S.Soloviev: ...even if
the subject of split personality has no Freudian overtones in psychoanalysis as
such, the question is, did it have in 50 and 60-es in the USA when VN was
writing Pale Fire? [...] I speak of historical reconstruction, not about
your "objective" view as a psychoanalyst.
EDNote:
VN would have gotten his earliest major exposure to the "split personality"
concept from William James' retelling of the work of Pierre Janet [...]My own
research on this subject has not revealed major connections between Freudian
theory and multiple personalities in the 1950s--either independently, or in
Nabokov's notes on the subject. ~SB
JM: Now I understand Sergei's point in
relation to a "historical reconstruction" of psychoanalysis in
America and post-war different schools of freudian
followers. Unfortunatelly I know almost nothing
about it. My commentary was inspired in VN's constant reference
to a "Viennese quack" ie: the original Bergstrasse 19, Vienna, Sigmund
Freud - and not to the fashionable "freudism" in the
new continent ( Pnin's imported Winds are satirized in
connection to Freud's Oedipus theories). SB's
additional commentary clarifies this issue.
VN's use of popular psychoanalytic theories
on dream symbolism is usually very explicit ( cf. Shade's lines
641-644 on "fishy Freuds"), not hidden in the plot ( since he might
then seem to be competing or applying a Freudian kind
of "investigation"?)
SB: I read somewhere that VN was acquainted with
Charcot's experiments with hysterics. He also seems to have made reference
to the famous umbrella experiment by Bernheim, but I cannot remember where
and in what context. Do you know?
..................................................................................................................
btw: I was re-reading "Good readers, good writers" to
discover what VN might expect from a Pale Fire reader. I
saw that VN mentions the word "patience", as in Rimbaud's poem about
Eternity, not only "intuition" and "passion" as in
his oft-quoted sentence about art and
science.