In the age of the novel, people saw themselves as characters in a novel. This is why Freud’s early case histories read like short stories: because the implicit psychological model of his time was inextricably bound up in narrative—in its emphasis on specificity and in its gradual unfolding. Character in those days was seen as fundamentally something that developed, and that developed in large part through hardship, through error—that is, through the recognition of error and the overcoming of hardship. Error and misfortune, then, were not to be studiously avoided. One had to meet with these things, to know them, to survive them, in order to be a fully developed person.
One result of this kind of development is peculiarity. The characters in novels—the best ones anyway—are like twisted old trees. Their interest, their value, comes from their specificity. As readers and writers, we are not interested in how a character is like others of their type (quiddity) but how they differ from their type (haecceity). Their haecceity is what is important about them; their quiddity is only a sort of background.
Freud was was anxious about the degree to which his case histories read like stories (see for example his comments on this theme in the critical analysis section of “Elizabeth Von R.”). After all, his stated project was to develop a science of psychoanalysis. He wanted to identify configurations of symptoms, to discover the underlying structure of hysteria, of obsessive-compulsive disorder— structures that would be common to all hysterics, all obsessive-compulsives. For such a project, what mattered was not what made a patient unique but what made him a member of a category—not his haecceity but his quiddity.
People no longer see themselves as characters in a novel. The basic model of the psyche today comes from the psychological study—not Freud’s case histories, which were still four-fifths narrative, but the modern statistical study: the sort that purports to tell us about ourselves, to reveal our hidden biases, to pierce through our false self-conceptions.
In the statistical study, everything that was essential to a character in a novel becomes noise. Haecceity—the way that an individual deviates from type—is precisely what the whole field of statistics is designed to eliminate, in order to reveal the underlying “laws” of human behavior. In this new model, what is essential is our quiddity. Our haecceity is an extraneous element. No wonder then that we have such a horror of error and misfortune, that we try to guard desperately agains them—lest they drive us away from the mean (the “true” value), towards those ever-narrowing tails of the bell curve.
At the same time, we are encouraged to express ourselves, we are told we are special, we are hypnotized with visions of beauty and genius—of outliers. As with so many things, these contradictory elements exist side by side without conflict. The desire for specialness, the fetishization of self-expression, the striving for beauty and brilliance have themselves become not merely common but nearly universal qualities.
Let us learn to see ourselves once more as characters in a novel. Then our failures and frustrations will again take on the rich hues of an unfinished struggle with life. Then we can again begin to find something beautiful and worthwhile even in loneliness and disappointment. Then we can let ourselves grow strange. It will not be easy to go back to this conception of the self. Again and again, the conception that is native to the statistical study will seek to reestablish itself, and we will realize we are again seeing our lives and our psyches through its flattening gaze. But gradually, with persistence, we can regain the novelistic conception. It will help, in this process, to read novels, especially old novels, novels written when the novelistic conception of character was still dominant.
Footnote to this post >>
More on Seeing Ourselves >>
One result of this kind of development is peculiarity. The characters in novels—the best ones anyway—are like twisted old trees. Their interest, their value, comes from their specificity. As readers and writers, we are not interested in how a character is like others of their type (quiddity) but how they differ from their type (haecceity). Their haecceity is what is important about them; their quiddity is only a sort of background.
Freud was was anxious about the degree to which his case histories read like stories (see for example his comments on this theme in the critical analysis section of “Elizabeth Von R.”). After all, his stated project was to develop a science of psychoanalysis. He wanted to identify configurations of symptoms, to discover the underlying structure of hysteria, of obsessive-compulsive disorder— structures that would be common to all hysterics, all obsessive-compulsives. For such a project, what mattered was not what made a patient unique but what made him a member of a category—not his haecceity but his quiddity.
People no longer see themselves as characters in a novel. The basic model of the psyche today comes from the psychological study—not Freud’s case histories, which were still four-fifths narrative, but the modern statistical study: the sort that purports to tell us about ourselves, to reveal our hidden biases, to pierce through our false self-conceptions.
In the statistical study, everything that was essential to a character in a novel becomes noise. Haecceity—the way that an individual deviates from type—is precisely what the whole field of statistics is designed to eliminate, in order to reveal the underlying “laws” of human behavior. In this new model, what is essential is our quiddity. Our haecceity is an extraneous element. No wonder then that we have such a horror of error and misfortune, that we try to guard desperately agains them—lest they drive us away from the mean (the “true” value), towards those ever-narrowing tails of the bell curve.
At the same time, we are encouraged to express ourselves, we are told we are special, we are hypnotized with visions of beauty and genius—of outliers. As with so many things, these contradictory elements exist side by side without conflict. The desire for specialness, the fetishization of self-expression, the striving for beauty and brilliance have themselves become not merely common but nearly universal qualities.
Let us learn to see ourselves once more as characters in a novel. Then our failures and frustrations will again take on the rich hues of an unfinished struggle with life. Then we can again begin to find something beautiful and worthwhile even in loneliness and disappointment. Then we can let ourselves grow strange. It will not be easy to go back to this conception of the self. Again and again, the conception that is native to the statistical study will seek to reestablish itself, and we will realize we are again seeing our lives and our psyches through its flattening gaze. But gradually, with persistence, we can regain the novelistic conception. It will help, in this process, to read novels, especially old novels, novels written when the novelistic conception of character was still dominant.
Footnote to this post >>
More on Seeing Ourselves >>
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