MUSHROOMING: resistance and creativity in sigmund freud and emily dickinson

Abstract

This paper explores Sigmund Freud's use of metaphor, taking as its focus a footnote in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). In a development of this footnote, Freud employs the figure of the mushroom in order to illustrate the limit presented by dream interpretation. Whilst commentators have discussed this footnote, few have explored the significance of the mushroom image itself. I explore both Freud's use of metaphorical language and also Emily Dickinson's use of the mushroom image. The poet's treatment of metaphor resonates with Freud's, illuminating his use of the mushroom figure. Through close readings and examinations of various theoretical perspectives, I consider the relationship between interpretative resistance and creativity in psychoanalysis.

Keywords:

• creativity
• Sigmund Freud
• psychoanalysis
• Emily Dickinson
• poetry
• dreams

Notes

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams 382.

Ibid. 111.

Weber 112. For an alternative translation, James Strachey has this full description as:

There is often a passage in even the most thoroughly interpreted dream which has to be left obscure; this is because we become aware during the work of interpretation that at that point there is a tangle of dream-thoughts which cannot be unravelled and which moreover adds nothing to our knowledge of the content of the dream. This is the dream's navel, the spot where it reaches down into the unknown. The dream-thoughts to which we are led by interpretation cannot, from the nature of things, have any definite endings; they are bound to branch out in every direction into the intricate network of our world of thought. It is at some point where this meshwork is particularly close that the dream-wish grows up, like a mushroom out of its mycelium. (Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams 525)

The original German text reads:

In den bestgedeuten Träumen muß man oft eiene Stelle im Dunkel lassen, weil man bei der Deutung merkt, daß dort ein Knäuel von Traumgedanken anhebt, der sich nicht entwirren will, aber auch zum Trauminhalt keine weiteren Beiträge geliefert hat. Dies ist dann der Nabel des Traums, die Stelle, an der er dem Unerkannten aufsitzt. Die Traumgedanken, auf die man bei der Deutung great, müssen ja ganz allegemein ohne Abschluß bleiben und nach allen Seiten hin in die netzartige Verstrickung unserer Gedankenwelt auslaufen. Aus einer dichteren Stelle dieses Geflechts erhebt sich dann der Traumwunch wie der Pilz aus seinem Mycelium. (Freud, Die Traumdeutung 517)

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams 96–117. The full narrative of Freud's dream is given below:

A large hall – many guests, whom we receive. – Among them Irma, whom I immediately take aside, as if to answer her letter, and to reproach her that she doesn't accept the “solution” yet. I say to her: “If you still have pains, it is really only your fault.” – She answers: “If you knew what pains I have now in my throat and stomach, it's tightening me up [“zusammenschnüren” – literally, “it's tying me up in knots”. The SE: “it's choking me up”].” I am startled and look at her. She looks pallid and puffy; I think, after all I am overlooking something organic. I take her to the window and look into her throat. With that she shows some resistance [“recalcitrance” in the SE] like women who wear a denture. I think to myself, she doesn't need to do that. – Her mouth then opens properly, and I find on the right a large white spot, and elsewhere I see some remarkable curled structures which are evidently patterned on the nasal turbinal bones, extensive white-grey scabs. I quickly call Dr. M., who repeats and confirms the examination […] Dr M. looks entirely different from usual; he is very pallid, limps, is beardless on the chin […] My friend Otto now also stands next to her, and my friend Leopold percusses her over the bodice and says: “She has a dullness below on the left,” points also to an infiltrated portion of the skin on the left shoulder (which I, in spite of the dress, just as he, feel) […] M. says: “Without a doubt, it's an infection, but it doesn't matter; dysentery will follow and the poison will be eliminated […]” We also directly know where the infection comes from. Recently, my friend Otto, when she was not feeling well, gave her an injection of a preparation of propyl, propylene […] proprionic acid […] trimethylamine (whose formula I see in heavy type before me) […] one doesn't give such injections so lightly [“thoughtlessly” in the SE] […] Probably, too, the syringe wasn't clean. (Mahony 83–97)

For an alternative translation see Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams 107.

Buczacki 251–52.

Bowie 38.

Freud, Studies on Hysteria 291.

For another scientific description of the mycelium see Letcher:

A single hyphal thread hatches out of the spore and expands outwards, rather like the long modelling balloons used by stage conjurors, but inflated by water pressure, not air. The hypha grows, splits and branches this way and that, sensing its way to where pockets of nutriment can be found and absorbed through its semipermeable wall. (6)

Lacan 154–55.

Bible Codes.

Botting 20.

Žižek 23.

Highsmith 30.

Felman 66.

Ibid. 65.

Bronfen 84.

Derrida 15.

Dickinson, Poem 1350.

Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson 1166.

Bushell 16–17.

Riffaterre 19.

Jacobus 246.

Jones 393.