SCHILLER AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, the German poet and dramaturge, was born on November 10, 1759 in Morbach and died on May 9, 1805 in Weimar. He was the last and most exemplary representative of the Sturm und Drang movement before evolving—always in the company of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose friend he became in Weimar—toward the aesthetic humanism of his classical period. He was a fundamental model for Sigmund Freud, whose identification with the poet was so strong that Schiller was a familiar figure in his dreams: for example, the dream about Hollthurn, in which Schiller's birthplace was the object of scorn, analyzed by Freud in The Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life (1901b).

In difficult periods in his self-analysis, Freud's dreams referred to the plays of Schiller, whose sensibility is darker and more violent than Goethe's. Freud had been familiar with these works since his adolescence, and at age fourteen, with his nephew John, had performed an act from Schiller's Brigands (1781) depicting the murder of Caesar by his adoptive son, Brutus; he evoked this memory in his associations with the dream "Non vixit" to analyze his rivalry with his brother. Schiller's modernity exalts the "deviltry of freedom," the main theme of the play that earned its author honorary citizenship in the French Republic.

The twenty-seven quotations from Schiller in Freud's work, as identified in the Concordance, attest to his intimate knowledge of the writer, who was also a Dicterphilosoph (poet-philosopher) who articulated a theory of the drives: "The animal drives [Triebe ] awaken and develop the spiritual drives"; he opposed the material drive (Stofftrieb ) to the form drive (Formtrieb ). The Spieltrieb (play-drive)—which expresses play, the beautiful, freedom, and the total man—is posited as an ideal nexus between the two Triebe. It is also the force that drives creation: "It is union of the unconscious and reflection that makes the poetic artist."

In 1910, Freud situated himself in Schiller's wake by distinguishing the sexual instincts from the ego instincts, acknowledging in 1930 that Schiller, with hunger and love, had provided him with an initial "foothold." The poet was again called to the rescue to provide the words to complete an elaboration, dealing with the oceanic feeling that was being held in abeyance: Freud alluded to the poem "Der Taucher" (The diver) to evoke the dangers of the maternal body inhabited by monsters, citing only the diver's ascent toward "the rosy light," to justify his avoidance of submersion in the maternal unconscious. Elsewhere, he used Schiller's poem "The Ring of Polycrates" as an illustration in "The Uncanny" (1919).

Ultimately, Freud considered the age of Goethe to be a prehistory to psychoanalysis, and he credited Schiller for his emphasis on free association as the basis for literary creation.

Madeleine Vermorel

See also: Ego; Goethe and psychoanalysis; Instinct; Sudden involuntary idea; "'Uncanny,' The."

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1901b). The psychopathology of everyday life. SE,6.

——. (1920b). A note on the prehistory of the technique of analysis. SE, 18: 263-65.

Hell, Victor. (1974). Friedrich von Schiller: théories esthétiques et structures dramatiques. Paris: Aubier.

Vermorel, Madeleine. (1990). The drive (Trieb ), from Goethe to Freud. International Review of Psychoanalysis, 17, 249-56.

——. (1995). La pulsion, de Goethe et de Schillerà Freud. In Freud, judéité, lumières et romantisme. (p. 133-49) (H. Vermorel, et al, Eds.) Lausanne: Delachaus and Niestlé.