During the middle decades of the 20th century, the theories of Sigmund Freud inevitably cast their shadow on the field of literary criticism—not surprisingly, given lit-crit's almost instinctive mimicking of whatever discipline is most in fashion at any given time. Over the years we have enjoyed the spectacle of professors of literature taking on the jargon and perspectives of anthropology, linguistics, semiotics, critical theory, economics, and virtually every other social or human science. But the affinity for Freud shown by leading arbiters of literary taste—Lionel Trilling, Harold Bloom (who even draws on the Oedipus Complex to explain literary influences), Edmund Wilson and others—had more plausible grounds than many of these other cross-disciplinary borrowings. Freud himself undertook literary analysis, and his own published case studies closely followed the conventions of narrative fiction.
In an influential essay published in Partisan Review in 1974, Steve Marcus, a Trilling protégé, suggested that Freud's famous study of Dora ("Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria") could be examined "from the point of view of literary criticism." Marcus argued that "Freud is a great writer and that one of his major case histories is a great work of literature…an outstanding creative and imaginative performance." In this clinical document, we encounter all the necessary ingredients for successful fiction: intriguing characters, complexities of plot and their final resolution, interesting dialogue, symbols, a sense for pacing and telling observational details. Indeed, readers will find these and the other Freud case studies more akin to the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle (with Sigmund taking on the role of sleuth) than to previous landmarks of psychology by William James, Gabriel Tarde, Henri Bergson and others who explored the human psyche outside of the Freudian paradigm.
Given this affinity, why shouldn't the psychiatrist's case study serve as the basis for a modern novel? And, taking it a step further, why not bring Freud into the book, both as character and ostensible author of a fictional case study? D.M. Thomas does just that in his 1981 novel The White Hotel —and, to up the ante considerably, aims to explain more than just a case of hysteria, but rather come to grips with horrifying world-historical events. To say that such an agenda is ambitious is an understatement. Upon the book's release, critic Leslie Epstein, writing in the New York Times , declared that Thomas offered, in the form of fiction, "the diagnosis of our epoch through the experience of an individual." "It comes close to achieving that goal," she added. "Indeed, the opening sections of the novel are so authoritative and imaginatively daring that I quickly came to feel I had found the book, that mythical book, that would explain us to ourselves."
But Thomas is hardly constrained by the clinical tone required by the case study format. In fact, each section of this book takes on a radically different style, with only its central portion—a psychoanalytical assessment of patient "Anna G."—following in the footsteps of Dora and other Freudian patients. The rest of the novel could hardly be more surprising or diverse. The prologue follows an epistolary format, and presents fictional correspondence between Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, Hanns Sachs and others—thus creating an expectation that The White Hotel will be a historical novel of conventional scope and style. But within a few pages, Thomas has switched gears and present a lengthy poem, by turns surreal and obscene, recounting a young woman's strange escapades in a mysterious white hotel. The poem is presented as the creation of Lisa Erdman, an opera singer who is also the patient "Anna G" in our case study.
Erdman had written the poem in the spaces between the musical lines in a score of Mozart's Don Giovanni —then presented the work to Freud. "Had Frau Anna's version of Mozart been sung in any of our opera houses," the psychoanalyst later writes in his case study, "the house manager would have been prosecuted for the abuse of public morals." In response, Freud asks Lisa to "go away and write down her own analysis" of this lurid poem. When she returns a few days later, she presents the doctor with a lengthy manuscript, which is not an interpretation, but rather a prose elaboration of the story of the white hotel, even more cryptic and dreamlike than her earlier document.
This story-within-a-story tells of Erdman's journey to the hotel in the company of Freud’s son (whom the patient had never actually met). They engage in a torrid affair in the midst of a series of devastating disasters—avalanche, fire, flood—and magical happenings. External events at the hotel have a strange way of reflecting the inner lives of the residents, most of whom are dead before the journal comes to a close. The incidents related in the memoir, taken at face value, are bizarre and hallucinatory, yet they anticipate many later developments in Thomas's novel.
Freud's rationalism defuses the magical and surreal elements in Erdman's account, and the tidiness with which he elucidates and explains the details and events is impressive…even if not entirely convincing. As is common with psychoanalytic method, he probes into the deep past of his patient in order to unlock hidden meanings and lay bare repressed memories. The significance of our narratives, according to this section of the novel, can only be found by probing the hidden depths of our personal psychic history.
But what if a story's true meaning only can be understood in a collective historical future? What if our subconscious grapples with events yet to come, not those already completed? Such a perspective has no basis in modern analytical theory, but finds its justification in a far more ancient school of psychological interpretation, focused on omens and harbingers. In The White Hotel , grotesquely magical and fantastic elements ultimately refuse to be placed within a neat rational framework, and what starts out as the quintessential Freudian novel turns into a repudiation of the therapeutic worldview. Even Freud himself (at least as a character in this novel) seems dimly aware of this possibility when he admits that his patient seems to possess an uncanny telepathic or clairvoyant ability. "My experience of psychoanalysis," he remarks in these pages, "has convinced me that telepathy exists. If I had my life to go over again, I should devote it to the study of this factor."
At this stage in The White Hotel , Thomas moves away from the narrative structures of the case study, and enters into a more conventional account of the post- therapeutic life of opera singer Lisa Erdman. Now our story advances by degrees into a grotesque and horrifying account of the onset of the Holocaust. Erdman is caught in a web where her own mixed Jewish and Christian heritage, as well as personal and family loyalties, force her to make dauntingly hard decisions about her own sense of identity and responsibility. This heroine, first introduced to us as the poetess who has written a frivolous, racy fairy tale, now takes center stage as an unwilling participant in the massacres at Babi Yar.
Yet just when the hallucinatory tone in this novel seems to have been banished for good, it returns in a final postscript—a wholly unexpected coda that makes a strange work even stranger. I won't be a spoiler; you will need to read this for yourself and deliver your own verdict. For my part, I will simply say that, finishing the last chapter of The White Hotel , I was left wondering what Freud would make of it.