R. Gray
German 390/Comp. Lit. 396/Engl 363/CHID 498/Euro 490

"Freud and the Literary Imagination"

Lecture Notes: Franz Kafka, "A Country Doctor"

I. Structural and Literary Features

Opening Sentence: "I was in great perplexity." In the original German: "Ich war in grosser Verlegenheit."

The word "Verlegenheit" as a kind of Freudian nodal point in this text. It has 3 very different possible meanings:
1) "dilemma": "I was confronted with a great dilemma." = problem, aporia. A conflict in need of a solution.
2) Verlegen as an adjective means "shame" or "embarrassment": "I was in a very embarrassing situation." Alludes to problem of shame. Recall Freud's reference in "Creative Writers and Daydreams" to the shame that prevents us from revealing our most intimate fantasies.
3) Verlegen as a verb means "to misplace", to "lose" due to being distracted, etc. "I had misplaced something of great importance." Note the connection to the distraction the Country Doctor experiences when he kicks open the "unused" pigsty and discovers the horses. In terms of Freudian theory "misplacing" is related to the repression or forgetting of significant memories or urges.
Thus one of the opening words of Kafka's German text is overdetermined (to use Freud's terms) by concentrating into one single word these 3 different possible meanings or allusions. Each possibility points in a different direction, but each direction proves to be relevant for a deep-psychological reading of Kafka's text.
–Reflect on these 3 motifs in the text: Dilemmas (and their solution); Shame (and its consequences); Misplacing (or repressing) important information/things/people, etc.

First-person narrative form: an "I" reports on previous experiences of the same "I." This split between two historically (temporally) distinct versions of the self is typical of autobiographical forms of writing. Note how this duality in the structure of Kafka's narrative harmonizes with the thematic of duality and splitting at the level of content, or in the fictional world of the story. Narrating a previous event in the past tense is typical of autobiography, in which the self recounts a prior experience. But note that in its final paragraph Kafka's text shifts to the present tense. In the original German, much of the text is narrated in the present tense: Text begins in traditional past tense, but shifts to present tense at the moment the groom begins molesting Rose (top of p. 221). It remains in present tense until the doctor takes leave of the boy (p. 225), where it returns to past tense until the quotation of the children's song, and after the song it goes back to present tense. In the use of present tense, the narrating and the narrated self converge (as do the narrated time and the time of narration), so that we must imagine the Country Doctor telling his tale while standing naked on his sled, suspended between his home and the house in the village. The suspension of time and place on the sled is reflected on the level of narrative in the present-tense form, which one critic (Dorritt Cohn) referred to as "Kafka's eternal present."

Like Freud's "Dream of Irma's Injection," Kafka's "A Country Doctor" can be read as a wish-fulfillment fantasy motivated by self-exculpation. The Country Doctor as narrator constantly places blame for his failure on others: on the lack of horses, on the Groom, on the villagers, on the Boy, etc. His narrative attitude is one of: "If I have failed, it's not my fault, but rather the fault of these other people. I've done my best, indeed, all that is humanly possible, but these others are the cause of my failure. If the Boy is not cured, I'm not to blame. If Rose is raped, I'm not at fault." Etc. Thus the tone of the narrator is defensive.
–Related to this is the frequency of passive situations: the Doctor is carries away by the horses, against his will; he lets himself be undressed despite the fact that he has resolved to leave (p. 222); the patient's family must clue him in to the boy's wound; he is carried to the boy's bed, and he submits to this without resistance; his inability to "control" the horses as indicative of his failure to rescue Rose (p. 222).

II. Structures of Doubling in Kafka's Story

    1. 2 horses in the pigsty; one horse barely fastened to the other
      —names: Brother and Sister
      —anticipate the "brother" and "sister" at the village house, the "patient" and his "sister"
    2. Groom's bite on Rose's cheek; 2 rows of teeth
      —anticipates boy's "wound"
    3. Wound: done with "2 strokes of an axe"
    4. 2 carriage rides; one fast, one slow (opposition!)
    5. 2 examinations of the patient; one finds nothing, one discovers the "wound" (opposition!)
    6. 2 please of patient: first asks doctor to let him die; second, pleads for his life
    7. 2 scenes portray the breaking down of doors: the doctor kicking in the doors of the pigsty; the groom breaking down the door of the house to reach Rose
    8. 2 songs by the village children: one threatens the doctor, the other praises him (opposition!)
    9. 2 locales: home of the doctor; home of the patient
      --at the conclusion, the doctor is suspended between these two locales

      Note how the doubles themselves are often doubled: e.g. 2 horses > 2 siblings.

III. Extend this Dualistic Structure to the Level of the Characters

    1) Country Doctor: his counterpart = the Groom

    Country Doctor / Groom
    old / young
    tired / energetic
    responsibility (duty) / sexuality, eroticism
    weak / strong
    "human" [civilized] / animal (pigsty; "on all fours")
    protects Rose / molests Rose
    lives with Rose without noticing her / has eyes only for Rose

    Note how these characters are joined by opposition;     see Freud's comments in "Three Caskets" about connections via opposites and their role in the structure of the unconscious.

    2) Rose: her counterpart = the Boy, the Patient

    Rose/Boy (displacement of Sister?)
    female/male
    "Rose"/"Rose-red" wound
    "victim"/patient/"victim"?
    needs help, rescue/needs help, rescue

    3) Interactions between these 2 pairs of characters

    Doctor > duty, responsibility, profession > Boy/Patient

    Rose < sexuality, lust < Groom

    Note that the boy/patient is a composite image, fusion of Rose and patient, marked by gender reversal.


    —Connection between Boy/Rose suggests connection between Doctor/Groom
    —Is the Doctor's sense of professional responsibility nothing but a displacement of his desire for Rose?
    —Is the Groom the Doctor's "alter ego," the erotic side of his professional personality?
    —Rose lives in the Doctor's house for years "without [him] noticing her" (p. 223)
    —night alarm: the call to urgent professional action, or the sudden arousal of the Doctor's repressed erotic longing for Rose?

    Freud's theory of "sublimation": erotic energy is transformed or diverted into alternative outlets, into professional accomplishment (for example), creativity, scientific discovery, etc.
    —Is "Country Doctor" an example of the sublimation of erotic impulses into a sense of professional responsibility, duty, ambition, etc.?
    —Note that in "Creative Writers and Day-Dreams" Freud identifies only 2 types of wishes: ambitious and erotic wishes. Do we witness the conflation of these 2 in "Country Doctor": ambitious = Boy as object; erotic = Rose as object. What happens when the Doctor is placed in bed with the Boy? — These 2 drives are condensed into a single event or image.

    Does Kafka's text portray the problem of psychic ambivalence (see the suspension of the Doctor between home and house of patient)? Does the story enact or choreograph the fundamental conflict between the ego and the id, the conscious and the unconscious, that is the cornerstone of Freud's theory of the psyche?

IV. Composition of the Text; Structural Elements

    1. First-person narrative — identity of hero and narrator?
      —Egoism as centerpiece of literary creation, as Freud claims?

    2. Dream "logic": The story unfolds as a series of unconnected or tenuously connected scenes or sequences.

      Scene I: Doctor's Dilemma
      —perplexity, "confused distress" (ambivalence?)
      —blizzard
      —call of night bell to ill patient
      —his own horses dead (his own impotence? old age?)

      Transition 1: Doctor thoughtlessly (unconsciously?) kicks the pigsty door

      Scene II: Dilemma Resolved
      —horses emerge from pigsty = found in his own "house," his own "unconscious"?
      —horses carry Doctor to patient
      >>>>> New Dilemma:?the Groom attacks Rose; her fate "inescapable"

      Transition 2: Space and time annulled, relativized; ride on sled/carriage occurs outside of space and time.

      Scene III: Doctor and [healthy] Patient
      —Doctor welcomed by Boy
      —Boy wants to die
      —first examination > no illness
      —Doctor sacrifices Rose for the sake of his patients, but all for nothing
      >>>>> Sub-scene: memory of Rose; Dilemma reversed = now he must return to rescue Rose
      —his ambivalence: wants to return, but allows his coat to be taken off (p. 222)
      This is a classic instance of what Freud elsewhere calls a "symptomatic act": acting out in body language or through physical movement an intention that runs counter to the one expressed by the conscious mind--in this regard, a kind of Freudian "slip" expressed physically (hence: "symptomatic"). Note also that the act of undressing is a kind of nodal point: it joins this scene to the Doctor's suppressed wish to "undress" with Rose. The same is true for the patient's bed, which is a displacement for the bed the Doctor would like to share with Rose.

      Transition 3: Sister holds up bloody towel (symbol of menstruation? emerging sexuality? sexuality identified with illness?)

      Scene IV: Discovery of the "Wound"
      —Rose-red = connection to "Rose"
      —"open like surface mine to daylight"
      —worms wiggle toward light; phallic images?
      —boy wants to be saved (reversal!)
      —Doctor stripped and placed in Boy's bed = displacement for being in Rose's bed?
      —his return home "springing out of this bed into my own" (p. 225) — with Rose?
      —Doctor consoles Boy

      Transition 4: Return home: time and space annulled
      —transition never ends
      —narrated in present tense

      "To write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an understanding with people is hard" (p. 223). Can this statement stand as a motto for this story?

V. Possible "Symbols" or Dream Images

    1. Horses

      Rose

      Carriage/sled

      Wound/Blossom

      Worms

      Pigsty

      Breaking door

      Bloody towel

      Stripping naked of Doctor

      Night bell

      Eyes scratched out

      "Frost of unhappy age"

      Snow, blizzard

      Etc.

VI. General Conclusions to be Drawn from the Analysis

1) We can apply Freudian methods or interpretive strategies without necessarily relying on autobiographical information about the author. The method we have pursued here is similar to that applied by Freud in "The Theme of the Three Caskets" in that it begins with a structural analysis (the phenomenon of doubling) and moves from there to an interpretation of theme.

2) We can import certain Freudian themes and apply them, where appropriate, to literary interpretation and arrive at a (relatively) coherent interpretation. E.g.: dichotomy between conscious/unconscious; problem of ambivalence; sexual repression; sublimation of instincts (libido) into other activities (the Doctor's ambition and professional aims); characters as representations of psychic phenomena, agencies: the "splitting" off of parts of the "self" into distinct characters (Doctor and Groom); repression and distortion; etc.

3) In "Country Doctor" we witness a second type of infiltration of literary production by theories or methods schooled on Freudian psychoanalysis. If Gustl's stream-of-consciousness method represented a kind of graphology of the psychic processes, an immediate "inscription" or "recording" of the mental dynamics of an individual character, "Country Doctor" exemplifies the logic of the Freudian "dream-work" as concretized in a literary text: suspension of temporality and its transposition into spatial relation; annulment of narrative logic in favor of loose juxtaposition and succession of scenes; visualization of central abstract ideas (ambivalence!); dramatization of problems issues through the character interactions; non-logical sequencing, a series of seemingly unrelated images that are strung together by certain images (wound), ideas, symbols; the concentration of meaning into "nodal points," centers of the text that focus multivalent ("overdetermined") significations and point to diverse constituents in the text.

Last Update: 10/15/09