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Re: THOUGHTS--Lolita and the Viennese child woman
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Jim Twiggs:... I wish to call attention to another work that ...fits nicely into the discussion of VN vs. Freud... Freud and the Child-Woman: The Memoirs of Fritz Wittels... [A]mong early reviewers of Lolita, there were several who saw Dolores as a coarse, oversexed brat who brings a well-bred scholar-gentleman first to his knees and then to grief and murder.." Related to.Freud’s response to Wittels’s paper:, his fury "suggests that Wittels had touched Freud’s deepest fears about psychoanalysis. ‘It was not his intention, he said, to lead the world to an uninhibited frenzy. On the contrary he wished to teach men not to satisfy their instincts in ...neurotic disguises... Instead of repressing and lying to themselves they should consciously reject what they consider evil.’ ...Wittels accuses Freud of not having the courage of his own convictions. So we see, even at this early date, deep conflicts within the inner circle of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society over the meaning of Freud’s message...
JM: No free institution is without conflicts and dissenters. Freud's meaning, though, is clearly stated in his extensive works (there's no need to interpret them any further). Wittels accusation, as I see it, is totally unfounded since, from all the pointers I got, Freud was a morally courageous man. If he harbored special "evils" and avoided them, it was by conscious deliberation, exactly as he recommends in theory.
However, there's no arguing against opinions acquired by hearsay and, not to be counted among that crowd, I still need to read "Phillips’s wise, witty and sometimes hilarious review... http://www.lrb.co.uk/v18/n01/adam-phillips/women-what-are-they-for," before I express anything else about Wittel's "unfounded accusation"
According to Jim Twiggs, editor Edward "Timms tracked down Wittels’s papers. He goes on to say that “it was Wittels who in 1907 initiated the cult of the ‘child woman’, in a paper which he read to Freud in private, presented to the Psychoanalytic Society and then published in Kraus’s magazine Die Fackel (‘The Torch’).” I can only surmise that the report about Freud's reaction to the paper concerns its first private reading. About Wittel's article, after he presented it in the Vienna Psychoanaly Society, there might be other records available related to how well it was received by his colleagues. It appears that Wittel was unable to publish it in any reputable psychoanalytic journal since it came out under the auspices of Kraus's magazine.
Anyway, I hesitate about comparing Irma (a real person) and Lolita (fictional character) - or Kraus and Humbert for the same reason. Lolita's background is widely different from Irma's, and their story has only superficial similarities.Besides, Wittels's "Child-Woman" image is quite distinct from Humbert's definition of a "Nymphet" and John Ray Jr's "clinical case" belongs to Nabokov's criticism against psychiatrists in general ( in general).
And ( but this is a risky hunch)...I find no common traits between the pair ( Kraus, Wittels) and Nabokov: this is why I think that, had Nabokov read the story ( JT: " I do not, of course, claim that VN took anything from the story of Irma, or that he was even aware of it. Nevertheless, there are some clear similarities between Irma and Dolores. In both cases, a young girl is treated not only as a sex object but also as a suitable object of study by much older, well-educated men who “solipsize” her for their less-than-honorable purposes"), he would have avoided these "clear similarities" or, even worse, he might have given up writing "Lolita" altogether. Nabokov, like Freud, seems to have been free enough to exercise moral choices, unlike the other two.
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JM: No free institution is without conflicts and dissenters. Freud's meaning, though, is clearly stated in his extensive works (there's no need to interpret them any further). Wittels accusation, as I see it, is totally unfounded since, from all the pointers I got, Freud was a morally courageous man. If he harbored special "evils" and avoided them, it was by conscious deliberation, exactly as he recommends in theory.
However, there's no arguing against opinions acquired by hearsay and, not to be counted among that crowd, I still need to read "Phillips’s wise, witty and sometimes hilarious review... http://www.lrb.co.uk/v18/n01/adam-phillips/women-what-are-they-for," before I express anything else about Wittel's "unfounded accusation"
According to Jim Twiggs, editor Edward "Timms tracked down Wittels’s papers. He goes on to say that “it was Wittels who in 1907 initiated the cult of the ‘child woman’, in a paper which he read to Freud in private, presented to the Psychoanalytic Society and then published in Kraus’s magazine Die Fackel (‘The Torch’).” I can only surmise that the report about Freud's reaction to the paper concerns its first private reading. About Wittel's article, after he presented it in the Vienna Psychoanaly Society, there might be other records available related to how well it was received by his colleagues. It appears that Wittel was unable to publish it in any reputable psychoanalytic journal since it came out under the auspices of Kraus's magazine.
Anyway, I hesitate about comparing Irma (a real person) and Lolita (fictional character) - or Kraus and Humbert for the same reason. Lolita's background is widely different from Irma's, and their story has only superficial similarities.Besides, Wittels's "Child-Woman" image is quite distinct from Humbert's definition of a "Nymphet" and John Ray Jr's "clinical case" belongs to Nabokov's criticism against psychiatrists in general ( in general).
And ( but this is a risky hunch)...I find no common traits between the pair ( Kraus, Wittels) and Nabokov: this is why I think that, had Nabokov read the story ( JT: " I do not, of course, claim that VN took anything from the story of Irma, or that he was even aware of it. Nevertheless, there are some clear similarities between Irma and Dolores. In both cases, a young girl is treated not only as a sex object but also as a suitable object of study by much older, well-educated men who “solipsize” her for their less-than-honorable purposes"), he would have avoided these "clear similarities" or, even worse, he might have given up writing "Lolita" altogether. Nabokov, like Freud, seems to have been free enough to exercise moral choices, unlike the other two.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/