Call PN 80 P37 ‘v9m2008 Yes Se an22004 Ol Ne Location: 8 ns Conditional ILL: 5028762 ‘Maxcost: $50.00 FM Paragraph IND ORU,VA@,VA@PSC Amprint: ‘Article: Robert Young "Psychoanalytic Criticism: Has it got beyond a joke?” Vol: 4 Now Pages: 87-114 Borrowing Notes: : Fai SHIPPFM APR 13 2004 ILL: 5028762 ~ :Borrower: INU Reqbate: 20040409 :NeedBefore: 20040509+ | | Status: IN PROCESS 20040409 RecDate: fOcLC: 12130734 :Source: Clio :DueDate: | fuender: *IND, ORU, VAG, VAG, PSC : |icanLNo: ‘Lender's OCLC LDR: v.3- 1984- + :TITLE: Paragraph » ARTICLE: Robert Jeane "Psychoanalytic Criticism: Has it got beyond a joke?" + :VOL: 4 2m :DATE: TPAGES: 87-114 + :VERIPIED: ocle + NOT RON: Kotkowska, Ela ela@northwestern.edu + :SHIP TO: Northwestern University [ESE i1e70 Campus Drive/Interlibrary +Loan/evanston IL USA 60208 + LTO: Bane TY (SH? VIA? ariel. library.northwestern.edu (129.105.29.32) Fax: 84' 91-5685- | MaXCOST: $50.00 IFM :COPYRT COMPLIANCE: CCG + :LENDING CHARGE: SHIPPED :SHIP INSURANCE: + :DENDING RESTRICTIONS: + :LENDING OTES: + :RETURN TO: + :RETURN VIA: + | = iii" Return Ty | ILL: 5028762 Borrower: INU University of Nowe Dame e: 4/9/2004 LC #: 121307 117 Hesburgh Library | ReaDater 490 ee cen Interlibrary Loan | Patron: Kotkowska, Ela ela@northwestern.edu Nore Dame, IN 46556-5629 ‘Author: | Title: Paragraph | Articles Robert Young "Psychoanalytic Cris: Has it got beyond a joke?” Ship To: ‘Northwestern University Library Vol: 4 Ne Pages: 87-114 1970 Campus Drive Interlibrary Loan | Evanston TL USA 60208 cle Due Date:EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Felicity Baker Malcolm Bowle Terence Cave Forbes Marian Hobson Michael Hol land é Kelley Kelth Reader Michael Korton Cover design by Jane Boyds © Prepared with the help of Tony Rick and Jen Masons Printed by Penbgate, Cambridge. Published by the Modern Critical Theory Groups Copyright @ 1984 The Modern Critical Theory Group. ISSN 0264 8334 See back cover for subserIptions; forthcoming articles; guidelines to contributors; Hist of bookshops stocking PARAGRAPH. £3.00 PARAGRAPH The journal of the Modern Criical Theory Group 4 October 1984PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM: Has It Got Beyond a Joker thn Inpoverished Individual borrowed 25 florins from a prosperous acquaintance, with many asseveretions of hls necessitous circumstances. The very sane day his benefactor met him again In a restaurant with a plate of salmon mayor naise In front of him. The benefactor reproached him: What? You borrow money from me and then order yourself salmon mayonnatse? 1s that what you've used my money for?" NL don't understand you," replied the object of the attack: | haventt any money | can't eat salmon mayonnaise, and If | have sone money | austatt eat salmon mayonnalse. Well, ‘thon, when an | to eat salmon meyonnalse?™"! A joke: a trep: castration: sexuality: Identlty: language: meaning: nonsense: 3 Joke ‘The more closely you lock at @ word the more distantly It looks back". Ker! Krause ' | begin with an Insight from psychoanalytic critictsm: Colertage strengthens the concept of the phallic mother by his use of the symbolism of the snake. By Its behaviour and by Its relation to food and protection the Albatross Is the mother, but In one Hine In the poom Is Identified es "hin. -87- To Coleridge, the father was 8 fentaine giving me! nother a masculine, rejecting female. The Mer Iner despised the snakes: the child attenpted to fight off the dangerous phallus, to deny nis passive Impulses; but It was ‘2 hopeless struggle. The Mariner must subm Dovid Geres's Interpretation of "The Anclent Mertner' In terms of an Identification of the albatross with @ phallic mother provides © good example of 9 kind of criticism that has for 8 Tong tine produced laughter enong acadenlcs and non-academles alike ~ thus eeralng the right to be called 2 jokes In spite of ‘the achlevenents of psychoanalytic criticism at Its best ~ the work of Maud Bodkin or Kenneth Burke for: Instance ~ thers were good reasons why, by the sixties, Its credentials were af on al! time low. It was accused, for the most part quite rightly, of & crude application of psychoanalytic theory, of a reductive pur= sult of pt ‘end excrenental symbolism In IItereture, always Interpreted In a predictable way at the sane time It was felt that It alssed out entirely every quality thet made IItereture IIteratures If In sone sense psychoenalytic criticism was a kind of grotesque caricature of the tendency to reduce IIterature to 2 sot of othical prescriptions about "IIfet, the cherge thet It neglected Iitereture's IInguistic texture was stIil a just one To put It enother way, phallic mothers did not succeed In explaining IIterature only In creating an unintentional ly humorous form of criticism. It vas In this situation In the six~ tes, when the early excitenents of psychoanalytic criticism had given way to @ rather lintted and repetitive critical mode, that "French Freud arrived and virtually rehablliteted psychoanalytic criticism overatghts In England 1+ came via Christian Metz, Althusser and the New Lett Review; In the States It was ploneered in particular by Severe! Issues of Yale French Studies: Jecques Ehrmenn's ‘structural ism! (1966), Jeffrey Mehiman's YES 48 ("French Freud: Structural Studies In Psychoanalysis", 1972), end Shoshana Folman's ‘Literature end Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading: Otherwise' of 1977+ Lacan's appearance at the Johns Hopkins Symposium of 1966, the proceedings of which were publ shed as The: Structuralist Controversy, was obviously also erucla In Intro=ducing French Freud to America, with his fanous remerk "the bes 5 Baltimore in the early mo feral ly bringing then together nage to sum up the unconscious Two years later fol loved The energence of thls and In hand with Its use tn In Iterature It seemed to nex version of psychoanalysis went Merxism, anthropology, and semlology; Inttlate @ new phase for 2 psychoanalytic criticism that would no nger be concerned with solf-atfirming, reductive readings of IIterary texts as symptons or case histories of thelr authors- Typical of this sense of a new start was Shoshana Felmants Influential Introduction to YFS 55/56: "We moan Indeed to suggest that s+. the very relationship between literature and psychoana- lysis ~ the way In which they Inform each other - has In Itself to be reinvented'.3 What she objected to about the past was the wey In which the notion of psychoanalytic criticism Inpited a mastering body of knowledge, never Itself questioned, being brought in a kind of grid upon which to read off and Interpret Ilteratures The relation between the two disciplines Instead of belng one of coordination imp!ted subordinat lon: a relation In which IItereture Is submitted to the authority, to the prestige of psychoanalysis+ Wh ture Is considered as 4 body of language ~ to eroreted = psychoanalysis Is considered as a body of knowledge, whose competence Is called upon to Interpret. Psychoanalysis, in other words, occuples the place of a subject, IIterature that of an object; the relation of Interpretation Is struct tured as a relation of master to slave (ps 5) tera the: sol t es she points cut, If Iterature seons + witht Im of psychoenal psychoanalysis equally finds In the realm of Ilerature, where It discoveres not only @ 4 for external verification and hypothesis testing, but also ‘the constitutive texture of Its conceptual framevork, of Its theoretical body. The key concepts of psychoanalysis are references to IIteratures++ Inhich} Is the language psychoanaly= SIs uses In order to speak of Itself, In order to nano Itself? (ps 99+ This moans at the very least, she argues, that the old notion of application has to give way to one of Implication, of exploring the ways In which the two Implicate each other. Felman's reappraisal of the relation between literature and Psychoanal ysis, nterImplicatlon', has been extraordinarily Influential, not only with Lacanians but with ego But what was striking when the volume wes. Fepub! ished recently as a book was the way In which whet had years eariler sowed ITke a harbinger of 2 whole new mode o! 1 a rehabilitation of psychoanalytic criticism es serlous lea! mode, seemed In 1982 IIke the apex of @ movenent which since then had been on the wane. Although one can point to cer= tain books of Interest that have appeared since 1977, the new Psychoanalytic criticism has fatied to establish Itself with o sustalned body of work- Why? her stress on There are, | think, t¥o maln reasons for this+ The first Is 2 purely conceptual one. As the title of YFS 55/36 - ‘Literature ‘and Psychoanalysis' = suggests, as soon es you reject the notion of psychoanalysis as a masterful body of knowledge belng brought to bear upon Iiterature then the notion of a psychoanalytic cri= tletsm as such must be rejected also, for It preclst the use of psychoanalysis as a perspective that Is, to bear upon ITterature, clsm. tron tlonship between literature and psychoanalysis had the effect not Just of superseding the standing Joke of vulgar psychoanalytic criticism but of superseding any notion of a psychoanalytic ori~ tieism at all. The second reason could be described as Internal: It derives fron a particular effect thet occurs during the act of snalysis Hself. To demonstrate the way In which it works | will tell three stories where critics and analysts find thenselves at the wrong end of a joke, as "Jokoes' to use the old word for e Joke~ Victim. My three jokees are Felman, Freud, and Jeffrey Wehiman, ®il of whom when faced with IIterary and psychoanalytic phenonena cannot, rather literally, get beyond 2 Joke, that is, to Its other sides This also points to @ certain Inposs! Into the whole enterprise of psychoanalytic critictsmIn Felments equally Influential essay on Janes's Turn of the Screw she shows that the history of critical debate obout the ‘story 15, 05 sho puts It, 2 repetition of the scene dramatized In the text» The criv tical Interpretation, In other words, not only eluctdates the text but elso reproduces I+ dramatical artictpates Through Its very reading, th Yo speak, acts Itself out. As a reading effect, this vertent acting out" 1s Indeed uncanny: xhichever way the reader turns, he can but be turned by the text, he can but perfora It by repeating It.? ‘This strange phenomenon, Felman speculates, Is the trap of which James speaks In hls Preface when he describes the story as ‘an anusotte to catch those not easily caught'. She then denonstra~ ‘tes very cleerly how the uncenny trapping pover of the story manages to catch both nalve and sophisticated readers allke In an inescapable reading effect. je Jokelet, bis ‘amusettet, turns out to ensnare th the story's anbi- Ie metaphors and : nenely, the he story won't vulgar way's Douglas remarks to the "sexual ty" through the q) guity, Edmund offered an answer to governess's sex: tel In any narrator, Wlison te Felman polnts out, It such simple, Wilson's essay has engendered an endless confilet of Flons about the text among Its critics. The struggle for the text exactly parallels and continues that for the children bet= ween the governess and the servants. If the meaning of the story never cones off, then James's joke certainly does, operating In exactly the sane way as the ‘extreme exemple! of the Joke ~ the nonsense jokes Freud writes: -91- These extreme examples have an effect because they rouse the expectation of a joke, so that one tries to find @ concealed sonse behind the nonsense. But one fInds none; they really ‘are nonsense (Jokes, p+ 190). To avold the vulgar Freudlan reading, It seems, the critic has to avold trying to make sense of nonsense - because If he does try to provide @ meaning then the text makes a nonsense of the any effort to suppress the text's conflictual wuity of meaning, the critic becomes trapped within them himself and forced to act out @ process that recalls the Indentiflcetory yet divisive structure of the constitution of ‘the subject and of Its sexual posttlonings: as with sexuallty, the critic Is obliged to take sides. eritle!s sense» forces, Its an So In Jones's tale of texqulsite mystification’ the attempt to demystify the story only turns out to Involve @ eritic In further mystl fication: te could very well wonder,' writes Lacan of Poe's Purlolned Letter but in terms equally applicable to The Turn of the Screw, ‘whether It Is not precisely the fact thet everyone Is fooled which constItutes here the source of our pleasure’. If the IIterary mystification Is, In Janes's torms, ‘exquisite,! It Is Indesd because It constitutes 0 source of pleasures The mysti fication 1s 2 game, 2 Jokes to play Is to be played; to comprehend mystification Is to be comprehended In It; entering Into the game, ve ourselves becone fair gane for the very tJoke! of meaning. The joke Is that, by meaning, everyone Is fooled (pps 202-3). The Joke, a5 Felman coments at the end of her essay, Is Indeod fon us+ Sut how do we avold being taken In? If meaning turns out to be ® joke, what can the critic do to avold being Inscribed in the antagonistic forces of the text? Can we make sense of non-sense? I wll retura later to a consideration of Felman's own suggestion of how we should read such an unreadable storys For ‘the monont let us leave The Tura of the Screw bearing two things In mindste Meantng In the tale, far from being Its substance es one would normally expect, seems to be merely 2 facade, Its forte, while @ certain rhetorical play and effect, norm teken to be the Inessentlal exterlor of @ story, reveals Itself as the story's Inner nucleus ~ @ structure which, 85 we shell see, happens to be the sane as that which Freud analyses In the Joke- 2. The attenpt to get outside the story, to constitute It as an object for eritictsn, far fron creating an object of knowledge turns out to be the lure by which the critic Is most effectively drawn Into the confilctual processes of ‘the text. Parad , the ‘affirmation of mastery’, of fan unambiguous neaning, putting the phallus in It to speak, turns out to be sel + pos critle on one side or the other of the very seeks to el imnate.® This seting out of textual division, of senantle equlvoce- lity, Is by no means, however, confined to the luckless critics of ‘The Tura of the Screw. Samuel Weber, wing Lacan, has recently suggested in The Legend of Freud that Freud's psychoane~ lytle theory elso participates In the very processes that It socks to analyse Weber asks: can psychoanalytic thinking Itself escepe the effects of net It endeavors to think? Can the disruptive distortions of unconscious processes be simply recognized, theoret ~ cally, as an object, or must they not leave thelr Imprint on ‘the process of theoretical objectification Itself? Must not psychoenalytical thinking Itself parteke of ~ repeat ~ the dislocations It seeks to describe?” of all Freud's writings, 'The Uncanny? Is generally recognized as the text In which he most’ thoroughly finds himself caught up tn ‘the very processes that ne seeks to conprehend, to the extent that, as hes been pointed out, his oxn anelytical essay Itself becomes uncanny: an uncanniness to which | now turns® very different!. ‘concealed, kept fron sight, so that others do not get to know of or about It, withne! + to do something to. look on with are secret vers To dicover, disclose, betray To vel! the divine. ch places In the funan bodys him to whom secrets are revesied-++ Holmlich, as used of Knowledge - mysticess @ heimiich moaning, aysticus, divinus, occultus, tiguratus..+ ch In @ different sense, as withdrann from knowledge, clouses+ obscure, inaccessible to knowledges++ The. ot hides end dangerous... so_that helmiich cones to have “ne meaning usually sseribed to ‘unhelmiich'«9 A trap? Freud's famous wender through the dictionary shows that far from enabling him to define I+ objectively, the definitions of the uncenny drew him Into Its own anbiguous effects. — The uncanny, Freud complains, Is not a word slvays used In a clearly definable senses He Jocks for Its Intrinsic quality ~ which turns out to heve nothing to do with meaning as such, for meaning Is, as he puts it, only tattached to the word "uncenay" In the course of Its history" (p. 720, emphasis added pursult of ‘the uncanny through the dictionary finds not 2 s ‘an ambivalence, a constitutive div! the secret knowledge of that which resists knowledge, a secret meaning which resists meanings In its shifts of exclusions and reversals, khelmiich begins In opposition to unhetml by Including It, except thet, by then, it no longer means hel = It becomes estranged from Itself = the unhelmlich par excellence. To be estranged from oneself: to beer the other within.In all the Innunerable golngs-on of this little mystery tale, | want to look at the resistance of the uncenny to Freud's ‘explanation, his theoretical solution of "castration! comparable to Wilson's sel f-castrating solution of ‘sex' to The Turn of the In tals renitence IItersture plays 9 decisive role In dispossessing Freud of yn and In producing the effect of self-castration to his assertion of mastery. Is so! Freud begins with © cunning gesture: he addresses the only 1s paper on the tople and characteristically denies the dity end priocity of his precursor without himself making "any claim to priority's He announces that "the uncanny Is that class of the frightening which leads back to something long known to us, once famiiler'; Jentsch Is criticised beceuse he did not go beyond the relation of the uncanny to the novel and unfami iter. He ascribes the essential factor In the production of the feeling of uncanniness to Intellectual uncertainty; so that ‘the uncanny would always, as It were, be something one does not know one's way about In (p- 221, emphasis added) « If Jentsch's analysis doesn't go far enough, Freud nevertheless: begins In the same place with Hoffmann's The Sandan. He cites jn telling @ story, one of the most successful devices uncenny effects Is to leave the reader In uncertainty 2271, In order to contradict him: ‘entsch's. point of an Intellectual uncertalnty has nothing to do with the effect" (ps 230, enghasis added). js the fear of belng robbed of one's eyes that craates the feeling of the uncanny. Freud concludes: There Is no question, therefore, of any Intellectual uncer= talnty here: wo know now that we are not supposed to be looking on at the products of a madman's Imagination, behing which wo, Ith the superiority of rational minds, are able to detect the sober truth; and yet this knowledge does not lessen the Impresston of uncanniness In the least degree. The theory of Intellectual uncertainty Is thus Incapable of explaining that Impression (pp. 250-1) = 95- Froud Is so cortain that It Is not Intellectual uncertainty. He refuses to bo taken In by the mere artifice of IncertItude that Hoffmann creates and proceeds to assert his own truth or solution of the mystery: the real secret of the uncanny Is the fear of castration. If, hoxever, the uncanny effect Is derived fron the fear of castration, then we might note that castration Itself tells the story of the dislocation of the subject, the basis of uncertalnty about Identity and sexual ity. In splte of his disavowals Froud, as Is well known, con tInuas In 9 state of uncertainty for the whole essay which cones more and more to resenble his ovn risqué story of getting lost In fen Ifallan towns Although he provides @ concluding definit sunmary of his findings at the end of part | begins wlth an admission that the reader nevertheless have felt cortaln doubts arising In his all After discussing @ sunber of proliferating problens Freud finally asks: And are wo after all Justified In entirely Ignoring Intellectual uncertainty as 2 factor, seeing thet we have admitted Its Importance In relation to death? (ps 247)+ It Is at this point thet Freud re-Introduces the question of Iterature: One polntes+ may help us to resolve these uncertainties: nearly ell the Instances which contradict our hypothe are taken from the realm of fiction, of Imaginative (pe 2676 Although he had made no distinction In his eartt leads Freud to differentiate botwoon Hterature Is blamed for producing the uncer= realty people can avold belng ‘taken In', but the uncanny In IIterature 1s so cunning that It Is now seen to demand 2 separate discussion:+ Is a mich more fertile province than the uncanny In real !1fe, for It contains the whole of the latter and something more besides (p+ 24)« Litersture, then, Is the supplement that refutes Freud's hypothe sis, denying his analysis of the uncanny's cause In Infantile experlence, turning It back Into e trick, an a In which the weiter produces Its effect by 'teking us ho Is In a sense betraying us to the supersti= tn we have ostensibly surmounted; he deceives us by promising to give us the sober truth, and then after all oversteps the bounds of possibility. We react to his Invent tons as we would have reacted to real experlences; by ‘the tine we have seen through his trick It is already too late ond the author has achieved his object. Gut It mst be added that nis success Is not unal loyeds We retain a feeling of dissatisfaction, kind of grudge against the Tattenpted decelt (pp+ 250-1, onphasis edded)« ‘The production of the uncanny In IIterature has exactly the seme effect as the nonsense Joke: a fooling of displeasure In the vic~ tim, a vexation that Is all the more pertinent In this case when ‘renender thet It Is IIterature that has made @ nonsense of Freud's attempted solution of the mystery of the uncanny The writer ‘cunningly and Ingenlously' creates this effect against cur will: you have to be canny to bring ebout the trick of uncanny. At the end of thls éIffuse, repetitive, essay IIterature, hich Includes Freud's theorles and something more, turns out to be a joker that uses trickery In order to practise Its decelts. ‘appears es © kind of trap Into which Freud has joluntartly? through ‘the tenptation to explain certain Instances' which contradicted his theory of the causes of ‘the uncenay (pe 2512+ And at the realization thet the uncanny has, efter all, token him In, Froud retires baffled, and cuts the essey off abruptly. At the beginning of his Investigation, he was Invulnerabie: "I+ Is long since he has experlenced or heard of anything which has given him an uncanny Impression* (ps 220)+ Hore ITereture's power Is Inplicitly denleds Soon we discover, however, that IItersture not only cant be taken In by Froud's ‘theory, but takes him In, tekes him for a ride, back to the hetmi ch places. Literature disal los certainty of meaning, makes ‘sense Into nonsense, plays @ cunning Joke on Its reader. As with The Turn of the Screw, Ith every explanation the analyst of the ‘uncanny finds that @ helmiich meaning turns Into a hel: prank: 'To look on with helmlich pleasure et someone's dlscont Ituret This last citation from the dlctlonary could almost describe the analytic situation, particularly the position of mastery which Freud adopts with his patient Irma: 1 at once took her on one side, as though to answer her letter and to reproach her for not having accepted my ‘solution’ yets++ | took her to the window end looked down her throat, end she shoved slgns of recalcltrance, women with ar 1 dentures: | thought to myself that ‘there was really no need for her to do that.!0 "The Uncanny! the reader's resistance to the artifice of the weiter moans hi 's portrayed in the sane terns: ‘The writer has one more trance and at the sane tne to improve his chances of success' (p. 251). Goth the writer and Freud have to adopt devices to overcone the resistence of thelr reader or patient. Success for both Is ossured In exactly the same way as for the Joke - with the pro- duction of en effect. Just as the Joke-teller produces the effect of loughter, or dlsploasure, in the welter produces uncanny effects In the reader, and so Freud's analysis creates the effect of @ cure In hls patlent when the symptom diseppears: It wes my view st thet tine (though I have since recognized It es @ wrong one) that my task was fulfilled when 1 hod Informed a patient of the hidden meaning of his symptoms: 1 considered that | was not responsible for whether he accepted the solution or not ~ though this was whet success depended on (Third story: third resistence to @ solution: third joke: whose? No doubt at any rate that It Is, In the first Instance, Irma's 'disconfiture'. She gets the Injection ~ with 9 dirty needle to boot Nehiman's essay on the dream of Irna's Injection also enpha~ slzes the traces In Freud's theorles of the very effects he was trying to analyse-!2 Before ‘plunging Into the dream Itself? Mohiman drevs attention to the known 1925 footnote to Chapter VI of the dream book In which Freud criticizes analysts for overlooking the distinction between the latent dream thoughts ‘and the dream works Freud writes: At botton, creams are nothing other than a particular form ‘of thinking, made possible by the conditions of sleep. It Is the dream work which creates that form, and It alone Is ‘the essence of dreaning - the explanation of Its peculiar nature (ps 650). The specimen drean turns out to be about a comparable mistake: Froud obstinately clings to his explanation of the synptons of Irma's IlIness to the extent thet his friend Otto literally injects the ‘solution’ Into her In the cream. Sut It turns out Yo do her no good. In the analysis, Freud Identifies the error fof hls therapeutic method at that tle which the dreom uncenn! ly points to: his technique was simply to confront the patient with hig solution of the hidden meaning of the symptons. That theory, as Mehimen notes, gave way to a structure of the trensterence ~ the process of the acting aut of unconsclous desire In the analy- tHe situation: not 2 question of finding the hidden key to the enalysend's secret but of producing unconsclous fantasies repro- jected on to the enalyst+ As with dreams, Instead of @ hidden meaning, @ taliing, we get a form of thinking = the structure of 2 showing. The "essence jans', what Is tpecullar to dream Ife and characteristic of It" Is the dream work, the process of dlsflguration of distorted dream thoughts. The desire to produce 2 hidden meaning turns out to be nothing less than the repressive wish of the ego acting In Its own sel f-defence.!! Freud Identifies the meaning of the dream es the xIsh to ‘escape assaults on his professional Integrity. But this dlsco- very of @ single meaning In facts works In collusion with the repressive function of what he significantly calls elsewhere "a nless dreon'.!5 Rather than accept the threatening lon that Freud's solution for irma's complaint was wrong, ‘the dream Invents 9 whole sortes of explanations for It: 1. Ht was on organic I Iness 2. It wes Irmats widowhood 3+ It was Otto's Injection of an unsultabie drug 4. anyway the noodle hed boon dirty. ‘As Freud notes, while all these Interpretations of Irmats Il Iness agree In exculpating him they are Inconsistent «Ith each other, ‘and Indeed are mutually exclusive: The whole plea - for the dream was nothing else - reminded one vividly of the defence put forward by the man who was charged by one of his nelghbours with having given him back 2 borrowed kettle In @ damaged conditions The defendant asserted first, that he had glven It back undamaged; secondly, that the kettle had a hole In It when he borroved It; and thirdly, that he had never borrowed a kettle from his netghbour at all (pe 197). So eager Is Freud to substantiate the meaning that he has found for the dream that he Ignores the ridiculousness of the explana tons. Instead of soelng It as @ Joke ~ and the example would eeppear as one several times In the Joke book ~ he takes the whole thing sertousiy: So much the better: If only a single one of these three Ines of defence were to be accepted as valld, the man would have to be acquitted. = 100 =The fact thet the four excuses In the dream, or the three In ‘are mutually contradictory would normally of course suggest thot taken together they are all unconvincings I+ prect= sely wouldn't work In @ court of lav. As Mehiman Indicetes, Instead of Iden! unconsclous w1sh that the dreem might have shown, Fr continues end colludes with the repressive stebl izing ot wards off any threat to the ego: far fron being @ work of analysis of the repressed ‘orlginary! wish of the dream, the analysis that Freud offers Is merely & further Instance of secondary elaboration. Weber calls attention to the way in which Freud describes secondary elaboration as 'e kind of joke played by the unconscious agalast, or at the expense of, consclousness' in the following account later in the dream book: If 1 lock around for something with which to compare the fine! form assuned by 2 dream as It eppears after normal thought has made Its contribution, | can think of nothing better than the enignatic Inscriptions wlth which Fllegende BlStter lOritting Leaves, © hurourous magazine] hes for so Tong entertained Its readers. They are Intended to make the reader belleve that 2 certain sentence ~ for the seke of contrast, e sentence In dlelect and as scurrilous as possible = Is a Latin Inscription. For thls purpose the letters contained in the words ere torn out of thelr com binetion Into syllables and arranged Ine new orders Hore ‘and there @ genuine Latin word appears; at other points we seem to seo abbreviations of Latin words before other points In the Inscription we may al low our: deceived Into overlooking the senselessness of Isolated let tors by parts of the Inscription seeming to be defeced or showing lacunae. If me are to avold being taken In by the “[cke, we mist disregard everything that makes It seem ITke ‘on InscrIption, look firmly at the letters, pay no attention fo their ostensible errengenent, and so conbine them Into words belonging to our ovn nother=tongue (pp+ 642-3, cited by Kober p+ 11, my omphasis)« In the dream of Irma's Injection Froud Is taken In by the trick ‘and reads the Inscription as It Is presentad to him: the moaning ‘that he finds Is simply @ Joke played on him by the unconsctous = 101 - If this Is the case, then we must revise the whole of the Interpretation of Dreams which Is founded on the discover ‘this specimen dream thet the ‘key! to the secret of dreans Is thet their meaning Is 9 wish-fulfilmont. Instead, It seens that this meaning Is something of Joke- As It happens, It Is not only the drean's meaning that Involves 2 trick played by the unconscious on the consctous, for ‘the analysis Is also something of @ trick played by Freud on his reader. If we take the standerd Freudian practice of observing any perepraxis carefully, we may note that on page 187 of the Penguin edition he glves the wrong date for his first paper on | known that there are many residues of It repeats @ whole series of rery much more serious than the imple case of Irma. In the Ilght of this Freud's Innocent Interpretation of hls dream can be seen as sonathing of 2 hoax, almost 2 bad joke thet deliberately doludes the reader. This ‘takes us back to Freud's ovn example of the man with the damaged kettle and its Inplictt IkenIng of the processes of the dream to the structure of a joke, 2 relationship he makes explicit elsewhere In @ detal led comparison between the drean work and the Joke works Freud notes that It Is often ‘fer from easy to decide whether what we ere dealing with Is @ Joke or a drean'.!> What Is most remarkable, however, Is that he goes on to comere the dream work to 2 bad Joke: The unintended "drean-Joke" brings none of the yleld of pleasure of @ true joke. You can learn why If you go more Gooply Into the study of Jokes. A 'dreanajoket strikes us as a bed joke; It does not make us laugh, It leaves us colds If we turn fron this feeling of displeasure to Freud's ‘theory of the joke we find that, once aga} regards the essence of the Joke not as Its meaning but Its Samuel Weber's correction of Strachey's normalising translation shows that the polnt Freud strives to make substantial thoughts", products of conse! used by the wunconsclous as 2 foll, "enveloy ty, ere or guise, to dis~ = 102 =guise and conceal Its operation (p+ 89. Weber polnts to the paradox that because of his attempt ‘to construct the Joke as a proper, meaningful object of theory’, for Freud "the essence of jjoke resides In the manner In which meaning Is placed In the sor~ Vice of play! (pe 94) This Is the basis on which Freud makes the distinction between the "good' and the 'bad' joke: in the good joke resemblance Is accompanied by a meeningful relation, whereas In the bad joke @ superficlal Sink Is the whole point of the joke (okes, p+ 169). If 2 bad joke Is by no means bad as a joke = thet Is, unsuitable for producing pleasure - then It can't be as bad as the dreamjoke which does 'not make us laugh, It leaves us cold". The reason why dreams need special Interprete- tion In the flrst place Is because they are, Iter: jonsenset the dreen or nonsence joke 1s the subject of @ footnote added to the ond of chapter 6 where It becones clear that there are good and bad versions here toos In normal nonsense Jokes, there Is a sense lurking behind the nonsense - and It Is thet this mok Into a jokes As Freud notes, joking nonsense makes an © jokes But In an addendum added to the footnote In 1912 Freud ‘dni tted an even more extreme version which Weber rightly charac- terizes as a shoggydog story: A nunber of productions resembling jokes can be classed alongside of nonsense jokes- There Is no appropriate name for then, but they might well be described as "Idiocy masquerading es 2 joke's There are countiess numbers of them, and | wil} osly select two samples: ‘A man at the dinner table who was being handed fish dipped his two hands twlee In the mayonnaise and then ran them through hs hairs When his nelghbour looked et him In astonishment, he seamed to notice his misteke end im so sorry, | thought It was spinach". Life Is @ supension bridge", sald one mane ~ "Why Is ssked the otners - "How should | know?" was the These extrene examples have an effect because they rouse the expectation of 2 Joke, so that one tr coaled sense behind the nonsense. But one ro flnd a con ds none: they really are nonsense. The pretence makes It possible for 2 moment to Iberate the pleasure In nonsenser Those jokes ‘are not entirely without @ purpose; they are a "teke-In', and give the person who tolls then @ certain onount of pleasure in misleading and annoying his hearers The latter ‘then dams down his ennayance by determining to tel! them himself tater on (p+ 190) The nonsense joke produces a slnulacrua of nonsense thet conceal s ‘an essence of sense, whereas the extrene nonsense Joke Imp! tes ‘that It¥s going to provide 9 simulacrum of nonsense that conceals an essence of sense only to reveal that the Joke 1s In fact = kind of confidence trick - for whet it provides Is tot soloss, and the faugh Is on the IIsteners It re nonsenso« I Is with the Joke of the Joke that we find the displeasure of the dream-joke which leaves us cold ~ precise 30s the Intersubjective nature of the Joke's effect and turns the person who expects to be told @ meaningful joke Into 2 dupes vecause It refu= | suggested that the Interpretation of Dreams Is structured like @ jokes If so, what kind of a joke? Freud's analysis of irma's Injection, his promise of meaning end a solution to the riddle of the secret of dreams, seons to be Ike a good joke, offering @ simulecrum of nonsense, the dream, which he wil! show contains an essence of senses But Mehiman shows us something thet Is ore Ike the worst Joke of all - the cuping of the ena lyst by the dream end the reader by the dream and Its analysis+ The dream In fact hes as much meaning as the kettle joke, moroly giving "the appearence of loglc which ts chorecteristic of a plece of sophistry and which Is Intended to conceal the faulty Feasontng? (Jokes, p+ 100)+ The discovery of the Interpretation of Dreams, 1 would suggest, Is that dreams really are, as ‘everyone has always sur’ nonsense - end that psychoanalys es everyone has more maliciously suspected, 1s founded on a joke, ‘or rather the joke of @ joke. Having been duped, Freud tokes up ‘the only option when he realtzes he's been 'hed' and begins to tell another story - the story of the Interpretation of dreams, end of psychoanalysis In general + In each case that we have examined, the analyst who uses psychoanalysis has cone up against the realization thet the = 108 =material that he has been analysing hes In fact taken him ine Jamos's story, the uncanny, Freud's drean of Irma's Injection, have all held out 2 lure of sense and meaning, but always as a kind of joke ‘played by the unconsctous against, or at the expense of, consclousness'. Each time It seems that psychosnaly~ sis end psychoanalytic criticism find that they can't get beyond 2 joke. This Is the general Impasse, | would suggest, that has led to the abandonnent of psychoanalytic criticism as suche v Nobody, after ali, I1kes to be on the wrong end of a joke. But can we avold bolng taken In ~ or do wo always really want to? It scons to me that there are two areas of criticism at least which have good reasons for belng taken In, and which, paradoxical ly, have taken psychoanalysis In too. Where does that leave psychoanalytic criticism? There. 1+ has not diseppeered: It nas merely been displaced, to deconstruction and fenialsm. Although there has been, as far as | am axare, no sustained exemination of the relation of Derrlda's work to psychoanalysts, It Is obvious that the Influence Is very pervasive, and speci fI~ celly that the notion of castration has clear Inks to that of dissemination, which might be described as castration's rhetorI= cal, Its conceptually ungovernable IIngulstic effect. It Is significant, In thls respect, that the essay ‘The Double Session’ Is described by Derrida as @ rereading of "The Uncanny: In The Uncanny, Freud ~ here nore then ever attentive to undecIdable ambivalence, to the play of the double, to the endless exchange between th "symbol 1zed" and the "synt inable substItutlon ~ can, have recourse both to castra behind which no deeper secret, no other meaning, would Ile hidden, and to the substitutive relation itself-!5 sr", to the process of Inter~ hout contradicting this play, = 105 - The story of castration Involves both the InItlation and the dontal of meaning end sexual Identity, creating thom but at the same tine disallowing then. Its double fantasy Involves 2 pro- cess by which the subject Is Inscribed In a systen of forces of which It Is no longer the master and In which It Is assigned o position which It hes to take up but which doosn't exactly flit. Sexual lty and meaning are held at the balancing polat of the fixity and si Ippage of each o tn render ing moar don ‘tlty, and sexual ty uncertain at the very moment that It instiga- ‘tes then the castration complex could be characterised as a sort of bad Joke ~ Indeod one could argue with sone justification that the castration complex Is the unkindest cut of all. The shaggy dog story, which holds out the lure of sense but effectively negates meaning and truth, rehearses the structure of castration ‘and leads one to wonder whether the experlence of the bed Joke, th leaves us co pleasureless because It casts the Joke victim within castration's empty and anxious lowse Castration Inltlates and disperses meaning and Identity. ‘Dissemination’, as Derrida puts It, 'autIlates the unity of the Slonifier, that Is, of the phallus', and enacts a somentle dispersal and protlferation.!7 In each of the three texts which wo have examined, the joke of declpherabliity played et the analyst's expense leaves him or her wlth no option but to Fenounce the hermeneutic quest for the discovery of meanings In Felmants analysis of Tho Turn of the Screw her answer to the question of how to read @ story which sears to resist all solu- tlons by converting them Into further symptons, Is to discard the notion of @ soluble moaning all together In favour of an understanding of the rhetorical functioning thet produces the text's ambiguity. She concludes: Tho question underlying such @ reading Is not 'what does ‘the story mean?* but rather thox does the story mean?! does the meaning of the story, whatever It Is, rhetorical ly 4teke place through permanent d!splacone ‘Shope and take effect; take fItght? (p- This description of a now kind of reading Is hardly distInguisheble from 'doconstruction', nor probably thinkable without It. Indeed In showing the powerlessness of psychoanaly- toe)sls In the face of rhetoric, and In advocating a rhetorical reading of textual division, one begins to suspect that the unnamed master to whom Felman, I1ke the Governess, seems to be forbidden to write 2 latter 1s none ather then Jecques Derrida Deconstruction, | would argue, Is the new form of psychoanalyt- cal criticism hich Is nof to say that that Is all that deconstruction Is = or Isn't. If succeeds where psychoanalysis falls because Instead of attempting to provide theoretical expla nations It reproduces and reworks the fictions and figurations that It analyses. vl In all this discussion of jokes 1 have so far excluded from consideration those whom the Joke puts In a somewhat worse posi- tion than mere displeasure, namely wonen, whom Jokes exclude, or more precisely erase. All jokes are structurally dependent on the elimination of oman, who In that sense can hardly be sald to be "taken Int by then: Indeed It 1s woman's very refusal to be taken In, to be seduced, that leads to the development of the joke In the first place. Insofer as jokes are 0 ‘taking In' they are a form of seduc- lon, 9 leading astray; they develop es 2 Joke when a first seduction strated: The Ideal case of @ resistance of this Kind on the wonan's part occurs If another man Is present at the sane time - a third person - for In that case an innediate surrender by ‘the wonan Is as good as out of the questions This third person soon acquires the greatest Importance In the develop~ ment of the dirty Joke Cokes, pe 143). The third person cones to replace the xoman as the addressee of ‘the Joke so that gradual ly In place of the woman, the onlooker, now the IIstener, beco- ines the person to whon the dirty joke Is addressed, and = 107 = owing to this transformation It Is already near to essuning the character of a Joke (ps 143). In this sense, the dirty Joke provides the origin end structural paradign of all joke telling. It Is constituted by the ‘simultaneous presence, and Interference of 2 third person’, an Intersubjective structure which reproduces the structure of the cedipal triangle, leading Weber to wonder whether this Impl les that the Oedipus complex Is simply a dirty Joke. The joke book was written In fact at the sone time as the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: Ernest Jones tells us that Freud kept the two manuscripts on adjolaing tables and added to one or the other ‘according to his disposition ~ no doubt according to whether he was In a good or a bad mood. One can't help wondering whether sonotimes he might have mistakenly added a paragraph to the wrong manuscripts ‘The link between the Intersubjective structure of the Joke and the castration that provides the grand {Inale to the oedipus complex leads toe further consideration of the relation of wonan to the critical phenonena that | have been analysing. The action ‘of being ‘taken Int by the codlpus complex Involves nothing less than the construction of subjectivity through a process. which produces the pos! Hy = and uncertainty = of the subject and Its sexual Identity. In Lacan's formulation, the constItutlon of ‘the subject repeats the structure of the Joke even more exactly, viz In the exclusion of womans As Jacquel Ine Rose puts It, the status of the phallus In human sexuallty ‘enjoins on the woman 2 Gof inition In which she Is simultaneously symptom and myth': In so far as It Is the order of language which structures sexual Ity eround the male tern, or the privileging of that ‘term which shows sexual lty to be constructed within Janguage, so this raises the Issue of wonen's relationship to that language and that sexuality simulteneously.18 ‘As Rose makes clear, uncertainty of meaning and uncertainty of sexuel Identity both occur In relation to the arbitrary sym bollzation of the phallus as difference and division.!9 This suggests thet the locus of non-meaning, the refusal of the phailus's Inposture, of phallogocentrism as such, which we have = 108 =encountered In the texts that have been discussed, mst be of Interest to a criticism that calls Itself feminist. The rele tions between such an Interest and those of deconstruction are well known from the ellfance of feminism and deconstruction In the work of such critics as Jane Gallop, Peggy Kamut and Gayatri Splvak- Indeed, to Judge by the Diacritics Feminist Issue Derride himself ‘sons to be virtually regarded by feminists 05 on honorary womans 1) a8 Shoshana Felman suggests, ‘tt 2 "Freudian reading” 1s generally recognized Its InsIstence on sexuallty, on Its cruclal place and role In the text" then In en Important sense a feminist reading Is the truest Freudian reading, and the contemporary appropriation of psychoanalysis by feminism Is entirely correct. It Is Interesting In this respect thet the latest translation of Lacan Is presented as 2 book on feminine sexuality, In which It ts ergued that ‘the history of psychoanalysis can In many ways be seen entirely In terms of Its engagement with thls question of feminine sexuallty': the exposure of the constant difficulty of subjection to the law by which "Individuals must line up according to an opposition (having or not having the phallus)! constItutes pert of the same project for psychoanalysis end for feminism (pps 28-9). More recently In Feminist Review, esking Whether psychoanalysis Is a new orthodoxy for feninism, Rose teal effectivity of thelr conjunction stential backwater that can occur when Tzed discourse appropriates enother Instltutlonal ly marginal lzed one: one characteristic by Psychoanalysis finally remains one of the few places In our culture where our expertence of femininity can be spoken as @ problem thet Is something other than the problem which the protests of wonen are posing for an Increasingly conser- vative political world. | would argue that this Is one of ‘the reasons why It has not been released Into the public sdomatn.20 If deconstruction and feminism are the substitutive places for psychoanalysis now that psychoanalytic criticism as such has = 109 = becone Impossible, we might end by asking whether thelr taking In psychoanalysis prevents them from belng taken In according to the kinds of ways that nave here been described. Have they taken the Joke out of the Joke, or at least turned It on Its feller? Feminism, as with all politics, 1s no laughing matter, and It Is ighing matter to be taken In, Inscribed In the process of subjectivity as a woman. The worry of Mitchell, Rose, and of Jane Gallop, seems to be focused on the continuing refusal of woman to be taken In - seduced - by psychoanalysis: 2 recalcitrence which perpetuates the structure es It stands. Rose argues that the feminist opposition to Lacan that claims an originary femininity rather than an Instituted fictional dif- ference Is a repetition of the trap of a notion of a primordial femininity, relegating women outside of language and history, that hed already occurred as a reaction to, and repression of, Froud In the so-called ‘great debate! of the twenties and thir- les. [+ was this version of femininity that Lacen argued ‘against In his plea for @ return to Freuds On the other hand, fone might also note Elaine Showalter's recent warning that feml~ nlsm Itself Is In danger of being taken In by supposedly sym pathetic male feninists - who really want to take It over.2! And deconstruction? I+ certainly appreciates Jokes, and Mikes to share 2 Joke with a text and tell It to a reader, @ strategy that loads Jokee-critics to complain uncomprehendingty of Its frivollty. Yet there are also lots of traps In deconstruction, and not only for Its critics. It Is significant, | think, that for all the brililance of Weber's reading of Freud It Is one from which the engagenent with the question of feminine sexuallty hes entirely disappeared. And when sexuality disap- pears, no doubt to take the form of substitution, one Is very docldedly back within the realm of the joke, the dirty Joke In fact, @ kind of joke of which Freud discreetly gives no examples = no doubt fearing that they might not cone off. However, just to affirm that, though | may be beyond a joke, | am not beyond telling @ Joke, and to shox that | too am reluctant to get beyond 2 Joke, | end with the following from the Jokes book, which, after the spinach joke, which Is my favourtte, and the salnon~ mayonnaise joke, which Is clearly Freud's, Is still not quite as good as a Joke as most psychoanalytle theory:‘A gentleman entered @ pastry-cook's shop and ordered a cakes but he brought It back and asked for a glass of !iqueur instead. He drank It and began to leave without having pald. The proprietor detatned hime ‘What do you want?" asked the custonor. "You've not pald for the Iqueur'+ "But I gave you 9 cake In exchange for It's "You didn't pay for that elther'« "But I hadn't oaten It's ROBERT YOUNG, Southampton University. FOOTNOTES Jokes and Th Library 6 (Harmondsworth, 1976), p+ 86+ references wil! be cited In the text. Ir Relation to_ the Unconsclous, Pelican Freud Further page "A Oream, a Vislon, and a Poon! 8, ede S+ Lorand (New York, "The Thee of "The Anc een Coburn (Englewood *To Open the Quest! Further page references Je French Studies 95/56 (1977), 5+ Ibe cited In the text. Esge, Meredith Anne Skura, Use_of the Psychoanal Gs Berry Chabot, Freud on Schreber: Psychoanalytic Theory and the Critical ‘Act (Amherst, 1982). The "Turning the Screw of Interpretation’, Yale French Studies 55/56 (1977), 101. Further page references will be clted In the texts + tAnalysis of a Specimen Orean', The Interpretation of puts It: "In attempting to escape the reading- Hutlve of rhetorle, Htempting to escape the error constltutive of Ilterature, In attempting in order not to be Its dupe, psychoana~ lysis, In Inescepable pa to the fact thet It Hself exemplifies no less than the spot of rt clty, the spot where any affirmation of mastery I anounts to a self-subversion and to @ self-castration’ (pp. 199-200). Some! Weber, The Legend of Freud (Minneapolis, 1982), pe xvI. Weber's discussion of the ‘Au! rted me to the ublquitous operation of the am also particularly Indebted to hs reading of Freud on Jokes Recent york on ‘The Uncanny? Includes Hél8ne Clxous, "Fiction and Its Phontoms: A Reading of Freud's Das Unhetm! Iche' ‘the Sandman’ ual Strategies, ed. Josué Vs Herar! (London, 1980), pp» 296-321; Sarah Kofman, 'Le Double e(s)+ le diab! Todorov, ‘The Uncanny’, In The Stendard Editon of the Complete Psychological Works of Slgound Freud, trans. Janes Strachey (London, 1953-73), vol» XVI1, pps 224, 225-6. Further page references «III be cited In the texts Dreams, Pelican Freud Library 4 (Harmondsworth, 1976), pe 182. Further page references will be clted In the texts In ‘the dream analysis Freud reveals that Irna's recaleltrence Is Itself the displacement of 2 further frustreted seduction: "The way In which Irma stood by the window sud~ denly reminded me of another experiences Irma had an Intl~ mate woman friend of whom 1 had a very high opiniones. | now recollected that | had often played with the Idea that she -12-+ Jeffrey Mehiman, ‘too might ask ne to relieve her of her symptoms. 1 myself, howover, had thought this unlikely, since she was of a vory reserved natures dream! (ps 186)« She was recalcitrant, as was shown In the + Weber explores the Implications of Freud's Insight that systenatle thought In general operates In exactly the sane way as the expectation of @ coherent meaning for the drean: both denote ‘the reaction of an ego seoking to dofond Its confi et=ridden cohesion’ (ps 13). "Trlmethy lam Drean', Diacr: Notes on Freud's Specimen 1976), 4295; reprinted In Untying the Text: A Post-Structural Ist Reader, ed. Robert Young (London, 1981), pps 177-87. es 6 Interpretation of Dreams, p. 683. The other ‘dIstortionless Groom’ Is the drean of the burning child (p+ 652-4), discussed by Weber pp» 69-74. M. Schur, "Sone Additional Dream" of Psychoanalysis ay Residues" of "The Specimen In Psycho-Analysis: A General Psychology, ods. R+ Lowenstein, L+ Nownan, Ms Schur, and A Solnlt (New York, 1966), pp. 45-85; cf. also M. Schur, Freud: Llving end Dying (New York, 1972). A brill lant Feading of Freud's Specimen Dream utilizing thls and other mmatertal was glven by Gynthla Chase In 9 paper entitled "Anecdotes for Fathers: Wordsworth's, Freud's", presented to the elghth IAPL Conference, Stony Brook, 6 May 1983. Introductor Livery 61-2. Lectures on Psychoanalysis, (Harmondsworth, 1974), ps 2736 Pellcen Freud Cf. Jokes, pps Jacques Dorrie ‘Chicago, 1981 Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson pe 268+ "The Purveyor of Truth!, Yale Erench Studles 52 (1975), 65+ Jecques Lecan and the cole freudienne, Feminine Sexuel eds. Jullet Mitchel! and Jecquel ine Rose, trans. Jacqueline <3 19. a + Jacque! Rose (London, 1982), pp+ 57, 54+ clted In the text. Further references «Ill be Rose polnts out thet ‘the question then becones not so mich ‘the ‘difficulty! of femlaine sexual ity consequent on phal lle Glviston as what I+ moans, given that division, to speak of the women! at alles As the place onto which lack Is pro~ Jected, and through which It Is simultaneously disavoxed, women Is 2 'sympton' for the mans Defined as such, reduced to being nothing other than this fantasmatic place, the woman does not exist! (p. 48). At the same time Insofar as wonan Is exalted Into the place of the Other and made to stand In for Its truth, she Is simply @ means of closing off uncertainty, of guaranteeing the senblance of meaning and ‘the consistency of the phallus Ross Review 14 (198: "renin 9. Hy and Its Discontents’, Feminist Elaine Showalter, ‘Critical Cross-Dressin ‘and the onan of the Year', Reritan 3 (1983) Male Feminists 130-49.