Abstract
Utilizing a field theory of unconscious communication, and in particular the concept of the analytic third, this paper situates Freud’s interpretation of Ibsen’s 1886 Rosmersholm, presented in the section of his essay “Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work” (1916) entitled “Those Wrecked by Success,” in the context of his relationship with Ferenczi. Both in his interpretation of Rosmersholm and in his earlier papers on the psychology of love, it is argued, Freud may be seen to commenting both on Ferenczi’s incestuous love triangle with Gizella and Elma Pálos and on his equally incestuous triangle with Martha and Minna Bernays. In a postscript, the challenge offered by Groddeck to Freud’s oedipal reading of Rosmersholm is assessed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Writing to Freud on October 17, 1916, Ferenczi informs him that he and Gizella “had taken a walk in the same area which had been the scene of our union in 1900” (Freud and Ferenczi, 1914–1919, p. 141; see Berman, 2004, p. 493).
In Ferenczi’s published writings, the clearest expression of his erotic conflict, and of its entanglement with his impending analysis with Freud (see Falzeder, 1997), is to be found in the disguised autobiographical case history in “The Dream of the Occlusive Pessary” (1915a), the manuscript of which he sent to Freud on September 8, 1914. Speaking with the voice of the analyst to the patient who is reality himself, Ferenczi interprets the dream in question as deriving from the time “when you felt yourself attracted by no other woman than by your mother”; his split between mother and daughter figures is shown to be represented by a choice between “the woman with the too wide and the bride with the too narrow vagina” (p. 309).
Rosenberg (1978) refers to Ibsen’s heroine, Rebekka West, by using Rebecca, the version found in the English language version of Freud’s works (1916a), although in the original German Freud uses the name Rebekka (Freud, 1916b). I will follow Ibsen and Freud, in their original usage. Groddeck (1910) also refers to her as Rebekka West.
On “dying together” as simultaneously a gratification of, and punishment for, incestuous desires, see Jones (1911).
See, however, the postscript to this paper, where I examine the challenge posed by Georg Groddeck to Freud’s interpretation of Rosmersholm.
In my companion paper (Rudnytsky, 2012) on the infantile determinants of Freud’s affair with Minna Bernays, I have cited the case of Fräulein Elisabeth von R. in the course of tracing a sequence of veiled literary allusions to this relationship in Freud’s writings between 1895 and 1901.
For an extended discussion of Ferenczi’s “infantile thoughts” concerning Freud and Minna, see chapter 2 of my Rescuing Psychoanalysis from Freud (Rudnytsky, 2011). As Peter Swales has suggested to me in a personal communication, it is likely during their trip to Sicily in 1910 that Ferenczi learned from Freud about his sentimental journey with Minna.
I am grateful to Mark F. Poster for reminding me of the presence of Rosmersholm in the Freud-Groddeck correspondence, and to Galina Hristeva for supplying me with the text of Groddeck’s essay on Rebekka West.
Groddeck offers an extended interpretation of Peer Gynt in a 1927 essay, in which he moves beyond the concept of the It to espouse a notion of the self as an even more radical alternative to the ego. On Groddeck’s critique of Freud’s domesticated understanding of the “id,” see my Reading Psychoanalysis (Rudnytsky, 2002, pp. 151–152, pp. 203–204).
References
Berman, E. (2004). Sándor, Gizella, Elma: A biographical journey. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 85 (2), 489–520.
Breuer, J. & Freud, S. (1895). Studies on hysteria. Standard Edition (Vol. 2, pp.1–323). London: Hogarth.
Falzeder, E. (1997). Dreaming of Freud: Ferenczi, Freud, and an analysis without end. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 17 (4), 416–427.
Ferenczi, S. (1908 [1956]). The analytic interpretation and treatment of psychosexual impotence. In E. Jones (Trans.) Sex in psychoanalysis [Contributions to psychoanalysis] (pp. 11–34). New York: Dover.
Ferenczi, S. (1912 [1994]). Suggestion and psycho-analysis. In Further contributions to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis (pp. 55–68). London: Karnac.
Ferenczi, S. (1915a [1994]). The dream of the occlusive pessary. In Further contributions to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis (pp. 304–311). London: Karnac.
Ferenczi, S. (1915b [1994]). Psychogenic anomalies of voice production. In Further contributions to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis (pp. 105–109). London: Karnac.
Ferro, A. (2006 [2009]). Mind works: Technique and creativity in psychoanalysis P. Slotkin (Trans.). London: Routledge.
Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition (Vols. 4 and 5, pp. 1–626). London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1906). Psychopathic characters on the stage. Standard Edition (Vol. 7, pp. 305–310). London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1910). A special type of choice of object made by men. Standard Edition (Vol. 11, pp. 165–175). London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1912). On the universal tendency to debasement in the sphere of love. Standard Edition (Vol. 11, pp. 179–190). London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1916a). Some character-types met with in psycho-analytic work. Standard Edition (Vol. 14, pp. 311–333). London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1916b). Einige charactertypen aus der pscyhoanalytischer Arbeit. Gesammelte Werke, X, 364–391.
Freud, S. & Ferenczi, S. (1908 – 1914 [1993]). The correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi. Volume 1: 1908 – 1914. In E. Brabant, E. Falzeder & P. Giampieri-Deutsch (Eds.) P.T.Hoffer (Trans.). Cambridge, MA & London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Freud, S. & Ferenczi, S. (1914 – 1919 [1996]). The correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi Volume 2: 1914 – 1919. In E. Falzeder & E. Brabant (Eds.) with the collaboration of P. Giampieri-Deutsch. P.T.Hoffer (Trans.). Cambridge, MA & London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Freud, S. & Fliess, W. (1887 – 1904 [1985]). The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887 – 1904 J. M. Masson (Ed. and Trans.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Freud, S. & Jung, C. (1906 – 1914 [1974]). The Freud-Jung letters: The correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. W. McGuire (Ed.) R. Manheim and R.F.C.Hull (Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gerson, S. (2004). The relational unconscious: A core element of intersubjectivity, thirdness, and clinical process. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 73 (1), 63–98.
Groddeck, G. (1910 [1964]). Rebekka West (Tragödie oder Komödie?). In E.R. von Diersburg (Ed.) Psychoanalytische Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst [Psychoanalytic writings in art and literature] (pp. 102–123). Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag.
Groddeck, G. (1923 [1961]). The book of the it, V.M.E. Collins (Trans.). New York: New American Library.
Groddeck, G. (1927 [1989]). Peer Gynt. In V.M.E. Collins (Trans.). Exploring the unconscious, (pp. 153–179). New York: Vision Press.
Ibsen, H. (1867 [1974]). Peer Gynt, P.Watts (Trans.). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.
Ibsen, H. (1886 [1975]). Rosmersholm. In The master builder and other plays, U. Ellis-Fermor (Trans.) (pp. 29–119). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.
Ibsen, H. (1888 [1974]). The lady from the sea. In Plays P. Watts (Trans.) (pp. 235–330). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.
Jones, E. (1911 [1964]). On “dying together”: With special reference to Heinrich von Kleist’s suicide. In Essays in applied psychoanalysis, 3rd edn. 2 vols. (Vol. 1, pp. 9–15). London: Hogarth Press.
Maciejewski, F. (2006). Freud, his wife, and his “wife”. J. Gaines, with the collaboration of P. J. Swales & J. Swales (Trans.) American Imago, 63 (4), 497–506.
Ogden, T. (1995). Analyzing forms of aliveness and deadness of the transference-countertransference. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76 (4), 695–709.
Rosenberg, S. (1978). Why Freud fainted. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Rudnytsky, P.L. (2002). Reading psychoanalysis: Freud, Rank, Ferenczi, Groddeck. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Rudnytsky, P.L. (2011). Rescuing psychoanalysis from Freud and other essays in re-vision. London: Karnac.
Rudnytsky, P.L. (2012). The etiology of psychoanalysis: Freud’s abuser, sibling incest, and the affair with Minna Bernays. Unpublished manuscript.
Schacht, L. (Ed.) (1977). The meaning of illness: Selected psychoanalytic writings, by Georg Groddeck. (Including his correspondence with Sigmund Freud.). London: Maresfield Library.
Swales, P.J. (1982). Freud, Minna Bernays, and the conquest of Rome: New light on the origins of psychoanalysis. New American Review, 1 (Spring/Summer), 1–23.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
A version of this paper was presented at the International Ferenczi Conference, Faces of Trauma, in Budapest, May 31–June 3, 2012.
1Ph.D., L.C.S.W., Professor of English, University of Florida; Florida Psychoanalytic Institute; Corresponding Member, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles.
Like all the other texts discussed in this paper, “Suggestion and Psychoanalysis” (1912) can be read in the context of Ferenczi’s dialogue with Freud. Its main theme implicitly touches on Ferenczi’s awe of Freud in its description of how suggestion, in contrast to psychoanalysis, “reduces people precisely to the level of a helpless child incapable of contradicting or of independent thought” (p. 56), while their respective romantic triangles are refracted in Ferenczi’s account of the conflict of Ibsen’s heroine, who is “forever tormenting herself with the thought that she does not love her husband”—who happens to be a doctor—and that “her heart still belongs to the adventurer” from the sea (p. 59). In the end, she is freed from her obsessive brooding when the adventurous sailor returns and her husband secures his wife’s heart by magnanimously allowing her to choose freely between them.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rudnytsky, P. Freud, Ferenczi, and Rosmersholm: Incestuous Triangles and Analytic Thirds. Am J Psychoanal 73, 323–338 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2013.22
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2013.22