Genius on the Couch

When a psychoanalyst has somebody under his care, he has almost endless access to the patient’s musings, thoughts and dreams. Presumably, if he knows his business and the patient’s money holds out, he can hang on until he gets somewhere. But with the psychoanalysis of artists who died long ago, the data must by their very nature be insufficient.

Artists have the quality of imagination; they are also in the business of observing other people. Nobody knows just what Shakespeare, for example, took from his own experience and what he took from a capacious knowledge built up by the use of his eyes and his ears. Was he Hamlet? If so, was he also Falstaff? And Hotspur? And the endless number of clowns, knaves, villains, kings and lovers that streamed from his pen in such richly variegated profusion? Faced with the task of psychoanalyzing Shakespeare from the contradictory data of his plays and sonnets, not even the shrewdest medico could presume to succeed. The very fact that certain literary detectives think Shakespeare was Marlowe while others insist he was Francis Bacon is proof enough that genius, if it is only great enough, can be practically indecipherable.

When a psychoanalyst has somebody under his care, he has almost endless access to the patient’s musings, thoughts and dreams. Presumably, if he knows his business and the patient’s money holds out, he can hang on until he gets somewhere. But with the psychoanalysis of artists who died long ago, the data must by their very nature be insufficient.

Artists have the quality of imagination; they are also in the business of observing other people. Nobody knows just what Shakespeare, for example, took from his own experience and what he took from a capacious knowledge built up by the use of his eyes and his ears. Was he Hamlet? If so, was he also Falstaff? And Hotspur? And the endless number of clowns, knaves, villains, kings and lovers that streamed from his pen in such richly variegated profusion? Faced with the task of psychoanalyzing Shakespeare from the contradictory data of his plays and sonnets, not even the shrewdest medico could presume to succeed. The very fact that certain literary detectives think Shakespeare was Marlowe while others insist he was Francis Bacon is proof enough that genius, if it is only great enough, can be practically indecipherable.