Writing Madness This course has got many components.

This year, I am going to concentrate on two periods: the early modern and the modern. The early modern (look at Foucault: Madness and Civlization for discussion of folly and madness; for the lack of clear definition of madness, perhaps in the sixteenth century). Madness may also be classified as melancholia. Cervantes: The Glass Graduate Shakespeare: Hamlet The modern: Henry James: The Turn of the Screw Freud on Schreber Case Histories II Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar and poems Introduction writing: is a form of madness? writing: constructs madness when you think you are only writing about it? writing: madness: how can the mad write, when language is on the side of the logos (logic, reason, the word) and is logocentric (Derrida) or phallogocentric (Derrida on Lacan). The mad are made to write that is called confession. Mad writing is writing the sane need not bother about. Distinguish in this course writers who try to deal with the other the mad, and those who were classed as mad themselves. Cervantes. Read The Glass Graduate and as much of Don Quixote as you can. Don Quixote part 1 appeared in 1604, part 2 in 1615. Miguel de Cervantes, the author (1547-1616) wrote in Spain, which in the 1500s, on account of the colonisation of the Americas, which began in 1492 (Columbus), and its own imperial possessions in Europe, was the most powerful country out but, obsessed with its own national purity, which made it expel Jews and then Islamic peoples (Moriscos) it became inward looking, bankrupt, and declined in power rapidly. Charles V, Philip II (who gave his name to the Philippines) and Philip III were its rulers in Cervantess time. For the subject of national paranoia, look at the architecture of Philip IIs palace just outside Madrid, the Escorial.

The thesis that Don Quixotes madness is related to his sexual fear of his niece was expressed by Carroll B. Johnson, Madness and Lust: A Psychoanalytical Approach to Don Quixote (California, 1983). You will see it often referred to. See Johnsons introductory study of DQ, Don Quixote: The Quest for Modern Fiction (1990) in the library. Another opening study is by A.J. Close, Cervantes: Don Quixote (Cambridge 1990). More discussion of DQs psychosis appears in Henry W. Sullivan, Grotesque Purgatory (1996). See also: Anthony J. Cascardi, The Bounds of Reason The Curious Impertinent is also discussed by Nicolas Wey-Gomez in Cervantes and his Postmodern Constituencies ed. Anne J. Cruz and Carroll Johnson (1998) and in Quixotic desire: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Cervantes ed.Ruth Anthony El Saffar and Diana de Armas Wilson (1993). Apart from Foucaults Madness and Civilization, see his discussion of Cervantes in The Order of Things, pp. 46-50. There are a large number of commentaries on Cervantes in the library: any of them will be useful at times. On The Glass Graduate see Alban K. Forcione, Cervantes and the Mystery of Lawlessness (1984). A Bibliography for the Exemplary Novels is given in the Oxford translation by Lesley Lipson (Oxford, 1998). If you are interested in The Curious Impertinent, you should read the exemplary Novel, The Jealous Old Man from Extremadura. (My own favourites are also The Deceitful Marriage and The Colloquy of the Dogs.) Essay suggestions (suggestions only): 1. How would you link madness in The Glass Graduate, Don Quixote and the two friends in The Curious Impertinent? 2. Discuss the relationships between the mind and the body that you see in Cervantes The Glass Graduate. Notes on "The Tale of the Curious Impertinent" (or "The Man who couldn't keep from prying") This is a difficult short story, expressing a different form of madness from that of Don Quixote, who is asleep for most of it (though note that he wakes up for a moment at the beginning of chapter 35, so you have to read from p. 241 to start the story again at p. 244. The edition I have photocopied from you is translated by Burton Raffel (New York: Norton 1999). Other editions of Cervantes' novel are also good, if you want to compare versions. In my lecture I stressed that Lothario idealises the body of Camilla - as a diamond, as an ermine, as a garden, and so on, until he reaches the idea of her body as glass. Perhaps Lothario is giving voice to his own abject fears about the body, when he wants to see it in such pure terms, and says that a woman must be adored, not touched

(p. 221). He speaks for women - but he gives voice to his own attitudes. For Lothario and Anselmo are doubles of each other. In abjection the subject tries to establish his subjectivity by a process of hatred of the body - its materiality, its flows (its liquid aspects), what falls from it (the word cadaver, which means a corpse, comes from the Latin word cadere, to fall). See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror pp. 3,4. The ideal, in abjection, is to expel the body. But to do this means death. Since the body cannot be abjected, and the abjected body always relates to the mother, the effort produces melancholia, which is what abjection means. If the body is to be held in a state of abjection, is this why Anselmo does not sleep with his wife (see p. 229)? It seems that he feels that his own body is made of glass, perhaps? In the lecture I did not have time to make the point that Kristeva sees the abject subject as fascinated by the body, and fascinated by what it considers as filth, as disgusting. Anselmo talks about his strange desire (216) which is that his best friend should try to sleep with his wife. (Though he does not put it that way, it can be deduced that this is what he is expecting, or rather, that he allows for the possibility.) In other words, he is fascinated by what he hates, or he loves what he loathes. See in particular his words to Lothario on p. 223, when he talks about the desire to eat dirt. This is the split desire that takes place in melancholia. If Anselmo was paranoid, he would be terrified of anyone coming near Camilla. (You can compare this with another Cervantes short story, "The Jealous Old Man from Extramadura.") But perhaps not having sexual relations with his wife is paranoid. On p. 222, Lothario tells Anselmo that husband and wife are one body, one flesh. (In Christianity, that depends on them having a sexual relation with each other.) So if Camilla committed adultery, that would mean Anselmo's body was defiled, that he was filthy, unlike the ermine. Is that what he really wants? Male friendship (homosociality) is prior to the relationship between a husband and wife, it seems from this short story (novella). Is this because of the abject? Is it that Anselmo identifies sexually with Lothario, because this avoids touching a woman? What does Anselmo desire? That his wife be defiled? That he should be defiled? That he should have a sexual relationship with Lothario? That he should be able to watch sexual intercourse without being involved himself? (voyeurism, or scopophilia, in Freud's terms). Note the following points in the story: you could use them as the basis for an essay: 1. the use of the word "curious" and "curiosity." Look how often either word is used. Is being fascinated with dirt a form of curiosity? Compare with "The Glass Graduate." 2. who is "impertinent" - Anselmo or Lothario? 3. Look at the character of Leonela (introduced on p. 227). Is she a double of Camilla? How does she compare to her? What about her lover and why is he not named? 4. At the end, Anselmo is said to be mad (245,246). Note also, p. 246 uses the phrase "unwise curiosity" which is the title of the story. The words also appear at the end of

chapter 34. Is he mad when he starts? Was he mad when he fell in love? (Why didn't he propose himself?) Or does he become mad? Note also the terms he uses in his last letter, p. 246. 5. How does the desire for purity, which is seen to be self-destructive, relate to Spain's political desire for purity of "blood" as I have discussed this - only wanting old Christians, no Jews or Moslems. Is Anselmo a picture of Spain's crazy desire? 6. What does the story imply about friendship? A good essay would compare this with "The Glass Graduate." Try comparing the stories as studies of madness. Hamlet This is the most commented-on play in Shakespeare, as Shakespeare is the most commented-on writer in world literature. For basic understanding of the play, you should rely heavily on the various editions that have appeared - the Arden, the New Cambridge (ed. Philip Edwards). the Penguin (ed. Ann Barton). Some very basic approaches are suggested by L.C. Knights, in his An Approach to Hamlet in Some Shakeapearian Themes, and by Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet. Roland Muskrat Frye, The Renaissance Hamlet gives some interesting contexts for understanding the play. See also D.A. Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare. R.A. Foakess Hamlet or Lear has an interesting essay. After this basic work, aimed at understanding what is going on in the play, see: Francis Barker: The Tremulous Private Body Jacques Lacan, Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet, Yale French Studies 56-56, 1977. The same issue has: Daniel Sibony, Hamlet: A Writing Effect John P. Muller, Psychosis and Mourning in Lacans Hamlet New literary History 1980. John Hunt A Thing of Nothing: The Catastrophic Body in Hamlet Shakespeare Quarterly Jonathan Goldberg, Hamlets Hand Shakespeare Quarterly Jeremy Tambling: Confession: Sexuality, Sin, the Subject John Drakakis: Alternative Shakespeares Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory Michael Long The Unnatural Scene (for an application of Nietzsche to Shakespeare) [The work by Kristeva on Holbein is in her book Black Sun. The important books on melancholy, apart from Freud and Kristeva, are Klibansky, Saxl and Panofsky, Saturn and Melancholy and Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama. (See the web page for Carnival and Tragedy. The most famous book on melancholy is by Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1619: this has been the subject of numerous commentaries, which you can easily find in the library if you look up Burton or melancholy. See Julia Schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia.] On anatomy, see the articles in Representations 17, 1987, by Gelnn Harcourt, Andreas Vesalius and the Anatomy of Antique Sculpture and Luke Wilson, William Harveys Preclectiones: The Performance of the Body in the Renaissance Theatre of Anatomy. The articles will suggest further bibliographies. Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood in the 1620s.]

On Shakespeares theatre, start with Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition. See also the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. The journal Shakespeare Survey has plenty of information. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898) With James (1843-1916), we enter discussion of madness in the modern period. If in the early modern, madness is identifiable with melancholia, in the nineteenth century, it is largely identified with hysteria, and in the twentieth century with schizophrenia. Perhaps now we need to think in terms of trauma. On The Turn of the Screw see: Shoshana Felman, Writing and Madness: Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis Terry Heller: The Turn of the Screw: Bewildered Vision T.J. Lustig: Henry James and the Ghostly Ned Lukacher: Primal Scenes: Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis Jeremy Tambling: Henry James (please see this book for discussion of hysteria as well as for a chapter on the short story) On hysteria: Elaine Showalter: The Female Malady Sander Gilman (ed.) Hysteria Beyond Freud - Representions of Illness from Madness to AIDS Jan Goldstein, Console and Classify Freud and Breuer: Studies in Hysteria Hysteria as Lacan discusses it in The Psychoses: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book III, 1955-1956 trans. Russell Grigg (London; Routledge 1993) relates to the question of sexual difference. The hysterics question is What is a woman? this is not just a question to be asked by women; it also relates to the question what is a feminine organ? (p. 172,173). Lacan uses the Dora case which Freud wrote about (a most interesting case for the course) to discuss hysteria as a problem to do with the relation of the body to the symbolic order (of patriarchal language). The body revolts against language. The hysteric disavows the presence of castration, which is the means by which the subject enters the symbolic order. At the same time, the hysteric seeks reparation for his or her castration. The Turn of the Screw exists in relationship to Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847) which itself exists in relationship to The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) (see on this, the notes on the web for the Gender Studies course). An essay could be written bringing these texts together. For work on the madhouse, especially in the 19th century, look at books by Roy Porter, Andrew Scull, Sander Gilman. Schreber.

The book by Judge Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911), Memoirs of my Nervous Illness (1903) is in the Medical Library, and I shall give some extracts from it. It is well worth reading, and so are the commentaries on Schreber, who was confined in 1884, and from 1893-1902 and from 1907 till his death in 1911. You will find these in the book. However, I shall teach Schreber mainly from Freuds account, to be found in the Penguin Freud vol 9 or in the Standard Edition, vol. 12. It is called, Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) (1911) and you should read it. It has, effectively, set the agenda for studies of Schreber, Freud, schizophrenia, paranoia, homosexuality, delusions and for Lacan on psychosis. But remember that Freud never met Schreber, and only analysed him from his autobiographical account. Supplementary reading: Elias Canetti: Crowds and Power Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus William Niederland, 1974 The Schreber Case. This argued that Ss delusions could be explained by reference to his father, Moritz Schreber, whose disciplinary methods with children (compare Foucaults Discipline and Punish) were responsible for Ss case. Morton Schatzman, 1973 Soul Murder. Popularisation of Niederland. Schatzman linked Canettis arguments about power and paranoia with Ss delusions to argue that Ss case was symptomatic of the conditions leading up to the fantasies of Nazi Germany. Zvi Lothane, In Defence of Schreber 1992. Revision of Freud, and of Niederland, and a study of the historical materials. Han Israels, 1989, Schreber, Father and Son. Revision of Niederland. Biographical Louis Sass, 1995. The Paradoxes of Delusion. On solipsism, and on the idea of Schreber internalising a panopticism into himself. (Again, see Foucault for this idea.) Sass is author of Madness and Modernism (1992) which contains material on Schreber, and is generally very stimulating. Eric Santner, 1996. My Own Private Germany. This reads Schrebers madness as a response to a crisis of modernity. Schreber responds with delusions to the call to fufill a role (as Judge) that has nothing compelling it save an originary violence. The only basis for law is state-violence. David B. Allison, and others, eds. 1988. Psychosis and Sexual Identity: Towards a Postanalytic View of the Schreber Case. C. Barry Chabot, 1982. Freud on Schreber Some definitions: The following are terms you will often come across in the course and in writings on madness. I am not defining them, but just giving some suggestions as to how to use them. The definitions owe something to Lacan. Hysteria. Here, the body is in protest against its insertion in the symbolic order i.e. within patriarchal culture. As a protest against patriarchy, hysteria is often linked to women. (Greek: husteron: the womb). Neurosis. Here the body represses itself in favour of the symbolic order. For this reason, neurosis is often seen as linked to patriarchal types. Obsessional behaviour

(e.g. playing with something all the time, being very ritualistic, always tidying up) is often associated with neurosis. Paranoia. Fears of the other; fears of being persecuted; delusions that others are against you; can take the form of hallucinations, hearing voices. Psychosis. This is the 20th century term for madness; Lacan famously defines it as foreclosure of the paternal signifier. The psychotic has never been placed wholly within the symbolic order; that is, he or she has never been forced to see the difference between the real (what is outside, what hurts) and the symbolic (the order of language and culture). Lacan uses psychosis where Freud discussed hysteria. But to make things complicated, he also distinguishes them. Psychosis is worse than hysteria. Lacan speaks of the hysterical or obsessional neurotic; of the perverse subject; and of the psychotic. Schizophrenia would be the worst case of psychosis. Schizophrenia. There are supposed to be distinct markers of schizophrenia (lit: split mind but this does not mean two personalities, but rather a mind that because it is split or cut, that fails to function as it should): 1. Hallucinating hearing voices voices that speak your thoughts aloud; voices talking about you; voices carrying on a commentary on your actions 2. Interference in thinking processes the individual loses the sense that his or her thoughts are private. 3. Feelings of passivity with regard to the body the subject no longer has autonomy over this. 4. Delusions the universe is persecutory (cp. paranoia). Whereas psychoanalysis treats the mind as though it were one thing, Deleuze and Guattari refer to schizoanalysis, as though the mind was already, always, split. Freud used different terms for repression. The repression that causes neurosis is Verdrngung Verferfung repudiation. Lacan uses this word and translates it by foreclusion i.e. foreclosure. This is rejection of something as if it did not exist: in the case of psychosis, what is rejected is the Law of the Father. Verleugnung denial, or disavowal Whereas in neurosis, the ego, compliant with the demands of reality and the superego, represses instinctual demands, in psychosis, there occurs a complete rupture between the ego and reality, which leaves the ego under the control of the id [the unrepressed desire.] Laplanche and Pontalis In 1924, Freud proposed a simple criterion for distinguishing between neurosis and psychosis: in neurosis the ego obeys the requirements of reality and stands ready to repress the drives of the id, whereas in psychosis the ego is under the sway of the id, ready to break with reality. -Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus 122. Freuds essay is called Neurosis and Psychosis.

Foucault and Derrida. The most useful introduction to this debate (and see the Bibliography) appears in John Frow, Marxism and Literary Theory. Derrida reviewed Foucaults book on madness very sharply in Writing and Difference, Cogito and the History of Madness. Foucault replied in My Body, This Paper, This Fire in the Oxford Review no. 12. See also Derrida on Foucault in The Work of Mourning. Sylvia Plath (American poet, 1932-1963) On womens madness generally, look for works by Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (The Madwoman in the Attic), by Shari Benstock, by Michelle A Mass. On Plath herself: Jeffrey Berman, The Talking Cure (1985) Jacqueline Rose, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath (1991) There are also useful studies by Jeremy Hawthorn, Paula Bennett, Susan Basnett, Gary Lane and John Axelrod. Plaths poetry is often called confessional check this out as an entry on the catalogue. We look at her poem Daddy, at least. Some odd points: 1. Fredric Jameson discusses schizophrenia as a postmodern condition in his essay on Postmodernism in Postmodernism: or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism 2. Lacan on the mirror stage Ecrits: A Selection (1977) p. 9. Matter in square brackets is mine. The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency [the infants lack of completeness] to anticipation [anticipation of being the ideal self] and which manufactures [lit. machines used as a verb], caught up in the lure of spatial identification, [the idea of appropriating my body in my space] the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image [the body in pieces, the corps morcel] to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic [i.e. propped up by prosthetics, or made or taught to walk properly] and lastly to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity [identity as a neurotic structure], which will mark with its rigid structure the subjects entire mental development. 3. Schizophrenia may be marked by a loosening of associations, and a breakdown of a hierarchical system of thought so Bleuler. The schizophrenic makes no proper distinctions. In writing for this course, you should do two essays of about 1,500 words up to 3000 words each. Please see me before writing the essays, to clear your titles, and make sure that you get the first essay back before starting on the second. Jeremy Tambling Other texts and references we will try to make:

Madness in the Age of Reason (the period of The Great Confinement - Foucault) Here we look at: 1. Christopher Smart (1722-1771). Smart suffered from religious mania, starting in about 1756 and was confined from then till 1763. He was imprisoned for debt in 1770. Jubilate Agno, (Rejoice in the Lamb) was written while in the madhouse and not published until 1939. In all, it consists of four Fragments, A,B,C,D: we will work from Fragment B. 2. William Cowper 1731-1800. We shall look at two poems, Lines written during a Period of Insanity and The Castaway. 3. William Blake, 1757-1827 (for Blake, see the material on the Net for Reading the Nineteenth-Century.) 4. Friedrich Hlderlin, 1770- 1843. Hlderlin was a German poet (Germanys greatest lyric poet) with strong sympathies towards the French Revolution (1789). His psychosis began in 1802 and he was kept in confinement till his death. Madness and Romanticism. Blake thought that Cowper had gone mad as a way of escaping from the world of Newton and Locke. These are the figures who define the universe and the human mind in reductive terms, as essentially empty, mechanical. The image of God used in Newton and Locke is that God is a mechanic, like a clockwork maker, who is not immanent (present) in the universe. Blakes poetry, like Smarts, emphasises the importance of the nearness of the divine image, as something that makes the universe creative, not flat like a machine. Considering, however, the arguments of deconstruction, that belief in nature, and in presence belief in spontaneity and in what the poet Keats calls the holiness of the hearts affections and the truth of the imagination, is part of Romantic ideology, we can see that the Romantics are always haunted by the fear that they cannot produce, or work up, or sustain, or keep, this spirit of joy or of spontaneity. This in itself produces a madness. The English Romantic poet Wordsworth (1770-1850) was terrified of going mad: this is the theme of the poem of his I have given you: The Leech Gatherer. Smarts madness we may think of as his anti-humanism: where to be non-humanist is to oppose the limited view of Man proposed by rationalism and empiricism. It is a protest, and shows in the place he gives to my cat Jeffry, as one of the Lords poor as no different from him, as the Other. Cowpers madness, expressed in a poem called Lines written during a period of insanity (1773) appeared regularly in his life. In Lines Written, he had just attempted suicide, and he feels that his fate is to be kept above ground, not to be allowed to go to hell, which he feels is what God has planned for him eventually.

The reference to Abiram in line 16 is to the Bible the Book of Numbers chapter 16, where Abiram goes to hell without dying, as a special punishment for speaking against Moses. Cowper belonged to a strict group of Christians, called Calvinists, who believed that God had elected certain people to be saved and others to be damned. Although Cowper believed that he was one of the elect, he also believed that God had decided that he must be damned instead. He therefore feels worthless , abject, a castaway. A castaway is a Biblical term, meaning someone who is going to hell, but it also means something you throw away, something abject (cp.Julia Kristeva.) Cowpers poem The Castaway (1799) imagines a sailor being washed overboard in a storm and drowning. A sailor called Anson (line 53) had recently been drowned on an Atlantic crossing, and Cowper compares himself with him, but thinks that his own fate as a castaway is worse than Ansons. See on it, William Empson, chapter in his book Argufying. There is very little good criticism on Cowper. Christians will know Cowper, because he also wrote many hymns, along with a friend, John Newton, who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace. You could write a good essay comparing Cowpers response to God with Smarts, and both with Blakes idea of God, and his belief that God must be thought of as immanent in everybody the argument of The Divine Image in Songs of Experience. essay title: How do the Romantic writers you have read (Cowper, Smart, Blake) contest the Age of Reason? For Blake, the danger is to be caught by the reasoning power, which he calls the Spectre, or Urizen (your reason: Ur reason , i.e. primitive reason). Each man is in his spectres power Until the arrival of that hour When his imagination wake And cast his spectre in the lake. To be dominated by the Spectre is to be held by depression, melancholia, feelings of worthlessness and lack of creativity. On Smart, see the Bibliography in the Penguin edition of Smart (Selected Poems). Holderlin: Holderlin is difficult, but also very interesting. The Introduction to his work in the edition of Hymns and Fragments edited by Richard Sieburth is excellent; the best overall study is by Eric Santner (in the library). The translations by Michael Hamburger are good, and should be compared with Sieburths. See also Sieburths notes and references. Richard Unger also gives useful commentary. For those wanting to go further, consult the Bibliography in Thomas Pfaus collection of Hs prose writings, Essays and Letters on Theory.

The Lacanian psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche in his book Holderlin et le question du pre (not translated), saw H. as a classic case of psychosis, the foreclosure of the name of the father. For him, H. had never been fully brought into the symbolic order, and so had never made the distinction between the real and the symbolic. We distinguish between what we see in a film and what we see in real life; the psychotic has no principle by which to do this (the principle would be accepting the order of language as a convention, given by a culture which demands repression and acceptance of its terms. In the French Revolution, the authority of patriarchy was demanding that revolution should come to terms with reality, should accept that revolution could not change everything. Holderlin could not accept that, and it drove him mad. The French critic, Pierre Bertaux, maintained that H. had never gone mad, but that this was an escape from political trouble. If you want to write on Holderlin, it is enough to try to explain one of his poems, to give a reading of one of them. Or try comparing something of Blakes with something of Holderlins. Gerard de Nerval (1808-1855) Grard Labrunie, as his real name was, we may look at through one poem, El Desdichado, (1853). See the discussion of this poem in Kristeva, Black Sun. See de Nerval, Selected Writings ed. Richard Sieburth (Penguin, 1999). A longer text of de Nerval, Aurelia describes his madness, which seems to have been manicdepression. de Nerval is exceptionally interesting as a French writer in Paris he eventually hanged himself in a Paris street.