had

come to know her personally and a very close relation ship hadsprung up between them, a relation ship , he emphasizes , that isra re between parents and children . In the story last quoted herep resents himself as a young boy, the son of a professor . Hewrites

,

The mother on the other hand,wa s not a well educated woman .

She had merely been head housekeeper and children’ s nurse in her hu s

band ’s house . Numerous births and countless V igils (she had not sleptthrough a s ingle night for the last s ixteen years) had exhausted herstrength . When she became bedridden at the age of thirty—n ine and wa sno longer able to manage the house

, she made the a cquaintance of hers econd son .

Now that her part a s mother of the family wa s played to the end and

nothing remained of her but a poor invalid , the o ld—fashioned relationship of stri ct dis cipline , tha t ba rrier between parents and children wassuperseded . The thirteen—yea r—o ld boy was almost constantly at herbedside , reading to her whenever he was not at school or doing homelessons . She had many question s to ask and he had a grea t deal toexp lain , and, therefore, all those distinguishing marks erected by age andpos ition van ished one after another;if there wa s a superior at all it wasthe son .

But the mother also had much to teach, for she had learned her lessonin the school of life, and so they were alternately teacher and pupil .They discussed all subjects . With the tact of a mother and the

modesty of her sex, she told her son all that he should know of themystery of life . He wa s still innocent, but he had heard many thingsdiscussed by the boys at school which had shocked and disgusted him .

The mother explained to him a ll she could exp lain , warned him of thegreatest dangers to a young man, and exacted a p romise from him neverto vis it a house of ill—fame

,not even out of curiosity

,because

,as she

pointed out, in such a case no man could ever trust h imself. And sheimplored him to lead a temperate life and turn to God in prayer whenever temptation as saulted him .

By this time the bankruptcy o i the father had been forgotten

,the family had moved in to better quarters and pro sperity

reigned in the home . Life now looked bright to the young boy.

He no longer,

felt the unbearable pressure of past years and hewould in all probability have found, he assures us , an easy paththrough life , had not Fate willed otherwise .

It was the mother,the ruling pas sion of h is young life , that


now cast a sudden impenetrable gloom over his budding l ife .

She had now been ill for a year and was not expected to l ive .

One night he wa s aroused from his sleep and in the dark heheard a deep trembling voice calling him to his mother’ s dea thbed . (68 p . 86

It went through him like a flash of lightning. He froze and trembledwhile dress ing

,his head felt ice-cold

,his eyes were wide open and the

tears streamed so freely that the lamp flame appeared like a red blur.And now they stood by the death bed and wept for hours Hismother was unconscious and recogn ized none of them Johnthought of all the sins he had committed and found no good deeds tocounterbalance them . After three hours of weeping his thoughts beganto take various directions “How will it be

,he a sked himself

,“when mother 1s no longer thei'c ?” Nothing but emp tiness and desolation; no comfort, no compensation . There was nothing but a deepgloom in which he searched for a ray of light .

And now h is eyes fell on the mother’ s chests of drawers andhe happened to thin k that in it lay the on ly compen sation for h isloss

,the gold ring that his mother had promised him . He would

wear this ring and weep when it reminded him of her . Thesethoughts he immediately repressed, he tell s us , but no matter howdeep within him this incident was buried, he could never forget it .

It kept turn ing up now and then , and when he thought of it duringsleeples s nights and in hours of weariness , he felt a flush of shame mountto his cheeks . Then he began to examine himself and his conduct andreproached himself with being the meanest of all men .

On the day of the bu rial he was ab le to exerci se perfect contro l

, p robably because of the fact that he felt concerned andsomewhat respon sible for the younger members of the family .

To Strindberg,b lood was always thicker than water . That is

,

indeed,one of his traits . He states elsewhere (69 p . 44) that

he could not see any one of his own flesh and blood sufferwithout feeling it intensely . This was but another in stance of his lackof independence, a proof of the irrefutable reality of consanguinity, ofthe umbilical cord

,which could not be cut but only gnawed off .

Now when he felt the small trembling body of his infantsister clinging to him he suddenly became po ssessed of a strengthwhich he had not experienced heretofo re . Disconsolate

,he was

ab le to con sole and in quieting her he himself became quiet .With reference to h is mou rn ing of the mother he makes the


rather su rp rising statement that his sen se of real loss scarcelylasted more than three months . This statement he immed iatelyreinforces or rather rej ects by saying that he mourned her lo ssmuch longer

,but that was more because of a need to con tinue

in that mood,which was one of n atural melancho ly .

The two main components of Strindberg’ s p sychic attitude

towards the father are admiration and fear . His admiration fo rhim 1s due m a great degree to the fact that he could trace hisorigin back to nobility

,which p laces him ln the sharpes t contrast

to his p lebeian wife who , to use Strindberg’ s own words (69, p

was a poor tailor’ s daughter sent out into life by her stepfather to

make her own living,first as a servant girl and later as a café waitress

,

1n wh1ch position she was d is covered by John’ s father.

Desp ite the fact tha t their relation s were seriously s trainedeven from the earliest childhood , John could not but admire h isfather . Not on ly was he deep ly impressed by the manner inwhich he dealt with the servants , since it bespoke authority and

power, bu t he wa s infa tuated with his father’ s personality . His

features , beautifully regular and strong , his neat appearance , cleanlinen

,full beard

,h is spectacles , his hair combed according to the

style of Louis-Philippe , his bearing in general—e verything in hismakeup proc laimed the man of aristocratic blood .

But here his admira tion ended . No matter how sincere itwas

,it was always overshadowed by an ungovernable fear

,at

least during his pre—pubertal stage of development . A s to whatextent thi s fea r was j ustifiable we cannot long be in doubt if werecall that the

. di scip l ine of the home was mos t severe and that itoften bordered on cruelty which wa s largely enforced by thefather . The mere men tion of his name wa s enough to striketerror in the hearts of the children . The threat to tell father, wa siden tica l with a thrashing (op . cit. p

At the cry: Father 1s coming, the children ran and hid themselvesor rushed into the nursery to be combed and washed . At the tab lethere was a death-like silence and the father spoke but little.

In referring to the strict discip line of the home Strindberg

tells u s that falsehood was subj ect to merciles s punishment . This

also app lied to disobedience in general . As a typ ica l examp le of

the manner in which the boy was taught the value of truthfulness

I cite the ep isode of an emptied wine flask (68 p . 1 0)


One day during the midday meal his father examined the wineflask .

It was empty .

“Whohas drunk the wine,

” he asked,looking around the

circle . No one answered,but John b lushed .

“ It is you then,

” said the father. John who had never noticed wherethe wineflask was hidden burst into tears and sobbed : “I did not drinkthe wine .

” “So you lie, too. When dinner is over you will get something .

The thought of what he would get after dinner,as well as the continued

remarks about John ’ s secretiveness caused his tears to flow even faster.They arose from the tab le .

“Come here

,

” said the father,and went into

the bedroom . His mother followed .

“Ask father

’s forgiveness

,

” she saidas the father took down the rod from behind the mirror.

“Dear Papa , forgive me ,

” cried the innocent child . But now it was toolate

,he had confes sed the theft and the mother as sisted in the execution .

John howled from rage and pain but chiefly from a sen se of humiliation .

Ask father’ s forgiveness now,repeated the mother. The child looked

at her and desp ised her. He now felt lonely and deserted by her to whomhe had always fled to find comfort and con solation, but so seldom justice .

He again asked his father’ s forgiveness with compressed, lying lip s .

Then he s to le away to the kitchen, to the nursemaid who a l

ways combed and washed him,to sob away his grief in her apron .

In rep ly to her question a s to what he had done he an swerednothing .

” Just then the mother appeared and overheard John’ s

denial . Once more he wa s fetched into the bedroom and tortureduntil he had confessed an offence of which he was not guilty .

Vividly reca lling these experiences he cried out with indignation more than thirty years later (op . cit. pp . 1 1-1 2 )

Splendid moral institution , sacred family, unassailable and divinelyappointed, where citizens are to be educated in truth and virtue . Thoupretended home of the virtuous , where innocent children are torturedinto their first falsehood, where wills are broken by tyranny, and selfrespect killed by narrow egoism . Family

,thou art the home of all social

evils,a charitable institution for comfortable women

,an anchorage for

fathers and a hell for children .

After this day, he declares, he lived in perpetua l fear and wasabsolutely iso lated. He suspected enemies everywhere . God ,he knew only in his prayers but in the dark he had, l ikethe savage and the animal, premonition s of evil sp irits .

Fear is,a s we know, the attribute par excellence of the weak

and help less . In the same degree a s the individual’ s physica l

s trength and mental powers increase , and p roviding , of course ,that the fear is not succes sful ly repressed, it changes into defiance and hate . This is p lainly the case with Strindberg . Neverin his life was he able to forget comp letely the unju st treatment

A PSYCHOANALYT IC STUDY 3 1

received during his childhood at the hands of his parents . A ssoon , therefore , a s his strength permitted, he challenged his father,mother and the other members of the family . One or two examp le s will suffi ce to illustrate his behavior . After having described in the minutest detail how he successfu lly picked a quarrelwith h is father and how by means of a s killful and maliciou s manipu lation of the material at his disposal he succeeded in giv

ing his mother the lie, he Says (69, p . 64)

The coldnes s towards the father increases and now he (John) is on thelookout for acts of oppress1on, and desp ite his weakness he makesattempts at rebelhon on a small scale .

One of the many ways in which he tried out his strength and

the safety of his policy of oppos ition wa s by refusing to go tochurch . When he found that this might be done with impunity,he grew bo lder .

The gradually increasing tension between the father and theson reached its culmination when , less than twelve mon ths afterthe death of his wife , the father announced his intention of marrying the housekeeper . Strindberg says (0p . cit. p . 92 )

The two elder brothers took the matter lightly and were resigned .

The father-cult was their religion . They believed,never doubted .

They had never thought of fatherhood as being an accident that mightbefa ll anyone .Bu t John doubted . He fell into endless disputes with his brothers

and attacked the father for becoming engaged before the exp iration ofthe conventional period of mourning . He conjured up the shades of hi smother, prophes ied disaster and ruin , and worked himself up about it andwent to extremes .

Later on at a gathering of the new relatives in the home,he abso lutely refused to meet them . His father wa s vexed but

did not wish to show it. After exchanging a few unfriendly

words wi th the father, the boy went upstairs to his room (Op . Cit .

p 93 )

Here it was cold and dark and he could not work on account of themusic and the dancing below Hungry and angry he pacedup and down the room . At intervals he wanted to go downstairs whereit was light, warm ,

and cheerful, and several times he took hold of thedoor knob . But he turned back for he was shy He went tobed hungry and considered himself the most unfortunate creature in theworld .


On his father’ s wedding day he revolted . He did not kis sthe bride like the brothers and sisters

,but withdrew to the toddy

room where he became somewhat intoxicated .

About this time he entered the Gymnasium . This meant adecided rise in the world . From the point of view of the schoo lauthorities he was no longer a boy . The conditions of the homecontinued to be the same, or became worse . Under the newregime of the s tepmother -food was scarce , and the father refusedto provide him with proper clothing and up

-to—date text books,on

which account the boy became an obj ect of ridicule among hisschoo lmates . What depressed him was that th i s poverty wa simpo sed up on him as a retal iation , a pun i shment , for it wa s not anecessity. When he comp lained about it to his brothers theyto ld him not to be proud . He now came to the conclusion thatthe difference in his and their education had opened up a gulf between them . They belonged to a different clas s in society andranged themselves on the side of the father who wa s of their cla s sand the one in autho rity .

But there wa s yet another kind of humiliation o r pun i shmentin store fo r him . In sp ite of the fact that there wa s no lack ofservan t s in the home

,the boy was aroused early each morning

and sent out on different errands . When p leading lack of timehe wa s i nvariab ly told that he would always find time fo r hisstudies . Later in life he asked himself whether a ll thi s had beendone pu rposely, i . e .

,whether the father thus endeavored to

counteract the harmful effects of excess ive brain a ctivities,or

whether it wa s fo r some other reason un known to the boy. Hehimself failed to see any beneficent intention in the matter . Hesays (op . cit. p

The whole affair seemed so dictated by malice and an intention tocause pain that it was 1mpo ss 1ble for him to di scover any good purposethough it may have ex1sted along with the evil one .

To relate even superficially the continuou s conflicts , r eal

and imaginary,extending over the adolescent period of the boy

would ca ll for more space than this study could well afford to

give to the subj ect. Nor is it neces sary . The antagon ism and

enmity between the father and the stepmother on the one handand the future famou s author on the other, I trust I have demonstrated beyond a shade of doubt. The significance of these re

lations will be dealt with p resently.



from an overruling feeling of inferiority,and all his after life was a series

of desperate efforts to work himself out of this . All thathe aimed to construct to this end soon collap sed and he again stood in thesame place as before . In sp ite of all his unprecedented power for creating

,he never succeeded in bringing out one single value that became

established for himself or could Show a way for others it all dissolvedin chaos . Finally he succumbed to the feeling of inferiority with whichhe started out

,dying with the cross before his eyes and hate in hl S heart;

the cross,which i s the everlasting symbol of inab ility to master the

earthly life,and hate

,which is only the negation of all emotional value .

And again (7 pp . 1 54- 1 55)

One of Adler’ s most faithful adherents , Freschl, has recently devotedhimself to a study of Strindberg’ s book For Pay. This points outhow

,for the author

,everything was a question of power, an effort to

demonstrate hi s superiority . He feels his inferiority in regard to womanand marries three times in hopes of finally becoming master over someone . At the bottom of hi s inclination to endow woman at one and thesame time with irres istib le charm

,and with the most horrible qualities

,

lies one of those Strange stratagems which are so often met with inneurotics ;he does it to p rotect himself from the humiliation which otherwise would mean his going under in the battle again st her

,for no one

need be ashamed of being unab le to withstand such monsters of artificeand enchantment as he makes his fictitious women appear to be . Helenmust conquer in order to Show the dangerous power of whi ch she isposses sed and it is easy to understand the need of the man to protect

(himself again st her—against woman— etc . Out of Strindberg’ s life

.and out of all his books it i s easy to see how aggression tendenciesoriginated from a neurotic thought s cheme

,to which he must cling in

order to as sure himself,since he plainly felt how great was his insecurity

aga in st woman . Thi s feeling of powerles sness in the struggle aga insther was

,however

,only one expression standing out in the foreground,

for a general feeling of inferiority which he had with him from the verybeginning . When Strindberg speaks of love between man and woman

,

5 it does not mean anything like love,but only the question whi ch of the

l\two shall get the better of the other in the struggle for power.

Since I have not had acces s to Fre sch l’ s study, I cannot discus s its merits but Strindberg’ s story i s not

,in my op inion , good

proof o f his desire for power or a demonstration of superiority.

The story in question may be found in Married (64 p . 26 1 ff. )under the title of Corinna , and I leave it to the reader to decidewhether it is anyth ing else than a sex duel conceivable in the ca seof any man who is unfortunate enough to marry a woman suffering from chronic sexual ana sthes ia , and accompanying masculinetendencies . A far better field for the g lean ing of proofs of hiss truggle for power wherewith to counterba lance his deep-seated


and inten se feeling of inferiority and threatened security may befound in his autobiographical works .

It seems to me after a careful perusal of a large number ofStrindberg’ s representative works , a s well as of critici sm and

inte rp retation , that in spite of his marked egocentric tendencies ,which mus t be recognized

,one would have to be especially biased

in favor of the Adlerian theory in order to make it the exclusivebasis for a psycho-analytic study of the man .

In his Maker: of Man , Charles J . Whitby (76 p . 3 16) makesthe following significant statement

No investigation of the types of human greatness could be in anyway satisfactory—it i s futile to talk of “ completeness

” in such a connection—which ignored the great question of their sexual proclivities .In no other manifestation of temperament or character are more sigmificant glimp ses to be obtained of the fundamental spiritua l attitude towards life and its responsibilities , whose diagnosis is the ultimate des ideratum of ethological scrutiny. A man’ s conception of womanhoodin general

,and of his relation thereto

,i s one of the main expression s ,

perhap s the main expression of hi s genera l instinctive bias . It colors ,for good or evil, his entire emotional and intellectual being and largelydetermines his rank in the scale of sp iritual values .

This is undoubtedly true not only of types of human greatness

,but of man in general, no matter what his intellectual and

other endowments may be . That it is eminently true of S trindberg I shall endeavor to prove in the following pages , and to thisend I will immediately proceed to a consideration of his familycon stellat ion . Let us begin with his father .

Freud ( 19) ha s pointed out, and it has been corroborated“

by Jung,and others , that the father

’ s influence upon the childexerts the most lasting of all influences and i s of an overwhelmingimportance in any later neurosis .

Says Jung (36 p . 1 56)

This relationship i s in fact the infantile channel par excellence inwhich the libido flows back when it encounters any obstacles in lateryears

,thus revivifying long-forgotten dreams of childhood . It is ever

so in life when we draw back from too great an obstacle—the menaceof some severe disappointment or the risk of some too-far—reachingdecision—the energy Stored up for the solution of the task flows backimpotent; the by—streams once relinquished as inadequate are againfilled up . He who has mis sed the happiness of a woman

’ s love fallsback

,as a sub stitute, upon some gushing friendship;upon ma sturbation ,

upon religiosity; should he be a neurotic, he plunges still further backinto the condition s of childhood which have never been quite forsaken ,


to which indeed the normal is fettered by more than one link—he re

turns to the relationship to father and mother.

For a fuller treatment of the subject, the reader is referredto th e work of Dr . Emma Fii rst (28) whose achievemen ts in this

particular field are of Special importance .But the far-reaching importance of the father comp lex is

perhap s most convincingly demonstrated by Jung (36 p . 1 72)in his chapter on the significance of the father .He says :

If now we survey all the far-reaching possibilities of the infantilelconstellation we are forced to say that i n c::ence our life

’:fate 1: identical

wi th the fate of our :exua lity. If Freud and hi s school devote them11 selves first and foremost to tracing out the individual’ s sexuality it i scertainly not in order to excite piquant sensation s , but to gain a deeperin s ight into the driving forces that determine the individual ’ s fate.If we can strip off the veil shrouding the problems of individual destiny,we can afterwards widen our view from the history of the individual tothe history of nations . And first of all we can look at the history ofreligions

,at the history of the phantasy systems of whole peoples and

epochs .

And so he goes on to Show (op . cit. pp . 1 73-74) that the Old

Testament raised the Pater fami liar to the position of Jehovah of

the Jews,whom the peop le worshipped in fear and dread . The

Patriarch s played an interm ediate role between man and theDeity . The neu rotic awe and dread of the Jewish religion he

pronounces an un successful attempt at the sublimation of a stilltoo barbarous peop le and hence the excessive severity of theMosaic Law

,the ceremonial con straint of the neurotic .

The on ly ones who succeeded in freeing themselves from thiscons traint

,he continues

,were the prophets , who actua lly identi

fied themselves with Jehovah and thus became the fathers of the

peop le . Through Christ, who was the fulfi lment of the prophecy,the fear of God ends, forHis message was and is that God is love.But later successful sublimation of the Christian Mas s once moreleads to the ceremonia l of the Chu rch from which , occas ionally,some minds—saints and reformers—capable of sublimationhave been able to del iver themselves .

This development of world processes is also seen in theindividual . The parents con stitute the child

’ s higher controlling

power . Bu t a s the child grows the clash between the infantilecomp lex and his budding individuality is inevitable . Parental

AE’

PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY 37

influence is now forced below the threshold of con sciousness,but

that does not mean that it is eliminated . For we must remember,

—first that one of the most salient characteristics of the Uncon-fsciou s is its absolu te reten tiveness

,and secondly that its entire

content is dynamic . And so,as by invisible threads , as Jung

says , the paternal influence directs the creative impulses of theoffspring and thus makes poss ible the first religious sub limation .

In due time the father with all his faults and Virtues disappearsand in his p lace appears a duality . On the one hand the Deity

,

on the other the Devil . In the case of the neurotics God is theSymbo l of comp lete sexual repression and the devil that of sexuallus t .

Pfister (45 , pp . 147 , 575 and footnote 26) in the discus sionof the fa ther and mother comp lexes shares the views of Freudand Jung . He quotes some of the Saviour’ s many utterances a sregards the necessity of liberation from the father imago; jus ta s he himself effected a comp lete emancipation from his mother .He quotes the pos tula te of sublimation formulated in MatthewXXI I I

, 9 :

And call no man your father on the earth; for one is your Father,even He who i s in heaven .

Thereby Jesus has relieved the harmful fixation and broken the

bonds of free personal development.

In this connection he also cites Hebbel’ s statement in h is

Aufzeichnungen au: meinem Leben (Chap . V) where he tells us

how religion helped him to cut the menta l navel string which hadpreviously bound him exclusively to his p arents .

The S ign ificance of the influence,conscious and unconscious ,

of the father upon Strindberg’ s l ife can hardly be over esti

mated. To him he owes , to a very large degree—just as Schopenhauer did to h iS

’ father— his invetera te cynicism , aggressivenessand will to power . To the father influence we may also attributehis unquenchable thirst for knowledge , hi s incorruptible honesty,rigid tru thfulness , his sen s itivenes s to pressure , the primitiveforce of his respon se to environmental s timuli, his dualism ,

ex

pressed by his con tinual warfare between the spirit and the flesh, lh is religious doubts and general skepticism and sense of j us tice .

’

The stern,un sympathetic father who , as I have already

shown, puni shed him severely and too often unjus tly, bred in the]


2child a deep , bitter hatred which he soon tran sferred upon civilization a t large with all its restrain ing influences . It was thefather who awakened in the boy the primitive man who foughtfor his primitive , unlimited rights . In school and co llege his

lattitude towards his teachers was largely that which he assumedtowards his father . In his dis cus sion of the father comp lex Frink2527 p . 2 14) quotes one of his patients as saying :

I have always been so afraid of doing something wrong,that I have

never yet done anything right.

That is a true Strindberg sentiment expressed more thanonce . His whole ch i ldhood is characterized

,as we know

,by

over conscientiousness . His entire l ife up to the Inferno periodshows in a most con sp icuou s manner a transferrence of the hostile,defiant feelings of his father comp lex upon such surrogates as

University professors , military forces , civic and national governments , prominent individuals in Swedish history (kings , poets,artists) , religious institution s and dogma

,theatrical managers

,

newspaper editors ,— the world and all that the human kind holdsdear . His was the spi rit of the iconoclast,

the active atheist,ra iler at conventional restraint .

Toward the age of fifty an over compen sation developed and

ambivalen tly he went to the other extreme of religiou s fan aticism .

If we bear his home environment in mind we can ea sily unders tand his horror of authority and the enthusiasm with which helooked forward to the atmosphere of freedom at the University,and with which he embraced everything revo lu tionary and an

a rch ic during the subsequen t thirty years of h is life . It is nowonder that h i s enthusiasm broke all bounds when he discoveredSchiller ’ s Die Rduber and tha t he swo re immediately by KarlMoor who voiced his own hostility towards the p latitudinou sconven tionalities of life . Here he had found a truly kindredsoul who preached in surrection again s t laws , morals and religion .

Again,it is in part an uncon scious revo lt again st his father ,

the tyrant of his childhood and you th , that throws him with irres istible force into the rio ting crowds on the side of the massesto whom he is related by ties of blood and sentiment (63 p . 70 ff) .The same sp irit of defiance moves his hand when he sits down toSketch the drama j eru: of Nazareth designed to wipe Christian ityfrom the face of the earth . Thorwaldsen

,the hero of h is j uven ile


p lay In Rome (67 pp . 1 86 facing the gigantic statue of Jason,

ready to batter it down with a sledge-hammer,is truly symbolic

of the youthfu l author’ s real attitude towards the object of hisdeep , unconscious hatred and aversion— his father .

That Strindberg’ s fate was also clo sely bound up with and

largely shaped by physical qualities inherited from the fa theris certain . He inherited from him that rugged physique whichsaved him from p remature death and the madhouse on more thanone occas ion . I n h is writings he has made little direct mention ofhis father , bu t l ike Goethe , he has to ld us what he con s idered wash is inheri tance from both his father and mother.

InMarried (64 p . 1 3 ) he says

One might compare the boy’ s character to an ill-proportioned com

pensation pendulum;it contained too much soft material of the mother,not enough hard meta l of the father . Friction and irregular oscillation swere the natural consequences .

Bu t there is still another angle from which we must viewthe relat ion of father and son , in order to be able to appreciateto the fu llest extent the son’ s attitude towards the father . Those !who are familiar with the Freudian p sycho-analytic theory, are !well aware of the fact that until Freud’ s epoch making discov ery, iin the early eighties of las t century

,of the cause of hysteria and

1his subsequen t formula tion of the theory of sex and the incest .

motive as the nuclear comp lex of the neuros is , nothing was known lof the close and pecu liar relations of the child to its parents . The

s

child was con sidered asexual up to the time of puberty when therep roductive in stinct manifested itself all at once . Now it is awell known fact

,even if not generally accepted, tha t the child

passes through three distinct s tages of sexual development andthat its future depends upon the succes sfu l pas sing of the preinhibitory

,latency and pubertal periods . Frink writes (27 p .

It will be suffi cient . to say, that every step in ontogeneticdevelopment, every transition that must be pas sed through, offerspossibilities of morbid disturbances through a persis tence of thi s or thatphase that should normally be pa s sed, through the opening up of avenuesfor aberrant development, or through the formation of locu: minori:re:i:tentiae at which the apparently normally accomplished sexualsynthesis may give way under the strain and Stress of adult life .

Despite the fact tha t there is still in the child at this stage

of development— the preinhibitory, from three to four years of


age—no sexual synthesis

,the infantile eroticism

,according to

F reud , and others , is not so widely different from adult sexua lityas might be expected .

At any rate before the termination of the period the libidoturn s outward and it is s ignifican t tha t a ch ild even at this earlyage shows p reference fo r the oppo s ite sex . Here begins theserious development of the child

’s sexual life . Jea lousy of realor apparent rivals is evidently raging in the breast of the childlong before it can be detected or its in tensi ty can be determinedby the untrained mind . A clas s ica l examp le is that of little Hansof whom Freud ( 17 pp . 1- 1 22 ) says in his Analyri: of the Phobiaof a F ive-year—old Boy:

I n his relation to father and mother Hans confirms most emphaticallya nd palpably everything that I have as serted in the Interpretation ofD reams

,and in the Sexual Theory concerning the sexual relation of

children to their parents . He is truly a little O edipus who would liketo see his father out of the way in order to be alone with his handsomemother and to sleep with her.

This early selection of the love-obj ect is the foundation of thefamily constellation known in psycho-ana lysis as the OedipusComp lex for the male and the Electra Complex for the femalechild.

The latency period is one of repres sion of sexual in stinctsth rough the ethical and aes thetic forces of inhibition incidentto later sexual life . This making over

,so to spea k , o f the p rimitive

ins tincts for higher purposes is called sublimat ion . This p rocessmay be only partially successful and sex- life may take very definite forms even at this early age . In children showing suchtendencies later neuros is or sexual abnorm alities may be expected .

This is exactly what happened in the ca se of S trindberg.

Long before the advent of puberty it may be assumed with greatcertainty tha t his sex- life reached an abnormal development .The fi rst proof that I venture to offer is the fact that h is earliestimp res sions of life were fear a nd hunger . Freud (23 p . 83 ) says

The fear expressed by children is originally nothing but an expressionfor the fact that they mis s the beloved person . They

,therefore

,meet

every stranger with fear,they are afraid of the dark because they cannot

see the beloved person and are calm if they can grasp that person’ s hand .

With this we may well compare Strindberg’ s excessively de

v eloped fea r so graphically described in The Son of a Servant.



The early awakened auto-eroticism makes the child more unfitted forbringing up , the prevention Of bad

,uncivilized impulses becomes

diffi cult from the outs ide,for the same reason the child does not adapt

its elf to cultural l ife and becomes evil and unamenable . At the sametime there ari ses in him further supports for his cowardice, shynes s andanxiety

,and he seeks comfort and protection for the understanding

which he has of the s in in childish superstitions and religious phantasieswith unfortunate results . In the psycho-analysis of neurotic p ersons wefind both in the ideological sexual superstructure . Phys iologicallyviewed it i s compensation of the sexual organs in the psychomotor field,strengthening and check . How often these happenings become thefoundations of psychoneuros is as soon as compensatory interruptionand recip rocal effects of two inferior psychomotor fields occur

,Freud

has irrefutably shown in his psycho-analytic material .

Bu t even if we were not in posses sion of all these facts , manyother circumstances migh t be brought forth a s potent causesof Strindberg’ s early awakened sex- life . S ays Freud (2 3 p .

! uarrels between the parents and unhappy marital relations b etweenthe same determine the s everest predi spo smons for disturbed s exualdevelopment or neurotic disease in the chlldren .

And again (op . cit . p . 98)

Sexual prematuri ty often runs parallel with premature intellectualdevelopment; it is found as such in the infantile his tory of the mostdistinguished and most productive individua ls and in such connectioni t does not seem to act so pathogenically as when appearing isolated .

Among the many conditions actively favoring that phase ofthe child’ s development which I have d iscussed may also be mentioned the cramped quarters in which he was reared . Even inthe least favorab le mi lieu we know tha t when the child begin s tohave a faint realization of self as distinguished from h is surroundings

,he begins a mo re or less tho roughgoing sexual investigation .

This is abou t the time of tran s ition from the infanti le to thelatency period . He becomes interested in his own o rigin and thato f others . The many stories of the stork , the doctor, etc . , furn ishirrefu table proof of the universality of such infantile activities .The sexual investiga tion normally comes to an end at the beginning of the latency or inhibition period and all memories ofthe child’s ea rly Speculation van ish from the mind. But beforethe approach of puberty a second period begins . The childrennow discuss the matter open ly with one another and in ra re casesthey learn the whole truth of reproduction from parents , guardians


or teachers . But as a rule their theories are even now absurd .

Some ch ildren , however, particularly those who share the bedroom with their parents , neces sarily must arrive at conclusion sdifferent from those of ch ildren who have been in a less favorable

pos ition for making observation s . The former are apt to con

ceiv e of parenta l sex-life as an act of aggression as Freud (Op . cit.

p . 57) has pointed out. He says

If children of so delicate an age become spectators of the sexual actbetween grown-ups . it impresses them in a sadistic sense .

Psycho-analysis also teaches u s that such an early impress ion contributesmuch to the disposition for a later sadistic displacement of the sexua la1m.

Now if we take into consideration that Strindberg in all

p robability not on ly shared the bedroom with his parents bu t a ttimes th eir bed, that bi rths and deaths, baptisms and burialsa lterna ted in rap id succes sion and tha t the child was more ob servant because of his exces sive nervousness

,we are forced to the

conclusion that h is milieu was a most favorable one for the dev elopment of abnormal infantile phan tasies . This helps to ex

p lain h is sexual aggressiveness in later life .

I mus t,therefore , conclude from the evidence that I have

presen ted here as well a s in preceding chapters , and from anabundance of materia l that I cannot deal with in this connection

,

tha t S trindberg,because of his premature sexual development

and fix ation on his mother, early began to regard his father as anintruder and a dangerous rival .The male child’ s p sycho—sexua l fixation on the mother and

al l that it imp lies , repulsive as it is , is something which may no tbe exp lai ned on the bas is of assumed abnorm al developmen t andas appertain ing on ly to the degenerate and the neurotic . Indiscuss ing the tragic fate of Oedipus Tyrannus , Freud says

( 19 p

There must be a voice within u s which is prepared to recognize thecompelling power of fate, while we justly condemn the situations occurring in Die Ahnfrau or in the tragedies of later date as arbitrary inv entions . And there must be a factor corresponding to this inner voicein the story of King Oedipus . Hi: fate move: u: onlyfor the rea:on that

itmight have been can , for the Oracle ha: pu t the .rame cur:e upon u: beforeour birth a: upon him. Perhap s we are all destined to direct our firstsexual impulses towards our mother and our first hatred and violentwishes towards our father;our dreams convince us of it. King O edipus ,who has struck his father Laius dead and has married his mother Jocasta ,


is nothing but a realized wish of our childhood . But more fortunatethan he, we have since succeeded, unless we have become p sycho—neurotics

,in withdrawing our sexual impulses from our mothers and in

forgetting our j ealousy of our fathers . We recoil from the person forwhom thi s primitive wish has been fulfilled with all the force of repress ionwhich these wishes have suffered within u s . By his analysis , showingus the guilt of Oedipus , the poet urges us to recognize our own inner self,in which these impulses , even if suppressed, are still presentLike O edipus , we live m ignorance of the wishes that offend morality,wishes which nature has forced upon us , and after the revelation ofwhich we want to avert every glance from the scenes of our childhood .

To wha t extent the incestuous impulse is fundamenta l in thedevelopment O f a ll that humanity understands by cu lture in thefulles t sense of the word, the voluminous psycho-analytic literature has shown in as ton ishing detail . Besides Freud I needmention on ly such names as Havelock Ellis , F rink , Hugo Hellmuth , Ernest Jones , Jung, Adler, Moll, Reitler, Pfister, Bleu ler,Putnam

,White

, Jelliffe , Brill , Ferenczi , Abraham ,Stekel

,Reik

and Rank (48) Whose monumental work Da: I uze:t-Moti v in

Dichtung und Sage affords us an in sight, from the Freudian po intof view

,i n to the inner structure of artistic creation and the con

ditions and processes underlying them . Here the individual rootsin their incredible ramifications a re shown in the types of therepresentative incest dramas of the world

’ s literature,ancient and

modern . Here the life and death s truggle of all the untold agesbetween father and son , as recorded in myth , fable , Chris tianLegends and Holy Writ, stands forth in a ll its repulsivenes s .Here aga in . the rela tion of fa ther and daughter, that of brotherand s ister, sheds new light upon human life and its hidden motives .Here finally the problem of gen ius has been represented as inseparab ly bound up with the nuclear comp lex of the neuros isinces t— from Sophocles to Ibsen . Says Pfi ster (45 p . 301 )

Whether the incest is constantly the innermost nucleus of the symbols ,a s Freud assumes

,or whether the incest wish

,even where it expresses a

natural des ire,i s to be constantly solved as symbol

,as Jung as serts

,is

for me undecided . As remarked before ( 165) I cons ider the incestuouswish to be the expression of an actual wish whi ch bears witness to old

inhibitions without including at the same time a sublimated impulse .

ts

Whether we accept the one or the other interpretation of theOedipus phantasy undoubtedly depends in the fina l analys is

“Cf Riklin (49) Oedipu: und Pm . Wi::en und Leben V 19 1 2 , p 5 52 .


upon the success or failure of our own infantile sexual development; But a recognition of the Oedipus comp lex in essence , itseems to me

,as demonstrated in the works already referred to

and those of Westermark (75) and Marcuse (41 ) to mention no

others , is inevitable . Fo r while we are today far removed fromthe necess ity of being under the restraint of incest taboos

,such

a s described by Freud (24) or of the curse of Deuteronomywe are all struggling under the constraint of our moral

,religious

,

ethica l and aesthetic codes with the Titan within u s .We are compelled to realize the truth of Dr . White

’ s (77 p .

147) statemen t,

That in the life history of every individual who grows to adulthoodthere comes a time when he must emancipate himself from the thraldomof the home . He must break away from his infantile moorings , and goforth into the world of reality and win there a place for himself. Th i si s not to be understood to mean that he must simply physically leave thehome but he must leave it in his feelings , he must put aside hischildhood, put away his infantile attachments and conquer his ownworld . While this is necessary it is extremely painful and many personsnever accomp lish it . They are the future neurotics .

I have already p resented evidence , irrefutable in my op inion,of S trindberg’ s inces tuous attachment to his mother . Bu t evenif we were to ignore it all

,even if we attached no importance

wha tever to such a statement of his as this , viz . (69 p . tha tsons are reared as if th ey were to be sons for life withou t a Singlethought of the fact that nature had the parental function in V iew,

or again,tha t (Op . cit . p . 1 52 ) in every young woman who aroused

the love emotions in his bosom,he saw part o f his mother; o r

again tha t,as he said later in life , he never could tell whether he

was looking to women for a mother’ s love or for that of a mistress,

I could p o int to even more Conclusive evidence in his adult lifeand activities and particu larly and natural ly in his relation to theOppo site sex .

We could, therefore , waive all evidence produced of his in

fantile object selection and begin with its obvious after effectsabou t the time of puberty . Says Freud (2 3 p .

Even those who have happily eluded the incestuous fixation of theirlibido have not completely escaped its influence . It is a distinct echoof this phas e of development that the first serious love of the young manis O ften for a mature woman , and that of a girl for an older man equippedwith authority

,i . e .

,for person s who can revive in them the picture of

the mother and the father The man seeks ‘above all the memory


p icture of his mother as it has dominated him since the beginning ofchfldhood .

Now let u s see how this corresponds with the facts in Strindberg’ s case . In chapter VII of The Son of a Servant he tell s u sthat when he was fifteen years of age he fell in love with a womanof thi rty . I f

,as he says (68 p .

it rea lly was love and not mere friendship .

I n response to h is own question a s to how he came to love herhe states (op . cit . p . 1 3 2 ff . ) that it was not from one motive butfrom many .

She was the landlord’ s daughter and had, as such, a superior position .

The house was well appointed and always open to vis itors . She wascultivated

,admired

,managed the house and spoke familiarly to her

mother; she could play the hostess and lead the conversation; she wasalso surrounded by men who courted her . She was emancipated withoutbeing a man hater; she smoked and drank, but was not without taste .She was engaged to a man whom her father hated and did not wish tohave for a son-in-law. Her fiancé stayed abroad and wrote seldom .

Among the visitors to her home were students,clerics

,a D istrict Judge

,

a man of letters,and townsmen who all hovered about her . John’ s

father admired her,his stepmother feared her and his brothers courted

her.

According to his description of her, she was tall and mascu lineand suffered from dropsy and Bright

’ s disease . It seemed ab surdto him to be in love with such a woman and ye t he was in lovewith her for she had him fi rmly under her control .After having described their fi rst conversation he says (op .

cit . p . 1

After this she as sumed an air of superiority and became motherly .

This made a deep impression upon him ,and when later she was teased

because of her fondness for him she felt almost a shamed, banished allother feelings except that of motherliness and began to labor for his convers ion

,for she also was a pietist .

The following s tatement concern ing hi s attitude towards heris s ignificant (69 p .

John never concentrated his thoughts on her body,he only noticed her

eyes which were deep (dark ?) and full of expression . Nor was it exactlythe mother whom he worshipped in her, for he never longed to put hishead in her lap , no matter how unhappy he wa s , as he always wished to


do in the case of other women . He also had a horror of touching her,

not the horror of secret desire,but of aversion . He danced with her

once, but never again . It was probably only friendship and her souland body were masculine enough to make friendship poss ible .

This is no Sign that she was a poor surrogate for the mother .It is rather a good examp le of vigorous unconscious resistanceneces sary to counteract his incestuous desires and thus on ly one

of the many defence mechanisms characteristic of the neurotic .Space forbids a detailed treatment of his psychic develop

men t so graphical ly described in volumes I I and III of his autobiography (63 , covering the years of 1 867- 1 877 . I t may becharacterized by a single term : Zerri::en

,the result of ten years

of the mos t Vio lent,almos t super-human effo rts to effect a ca

thars is, a discharge of the emotional con tent of the Unconscious .Fo r while an almost endless number of factors helped to shapehis life ’ s course during this period— from eighteen years of age totwenty-eigh t— as well as later, his p sycho-sexual fixation On theone hand and the impera tive need of breaking its spell over himcons titu ted that force par excellence, which at times threa tened toextingu ish his lights of reason and which drove him repeatedlyto suicidal attempts , as reco rded in j a:ning:tiden and I Rdda

Rummet.

If we accept the theory (Jung’s ) that religious confl icts so

characteris tic of ado lescence are symbolic of the sacrifice of thelibido , i . e .

, of infantile phantasies in favor of the larger adult lifeand its functions , then Strindberg

’ s life during this period referredto was

, p sychologically speaking, largely an endeavo r to returnto a mo re p rimitive psychic level . At the same time it was thefi rst real and partly successful attempt, as shown by the undercurren ts of h is j uvenile drama tic sketches , Fritdnkaren , Her

mione,I Rom, The Outlaw and Ma:ter Olaf to turn his mind ou t

ward from the realm of phantasy to that of reality.

But how unsuccessful he was in h is endeavor to part with the

past and to wha t an incredible extent his first serious steps wereinfluenced by his infantile fixation is p lain ly to be seen in h ismarriage in 1 877 to the Baroness Wrangel.

The union,as I have already pointed out, was an exceedingly

unhappy one , and while this was the result of an unusually la rgenumber of factors attributable not alone to one bu t to both of

the contrahents,I believe that the cause must largely be sought

in Strindberg’ S Oedipus comp lex .


In his masterly ana lysis of Hamlet,Ernest Jones (3 5 ) ha s

called attention to some of the results that may be caused by thecomp licated interaction between the Oedipus phantas ies andother influences . He says :

If the awakened passion undergoes but little repress ion theson may remain throughout life abnormally attached to his mother andunable to love any other woman

,a not uncommon cause of bachelor

hood . He may be gradually weaned from thi s attachment, if it is lessstrong

,though it often happens that the weakening is incomplete, so

that he is ab le to fall in love only with women that resemble th emother; the latter occurrence is a frequent cause of marriage betweenrelatives and has been interestingly pointed out by Abraham (2 a) .The maternal influence m ay also manifest itself by imparting a strictlytender feminine side to the latter character . When the aroused feelingi s intensely repressed and as sociated with Shame

,guilt

,etc .

,the-memory

of it may be so completely submerged that it becomes imposs ible notonly to revive it

,but to experience any similar feeling, i . e .

,of attraction

to the Opposite sex. This may declare itself in pronounced misogyny,or even when combined with other factors

,in actual homosexuality

,as

Sadger (5 2 a) has shown .

Whether Strindberg may properly be said to belongl to anyof these ca tegories remains to be seen . His mother was a p lainwoman , without education or aspirations , whose sphere was thehome such as it was

,and whose only ambition was to live for her

husband and children . That type of woman S trindberg alwaysleaned towards , in fact mo st of his lia i:on: p revious to his marriagewere with such women

,and how comp letely he was under the

influence of some of them may be seen in the autobiographicalworks to which I have referred above (62 , 63 ,Out of his E in:tellung to the mother developed on the one

hand that deep , indestructib le and unchangeable love of the Oppo s ite sex, which those of us who a re not blinded by its ambivalentform of hatred of the type diametrically Opposed to that of h ismother

,recognize withou t d iffi culty . He says himself (69 p . 1 52)

He adored only those !girls]who were kind, and felt honoredwhen he was well treated . The dashing ones

,the flirts , he was afraid of .

They looked a s if they were in search of prey, as though they wanted todevour him .

And again (69 p .

He longed to p lunge into the whirlpool of life, he wanted to work, tosupport himself and marry. To marry was his dream, for in no other



the woman stands in the relation of wife , fiancée , a friend orwhat not; the second makes possible that jealousy which is anabsolute necessity fo r this type of neurotic lover . Only whenthey can be jealous

,says F reud, does their love life reach its acme .

But strange to say,they are not as a rule jealous of the lawful

husband o r the lover,but of others who may be attracted by the

woman, or whom they may suspect of evil des ign s .

In pronounced cases the neurotic intruder does not Show anydesire of posses sing the woman alone but rather seems to be satisfied with this three-cornered affa ir.

Freud tell us that one of his patients whose lady hadcaused him intense suffering by such a liai:on , had no objectionto her marriage to the other man

,nor did he Show any signs of

jea lousy . I n another typ ical case , however, the p rincipal no ton ly showed intense j ealou sy

,but actually urged the woman tq »

sever connections with her husband .

Not infrequently the soteric aspect of the love is con sp icuous.

f

The man is convinced that the woman depends upon him and thatwithout

'

him she is bound to s in k to a dep lorab le level of imity . All the while he may

,however

,be making the mo st ela

and ingenious preparations for her seduction .

This peculiarly conditioned choice of the love object Freurefers to as the result of a severe and protracted infantile fixatioon the mother . The proof of it is best seen in the case of thwronged third party, who is none bu t the father of the neurlover with whom the latter vie s for the possession of the wifemother .

The second condition , that of the questionable reputation ,(D irnencharakter) while i apparently diametrical ly Opposed tothe content of the mother comp lex proper , is eas ily exp lained if weonly remember that the ccntent of the Con scious and the Umcon scious are distinct psych ic phenomena which , however, undercertain conditions may co incide or fuse entirely . It is beingexplained, therefore , on the b a s is;or princip le of repres sed mem

o ries on the part of the indivf

dual from the pre—pubertal periodsand the later initiation into the secrets of legalized

,as well as

il licit sexual relations of the sexe 3 .

All th is is exemp lified to a remarkable degree in S trindberg’s

early love-life , certain phases of Which I have a lready discussed,and as described by himself particularly in the work entitled In


the Red Room“. But the best illustration is afforded us by theStrindberg-Wrangel affair .Here we have a woman who lacks none of the qualifications 4/

essentia l for a rapprochement. She was the (adored ?) wife of ati tled captain of the Royal Guards , the object at the same time ofStrindberg’ s fear and admiration . He feared him (60 p . 1 34)as a son of the people, a descendant of the middle clas ses , whocannot but be impressed with the ins ignia of the highest powerof the land .

Whenever they met, says Lind—af-Hageby (40 p.

the aristocracy of birth and the.

aristocracy of brain presented themselves to Strindberg in a uxtapos1t10n which threw the superiority of theformer into pleasant rehef.

After a visit to the Guard-house where he felt the wholecrushing weight of his ignominious parentage and humiliatinginferiority he wrote (60 pp . 1 36

As I saw him sitting there, the sword between his knees—a sword ofhonor, the hilt of which was ornamented with the initials and the crownof the royal donor—I felt strongly that our friendship was but an artificial one, the work of a woman who constituted the only link between us .

Previous to this visit at the Guard-house the Baron had calledon Strindberg in the Royal Library. Strindberg describes hisfeelings toward the Captain in the following words (op . cit. pp .

50-5 1 )

Oppres sed on account of the insignia of his rank his belt andparade uniform, I endeavored to restore equilibrium by exhibiting myknowledge. But I only succeeded in making him restless . Sabre andpen; the nob leman down the bourgeois up . Perhaps the far-Sightedwoman instinctively knew to whom the future belonged when later tothe advantage of her unborn children she chose a father who belonged tothe coming nob ility of intelligence.

Ini tially Strindberg’ s passion for the Baroness—theMadonnawith the Child, the VirginMother—was ideal and pure, he assuresus . He writes (60 p . 39)

In a word I adored her without a des ire of pos sessing her. I adored\her such as shewas :as wife and mother as thewife of thi:man,

the mother of thi: child. And in order that I might do this , in orderthat I might realize this happiness , the presence of the husband seemed

6This work must not be confused with The Red Room.


to me inevitably neces sary . For without the husband, I said to myself,she would be a widow,

and I am not sure whether I could have worshipped her under such circumstances . Perhaps as my own , as my wife ?No. First of all such a frivolous thought could not enter my mind, andthen she would have been married to me and not the wife of thi: man ,the mother of thi: child, the mistress of thi: house . Yes , such as she

was,not otherwise. Yes

,it was the sacred memories that clung to this

house,

’ it was also the innate inclination of a representative of the lowerclasses to admire noble

,blue blood and thus the worship of

this woman resembled in every particular the religion whi ch I had discarded : To worship , to sacrifice myself, to suffer without the s lightesthope of gaining anything else than the enjoyment of worship , of selfsacrifice

,of suffering.

And now began his Madonna cu lt. He made his man sardinto a temp le of worship . He writes (Op . Cit . pp . 60-6 1 )

It had become a hab it of mine to draw the curtains at sunset, toarrange the flower-pots in a semi-circle and to p lace by the lamp in thecentre the picture of the Baroness . In this picture she appeared as ayoung mother with indescribably pure but somewhat stern features , herhandsome head being crowned by a wealth of blond hair . On a tablenear her stood her little daughter Before this picture I composed the letters “To my Lady friend which I always sent to theBaroness ’ address on the following day. This was the only outlet formy literary inclinations and in them I gave expression to the innermostsecrets of my soul .

But a few hours later his p sychic ten sion became too greatand a s ing le thought of her p roduced loathing in him and shebecame the fiendish creature , the beast from whose influence hemust free himself at all cost. He felt that he was being slowlyen tangled in a family drama and reproached himself for p laying areckless part in a farce that wa s bound to assume tragic proport HS .

Once during such an alternate spell of hatred of theMadonnahe fled to the club (op . cit . p . After having been greeted byhis friends he drained half a litre of Arrack Punch and then in

7As by the irony of Fate , Captain Wrangel and his family occup ied the former residence of the Strindberg family in Norra Allén. Of his first v is it to the Wrangel’s hewrites (op . cit. p . 3 1 )

How fatal. It was the hou se of my parents in which I had spent thehardest years of my youth , in which I had experienced all the innersto rms of the adv ent ofmanhood , the first communion, the death of .

_my

mother and the coming of the stepmother. Seized by a sudden feelingof uneas iness , I felt tempted to turn around and flee . I feared to findonce more all the misery of my adolescenceAt the sound of the bell, I expected that my fatherwould open the doorforme.


high-sounding verses and anatomical terms he celebrated

woman_

as the personifi cation of the inab ility of man to enjoy himselfalone (s1ch m1t s ich selbst zu amii s ieren) .

He became intoxicated wi th his drastic speech, with the

profanation of the Madonna , the pathologica l product of un

gratified des ires . He unchained his whole hatred against thefalse idol and was full of bitter hopeles snes s . He writes (op .

cit . pp . 68—69)

In the spirit I see the adored one before me giving herself up to everyexcess of her conjugal love only in order to divert herself from the boresome torment of existence. To her, the absent one, I direct all the infamies , attacks , insults of my blind rage, since I cannot possess her, tecoiling from such a crime .

The Bacchanalian revelry finally came to an end , and then'

there rang out in chorus,like a sing le voice

Forward. To the women .

He adds (Op . cit . p . 70)

Half an hour later the band broke in upon a horde of girls . Nows tought was ordered, fires kindled in the s toves and the Saturnaliabegan with living pictures .

Fea ring his own weakness and the irresist ible power of hisinfatuation for the Baroness , he now decided to flee from Swedenand accordingly embarked on a steamer bound for Havre . Butbefore the ves sel had reached the Baltic, his inexpressible longingto see her again ” took complete possession of him. He was

powerfully affected by the leaden October sky and the nakedi slands of the A rchipelago . Like an imprisoned animal he ranabout the decks of the steamer seeking some person to whom hemight tell his sorrow . He suffered phys ical pain , like a permanent toothache

,but he could not localize it . The farther the

ves sel advanced, the greater became his p sychic ten sion . Hefelt that the umbilical cord which united him to home , fatherland,family and her was about to snap . He was frightened by his ownfear which he attributed to premature birth or an attempt atabortion on the part of his mother, a practice which is commonenough

,he says , in la rge families .

While thus straying on the decks of the vessel he came upon


an old lady who told him that he looked unwell and who finallygave him some medicine and put him to bed (op . cit . p .

He writes

Howwell she knew how to do it. A motherly warmthwhich the childrenseek at the breast of their mother emanated from her. The tendertouch of her hand calmed me

,and in two minutes gentle sleep took

possession of me. I imagined that I was a nursing—baby and saw howmy mother tenderly busied herself about my bed .

but soon the mother’ s image fused with the handsome countenanceof the Baroness and that of the compas siona te lady, and then helapsed into a state of unconsciousnes s . He slept.When he awoke he felt that he had to get back to the Barones s

or go mad . He writes (Op . cit . pp . 1 10

Indeed, my love was of the right quality because I had relap sed intoa state of childhood , obsessed by a s ingle idea , a s single image, by anoverwhelming feeling that had rendered me void of resistance so that Icould do nothing but sob .

Acco rdingly he persuaded the Captain of the necess ity ofbeing pu t ashore . I t was done . But no sooner was his wishfulfi lled than he recognized the hopeles sness and disgrace of hiscondition and determined to end his life , for life withou t her wasimpossible . He says (op . cit. p . 1 1 3 )

But with the cunning of a madman , I decided to get some satisfactionout of my death by contracting pneumonia or a S imilar fatal disease, forin that case

,I argued

,I should have to lie in bed for some time : I could

see her again and kiss her hand in saying goodbye forever

After having engaged a room in the Vil lage Inn,he returned

to the shore to carry out his p lan . The coast was precip itou sand the water deep , everything just as he wanted it to be . Inthe cold October gale he undres sed and lept into the surf . Heswam about in the water unti l he was nearly exhausted and thenreturned to the cliff. He sat down on the rock in order to al lowthe cold wind to do its deadly work, but was final ly compel led toclimb a tree , since it was extremely diffi cu lt for him to remainin one p lace . He remained in the tree unti l he was convincedth at he had attained h is end and then he hastily dres sed himself.

Upon reaching the village , he immediately sent a dispatchto the Baron telling of his sudden illness and the cancelling ofthe trip . Then he went to bed , rang for the maid and told her to


send for a physician . Since there wa s no physician in the villagethe Apothecary sent the patient an op iate with directions not totake too much as the contents were enough to kill a man . Strindberg took it all in one draught, rolled the quilt about himself andsoon went to sleep .

In the morning he awoke after a night of gorgeou: dream:and in his joy of being alive there was on ly one discord : hisshameful acts of yesterday. He now began to p lan his trip withthe next steamer . While doing so the Baron and the Baroness appeared on the scene and Strindberg all but fell on the lady

’ s neckin the presence of her husband . Her presence immediatelyres tored his equilibrium . We read (op . cit. p . 1 20)

She treated me like a child . And this role of mother was very becoming to her . With the sweetest words of flattery she spoke of me as

“he

”,

wrapped me in a shawl , placed a napkin before me at the table, pouredthe wine in my glas s and decided what I was to do . She was all mother .

His attempt to free himself from the Baroness was not asucces s a lthough the measures to which he resorted were severerthan tho se which resulted in the separation from a former mistress (62 p . 75ff) .

He returned to S tockholm and the o ld relationswere resumed .

In sp ite of the mo s t phenomenal resistance he finally made hisdeclaration of love . O ne day they met in the National Museumof Fine Arts and in the shadow of the s tatue of Psyche he im

p lo red her to take the final step and leave her faithles s husband .

She , now realizing the seriousness of her position , reminded himof the brother—sister compact . To this he answered (60 p . 1 59 ff) :

To the devil with the childi sh brother-sister compact .man and wife

,beloved and mistress . I adore you

,your body

and mind, your blond locks and honest soul, the smallest shoes inSweden and your straightforwardness , your eyes your charming smile

,white stockings and red garters ”

“But Sir

”

Yes,noble Lady . I have seen everything. I will b ite your neck

,

I warn you that I will smother you with my warm ki sses,crush you in my

arms . Yes,I am strong as a god and will consume you entirely . You

think I am weak. No, I am the imaginary sick man,or rather the

hypocrite . Be on your guard against the sick lion , don’t go into its

cave,it will love you to death . Off with that hateful mask . I desire

you,as I have done from the first time I saw you . What do I care about

the friendship of this dear Baron . I , the bourgeois , the provincial ,disinherited one . He hates me and I curse him .

”


And she went into the lion ’ s den . In his mansard, the onetime temple of pure adoration he seduced her after having a llegedan organ ic defect, which , if it did not render him sterile , madehim practically harmless .

Soon afterwards d ivorce proceedings were begun and theBarones s had to desert her husband in order to be free . Shewen t to Copenhagen and induced Strindberg, after much res istance on his part , to accompany her, if only a few miles ou ts ideof the cap ital . Finally he consented . But the misogyn ist hadalready supp lanted the idolater . A quarrel began between thembefore the train pulled out of the station . He felt the noo setighten around his neck . The Barones s wept and talked ofn othing but her love for him . He rebelled and felt a wild desire

,

h e tells us , to throw himself ou t of the car window and thus esicape a prison where he was being watched by an enemy, struggl ingihelples sly in the clutches of a sorceress . He suffered al l theterrors of a n ightmare and cursed his existence .

But all of a sudden the Baroness , feign ing exhaustion , pu ther feet on the upholstered seat and Strindberg was on his kneesbegging her forgiveness . He had seen her adored feet (op . cit.

p .

At Katrineholm they parted . Like a mother she kis sedhim

,made the s ign of the cross and entrusted him to God’ s

keep ing . Having left her he felt greatly rel ieved,but in the

V illage Inn, where be‘was to spend the night, he broke down

feeling that he could not l ive without her . He made the followingconfess ion (op . cit . p . 190)

I love her, love her such as she revealed herself in the moment ofparting:and the remembrance of the first days of our acquaintance ri s esup within me , when sh&wife and mother at the same time—gently and

tenderly caressed and fondled me like a l ittle child . And so I love her,

desire her pas sionately for a W ife .

I s that an unnatural impulse ? Am I the product of the capri ce ofnature ? Are my feelings those of a degenerate

,Since I am in posses s ion

of my mother ? I s this unconscious incest of the heart ?

Then he sat down to write a letter in which he prayed to Godfo r her safety. The first part of a Fool

’: Confe::ion end s as

follows :

Her last embrace has brought me back to God, and under the influenceO f her last tears

,of which there are still traces in my beard

,I renounce



called her,he made up his mind to die , so he fled from her and

wandered upon the highways of the Continent weep ing l ike a los tchild . One day he found himself inVienna . He had lefth iswife andchildren with the fi rm determination of returning no more , but asusual

,he changed his mind . The City seemed l ike a tomb to him

and he went about the streets , he tell s us , like a corpse . Everywherehe saw her

,continually he dreamed of her and p lanned for her . In

the Belvidere he s tood fo r an hour before the Venus of GuidoReni

,resembling his adored wife in every respect, and all of a

sudden he felt an irresistible longing fo r her person , packed hisgrip and retu rned suddenly . He was convinced of being bewitched by her and tha t there was no escape .

The homecoming on such occas ions was always a great eventand the happiness in ten se for a few hours , bu t then the stormbroke loose once more . Yet no matter how grea t the estrangement

,no matter how firm ly convinced he was of her perversities ,

her malice and unfaithfulness,he was ever ready to flee to her as a

child to its mother,to confess his faults and to seek forgiveness .

After a serious a ttack of mental suffering while sojourn ingin French Switzerland, he writes , a s it seems , fully aware of thefact that he wa s suffering from persecutional mania (60 p .

Why this mania ? I am pursued, therefore, it i s very logical to cons ider oneself persecuted . In short

,I relap se into my childhood state

and in my exceptional weakness I spend my time on a sofa;my headrests in the lap of Maria , my arms encircle her wai st as in the Pietd ofMi chael Angelo . I p res s myself to her bosom,

call myself her child,the

man changes himself into a child, the wife becomes his motherShe i s the female spider who devours themale after the act of copulation .

The mental cond ition of Strindberg during the period referredto has been di scussed by a number of qualified as well a s umqualified writers . Most o f them are of the op inion that Strindberg suffered from some form o f in sanity o r other . Dr . WilliamHirsch (3 1 p . 2 20) in his Geniu: and Degeneration has dia gnosedhis case as paranoi a :implex chronica

, largely on the basis of thestory of his fi rst marriage . He says (op . cit . p .

It is a manifest ca se of j ealous insanity . The kind of disease is,how

ever,essentially completed by the nature of the description;or what is

more probable , there i s a delusion of grandeur . He always speaks ofhimself as the “ great poet

”, the

“ renowned scholar”, etc . In one placehe says that people are j ealous of his talent and, therefore, might puthim out of the way

,which is a characteristic manifestation of delusion

of persecution .


Afte r having reminded us of the fact that the so-calledreferential ideas a re among the most important symptoms of suchmaladies , he continues :

The patients refer all that goes on about them to themselves . Inevery look

,in every harmless remark of a stranger

,they fancy they de

tect a hidden slight intended for them . Whatever is said in their hearingthey connect with their own individua l selves

,and find in the s implest

things strong confirmation of their delusions . If people stand up in a

shop , it is because they are present . If anybody in the street spits hemeans to do it at them . All the articles in the newspapers are meant toapp ly to them . In short

,everything that happens has reference to

them .

As a remarkable examp le of such referen tial ideas , Dr. Hirschquotes the fo l lowing passage from Strindberg

’ s d Fool’

s Con

fers ion (60 p . which Strindberg wrote after having readIbsen’s Wi ld Duck :

It was a drama of the famous Norwegian blue-stocking, the inventorof the equa lity madness . How the boo k fell into my hands

,I could not

say . But now everything was clea r and gave occa s ion for the worstsusp icions concern ing the reputation of my wife . The p lot of thedrama i s as follows : A photographer (a nickname I had ea rned from mynovels drawn from real l ife) , ha s married a person of doubtful repute ,who had formerly been the mistress of a great proprietor. The womansupports the household from a secret fund which she derives from her

former paramour . In addition to that, she carries on the business of herhusband

,a good for nothing, who spends his time in drinking in the

society of persons of no consequence . Now, that is a misrepresentationof fa cts committed by the reporters . They were informed that Maria(Strindberg

’ s wife) made translations , but they did not know tha t it wa sI who gratuitously corrected them and pa id over to her the sums receivedfor them .

Matters become bad when the poor photographer di scovers that theadored daughter who comes before her time into the world, is not hi schild

,and that the wife had warned him when she induced him to marry

her. To complete hi s disgrace, the husband consents to accept a largesum as indemnity from the former lover . By this I understand Ma ria ’ sloan upon the Baron

’ s security,which I endorsed after our marriage .

But as for the birth of the daughter, I can see no trace of analogy, formy daughter was not born until two years after the wedding. But hold .

The dead girl . There, I am on the track . The dead child which forcedu s to a marriage which otherwise would not have taken place .I prepare a great s cene for the afternoon . I wished to catch Maria in

cross-examinations to which I wanted to give the form of a defence forus both . We had been equally attacked by the scare-crow of the mascu lin ists , who had been paid for the pretty job .


From thi s work which describes in the smallest details thel ife and death-struggle of a man so p la in ly under the influenceof his infantile phantas ies as to be whol ly unable to make thenecessary adju stments in the realm of reality, let us turn to hisfamous naturalistic p lay The Fa ther, where we shall encounterfurther evidence of that incestuous attachme nt to the mother ,which I have pointed out in A Fool

’

: Confu s ion .

Concerning the p lay in question, Bjorkman (8 p . 57) hasmade the following s tatement, characteristic ,-not on ly o f h is own

power of psychological penetration,” but of that of the average

litera ry critic . He says :

The Father was Strindberg’ s supreme effort to symbolize the li feand death-struggle between man and woman for such immortal ity asmay be offered them by the child . The picture of that struggle i s splendid but unfair. Man, as man , i s given rational in sight, while to womanis granted little more than low cunning . And as conscience i s al ivewith reason , the V ictory falls to its unconscionab le opponent . It maybe paradoxical to express a regret that the sex prob lem should enter atall into thi s p lay— a play designed wholly to exhaust that very prob lem .

But there is a p sychological side to the work that has nothing whateverto do with sex, and this side would hold our interest j ust as firmly if theconflict were raging between two men . The corrosive power ofsuggestion is here shown with diabolical skill . It is a duel of souls

,

with words for weapon s , and by a seed of doubt, sown in the right way,at the right moment, one of these souls is shattered and shattered as

fatally as a warship when its magazine explodes .

If we compare this summary with S trindberg’ s defence of the

p lay found in the famous preface to Coun tess Julia (66 Vo l I)the conclusion i s inevitable

,viz .

, that Bjorkman belongs to acertain type of spectator therein described. I quote in part fromthis preface

The simple brain will further be shocked by the fact that motivesbehind the actions are not simple and that there is not one view alone tobe taken of it . An event in life—and this is a comparatively new discov ery

— is generally produced by a whole series of more or les s deepseated motives

,but the spectator choses . for the most part the one

which i s easiest for him to grasp , or the one most advantageous to thereputation of his judgment . Take a case of suicide for example .

“Bad

business ” says the bourgeois . “Unhappy love”, says the woman .

Sickness says the di sease-ridden man .

“Shattered hopes

”,the

bankrupt . But it is poss ible that the motives lay in a ll of these causes orin none and tha t the dead man hid the rea l one by putting forwardanother

,which has thrown a more favorab le light on his memory.


The Father is a tragedy in three acts which presents a heartrending duel between a man and a woman fo r the possession ofthe sou l of a child . The father is a captain of cavalry, seriou sminded , in tellectual , studious and amiable . His wife is the incarnation of stupidity , malice and selfi shness . In the choiceof weapon s and meth ods , by mean s of which she finally destroysher husband

,she is nothing short of diabolically resourceful . The

husband is pass ionately fond of his daughter Bertha,whom the

women in the house all wish to bring up acco rding to their ownideas . The mother-in—law wan ts to make her a Spi ritualist .Laura

,the mother

,wants her to become an a rtist . The governes s

wants her to become a Methodi st,o ld Margaret, a B aptis t, and

the servant girl proposes that she join the Salvation Army . TheCaptain , who considers that he has the chief righ t to determineher future

,is opposed in every one of his efforts to have it h is own

way .

In order to break the res istance of her husband, Laura administers the po ison which unbalances the man

’s mind . She suggeststhat he is not the father of the child— and this immediately begin s to trouble his con science . Thereupon she informs thefamily physician tha t her husband is suffering from delusions asregards h is fatherhood and that this though t i s fas t becoming anobsess ion . Later conversation s with the physician confirm thecaptain

’ s doubts and before long he is a raving man iac . Finallywhen h is daughter also refuses to regard h im as her father, themeasure is full . He draws the revolver and the o ld nurse is sen tin to calm him with stories and memo ries of childhood . While onth i s mission , she , the good o ld woman , i n whom he had un limitedconfidence , s lips the strait-j acket on him, the raving lunatic .

Subjugated, crushed, robbed of his faith in God and himself,

the former strong,happy, influential man d ies ignominiously,

the V ictim of treacherous women .

In th is rather unenviable role Strindberg has immortalized

h is first wife and at the same time the type of woman which she ,accord ing to Strindberg , represented. She is the man-eater,

precisely the type of woman he feared in his youth and cursed

throughou t h is life , the diame trically opposite of his own mother ,W hom,

as we recall, he spoke of in Married (64 p . 1 2) as :

Her husband’ s truest friend, the only human being who had neverbeen jealous or envious and who had never contradicted him .


This woman is the destroyer of man 53 p .

the personification of the demonical, the cruelly enticing Daughterof Earth

, who with her fornication arid caresses tries to destroy man .

The mentally deranged Captain s ays to his daughter (70

p .

You see , I am a cannibal and will eat you . Your mother wanted toeat me

,but she did not succeed. I am Saturn who ate his children be

cause it had been so”prOphes ied that they should eat him . To eat or

to be eaten ? That I s the question . If I do not eat you,you will eat

me,and you have already shown me your teeth.

”

Those who are familiar with Strindberg’s life and works ,in part at least, and are able to deal with his unconscious motivation will realize that the p lay cen ters in the sex-prob lem and

tha t the “ corrosive power of suggestion’ is but one of the many

elements involved in it. The p lay i s s imp ly another Fool’

5

Confes f ion in dramatic form . It 1s more than that . I t IS full ofmental imageries and memories of ch ildhood . Margaret

,the

nurse,is none but the o ld wet-nurse, Christina , whom we know

from The Son of a Servant (68 , pp . 1 8 The discu ss ion of thereligious education of Bertha is taken directly out of Strindberg’ sown childhood . The whole repuls ive atmosphere of the p lay is acro ss between that of his paternal home and his own married li fe ,ruined, according to h imself, by a woman who had nothing incommon with him, who squandered his income , whose immoralitywa s a con stant source of worry to him, who goss iped about hismental cond ition and p lanned to have him committed to thein sane asylum (60 pp . 263 , 265 , 275 , The subj ect matte rof The Father is , therefore , taken very largely, as I have alreadysta ted

,out of his own conjugal life , and the same may be said

almos t exclu s ively of all of his naturalistic p lays .

The p lay in question j us tly raises the question not only ofhis san ity

,but it affords us further evidence of his Einstellung to

h is mother . Already in 19 1 2 Karin Michaelis (43 p . 3 2) is re

ported to have endeavored to bring Strindberg’ s misogyny which

is so akin to that of the Euripidean Hippolytos into rapport withhis own infantile fixation on the mother . The point is indeed wel ltaken .

In Act I, page 2 1 (70a) he says to the nurse :

You have always been,as it were

,a mother to me .

A PSYCHOANALYT IC STUDY 63

In the same act p . 30, the following conversation occurs

Capta in

Can you explain to me why you women treat an old man as if he were achild

I don’t understand it, but it must be because all you men, great andsmall

,are women’ s children

,everyone of you .

Capta in

But no women are born of men . Yes,but I am Bertha’ s father .

Tell me, Margaret, don’t you believe it ? Don’t you ?

Lord, how silly you are . Of course you are your own child’ s father.

In Act I I , page 48 , after he has implored his wife to tell himwho is Bertha ’ s father and after his wife has said :

I will swear by God and all that I hold sacred that you are Bertha ’ sfather . ”

He is still in doubt and continues

I implore you as a wounded man begs for a death blow to tell me all .Don ’t you see that I am helpless as a ch ild ? Don ’t you hear me complain ing a s to a mother? .Yes , I am crying although I am aman .Why should not a man complain , a soldier weep ?

”

Laura:

Weep , then , my child, as if you were with your mother once more .

Do you remember when I first came into your life,I was like a second

mother ? Your great,strong body needed nerves; you were a giant

child that had either come too early into the world,or perhap s was not

wanted at all .

Capta in

Yes,that is how it was . My father’ s and my mother’ s will was

against my coming into the world,and consequently I was born without

a will . I thought I was completing myself when you and I became oneand

,therefore

,you were allowed to rule

,and I

,the Commander at the

Barracks and before the troop s , became obedient to you , grew throughyou

,looked up to you as to a more highly gifted being, listened to you a s

if I had been your undeveloped child .

Laura

Yes,that is the way it was , and, therefore, I loved you a s my child .


But you know,you must have seen, when the nature of your feelings

changed and you appeared as my lover that I blushed, and your embraceswere joy to me that was followed by a remorseful conscience , as if myblood had been ashamed. The mother became themistress . Abominable .

Capta inI saw it

,but I did not understand . I believed that you despised me

for my unmanliness and I wanted to win you as a woman by being a man .

Laura

Yes,but that was the mistake . The mother was your friend, you see,

but the woman was your enemy, and love between the sexes 1s strife .

In the last Act page 72 , after the nu rse has put the straitja cke t on him he says to her

What have you given me for a pillow,Margaret ? It is so hard

,

! socold . Come and sit near me . There. May I put my head on yourknee ? So . This i s warm . Bend over me so that I can feel your breast .Oh

,it is sweet to sleep against a woman

’ s breast,amother’ s or a mistress ’

but the mother’ s is sweetest . ”

But besides this further proof of Strindberg’ s incestuou s

fixation fu rnished by the p lay in question , another trait o f hisneurotic

,if not paranoid condition , s tands out in a bold though

indi s tinct relief.I t has been pointed ou t by Freud and other prominen t psy

ch iatrists and psychoanalysts that an incestuous fix ation on themother (or the father) invo lves a ho st of other abnormal psychicpenchant; on th e part of the individual , manifesting themselvesin an almos t endles s variety of perversion s and phobias .

It is not surpris ing, therefore , that Strindberg’s j ealousy

finds an expression in doubt as to whether he is the father of h isdaugh ter Bertha or not . At the end of Act III Laura as ks himshortly before he exp ires , if he does not want to see his child , andto this he makes the following reply, which Rank con siders asvery significant (70a p .

“My child ? A man has no children,it is only woman who has

children, and, therefore, the future i s hers when we die childles s .”

The unman ly attitude towards the opposite sex which is sostrikingly noticeable also in other works of Strindberg—more

particularly in A Fool’.s~ Confefi ion—may perhap s ju stly be con

s idered as evidence of a homosexual trend . Dr . G . Stan ley Hal llately raised this question and as a result of it, the Strindberg



towards the opposite sex, nor am I inclined to underestimate theimportance of the pa ranoid utterances of the hero of the p lay.

On the contra ry I maintain that nothing in this p lay—and thisappl ies moreover to everyth ing tha t Strindberg has writtenshould be taken lightly . Every detail ha s a profound meaning.

Goethe ha s said somewhere that noth ing in his writings wasaus der Luft gegrifien ,

o r something to that effect . The same istrue of Strindberg , perhaps to an even greater extent . The mo sttrivia l s ituations in h is writings are incidents out of his own l ife .To give a single illu stration I wish to call attention to a passagein his p lay entitled There are Crime: and Crime:The opening scene represents an avenue of cypresses in the

cemetery ofMontparnasse in Paris . A woman in widow’ s weedsis praying a t a grave and her child is p laying nearby with witheredflowers

, picked up from a heap of rubbish . A watchman sudden lyappears and warns the mother that flowers must not be picked inthe cemetery .

Compare this with a pas sage in The Son of a Servant (68 pp .

20—2 1 ) where he tells of his V is it to a chu rch yard in Stockholm inwhich it was forbidden to walk on the gras s o r to touch the leavesof the trees and shrubs . On such an occasion his uncle had

p icked a leaf from the branch of a tree and a policeman was instantly on the spot. Such in stances might be p roduced almostad infinitum to show that every p lay, every poem,

every noveltha t he has written deals above all other things with his own l ifeand experiences .One of his crit ics (30, p . 5) has said that he is the greate st

subject ivist of modern times . His statement is eminently correct .I t would be difli cult to find another author of whom it mightjustly be said that the whole literary output is so largely autobio

graphical as in the case of Strindberg .

But let us retu rn once more to the subject of homosexuality.

Of the gross manifestations of sexual inversion such as characterized the life of Walt Whitman (50) fo r instance , there is not theslightest trace in Strindberg’ s life . At least

,from the material

at my d isposal , I cannot po int to a single instance . In his youthI fail to detect any abnormal leanings toward his own compan ion s .That his relation to his youthfu l friends who figure in The Sonof a Servant were no rmal in every respect, seems to me to be beyond a shade of doubt . The same is undoubtedly true of his associations with his friends at the Un iversity of Uppsala . Hischurn , Fritz, whom we know from The Son of a Servantwas one of


his closest friends at that time , and that Strindberg admired him ,

he has himself confessed . Moreover they had experiences together that not infrequently fall to the lot of youths and evengrown-ups .

In j arningstiden (63 p . 1 2) he rela tes how already'

whilethey were students a t the Gymnasium they fell into the hands ofthe Secretary of one of the Foreign Legations in Stockho lm who

,

to judge by the description , was a pederast . This same manwhom he refers to as v on X . also visited the boys during theirfirs t term a t the University and the reunion resulted in a scandalon a small scale . After a trip to O ld Uppsala where , as he writes ,

their names are still to be found on the register as a reminder of anill-chosen fr1end,

they were invited by v on X . to a champagne dinner at a restau rant in the University City where they swore one anothereternal friendship , embraced and kissed, according to the customof the country represented by v on X . But the scandal which Ihave referred to occurred at the railway station later in theeven ing when v on X . was about to return to Stockholm . O ne

of the young friends had fol lowed him in to the car where the o ldgen tleman had become aggressive . Strindberg felt very in

dignant and now understood why they had .been ridiculed bythe other students while d ining

Any gushing friendship of his own

sex I am not aware dberg . The closesthe came to such a during his stay inBerlin sho rtly after the separation fr first wife in 1 892 . Irefer to the coterie Zum Schwarzen and in particular toStan islaw Przybyszewski, whom Strindberg (6 1 , p . 67) speaks ofa s

My Russian friend, my pupil who calledme Father because he owedall hi s cultu re to me

,my Famulus

,who called me “Master” and kis sed

my hands , whose life began where mine ended .

Tha t this Polish author who also goes under the name ofStachu and also Popoffsky, was very much attached to Strindberg

,far more so than S trindberg to him ,

is p lain from Uddgren’s

(73 p . 68) comments . Stachu ,l ike S trindberg , wa s an inveterate

sentimentalist,and both did their level best during the transition

period in Strindberg ’ s abnormal psychic development to rid


themselves of their Weltrchmerz by free and probably more o r less

continuous indulgence in Dionysian orgies .

I am well aware,however

,that the absence of all external

s igns of homosexuality does not necessarily preclude the presence

of such proclivit ies on the part of the individual . Man is , accord

ing to Freud (23 p . 7) bisexual by constitu tion and nature and

only becomes monosexual in the course of development . Freud

says (2 1 p .

Also Schreber,whose delusion culminates in a homosexual wish phan

tasy that cannot possibly be ignored showed during the time he enjoyedhealth

,according to all reports , no signs of homosexuality in the vulgar

sense of the word.

If we accept Dr . Hirsch’ s (3 1 p . 220) diagnosis of S trindberg

based on A Fool’: Confeyrion , we may assume with some degree of

certainty that Strindberg was homosexual . Dr . Hirsch was fully

convinced that S trindberg suffered from paranoia :implex chron

ica . A careful study of the symptoms of Strindberg’ s malady

has confirmed me in my belief that more importance mus t beattached to Dr . Hirsch ’ s j udgment in the matter than to that ofDr . Rahmer (46 p . 26) whose diagnosis reads as fo llows

According to my opinion it was melancholia, and first of all thetypical melancholia moralis with a desire for seclusion, indefinite fear ,thoughts of death

,ideas of suicide and false notions of imaginary trans

gress ions . Later on at the further development of the complex of symptoms

,there was added praecordial anguish accompanied by attacks of

raptus melancholicus followed by chimerical imageries (Wahnideen) andsense delusions In this complex of symptomsand in its course it is a typ ical case (Schulfall) of melanchol ia whi ch atthe height of its development shows itself as melancholia daemomaniaca .

This d iagnos is ha s been criticised by Dr . Tretow (7 1 ) ofStockho lm

,as unsatisfactory . Dr . Lange (39) ofTiib ingen rejects

it entirely . I must confess that even before I came across thislas t men t ioned criticism

,the result of Dr . Rahmer

’

s pathographicstudy impressed me as superficial because of the fact that theana lyst had disregarded entirely that period of Strindberg ’ s l ifeupon which I have based my attempt at analys is—~ his childhood,youth and adolescence .

Dr . Lange attacks Rahmer for the very same reason . Hetakes the latter to task on the basis of his own statement (46 p . 6)


that an exhaustive p sychiatric analysis of the entire biographicalmaterial would take him (Rahmer) too far afield .

and ins ists that scientific thoroughnes s never yet has led theinvestigator too far in search of the truth . Dr. Lange supportsDr . Rahmer, however, in h is belief that S trindberg did no t sufferfrom parano ia . While he offers no solu’tion of the problem , D r.

Lange is evidently of the opinion that Strindberg was subject to

periodic attacks of manic-depress ive insanity due to organicdi sease of the brain (39 p .

Since these are questions pertaining exclus ively to psychiatry ,I mus t leave the argument open . But if

,a s I have already said

,

we accep t Dr. I-I irsch

’s d iagno s is , which undoubtedly is a s worthy

of considerat ion as tho se of Drs . Lange and Rahmer,we are

justified in as suming that S trindberg’ s crises , bo th that of the

period covered by A Fool’: Confers ion and that of The I nferno

,

s tand in a very close rela tion to sexual inversion .

Fe renczi ( 1 5 p . 1 3 2) says :

It ha s become evident that the paranoiac mechanism is set in actionas a defence against all possible attachments of the sexual hunger, butaccording to the observations made up to the present, is di rected onlyagain st homosexual choice of objects .

And again (0p . cit . p .

The observation of severa l cases seems to justify the surmisethat in the pathogenesis of paranoia , homosexuality plays not a chancepart but a most important one, and that paranoia i s perhap s nothingelse at all than disguised homosexuality .

While it cannot be my purpose to decide the question as towhe ther Strindberg suffered from a mild form of paranoia ra therthan from other forms of men tal derangement, I cannot refrainfrom calling atten tion to some of the symptoms of this diseaseas characterized by Kraepelin (Defendo rf, 1 1 p . 3 16

Fi rst of all the disease is apt to develop between the age oftwenty-fiv e and forty which was the case with S trindberg . Itdevelop s on a defective con stitutional basis . This may be eithercongenital or acquired and in a large percen tage there is defectivehered ity . The early life of the ind ividual is marked by eccentri

cities,he may be moody, dreamy o r seclu sive . I t is further

marked by sexual perversions , aptitude for s tudy and mentalactivity in special fields . Some patients are abnormally bright,


others flighty, entering into many proj ects which they are unab leto pursue with success . The s tarting point is often formed byexciting cau ses such as acute illness

,excessive menta l s tress , shock ,

busines s reverses,deprivation and d isappointment .

The developmen t of the psycho sis is gradual and very in s idiou s . The patient becomes irri table , susp icious , discontented and

may suffer from insomnia . Imaginary slights become a source ofworry and suspicion that they are not accidental . He becomesdis trustful and seeks evidence of u nfriendliness and nurses thefeeling that he is being purposely neglected . Al l patients suffering from the effects of this d isease are morbidly sen sitive . Harmless jokes

,smiles

,accidental nods of the head have a Special

reference to themselves . Items in the papers , a s a lready po intedout by Dr . Hirsch

,are indicative of intrigue against them . A

passerby cannot light his cigar, cough o r walk behind them without being suspected of s in is ter designs .Ou t of this men tal s tate develop persecutory delus ions .

Everybody and everything consp ires again st them . Their friendsand supposed enemies cause them alarm . Their answers

,if

interrogated,show that they are guilty . They are afraid of being

slowly po isoned and put ou t of the way by electricity . I n duetime and in connection with these delusions , expan sive delusionsmay also appear . Since these patients cannot bu t attract agreat deal of a ttention they soon begin to cas t about for thereason of this . This they find in the property that they po ssess ,in personal charm,

imaginary noble descent, or else they may

come to the conclus ion tha t they had been born for a specia lmis sion .

Sometimes these delusion s may assume the form of exaggerated self-importance . Love and religion play an all important

part in many cases . Hallucinations are always p resent butrarely pers is t th roughou t the whole course of the d isease . Auditory hallucinations are the most frequen t— first of indefiniteno ises

,la ter they assume all fo rms

,such as laughter

,curses

u ttered at them,etc . Visual hallucination s a lso occur . Those

of general sensibility are very frequent, such as pulling of thehair

,drafts of air, irritation of the s kin by poisonous powders , etc .A s for the emotional attitude we are informed that it stands

in direct relation to the character of the delus ion . In some casesthe patien t is irritated by his persecutors , he is shy and excitable

,

even desponden t . In other cases the persecution is tolerated and

regarded as essen tial to h is spiritual welfare . But al l of these


patients sooner or later become arrogant, proud and dogmatic .In conduct the parano iacs appear quite normal for a con

s iderable time , except for the eccentricities as characterized above .

Frequently they as sume the offensive against their enemies andsuspects . They are then apt to commit murder and often such anact is the first ind ication of their mental condition . Fo r thisrea son the parano iac is considered the most dangerous of theinsane .

Psych iatris ts claim that the course of the di sease presentsd istin ct periods which coincide wi th those of the evolu tion of thedelusion . The fi rst period is fo llowed by the insidiou s on

'set,

it is fo llowed by the persecutory period (delus ions of persecution sand hallucinations) . Finally there follows the third and lasts tage

,the so called ambitiou s period with a change of personality .

These are some of the symptoms of paranoia and they are al lfound in the life of S trindberg to a remarkable degree, particularly during the I nferno period, and if we agree with all thoserep resen tatives of the medical profession who have recognized

parano id traits in Strindberg’ s malady, then he was a sexua l

invert .But even if it could no t be granted on technical grounds that

S trindberg suffered from parano ia , there is evidence enough inh is life to warran t his class ification as a borderland case of sexualinvers ion .

In hi s Bernerkungen iiber einen Fall von Zwangneuroye,Freud ( 1 8 p . after having discussed the chronic parallelismof ungovernab le love and hate fo r the same person -a mostcharacteristic trait in S trindberg as we know— says , that suchemotional man ifestations are a most consp icuous s ign of the

compuls ion neuro s is . But not only in the neuros is . Suchviolen t

,alterna te love and hate p lays a great ro le in the patho

genesis of hysteria and paranoia .Then there is the fetichism to which I have already referred

and which , I believe , i s un iversally regarded as a proof of homosexuality . The large number of clin ical cases reported by KrafftEbing Frank Stekel (58 , 59) and others confirm one inthis belief.

Abraham ( 1 ) in his Bemerkungen zur Prychoana lyre einer

Fa lle: von Fq -und horf ettfetischifmus discusses a male patientwho se man ia terminated in a female attitude (Einstellung) to hisfather . The fetichistic phenomenon has been so well exp lainedby Freud (23 p . 19 note) that

'

I need no t dwell upon it . Suffi ce


it to say tha t no ma tter how estranged Strindberg was with hisfirst wife

,the s ight of her foot (shoe) or a bit of her stocking would

always bring him to his knees (60 p . He was thus p lain ly atthe mercy of an aberrant sex impulse , itself conditioned in partat least

,by the variou s impulses of his infantile eroticism and

psycho-sexual fixation on his mother . But even in this caseS trindberg forms a borderland case . For Freud (23 p . 19) has

pointed out that to a certain extent, fetichism is normal ,

especia lly during those stages of wooing when the normal sexual aimseems inaccessible or its realization i s deferred .

The case becomes pathological only when the striving for the fetichtakes the place of the normal sexual a im ,

or again,when the fetich dis

engages itself from the person concerned and i tself becomes a s exualo bj ect .

S tekel (58 p . 372) argues that intense j ealousy, Don Juan i sm ,

a preference for the delineation of female characters , phobias anddelusions , onan ism ,

fetichism of the hand,the foot

,the ears

,etc .

,

all being symbols of the lacking phallus in women , are nothingbu t masks of homo sexuality .

Furthermore he says (59 p . 268)

Fetichism is a substitute religion It springs out of a compromise between an uncurbable sexuality and deep p ietism . It affordsthe individua l an opportunity for a more or less complete ascetici sm .

Under the cover of diabolism and l ibertinage there hides a piety whos eaims reach far beyond thi s life . The fetichist is in open rebell ion agains tevery form of authority

, particularly against God to whom he secretlysubmits and whom he imagines he serves through special privations .

The same subject is di scussed in his Nervore Angstzustande

(57) where he says that homo sexuality is nothing but the succes sfu l defence mechan ism of the infantile incest phantasy and other

painful memories .9

That S trindberg who shows so many of the traits and tendencies discussed by these authors suffered from sexual inversiondoes not seem improbable . Those who are able to deal with the

problem more efficiently than I am , would undoubtedly be ab leto produce even more convincing proofs . To me his inversion sseem to be of the character which Freud (23 p . 2) has termedamphigenous , i . e.

,lacking in exclus iveness .

The term woman-hater which is the popular synonym for

°See also Riv ers , WaltWhitman ’:Anomaly pp . 29

—30.


72AUGUST STRINDBERG

1

aieads pa ssed by as noiselessly as shadows . Strindberg repeatedlydwelt on this day-dream of his which neither he no r Uddgrencould interpret, but which p sychoanalys is disposes of a s a pro

jection indicative of Strindberg’ s own wil l and ardent desire of

shifting the battle of life to another level .In November of the following year ( 1894) the cris is was well

under way . His second wife , ju st like the fi rst one , became anobject of susp icion and apathy . After having seen her off atthe North Rai lway Station in Paris he felt greatly relieved . Hewrites (6 1 p .

As I entered the Café de la Régence I placed myself at the table whereI used to sit with my wife, my beautiful jailer, who watched my sou lday and night, guessed my secret thoughts , marked the course of myideas and was j ealous of my investigations into the unknown .

Bu t he wa s no t satisfied with being temporarily separatedfrom his wife (op . cit . p .

In a fit of righteous p ride, in the pa ss ionate desire‘to do myself an

injury I commit moral suicide by repudia ting my wife and child in an

unworthy,unpardonable letter . I give her to understand that I am

involved in a new love affair . The blow goes home . My wife answerswith a demand for separation .

From this time on S trindberg led the life of a solitary man ,guilty of suicide and assassina tion .

” He withdrew from hisfriends and soon began to cons ider himself the obj ect of unj us t

persecution . At the same time he became aware of wha t he call sthe Unknown Powers

,which in the past had been p lacing ob

s tructions in his path of progress . That is the reason,he claims

,

fo r his having become an atheist and now he challenged the Invis ible One to wrestle with Him as Jacob did with Go d . Afterhaving su stained serious burn s on h is hands during chemicalexperiments carried on in h is own room ,

and after having Spentsome time in the hosp ital , Strindberg moved into Hotel O rfi la .

Uddgren who at tha t time resided in Paris states tha t it wasknown that Strindberg lived somewhere in the neighborhood of

Hotel de s Americains but tha t none of his friends dared cal l on him,

and furthermore that the story went that he was out of h is mind .

The fixed idea that harrassed him now was that his Polishfriend Stachu had come to Paris to as sassinate him . The reasonfo r this wa s that Strindberg had been familiar withMm e . Stachu

before her marriage . Strindberg’ s delusion was not broken unti l


authentic news from Berlin was p laced before him to the effecttha t Stachu had been p laced under arrest in the City just mentioned on a charge of having urged his wife to take her own lifeand the lives of their children . This she did . His fear and sus

picion of the friend now turned into p ity, and Uddgren who inthe meantime had been dis covered by S trindberg through mu tualfriends

,was summoned to Hotel O rfila . S trindberg was now

ob sesse d with another idea , viz., that he had caused Stachu all

h is troubles . Uddgren found him nervous and in a s tate of

humble resignation . There was nothing of that hybris (ftfipts )in him

,however

,which he himself considered the on ly s in that

the gods cannot forgive (73 p .

While Uddgren’

s opinion as regards S trindberg’ s mental con

d ition a t this time was probably not of any greater importancethan th at of the average laym an , it is in teres ting to know thatto him Strindberg appeared to all intents and purpo ses quitenormal . He had always been somewhat of a maniac and themos t serious of al l his man ias had been and was

,tha t of self

reproach . Uddgren says :

Besides in his scientific work he had gotten into a en! de s ac where itwas plain to him that he could not advance any further.

A p artia l retreat wa s unthinkable to S trindberg and so hebegan to tear up the foundation of his rationalism and to es tablishhimself upon the rock bottom of his childhood faith . His re

vers ion to orthodoxy was materially hastened by his relatives inAus tria whom he visited during a period when hi s men ta l res is tance was reduced to a minimum . After the release of Sta chuthe self-torture began with renewed vigor . He now suspectedhis Pa ris friends of being too l s in the hands of the famous Pole,and this was poss ib ly the rea son why he attemp ted suicide onsevera l occas ions

,considering h is chances o f escaping Sta chu

very sligh t . Each time something interrupted the operation and

he was saved . One nigh t later , however, he was convinced thatSta chu was in the adj acent room attempting to kill him by means

of poisonou s gases and electric currents , and then he fled ju st as

if he reserv ed for himself the right of ta king his own life .

In July 1 896 he sudden ly d isappeared from Paris and byway of D ieppe finally reached Ystad, Sweden . Here in the homeof Dr

. Elias son he finally recovered and la ter went to Lund,

Sweden , where he wrote h is I nferno between May 3 and July 2 5 ,

1 897 .


In the fall of 1 896, after having regained his mental poiseunder the treatment of Dr . Elias son ,

he went to Austria to seehis little daughter and relatives . When he took the two and

one-half year o ld child in his a rms he felt, he says , (6 1 p . 1 3 8)like Faust when he exclaimed,

“The earth has me again .

Love for a child turn s man into a woman;it is sexless and heavenly,as Swedenborg says . This is the beginn ing of my educat1on for heaven .

But I have not yet done penance enough.

Chapter IX of The I nferno,The Diary of a Damned Sou l ,

opens with a dialogue characteris tic of the conversation withhis mother—in~ law

,which I cannot refrain from quoting , s ince

it brings u s face to face with Strindberg’ s chief confl ict (op . cit .

pp . 166

My Mother—in—law:What have you done in your former existence that Fate deals so rudely

with you ?

I

Think ! Remember a man who was first married to another man ’ swife

,like myself

,and who separated from her in order to marry an

Austrian woman,a s I did ! Then this little Austrian woman i s torn

from him, just a s mine has been from me, and their only child is kept inthe Bohemian mounta ins

,just as mine . Do you remember the hero of

my romance On the Open Sea , who commits sucide on an island

My Mother-in-law

Enough !

I

You don’t know that my father’ s mother was called Neipperg

My Mother-in-law

Stop ! Unhappy man !

I

And that my little Christina resemb les the greatest murderer of thecentury to a hair . Only look at her, the little tyrant, the man-tamer attwo and one-half !

My Mother-in-law

You are mad .

I '

Yes,and what s ins have you women formerly committed, since your


lot is still harder than ours ? See how justly I have called woman ourevil angel

My Mother-in—lawTo be a woman is twofold hell .

I

And so woman is a twofold devil

How far cured of his mental breakdown he wa s while on hisvi sit at Dornach may be seen in Chap ter X of The Inferno . His

mother—in-law has informed him tha t he would not be well untilCandlemas , when the sun returns once more . As yet it is onlyla te autumn . He was still suffering from hallucinations ofvarious kinds . One day, he tell s us , there was a single clap ofthunder over his head (op . ci t . p . 1 85 if) . He felt alarmed and

a sked himself why he did not fal l down,humiliating himself

before the E ternal . He answered by saying that having beenallowed to hear the voice of the Eternal

,he felt almost on a level

wi th the Lord,l ike an in tegral part ofHis personality, an emana

tion of His being,an organ of His organism . He writes (op . cit .

pp . 1 86

He needed me in order to reveal Himself;otherwise He would havesent a thunderbolt and struck me dead on the spot .

Bu t frightened by his megalomania he quickly turned to theB ible and by chance Opened and read the fo llowing verse by Job

Wilt thou disannu l my judgment ? Wilt thou condemn me tha tthou mayest be justified ? Has thou an arm like God ? Or canst thouthunder with a voice like Him ?

He now entertained no fu rther doubt, the Eternal had spokento him and he demanded of Him what His servant should do .

There was no answer. He writes :

Good,I will humble myself before the Eternal who has humbled

Himself to speak to His servant . Bu t bend my knee before the mob andthe mighty ? Never !

His deliverance is p ractically effected through the instrumentality of the Seer, the Buddha of the North , Swedenborg ,whom he had scorned as a fanatic in Uppsala about thirty yearsbefore (0p . cit . p .


A single word suffi ces to illuminate my soul , to scatter my doubts andva in fancies regarding my supp

osed enemies , electricians , black magic,etc .

,and this single word 13

“Dev astatio .

”12

All my sufferings I find are described by Swedenborg—the feeling ofsuffocation (angina pectori s) , constrictions of the chest, palp itations ,the sensation which I call the electric girdle

—all exactly correspond ,and these phenomena , taken together, constitute the spiritual catharsis(purification) , which was already known to St . Paul “whom

,he says

,

speaking of someone ,“ I have determined to hand over to Satan for the

destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of theLord Jesus ,

”and

“ among whom are Hymenaeu s and Alexander,whom

I have delivered over to Satan, that they may be taught not tobla spheme .

And again (op . cit . p . 2 1 3 ff) .

Balzac, the Prophet’ s assistant, has taught me in Séraphita that Pain

of conscience is a weakness which does not put an end to sin;repentanceis the only power which makes a decisive end of all . Very well, let usrepent . Bu t is not that equivalent to criticising Providence

,who has

chosen me for its scourge ? And to saying to the Powers “You haveguided my destiny ill; you have made me and commissioned me tochasti se

,to overthrow idols

,to stir up revolt, and then you withdraw

your protection from me and disown me in an absurd way, telling me tocreep to the cross and repent .

”

Strange circulus vitios us , which I already foresaw in my twentiethyear

,when I wrote my drama Mas ter Olaf, and which has constituted

the tragedy of my life . Why be tormented during thirty years in orderto be taught by experience what one had already foreboded . Whenyoung I was sincerely pious , and you have made me a freethinker . Out

of the freethinker you have made an atheist and out of the atheist areligious man . Inspired by humanitarian ideals , I have been a heraldof sociali sm . Five years later you showed me the absurdity of socialism;you made all my prophecies futile . And supposing I become religiousonce more

,I am sure that in another ten years you will reduce religion

to an absurdity .

At the close of The I nferno he writes the moral of h is life’s

pilgrimage (0p . cit . pp 228

Such then is my life;a sign , an example to serve for the betterment ofothers ;a proverb to set forth the nothingness of fame and of celebrity;a proverb to show the younger generation how they should not live;Y es ! I am a proverb , I who regarded myself as a prophet and am revealed as a braggart. Now the Eternal ha s led this false prophet to speakempty words , and the fals e prophet feels irresponsible since he ha s onlyp layed the role assigned to him .

1 2According to Swedenborg this is the name of a stage in religious dev elopment.

(Translator’s note) .


Here you have, my brothers , the picture of a human destiny, oneamong the many, and now confess that a man ’s life may seem—a bad

joke !

In order to be able to understand this act of self-redemptiono r sp iritua l catharsis effected by means of this vo luntary fl ightinto semi-madness , it is necess ary to take a retrospect of Strindberg’ s exceedingly comp lex life and to summarize the main pointsbrought out in this analysis .

We started out with a child afli icted with a not inconsiderablehereditary Belastung, manifesting itself in organ inferiority and

con sequent hypertrophy of nervous function . The boy wasreared under ex tremely adverse environmental cond itions of

home,school and college . From the po int of view of physical

and menta l hygiene he suffered as much neglect a s any individualcould suffer .

The significance of this becomes p lain if we remember hisnervous predisposition and the fact that the limits of n ormalstimula tion and respon se are .very narrow . Dr . Burnham says

( 10a) .

Every one of us,should we be subjected to stimuli beyond the limits ,

would be thrown into a state of neuros is .

We also found that the adven t o f puberty was attended bysevere storms and stress , the in ten sity of which was due to thegenera l adverse condition s already referred to , but chief of whichwere his fixation on the mother and consequent s trained relation sto his father. Dr. G . Stan ley Hall says :(29) ( I I p . 1 09 )

Sex, is the most potent and magic Open Sesame to the deepest mysteries of life , death, religion and love . It is , therefore , one of the cardinals in s against youth to repres s healthy thoughts of sex at the proper age,because thus the mind is darkened and its wings clipped for many and

the highest intuitions , which the supreme Muse of common sen se atthi s its p sychologi cal moment ought to give . If youths are left tothemselves and the contagion of most environments , thi s mental stimulustakes a low turn towards the lewd imaginations and vile conception swhich undermine the strength and instead of helping upward and makinginvulnerable against all temptations it makes virtue safe only in itsabsence and prepares the way for a fall when its full strength is firstfelt .


Now,to realize the deep s ignificance of the above statement

we need only recall certain parts of The Son of a Servant o r thefi rst chapter in Married, which is the h istory of Strindberg’ sfirst real struggle s with life and its problems— his awakening, umguided sex-life and the violent repres sion of it by condition s oflife over which he had no control . Out of the un satisfactoryso lu tion of this problem originated the grea t majority o f Strindberg’ s woes . From the time O f his graduation from the Gymnasium in 1 867 to his marriage in 1 877 , his love-life confirms inevery respect my assumption of his p sycho—sexua l fixation on themother . His early literary activities , described by himse lf

(63 p . demon stra te furthermo re tha t he was con scious , to acertain extent

, of the shackles of the Family Romance and tha t h emade determined effo rts to effect a Spi ritual libera tion .

His you th and adolescence as well as his early manhood thusresulted 1n vio lent s truggles with all the Oppo site forces that constitute life

,foremo s t among which are love and religion , sym bolic

of h is relation to the parents . He illu strates i n a strik ing manner the genetic proces s of religious dualism which , according toRan k and Sachs (47) i s the resul t o f a sp litting of the feeling soccas ioned by the contrasts of the uncon sciou s E ins tellung to thefather—a conflict which reso lves itself into the Ormuzd-Arhiman

,

God-Devil concept. We read (Op . cit . p .

The extreme expres sion for the overcoming of the father i s atheismthrough which the individual comes to rely entirely upon himself andrecognizes neither ma ster nor Creator .

Along with this,however

,the autho rs continue

,the ambi

valen t feeling which clings to the image of the father and regardshomage and gra titude to him as the fi rs t religiou s du ty

,i s never

ab sent . Fo r the individual , the childhood relation to the fatherdeterm ines the attitude he as sumes later towards the heaven lyFather and creator of al l th ings . Emancipation from the fatherand rejection of his authority does not mean rejection of o rliberation from the love o f and dependence on the earthlyfather. They are part of the Uncon sciou s and may later findexpression in religiou s activities . And so the circle closes . For

religion , springing a s it does out of the relation of the child toits pa rents , culminates in the end in a compromise of the ambivalent p sychic impulses inherent in it .

I n my former dis cussion of S trindberg’ s love life,I confined



every individual th at is at all a live is an ana rchist and rebelsunconsciously

,if not consciously, against the limitation s th at

a life of culture puts upon him . After hundreds and thousandsof years of training

,man is still an animal that may be trained

but never comp letely tamed . To comp ly with the demands o fcultura l life is a sacrifice . Through marriage man renounces hisincestuous and polygamous in stincts in favo r of a s ingle woman .

Conscious ly man does this willingly;we are told , bu t unconsciou sly bitter feel ings a re born because of this sacrifice of persona lity,the shackling

,smothering and partia l stamp ing ou t Of the ego .

A happy marriage is unth inkable except where one of th econtrahents is comp letely vanquished , o r where both partieshave descended to a level Of pathological indifference and v ege

tation . Marriages fail, according to Stekel, because the contrahents a re too self—cen tered

,too narciss istic

,in other words neither

one of the two will become subordinate to the other . He who ismadly in love iden tifies himself with the object of his love . Hewho s imp ly loves is s till consciou s of a part of his own ego . Lovemarriages are

,therefo re

, no t neces sarily happy, for love andmarriage are different things .This philosophy of love , formulated by Stekel on strictly

Adlerian princip les , is the key to the unders tanding of Strindberg’ s vicis situdinous conj ugal life . Already in 1 887 he wrote inA Fool

’

s Confes s ion with reference to h is fi rst wife (60 p . 3 38)

I hate her because I love her.

Tha t Strindberg’ s attitude towards the oppo site sex wasla rgely determined by h is p sycho-sexua l fixation on the motherhas been recognized even by writers who have no t publicly identified themselves with any one Of the p sycho-ana lytic theorie s .Lind-af—Hageby (40 p . 22 ) says with reference to Strindberg :

The mother soon became an object of analysis ;he was torn betweenlove for her and contempt for her fau lts which he di scovered throughmak lng comparisons between her and his father.

This is correct so far as it goes,bu t it does not go far enough .

It is neces sary to amp lify the statement as fo l lows :On the onehand she was the flawless mother

,the source of love and con

solation to whom the child gravitated . But later on she a lsobecame the sensual , impu re woman , who had vio lated both lawsand conventions and so to speak became the concubine of his


father . Theoretically, he was born in wedlock, but practicallyhe wa s an il legitimate child . Moreover, he had another seriou s igrievance again st her. He owed his slave blood to her and tho se !traits of servility and lack of individuality which intens ify his jconsciou snes s of social inferiority .

His fanatical,highly abnorma l ideal ization of woman

,

marriage,motherhood and the family is but a defence mechanism

agains t his conscious and unconscious condemna tion of his own

paren ts , an over compensation for the inherent defects in hisfi rs t and last love object— his own mother . The dualistic image

of his mother in which the baser component con tinuallythreatened to become the dominan t element conditioned Strindberg’ s attitude towards the oppos ite sex . I t probably alsocreated in him that puritanic wo rship of virtue which mani fes teditse lf in an extreme shyness during his you th and adolescence.

There are many instances of this in his au tobiographical writings .The hired girl who uncovered him while he was asleep he horsewhipped on the following day when told abou t it (69 , p .

The maid (Karin) whom he found p laying m a su sp icious manner w ith a younger brother while the latter was in bed he spa

’ tin the face and defied both the father and the stepmother 1n thealterca tions that followed, fo r, as he said , he felt that he repre

'

sented the dead mother .The dialogue between the father and the son concerning this

inciden t I shall not a ttempt to interpre t . Bu t I venture to saytha t a very special meaning must be a ttached to it .

A ll this sensit ivenes s of hi s Strindberg regarded as a naturalendowmen t . From a psycho—analytic point of View it is a forceof repres sion and hence but a defence mechanism against whatwa s uppermo st in his unconsciou s , threatening to break throughand establish itself in consciousness . Ultimately there developedout of this trait in Strindberg this doctrine

that socia l and individual purity is the only solid foundation forphysical and menta l health, as well as an indi spensable condition of trueach ievement .

The Madonna cult which began in his childhood and whichoutlived his misogyny must a lso be traced to the same sourcethe mother . It was nothing bu t another form of over com

pensation . After his fi rst marriage , however, it came to an ah

rupt end, and a cons iderab le part of his so—called Romantic periodand al l of his Naturalis tic period are perm eated with that hatred

h—‘c,I.

y—‘r‘


of woman,that genera l m isanthrophy and sp iritua l darknes s

which cu lminates in and subsides , generally speaking, abou t thetime of h is divorce from the fi rs t wife and his entrance upon theroad to Inferno .

Since I have already discus sed in detail the various circumstances and factors , the interplay of which fina lly resul ted inthe unhappy union be tween Strindberg and the divorced Baroness ,nothing further need be said . It is p la in that S trindberg

’ s fatehis I nzes tseheu—forced him to marry, not the materna l type ofwoman

,bu t its very Oppos ite . We should , however, no t forget

that there were other motives a s I have previous ly pointed ou t. in detail . How vio lently he struggled again st the realizationof the union I have empha sized and demonstrated by excerptsfrom A Fool

’s Confes s ion . A reading of the ent ire work will re

lieve anyone of the doubt as to the validity of my s ta tement .The fact also that the Barones s was a native of F in land , thatStrindberg ’ s second wife

,Frida Uhl , was anAu strian and the third,

Harriet Bo s se wa s a Norwegian , gain s special significance in cons idera tion of the fact that Abraham (3 p . 499 ff) thinks there is atype of neurotics who has special difficulty in establishing relation swith the oppo site sex . He terms this type exogamous . Thediffi culty con sists in thi s , namely , that the man experiences anungovernable antipathy at coming in contact with a woman thatbelongs to the same race or nationality as he himself

,or rather

that of his mother. This Abraham regards a s a positive defencemechani sm against incest . The neurotic flees from the ma ternaltype to such women who are most unlike the mother (or s ister)in appearance and character . He reports that blond NorthGerman neurotics show great an tipathy towards the same typeof women . Nothing in their wives must remind them of theiroriginal love—the mother . Not even their home dia lect . Theyare attracted by foreign brunettes . Dr . Abraham has found anabundance of such examp les and i s inclined to think that thistype of neurotic makes his selection according to a defin ite law .

I n all th is the inclination to Reihenbildung, emphasized by Freud ,was most striking. Thepatient showed himself unable to directhis libido perm anen tly or successfully to a particular woman .

The fixa tion on the earliest love was over-powering .

Be this a s it may,one thing is certain and that is that the

Barones s embodied none of those traits which Strindberg admiredin h is own mother, that is the truly woman ly qualities , bu t manyof those qualitie s which he abhorred in his own mother . This

A PSYCHOANALYT IC STUDY 8 5

s tatement will be plain to anyone who will take the trouble to readA Fool

’

s Confes s ion ,which I have accepted a s a fair and essen

tially trustworthy characterization of the woman , even if somewha t overdrawn here and there , perhaps throughou t . And so it,

came to pa ss that S trindberg found in his much longed fo r corn-

4p lement an agen t who continually revived 1n him the memor1esof the seriou s Shortcomings of his own mother and caused him to!tran sfer al l h is unconscious ha tred of and con tempt fo r her on hisown wife and womankind at large in so far a s it did not corres

pond to the idealized image of his mother . To wha t extent heiden tified himself with his father and the Baroness with hismother is impos s ible to say, bu t to an individual S0 utterly a t themercy of au to-suggestion as S trindberg was , such feats would no tbe d iffi cult of execu tion .

At any rate his unceasing rhythmic vacillation between loveand ha te

,hope and fear, the joy of life with its hard battles on

the one hand and sickness , poverty, and though ts of suicide onthe other finally resulted in the severing of the conjugal bond .

I have already po inted ou t tha t the so-called I nferno crisi swas the logical ou tcome of a life that cou ld not run any longer ;i n the o ld ru ts . Shortly after his arrival in Berlin in 1 892 , he had !come under the influence of Swedenborg and theosophy . Thescientific studies which he then undertook, undoubtedly in orderto stifle the small voice from within , soon convinced him of thelimitations of the human mind and the vanity, the presumptuous-1

ness of wishing to arrive at po s itive proofs concerning the phenomena of life . Tru th

,that trea sure of which he had been in

ques t S ince his childhood,was no t to be found . The limitations

of the human mind now for the fi rs t time became an irrefu tablerea lity to him and at the same time a good and who l ly jus tifiableexcu se for beat ing tha t retreat which his pride and boundles sambition had pos tponed fo r years . In o ther words , his fictitiousgoal was unattainable and his safety a t stake . In one way and

in one on ly, could he burn the rema ining bridges and turn a seemingly d isa strou s defea t in to a glo rious victory— the greates tone of which the human being is capable . This was by proclaiming to the world the Vanita s Vanitatum of Eccle s ia ste s . And hedid it . His scientific studie s had degenerated into alchemy and

from out of this a tmosphere there wa s bu t a single step into ab

solu te mys ticism and occulti sm . He took the s tep . And fromou t o f

“ sorrow,despa ir, darkness and abso lu te skep ticism ,

” hebegan his I nferno wandering by way of D amascus to the Cross .


This pilgrimage of h is is described in the mys tic symbolicdramas entitled To Damascus . This dramatic trilogy reveal s tou s the soul’ s fina l battle with self and the devil— the past with allits vanity and so rrow —and the final renouncement of the world .

Here he bows before and embraces tha t faith in God which hehad combatted in his youth , and endeavored to eradicate entirelyfrom his life in after yea rs . Here we become acqua inted withthe S tranger and the Lady who j ourney together from place to

p lace in suffering and dis il lusionmen t,tortured by Violent

,

co rroding hatred o r so laced by ecs tatic love . Final ly theS tranger attains to perfect peace , that

“

peace which pa sseth allunderstanding ,

” in the monastery of dead pas sions , the whitemans ion on the top o f the h il l which he greets with the followingwords :

Anything so white I never before beheld on thi s unclean earth,except

in my dreams ;yes , this i s my youth’ s dream of a house wherein dwelled

peace and purity . I greet thee wh ite house Now I am athome .

In this p lay S trindberg’ s whole stormy life

,symbol ica lly

masked, passes in review . Here are found pall—mall The Beggar,

The D octor,The Sister, The Mo ther, The Confessor , The F001,

The Shadows— all but one and the same individuality in differentd isguise . With the cros s in his hand— the symbol of salvation

,

sna tched from a roads ide calva ire—The S tranger advances higherand h igher towards the sky . But he fall s and is found in a sta teof delirium by some of the inma tes of the monas tery who bringh im to the hosp ital . After he emerges from the trance he findshimself seated in the Refectory in company with all those whomhe ha s injured in life and with whom his own fa te has in some waybeen bound up . The dominant note of the whole scene is o ne o foverwhelming guilt— that guil t which like a red thread run sth rough S trindberg ’ s en tire life . The Confes so r reads a loud TheCu rse of Deuteronomy and eve ry word cu ts the Stranger tothe quick

,making him feel the whole crushing weight o f the Law

,

bu t he suffers it al l in re signation fo r he has reached the rockbottom of l ife and accomp l ished his self redemp tion— the sp iritualdeliverance from all tho se passion s which bound him to the

pa st .This deliverance is the subject of a large number of p lays

which,generally speaking , resemble To Damascus in though t

,

conten ts and dramatic con struction . Such are among othersAdvent

,Easter, The Dance of Death and The Dream Play, which


Lind—af—Hageby has characterized a s a new conception and anew art a p lay written for a stage no t yet built . ”

(40 pStrindberg call s The Dream Play a Buddhistic and proto

Chris tian drama . It is more than that,says Lind-af-Hageby, it

is pre-cosmic .

The Blue Book (Zones 0] the Sp irit) , cons titute , accordingto Strindberg himself the synthesis Of his life . Of this remarkablework Nil s Kj aer wrote in Verdens Gang:

It is more comprehens ive than any modern collection of aphori sms ,chaotic a s the Koran, wrathful as Isaiah, as full of occult things as theBible

,more entertaining than any novel

,keener—edged than most

pamphlets , mystical as the Cabbala , subtle as the scholastic theology,s incere as Rousseau ’ s confes sions

,stamped with the impress of incom

parable originality, every sentence shining like luminous letters in thedarkness— such is thi s book in which the remarkable writer makes a

final reckoning with his time and proclaims hi s fate, as pugnaciously a s

though he were a descendant of the Hero of Lii tzen .

13

To this admirable characterization of the book I would add i

tha t taken all in all it is an apology fo r his convers ion to the newlife . Like many of his works of the post-Infern o period

‘it is asafety and defence mechanism . This is evident from the way;in which he cites precedents from his tory, ancient and modern .

A la rge number of grea t men, poets and philosophers grew wise ,

l ike himself in o ld age and became mystics . He has , therefore”lo st nothing by renouncing his former self with all its worldly;vanity and fool ish specula tion s inspired by the arch-enemy of

man —the devil— bu t made positive ga in s;he ha s written to the!very summit of the A lp ine regions Of pure life and communica-5

tion with God, whence his way led onward to the verdant p la in s:and the calm wa ters of Felicity . From this commanding heigh t:

he surveyed the world below where he fo rmerly dwelt and the!

landscape is a lternately lit up with sun shine or draped in darkmists o r drowned in rain storms . But he , the poet, the redeemedone

,who has been snatched , as it were, from the j aws of dea th ,

ha s escaped alike from dark and bright days . He is above it all,

recon ciled with Fa te and the past .

But Strindberg’s faith was far from that of the ordinaryorthodox Christian . He writes (70 p .

1 8 ! uoted by Babillotte in his introduction to Zones of the Spirit.

~v


Let the fruit of faith be seen to be Humanity,Resignation

,Merciful

ness . But don ’t go and count how many gla sses of whiskey your neighbor drinks ;don

’t call him a hypocrite if once in a while he gives way tothe flesh, or if he is angry and says hard words . Don’t ask how often hegoes to church;don

’t spy on his words , if in an access of ill-humor hespeaks otherwise than he would a white lie or an embelli shmentof a story is not a deadly sin . An improp riety can be so atoned for byimprisonment that it ought to be forgotten . Don ’t secede from churchbecause you do not understand some dogma . Do not form a sect withthe idea of rais ing yourself to the rank of Shepherd One shouldhave a la rge-hearted Chri stian ity for daily use and a stri cter one forfestivals .

Again he shows his independence and originality in thefollowing excerp t (op . cit) .

I t is my duty to fight for the maintenance of my ego against all infl uences which a sect or party, from love of proselytizing might bring to’bear upon it . The conscience which the grace of my Divine Protectorhas given me, tells me that .

Hence it is perfectly safe a s well as just to mainta in thatin the last analysis

,S trindberg ’s ego tism tran scended his sp iritu

a lity .

Bjerre (7) voicing the theory Of Adler is , therefore , essential lyco rrec t . S trindberg’s conversion was

,a s I have al ready pointed

out,to a large degree a strategic retrea t, a compromise , a meces

sary modu s vivendi , conditioned in part at lea s t, by his inability asa neu rotic to accep t enigmatic problems of exis tence in a p ragmatic spiri t . Hence his fl ight in to a lchemy, magics , mysticism and

o ccu ltism and then to the Cro ss,the everla sting symbol

,as

1 Bjerre said , of the inability on the part of the individua l to copewith and master the problems of earthly life .

To Strindberg God became the greatest of al l realitie s . Totry to prove his exis tence was as fooli sh as to endeavor to provea geome trical axiom . The men of scien ce are ru stic intelligenceswho confound intelligence with reason and whose di scou rses uponthings spiritual a re worthless (70 p .

The con sequence of ambition and of lea rning he characterizesas fol lows (op . cit . p .

As soon as a man buries himself in books hegets b lack nails and dirtycuffs

,forgets to wash, to comb his hair and to shave . He neglects his

duties towards life, society and man; loses spiritual capacities , becomesabsent-minded, short-sighted, wears glasses and takes snuff to keeph imself awake . He cannot follow a conversation with attention

,can



and like all weary men he was seized with a longing his life’sorigin—hi s mother.

In the little hut in the high lands he found her. miraclewas wrought by a s ing le word . No sooner had she pronouncedhis name than

he was transformed into his former self. All his roles of kings , ofdemon s

,of mae

’

stros and mode ls went up 1n smoke and he was onlyone thing—his mother’s son.Then once more he knelt before her, gently laid hi s head in

her lap and whispered

I have had enough of life. Now I long to die.

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