Weighed in the Balance
"H.D.'s Resistance to Freud in "Writing on the Wall
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7627399 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joanna Spiro (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2001 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 597-621 |
| Publication date | 2001-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American imago (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0065-860X • E-ISSN: 1085-7931 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/aim.2001.0011 |
| OpenAlex | W2036776224 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 6 |
"I cannot talk to Sigmund Freud" H.D.'s memoir Tribute to Freud has been celebrated by feminist critics for its assertion of the integrity of female selfhood and artistic power, and for its critique of male gender authority in the theorization of female sexuality. In this essay I suggest that H.D.'s critics must look more closely at the means by which she resists Freud's unwelcome interpretation of her sexuality. H.D.'s rhetorical strategy for denying Freud's interpretations turns on Freud's Jewishness in a way that demands our attention. Before we applaud H.D.'s triumph in the contest with Freud dramatized in her memoir, we must consider whether we wish to ally ourselves with the means by which she effects gains in the field of gender. H.D. enters into psychoanalysis with Freud in 1933 because she wants his help in understanding the strange psychic effects of "a number of severe shocks" connected with her experiences during the First World War, including the death in action of her brother in France (1974,40). One of these effects is a visionary experience to which she gives the name "Writing on the Wall," consisting of a "series of shadow- or of light-pictures I saw projected on the wall of a hotel bedroom. . . " (1974, 41). H.D. sees these pictures on the wall in the course of a trip to Greece with her lover and companion Bryher (Winnifred Ellerman). Convalescing from double pneumonia at the end of the war, H.D. says to Bryher "'If I could only feel that I could walk the sacred way to Delphi, I know I would get well'" (1974, 50). They make the trip, but "we were informed. . . that it was absolutely impossible for two ladies alone, at that [End Page 597] time, to make the then dangerous trip on the winding road to Delphi" (1974, 49). Kept back from Delphi, H.D. makes her own oracle happen in the form of this vision, which becomes invested with all her love of antiquity and with her image of herself as a poet-prophet. H.D. does not doubt that she has been granted visions; it is about their interpretation that she wants to consult Freud. However, Freud's interpretation of the material H.D. presents to him does not find favor in her eyes. Freud, H.D. tells us, views the experience as a "dangerous 'symptom'" (1974, 41), "a suppressed desire for forbidden 'signs and wonders'. . . a suppressed desire to be a Prophetess, to be important anyway, megalomania. . ." (1974, 51). Not only does Freud fail to confirm H.D.'s place as a successor to the priestesses of Delphi, but he collapses her highest spiritual aspirations back into the baseness of the body, the female body which, in his system, as H.D. is well aware, is characterized by a basic lack. 1 H.D. presents this clash of Delphic and Freudian interpretations through a scene in which a Greek statue is passed between analyst and analysand. Freud selects from his collection of antiquities a statue of Pallas Athené, Wingless Victory, which he hands to H.D. "'This is my favorite,' he said. . . 'She is perfect,' he said, 'only she has lost her spear'" (1974, 69). Such a statement from Freud necessarily resonates with phallic implication. For H.D. the meanings surrounding the statue are linked to those carried by her vision, in which the same goddess appears (in the aspect of Niké). These meanings gain definition in contrast to Freud's interpretations, which she resists. Tribute to Freud has from the beginning attracted readings which raise the question of the text's representations of the phallus and its absence. Is H.D. as a woman necessarily incomplete, castrated, in Freud's view? How does she respond to such an implication, as presented in the scene of the statue? Where
Art · Freud's Psychoanalytic Theories · Genius · Human sexuality · Literature · Memoir · Power (physics) · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Resistance (ecology) · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Cold Fusion and Nuclear Reactions · Gender Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs · Philosophy · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,08 |
| Citation span | 2002 - 2012 (11) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |