Die Vermessung „Neu-Seellands“: Schreibweisen der Psychologien in der deutschsprachigen Literatur der Jahrhundertwende

Abstract

Focusing largely on the analysis of the representations of feelings and thoughts of literary characters or even the hidden “desires” of their authors, literary criticism for the most part has neglected to discuss the portrayal of the ‘inside’ of literary characters as a construction. Similarly, the critical discussion of texts by psychological theorists such as Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung attests to an oversight regarding the fact that they had to contend with the exact same challenge their colleagues in literature faced, namely the linguistic construction of a descriptive model for something singularly elusive and essentially non-verbal. The turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century in particular – just when the schools of Analytical Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Gestalt theory were emerging – proved to be a period in which literature responded to a particularly high popular interest in gaining insight into the supposed ‘inner world’ of literary characters. In pairing literary texts of that period by Richard Beer-Hofmann, Arthur Schnitzler, and Robert Musil with theoretical texts by Jung, Freud, and Robert Musil, this project examines the deployment of symbol, allegory and metaphor as well as the use of “Gestalten” – figures or shapes – in order to simulate the ‘inside.’ The first chapter examines the writings of C.G. Jung and Richard Beer-Hofmann’s novella, Der Tod Georgs (1900), for ways in which their respective construction of the ‘inside’ relies on the trope of symbol. The second chapter does the same in regard to allegory with the writings of Freud, specifically his Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse (1905), and Arthur Schnitzler’s stream-of-consciousness novella, Fräulein Else (1924). The final chapter juxtaposes literary writings with psychological texts by the same author, Robert Musil, and demonstrates that the construction of the ‘inside’ in his novella, Die Vollendung der Liebe (1911), relies heavily on metaphors informed by his great familiarity with key ideas of Gestalt theory. In conclusion, this dissertation argues that the charting of inner human landscapes is essentially a narrative endeavor, in literature as in psychology.