Page - 49 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Psychosexual development in puberty 49 Lotte is addressing the paradigm of Oedipal competition: the point is not the woman, but taking her away from the other man (father figure). However, on an emotional level, this wish to possess the mother constitutes a necessary step in the son’s independence. This rebellion is directed against societal constraints, the rigid rules of politics and society against which Werther rebels. Goethe contrasts these rigid strictures with the value of passionate feelings, Werther’s genius, his originality as well as his love and submission to nature. Instead of valuing only reason, intuition, feel- ing and passion are here elevated to a quasi -religious attitude that links the human being to his divine creator. The dissatisfaction of the adolescent with oppressive rules is also addressed. In his autobiographical book From my Life. Poetry and Truth (1811–13), Goethe emphasizes that he conceived Werther upon an autobiographical foundation: his own unhappy love and the death of his good friend Jerusalem, since he perceived his own similarity to him. He then withdrew from the world, writing his Werther in four weeks (Goethe 2003, 344). In his article “A Childhood Recollection from Dichtung und Wahrheit” (1917–19), Freud addresses Goethe’s relationship with his mother, citing a scene Goethe describes where he throws bowls, pots and a heavy pitcher out the window. As the neighbors applaud and encourage him, he throws more and more plates out the window and enjoys seeing them break. Freud interprets this act of throwing as an expression of the unconscious, jealous wish to defenestrate his own siblings. “This ‘out!’ seems to be an essential part of the magic action and to arise directly from its hidden meaning. The new baby must be got rid of – through the window . . .” (Freud 1917–19, 151). The heavy pitcher, for its part, indicates a mother laden by pregnancy; when he throws it out the win- dow, he symbolically defenestrates her too, as he is embittered and angry over the incipient rival in her womb (Ibid, 151). Goethe was the oldest of six siblings, of whom only he and his sister Cornelia survived: the four other siblings died at the age of six (Hermann), one (Katharina), two (Johanna) and eight months (Georg). In Werther, Goethe describes with particular tenderness the scene where Lotte takes care of her six younger siblings – as if Goethe were reawakening his dead siblings to life. A psychoanalyst might presume that the young jealous Johann Wolfgang had mixed feelings when his murderous wishes became reality and the siblings were actually buried. “Goethe, too, as a little boy saw a younger brother die without regret” (as Hitschmann writes, quoted by Freud; italics original, Freud 1917–19, 151.) In a corollary, the psychoanalyst might assume that in the creative act of writing, the fantasized guilt for the siblings’ death is redeemed. Lotte’s six siblings could stand for the dead and living children – six altogether: in Goethe’s fantasy, they are all alive and eating a meal together. The potential usurper then commits suicide. At his birth, Goethe was difficult to bring to life – at first, he seemed lifeless. He might have felt himself to be a “lucky child”, an uncontested mother’s favorite, as Freud emphasizes. Yet he might also have felt himself guilty for death wishes towards his siblings – wishes that came true in a magical way, but now could be assuaged through Werther.