Psychology in the Fiction of Henry James: Memory, Emotions, and Empathy 1666905747, 9781666905748

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Psychology in the Fiction of Henry James

Psychology in the Fiction of Henry James Memory, Emotions, and Empathy

Teckyoung Kwon

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kwon, Teckyoung, 1947- author. Title: Psychology in the fiction of Henry James : memory, emotions, and empathy / Teckyoung Kwon. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book discusses consciousness using the teachings of Freud, William James, and recent neuroscientists, as well as the narrative techniques that Henry James devised to represent consciousness: ghosts and Free Indirect Discourse. By applying these scientific terms of memory, emotions, and empathy, a new reading of Henry’s novels is achieved”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2024003463 | ISBN 9781666905748 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666905755 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: James, Henry, 1843-1916—Criticism and interpretation. | Psychology in literature. | Consciousness in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. Classification: LCC PS2127.P8 K96 2024 | DDC 813/.4—dc23/eng/20240126 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024003463 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For My Parents

Contents

Acknowledgmentsix List of Abbreviations

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Introduction 1 1 Memory and Emotions in Early Psychology and Recent Neuroscience8 2 The History of Surplus Emotions and Henry James’s Ghost

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3 Empathy and Free Indirect Discourse

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4 Emotion and Feeling in The Portrait of a Lady: Why Rome?

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5 “Goblin” Speech and Empathy in The Turn of the Screw110 6 The Ambassadors: The Remembered Present in the Circuitous Paths 131 7 Love as Dissimulation in “The Beast in the Jungle”

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References171 Index 181 About the Author

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Acknowledgments

When I was twelve years old, my heart leapt with fright each time my English instructor, a rather strict Korean gentleman, ordered us to stand up and repeat a word he had uttered moments earlier. This was my first encounter with a foreign language. Given the absence of native speakers in our community, my peers and I struggled to absorb this unfamiliar language by scribbling words repeatedly in our notebooks. While I could reproduce English words flawlessly in my notebook, my speaking, listening, and writing skills remained quite limited. On those occasions when we read an English-language text, our teachers focused on grammar and structure. Hence, my first semester in a graduate program in the United States was nearly a disaster. I managed to get through primarily because of my strong performance in a linguistic course. Indeed, my linguistics instructor was dazzled by my ability to analyze foreign languages. My first love, however, was literature, and I had the good fortune to meet a professor who was teaching a course titled “The American Novel to Dreiser.” Yet, my first reading of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady threw me into a panic. I rushed to my professor’s office and exclaimed, “I just can’t understand Isabel’s final decision to leave for Rome!” My professor, unfazed, responded kindly, “That was James’s choice, his ethics.” Ten years ago, this gifted professor passed away, but the “A+” he gave me for my efforts in his class enabled me to find the strength to overcome the various hardships I would face as an international graduate student. Therefore, this book is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Robert F. Bergstrom. My one regret is that I missed the opportunity to dedicate any of my books to my parents while they were still living. Although I published several books in my own country, I hesitated to show any of them to my parents, inhibited perhaps by shyness or modesty. In truth, I should have dedicated my work to ix

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Acknowledgments

them before anyone else, as a sincere tribute to their love and support. Now, belatedly, I am honoring them through this heartfelt dedication. This book would not have been possible without the assistance of Professor Peter Rudnytsky and Professor M. Andrew Holowchak, who provided invaluable encouragement and feedback. Professor Rudnytsky’s insightful comments were supplemented with reassuring words that gave me the confidence to move forward. Meanwhile, Professor Holowchak could not have been more thorough, reviewing each line of this manuscript to ensure that I sustained a consistent argument. Looking back, this effort to fuse science and the humanities—with Freud, William James, and recent neuroscientists representing the former and Henry James representing the latter—posed a significant challenge. This challenge would have been difficult to meet without the input of these dedicated reviewers. I am especially grateful to Professor Greg Zacharias and Professor Gert Buelens, who inspired me with their substantial achievements in the field of Henry James studies. At the same time, I will always cherish my interaction with Professor Eung-Seob Kang, whose support and encouragement helped me to broaden my knowledge of Freud and Lacan. In addition, he facilitated rich conversations with graduate students at Yemyung Graduate University. Furthermore, I am deeply indebted to my friend and editor, Dr. Thomas Welsh, without whom I dare not set out to publish my essays and books in America. I also benefited from the assistance of Jasper Mislak, whose enthusiasm brightened the arduous task of reworking this manuscript. I would be remiss if I failed to express my appreciation to the publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, for their acceptance of my proposal and eventual decision to publish this book. Finally, I owe a special debt of gratitude to my family members, Changkook Shin and Hyewon, whose affection and encouragement made it possible to complete this challenging project. It should be noted that chapter 7, “Love as Dissimulation in ‘The Beast in the Jungle,’” originally appeared as an article, “Love as an Act of Dissimulation in ‘The Beast in the Jungle,’” in The Henry James Review 36.2 (Spring 2015): 148-162.

List of Abbreviations

ABBREVIATIONS OF WORKS BY HENRY JAMES Full details of the items listed will be found in the references. PL: The Portrait of a Lady TS: The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction by Henry James. AB: The Ambassadors BJ: “The Beast in the Jungle” ABBREVIATIONS OF WORKS BY WILLIAM JAMES PP: Volume number and pages The Principles of Psychology Vol.1 and 2. ABBREVIATIONS OF WORKS BY FREUD S.E.: Volume number, year, and pages The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.

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Introduction

Throughout his life, Sigmund Freud held fast to the concept of the memory system he developed in the early stages of his career. In 1895, the young neurologist articulated this concept in a neuroscientific treatise titled “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” which remained unpublished during his lifetime. In that treatise, Freud described three components of neurons as the core of human consciousness: permeable neurons, impermeable neurons, and perceptive neurons. Almost three decades later, in his essay “The Ego and the Id” (1923), he reformulated these components as the preconscious, the id, and the ego. No less significantly, Freud argued that “consciousness and memory are mutually exclusive.” He insisted upon the absolute division of the receptive neuron, which accepts an external stimulus, from the memory traces, which store that stimulus. Thus, consciousness accepts stimuli in an unlimited manner over time, while memory traces are updated with each experience. Freud restated this view in such essays as “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920) and “A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’” (1925), works that underscore his dual role as a discoverer of the unconscious and explorer of consciousness. Ultimately, Freud’s pioneering theoretical work would lay the ground for recent neuroscientific research. This book, which focuses on the study of consciousness, also examines new ways to read fiction from a scientific perspective, one that draws upon early psychological theories and recent neuroscientific research. As neuroscientists Eric Kandel and Gerald Edelman have observed, Freud and William James stand together as intellectual pioneers who contributed to our understanding of the revolutionary concept of consciousness. Meanwhile, Henry James, as a writer who was deeply influenced by his brother William, was not exceptional in this regard. He devoted his life to the development of narrative methods that would extend the realm of Realism: a pursuit that led him to 1

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Introduction

draw upon consciousness and experience alike. When examining these three figures, we can ask, What are the key components of consciousness that they shared in common? We also ask, How can we apply those components to the literature of Henry James? Given the purpose of this book, it will comprise two parts. The first part will deal with theoretical works on consciousness informed by the works of Freud, William James, and recent neuroscientists, as well as two narrative techniques Henry James devised to represent consciousness: the ghosts and Free Indirect Discourse. Once I have shed light on those key terms and concepts, I will engage in practice. The second portion of this book will analyze Henry’s major works of fiction to show how those scientific terms have been used to achieve a fresh reading of his novels.

THEORETICAL WORKS: MEMORY, EMOTIONS, AND EMPATHY The memory system Freud proposed accounts for our sense of time, with its dual-aspect monism. Freud argued that consciousness tracks time to react to the current situation, while memory traces, as stored experiences, are timeless. Hence, consciousness visits the memory traces in the process of moving forward, which guarantees that we will recall past events in the context of the present. In a similar vein, we tend to evaluate present events through the prism of past experiences. Our thoughts continuously change in time and place, as the memory traces are updated and enlarged, in tandem with the widening of our experience. The formula Freud developed has been, interestingly, affirmed by recent neuroscientific research. We now understand that the perceptive neuron is an area identified as the hippocampus, while permeable neurons are associated with the cerebral cortex, or frontal cortex. Moreover, these functions are mutually exclusive. The prefrontal cortex performs the function of the memory traces, which continuously updates memories from our experiences, in line with a particular time and place. At the same time, the hippocampus, as consciousness, perceives this new reality through a process that involves encoding and decoding. Indeed, Edelman has defined cognition as “the remembered present.” The phenomenon described above led William James to conclude that thought flows in a sequence of differences. He pointed out that we never experience an isolated sensation, which suggests that knowledge of a thing is merely knowledge of its relations. In other words, knowledge is temporal and grows in accordance with the updated memories that are facilitated by experience. James also concluded that while our thoughts are subjective, we cannot

Introduction

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escape from intersubjectivity, given that we are social animals. While this seemingly contradictory premise may be difficult to accept, we must remember that it closely resembles Freud’s assumption of dual-aspect monism, which also acknowledges that we retain an essentially animal nature. That said, James posits materiality, senses, and the body in place of Freud’s unconscious, whereas neuroscientists are inclined to focus on the brain stem, or the lower portion of the brain. James also intended to substitute emotions for the body. In his essay “What is an Emotion?” (1884), he promoted the revolutionary idea that we feel sad because we cry, which stands in stark opposition to the traditional view, which contends that we cry because we feel sad. He argued that humans, like all organisms, improve their chances of survival by regulating their bodily condition: a process known as homeostasis. Accordingly, emotion begins with a bodily response, which flows upward to the limbic system, which comprises the hypothalamus and amygdala. These two lobes interact with the frontal lobes to facilitate attention and learning by means of a working memory. Hence, emotion can be viewed as the body’s reaction, while feeling can be interpreted as an act of consciousness. James’s revolutionary idea undermines the traditional distinction between reason and emotions, while proposing the new idea that feeling has much in common with thinking. Once again, this view dovetails with recent neuroscientific research. As contemporary scientist Joseph Ledoux has asserted, emotion is the foundation of cognition, while feeling does not differ dramatically from thinking. Given this proposition, Antonio Damasio urges us to rethink the timeworn premise that emotion should be repressed in favor of pure reason. It is now time to turn our attention to the subject of surplus emotion, which is reflected in the ghosts that populate much of Henry James’s fiction. Due to the evolution of consciousness, humans are unable to directly access emotions, the body, or the senses, which manage the lower portion of the brain. In the image-making process mediated by consciousness, the remains of emotions arise in accordance with a working memory enlarged by one’s experience. We are largely unaware of the existence of leftover emotion or material things, a byproduct of image making, given that we accept what consciousness perceives as truth. However, psychology (of Freud and James) and art are designed to reveal to us the unconscious as that which is leftover, while also warning against it. In recent years, neuroscientists such as Edelman and Damasio explain that this bottom-up process involves the hippocampus, which is primarily in charge of remembering, the amygdala, which handles emotion, and the thalamus, which plays an important mediating role. The most important element in that process, however, resides within the lower portion of the brain, which despite its seeming fragility, is more durable than the higher portion.

4

Introduction

To shed light on surplus emotion, I will examine aesthetic concepts including Kant’s sublime, James’s fringe, Freud’s uncanny, and Lacan’s sublime object, or surplus jouissance. In this context, I will show that Henry James approached Realism as innovation and experiment by presenting the image of the ghosts as that which is leftover. Another significant function of art is the encouragement of empathy, an impulse that reflects our role as social animals. Given that we possess both animal instincts and feelings of individuality, empathy arises when we mimic the other, in a process Freud described as “emotional contagion.” Achieving the next step of cognitive empathy, however, requires us to gain a measure of distance from ourselves to understand others. In the field of neuroscience, our understanding of empathy was enhanced by the discovery of the mirror neuron system, which took place in 1992 at Italy’s University of Parma. This research suggested that mirror neurons reside in the same portion of the brain that oversees language and the impulse to communicate. Given that empathy is especially apparent in the performative side of language, it is evident that an ability to appreciate art enhances one’s capacity for empathy. In short, the most effective way to “step into someone’s shoes” resides within dualaspect monism, which involves an intertwining of “identification,” a capacity to imagine the other’s feelings, and “distance,” an ability to imaginatively assume the other’s perspective. To encourage empathy, Henry James employs a narrative device known as free indirect discourse. In The Ambassadors, for instance, he establishes a clear division between the narrator’s voice and the protagonist’s vision. Although each scene in the novel unfolds from the subjective view of the protagonist, we also benefit from the overarching perspective of the narrator, who helps us interpret the character’s words and actions. Hence, free indirect discourse is effective at fostering empathy, given that the narrative voice gives the reader a chance to identify with a focalized character. At the same time, however, the dissonant voice of the third-person narrator encourages the reader to establish enough distance from the protagonist to make a judgment. Henry James’s commitment to empathy was especially evident in his sensitive treatment of child characters. He repeatedly cautions readers against “reading” a child’s mind from their own (adult) perspective. PRACTICE IN READING FICTION Now that we have explored the three components of consciousness—memory, emotion, and empathy—through the psychology of Freud and James, along with recent developments in neuroscience, we will apply these concepts to the reading of fiction.

Introduction

5

We will focus initially on the distinction between emotions and feelings. In The Portrait of a Lady, Isabel’s cousin, Ralph, takes pains to help the protagonist broaden her horizons, advising her “not to see but to feel.” This phrase sheds light on the underlying theme of the text, which is critical to understanding its rather controversial ending. I would argue that Isabel’s decision to return to Rome must be understood in the context of bodily reaction, also known as emotional reaction. Therefore, I am especially drawn to the critical work of Hillis Miller, whose conclusions overlap with my own, although we have crucial differences on the issue of embodied consciousness or feeling. Unlike Miller, I would contend that one’s actions and decisions should not be treated in the same vein. The former, after all, is the body’s reaction to an external impulse, while the latter can be understood as an awareness mediated by consciousness, as in the case of emotion versus feeling. No less important is the relationship between “goblin speech” and empathy, which is reflected in James’s novella The Turn of the Screw. My analysis of this relationship draws upon Wayne C. Booth’s Rhetoric of Fiction (1983), in which he asserts that the authorial voice in The Turn of the Screw does not provide readers with enough information to give them a stable and coherent understanding of the story. In formulating my argument against Booth, I focus on two elements of the novella. The first is its prologue, which many critics have tended to neglect. The second element can be seen in the conversations between the governess and Miles. As the author suggests, the ghost in the novella bears a close resemblance to a “goblin,” a maker of illusions, an entity capable of creating something larger or smaller than the real. This goblin attaches itself to language, which is, itself, a product of individual experiences, memories, and cognition. The apparent interplay of this entity in the dialogue between the governess and Miles enables the readers to understand that the young woman’s lack of empathy toward her youthful charge contributes to the story’s tragic ending. Next, my analysis of Henry’s ambitious novel The Ambassadors will rely upon the psychological theories of Freud, instead of William James as a fait accompli. My argument is based on the four concepts, among others, outlined in Freud’s essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” They are the dual-aspect monism in the memory system, the circuitous paths to death (or nothing) for sublimation of an object, revelation through the repetition of the primal scene, and limping characters versus flying characters. As previously noted, the dualism inherent in one system gives rise to our sense of time. We recall past events in the context of the present and evaluate the present in the context of the past memories. Given that consciousness is “the remembered present,” it is not surprising that Strether experiences Paris through the prism of his previous experiences in Woollett, Massachusetts. Given these circumstances, the only way to live fully is to detour nothing (the void) by sublimating the

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Introduction

object, even if we risk experiencing the illusion of freedom. In the novel, we find that Strether appreciates many aspects of life in Paris. He admires a woman he meets there and even falls in love with her. However, the sublime image of that woman is undercut when he experiences a repetition of the primal scene—a landscape painting of Lambinet. After all, he has been the ambassador of Chad, his employer’s wayward son, rather than the ambassador of Mrs. Newsome, who hired him to lure Chad back to America. The “remembered present” in Freud’s concept of consciousness can never escape alterity, since our cognition is inseparable from our memories of the past. Along with flying characters like Sara and Chad, who are ignorant of alterity, we find limping characters like Strether and Miss Gostrey, who accept alterity, even though they possess nothing. Given that we cannot escape from cognition as the remembered present, good memories are all that we can have in this world. Finally, starting with the discussion of two different critical voices of Eve K. Sedgwick and Leo Bersani, I will examine James’s novella “The Beast in the Jungle.” In her essay “The Beast in the Closet,” Sedgwick contends that the protagonist, Marcher, has developed a phobia toward homosexuality, even as he continues to nourish hidden desires. Although May Bartram does not explicitly enable Marcher to fortify his homosexual desires, she certainly helps to reinforce his closeted existence. Ultimately, she offers a gesture that enables him to appreciate the grief shown by an unidentified male mourner at a grave. Meanwhile, Leo Bersani concentrates on James’s various uses of the enigmatic term, “it.” Bersani interprets the free-floating signifier as the signified of the Freudian Id, the hiding place of the repressed, before moving on to a discussion of Lacan. He eventually interprets Marcher’s period of waiting as a product of his expectation of empty, infinitely deferred meanings, and he concludes his analysis by identifying Marcher as an emblem of art. Beyond those distinctive readings, I claim that it is possible to interpret the Beast in the context of the dimensions found in two different emblems associated with the two different characters. In other words, it can be that, for May Bartram, the Beast signifies the multiple and ever-changing meanings by which we can detour death, while for Marcher, it symbolizes the knowledge supposedly buried within May’s consciousness. Given the divergent experiences of the sender and receiver—not to mention the fact that each has retained a different level of memories—Marcher eventually confronts the remains, the surplus, of the knowledge he had attempted to fix as his final signified. After applying these theoretical works to the practice of rereading Henry James’s works, I argue that the three components of consciousness—memory, emotion, and empathy—are elements in the dual-aspect monism that Freud proposed earlier. We must be attentive to the hidden part of consciousness:

Introduction

7

the unconscious, materiality (or body), and those portions of the brain below the limbic system. Even if the terms are various, they reflect the surplus of our awareness. In this respect, I confirm that one of Henry’s significant contributions is the light he shed on the three components of consciousness and their effect on the human mind.

Chapter 1

Memory and Emotions in Early Psychology and Recent Neuroscience

Various readings of Henry James’s fiction have underscored his intimate relationships with two individuals, in particular: his brother, William James, the pioneering psychologist, and his close friend and mentor, William Dean Howells, a major U.S. literary figure of the period. If William James exposed his brother to the groundbreaking psychological theories that served as the groundwork for Pragmatism and Phenomenology, William Dean Howells introduced his friend to the new wave of literature that had swept America after the Civil War. Moreover, as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, Howells helped Henry to reach a much larger community of readers. Not surprisingly, the two men’s lives followed a similar trajectory. As Leon Edel observed in his The Life of Henry James, “The one [was] destined to become a distinguished editor and writer of fiction, and ultimately ‘dean’ of American letters, the other America’s cosmopolitan novelist and an innovator in fiction” (1977, 1: 225). Indeed, many critics assume that Howells was the primary inspiration for James’s protagonist, Lewis Lambert Strether, in The Ambassadors, which the author regarded as his finest novel. Yet, nothing matched the intimacy Henry James enjoyed with his brother, William. It was as though Henry were wearing William’s clothes and stepping into his shoes. Both friendships were sources of strength that sustained Henry James as a writer. Yet, we cannot ignore the significant differences that existed among these three men, especially those that separated Henry James and William Dean Howells. As a serious artist, Henry adopted William’s principles of psychology and placed them at the center of his literary work. He drew from his brother’s writings the concept of Realism, while allowing William’s ideas to shape his general approach to fiction. Henry clearly set out to covet his brother’s revolutionary ideas when he embarked on a new literary project: an impulse that is clearly reflected in his letters. In 1884, for instance, Henry 8

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wrote to William, “I have attacked your two mind articles, with admiration, but been defeated” (Skrupskelis and Berkeley, 1997, 160). Significantly, one of the two articles referenced in the letter was William James’s crucial essay on the human brain, “What is an Emotion?” Yet, Henry’s enthusiasm for this work, first published in Mind 9 (1884), was eclipsed by the excitement he expressed in an 1890 letter to William, which stated: “Your Psychology has never turned up—though you told me you had ordered an early copy sent. Has there been some error or non-compliance? Will you kindly see? I yearn for the book—to lift me out of histrionics” (248). The book Henry was so eager to possess was The Principles of Psychology, which distilled the essence of his brother’s theoretical work. Meanwhile, Henry took pains to differentiate himself from Howells and his entire approach to literature. If William’s laboratory of the brain was the destination to which Henry aspired, as he set out to develop a new age of American Realism, Howells’s work represented the boundary he would need to transgress in order to achieve his literary goals. Although Howells introduced Henry to the world of letters, he never qualified as a true literary mentor—a situation that led James to comment ruefully: “He has little intellectual curiosity, so here he stands with his admirable organ of style, like a poor man holding a diamond and wondering how he can wear it. It’s rather sad” (Edel, 1977, 1: 229). Unlike Howells, the poised and confident Henry knew precisely what he should do with the “diamond” in his possession. Yet, for all their differences, both men were involved in laying the foundations for the new literary movement that had arisen in the shadow of the Civil War, whose carnage left little room for the Romanticism of Hawthorne and Melville. The universal catchphrase of the era was to portray things as they actually are: “Nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of materials” as Howells proclaimed in Editor’s Column at The Atlantic Monthly. That said, Howells sought to convey the real mainly through the dialogue of ordinary people, who were presented in a manner devoid of either fantasy or reverie. This plain-thinking approach, bereft of imagination, resulted in straightforward plots that were intended to lay bare the fallacy of romantic notions. Henry James’s approach could not have been more different. As Brian Seto McGrath observes, in “Boring Howells” (2017), Henry desired “realities more intensely felt than the real thing” and constructed a version of everyday life that was profound, although without eliminating verbal drollery, absurdity, and irony (36). Howells’s superficial view of ordinary middle-class characters reveals his lack of insight into the human condition: a weakness that could not be overcome by the apparent sincerity of his motives. In this context, Henry’s story “The Real Thing” (1892), merits our attention, because it offers clues to the young writer’s approach to Realism.

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He introduces the reader to a magazine illustrator who meets two aspiring models, Major and Mrs. Monarch, whose aristocratic bearing leads him to conclude that they are seeking a commissioned portrait. Given that they are a handsome and cultivated pair who have obviously fallen on hard times, the illustrator regards them as the real thing, unchanging and in no way malleable to the needs of the artist. In short, as models, they cannot convincingly portray servants or vulgar individuals. Faced with these aristocratic models, the illustrator finds himself relying on another couple, who are lacking in perfection and therefore grant the illustrator a sufficient amount of creative space. Indeed, they offer so little in themselves that they can persuasively represent a wide variety of types. The young woman, a freckled cockney, can portray everything from a fine lady to a shepherd and from a princess to a prostitute. In the end, the illustrator concludes that “the real thing” is ill-equipped to represent “an innate preference for the represented subject over the real one; the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure” (38). In Henry’s view, Realism cannot be found in the strictly real, but in the absence of the real, given that this absence provides the potential to create a space from the remains. Thus, the story can be read as a finely crafted analogy of Henry’s disagreement with Howells, with its assertion that appearance is more convincing than reality when one seeks to represent the object. Henry always preferred the appearance of things to the reality, since he perceived the latter as the product of the former: reality exists only within the realm of possibilities. He turns to the subject of consciousness from the perspective of Darwinian biology, basing his art on an evolutionary system of the brain rather than relying on Cartesian cogito—a position revealed in the outline of The Portrait of a Lady that was included in his “Prefaces to the New York Edition” (1908): “Place the centre of the subject in the young woman’s own consciousness,” I said to myself, “and you get as interesting and as beautiful a difficulty as you could wish. Stick to that—for the centre; Put the heaviest weight into that scale.” (1079)

Significantly, the novel deals with the world the protagonist experiences, as well as the transformation of her mind, emotion, and judgment, according to her efforts to process those experiences. This calls to mind the consciousness of Strether, the protagonist in Henry’s most ambitious novel, The Ambassadors. In “The Real Thing,” on the other hand, the author holds up the image of the Monarchs and contrasts it with a view of reality as myriad forms, along with a concept of experience that is neither limited nor complete. Since one’s glimpse of an experience lasts only a moment, the novel grows and develops

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like any other organism. Taking issue with a reductive view of reality that organizes it into conventional molds with a few familiar clichés, Henry James winds up his essay on “The Art of Fiction” (1884, 1888) by asserting, “There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason” (597). Now, the question remains: What is the nature of the psychology that Henry references here? Moreover, what relationship does it bear to William’s psychology? As noted earlier, Henry’s letters to William convey his intense desire to consume his brother’s most recent publications. This tone, taken together with William’s advice to his younger brother regarding his literary projects, might lead us to conclude that the two possessed a single mind. Indeed, when we examine their approach to the exploration of consciousness, the James brothers reflect a spirit that is almost identical. Leon Edel defines Henry’s artistic concerns as a product of the “religion of consciousness,” and he goes on to interpret his approach to psychology as “treatment of the past”; “What he did try to describe was the sense of the past in a man and woman of the present” (1: 249). Beyond his implication that memory is a part of cognition, Edel observes that “experience” refers to the education of the emotions. Hence, the evolution of consciousness brings emotion, memory, and cognition into an interactive system of “dual-aspect monism,” which is the source of the fiction, or fantasy, which finds its way into our cognition of the present, as well as efforts to remember the past. In short, without some degree of deception and disguise, there would be no memory or thought, as Freud notes when he examines the role of dreams and fantasies in our memory, which is facilitated by the unconscious. Nevertheless, Henry James distinguishes this sort of fantasy from the literary device employed in Romanticism. He is determined to employ his brother’s principles of psychology when constructing his unique brand of realism. Given that the evolution of consciousness—along with fantasy and illusion—is an inevitable part of reality, Henry incorporates the dimension of psychology into his work, which sets him apart from Howells and his prosaic approach to realism. Yet, one might ask whether William James’s psychological theories were the only significant influence on the work of his brother, Henry. William James was one of the two most influential pioneering psychologists of the era. We cannot ignore the psychological principles outlined by Sigmund Freud, who began his career as a neuroscientist, a development that is reflected in his essay “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895). Notably, although he refrained from publishing it, Freud produced this essay just five years after the publication of The Principles of Psychology. The long-forgotten essay was discovered by Ernst Kris in 1950, more than a decade after Freud’s death in 1939. Today, the posthumously published essay is regarded as compelling evidence of Freud’s active engagement with neuroscience. Indeed, the

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kernel of his complex theory on the mechanics of remembering, outlined in his letter to Wilhelm Fliess, was sustained, even after his momentous shift to the emerging field of psychoanalysis. From this new perspective, memory is treated as the key element of the psyche, and it can lead us to the path of the unconscious through the so-called talking cure. Although there is no evidence that Henry was directly influenced by Freud, his fiction reveals the commonalities that existed between these two psychologists, who held similar views about memory, emotion, and empathy. These three elements are, unsurprisingly, at the center of contemporary research in the field of neuroscience. Modern researchers take for granted the parallels that existed between the thought and work of these two pioneering figures, and contemporary neuroscientists such as Erick R. Kandel and Gerald M. Edelman have acknowledged that William James and Sigmund Freud were precursors of modern neuroscience.1 Toward the end of the twentieth century, Freud’s approach to psychology gained a brand-new audience through the journal, Neuro-psychoanalysis, which appeared in 1999. Considering these developments, we can assume that the psychological principles put forth by James and Freud overlap with the findings of modern neuroscience, specifically in terms of their approach to a consciousness whose functions can be described as memory, emotion, and empathy. Interestingly, one can gain a fuller appreciation of Henry James’s literary output by sampling the essays of contemporary neuroscientists like Endel Tulving, Eric Kandel, Gerald Edelman, Antonio Damasio, Joseph Ledoux, and Jaak Panksepp—all of whom focus on the functions of consciousness. Yet, this raises a question: In what specific ways do the major concepts of these pioneering figures resonate for modern neuroscientists? One detail that will become increasingly clear over time is that our consciousness emerges consistently on the dimension of “dual-aspect monism.” CONSCIOUSNESS AS A MEMORY SYSTEM Darwin’s theory of evolution, which manifests that humans originated from other animals, places the examination of consciousness firmly within the context of disciplined research on the brain. The brain emerges as the kernel of evolution, while consciousness serves as its central agency, taking charge of the psyche. In the process of evolution, the brain, accordingly, structures of lower animals serve as foundations from which an intellectually sophisticated animal eventually evolves. For example, the upper part of the brain, which is frequently described as the frontal cortex, plays a significant role in one’s ability to learn directions and establish order within one’s environment. Yet, without its lower counterpart, the frontal cortex cannot function at all, given

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that the human and animal brains differ significantly in terms of degree, not kind. We not only benefit from prudence and the ability to derive information from experiences encoded into memories, but we also possess a primary memory that is unconsciously inscribed within the body through repeated acts. To overcome their environment, organisms adopt a new habit, one that is naturally selected. Furthermore, in the case of the more sophisticated human brain, any mental action, if frequently repeated, tends to perpetuate itself. Hence, humans engage in a considerable degree of activity that is unconscious and automatic. This makes life easier and enables us to encounter the world in a manner that is clearer and more accurate. William James described this phenomenon as “habit,” noting that it is either implanted at birth or nourished by discipline: “the phenomena of habit in living beings are due to the plasticity of the organic materials of which their bodies are composed” (PP, 1: 74). Thus, bodily memory is an enormous resource for all living creatures. By means of repetition, memories are inscribed on the cerebrum, and they are never entirely lost, even if one’s conscious memory fades. A question remains, however: What is that other level of memory, conscious memory? Indeed, there must be two kinds of human memory. If I say, “I can swim well, because I learned to do so when I was a young girl,” I am referring to habit, the primary memory implanted in my body through repetition, or practice. However, I might say something along these lines: “I remember the day I learned how to swim. I can still hear his kind voice, and that soft touch. That chilly day was the moment when my life completely started again.” In the first case, I am referring explicitly to bodily memory, which is available to all animals. However, in the second case, I am demonstrating a kind of memory that is exclusive to humans. This conscious effort to recall an experience is referred to in the literature as recollection, while Freud refers to this secondary memory as remembering. Notably, the modern neuroscientist, Edel Tulving, makes a similar distinction. He explores the difference between “episodic memory” and “semantic memory,” a memory that is the product of simple knowledge and works on the same level as a habit. As suggested earlier, the presence of these two kinds of memory differentiates humans from other animals. Only a human, who has developed consciousness, bears secondary memory, and this becomes the source of imagination, enabling humans to create civilizations and languages. As we all know, secondary memory is the object Freud regarded, from the earliest days of his career, as the core of the human psyche, and he placed it at the center of psychoanalysis. Significantly, as early as December 6, 1896, one year after he published his essay, ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology,’ Freud penned a revealing letter to Wilhelm Fliess, the most influential of his early mentors. The thought that most

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captivated Freud is summed up in the following passage: “W(perceptions) are neurons in which perceptions originate, to which consciousness attaches, but which in themselves retain no trace of what has happened. For consciousness and memory are mutually exclusive” (1985, 207–208). Over the years, Freud never abandoned this assumption, and he even tried to explain it by drawing a parallel to a novel device called “the mystic writing-pad.” Almost thirty years later, in his short essay “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’” (1925), Freud further developed this concept and concluded that the memory system comprises two distinct systems. He further asserted that consciousness receives perceptions but retains no permanent trace of them. In other words, consciousness responds to each new perception of reality in the manner of a clean sheet. Meanwhile, permanent traces of the excitations are preserved within the neurons lying beneath consciousness. Thus, “an unlimited receptive capacity and a retention of permanent traces seem to be mutually exclusive properties in the apparatus” (S.E., 19, 1925, 227). He then revisits his analogy of the mystic writing-pad. Composed of three sheets, including a protective cover, the mystic writing-pad is a device that inadvertently imitates the memory system of the human brain. This basic theory would inform the totality of Freud’s work on remembering, and recent researchers have found his theories in line with the findings of modern neuroscience, with one memory system associated primarily with the hippocampus, while the other is associated with the prefrontal cortex. For some reason, few articles have been dedicated to the memory system that is outlined in Freud’s memorable essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920). Instead, scholars have focused on Freud’s coinage of the term, “the death drive.” Despite this oversight, we should remember that Freud’s newly minted concept, which entails both the compulsion to repeat and the circuitous paths to death (S.E.,18, 1920, 38), rests firmly on the foundation of a mutually exclusive memory system. The permanent memory traces lying beneath consciousness never enter one’s conscious, and therefore they belong to the unconscious. Nevertheless, they are often a powerful and enduring force, without which remembering, cognition, and emotion are impossible. Freud hints at “the dual aspect of monism” when he writes that “becoming conscious and leaving behind a memory-trace are processes incompatible with each other within one and the same system” (25). In this essay, Freud introduces information that has proven critical to recent developments in neuroscience, when he suggests that “unconscious mental processes are in themselves timeless” (28). If the conscious process is time-bound, while memory traces are timeless, we might ask, What happens to memory and cognition? Freud, who proposes a dual system, arrives at the concepts of deferred memory and deferred meaning. William James, on the other hand,

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responds differently to the new concept of consciousness, envisioning it not as a solid entity but as a flow. Building on the groundwork of dual-aspect monism, Freud, placing it in opposition to the life instinct, which arises from the reality principle, introduces the death drive beyond the pleasure principle. The death drive is presented as a demonic impulse that is dedicated to restoring an earlier state of things. Freud states that the death drive brings about, within all organisms, the compulsion to repeat (35). Furthermore, if the death drive is not properly interconnected with the life instinct, which has a moderating effect, its impact can prove disastrous, as it hurls an organism toward death. In this vein, detouring the death drive serves as a critical component of psychoanalysis. To avoid a short-circuit and facilitate a circuitous path, the presence of a sublime image is required, as reflected in Henry James’s most ambitious novel, The Ambassadors. In this groundbreaking novel, the protagonist, Strether, differs significantly from the other ambassadors who are dispatched by a wealthy New England businesswoman to retrieve her wayward son, Chad, who lives in Paris with his mistress. Strether distinguishes himself by detouring death, while experiencing the sublime image. While he fails to complete his errand, the protagonist falls in love with a woman whose image he has idealized, only to discover that this sublime image was false. The object of his love and admiration is, by no means, a paragon of virtue and good taste. Indeed, she has served as Chad’s mistress all along (The deceptive process James explores in the novel will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 6). A critical factor in Strether’s deception is his tendency to view the present in the context of his memories, which have been encoded within the region of the higher cortex. Therefore, his reflection on past experiences in America leads him to misjudge his current situation in Europe. Consciousness is neither transparent nor complete, given the dual-monism of time-bound receptive neurons and the timeless prefrontal cortex. Consequently, all of us view the present through the prism of memory traces, the unconscious, which can lead to serious misinterpretations. Strether’s case is hardly an outlier in Henry James’s oeuvre. Another memorable protagonist, Isabel Archer, commits a series of life-changing errors when she misreads the character and intentions of Madam Merle and Osmond, amoral figures who manipulate her shamelessly. These scenarios suggest that our memory traces are timeless, while consciousness tracks time to respond appropriately to the present situation. In this sense, the work of modern neuroscientists, including Eric Kandel and Gerald Edelman, lends credence to Freud’s approach to psychology, with memory understood as the past remembered within the context of the present, while cognition is interpreted as the present thought in the context of past

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memories.2 It is intriguing to consider whether William James’s statement that consciousness is “not a stuff nor solid entity but a flow” (PP, 1: 150) bears any connection to dual-aspect monism. Indeed, we might ask, In what way does his approach to psychology differ from that of Freud? The most obvious corollary to Freud’s dual-aspect monism is James’s concept of “relations,” which he employs consistently in his writings on psychology. At one point, James remarks: “The essence of mental life and of bodily life are one, namely, the adjustment of inner to outer relations” (PP, 1: 9). For James, the term “bodily life” does not refer exclusively to the body. It also extends to the senses, things, and the environment, all of which can be categorized as part of the realm of materiality. Thus, mind and matter are two, while at the same time, they function as one. In short, they are different aspects of the same process, as suggested by the term “dual-aspect monism.” Like Freud, James regards consciousness as an agency of selection that is directed by its interest. Furthermore, consciousness is a feeling, a detail to be explored later in this essay. Materiality encompasses the lower part of the human brain, which we share with other animals—a fact Darwin delineates in his writings on biology. While Freud indicates that unconscious memory traces are part of the process of consciousness, James places materiality in the same process as the mind, which is referred to as “attunement” in Phenomenology. Indeed, he writes, “Minds inhabit environments which act on them and on which they in turn react” (PP, 1: 9). These ideas would permeate the literary work of his brother, Henry. In The Portrait of a Lady, for instance, the expansion of Isabel Archer’s mind is reflected in her inner life as she responds to external things and becomes attuned to them. This is especially evident during her sojourns in Rome, which offers an inexhaustible supply of external stimuli. If we begin with the premise that materiality is closely associated with cognition and remembering, William James’s concept of “relations” can be viewed within the context of Freud’s dual-aspect monism. The term “Mobius strip,” or “chiasm,” famously employed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is equally relevant in this respect. When writing on relationships, James insists that thought is invariably related to objects. He goes on to conclude that, without the object, there can be no thought, for their relationship reflects the process of dual-aspect monism. In this relational position, our thoughts can scarcely serve as pure representations of reality. The object is always represented differently, in line with our cognition, which changes continuously as we move through time and space. When we say that thought is intentional, we are suggesting that it flows continuously. Hence, the process of thinking involves the memory system. Moreover, without episodic memory, there can be no consciousness, for, as James concludes, consciousness itself is memory.

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The relationship between memory and consciousness follows the two steps outlined in Freud’s description of the process of remembering. First, with consciousness, the perceptive neurons and memory traces, as encoding neurons, are in a mutually exclusive position, while the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, as recent neuroscientific research confirms, are separated into a single system. Secondly, the former closely follows time to react to the current situation, while the latter remains static—that is to say, timeless. Crucially, the prefrontal cortex continuously updates its memories in line with a particular time and place, to the same extent that consciousness perceives this new reality. In short, our perception of an object is continuously changing, while also being updated and enlarged. This phenomenon leads James to conclude, “The chain of consciousness is a sequence of differents” (PP, 1: 153). James goes on to point out that we never experience an isolated sensation, which ensures that knowledge of a thing is simply knowledge of its relations. In other words, knowledge is temporal and grows in accordance with updated memories that are facilitated by experience. Consciousness acts as an agency to select a certain meaningful experience, sending it to be encoded within the memory traces and then retrieving it when the subject attempts to interpret the meaning of the present situation. If this is so, we might inquire, On what ground does consciousness select an experience to be encoded within the memory traces, only to be retrieved later? We might also ask whether other neurons influence the selection of those experiences that take the form of an enduring memory. Certain memories, obviously, survive over time, while others are quickly forgotten. It should be noted, however, that certain memories are repeated as traumas, against the subject’s will.

CONSCIOUSNESS AS EMOTION There is one apparent contradiction within the system of memory and consciousness. We are distinctly unaware of repressed materiality, without which we cannot remember the past or make judgments about the present. Memory and consciousness flow within time and place, grounded on a system of relations. Moreover, memory operates within the interconnection that exists between consciousness and the memory traces, in the same way that consciousness functions as part of materiality, as well as one’s environment. Our judgment is deeply influenced by our material environment, as Henry James’s shrewd antagonist, Madame Merle, asserts. Indeed, she inspires a strong rebuttal from the protagonist, Isabel, who denies the existence of the material self—a scene that unfolds in the nineteenth chapter (pp. 207– 208)

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of The Portrait of a Lady. This scene calls to mind William James’s proposal in The Principles of Psychology: We see then that we are dealing with a fluctuating material. The same object being sometimes treated as a part of me, at other times as simply mine, and then again as if I had nothing to do with it at all. In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. . . . (James’s italics and emphasis, PP, 1:193)

If the above passage is true, we might inquire why Isabel is unaware of her own materiality during the first stage of her European adventure. In her conversation with Madame Merle, Isabel reacts angrily to the latter’s insistence upon the materiality of the self, since she has internalized ideas regarding the independence of the self, which formed the core of American Idealism. She represses the concept of materiality, a situation that Freud acknowledges when he introduces the term, “the repressed,” in the context of the unconscious. The fact is, we tend to hold the naïve belief that consciousness alone controls memory and thought, that is, until we experience the painful return of the repressed. For this reason, Freud sets out to expose the repressed, to prove the existence of the unconscious. Similarly, William James categorically denies Cartesian cogito, as well as Kantian approaches to mind and consciousness. In his essay “Does Consciousness Exist?” (1904), James argues that for twenty years past he has mistrusted “consciousness” as an entity and that Kantianism is misguided, given that its adherents believe that consciousness is an epistemological necessity (479). For James, along with Freud, consciousness stands for a function, not an aboriginal form of stuff or a state of being. Indeed, both scientists place an emphasis on consciousness as a mediator or agency due to their awareness of our ignorance of repressed materiality or senses, which belongs to the unconscious. In fact, the unconscious is the ground on which evolution has developed, and without it, memory, emotion, and cognition are impossible. As noted earlier, Freud’s unconscious and James’s materiality underscore the fact that consciousness is less than a pure entity. On the contrary, it is relational and temporal, even though it might seem odd to suggest that the relational is somehow compatible with the personal. A major characteristic of thought is its tendency to be subjective as part of personal consciousness. Indeed, I can only speculate about another person’s thoughts because my own thoughts are based exclusively on my own experiences and memories. Hence, I remember one thing more than another since memory is influenced as much

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by personal experiences as it is by emotions. Significantly, James insists that memory is remembered emotion: He remembers his own states, while he only conceives Paul’s. Remembrance is like direct feeling; its object is suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object of mere conception ever attains. This quality of warmth and intimacy is what Peter’s present thought also processes for itself. So sure as this present is me, is mine, it says, so sure is anything else that comes with the same warmth and intimacy and immediacy, me and mine. What the qualities called warmth and intimacy may in themselves be will have to be matter for future consideration. (PP, 1: 158–159)

The above passage calls to mind an excerpt from one of Henry James’s stories in which the act of remembering the past is inextricably bound up with emotion. In The Beast in the Jungle, the protagonist, Marcher, is plagued by the feeling that something dreadful, sooner or later, will happen to him. He cannot fully inhabit the present moment, because he lives in fear that a beast will leap out of the jungle and attack him. This recurring image may reflect a fear of death that has been inscribed on his mind and heart over the space of generations. Indeed, the author refrains from offering a clear description of the beast in question. Instead, he concentrates on Marcher’s behavior, which is the product of a deep-seated fear. Marcher’s cold and sterile disposition stands in contrast to the warmth and empathy of May, who tries to help him expand his emotional horizons and who encourages him to savor every moment. However, he is unable to accept her love, as his fears undermine his ability to connect with her emotionally. He remains trapped by his own narrow and selfish agenda. One telling piece of dialogue surfaces early in the story, in a scene where the two of them meet by chance, after a previous encounter that had occurred years earlier. While May recalls their previous meeting in detail, Marcher is unable to remember anything about her. If one’s life depends upon the memories stored in one’s mind, Marcher has wasted his time, while missing out on a chance for a loving relationship. Thus, our memory reflects the association of a present emotion with something memorable that has occurred in the past. If Henry James, taking his cues from his older brother, William, placed an emphasis on warmth and intimacy, Freud, as a physician, focused more on curing the mental disorders of his patients, who dealt with the repetition of harmful memories known as traumas. More recently, neuroscientists such as Guillen Fernandez and Richard G. M. Morris have introduced the elements of novelty and surprise, and they draw on events occurring around the time that a memory is encoded and retrieved: “A medial prefrontal route predominates when to-be-learned

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information fits well with prior knowledge, and a medial temporal route predominates when information is characterized by novelty” (2018, 657). Whether we focus on warmth and intimacy, or a repeated trauma that is beyond the control of a subject—or even novelty and surprise—emotion is deeply connected with the formation of memory. However, if consciousness is nothing but memory incorporated within emotion, we might ask, What happens within our brain that leads to the emergence of perception in this way? According to neuroscientists, two regions of the brain are critical to the phenomena underlying constructive memory. Those are the medial temporal lobes, including the hippocampus, which plays an important role when it contacts the frontal lobes. In 1895, Freud identified these two regions as the perceptive neurons (consciousness) and the memory traces (higher cortex), while he concluded that they were engaged in a mutually exclusive relationship. His conclusions have been supported on various levels, especially by research on the limbic system and the frontal cortex, or the transference between the past and the present. Daniel L. Schacter, in Searching for Memory (1996), outlines the reasons that remembering operates in a style that could be described as “back to the future.” He indicates that we remember the past in the context of the present because “past learning is for the present survival,” which is the crowning achievement of human evolution (27). Schacter states that all brain functions follow this rule, an observation that could lead us to ask, What about the neurons in charge of emotion? We might assume these neurons are based in the region close to the hippocampus to influence memory. In fact, the lobes dealing with emotional memory are known as amygdala, the core of the medial temporal lobes, along with the hippocampus. The two organs are linked together in one system of the medial temporal lobe, which is called the limbic system. Elizabeth A. Phelphs, in her essay “Human emotion and Memory,” confirms that both are bidirectionally influenced by each other, “the amygdala can modulate both the encoding and the storage of hippocampal-dependent memories” (198). In the same way, the hippocampus can influence the amygdala when emotional stimuli are enhanced by feelings of warmth, intimacy, or fear, given that we feel fear when we recall fearful experiences of the past. The amygdala handles both implicit memory, which is encoded within the body, and explicit memory, which is encoded in one’s frontal cortex by the age of two or three years—around the time that the region of the hippocampus begins to function. As Mauro Mancia observes, in Feeling the Words (2007), the amygdala oversees the emotion and implicit memory circuit, while the hippocampus selects, codifies, and retrieves information that is required for explicit memory (29). This process reflects the brain’s global bottom-up process, in terms of emotion and memory, for the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex cooperate with the medial temporal lobe in an integrated manner.3

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The amygdala, which is composed of neurons responsible for the formation and storage of emotional memories, interacts with the hippocampus to bring about the encoding and retrieval of memories that are stored in the frontal lobes, the higher portion of the brain. If this is so, however, we might ask, What is the source of the emotion the amygdala requires to form emotional memories? Emotion arises from the region of the brain located below the medial temporal lobes, where consciousness emerges. It is the region occupied by the brain stem, the senses, and the body: an area James describes as materiality, or body, and which Freud refers to as the repressed unconscious. Emotion, which arises in response to stimuli from the external world, can be understood as the oldest and most enduring organ within the animal kingdom, for it predates the evolution of humans. Moreover, it is essential to one’s survival, as well as the extension of life. While emotion may appear vague and fragile, it can also be strong and persistent, just as implicit memory, which is inscribed within the body, is older and more enduring than explicit memory. Daniel Schacter (1996) points out that “taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised for a long time” (27). Emotion is closer to an instinct than it is to judgment or feeling, as James and Freud have both observed.

EMOTION AS THE BODY’S REACTION As a pioneering psychologist, William James promoted a specific view of emotion and its relationship to one’s body and one’s environment. He places emotion at the same level as instinct, in terms of the degree to which it is stimulated by the object, “As with instincts, so with emotions, the mere memory or imagination of the object may suffice to liberate the excitement” (PP, 2: 303). Human instinct (or emotion) arises when the body encounters the object. It responds to the object, or the outside world (namely, the environment), in a way that affects the condition of the body. Indeed, emotion appears within the walls of a blood vessel, while generating various hormones and contracting or relaxing muscles. Humans, like all organisms, improve their chances of survival by tapping their capacity to regulate their body’s condition, a process known as “homeostasis.” In short, emotion is the body’s way of telling an organism about the world, which enables consciousness to deal with it in an appropriate manner. While all organisms share this bodily reaction to stimuli, only humans possess another level of perception, one that can be understood as the byproduct of evolution. We are referring, of course, to the higher perception of consciousness. Matthew Ratcliffe argues, in “The Phenomenology and Neurobiology of Moods and Emotions,” that “the body is that through which we experience the

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world, rather than just an object of perception” (134). While emotion plays an important role in survival among all organisms, humans alone depend upon their experience, as we can negotiate with stored memories, the stock of previous experiences, in order to select the most appropriate solution. In the absence of encoded memory, or experiences that are stored in the frontal cortex, emotions would be limited to helping us deal with environmental issues, at the same level found among other animals. Thus, knowledge is embodied by—and intertwined within—the world. Moreover, its range is expanded in ways that gives humans access to far more information. This is the primary reason neuroscientists have placed emotion on the same level as cognition. Indeed, Michael A. Arbib and Jean-Marc Fellous place emotional circuits in the same context as cognitive circuits. Emotion begins with a bodily response and then flows upward to the hypothalamus and the amygdala, while these two lobes interact with the frontal lobes to facilitate attention and learning by means of a working memory (2004, 559). If emotional circuits adhere to a bottom-up process, like cognitive circuits, we can conclude that there is little difference between emotion and judgment. The pioneering psychologists, Freud and James, say as much. In his essay “The Ego and the Id,” Freud indicates that the ego cannot be separated from the id. Indeed, the ego is a transformed version of the id, much like the superego. Hence, the origin of both forces can be traced back to the id. Even though the ego represents common sense, or reason, the id represents passion, “the ego is not sharply separated from the id: its lower portion merges into it” (S. E., 19, 1923, 24). Building on this theory, Freud offers an interesting example of the relationship between the ego and the id: “it [ego] is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse [id]” (25). In other words, the ego draws upon the strength of the id, which represents passion. Therefore, whenever the ego begins to lose force, it gives way to the id. In the same essay, Freud associates the ego with the life instinct, while equating the id with the death drive. Interestingly, this view is compatible with Hegel’s definition in The Phenomenology of the Spirit, which suggest that death is the master, while life is the slave, not vice versa: Two opposed shapes of consciousness; one is the independent consciousness whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is the dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or to be for another. The former is lord, the other is bondsman. (114)

If, indeed, the id is the ultimate source of the ego and superego, we must conclude that there is not a significant difference between emotion and judgment.

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William James also suggests that consciousness and emotion do not stand in clear separation from one another, for they are essential elements of the neuron’s bottom-up process and are indispensable to each other as components of feeling, along with thinking. James goes on to make the following observation: I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole theory, which is this: If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no mind-stuff out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. (James’s italics, PP, 2: 309)

Consciousness is invariably affected by emotion, because, in the context of our brains, the hippocampus, which takes charge of memory, stands near the amygdala, which takes care of emotional memory. In his early essay “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” Freud states that perceptive neurons play a role in mediating the permeable neurons and impermeable neurons, so that the quantity of the unconscious is transformed into the quality of consciousness. During perception the φ and the ψ systems are in operation together; but there is one psychical process which is no doubt performed exclusively in ψ—reproducing, or remembering—and this, speaking generally, is “without quality.” (S.E., 1, 1950 (1985), 308) There is a third system of neuron, ω which is excited along with perception, but not along with reproduction, and whose states of excitation give rise to the various qualities—are, that is to say, “conscious sensations.” (309)

These pioneering observations are echoed in contemporary research described by Antonio Damasio in The Strange Order of Things (2018). Damasio sheds light on the term, Qualia, which refers to a phenomenon that is rendered possible only with the subjectivity of consciousness: If you had been born without feeling tracks, the rest of the images would have traveled in your mind unaffected and unqualified. Once feeling would have been removed, you would have become unable to classify images as beautiful or ugly, pleasurable or painful, tasteful or vulgar, spiritual or earthy. (101)

Accordingly, if no feelings were available, we might be trained, at great effort, to make aesthetic or moral classifications of objects. Notably, Damasio’s work leads us to rethink the timeworn premise that emotion should be

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repressed in favor of pure reason, given that feeling is already an indispensable element of thinking. Henry James also subscribed to the view that thinking is feeling, a perspective that is duly reflected in The Portrait of a Lady. This is especially evident in the scene where Ralph, who comes closest to reflecting the voice of the author, asks Isabel about her ambition to see Europe. When Isabel insists, “I only want to see [Europe] for myself,” Ralph gently responds, “You want to see, but not to feel” (PL, 159). Ralph’s comment suggests that our thoughts are enhanced by a tinge of emotion, as feeling is not far removed from thinking. In this vein, Henry’s brother, William, proposes that fact and fiction are sometimes indistinguishable, and therefore belief must play a decisive role in determining reality. Yet, at this point in Henry’s novel, Isabel is a naïve and inexperienced girl, and she has no concept of the fact that feeling is more tangible than pure knowledge. If this is true, we might ask the following question, In what manner does the body inform the mind, and in what way does consciousness belong to emotion? In other words, how does emotion, as a bodily reaction, become feeling, which is virtually compatible with thinking? Contrary to traditional approaches to knowledge, the transformation of emotions into feelings suggests that increased reliance upon emotions results in fewer errors in judgment.

EMOTION AND FEELING It may seem surprising to find that core elements of the early psychological theories of William James and Sigmund Freud have been supported by recent research on memory, emotion, and empathy. However, as main components of consciousness, those concepts were explored in detail, even if the terminology differed from that which is commonly used today. Yet, we might inquire about the value of continually seeking to prove the theories of these pioneering figures, even though their ideas already enjoy wide acceptance. Does this reflect a stubborn skepticism about the discoveries of those who came before us? Let us explore the example of emotion. As early as 1884, William James proposed a revolutionary theory in his essay “What is an Emotion?” He points out that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colourless, destitute of emotional warmth. (189–190)

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Despite the passage of time, James’s observation still strikes us as groundbreaking, given that we intuitively cling to the notion that we weep because we feel sad. While Freud asserts that the unconscious is the underlying part of consciousness, James proposes that emotion, or bodily change, serves as the underlying part of consciousness: Without emotion there can be no consciousness, just as there can be no feeling in the absence of the body. The upward flow of feeling from the body, in the context of the global process of the neurons, is so instantaneous that we are scarcely aware of it. As James asserts in the same essay, Quick as a flash, the reflex currents pass down through their pre-ordained channels, alter the condition of muscle, skin and viscus; and these alterations, apperceived[perceived] like the original object, in as many specific portions of the cortex, combine with it in consciousness and transform it from and objectsimply-apprehended into an object- emotionally-felt. (1884, 203)

Although this process occurs within the blink of an eye, James insists that it remains an orderly bottom-up process, that is, “every one of the bodily changes, whatsoever it be, is felt, acutely or obscurely, the moment it occurs” (1884, 192). Let us examine James’s statement from the perspective of more recent theories concerning emotion. James’s contention that we are unaware of that underlying body’s reaction, before it reaches the upper portion of the brain, seems consistent with Freud’s proposition that we are unaware of the workings of the unconscious behind consciousness. If we are sad because we cry, as opposed to crying because we are sad, it becomes possible to distinguish emotion from feeling. Emotion can be interpreted as the body’s reaction, while feeling can be viewed as an act of consciousness. Eric Kandel sheds light on this bottom-up process in The Age of Insight (2012). First, comes the arousal of the body, in response to an external stimulus. At that point, this sensation flows up to the cerebral cortex, which facilitates the appraisal of emotion by means of a working memory. This process enables consciousness to feel this sensation as an emotion. Significantly, two regions are involved here: one is insular and the other is the amygdala. The former is “a little island of cortex located between the parietal and temporal lobes” (353), while the latter “plays a central role in the neural system concerned with perception and coordination of emotion” (357). If emotion is appraised by the higher region of the prefrontal cortex, the neurons Freud describes as “the memory traces,” it seems clear that the circuit is not much different than the system of remembering, or that of thinking, in the context of the bottom-up process. Hence, feeling is cognition, and Kandel notes that “emotion is also a form of information processing and therefore a

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form of cognition” (352). Indeed, emotions cannot be viewed separately from the process of constructing value and importance. Philosopher, Martha Nussbaum, in her essay “Emotions as Judgment of Value and Importance” (2018), observes, “The word feeling now does not contrast with the cognitive words, perception and judgment, it is merely terminological variety for them” (195). Joseph Ledoux, a prominent figure in the field of emotional fear, examines emotion in the context of the body’s defensive survival system. Yet, in his book, Anxious (2016), Ledoux takes an approach that is consistent with that of James and Kandel, insofar as he indicates that feeling is based on bodily changes that come in response to external impulses. His emphasis on the power of the underlying body over that of the higher cortex calls to mind the Freudian concepts of the ego and id. As we know, the id comprises of emotions that have been hidden and repressed by the ego. However, the id is stronger than either the ego or superego, as it is a source of enduring energy. Likewise, Ledoux determines that projections of the amygdala to the cortex are greater than projections from the cortex to the amygdala. In this regard, biology and psychology form a seamless partnership. Finally, W. M. Bernstein, in A Basic Theory of Neuropsychoanalysis (2011), observes that sensation must be corrected by cognition if we are to grasp what is going on in the external world—or for that matter, what is happening inside of the body and the brain. Applying biological principles to cognitive-social theory, Bernstein examines the role of the amygdala, in terms of how they relate emotion to feeling. According to Bernstein, the amygdala takes charge of the regulation of reflexes like fear and flight responses in more primitive areas of the brain. The sensory system in which perception arises precedes the cognitive system, a perception of perception.4 Those recent scientists have followed James’s concept of emotion. In other words, bodily changes occur first, and then feeling emerges. Yet it is difficult for us to accept an ordering of events in which we feel fear because we are in flight. Owing to the evolution of consciousness, humans experience the external world acutely, or obscurely, as “my pain,” “my fear,” or “my happiness.” As with remembering and thinking, feeling relies heavily on the personal memory that stands apart from bodily memory. Hence, we concentrate on the higher lobes of consciousness, while ignoring the lower portion that comprises the body, or materiality. Consciousness should respond as quickly as possible to reality in real time, flowing like a stream. When we examine the properties of consciousness, it becomes clear that episodic memory is central to bringing together emotion and cognition. In other words, the primary reason our feelings are personal, unlike other animals, is the evolution of episodic memory, without which thinking (or feeling) about the present and remembering the past are impossible. All three properties operate on the same plane of consciousness, that is, self-consciousness. This raises a question, In what way does episodic memory facilitate self-consciousness?

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PRIMORDIAL EMOTION AND PERSONAL FEELING Apart from the habits that they share with other animals, humans are endowed with the faculty of remembering, which owes much to the evolution of the frontal cortex, where experiences are stored in a way that enables to appraise the present situation. Endel Tulving referred to memories stored in the cortex as “the episodic memory,” a property that is the exclusive domain of humans, who possess autonoetic consciousness. Tulving described the frontal cortex as an executive supervisor that solves new problems based on previous information (1997, 343). He then refers to “a mirror stage” that is experienced by infants between the ages of eight and eighteen months. Tulving notes that such infants misinterpret their reflection in the mirror as an ideal image. The fantasy, or misrecognition, characteristic of this stage serves as the basis of an ego-ideal. Later, it becomes the source of imagination, when episodic memory is developed around the age of two or two-and-half years. With the rise of episodic memory, infantile memories are forgotten “because some cognitive or neurocognitive transformation makes previously encoded memory traces non-retrievable” (345). Tulving describes this non-retrievable period as infantile amnesia, which is consistent with Freud’s concept of childhood memory. Infantile amnesia gives way to episodic memory, which helps to transform the child into an individual. Indeed, the function of the cerebral cortex is compatible with “my memory,” “my thought,” and “my feelings,” because its primary function is to store personal experiences. Tulving highlights the difference between infantile amnesia and episodic memory by juxtaposing two distinct sentences: “A dog is in the yard” becomes “I am now watching a dog in the yard.” He asserts that to be born with a personal memory is to be born with selfconsciousness, as the subject is only possible when it encounters the object: I see myself being seen by you (or others). Accordingly, as Daniel Sznycer (2019) points out, feelings that arise with the development of the social self are diverse and reflect various kinds of self-evaluation: depression, satisfaction, fantasy, surplus emotion, self-esteem, and so on. Yet, infantile amnesia does not eradicate infantile memories, which are locked behind episodic memory and become the body’s memories. This places them within the realm of emotion. Given that it is situated in an inaccessible area of the lower brain, consciousness cannot directly communicate with emotion. Hence, we experience emotion only in the form of an image. This ensures that we will feel emotion (or the body’s reaction) “acutely or obscurely,” as James noted. Given that we are unable to clearly identify the body’s emotion, consciousness must contact the cerebral cortex to appraise and perceive it. Antonio Damasio makes this point in Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2010), when he describes the thalamus, which is in ceaseless

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forward motion, as the image-making structure based on body-mapping below the cerebral cortex (20). Given the discrepancy between emotion and feeling, we occasionally miss the opportunity to determine what emotion desires, even though emotion plays a critical role in achieving the balance between the inner and outer structures through life regulation. This dynamic process, known as homeostasis, can be understood as the “magic range of health” (27). While the door to this portion of the brain may be locked, its contents nevertheless remain critical to our survival. Aware of its importance, Freud named that area beyond consciousness as “the unconscious.” Damasio, similarly, describes homeostasis as the coexistence of the unconscious and consciousness. Asserting that “simple single organisms are still with us today” (33), Damasio postulates three dimensions of the self: (1) the proto self and its primordial emotions, which are mainly in charge of the brain-stem level; (2) the action-driven core self, which takes charge of the thalamus; and (3) the autobiographical self, which takes charge of the cerebral cortex and incorporates its social and spiritual dimensions. These three dimensions are compatible with Freud’s concept of the id, the ego, and the superego. For Freud, the infantile amnesia that is inscribed in the body is never deleted and retains an enduring power to influence the higher portions of consciousness. His exploration of bodily memory was the phase of his research in which he struggled to determine the cause of neurosis, an effort that is aptly reflected in his groundbreaking analysis, “From the History of an Infantile Neurosis” (1918). Freud experienced a breakthrough when he examined a patient who was passionately involved with women who adopted a specific pose and repeated it. This case would enable Freud to identify the trauma of neurosis. He postulated a primal scene in which the subject, at the early age of one-and-a-half years, witnessed his parents engaged in coitus a tergo. There is no doubt that this scene was constructed by Freud and contained elements of fiction, as he himself acknowledged in his footnotes. The crucial element in this analysis, however, is his assumption that the patient’s infantile amnesia was not deleted but had survived within the body and continued to influence his behavior, although without his awareness. This primal scene was the province of the unconscious. The door to any direct encounter with the unconscious, or to any portion of the brain beyond the limbic system, has been firmly closed, in accordance with the evolution of consciousness. This situation accounts for our reluctance to accept the fact that we feel sad because we cry. At the same time, it helps to explain our failure to recognize the discrepancy between the body’s reaction and our awareness of it. Heather A. Berlin, in “The Neural Basis of the Dynamic Unconscious” (2011), sheds light on the imbalance between the two systems when she writes that “the amygdala is a key structure involved in triggering the affective/emotional signals of immediate outcome; and a

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‘reflective system’ which can be likened to the superego where the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a key structure” (64). This suggests that imagemaking is the byproduct of an imbalance between these two processes. The first process occurs beyond the scope of human awareness, even though it shapes how we think, feel, and behave (69). Ledoux is not exceptional when he asserts that the primary process is mostly working at the non-conscious level (2016). Given the discrepancy between affective/emotional signals and the reflective system—not to mention the existence of impermeable neurons that exist beyond consciousness—we should keep in mind that the accuracy of our judgment depends on the abundance of our experience. That tends to undermine the traditional assumption that emotion has a negative effect on our reason and judgment. On the contrary, emotion, in combination with memory, forms the essence of our personalities: a reality that is suggested in the literary work of Henry James. James’s most memorable protagonists, Isabel (The Portrait of a Lady) and Strether (The Ambassadors), encounter environments that are totally unfamiliar, and they make mistakes rooted in their evident lack of experience. Yet, at the same time, both protagonists are endowed with rich emotional lives, and they eventually learn to navigate their respective environments. In short, bodily memory is indispensable to human emotion, while episodic memory is intimately bound up with feeling. At the same time, however, they are closely associated in the context of the human brain. Although emotion (or affect) facilitates the body’s engagement with the world in a way that tends to support the longevity of life, we find it mysterious, given that it is transformed by consciousness into a veiled image. Philosopher, Robert C. Solomon, in his essay “Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings” (2004), takes a phenomenological view, when he asserts that feeling is intentional and directed toward something in the same manner as thought and judgment. Given the dual nature of emotion and feeling, they invariably produce a leftover of emotion, thought, and judgment. We tend to ignore this surplus of emotion, that is, beyond a veiled image of feeling. We should not forget that, prior to human evolution, emotion was our absolute master, and it retains an enduring power to influence human nature. As neuroscientists caution, the loss of the higher portion of the brain results in the loss of functions specifically associated with it. On the other hand, if you lose the lower portion of the brain, you lose life itself. It is now time to turn our attention to the subject of surplus emotion, with an emphasis on the ways in which it appears and works within our conscious self. Its modus operandi calls to mind a ghost in Henry James’s literary works, given that it is invisible yet produces a visible effect. In the next chapter, I will examine the ghost and sublime image, as they relate to our topic.

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NOTES 1. Eric R. Kandel remarks that Freud is a forerunner of cognitive psychology and compares Freud’s writing to James in The Age of Insight (2012). Freud’s 1895 essay is “a bold but somewhat chaotic attempt to unify knowledge about the science of mind and the science of the brain,” while a parallel effort of William James’ 1890 book is “a clear, beautifully written treatise, whereas Freud’s essay is remarkably dense and difficult to understand” (see pp. 53 and 61). Gerald M. Edelman in Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind (1992) observes James and Freud as Intellectual pioneers in the field of neuroscience. He cites William James’s words that mind is a process, not a stuff, while posits Freud in a good example of a property dualist in his later years (see pp. 6 and 12). 2. See Eric Kandel, “Two Modernist Approaches to Linking Art and Science.” American Imago 70.3 (2013): 315–340. He elucidates Freud’s term, uncanny in accordance with human creativity and reading. They are appraised by one’s own memory traces. Edelman regards consciousness as the remembered present in Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness (2004) (see p. 4). 3. See Chai M. Tyng, et al., “The Influence of Emotion on Learning and Memory.” Front Psychol. 8 (2017): 1454. The essay confirms the general information about emotion and feeling. Feeling emerges at the stage of the prefrontal cortex, so not much different from thinking and judgment. Globally, emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive processes in human, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving. Emotion also facilitates encoding and helps in the retrieval of information efficiently. The amygdala and the prefrontal cortex cooperate with the medial temporal lobe (limbic system) in an integrated manner. 4. See also Ralph Adolphs and David J. Anderson, The Neuroscience of Emotion: A New Synthesis, 120: a cognitive neuroscience version of William James’s original hypothesis might propose that seeing a fear-inducing stimulus cause activation of the amygdala or hypothalamus, which in turn causes changes in the body, which are sensed by the insula, which make you feel afraid.

Chapter 2

The History of Surplus Emotions and Henry James’s Ghost

In his groundbreaking paper “The Ego and the Id,” Sigmund Freud presented his theories on the psychodynamics of the ego, the id, and the superego. As he examined the interrelationship among the three components of the brain, Freud inferred the existence of two layers of the unconscious: “the one which is latent but capable of becoming conscious, and the one which is repressed and which is not, in itself and without more ado, capable of becoming conscious” (S.E.,19, 1923, 15). He labeled the former as the preconscious, indicating that it is much closer to consciousness, as it can be represented with words that function as the residue of memories: “They were at one time perceptions and like all mnemic residues they can become conscious again” (20). Freud states that, when we remember the past, the memory traces stored in the preconscious become conscious once again. This process is directly adjacent to the system of perceptive consciousness. Thus, our analysis of the past is accomplished through memory traces that have been stored in the preconscious. Meanwhile, the unconscious is largely suppressed by the ego and therefore becomes the object of psychoanalysis, which is designed to reveal the cause of the initial trauma. The two layers of the unconscious—the preconscious and the repressed id—serve as intermediate links for analysis. If we examine Freud’s approach through the prism of recent developments in the field of neuroscience, we can connect the preconscious to the neurons of the prefrontal cortex. At the same time, the repressed id corresponds to the older, pre-evolutionary portion of the brain—the brain stem—which is suppressed by the social ego. Over the years, this more primitive portion of the brain has been known by various names. Antonio Damasio referred to it as the “proto self,” while Joseph Ledoux described it as “emotion.” William James, on the other hand, termed it as “materiality,” or “the body.” Since the upper portion of the prefrontal cortex is a byproduct of human evolution, the 31

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information it stores is lucid when compared to that stored in the lower portion of the brain. Freud described the difference between these two layers of the unconscious as follows: “Whereas the relation of external perceptions to the ego is quite perspicuous, that of internal perceptions to the ego requires special investigation” (19: 21). While in the previous chapter, I shed light on the two layers of emotion and feeling, I will now show how they can be seen as corresponding to the two kinds of unconscious Freud outlined. The psychologist asserted that emotion is our bodily response to the world, which occurs in the lower portion of the brain. Feeling, on the other hand, is a cognitive response arising from the intermediation of the ego. Given the discrepancy between these two layers of emotion and feeling, we have only a vague sense of our emotions as they unfold within the body and the world at large. Due to the evolution of consciousness, humans are unable to access directly the lower portion of the brain. Indeed, this part of the brain can be reached only through a mediation between the ego and preconscious. The mediator in this process is typically referred to as consciousness, although Freud specifically described it as the ego. Neuroscientists, meanwhile, have characterized this mediator as the limbic system. Edelman and Damasio, for instance, explained that this system comprises the hippocampus, which is primarily in charge of remembering; the amygdala, which handles emotion; and the thalamus, which also plays an important mediating role. To put it differently, the two systems of the unconscious—the preconscious and repressed id—are linked in the global perception of a bottom-up process. Hence, the two layers of the sensory system and the cognitive system work together to produce cognition as the perception of perception. In this global process, the sensations emanating from below must be interpreted and moderated by cognition if we are to secure an accurate picture of what is happening in the external world, not to mention the internal body. The most important element in this bottom-up process resides within the lower portion of the brain, which, though fragile, is more durable than has been generally accepted. We should note, for instance, that taste, smell, and touch are all faithfully recorded and stored for lengthy periods of time. Experiences submerged within the body for long periods are suddenly—and vividly— recalled: a phenomenon illustrated in Marcel Proust’s literary masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. The explicit memory that works within the preconscious is designed to deal with the present moment, which unfolds continuously, to ensure that we remember the past within the context of the present. Indeed, the brain’s functions operate according to a simple rule: past learning is critical to present survival. In contrast to this lucid brand of memory, the memory of the body, repressed by consciousness, is implicit and survives as “the surplus.” This surplus is not only remembered suddenly, but it also manages

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to survive prohibition. Hence, the repressed always returns as a leftover—the price that we pay for evolution. It returns as the surplus of the past, which has been repressed by the force of the present as in the case of explicit memory, or as the surplus emotion that has been repressed by consciousness, as in feeling. More than others, these two kinds of leftovers merit examination, for they wield a significant influence on unconscious thought, as illustrated in the novels of Henry James, whose protagonists make disastrous errors when struggling to navigate unfamiliar environments. As these characters seek to gain a perspective on their new surroundings, the surplus lurks in the manner of a ghost and exerts a powerful influence upon their thoughts and feelings. In “The Ego and the Id,” Freud provided a memorable analogy. In an effort to help us to understand that the ego is inseparable from the id, while the superego is transformed by the id, he provided this vivid image, Thus in its relation to the id it [the ego] is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed force. (19: 25)

The id, as represented by the horse, is superior in strength to the ego, as represented by the rider. Yet, the id functions primarily as a source of energy, while the ego derives much of its strength from the id. Even in cases where the ego seeks to control the id through social adjustment, the id somehow manages to leave behind a surplus, despite the controlling force of the ego. We understand that without the horse, the rider is unable to move forward. Yet, the strength of the horse often overwhelms the boundaries that have been established by the ego. Moreover, the repressed id tends to become stronger when they are repeatedly ignored by consciousness. We should recall that Kant, in his aesthetic theory, compared human understanding to the feeling of the sublime. The sublime, which transcends all human understanding, is encompassed in the feeling of awe we experience when watching the fearful forces of nature from behind the safety of a window. While humans cannot control this force in any direct way, they are able to draw upon its strength through the sublime faculty of reason as shown in detail later in this chapter. To carry Freud’s analogy further, the superior power of the horse resides in our brain as a simple, primitive organism dedicated to survival. Evolution, after all, has compelled us to become the equivalent of a rider on horseback. Jaak Panksepp made this point when he analyzed Freud’s work in the context of modern neuroscience, with an emphasis on the three phases of the brain he postulated in “The Ego and the Id.” Panksepp observed that the lowest portion, the id, is equivalent to the Reptilian brain, which exists mainly as basal ganglia. Meanwhile, the middle portion, or the ego, can be seen as the

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Old Mammalian brain, which exists as the limbic system. Finally, the upper portion of the brain, the superego, is equivalent to the Neo-mammalian brain, which exists as the neocortex (1998, 43). Panksepp went on to discuss the strategy of dual-aspect monism, which Freud consistently evoked in his psychology. He notes that a clear example of that dual nature can be found in the two components of Primary Narcissism and Secondary Narcissism, which are intertwined (2006, 18). Similarly, W. M. Bernstein has sought to connect the pervasive strength of the id with the more primitive areas of the brain such as the amygdala: “The amygdala functions to regulate reflex like fear and flight responses,” that is, emotional responses (2011, 3). In short, surplus emotion can be seen as the leftover of the ego, so that one’s perception of the world, or body, is little more than an image formed by the preconscious, the upper cortex of the memory trace. In this vein, Henri Bergson, in his book, Matter and Memory, described perception in relation to the image memory. Putting forward the idea that the brain is part of the material world, Bergson claims, There is no perception which is not full of memories. With the immediate and present data of our senses we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience. In most cases these memories supplant our actual perceptions, of which we then retain only a few hints, thus using them merely as “signs” that recall to us former images. The convenience and the rapidity of perception are brought at this price: but hence also springs every kinds of illusion. (24)

Image-making, or body-mapping, has also been discussed by Antonio Damasio, who set out to explain the function of consciousness in Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2010). Notably, the three layers of the brain Damasio described adhere closely to Freud’s formula. The protoself corresponds to the id, while the action-driven core self bears a strong resemblance to the ego. Finally, the autobiographical self, which incorporates both social and spiritual dimensions, corresponds to the superego. Damasio suggested that, beneath the cerebral cortex, body-mapping, or image-making, arises mainly from the thalamus, which moves forward ceaselessly (20). While emotion may seem fragile, it is strong enough to survive beyond the boundaries of consciousness and takes its place as an enduring force at the center of the image. Indeed, Freud observed that a word is the mnemic residue of a word that has been heard, while Lacan described it as the body posited in language, which is a seed for the play of signifiers. As opposed to emotion, consciousness seems to be as clear and absolute as the action-driven core self. In fact, however, what it produces is an image that is transformed ceaselessly as it moves forward in time. If we examine the history of psychology, not to mention that of philosophy, we encounter repeated attempts to identify the hidden power that inhabits the human mind in the manner of a ghost.

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With this in mind, we should not be surprised to encounter the following phrases in William James’s The Principles, The sensation is one thing and tile perception another, and neither can take place at the same time with the other, because their cerebral conditions are not the same. They may resemble each other, but in no respect are they identical states of mind. (PP, 2: 61, James’s italics)

Thus, human understanding is exclusively reproductive and never productive in the same manner. Indeed, Kant had already come to recognize that we cannot reach the thing-in-itself directly, and he placed aesthetic judgment at a higher level than pure reason. Furthermore, he regarded “the sublime” as superior to “Understanding” in terms of our appreciation of the aesthetic form. The analytic of the sublime is described in different ways in psychological aesthetics related to surplus emotion. Various examples have included William James’s fringe, Freud’s uncanny, and Lacan’s sublime object of desire (or the surplus jouissance). In what way do those concepts arise, and how is the repeated surplus relevant to the ghost that appears in Henry James’s fiction? Is there a reason that psychologists have continued to address this ghost with such seriousness, almost as though it were an entirely new concept? However, before embarking upon an investigation of the ghost in three of Henry’s works, it is necessary to provide a brief overview of the history of surplus, while describing Henry James’s fundamental idea of the ghost.

HENRY JAMES’S GHOSTS AS PSYCHOLOGY In 1949, Leon Edel, in his “Introduction” to The Ghostly Tales of Henry James, asserted that Henry James’s ghosts “possess an unusual degree of reality because we see them invariably through the people who see or feel them” (xxvii). He seemed to regard Henry’s ghosts as something other than supernatural specters that exists outside of the self. For Henry, Edel stressed, the ghosts reflect something innate in our vision and feelings that functions as a component in our struggle to construct reality. Meanwhile, in her analysis of Henry’s work, Pamela Jacobs Shelden has identified three fundamental aspects of Jamesian Gothicism. She noted that Henry seems determined to follow William’s work in psychology, a commitment revealed in his letters, in his enduring interest in The Society for Psychical Research (for which his brother served as president), and in his employment of Gothic vocabulary when he described the enigmatic self (1974, 125–126). Of these three aspects, the one that seems most relevant to our concerns is the use of Gothic devices

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to represent the enigmatic self. We might ask, in what way is “the enigmatic self” related to the unusual degree of reality that Edel discussed? Does it refer to some element leftover in our mind that is essentially the residue of vision and feeling, as applied to our relationship with the real world? In other words, it appears that the ghosts, in Henry’s view, are neither hallucinations nor phantoms; on the contrary, they are products of psychology. Andrew Smith in his “Henry James’s Ghosts” (2014) called attention to the fundamentally psychological purposes of Henry’s ghost tales. Smith observed that James created “eighteen tales between 1868 and 1908 that use either explicit or implicit images of the ghostly” (190). During this period, his approach to realism “was characterized by innovation and experiment” (190). Hence, it should not be surprising that his decision to introduce ghosts would be part of a complicated narrative method intended to shed light on the complexities of human psychology. With these ghosts, he set out to portray the workings of human consciousness as his characters navigate the world around them. Indeed, the narrative device using the ghosts was integral to Henry James’s innovative approach to fiction, as he strove to suggest a deeper level of reality. This approach was, in many respects, consistent with William James’s revolutionary view of consciousness as an uncontrollable non-entity, a source of continual flowing. In line with his brother’s views, Henry treated cognition as neither transparent nor solid, given that it is based on materiality and the body but situated in consciousness. Therefore, the surplus of consciousness, while designated as materiality, retains a close connection to the unconscious. Reality cannot exist in the absence of this unconscious residue. Sigmund Freud made this assertion repeatedly in his writings, even as William James strongly denied this possibility. Critics have accepted the Freudian element in Henry James’s work, while noting that—despite his brother’s obvious influence upon his work—he was essentially Freudian in his outlook, even if he was unaware of it. For instance, some early critics in dealing with The Turn of the Screw were inspired by Freudian sexuality. Edmund Wilson and Edna Kenton read the governess as a neurotic case of sexual repression. More crucially, British writer Virginia Woolf contends in “The Ghost Stories” that James’s ghosts represent something unnamed within ourselves, “the baffling things that are left over, the frightening ones that persist” (53). Her interpretation of Henry’s ghosts reminds us of not only Freud’s unconscious, especially depicted in his essay “The Uncanny,” but the surplus emotion. In terms of their approach to memory, emotion, and empathy—all of which have become subjects of modern neuroscience—Sigmund Freud and Henry James are in remarkable accord, as Pericles Lewis noted in “The Reality of the Unseen: Shared Fictions and Religious Experience in the Ghost Stories of Henry James” (2005). Lewis focused on an element of the unconscious

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that cannot be easily understood in the context of consciousness. He stressed that realism includes this other element, which William James proposed in his concept of thought, with a special emphasis on religion. Indeed, William regarded the supernatural as an integral part of the physical world, pointing specifically to religious experience. He asserted that God is powerful in the wake of His death, which has rendered Him invisible. This unseen God produces effects on the human mind and the world in which we live, although not in the form of a terrifying specter or inexplicable sights and sounds. On the contrary, God makes an appearance as a degree of reality. After all, the invisible is the very surplus that has a profound impact on people’s minds, motivating them to move in a specific direction, as in ideology and religion. Surplus emotion renders consciousness as a flow rather than an entity, pushing it toward engagement with the object. As an integral part of the object, consciousness is intentional, given that it always belongs to the object and the material world. Therefore, it is not only phenomenal in the context of changes within time and space; it is also personal, as it produces the appearance of experience. This construction occurs within our brain through consciousness (the limbic system), whose function is associated with the neurons that operate beneath the limbic system and the upper neocortex. In this process, the surplus emotion (or sense, body, and materiality) surfaces as a residue, or leftover, of the image. In the process of remembering, the leftover is the previous experience repressed in the context of the present situation. This residue, or leftover, can be regarded as aspects of the body, sense, or emotion that are neither absorbed nor organized by consciousness. Given that our personal experiences are stored within the prefrontal cortex, this leftover permeates our vision and thought, calling to mind Henry James’s words to Francis Boot in his 1895 letter: “but I see ghosts everywhere.”1 No less relevant to our purposes is the note Henry scribbled to himself at Lamb House on August 9, 1900: The ideal is something as simple as The Turn of the Screw, only different and less grossly and merely apparitional. I was rather taken with Howells’s suggestion of an “international ghost or the repressed”—I kindle, I vibrate, respond to suggestion, imaginatively, so almost unfortunately, so generously and precipitately, easily. (Notebooks, 1987, 189)

This raises a question: What is an “international ghost”? Should we interpret it as the surplus of cognition within the vision of a stranger who is thrust into a different and unfamiliar culture—an American in Europe or a European in America? This may help to explain why the ghost appears even in Henry James’s non-fiction, like The American Scene, a piece of travel writing that documents his travels in the United States between 1904 and 1905. There is

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no clear border between past and the present, given that the surplus of previous memories influences his interpretation of the present. As Gerald Edelman observes in Wider than the Sky, consciousness is essentially the remembered present (4). In Henry’s fiction, it is possible to examine the various characters in terms of surplus emotion. Of particular interest is Ralph in The Portrait of a Lady, who seems perfectly aware of the influence surplus exerts on his vision and mindset. At the outset of the novel, when the protagonist, Isabel, asks Ralph whether he has seen the ghost that purportedly haunts his family’s estate, he informs her that one can see a specter until he or she has experienced pain and suffering. Fittingly, Isabel perceives the presence of a ghost at Ralph’s deathbed, only after she has dealt with the consequences of her disastrous decisions. At that point, she encounters Ralph’s kind and empathetic ghost. A markedly different situation faces Strether, the aging protagonist of The Ambassadors, whose awareness of his wasted opportunities is heightened by his revelatory experiences in the new and unfamiliar environment of Paris. As he attempts to encounter Parisian culture with an open mind, Strether misinterprets the nature of the relationship between Chad and Madame de Vionnet: an error that is at the heart of his failure to persuade the young man to return to the United States. This misperception forces Strether to consider the ways in which surplus presented itself as a lure in a deceptively familiar scene. At one point, the protagonist encounters a pastoral scene during an outing, and that scene evokes a powerful memory of a painting that he was tempted to purchase at a Boston gallery years earlier. The surplus of that previous image blinds him to the hidden passion that links the wealthy young American and the middle-aged Parisian socialite. Nevertheless, Isabel and Strether have one thing in common: While their approach to reality is informed by an imperfect grasp of situations which they encounter, they are nevertheless determined to experience each moment to the fullest. Through experience, they gain a deeper understanding of reality. They come to realize that life is a series of appearances, and there is no ultimate truth that lies hidden beyond phenomena. Hence, they are prepared to accept the process of living and experience the surplus that inevitably surfaces in the middle of the repetition of appearance. In Henry’s most extreme ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, the protagonist is totally unaware of the fact that the ghosts are a product of the surplus within her own mind. On the contrary, the governess is convinced that the apparitions she encounters are spirits of the household’s former governess and her wanton lover, who she believes have malevolent intentions toward the innocent children in her charge. Motivated by ambition and a profound sense of moral duty to protect the two children, she engages in extremes of behavior that facilitate her worst fears. A captive of her prejudice against

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freedom, she ultimately harms the young boy, who is the more vulnerable of the two children. Throughout the story, the governess shows herself to be impulsive and possessive. Above all, she is ignorant of the need to detour the surplus, and her delusions contribute to the story’s tragic conclusion. It becomes apparent that the story’s atmosphere of pervasive evil has its source in the governess’s mindset. As I mentioned, Virginia Woolf noted, in her posthumously published essay “The Ghost Stories” (1963), that Henry James’s ghost is a product of the darkness within each person. Woolf shed new light on the nature of the ghost, defining it as a source of bafflement in the human mind. Henry James’s ghosts have nothing in common with the violent old ghosts— the blood stained sea captains, the white horses, the headless ladies of dark lanes and windy commons. They have their origin within us. They are present whenever the significant overflows our powers of expressing it: whenever the ordinary appears ringed by the strange. The baffling things that are left over, the frightening ones that persist—these are the emotions that he takes, embodies, makes consoling and companionable. (Woolf, 1963, 52–53)

Her observation calls to mind Freud’s uncanny, non-sublimated unconscious, whose influence on our mind results in compulsive repetition. In The Turn of the Screw, the governess is intimidated by a new, unfamiliar environment, and she feels unequal to the task of dealing with Miles, a child with an entirely different background who has been expelled from school—a situation she perceives as shameful. Her failure to detour the surplus stands in sharp contrast to the final response of Marcher in “The Beast in the Jungle.” In the end, Marcher recognizes that he might have avoided the ghost, the primordial fear that had resided within his mind. However, he sadly comes to this realization after the death of May, who had struggled to give him a chance to live. Dorin Smith contended that Henry’s ghosts are “Freudian uncanny, psychologizing ghosts, absences borne out of repressed familiarity” (2016, 248). Hence, Isabel, in The Portrait of a Lady, acknowledges: “I am afraid of suffering. But I’m not afraid of ghosts” (PL, 60). Detouring the ghost not only provides a way to avoid the dead-end of self-destruction; it also enables us to achieve some degree of wisdom. At this point, it seems natural to explore the purpose of our quest, which is to reveal the repetition of surplus. In the process, we will examine concepts including Kant’s sublime, James’s fringe, Freud’s uncanny, and Lacan’s sublime object, or surplus jouissance. During this journey, we might ask ourselves, In what forms do they return, and why does this process occur, in the first place?

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GHOSTS AS THE SURPLUS: KANT’S CONCEPT OF THE SUBLIME In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), in his “Analytic of Aesthetic Judgement,” proposed requirements for an ideal poet that were consistent with the two faculties of human consciousness: Understanding and Reason. Kant suggested that the former belongs to the analytic of the beautiful, while the latter belongs to the analytic of the sublime. In this section, I will show that the beautiful, when understood as formal perfection, corresponds to cognition. Meanwhile, the sublime, when understood as great inspiration, can be identified with the boundless faculty that enables us to recognize the leftover of a fearful force in the mind—one not unlike the forces that occur in the natural world. If we consider these concepts in terms of modern neuroscience, formal perfection corresponds to the quality mediated by consciousness, whereas the great inspiration that surpasses it bears a connection to the immeasurable quantity beyond cognition. One could easily relate this quality to the appearance and quantity of the real, which is a force, or thing, beyond human understanding. Kant’s aesthetic judgment can be applied to two components of the human brain: the image-making function of consciousness and reason, which enables us to obtain insights into the real beyond phenomena. The real, as the leftover of the image, reflects the immense energy of the unconscious, even if it is repressed by the ego. This internal energy corresponds to the awe-inspiring external world. Reason, in the Kantian sense, is the wisdom that enables us to see that there is a thingin-itself that lies beyond human understanding, and it can be experienced in the feeling of sublime awe. Kant divided taste into three basic categories. The first of these is delight in “The Agreeable,” a primordial sensation without concept that humans share with other animals. Indeed, all kinds of animals enjoy the freedom to eat what they want, and this kind of delight gratifies one’s subjective interest. Qualitatively different is delight in “The Good,” which is coupled with an interest in the object. This category of delight involves a formation of the object that is geared to a special purpose. It is informed by a human sense of usefulness. Hence, it reflects a universal and objective interest that is approved by others. The Good is a form of delight shared by every rational being. The inherent problem with the Good lies in the concept before it is tested. In other words, objective interest occasionally turns out to be a disguise for subjective interest. Meanwhile, the third kind of delight offers an alternative to the previous two categories: delight in “The Beautiful.” This form of delight stands somewhere between subjective and objective interests, occupying a space that we might describe as subjective universality. After all, we do not enjoy art for others, nor does it satisfy a useful interest. It is a delight freely

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available to a person who lives with others, and it also reflects our status as a social animal. Given these circumstances, aesthetic judgment is most assured when it is independent of interest. In this case, it stands apart from all concepts and yet possesses universality. It appeals to one’s personal feelings and nevertheless has a claim to validity for all humans. Grounded on “a claim to subjective universality” (9), the pleasure of art satisfies both our senses and our cognitive functions, reflection and feeling (judgment). Consequently, Kant required a mode of representation as the significant element. He contended that an aesthetic judgment is made only after experiencing the form of art, so that it reflects empirical taste based on the finality of form. That is why this specific form of delight involves the faculty of understanding. If we apply Kant’s view of delight that we take in the beautiful to the functioning of the brain, it approximates what consciousness (the limbic system) is doing. In the bottom-up process of image-making, consciousness seeks to read the body’s reactions with the assistance of the upper portion of the frontal cortex, where experiences are stored as memory traces. The bottom-up process is unknown to us, for it belongs to the unconscious and unfolds without our awareness. We know only what consciousness relates to us, and we are bound to accept it as the truth. We are wholly ignorant of the existence of leftover emotion, sense, body, or material things, which are byproducts of image-making. However, psychology and art are designed to reveal to us this unconscious process, while also shedding light on that which is leftover. In his exposition, Kant classified the analytic of the sublime as an aesthetic judgment, while revealing the boundless quantity that exists beyond cognition. If The Beautiful is all about the form of a representation, The Sublime is apparently devoid of form. If the beautiful is an empirical taste, the sublime involves spontaneous engagement. In his “Analytic of the Sublime,” Kant observed that “it immediately involves, or else by its presence provokes, a representation of limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality” (24). To put it differently, the beautiful is a positive delight in relation to the finality of form, whereas the sublime is a “negative pleasure” that derives from the finality of Nature. Why is it a negative pleasure? It is presumed that the other side of the destructive force of Nature is nothing but the human capacity of sublimation through circuitous paths to the surplus emotion as James represented it as the ghost. Freud proposed it as the compulsion to repeat in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920), a topic I will resume in chapter 6. When we encounter the dreadful and destructive forces of nature, we experience a sense of awe and fear that is rooted in our perception of comparative human weakness. Kant provided examples of nature’s power in contrast to human frailty when he noted that

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volcanoes in all their violence of destruction, hurricanes leaving desolation in their track, the boundless ocean rising with rebellious force, the high waterfall of some mighty river, and the like, make our power of resistance of trifling moment in comparison with their might. (26)

The primary issue at hand is a sense of human security, as Kant stressed when he envisioned a man safely observing natural forces from behind a window. Looking out on this sort of destructive scene, we experience a feeling of delight arising from the fact that we are protected from it. The more fearful the scene, the stronger our feelings of attraction toward that particular scene is. Kant termed such objects as sublime because the destructive scene elevates the soul above that which is vulgar or commonplace, investing us with a power of resistance against destruction, as well as the courage to measure ourselves against the omnipotence of nature. Kant went on to assert the following: “Sublimity, therefore, does not reside in any of the things of nature, but only in our own mind, in so far as we may become conscious of our superiority over nature within, and thus also over nature without us” (27). Kant further notes that we have the same kind of natural force within us: an observation that calls to mind Freud’s characterization of the unconscious as an interior natural force, which the ego enables us to resist. Similarly, Kant presents the sublime as a human soul raised up to measure the power of a natural force. We might ask ourselves, however, whether we can safely regard the sublime in the terms Freud suggested, as the human soul raised up to resist the overwhelming force of the id. If we were to define the id, we would conclude that it is the remains of nature’s forces within us, mediated by consciousness. In this sense, it seems evident that the delight one takes in the sublime is negative because the other side of sublimity is the destructive force of nature. Indeed, in psychology, the other side of the sublime object is a surplus of destructive natural forces, the ghost, as Jacques Lacan indicated in his essay “The Splendor of Antigone.” In his analysis of Sophocles’s play, Antigone, he explains the ways in which the protagonist, who resists Creon’s law, emerges as the sublime object for the reader. Lacan contended that Sophocles himself presented her as the sublime object by means of the language he employed in his play. I will return to this subject later in the chapter. Kant placed the sublime within the category of aesthetic judgment. He noted that aesthetic judgment not only contributes to our cognitive faculty as subjective universality, but it also reveals the leftover of natural forces within us, which leads us to avoid the surplus by detouring it. Kant’s view of the sublime as the primary purpose of art echoes Arthur Schopenhauer’s position in The World of Will and Representation. When Schopenhauer asserted that the aesthetic mind seeks to perceive that which is beyond representation, his

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concept of will bears a strong resemblance to Kant’s thing-in-itself—that which lies beyond the grasp of human consciousness. Schopenhauer argued that the human mind constructs the concept of the world as an idea or representation. However, the world so constructed is only the world of appearance or phenomena (475). These words remind us not only of Kant’s categories of the Beautiful and Sublime; they also call to mind Freud’s concepts of consciousness and the unconscious, as well as the concept of Phenomenology developed by William and the ghosts by Henry James. Similar concepts are explored in Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings on the origins of the work of art. In “The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche observed that the protagonist of Sophocles’s King Oedipus is “his father’s murderer, his mother’s husband,” and the man “who solved the riddle of the Sphinx!” This led him to ask, “What can we learn from the cryptic trinity of these fateful deeds?” (153). He went on to present Dionysus, the god of pleasure, instinct, and emotion, as the source of tragedy beyond Apollo, who is the god of cognition and order. Nietzsche shed light on the ultimate union of these two gods. He argued that the individuation represented by Apollo is the primal source of evil, and the ultimate purpose of art is to expose the fact that the spell of individuation can be broken, and oneness can be restored. Indeed, Sophocles’s play outlines, step by step, the process of unveiling the mask of Apollo to expose the true face of the primordial hero, Dionysus. This process was designed to give the audience pleasure. In this regard, the Freudian concept of the unconscious is somehow allied with Nietzsche’s idea of primordial oneness. In “the Ego and the Id,” Freud purposefully quoted Georg Groddeck, who insisted that “what we call our ego behaves essentially passively in life, and that, as he expresses it, we are ‘lived’ by unknown and uncontrollable forces” (S.E., 19, 1925, 23). Groddeck followed Nietzsche’s line of thought that man is subject to impersonal natural law. In the context of art, unknown and uncontrollable forces of nature, within and without, surface continuously as leftovers of representation. This phenomenon is reflected in the ghosts that populate Henry James’s fiction. In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry describes a remarkable scene in which Isabel’s experience of the sublime contributes to her deluded view of Europe’s new and unfamiliar culture. In the wake of this scene, Isabel emerges as a blind supporter of Madame Merle, who misleads the protagonist and exploits her for her own selfish ends. Interestingly, their initial encounter occurs at a piano recital featuring Madame Merle, who demonstrates remarkable skill and sensitivity as a performer. While Isabel is emotionally affected by the performance, her experience is enhanced by a specific set of circumstances. In the large drawing room, Isabel takes the chair nearest to the piano so that she can fully appreciate Madame Merle’s performance. James writes that,

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while the pianist “played the shadows deepened in the room. The autumn twilight gathered in, and from her place Isabel could see the rain, which had now begun in earnest, washing the cold-looking lawn and the wind shaking the great trees” (PL, 181). His description of the storm that Isabel observes from the safety of the drawing room window echoes Kant’s representation of the sublime experience. We sense that Isabel’s appreciation of the recital is informed by her view of the natural forces unfolding outside the drawing room, and her soul is exposed to an experience of the sublime. Young and naïve, Isabel is unaware of the fact that her reaction has more to do with the impersonal forces of nature at work outside the room than it does with Madame Merle’s performance within it. Hence, from that point on, Isabel indulges the pianist’s every whim, ignoring the advice of those who question Madame Merle’s intentions. We are reminded of the fact that William James, in his writings on psychology, connected the leftover, or the ghost, with concepts such as materiality, sense, emotion, and body—all of which are associated with the lower portion of the brain. Given the circumstances of human evolution, we are unable to approach this region of the mind directly, and we must therefore rely on the mediation of consciousness. As noted, an image is created with the assistance of the upper portion of the brain, the frontal cortex, where our experiences are stored and interpreted. Hence, there is always a surplus of body or materials, which William has described as “Fringes,” a topic I will now turn to briefly. GHOSTS AS FRINGES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WILLIAM JAMES William James’s entrance into the emerging field of psychology contributed to a revolutionary shift in the status of consciousness. It was no longer perceived as an entity, or as stuff, but rather as a continuous flow. This groundbreaking premise drew upon the following observations: human cognition always arises whenever there is an object, so it is intentional and personal, and above all relational. William argued, in his essay “Does Consciousness Exist?” (1904), that the three characteristics of consciousness—intentional, personal, and relational—are intimately interwoven. He further suggested that we cannot perceive the object as it is, since we have already become part of the object that is perceived. In other words, we view the object through an eye that has previously formed an idea of that object. Hence, the object itself and our previous vision of it are intermixed and inseparable, ensuring that our knowledge is intentional and personal. James indicated that it is difficult to determine how much of our perception of things reflects reproductions of previous experiences and how much owes to our immediate visual sensations.

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Perhaps the two work closely together to form our image of a given object. As James wrote, “All brain-process are such as give rise to what we may call FIGURED consciousness,” so the faintest sensations may give rise to the perception of things if they resemble things that are already formed (PP, 2: 61, James’s italics and bold letter). What, then, can we say about the relational? As noted earlier, our thoughts turn naturally to the previous experiences stored in the frontal cortex, in the same way that our perception of an object is informed by our previous experiences and thoughts. Given that our view of an object is influenced by our thoughts, fact and fiction are sometimes indistinguishable, and belief can play an outsized role in our interpretation of reality. William James’s view of consciousness—whether intentional, personal, or relational—relies heavily on those previously stored experiences, which come to mind almost automatically. Moreover, his ideas have been illustrated in the fictional work of Henry James, several examples of which I have mentioned. Although I will examine these works in greater detail, a few of them merit attention at this point. We have discussed the fact that the protagonist in The Portrait of a Lady is blind to the deception orchestrated by Madame Merle and Osmond, as she observes them through the prism of the Idealism she embraced before her arrival in Europe. Similarly, in The Turn of the Screw, the governess, who finds herself in a new environment, perceives the ghosts who supposedly haunt the household, even though others do not. Finally, Strether, the protagonist of The Ambassadors, sees Parisian culture through the prism of his previous experiences in America, which prevents him from perceiving the romantic relationship involving Chad and Madame de Vionnet. We can easily place the above scenario in the context of modern neuroscience. When seeking to create an image out of responses from the body and emotion, consciousness is affected by the upper portion of the brain, where our experiences are stored—the so-called memory traces. This process serves as a guide toward cognition and judgment of a new reality. After all, the past and the present coexist in remembering as well as cognition. Like Henry’s characters, we are unaware of this fact and believe our vision to be transparent and immediate, devoid of any influence from previous experiences. We do not perceive our concept of an object as flowing and relational. On the contrary, we regard it as an independent moment, as though we are distinctly perceiving the seven colors of the rainbow. In the process of a time-gap, we experience an object in truncated form, despite its actual continuity. We do not have isolated sensations that result from associated ideas within the stream of consciousness. Consciousness does not involve pure and transparent reflection, nor does it involve simple and clear sensations. On the contrary, it functions as a mediator between the lower portion of the brain and the upper portion, which stores the memory

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traces. Consciousness not only handles the materiality within the brain, which is responsible for the bodily sense beneath it and the materiality that exists outside, but also the past experiences that are stored in the neocortex. In this respect, our cognition is a production that involves complicated sensations. As William James reminded us, Our sensations or perceptions are of various species, so are there various species of relations;—the number of relations even of external things, being almost infinite while the number of perceptions is necessarily limited by that of the objects which have the power of producing some affection of our organs of sensation. (PP, 1: 165)

James compares the “various species of relations” that exist within and without the brain to a rainbow, or an overtone. Like a rainbow “every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it” (PP, 1:169). Meanwhile, Alfred Schuetz described them as necessary relations between the emergent object of thought and its surrounding objects. He indicated that they occur in the transition between the thought of one object and the thought of another. There is no isolated thought, for each forms a transitive element within a stream of consciousness in which perceptions of the present are shaped by awareness of the future and the past. In other words, “the actual presence is not an instantaneity but the persisting form for continuously changing contents” (Schuetz, 1941, 448). Thus, each thought is surrounded by a halo of psychic overtones, as in a rainbow, and there is transitive consciousness between all their substantive elements. Words and images do not have a clear and distinctive boundary; they are instead fringed. Hence, our previous experiences linger as a fringe in our perception of the present, and present desire continually informs our memory of the past. In this sense, not unlike Freud’s concept of the unconscious, the fringe functions as a vague but ever-present element that calls to mind a ghost. To understand this concept, it is helpful to consider the role of overtone within music. In an orchestra, various instruments reproduce the same note in a manner that resembles the way distinct human voices are blended. This produces a harmony of sound in which we perceive a single note. Similarly, we possess a psychic overtone or fringe, so that knowledge about a thing involves knowledge of its relations. However, perception, influenced by a faint brain process, dimly perceives those relations and objects. We are only aware of a fringe of unarticulated affinities because our impulse is to fill in the gaps to hear each as overtone. Overtone, in this sense, reminds us of the process through which memories are supplied by the upper portion of the brain as a guide to reality. As neuroscientist Bernard J. Baars observed, in his paper “William James on

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the Mind and Its Fringes,” the regions of the brain appear to be activated by fringe experiences. Baars went on to connect “the sense of mental effort” with the evocation of BOLD (fMRI) activity in the anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These regions are known to be involved in expressed goals and to be triggered by goal conflicts and barriers. These frontal properties relate closely to “the sense of mental effort.” (461)

William James indicated that our topic, or interest, is experienced consistently as an overtone, or fringe, that contributes to feelings of harmony and discord, as well as a sense of right and wrong direction, in the image-forming process of consciousness. The fringe produces quality out of quantity, directing us toward a sense of knowing, being on the right track, and familiarity. Fringes, after all, are traces, or remains, of previous experiences. While some experiences may have been forgotten, even lost, the fringe nudges the present feeling toward the object. The forgotten part of an experience, the gap, is filled in by our thoughts. Indeed, one modern-day neuroscientist, Damasio, described the fringe as qualia, the process through which we can appreciate the quality of a certain thing and determine whether it is good or bad or ugly or beautiful. While quantity belongs to the realm of the unconscious, which is not an appreciable part of consciousness, the qualia are firmly connected to consciousness, given their strong association with the amygdala and hippocampus. The amygdala serves as a kind of reservoir of emotions, while the hippocampus handles the encoding and retrieval of memories through contact with the prefrontal cortex. Since the amygdala and hippocampus are connected, emotion plays an influential role in the preservation of memories. This calls to mind William James’s emphasis on the importance of “warmth and intimacy” which were so often spoken of in the chapter of self, as characterizing all experiences “appropriated” by the thinker as his own (PP, 1: 436). In one of Henry James’s most effective stories, “The Beast in the Jungle,” the protagonist, Marcher, does not recall the days he shared with May, a woman who has warm feelings toward him and, as a result, retains detailed memories of their time together. Since their initial meeting at gathering years earlier, Marcher has stubbornly refused to open his mind to her and refuses to accept her love. He is obsessed with fear about a future calamity that is symbolized by the image of a beast springing from the underbrush. Thus, he loses the opportunity to experience love and to live more fully: a realization that strikes him when it is too late to reverse the situation. Why is, then, the Fringe so Vague? As Baars pointed out, the fringe experience is unclear and difficult to perceive as a figured form; it is instead fuzzy or vague. Baars compared the

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fringe to the phenomenon known as the tip-of-the-tongue, tracing it to a lack of sensory qualities in the activation of the frontal cortex rather than the sensory regions at the back of the brain. The frontal cortex is continuously updating memory with information provided by the hippocampus, in accordance with time. Although William James refused to accept the concept of the unconscious as presented by Freud, our understanding of the fringe can be enhanced by referring to the Freudian memory system or the essence of episodic memory, which are accepted by modern neuroscientists. Of particular interest here is the concept of dual-aspect monism, in which the region in charge of encoding and retrieving memories is separate from the region that stores them. Freud insisted, early on, that consciousness and memory traces are mutually exclusive. Notably, we now recognize that the hippocampus operates in real time to address present reality, while the prefrontal cortex (or preconscious) is static and stores memories. A critical aspect of this process is the change that occurs within memory traces over time. Memories are superimposed upon one another and updated with the passage of time: a situation that led James to conclude, “We never could have any knowledge except that of the present instant” (PP, 1: 403). As noted previously, we recall the past in the context of the present moment and in the context of present desire. In the same way, we recognize the present object that is reflected in past experiences or memories. These experiences and memories are continuously updated over time. Due to the passage of time and the updating of our memories, one idea follows another. James noted that in each of our successive states of consciousness, the moment that has passed is gone forever. We might ask, where is present time? In fact, it exists only for the brief duration in which we recognize it as the present; it vanishes with the arrival of the next moment. Due to time and the updating of our memories, our knowledge of the past or the future—the near or the remote—is blended with our knowledge of the present. In this vein, James suggested that we experience the fringe as an unconscious element within our daily lives. All consciousness is in the form of time, or that time is the form of feeling, the form of sensibility. Crudely and popularly we divide the course of time into past, present, and future; but strictly speaking, there is no present; it is composed of past and future divided by an indivisible point or instant. That instant, or time-point, is the strict present. What we call, loosely, the present, is an empirical portion of the course of time, containing at least a minimum of consciousness, in which the instant of change is the present time-point. If we take this as the present time-point, it is clear that the minimum of feeling contains two portions—a sub-feeling that goes and a sub-feeling that comes. One is remembered, the other is imagined. The limits of both are indefinite at the beginning and end of the minimum, and ready to melt into other minima, proceeding from other stimuli. (PP, 1: 404-405, James’s italics)

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Our cognition, as well as our capacity to remember, relies upon our awareness of the present, even though the present exists for a brief duration. We cannot grasp it, nor clearly perceive it. That void is filled with an expectation of the future or shaped by our retrospective mind. The present belongs to non-sensory experience, which Bruce Mangan referred to as the ghost in his article “Sensation’s Ghost” (2001). Mangan argued that the difference between a clear, sensory experience and a vague, non-sensory experience depends on the level of attention devoted to it. He referred to the non-sensory fringe as the ghost because it is vague and unclear, but it also becomes a source of knowledge and judgment. Significantly, the ghost plays an important role in consciousness where it continuously flows, giving rise to a sense of knowing, familiarity, getting on the right track, and achieving psychical overtones. I would add to this list another important item: the ghost helps us to see the same object in a new light by means of the updated experiences that are provided by the memory traces. The surplus emotion beyond the image, or the remains of materiality that is not absorbed into consciousness, proves to be as persistent as it is vague. This baffling leftover element in our mind should be understood as the ghost. It is formed by the excess of consciousness that is left behind in the wake of the memory traces, without which there can be no thinking, let alone remembering. One question remains: How should we deal with this ghost? While it may seem vague, we should not blind ourselves to the psychic overtone, because the ghost can bring about great suffering and disaster. Henry James offered a chilling example in The Turn of the Screw, given that the governess’s refusal to acknowledge the source of the ghost contributes to a disastrous outcome for Miles. On the contrary, Srether’s sublimation of the ghost in The Ambassadors enables him to live more fully. In this regard, I will examine the ghost presented in Freud’s essay “The ‘Uncanny’,” and contrast it with Lacan’s sublime object in Antigone. This exercise will shed light on some of the different ways to deal with ghosts.

FREUD’S UNCANNY AND LACAN’S ANTIGONE: HOW TO DEAL WITH GHOSTS Eric Kandel discerned that William James and Freud were forerunners of recent developments in neuroscience who drew upon Darwin’s intellectual achievements. There is no doubt that they shared common ground, given that each dealt with consciousness as the kernel of evolution. They all appeared to anticipate the way in which neurons are arranged and circulate in line with memory, emotion, and empathy. If one of them had held an entirely different view of the human mind, he would have lost his standing in the

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field. Yet, each employed different terms and approached his subject from a vantage point reflecting his specific interests. William James, for instance, concentrated on the function of consciousness in a manner that departed from traditional views on feeling and thinking. He developed the basic idea of psychology, as an examination of emotion and cognition, while also extending it to include philosophy, ideology, and religion. He placed a particular emphasis on the term, Fringe, which he perceived as the core of the stream of consciousness, and he shed light on how the global process of neurons gives rise to memory, emotion, and cognition. Above all he sought to develop a pragmatic way to enhance memory and learning. He refrained from using the term “the unconscious,” even criticizing it, as Baars has pointed out (462). Nevertheless, the terms “unconscious” and “non-conscious” have gained currency among neuroscientists exploring the regional circulation of neurons. While Freud began his career as a neuroscientist, he eventually focused on the structure of the brain to shed light on the nature of the human mind, with an emphasis on mental disorders. Hence, he established the new field of psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, he remained a psychologist who was grounded in brain science, and his primary interest would be the dynamic relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. Significantly, the overarching theme of his early paper on neurons, “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895), is echoed in his subsequent essay on metapsychology, as well as the various case studies he completed throughout his career. In his rather complicated paper on neurons, Freud identified three basic types of neurons: φ, ψ, and ω. The first sign, φ, represents a system of permeable neurons that appears later in his essays, while corresponding to the preconscious, in “The Ego and the Id” (1923), or the memory trace, in “A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’” (1925). The second sign, ψ, represents the system of impermeable neurons that corresponds later to his concept of the unconscious, or the Id. Finally, the third symbol, ω, represents the system of perceptual neurons that corresponds to consciousness, or the Ego. To address a mental disorder (neurosis as opposed to psychosis)—and to position humans as social animals caught in the eternal conflict between the primal stage of the unconscious and the secondary stage of consciousness—Freud proposed a period of infantile sexuality as the primal source of this conflict. He went on to describe the conflict between the unconscious and consciousness, pointing out that the egolibido is the antithesis of the object-libido, in the same way that the pleasure principle contrasts with the reality principle. In his later years, Freud focused on “the thing” beyond the pleasure principle—namely, the death instinct—which emerged as a crucial concept in his attempts to explain the origins of human instinct, as it relates to the demonic power of repetition. Regarding the human compulsion to repeat, Freud argued that it enables us to avoid the short circuit to death, which reminds us of the

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way in which we deal with the ghost, or surplus emotion. In this regard, I will examine two of Freud’s essays “The ‘Uncanny’” and “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” which were published within a year of one another and are clearly connected. My exploration of these two essays will focus on the sublimation of the ghost, or surplus emotion. It is widely assumed that the second essay is a positive response to the previous piece, which is typically interpreted as a negative view of repetition. Before proceeding, however, I would like to discuss how Freud demonstrated that the thing inevitably produces surplus emotion. We should remember that William James’s concept of the Fringe and Freud’s surplus unconscious bear a striking relationship to the ghost in Henry’s fiction, even though they are employed in very different ways. Initially, I will turn my attention to Freud’s concept of the Dead Father, as well as the repression of the Primal Father, which are outlined in his essay “Totem and Taboo” (1912/13).

WO ES WAR, SOLL ICH WERDEN: THE SURPLUS OF THE PRIMAL FATHER Influenced by Darwin and Atkinson, Freud introduced his view of the origin of the law in a collection of essays titled, Totem and Taboo. Freud suggested that humans in primitive society survived by forming small groups led by a dominant male who enjoyed intimacy with his own partner and every other woman in the community. To protect his position, the dominant male saved his youngest son and slew anyone who threatened to betray him. Freud speculated that this cruel dictatorship provoked a treasonous uprising led by his own sons. After murdering their father, the sons shared his flesh in a celebratory feast, reflecting the fact that they coveted his power, even though they feared and hated him. In time, competition among the sons to fill the subsequent power vacuum produced deep divisions within the community. Faced with a chaotic situation, the sons determined that they must compromise by establishing law and order within the group. At that point, they selected a specific animal that represented the father and set out to ritually worship this image. Hence, the totem, a symbol of the law, became more powerful than the real father. The power of the totem rested, to a large degree, on the fact that it was an image, the void. Thus, the symbol of the Dead Father became the symbol of absolute power that is needed to sustain society. In Freud’s view, this was the origin of law and civilization, but he went on to provide another critical detail. He described what he called the return of the repressed Primal Father. Since the other side of the dead father is the primal father, it should be surprising to learn that the law, when pushed to extremes, will reflect cruelty and

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aggression. The empty hole, or void, is the surplus of the law, as Lacan suggested in his description of Hans Holbein’s famous painting, The Ambassadors. He emphasized the presence of an ungainly image at the middle of the painting’s lower portion, one that Slavoj Zizek described as “looking awry.” The shape initially resembles a phallus, but upon closer inspection, we can see that it is a skull.2 If the other side of the law is the Primal Father, and the reality principle is established by the pleasure principle, what does repression truly mean? We know that there is always surplus libido, which cannot be fully absorbed by consciousness. Moreover, one cannot repress the primal father completely because he serves as the origin of the dead father law. If there is no way to avoid surplus emotion, which is an essential part of establishing the law, we had best accept it by elevating it to the level of the sublime object. In this regard, Freud proposed a remarkable example of the relationship between the ego and the id in his essay “The Ego and the Id” (1923). In the topography of the libido, the ego is not clearly separated from the id, for its lower portion merges with the id, in the same way that the superego is affected by the id. As noted, Freud states that, in its relationship with the id, the ego is like a man on horseback who must draw upon the superior force of the horse. This metaphor not only illustrates Freud’s mechanism of the psyche; it also roughly corresponds with what we know of the brain’s structure. If the ego corresponds to consciousness (broadly known as the limbic system), the id is connected to the neurons that are repressed by consciousness in the image-making process. Meanwhile, the preconscious corresponds to the prefrontal cortex (or the memory trace), the area of the brain represented by language. The lower portion of the brain is conversely repressed by the limbic system, which makes communication extremely difficult. That portion of the brain moves instinctively, in a bottom-up process that lies beyond our awareness. Once again, Freud compared the repressed lower portion of the brain to a horse that is mounted by a rider, the ego. While the ego seeks to follow the instructions of the superego, this proves challenging because the horse, as the origin of life, is much stronger than the upper neurons. Thus, the ego’s efforts to repress the id are imperfect and risky. The act of repression leaves behind the remains of the horse’s strength and paves the way for the return of the repressed. This raises a question: Is there a safe way out of this perilous situation? For Freud, the most effective way to avoid this risk is through complete and unconditional acceptance of the remains. The ideal ego formed in the narcissistic libido can be transformed into the object-libido, which turns out to be the ego-ideal. Notably, the ideal image of the self can point a way out of the aggressive double by pushing it toward the service of a higher aim, rather than the sexual instinct. Examples might include channeling one’s strength to

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meet the social demands of a family, a class, or a nation—anything society regards as meaningful. In his essay “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” Freud defined sublimation as “a process that concerns object-libido and consists in the instinct’s directing itself towards an aim other than, and remote from, that of sexual satisfaction” (S.E., 14, 1914, 94). In short, sublimation offers a safe way for the ego, that is, the rider on horseback, to be released from the horse’s superior strength. The secret to handling surplus strength coupled with sublimation will be my next topic, as I examine two essays, “The ‘Uncanny’” (S.E., 17, 1919) and “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (S.E., 18, 1920). In opposition to traditional aesthetics regarding the positive assessment of what is beautiful, attractive, and sublime, Freud introduces the term “the uncanny,” which refers to the negative feelings of repulsion and distress, even feelings of dread and horror. As if referencing a ghost story, Freud’s narrative of the uncanny evokes a feeling of uncertainty amid a gloomy, dismal, and ghastly atmosphere that calls to mind a repulsive creature in a haunted house. Whereas canny refers to familiar, tame, intimate, and friendly feelings, the uncanny is associated with feelings of the demonic and the gruesome. Somehow, the uncanny also appears to be another name for the unconscious, given that Freud presents it as “the frightening feeling which is leading back to what is known of old and long familiar” (S.E., 17, 1919, 221). Despite the feelings of familiarity experienced long ago, the present situation is “something one does not know one’s way about in” (221). What was once familiar returns as something that is weird and unfamiliar: “Unheimlich is the name for everything that ought to have remained. . .secret and hidden but has come to light” (224). One might conclude that the uncanny is nothing more than the surplus, or remains, of infantile sexuality that has been repressed by consciousness for a long period of time and is only now coming to light. Freud shed light on the return of the repressed, that is, the return of the castration complex, in his analysis of “The Sandman,” a story that is included in Eight Tales of Hoffmann. The story’s protagonist, Nathaniel, is haunted by the specter of the sandman, a folkloric figure which his nurse describes when the young boy refuses to go to bed. The nurse warns the boy that the sandman will pull out his eyes if he disobeys his father. Notably, the removal of one’s eyes is a symbolic reference to castration, given that this is the punishment Oedipus inflicts upon himself after committing incest with his mother. Nathaniel’s fear of the sandman is manifested in a dreamlike encounter with his father’s colleague, Coppelius, a lawyer with a hideous visage. When the lawyer catches the boy spying upon him, he grabs him and threatens to pull out his eyes. Not long after this incident, Nathaniel’s father dies, while the mysterious Coppelius disappears. As an adult, Nathaniel meets the optician, Coppola, whom he initially believes is the dreaded Coppelius. In time, Nathaniel falls in love with Olympia, the presumed daughter of a professor

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named Spalanzani. However, one day, as he watches the girl through one of Coppola’s spyglasses, the optician removes one of the girl’s eyes and tosses it to him. To his horror, Nathaniel realizes that Olympia is an automaton that has been created by Coppola and Spalanzani. In the wake of this disaster, Nathaniel becomes reconciled with his fiancé, Clara, and climbs a tower in the city at her suggestion. After spotting something with his telescope, Nathaniel experiences a fit of madness and attempts to throw Clara off the balcony, but her brother, Lothaire, intervenes. Meanwhile, Nathaniel jumps to his death, terrified by a glimpse of the dreaded Coppelius, whom he had spotted with his spyglass in the crowd below. Drawing upon this dismal tale, Freud presented two critical concepts: the castration anxiety and the compulsion to repeat. In Hoffman’s horror story, the sandman interferes with Nathaniel’s love for the women in his life: his mother, Olympia, and Clara. Ultimately, the sandman represents the father who intimidates his son with the threat of castration, and he reappears continuously. Early in the story, the sandman takes the form of the mysterious lawyer, Coppelius. Later, when Nathaniel is an adult, he resurfaces as the optician, Coppola. Finally, at the story’s conclusion, the sandman makes another appearance as Coppelius, driving Nathaniel to suicide. In Freud’s analysis of the story, he suggested that the father serves as an obstacle to the son’s love, while the son fears blindness, which represents castration. We might ask, however, why the castration anxiety of Nathaniel’s childhood is coupled with the reappearance of a single figure. What were Freud’s intentions when he bound these two concepts together? He evidently wanted to show that Nathaniel is not successfully handling Secondary Narcissism, in which the double of the mirror stage fails to disappear. When experiencing infantile sexuality, or the mirror stage, the child is unaware of the object and mistakenly concludes that his own image is the ideal ego. This stage entails the secondary stage, but the primary stage, or mirror image, always appears as the surplus of repression. Unlike a well-adjusted individual, Nathaniel is unable to free himself of the fear of castration, which Freud termed as regression. The psychologist went on to assert that Nathaniel experienced “a regression to a time when the ego had not yet marked itself off sharply from the external world and from other people” (S.E., 17, 1919, 236). As Freud pointed out, in his examination of the game of fort-da, a child’s terror of the double inspires him to repeat the same thing over and over. Unlike adults, who grow bored with repetition, a child cannot grasp the difference. If an average adult has no interest in hearing the same story, a child is endlessly entertained by a repetition of the same story. Freud argued that the unconscious mind’s compulsion to repeat is so powerful as to overrule the pleasure principle, and this demonic power appears to be the residue of animistic mental activity within us. In other words, it is

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the return of the repressed (a surplus emotion), “something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression” (241). If the prefix “un” is the token of repression, as Freud suggested, then the uncanny signals the return of the unconscious, which has undergone repression and returned as surplus. The uncanny is the remains of cognition, as indicated in the work of William James and affirmed by recent developments in neuroscience. If repression corresponds to the image-making process carried out by consciousness, it will always produce a surplus of emotion, body, sense, or materiality. As discussed, consciousness cannot directly contact the lower portion of the brain. Indeed, the only way that consciousness can reach this part of the brain is by drawing upon the personal experiences that are stored in the upper portion of the brain, namely, the memory traces in the frontal cortex. Hence, the question remains: If we want to avoid regression, the demonic power of repetition, and a disaster like the death of Nathaniel, what should we do? In other words, is there a way to escape the demonic power of the ghost? Let us consider the circumstances leading up to the miserable death of Miles in The Turn of the Screw. In Henry James’s disturbing story, the governess believes that she is being monitored by evil spirits, and yet she is the only member of the household who can see the specters. She clearly lacks the background and experience to deal with the young boy, who has been dismissed from school without a clear explanation. Her response to the situation is shaped by her upbringing as the daughter of a country pastor, but she is also deeply influenced by her previous interview with the children’s attractive uncle, who urged her to take full responsibility for them. Blinded by feelings of anxiety, she is unable to understand the motives of the young boy, who is, after all, the product of an entirely different class. If the governess had regarded the ghost with the surplus emotion that was produced as the remains of her previous experiences—and if she had bothered to imagine Miles as an individual different than herself—she might have averted a tragic outcome. Notably, we learn from the narrator of the story’s preface that the governess had been overcome with regrets later in life. Perhaps helpful advice can be found to those seeking to avoid such mistakes in the following essay, which appeared one year after the publication of the “The ‘Uncanny’.” As an alternative to the demonic power of repetition that arises within the unconscious, Freud introduced two important concepts in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”: the death instinct and the circuitous paths to death. At this point, he presented the powerful analogy of the fort-da game, which was commonly played by children who were one-and-a-half years old. Unlike adults, who tend to enjoy novelty, young children enjoy repetition, which

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distracts them from unpleasant feelings arising from the absence of their mothers. The desire to continually relive an identical experience reflects the influence of the demonic power seeking to restore things to an earlier state. Indeed, Darwin asserted that every organism strives for inertia, driven by this same urge, which Freud referred to as “the death instinct.” If this is so, there must be a life instinct that offers an alternative to death. This instinct slows down the compulsion to repeat by detouring before the organism achieves its goal of death. Freud commented that “these circuitous paths to death, faithfully kept by the conservative instincts, would thus present us today with the picture of the phenomena of life” (S.E., 18, 1920, 39). The short-circuit he described arises from a deep instinct, given that the aim of all life is death. After all, inanimate things existed before living ones. Freud encouraged us to take comfort in the option of detouring death: “What we cannot reach flying, we must reach limping. . . . The Book tells us it is no sin to limp” (64). We can assume that Jacques Lacan shared this view, arguing for circuitous paths to death by means of the sublime object a in his formula of desire.

LACAN’S THE SUBLIME OBJECT: SURPLUS JOUISSANCE Lacan announced his new psychology with two distinctive catchphrases: “Return to Freud” and “The unconscious is structured like language.” These two premises are, in fact, combined into a single idea concerning the position of the unconscious. Unlike Freud, who presented the unconscious as a subversive power (even though it is repressed by consciousness), Lacan sought to posit it within society, especially in language. He was evidently influenced by the intellectual movement of (Post) Structuralism, which sought to explore how the unconscious appears within the psyche of those participating in language and society. In this vein, Lacan famously argued: We only grasp the unconscious finally when it is explicated, in that part of it which is articulated by passing into words. It is for this reason that we have the right—all the more so as the development of Freud’s discovery will demonstrate—to recognize that the unconscious itself has in the end no other structure than the structure of language. (1992, 32)

Structuralism contends that language is an arbitrary system in a particular society that functions in terms of its difference. Hence, a signifier does not have an absolute signified. Aware that the meaning of language is personal coupled with one’s experiences that are stored in memory traces, Lacan

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introduced the term “the play of signifier” to highlight the fact that a certain signifier has a series of signified that are related to time and place. This calls to mind William James’s concept of stream of consciousness. Accordingly, Lacan noted that the unconscious regularly surfaces in speech, in the form of so-called parole. Building on Freud’s presentation of the mirror stage as the unconscious, Lacan coined the term “The Symbolic” in corresponding to the Freudian term, the Reality Principle. He was particularly concerned about the mode of the unconscious in the Symbolic, arguing that it existed as the remains, or the Surplus Jouissance. Yet, this surplus cannot be perceived solely as the remains, given that it also functions as the cause of the symbolic, as the former produces the latter. Without repression, there can be no desire, for the prohibition itself is a cause of desire. This means that, if the surplus is ignored, the Symbolic itself is threatened with destruction. Moreover, it emerges as a subversive power if we try to delete it, as its original form is a demonic power that points toward death. This led Lacan to coin yet another term “The Real,” which refers to the real face of the law. As we know, Freud proposed the figure of the dead father as the origin of all law and civilization in Totem and Taboo. His writings suggest that the primal father was the real father, who alone enjoyed jouissance. For Lacan, the Real contained elements of both destruction and construction, since the demonic power of the primal father was the origin of law and society. In this vein, Lacan asserted, “I can only know the Thing by means of the Law,” or “Without the Law the Thing is dead” (1992, 83). Given that death serves as the origin of life, it demands our respect. After all, in its absence, there would be no law (or life). Lacan made this point when he formulated, Kant with Sade, arguing that without the ghost (or surplus) of Sade, there would be no Kant. In short, the ghost serves as either a demon or angel, depending upon the situation. Pointing to the ambivalence of the dead father, Lacan stressed the importance of surplus jouissance in the symbolic. He noted that the unconscious lurks within the conscious judgment, as in the mode of Sade with Kant. Therefore, we cannot push the Thing beyond its limit, whether it represents Sade or Kant. In his argument, Lacan repeatedly promoted one concept: the “sublimation” of the surplus, or as Freud described it, “the circuitous path to death.” Given the discrepancy that exists between The Thing and the object (1992, 98), sublimation is the only way for the subject to survive. The Thing may look like a desirable object, but it turns out to be nothing—death—once you reach it, for the real face of the law is the dead father. Yet, Lacan pointed out that sublimation is not just about art; it also “creates socially recognized values,” as it forms the essence of the ethics of psychoanalysis (1992, 107). He presented the example of a painting produced by a melancholic woman that happens to hang on a wall that features the work of a famous painter.

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Viewed in this context, her painting is perceived as a masterpiece. Likewise, the aim of life should be sublimated. In his theory of desire, Lacan encouraged us to sublimate the desirable object because the object comprises nothing but a lure to sustain our life. Perhaps this is the reason that he described the mirror stage as “The Imaginary.” Without the fantasy of the mirror stage—the point at which the child confuses his or her image with that of the ideal ego—there can be no sublime object in the symbolic, given that the double does not disappear. The sublimation of surplus emotion requires keeping a distance from the object, which enables us to create a fantasy object that serves as the subject of desire. Hence, the mirror stage is the origin of imagination, a fantasy created by a grown-up to move forward in life. With this in mind, Lacan treated “Courtly Love” as the sublimation of surplus emotion, as well as other emotions. He explained that in courtly love, a paradigm of sublimation that permeated in France (11C-13C), a desirable woman is placed in an unreachable position as the poet praises her beauty and virtue in elevated language. Lacan argued that this was “the turning point in European eroticism, and civilized as well” (1992, 100). Sublimation was intended to provide the object with a fantasy which conceals the fact that no sexuality is involved. Moreover, such prohibitions make the woman more desirable. Lacan presented Sophocles’s play, Antigone, as the very antithesis of courtly love. He noted in his paper, “The Splendor of Antigone” (1992, 243– 287), that the sublime element within the play is a product of its language. In any case, the work vividly illustrates how ignorance of surplus can bring about an unrecoverable disaster. Antigone’s plot hinges upon the eponymous protagonist’s decision to bury the body of her brother, who has been declared a traitor. It soon becomes evident that any attempt to give the young man a proper burial has been prohibited by Creon’s law. As the play unfolds, Antigone becomes an increasingly disturbing figure. At the same time, however, we are fascinated by her extreme behavior, and she is sublimated in her unbearable splendor. Antigone justifies her decision to choose her deceased brother over her husband and child by noting that her parents are dead, and she can therefore never have another brother. Her transgression of the law, ultimately, makes her a victim of the law. Lacan concluded that the drama of Antigone exemplifies the way in which an image can be constructed through language to produce a desirable effect. He pointed out that Antigone, by standing outside the law, becomes a symbol of the victim for freedom. Yet, her real face is cold and harsh, inviting comparison to the Thing in the realm of “Ate,” the Greek goddess of death (1992, 273). To put it succinctly, Antigone, who is the surplus jouissance of Creon’s law, has been elevated to the level of the sublime image by language itself. This might lead us to ask, How should Creon have handled this surplus

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emotion? Lacan, for his part, argued that Creon’s error was rooted in his decision to become involved in the matter in the first place. As Lacan observed, “the moral fruit that Creon harvests through his obstinacy and his insane orders is the dead son he carries in his arms” (1992, 277). The monarch is undone by his vain attempt to control surplus that is poised beyond the law. Had he recognized that Ate controls the terrain of the Other, which is beyond his jurisdiction, Creon might have saved his family as well as his kingdom.

TOWARD EMPATHY When we examine Kant’s concept of the Sublime, it becomes evident to us that Creon has confronted the equivalent of a storm that reflects the raw power of Nature poised beyond human cognition. Yet, we only feel a mysterious sense of awe when we watch a storm from behind the safety of a window. The concept of the sublime, after all, belongs not only to aesthetics but also to the ethics of psychoanalysis, and it is worth noting that Lacan’s Desire closely resembles Kant’s Reason. Both indicated that the ethics of consciousness is intended to elevate the surplus to the realm of the sublime. Freud appeared to agree with these two concepts when he observed that sublimation is the “circuitous paths to death.” Recent developments in neuroscience confirm that the force of the lower portion of the brain exceeds that of the higher portion, ensuring that surplus will always be part of the image-making process. Dealing with this surplus is a matter for the ethics of psychology. If we examine the figure of the governess in The Turn of the Screw, for example, it becomes clear that she is immature and therefore too willing to accept the objective reality of the ghosts. She fails to understand that the ghosts are products of her repressed mind. It becomes clear that her energy would have, ultimately, been better spent examining her past experiences and identifying the differences that separated her from the children rather than seeking to protect her charges from nonexistent ghosts. Her failure is rooted in the fact that she apparently lacks the virtue of empathy. Standing in sharp contrast to the governess is Strether, the mature protagonist of The Ambassadors, who responds more appropriately to the phenomenon of surplus emotion. At the outset of his Parisian adventure, Strether is invited to the home of a famous sculptor, where he is introduced to Madame de Vionnet, a beautiful woman of the kind he has only imagined. As a product of nineteenth-century American society, with its conservative values, he perceives Madame de Vionnet as an anxious mother determined to marry off her daughter to the eligible Chad. In the end, he grasps the truth and recognizes that Madame de Vionnet and Chad, despite all appearances, are lovers. In the process, Strether is forced to confront the fact that his prospective stepson, Chad, has

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deliberately manipulated him. Given this outcome, we might be tempted to conclude that Strether has been left with nothing at all. It seems to assume that his relationship with his former fiancée is over, depriving him of the chance for a materially advantageous marriage. In spite of his seemingly failure, his misreading of the situation in Paris has enabled him to live a fuller life. By elevating the lady, the Thing, to the level of a sublime figure within the sublime cathedral, he shows the reader a circuitous path to death (or nothing) by limping toward the fantasy object. His empathy will prove a key element in his ability to live with others in society. Once again, his journey differs from that of the governess, who is unable to empathize with those she encounters in her new environment. This is particularly true in the case of Miles, whom she harms. If empathy is a great gift to humans as evolved animals, it also served as the overriding concern of Henry James as he set out to develop his narrative form—a subject that will be my next topic. NOTES 1. See Henry James Letters Vol. IV. 1895–1916. Ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 24. 2. About Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, see p. 88 of The Seminar XI. Lacan notices that Begin by walking out of the room in which no doubt it has long held your attention. It is then that, turning round as you leave—as the author of the Anamorphosis describes it—you apprehend in this form. . . . What? A skull. (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XI, pp. 79–90)

In the same context, Slavoj Zizek uses the words, “looking awry” for the title of his book, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (1991).

Chapter 3

Empathy and Free Indirect Discourse

Henry James’s encouragement of empathy through “Free Indirect Discourse” involves two basic steps: identification and distance. This approach not only serves as a substantial contribution to the field of narrative theory, but it also enriches our overall understanding of consciousness. When commenting on the modern novel, Henry James emphasized its elasticity as well as its rare ability to capture human consciousness. In The Ambassadors, James tracks the development of his protagonist, Lambert Strether, as he repeatedly misinterprets social cues in a new and unfamiliar environment. Yet, Strether comes to recognize his mistakes, and he even benefits from them. We learn, for instance, that the protagonist sublimates his misplaced idealization of Madame Vionnet in ways that enable him to live a fuller life that is characterized by greater empathy for others. James illustrates this process through the application of a narrative technique known as “Free Indirect Discourse.” Drawing on this technique, the narrator faithfully describes events from the perspective of the protagonist, even as he or she reveals the ways in which the character’s consciousness is transformed by those events. On the one hand, the narrator’s rich description of the protagonist’s inner thoughts, actions, and reactions invites the reader to identify with the character. On the other hand, the narrator maintains a careful distance from the protagonist, enabling the reader to render a balanced judgment. In this chapter, I will examine empathy from a traditional perspective while also placing it in the context of recent developments within neuroscience. Ultimately, I will show how James’s formal renovation of the concept relates to practice and enhances our understanding of the ethics of empathy. Evidence of the evolution of human consciousness can be seen in the striking cave paintings found at Lascaux, France, which were completed more than fifteen thousand years ago, as well as similar paintings located 61

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on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, which are more than forty thousand years old. Both sets of paintings depict herds of running animals that primitive humans pursued in their perilous struggle for survival. The cave paintings highlight the fact that humans, at an early stage, began to differentiate themselves from other animals. At the same time, the paintings reflect the human capacity to reconstruct a partially fictionalized image of the past from memories stored within our consciousness. The creation of these paintings may have served to overcome the critical moment, or to mitigate the trauma experienced in a deadly hunt. Whatever the case, the fictional element in these works reflects the development of imagination, which enabled primitive humans to represent their feelings and memories in the form of paintings and, later, stories. The importance of storytelling became evident when humans began to share their experiences with others in the process of forming villages and societies. Primitive humans discovered that if they were to communicate effectively with their neighbors, they must rely upon language. As consciousness developed and society became increasingly complex, episodic memory—apart from habit—became a more personal affair. Meanwhile, language was required to convey a wider variety of experiences, and its meaning became more complicated and less transparent. As we know, whenever consciousness is filtered by emotion, it becomes difficult to differentiate subjective feelings from cognition and judgment. Thus, humans, in their dealings with society—and even with themselves— came to rely upon the ethics of empathy. Along with memory and emotion, empathy is a chief component in consciousness. Indeed, this truth is reflected in the growing importance of art (especially narrative art) as society became more complex and communication became more challenging. Over time, the inner balance between the individual and society became increasingly fragile, which resulted in a serious dilemma. Lynn Kapitan, editor of Art Therapy, has pointed out that “to appreciate a person’s illness we must use our human capacity for empathy” by mobilizing our capacity to restore homeostasis (2011, 158). Consciousness as empathy is integral to the human experience of society, for we operate as selfconscious animals, standing alone while at the same time, seeing ourselves as viewed by others. The act of seeing tends to be equal to that of interpretation; and securing a proper vision of the world that takes into consideration the perspective of others requires practice and learning. To avoid repeating the errors that invariably occur as we confront real life, we must gain indirect experience through art, especially narrative art, which encourages us to empathize with a fictional character. In this effort, we are assisted by the fact that consciousness as empathy has a formidable ally in the unique plasticity of the human brain, which creates an inner balance known as homeostasis.

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As noted earlier, Henry James explored human consciousness through novels in which characters make mistakes, acknowledge those errors, and come away with a broader view of reality. James’s narrative strategy facilitates feelings of empathy within the reader, who identifies with the reflector, that is, the privileged character who watches events unfold. At the same time, the reader must gradually adopt a more detached view of this character, if he or she is to interpret the narrative. This as-if mode is nothing new in the history of narrative art, although James’s mode of representation is decidedly unique. We find significant precedents for this mode in the tragedies of Ancient Greece. Indeed, Aristotle, in his celebrated Poetics, offered a close examination of Sophocles’s King Oedipus that integrated the principles of mimesis with those of biology. In Poetics, Aristotle suggested that the aesthetics of the play enabled viewers to derive bodily pleasure by imitating the character’s actions. At the same time, he argued, viewers must achieve a degree of mental detachment from the protagonist to grasp the story’s meaning. In this way, the plot facilitates the construction of a bridge linking identification and moral judgment. Through the plot, which is essentially an imitation of the protagonist’s actions, the viewer adopts the hero’s perspective and experiences a strong desire to know what will happen next. This dynamic process concludes with the narrative’s climax, the point at which the viewer perceives the irony of the plot’s unexpected ending. During this reversal, the viewer’s emotional tension, which had been escalating, finds a sudden release. This process entails a restoration of balance, which is at the heart of the concept of catharsis. Aristotle’s insightful analysis calls to mind the more recent work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who has asked us to regard feelings as the “mental deputies” of homeostasis—at least in terms of creativity. In The Strange Order of Things (2018), Damasio argued that art and other cultural activities are closely related to the feelings that help us achieve homeostasis, a condition critical to the survival of all animals. This is consistent with Aristotle’s assertion that the audience, when experiencing the plot, achieve homeostasis as they cope with the emotions involved in identifying with the protagonist and then arrives at a cognitive judgment. Hence, we should avoid treating art, empathy, and biology as separate dimensions within human consciousness. The subject of empathy, a quality long associated with narrative art, has also popped up repeatedly in the fields of psychology and biology. In 1900, for instance, Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) adapted Robert Vischer’s term Einfulung, a German word that means, “feeling into.” In the title of Lipps’s groundbreaking essay “Aesthetische Emfuhlung,” he described the human instinct for inner resonance: the capacity to tune into the experience of a person that one observes and to put oneself in his or her place. Nine years later, in 1909, Edward Titchener introduced the term “empathy,”

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which refers to one’s capacity to project oneself into what one observes.1 More than fifty years later, in 1963, Robert L. Katz, in Empathy: Its Nature and Uses, described empathy as a counterpoise that neutralizes the tension between identification and detachment—or to put it another way: a quality that achieves a “balancing of involvement and disengagement” (39–40). This concept is consistent with ideas proposed almost two decades earlier by Otto Fenichel. In The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1945), Fenichel states that empathy involves two distinct acts: “(a) an identification with the other person, and (b) an awareness of one’s own feelings after the identification, and in this way an awareness of the object’s feelings” (39). Katz, on the other hand, placed empathy squarely within the context of cognitive neuroscience. His elaboration upon the concept of empathy not only echoed the classic psychological works of William James and Sigmund Freud, but it also anticipated the discovery of the mirror neuron system by researchers in the field of neuroscience. Given that our understanding of others relies on two stages of empathy, it goes to follow that speech involves a combination of bodily imitation and cognitive detachment. This view of language gained influential support in 1992, when neuroscientists discovered that mirror neurons effectively control the inferior frontal cortex. These mirror neurons modulate their activity not only in cases where an individual executes a specific motor action, but also in those instances when he or she observes the same action being performed by another individual. This process calls to mind the instinct for imitation that is outlined in the mimetic theory of art. Not surprisingly, the mirror neuron system, also known as Broca’s area, can be found in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for language processing and speech production. This underscores the fact that the body is the main source of language. As each of us recalls the past in the context of the present, our mind and body work together to participate in the dual system of empathy. Indeed, empathy plays a critical role in psychoanalysis, where dialogue is used as a tool to uncover the source of a mental disorder. Along with memory and emotion, empathy is a central component of consciousness. For humans, as social animals, it is truly invaluable. After all, we live in the world as self-conscious individuals but feel the urgent desire to bond with others. Sustaining a balance between ourselves and the world is an ongoing challenge, as Freud notes in his description of the continual struggle between the superego and the id. Before we examine Henry James’s narrative strategy of Free Indirect Discourse, we should review the concepts of empathy proposed by William James and Freud, as well as recent neuroscientists. This will help us to appreciate why it is so challenging for us to perform empathy in real life—and why we require practice through exposure to fiction. When we read Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, for instance,

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we gradually recognize that the governess’s lack of empathy has done great harm to her young charge, Miles. Despite her apparent love for the child, which is expressed in her desire to protect him from evil, the governess fails to understand Miles. She simply lacks the life experience needed to imagine herself in the child’s position.

THE COGNITIVE EMPATHY OF WILLIAM JAMES James’s brother, William, had a good deal to say about empathy. In The Principles, William presented several key points about this quality. Starting with the proposition that every thought is part of a personal consciousness, William went on to assert that thought depends upon the object. These interrelated ideas serve as the foundation of his proposal that thought can best be understood as a flow, rather than a solid entity. Each time we face an object, our thoughts about that object have already experienced some change. William indicated that this change reflects the growth of our experience, in line with the updated memory traces. Ultimately, this premise not only served as the groundwork for James’s psychology, but it also gave rise to the concepts of empathy, intersubjectivity, and stream of consciousness. In time, his work would influence the development of phenomenology and, later, cognitive neuroscience. James, after all, provided the critical insight that thought is integrally related to the object and is therefore intentional. In the absence of the object, James argued, there can be no thought. Hence, the object contains all that surrounds it, including the individual, the world, materiality, and the environment. As we function as beings-in-the world, our thoughts are already present within the minds of others. However, this raises a question about the apparently contradictory nature of these components: If one’s thought is subjective and personal, how can it be already present in the mind of the other? Or, perhaps, we could pose a related question: If one cannot exist without the other, why does one feel absolutely alone in this world? William James presented these seemingly contradictory elements—solitude and empathy—as intrinsic properties of human nature. He arrived at the conclusion that we are eternally insulated from every other soul: No thought even comes into direct sight of a thought in another personal consciousness than its own. Absolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law. It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought but my thought, every thought being owned. Neither contemporaneity nor proximity in space, not similarity of quality and content are able to fuse thoughts together which are sundered by this barrier of belonging to different

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personal minds. The breaches between such thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature. (PP, 1: 151)

William James’s insistence upon the isolation of the self finds parallels in recent research on the evolution of memory, including the work of Endel Tulving, who examined the concept of self-conscious from the perspective of episodic memory.2 In contrast, however, James also insisted upon the intentionality of thought, arguing that the self cannot be separated from the world. If so, it is equally true that the self cannot be separated from other minds operating within the world. James further contended that the self is neither entirely alone nor separable from the materiality within and without—a materiality that includes our body as well as the senses posited within the lower portion of our brain, which are repressed by consciousness. James went on to suggest that “a man’s self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children,” along with his reputation, his work, his lands, his horses, his yacht, and his bank account (PP, 1: 193). For this reason, it is striking that, in The Portrait of the Lady, Henry James’s protagonist, Isabel, reacts so strongly against Madame Merle’s assertion of a material self. What compels Isabel to thoroughly reject this concept? We know that Isabel eventually comes to terms with the fact that she has been manipulated by Madame Merle, and she accepts that this turn of events has been the product of her own naïve idealism. Yet, this begs another question: Why does Isabel need this punishing experience to understand that her vision is part of the object and its surrounding environment? As we know, William argued that the mind and world are composed of the same stuff. This would suggest that the knower cannot be separated from the object that is known. In the twentieth century, French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a proponent of existentialism and phenomenology, coined the term “chiasm” (or intertwined) to describe this related self. Taking a similar view, William James argued that the material self is a part of the social self—and even the spiritual self. In doing so, he noticed that intersubjectivity is the origin of empathy. At the same time, however, humans are evidently unaware of materials, or the way in which the body is mediated by consciousness. Hence, it appears as though the system of empathy differs little from the memory system, in which the past is closely intertwined with the present. More recently, French philosopher Frederique de Vignemont argued that since we cannot recall the past exactly as it transpired, there is little reason to believe we can perceive the other’s mind with any certitude. Thus, empathy consists of two stages: “mirror empathy and reconstructive empathy” (2010, 290). This dual condition calls to mind the dual-aspect monism involved in affect and cognition: the mirror stage of the body (or materiality) and the

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image-making process of consciousness. If this is so, we can only arrive at an estimate of the other’s perspective as if we were in his or her position. Yet, despite the assumptions involved in this estimation, we tend to be quite confident about our interpretation of the other’s mind, in the same way that we believe our memories are accurate reproductions of the past. The point is that materiality belongs to the unconscious, so we hold on to a mistaken belief in the transparency of our vision, which enables us to identify our position with that of our mind. On a conscious level, we are unaware of the mirror stage and material self, for such awareness might reveal the fact that we cannot truly put ourselves in the position of others. This phenomenon is illustrated in the novels of Henry James, and as readers, we see it reflected in Isabel’s willful naïveté, in The Portrait of a Lady, and the governess’s destructive lack of empathy, in The Turn of the Screw. Aware of this unconscious stage of empathy, William James asserts that we can only conceive the internal states of others. Ultimately, we are limited to conceiving, as opposed to perceiving, given the dualistic nature of our brain, which draws upon signals above and below the limbic system. Drawing upon the disciplines of neurobiology and phenomenology, British philosopher Matthew Ratcliffe insisted that the world in which we live cannot be seen as the object of knowledge. On the contrary, it is a world of the possible (139). Since we are unable to feel the unconscious part of the body (or materiality), we experience the sensation of being alone, as if we were insulated from every other soul. Yet, despite these feelings of alienation, we must come to terms with the reality that we are born into this world and function as a part of society and the environment. Thus, William James’s argument that thought is simultaneously personal and intentional is not necessarily a contradiction, as his proposition is built on the principle of dual-aspect monism. Like the phenomenon of remembering the past within the context of the present, empathy is the product of a dual system made possible by the remarkable plasticity of the human brain. This likely accounts for the fact that many of the same concepts found in classical psychology are also present in recent neuroscientific research. As we operate within a system of dual-monism, experience alone can teach us that there is a hidden area of the mind that returns continuously. If we ignore or suppress this part of the mind, our understanding of it will burst forth in the wake of serious blunders. Our chance of committing these kinds of errors, however, could be minimized by securing indirect experience of empathy by immersing ourselves in works of fiction. The James brothers appeared to believe that our experience of life bears a close resemblance to our experience of reading fiction. In his article, “Does Consciousness Exist?” (1904), William James argued that “this world, just like the world of percepts, comes to us at first as a chaos of experiences, but

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lines of order soon get traced” (482). If we apply this statement to the field of aesthetics, we find that it stands in stark opposition to a central tenet of Russian Formalism, an intellectual movement that emerged in the Soviet Union during the early twentieth century. A reaction against traditional approaches to art and literature, which placed an overwhelming emphasis on the content of an artistic work, Russian Formalism focuses on the analysis of form. Proponents introduced new terms, sjuzhet and fabula, which correspond to the concepts of form and content. Under their influence, the focus of literary criticism soon shifted from fabula, the chronological sequence of events found in a narrative, to sjuzhet, the scattered order in which the content is presented to the reader. Interestingly, if we were to reverse the Formalists’ position, we would gain insight into the way in which we create meaning from reality. During each moment of our lives, we are confronted with a rather scattered reality, which we struggle to comprehend by applying our cognitive skills. The hippocampus follows the sequence of time (while gaining access to the past experiences stored in the memory traces) and makes judgments about the present situation. In other words, our minds move from sjuzhet (reality) to fabula (cognition). Hence, if we accept the view of the cognitive process presented by William James in 1904, it becomes clear that the experience of reading fiction has much in common with the experience of dealing with real life: from a chaos of experiences to lines of order. Consciousness follows narrative time, and both proceed in accordance with our updated experiences. Hence, we never experience the same bodily sensation twice, in the same way that we never read the same book twice. Indeed, we never conceive of anything in quite the same way, given the changing nature of our mind. Our memory-images, after all, are pale reflections of previous perceptions. William James set out to capture the dynamic quality of the human mind in the following words: “The brain-redistributions are in infinite variety” (PP, 1: 157). Due to human evolution, our lives rely heavily on our experience of empathy, and few have contributed more to our understanding of this quality than the James brothers. As noted, we can therefore prepare ourselves for real-life struggles by reading the fiction of Henry James, whose characters make painful mistakes, experience the repressed, and eventually improve themselves. As Meghan M. Hammond observed in “Into Other Minds: William and Henry James” (2014), “both James brothers must be thanked for helping to shape our modern understanding of cognitive empathy as something to desire, fear, and doubt all at once” (33). In a memorable passage, she pointed out that Henry James even encouraged readers to make assumptions about the mind of a young child in What Maisie Knew, as though he were seeking to caution them against “reading” a child’s mind from their own (adult) perspective. Hammond concluded,

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In these final years, James takes a sustained interest in telling his own story as both a transatlantic mind and as an artist whose lifelong task has been to represent human consciousness and push the limits of fellow feeling and mindreading. (42)

Henry’s open invitation to misread the mind of a child calls attention to our collective tendency to impose our own perspective upon the minds of others. Yet, it seems natural to ask why we frequently learn about empathy through narratives devised by such authors as Henry James, as opposed to acquiring this knowledge through real-life experiences. Perhaps we should pose another question, Why are we unaware of the material part of ourselves? Addressing this question may require a deeper examination of the nature of the unconscious and the so-called mirror stage of empathy. This inquiry will lead us to Freud’s introduction of the following concepts: the unconscious as a group contagion, primary narcissism, and group psychology. We must remember that in the absence of empathy, there would be no “talking cure,” which has become a key approach to psychoanalysis.

THE UNCONSCIOUS AS EMOTIONAL CONTAGION Although William and Henry James added much to our understanding of cognitive empathy, we must not overlook the fact that Freud shed important light on the origins of empathy. To put it differently, the James brothers addressed the revolutionary concept of consciousness, while Freud devoted his entire career to the revolutionary concept of the unconscious. His work in this area remains relevant. Indeed, South African psychoanalyst Mark Solms, who helped pave the way for the new field of neuro-psychoanalysis in the 1990s, encouraged us to examine Freud’s work in an entirely new context. In his essay “Freud Returns” (2004), Solms placed the Freudian term “infantile amnesia” in the context of “implicit memory.” As he pointed out, Freud speculated that our earliest memories, while not entirely forgotten, cannot be retrieved on a conscious level. At the same time, such memories remain in the body as traces and continue to exert an influence upon adult feelings and behaviors. Solms called attention to Freud’s premise that “a good deal of our mental activity is unconsciously motivated” (85). In other words, the animal within us survives, beyond the barriers of consciousness, as surplus emotion. We might ask, What, then, is the nature of the unconscious that was posited by Freud, and what role does it play in the construction of empathy? While Freud explored the unconscious in a variety of contexts, he took care to establish clear boundaries around the concept. When he wrote about the structure of the human subject, for instance, he views self as comprising

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of two stages: the primary narcissism and the secondary narcissism, as the former is repressed as the unconscious. Likewise, the ego-libido is developed into the object-libido. In his discussion of female sexuality, Freud presented the affectionate current as the antithesis of the sensual current as he stressed that the death instinct, a self-destructive impulse, as antithesis of the life instinct. All these seemingly contrasting components are, in fact, dual aspects and yet in monism. So does empathy, as the very term of social animal implies. After all, we are not exactly animals, but aesthetic animals who identify with others even though we feel detached from others, who feel lonely and yet inevitably a part of others. In this sense, Frans de Waal, in his The Age of Empathy (2009), places the concept of empathy within a dual system involving the old herd instinct and the higher aesthetic sense. The old herd instinct largely corresponds with the sort of group psychology associated with emotional contagion as noticed in Freud’s essay “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” (1921). The origin of empathy as group psychology reflects Freud’s dire warning about the destructive power of the unconscious whenever humans lose contact with their individuality. He stressed that as individuals, we possess our own will and determination, while remaining conscious of our existence as viewed by others. Indeed, demonstrating that one has a conscience and takes responsibility for one’s actions is likely to improve one’s status in the eyes of others. In a group, however, humans frequently abandon such principles and regress into a state of unconsciousness. We are more likely to cast off the repression of our instinctual impulses in a group, where every act and sentiment becomes contagious to the degree that one’s personality is sacrificed for the collective interest. Freud described this phenomenon as follows: “Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct” (S.E., 18, 1921, 77). A crowd dismisses the idea of individuality and demands equal treatment for all members, with the notable exception of the leader, of course. Crowds move with spontaneity and ferocity, showing not a trace of doubt about their actions, for “the minds of lower intelligence bring down those of a higher order to their own level” (85). On those rare occasions when the leader happens to be constructive, a crowd’s enthusiasm can be utilized to establish a more equitable society. Even in those cases, however, power demands illusion, and when the leader loses his or her credibility, the crowds tend to scatter. Totalism simply cannot prevail under such circumstances. Freud termed the essence of the group mind as Eros, or Oneness, indicating that it unleashes an emotional contagion in which individuals have little awareness of one another. He further suggested that “identification is the original form of emotional tie with an object” (107). We are tempted to ask, How can one confront the phenomenon of emotional contagion and restore individualism?

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As noted earlier, the formation of human subject takes two steps of “the Mirror Stage” and the Symbolic. Since empathy is started with mirroring the object as the mirror neurons has proved, Freudian two stages of Narcissism would be replaced to Lacan’s terms. Before children are initiated into the object-libido, they misrecognize their own image reflected in the mirror as “the ideal ego.” They also closely identify with their mother, or someone who nourishes them as the ideal ego. This first stage of subject generally occurs when the child is anywhere from six months to eighteen months old. After this period of autoeroticism, the child gradually becomes conscious of the object—an indication he or she is becoming a self-conscious social animal. Freud referred to this second stage in the formation of the subject as “the Secondary Narcissism,” while Lacan termed it as “the Symbolic.” We must bear in mind, however, that the first stage involving the mirror image remains a powerful element in the adult psyche, even if it is repressed. When repressed, misrecognition (or Eros) becomes an even stronger sexual instinct, eventually giving rise to the faculty of imagination, or fantasy. Imagination not only entails a desire to love the other, but it also inspires us to participate in the development of civilization. In this sense, Lacan named the mirror stage as the Imaginary. Indeed, Freud argued that in the struggle between the ego-libido and object-libido, one entity will be depleted to the same extent that the other is employed. The distribution of libido is critically important because failure to achieve a balance in the dual libido is typically a factor in such mental disorders as psychosis, neurosis, psychopath, and perversion. The ideal way to handle this instinct is to sublimate it through an act of detouring. As noted in the previous chapter, detouring offers a means to experience the sublime object. The dynamic operating here bears close comparison to one associated with the concept of empathy. In short, achieving a balance between the ego-libido and object-libido involves both identification and detachment needed for empathy. Freud devoted a good deal of thought to the dilemma posed by the presence of animal instincts within the human psyche. In his essay “On Narcissism,” he presented what appears to be an ideal solution, one in which “the ideal ego” is introduced as a possible component of the unconscious to lead man into society. Freud stressed that while a child gazes at himself in the mirror and perceives the ideal image, an adult will project that image, “the ego-ideal,” to the object. As I noted earlier, he wrote, “Sublimation is a process that concerns object-libido and consists in the instinct’s directing itself towards an aim other than, and remote from, that of sexual satisfaction” (S.E., 14, 1914, 94). Since the ideal-ego has a strong social dimension, it is not only directed toward an individual object but also lends support to the common ideal of a family, a class, or a nation. Furthermore, in the process of sublimating the object into the ideal image, we may experience an increased sense of self-respect.

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It is hard to ignore the significant parallels that exist between sublimation and the ethics of empathy. Both involve two stages that facilitate our development as social animals. Mimicking the other is followed by an impulse to distance oneself from the other, which positions us to make a judgment. Not surprisingly, due to the first stage of imitation, the experience of a mother’s care is critical to the development of empathy. As we know, the child learns how to interact with others by emulating his or her mother’s behavior and mimicking her affection. While the child may derive pleasure from this act of mimicry, this practice could lay the ground for the development of an adult who is caring and accepting of others. Freud stressed the importance of the affectional current in an individual’s relationship with his or her mother, which could make up for any shortcoming in the adult’s sensual current. Indeed, if one’s first stage of identifying with his or her mother does not proceed properly, that individual may develop into an adult who lacks empathy, a psychopath, for instance. Building on this premise, Heinz Kohut, in his essay “On Empathy” (1981, 2010), focused on a mother’s care for her infant in his examination of the origins of empathy in the context of psychoanalysis. He suggested that empathy is most likely to develop in cases when a child feels he or she can be separated from the mother and always return to her. Freud’s chief contribution to our understanding of empathy rests on the dual-aspect monism between the first stage of identification and the second stage of detachment. He described the presence of the unconscious within group psychology as an emotional contagion that reflects the repressed animal instincts; he also drew a clear distinction between humans and animals. Humans differ from animals, in large part, because of the development of the ideal ego, which plants the seed for a human to become an individual through a process of sublimation. Freud acknowledged that a child’s emotional connection to the ideal ego through the mother is a form of identification. He added, however, that a mother’s care for her child enables the child to learn how to sublimate the other as the ego-ideal. This positions the child to care for others as an adult. A balance between the two libidos—identification and detachment—is part of the essential makeup of any emotionally healthy individual. In this vein, I will eventually examine Henry James’s fiction, with a focus on the balance between dual elements reflected in his characters. The governess in The Turn of the Screw, for instance, displays a lack of detachment that allows her to be caught up in an emotional contagion. This situation is reflected in her possessive attitude toward Miles. On the other hand, in The Ambassadors, protagonist Lambert Strether discovers the path to a fuller life by sublimating a woman who appears to be his ego-ideal. It scarcely matters that his perception of the situation proves to be little more than a fantasy.

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If we move beyond classical psychology and literature, however, we find that empathy has arisen as a focus of recent neuroscientific research. This is not surprising, when we consider that empathy is one of the brain’s major functions and operates in harmony with memory and emotion.

EMPATHY IN RECENT NEUROSCIENCE Readings of narrative art that emphasize the role of empathy can be traced back thousands of years, at least as far back as Aristotle’s Poetics. Over 2,000 years later, in the nineteenth century, Darwin’s biological research influenced the psychological theories of William James and Sigmund Freud, whose achievements would wait for more than half a century to receive affirmation from neuroscientific researchers. Such affirmation was made possible, in part, by the development of technology to examine the human brain, including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan. In 2000, Eric Kandel and Larry R. Squire became aware of an apparent breakdown between the study of the brain and the mind in the field of Neuroscience.3 In their efforts to connect the study of cell or molecular biology to psychology, they identified synaptic clefts as a source of communication and determined that the hippocampus, memory traces, and the limbic system served as a route to consciousness. Above all, they observed an interconnection involving the memory system, plasticity, and experience. On the one hand, the nervous system inherited many adaptations that are too important to be left to the vagaries of individual experience. On the other hand, the nervous system can adapt, or change, in response to events that we experience during our lifetime, “Experience can modify the nervous system, and as a result, organisms can learn and remember” (12). Hence, the concept of empathy cannot be divorced from considerations of experience, memory, and plasticity, as they apply to functions of the brain. A new level of scientific interest in emotion and empathy was inspired by the discovery of the mirror neuron system at Italy’s University of Parma in 1992. Significantly, this research indicated that the mirror neurons involved in the development of empathy also tended to elevate the function of language as a primary means of communication. This was especially true of speech, the performative side of language. The research further suggested that one’s ability to appreciate art reflects a capacity for empathy. The two components of empathy, including William James’s cognitive empathy and Sigmund Freud’s emotional contagion, are closely related to a sense of the past and the plasticity of brain. Similarly, Henry James’s fiction sheds light on the nature of consciousness, while showing how one’s experiences can alter one’s way of looking at reality. As Leon Edel observed, in The Life

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of Henry James, Henry’s fiction underscores the effects of previous experiences: “What he did try to describe was the sense of the past in man and woman of the present” (1: 249). Notably, this sense of the past in the present seems compatible with the premise that the Freudian unconscious exists in the context of present cognition. This raises questions about the relationship between mirror neurons and the experience of language. We might ask, How does speech contribute to the significance of reading a narrative? This leads us to another question: Why is the “as if mode” critical—in both narrative and neuroscience—to the development of empathy? Notably, Henry James’s desire to extend the boundaries of literary realism is not incompatible with his use of narrative devices such as ghosts and Free Indirect Discourse, which call attention to the fictionality involved in our perception of reality. Hence, these elements are an integral part of Henry’s approach to realism, and counterparts are evident in the psychological writings of William James and Sigmund Freud. At this point, it seems natural to examine the notion of empathy by breaking down the boundary between neuroscience and psychology.

SPEECH AS EMPATHY In his Poetics, Aristotle indicated the plot as an imitation of action that affects the audience in two distinct ways. First, it provides viewers with the pleasure of watching and imitating, drawing upon what we might describe today as the human instinct of emotional contagion. Yet, the viewer’s identification with the protagonist (in this case, Oedipus) is by no means complete, for he or she remains a self-conscious individual. Hence, the viewer makes his or her own judgment about the protagonist, as well as the meaning of the drama. Through empathy, we gain our own experience of the story, which is a production of language. We might ask why humans alone developed drama or narrative. Research has shown that other animals also look upon the object and respond bodily. Sandra Blakeslee in “Cells that Read Minds” (2006), noted that monkeys, too, have a mirror neuron system in the premotor cortex, which enables them to imitate and react to the gestures of the object. When a monkey observes a man holding a banana, for instance, it can interpret his bodily gestures to determine the likelihood of the man giving/sharing it. Furthermore, monkeys display a vague intuition about other animals’ intentions, which bears comparison to the emotional contagion found in humans. However, as Alison Jolly has argued, in “The Origin of Mind,” baboons are incapable of empathy. Given that they lack self-awareness, they simply form an alliance with the object, which, in this case, is its own kinship group. In the absence of self-awareness—the ability

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to differentiate between me and not-me—the baboon is incapable of developing language, history, and culture, unlike man (Jolly, 2007, 1326). The baboon’s mirror neuron system is generally known as the F5–PF frontoparietal cortical network, although it is sometimes described collectively as the F5 Neurons. The system is activated when baboons seek to interact with the object, whether that object is a member of its own kinship group or a human being. Significantly, Victorio Gallese, a leading scholar in the fields of neuroscience and phenomenology, indicated that F5 Neurons are the chief source of intersubjectivity. In his essay “The Root of Empathy” (2003), Gallese called attention to the homology that exists between a monkey’s area F5 and a human’s Broca’s region. He wrote, “it appears that even a part of the human brain traditionally considered to be unique to our species, nevertheless shares with its nonhuman precursor area a similar functional mechanism” (174). In short, the Broca’s region in humans does not appear to be involved exclusively in speech control. On the contrary, it shares qualities with a monkey’s area F5, insofar as it facilitates a prelinguistic analysis of the other’s behavior. Hence, we are reminded, once again, of the dual nature of the social bond implicit in Freud’s concept of emotional contagion and James’s concept of cognitive empathy. Indeed, proponents of phenomenology and neuro-psychoanalysis share the assumption that, from the onset of one’s life, subjectivity is already intersubjectivity. At the same time, there is a significant difference between the mirror neuron system of baboons and the Broca’s region of humans. The former does not go beyond bodily reaction, while the latter moves on to a chain of signifiers. In short, since the signifier of speech depends on the experience of the speaker and listener, the meaning is neither stable nor fixed. On the contrary, it flows continuously. Thus, there is an inevitable breakdown in communication as a result of the signified, which is transferred every time. Given that speech tends to be informed by inaccuracy, empathy is a critical element in communication. Beyond the empathy found among baboons, humans also possess cognitive empathy. Instinctively, however, humans linger at the first stage of emotional contagion because of the pleasure we derive from bodily imitation. Hence, just as we tend to ignore surplus speech, we regularly assume the other’s intentions are consistent with our own. We too often fail to consider the ways in which their experiences diverge from our own. Speech is invariably bound up with empathy, since the body, or emotional contagion, informs the words that we utter. At the same time, we are not fully conscious of this stage and retain our confidence in the transparency of words. This makes it extremely difficult for us to place ourselves in the other’s position. For, as it turns out, unconscious identification occurs more readily than conscious detachment. Therefore, it requires considerable experience and practice to achieve a balance between emotional contagion

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and cognitive empathy (An important means of practice involves sharing speech with others). Not surprisingly, researchers in various fields have come to recognize the significant role that empathy plays in normal human behavior. Leslie Brothers, who connected this topic to human psychology, observed that a deficit in empathy is a leading factor in the diagnosis of autism (1989, 13). Similarly, John Deigh proposed that psychopathy is the product of an affective disorder, as opposed to a cognitive one (1995). While cautioning us against the dangers of unconscious emotional contagion, Deigh wrote, To empathize with other, by contrast, one must recognize him as separate from oneself, a distinct person with a mind of his own, and such recognition requires that one retain a sense of oneself even as one takes up the other’s perspective and imaginatively participates in his life. (759)

Based on the evidence, we must conclude that lack of empathy is at the core of various mental disorders, including autism, mania, phobic states, alcoholism, and drug addiction. We should therefore consider it prudent to direct our thoughts toward the object, while also taking steps to avoid emotional contagion. Although mental disorders often involve an imbalance in the two stages of empathy, we should recall that even normal individuals are frequently unaware that they lack empathy. Recent neuroscientific research on affective and cognitive empathy sheds light on this phenomenon, as it exposes our automatic tendency to become caught up in emotional contagion. For instance, American neuropsychologist Douglas Watt, in his article “Toward a Neuroscience of Empathy” (2007), highlighted the critical importance of integrating affective and cognitive perspectives. More recently, Roman Krznaric, in Empathy: Why it Matters, and How to Get it (2015), defined empathy as “a constant awareness of the fact that your concerns are not everyone’s concerns and that your needs are not everyone’s needs, and that some compromise has to be achieved moment by moment” (xxi). Krznaric’s definition calls to mind Jacques Lacan’s advice to “lay down your gaze,” a phrase indicating that we can live a fuller life by downplaying our own desires and listening to other people. This seems to be an ideal way of “stepping into someone’s shoes,” as it reflects an intertwining of the “identification” needed to imagine the other’s feelings and the “distance” required to take another perspective. Interestingly, these elements appear consistent with the central theme of Aristotle’s Poetics, which indicates that apart from direct interaction with others, we can also foster empathy through the experience of narrative art.

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READING THE NARRATIVE: THE AS-IF MODE Almost overlapping with the discovery of mirror neurons was a critical reconsideration of the role of empathy in literature. For Ellen Dissanayake, Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why (1995) examined the aesthetic response in the context of psychobiology, while building on the work of German perceptual psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, who placed art in the dimension of perception, emotion, and learning, all at once. Drawing upon Arnheim’s argument on the unity of body and mind in art appreciation, she noticed that empathy operated in liaison with the two sides of the brain. As we know, the left brain is associated with rigidity, analytical skills, and patriarchal instincts, mainly because of its relationship with temporal processing, language, and thinking. The right brain, however, is associated with holistic instincts, intuition, and the feminine character, mainly because of its relationship with the body, visual-space processing, emotion, imagery, and analogue (153). Above all, the right brain handles the retrieval of memory. Art unites these two sides of the brain, in much the same way empathy unites emotional contagion and cognition. American author Jonah Lehrer, in Proust was a Neuroscientist (2007), a series of essays on creative figures, focused on the role of memory traces in remembering the past. Lehrer pointed out that previous experience is stored and updated at every moment of life, and this is equally true with the reading of fiction. In this sense, narrative art is the nearest thing to life; it is a means of amplifying one’s experience (2007, 51). The world we encounter is chaos, but we use our cerebral cortex to trace the outline of a narrative and arrive at “qualia,” the content of our subjective experiences. Perhaps the most striking aspect of Lehrer’s argument for the relevance of literature in scientific inquiry is the following premise: the same neurons respond when we see an actual mountain and when we imagine a mountain (117). This observation supports our consideration of the narrative form in the “as-if mode,” in which emotional contagion is coupled with cognitive appraisal. Scottish psychologist Alan M. Leslie, in “Pretense and Representation: The Origins of Theory of Mind” (1987), contended that the ego-libido, as an instinct, arises before the object-libido when a child perceives the object after the age of eighteen months. During this period, the child often begins to play the role of the mother, the father, the doctor, and so on, as if she were the object person (413). Through these role-playing exercises, she begins to learn skills related to sociability, given that she identifies with the object’s mind by imitating his or her actions and speech. At the same time, the child is conscious of the fact that she is not the object but merely pretending. The dual aspect of the “as if mode” is an analogue to the dual nature of humans as social animals, and it serves to integrate two observations described earlier:

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(1) Lehrer’s argument that the same neurons respond when we see a mountain and imagine one and (2) Vittorio Gallese’s conclusion that different neurons respond when we feel disgust and observe the disgust of a fictitious character. In his essay “Neuroscience and Phenomenology,” Gallese indicated that “there are other brain regions which uniquely activate during my disgust but not during your disgust or the disgust of a fictitious character in the narrative” (2011, 45). Perhaps these apparently contradictory scientific observations line up when we consider the two stages of empathy: identification and detachment. As noted, the dual aspect of empathy is critical to the maintenance of a healthy body and mind, as illustrated by the concept of “homeostasis,” which has been validated by neuroscientific research. The term homeostasis, which refers to a state of bodily balance, is often mentioned in the same breath as catharsis, a term associated with Ancient Greek tragedy. In “A Second Chance for Emotion” (2000), Antonio Damasio’s description of homeostasis declares that “emotions are always related to homeostatic regulation, always related to the process of promoting the maintenance of life, and always poised to avoid the loss of integrity that is a harbinger of death or death itself” (20). Hence, achieving a balance between external forces and one’s internal state is critical to maintaining our health. At the same time, however, this process unfolds unconsciously in partnership with hormone distribution, which is beyond our control. The question remains: Is there any way to achieve homeostasis by means of a conscious effort? As noted in the previous chapter, the evolution of consciousness unfolded in a bottom-up process, moving from the brain’s stem to the cerebral cortex and mediated by the limbic system. Our understanding of this process is enhanced when we classify these systems as follows: the proto self, which comprises raw affective neurons; the core self, and the autobiographical self. Notably, neuroscientists Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven have argued that even if the brain functions unconsciously in a bottom-up process, we can consciously facilitate homeostasis through a top-down process that involves reading narratives or creating art (2012, 396). Perhaps the concept of catharsis, which was introduced in Aristotle’s Poetics, describes a similar means of maintaining one’s bodily balance through emotional purgation. As audience experience the plot of a tragedy, they undergo the emotional tension involved in imitating the character’s action, which we now describe as the “as-if mode.” This tension gradually escalates until the tragedy reaches a climax, which facilitates an emotional release that involves reversal and discovery. This emotional purgation, or catharsis, enables the audience to restore a balance of mind and body through a top-down process. The utility of literature, however, is rooted not only in the experience of the plot, but also from the process of reading, through which we can experience

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a balance between the unconscious and consciousness. Furthermore, like remembering the past, reading a narrative is closely related to time and surplus memory. We remember the past in the context of the present situation, but we are nevertheless apt to believe in the transparency of the past. The memory traces updated by our experiences are unconsciously hidden from us, as surplus memory. Our recognition of this fact occurs only when we commit blunders of the sort associated with Henry James’s fictional characters. Hence, reading a narrative in time highlights the fact that the text expands in tandem with our own personal growth. Hence, the narrative self can be regarded as the time self and the empathy self. Reading is an ongoing process of intersubjective recognition that nourishes empathy. Winfried Fluck, in “Reading for Recognition” (2013), noted that empathy is constructed and transferred over time. He added that narrative and empathy are intimately connected to the flow of time in which the meaning of the text is transferred. If we accept this premise, the phenomenological view of reading advocated by Paul Ricoeur merits our renewed attention. After all, Ricoeur argued that when we read a narrative, our mind shifts back and forth between the text and our present memories, facilitating the transfer of empathy while also encouraging our growth in an ongoing process of intersubjectivity. Given that reading a narrative involves an experience of the unconscious combined with consciousness, we might ask the following, In what way does fiction enable the reader to experience both emotional contagion and cognitive empathy, while appearing to replicate the direct experience of reality? We already know that exposing the reader to various scenes and dialogue is more effective than relating information in an authorial tone. Considering the creative method invented by the author is crucial for the reader to nourish empathy in this sense. In the following section, I will shed light on the manner in which Henry James developed a narrative device capable of fostering the reader’s empathy.

FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE James believed that reality was a series of events that flowed continuously in time, in much the same way our consciousness flows. With this as his starting point, he argued that fiction should depict the real as potential, as opposed to a fixed ideal that is hidden somewhere. To represent the surplus of memory within the context of cognition, James adopted the narrative device of the ghost, as noted in the previous chapter. At the same time, he introduced another device: a target character who would provide the reader with access to his or her perceptions of (and responses to) the world. A third device James employed was the phenomenon of a similar scene that shows

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significant differences. Memorable examples of this device include Isabel’s eye-opening glimpse of the intimacy between Madame Merle and Osmond, and Strether’s transformative view of the couple boating on a river on the outskirts of Paris. In this case, the vista reminds Strether of a painting he was tempted to purchase years earlier in a Boston gallery. Through his repetition of a similar scene with significant differences, James heightens his representation of a character who is coping with the fact that he or she has committed a serious mistake and is therefore no longer confident about the perceptions of consciousness. Under these circumstances, James felt it was important to create a fantasy in which the reader could experience the entire process on his or her own terms. He took care to provide the reader with the narrative time and space that enables him or her to experience firsthand the surplus memory and change of vision. Pericles Lewis, in his essay “The Reality of the Unseen: Shared Fictions and Religious Experience in the Ghost Stories of Henry James” (2005), presented one of James’s stories, “The Beast in the Jungle,” as an example of the effect of unseen surplus on a character’s mindset and actions. While the beast is unseen, its impact can be witnessed in the life of protagonist John Marcher, and it clearly affects his relationship with May Bartram, a woman who evidently cares for him. So, it is not ultimately important whether the beast is real or not. Lewis went on to define the style indirect libre as a literary mode in which the reader must be attentive to slight differences between the protagonist’s observations and the narrator’s suggestions. He concludes that “the great gulf between Marcher’s perceptions and the reader’s is a product of James’s fine irony and a harbinger of much in modernist fiction” (53). For this reason, among others, the narrative provides the reader with enough space to make a judgment, as he or she gradually becomes detached from the character. Meanwhile, the meaning of the beast is endlessly deferred not just in the context of James’s text but in the outside of text. Significantly, Leon Edel, in his Life of Henry James (2: 800), reported that on December 2, 1915, James experienced a mild stroke. His maid, Minnie Kidd, later reported that she heard James say, “It’s the beast in the jungle, and it’s sprung.” If this account is true, it seems possible that the beast represented James’s fear of death. At the same time, it could have symbolized a fear of consciousness, or something real that is beyond our control. The possibilities are indeed endless. The ambiguity of meaning also extends to the space of interpretation, given the narrator’s specific position. Along the same lines, James appears to enjoy the gulf that exists between a grown-up’s perceptions and a child’s vision. In this vein, he gives readers the space to identify and step back from the character, as reflected in The Turn of the Screw and What Maisie Knew. Recent research concerning the cognitive effects of Free Indirect Discourse strongly suggests that it promotes empathy in readers. Angus Fletcher and

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John Monterosso, in their essay “The Science of Free-Indirect Discourse: An Alternate Cognitive Effect” (2016), called attention to several cases. They noted that in 2006, Keith Oatley and his team recruited ninety-four participants for a cognitive study, which found that fiction readers were better than nonfiction readers at predicting people’s thoughts from photographs of their faces (84). Additionally, readers of quality fiction tend to have highly developed social skills. In a 2013 article for Science, David Kidd and Emanuele Castano pointed to research indicating that readers of National Book Award finalists were better able than readers of Danielle Steel novels to gauge people’s internal moods from their outward appearance. This research, which was also published in The New York Times, underscored the importance of narrative techniques in which readers are afforded space for both emotional contagion and cognitive detachment. It appears that a good narrative encourages the reader to experience ambiguity and alterity as they stated, “Literature can encourage greater diversity and inclusion by promoting an acceptance of alterity” (94). The research further suggested that a first-person narrative is more effective at promoting tolerance of others than a third-person authorial narration, which leaves little room for the reader to form his or her opinion. If this is so, what can we say about Free Indirect Discourse? As the narrator conceals his intentions and leaves readers to wonder about the character’s mindset, the readers become ever more curious. Meanwhile, the readers gain insights into the target character through his or her actions and speech, and they are certain to notice mistakes. This helps them understand that consciousness is endlessly deferred, and every judgment is temporal and constructed. The more we experience the world, the less likely we are to make mistakes, as we develop greater reservations and tolerance toward other individuals. The key to producing a compelling story is to provide the reader with the narrative time and space that will enable him or her to experience the events along with the character. Ross Labrie, in his essay “Henry James’s Idea of Consciousness” (1968), argued that empathy is itself consciousness, in terms of the deferred reading process. Labrie went on to liken consciousness to a vessel, which determines a character’s capacity to accept reality. He observed that “some of them have larger and deeper vessels or containers of consciousness than others” (519). Indeed, in James’s fiction, we can compare various characters according to their capacity to deal with reality. We could, for instance, contrast the character of Isabel with that of Henrietta Stackpole, whose vessel is full of assertion, logic, and predetermination. Ralph’s endurance and generosity for others is contrasted with Casper’s narrow and decisive vessel. Only those with larger and deeper vessels are able to improve their lives through a process bound to involve errors and pain.

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James moves the narrative forward by filtering the environment of his fiction through a reflector’s consciousness. As Labrie observed, consciousness entails the interpretive and evaluative power to handle the obscure problems of the reflector’s environment (522). Overall, James’s emphasis on the capacity of consciousness reflects his intuitive understanding that emotional contagion (as the body’s instinct) is more powerful than the cognitive faculty of consciousness. He encouraged readers to distance themselves from the protagonist and render a judgment, while subtly discouraging their tendency to identify with him or her. As Percy Lubbock argued in The Craft of Fiction (1921), James’s purpose was best served by a narrative method that focused on showing rather than telling. Lubbock, who wrote favorably about James’s literary style, indicated that he preferred it to commonplace approaches that involve an omniscient narrator or third-person authorial point of view. Unlike traditional storytelling, James’s narrative did not depend on information relayed by the author or a particular character. Instead, the narrative is propelled by the reality the character experiences, with a focus on that character’s actions and interactions with others. The author dramatizes consciousness through the character’s dialogue, assumptions, and reactions to others. These function as the reader’s primary source of information about the narrative. To achieve what Lubbock described as a mode of showing, James employed a “third-person limited point of view,” which involves the dual functions of narrator and character. Notably, this third person narrator lacks an omniscient point of view, and this limited point of view focuses on the targeted character. The dual-aspect monism Lubbock discerned between the narrator and character in Henry James’s fiction served as the focus of Dorrit Cohn’s Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction (1978). Cohn referred to this technique as “narrated monologue,” a term she favored over its nineteenth-century French counterpart, style indirect libre. She suggested that narrated monologue adopts a more restrictive form because it is “a vision of reality that is not the narrator’s own, but that of a fictional character” (110). In this figural narration, “the thought-thread of character” is interwoven into the texture of the third- person narrator, and the character and narrator share their power equally, “without overstressing either its dualism or its monism” (112). In this sense, she regards James’s mode of representing consciousness as one in which the character is “encaged” in a two-in-one effect, so that he or she is tethered to the present experience. If Strether had narrated his own story, we are told, he could not have been “encaged ”and provided for us as “The Ambassadors” encages and provides. The word “engaged” is crucial here: as the center of consciousness in a figural novel Strether is fettered to his present moment of experience: he cannot know

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his future self, nor how that self will be affected by its present experience. The experiencing self in first-person narration, by contrast, is always viewed by a narrator who knows what happened to him next, and who is free to slide up and down the time axis that connects his two selves. (Cohn, 1978, 145)

Cohn’s chief contribution to our understanding of James’s fiction is her presentation of the concept of being encaged within dual-aspect monism. This term, which is not present in Lubbock’s discussion of the author’s work, helps us understand the ways in which readers are “encaged” within the character’s experience as they follow him or her step-by-step in time. Readers watch closely as the protagonist commits errors and experiences personal growth. Yet, this raises a question: How is it possible for the reader to identify with the character and, at the same, gain the proper distance to make a judgement, all while being encaged? The answer lies in the position of the narrator, who stands slightly above the character. The narrator selects and choreographs each scene, while providing the reader with critical background information about the character. James, however, refrains from providing too much information about the character, even though he knows precisely why Strether is confused in Parisian culture and grasps the reasons unlike Isabel’s misunderstanding of Europe. This information is conveyed in the form of dialogue, actions, and reactions. In line with the narrator, readers assume a position somewhat above the character, which enables them to identify while maintaining the distance needed to make a judgment. Through a process of empathy, readers can participate in the character’s present experience and learn from it. Another example of discrepancy that allows space for cognitive empathy can be seen in James’s use of the “unreliable narrator” in a third-person narration. In this case, the reader is aware of information of which the character is ignorant. The governess in The Turn of the Screw, for instance, provides a narrative that is highly personal, while also reflecting a degree of instability and ambivalence. If we have confidence in the governess’s version of events, we are inclined to view the children as liars. On the other hand, if we are suspicious of the governess, and doubt her perceptions, we are more likely to treat the children as innocent victims. A way out of this ambivalence is to take our cues from the third-person narrator, Douglas, who guides us through the Preface. We learn that it was Douglas, after all, who obtained the governess’s narrative and read it to a rapt audience that included the author, who has been inspired to produce a novella. A fine variation of Free Indirect Discourse, the partnership involving Douglas and the author, merits close observation. Their comments help readers to make up their minds about who is more responsible for the story’s tragic conclusion.

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James made even better use of Free Indirect Discourse in The Ambassadors, which many narrative theorists consider as his strongest effort in this regard. In Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (1980), Gerard Genette wrote that, in The Ambassadors, “everything passes through Strether” (189). Likewise, Franz. K. Stanzel, in A Theory of Narrative (1984), situated The Ambassadors in the transition period between Realism and Modernism. Genette stands out, however, for his introduction of new terms for voice and vision, as he pushed aside the traditional labels of narration and point of view. Describing James’s fiction as internal focalization, Genette introduced the terms “focalization” and “focalizer.” Notably, a focalizer, who is Strether, observes every scene, reacting and being acted upon by the novel’s environment, while entailing the reader’s identification and detachment by means of the narrative voice of comparing him with other characters. The method strikes at the heart of the James brothers’ contributions to the ethics of cognitive empathy. As Meghan Hammond argues, they agreed upon the concept of consciousness as an entity both personal and intersubjective, while noticing that we should avoid being too certain about consciousness when setting out to interpret the other’s mind. As mentioned, unconscious emotional contagion, after all, is considerably stronger than cognitive empathy—a fact that has been borne out by biological and neuroscientific research. Hence, on an unconscious level, we are tempted to perceive others in much the same way the governess in The Turn of the Screw regards the children. In Hammond’s assessment of the James brothers, she argued that their second major contribution reflected their understanding of the fact that an individual’s experience of the world appears quite different, in accordance with who is looking and where he or she is standing. Ultimately, as Peter Rawlings observed, in Free Indirect Speech, we should strive to be permissive, unbiased, and tolerant, while maintaining a degree of awareness regarding the differing experiences of others (2000). To sum up, memory, emotion, and empathy are interconnected and work together in the dimension of dual-aspect monism in line with emotional contagion along with cognitive empathy—a phenomenon affirmed by psychological and neuroscientific researchers. In this regard, the epistemological discrepancy reflected in Henry James’s narratives appears more relevant than ever. Reading his fictions in terms of three components of consciousness will be my next topic.

NOTES 1. See Edward Titchener’s book, Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1909.

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2. See Mark A. Wheeler, Donald T. Stuss, and Endel Tulving’s essay “Toward a Theory of Episodic Memory: The frontal Lobes and Autonoetic Consciousness.” Psychological Bulletin 121.3 (1997): 331–354. Introducing two concepts of memories, Semantic Memory and Episodic Memory, Tulving argues that “autonoetic consciousness is a necessary correlate of episodic memory” (350). His concept of childhood amnesia reminds us of Freud’s infantile memory. 3. Eric R. Kandel and Larry R. Squire, “Neuroscience: Breaking down Scientific Barriers to the study of Brain and Mind.” Science 290.5494 (October 11, 2000).

Chapter 4

Emotion and Feeling in The Portrait of a Lady Why Rome?

In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James delicately constructs an image of his protagonist, Isabel Archer, a young woman of independent mind whose knowledge of the world is largely restricted to her native Albany, New York. Raised by a single father who encouraged her varied intellectual interests, Isabel possesses an intelligence and erudition that proves intimidating to most potential suitors. Yet, Caspar Goodwood, the son of a wealthy New England manufacturer, is entranced by Isabel and asks for her hand in marriage. Fearing that marriage will undermine her independence, Isabel hastily accepts an invitation from her aunt, Mrs. Lydia Touchett, to spend a year in England, where Mrs. Touchett’s estranged husband, Daniel, is an influential banker. As James writes, “our young woman’s emotion deepened” (PL, 41). We come to appreciate that, while Isabel appears determined to live a purposeful life, she is also subject to her own powerful emotions. Her desire to maintain her independence is, ultimately, at odds with her tendency to be “affected by everything” (PL, 109). Her decision to visit Europe will have unforeseen consequences, as Isabel is exposed to Old World values that stand in sharp contrast to those of American egalitarian republicanism. After inheriting a fortune from the elderly Mr. Touchett, she turns down marriage proposals from both Goodwood and Lord Warburton, an aristocratic friend of the Touchetts, only to marry the adventurer, Gilbert Osmond. As the story develops, it becomes evident that Isabel’s decisions will undercut her goal to maintain an independent life. Yet, she will also expand her consciousness through a series of painful lessons. In James’s novel, knowledge often takes the form of a ghost, and the road to knowledge is paved with disappointment. When Isabel arrives at Mr. Touchett’s residence in England, she is initially charmed by the atmosphere and eager to encounter the so-called Ghost of Gardencourt, a spirit 86

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rumored to haunt the centuries-old estate. However, her ailing cousin, Ralph Touchett, warns her that she cannot perceive the ghost unless she herself has experienced suffering. Years later, a disillusioned Isabel, trapped in a loveless marriage and bereft of her youthful dreams, will finally witness the presence of a ghost as she visits Ralph on his deathbed. Here and elsewhere, James takes steps to explore the emotional life of his protagonist and other characters. He examines Isabel’s vulnerability and openness, as she seeks to navigate her new surroundings, and sheds light on the gentle compassion of Ralph, who offers his cousin prudent advice, even as he carefully refrains from interfering with her life. Ralph’s incisive observations often turn out to be prescient. For example, as I noticed before, when Isabel insists, “I only want to see [Europe] for myself,” Ralph warns her, “you want to see, but not to feel” (PL, 159). While she trivializes her cousin’s remark, Isabel will eventually understand that his observation cuts to the heart of her struggle to experience the world. In the letter, written in 1884, Henry devoted considerable space to “What is an Emotion?”—one of the two articles William had published in the journal, Mind (Skrupskelis and Berkeley, 160). More than a century later, in 2012, Michael Gorra, in Portrait of a Novel, reexamined Henry’s admiration for his brother’s article “He wrote William in the spring of 1884 that the essay in Mind had ‘defeated’ him and yet some lines in that year’s ‘Art of Fiction’ do seem to echo it” (235). Inspired by Henry James’s conception of the true artist, who—unlike a mere craftsman—perceives the expansion of consciousness that is precipitated by enlarged experience, Gorra interprets William as Henry’s ghost (321). In Gorra’s view, the novel reflects the pervasive influence of Henry James’s primary authority, William James. If so, Ralph’s role as a mentor to Isabel may provide clues to the ways in which Henry was influenced by William’s essay on emotion. We know that the ailing Ralph, who is deeply attached to Isabel, encourages her to open her mind to the material world in ways that transcend pure consciousness. We are also aware that Isabel’s enlarged experience of the world later enables her to perceive Ralph’s ghost, when she visits him on his deathbed. However, we might ask whether “to feel” Europe is more than “to see” it. We are also left to wonder whether Isabel’s encounter with the ghost has influenced her final decision to return to Rome. With these questions in mind, I will examine Gorra’s contention that Henry’s novel reflects his overwhelming admiration for his brother, William. At the same time, in a significant departure from Gorra’s approach, I argue that Isabel’s devoted cousin, Ralph, is a fictional version of Henry rather than William. After all, Ralph helps Isabel to enlarge her experience of the world, advising her “not to see but to feel.” This phrase relates to the overarching theme of the text’s commentary on thinking, emotion, and feeling. Naturally, it also calls to mind William James’s essay “What is an Emotion?”1 My

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purpose is to elucidate Isabel’s final decision to return to Rome, in terms of bodily reaction, also known as emotional reaction. This investigation will highlight ways in which Isabel is ignorant of the body and material things as inseparable components of consciousness, a concept that is neatly elucidated in William James’s The Principles of Psychology. As a result of human evolution, emotion is a bodily reaction to external impulses, whereas feeling is perceived by consciousness at the level of cognition: a sensation that is experienced by humans alone. From there, I will examine Henry James’s unique tendency to represent the revelation of error as a necessary stage for the expansion of consciousness, which, in turn, is facilitated by repetition of the primal scene. My exploration of these issues will shed light on Isabel’s ultimate decision to return to Rome, where she will presumably resume her loveless marriage with Gilbert Osmond. Since the novel’s publication, her last act to return to Rome immediately after Casper’s ardent kiss has been the source of endless discussion. However, before addressing the controversial ending, or differentiating emotion from feeling, I shall examine critical tendencies as they relate to The Portrait of a Lady. These critical trends fall into three basic categories. Early treatments of James’s novel invariably focused on issues such as art and the artist. Yet, by the 2000s, critics were more inclined to concentrate on cognition and the ethics of reading. Finally, by the 2010s, critical examinations of the novel had shifted to the materiality of consciousness, the body, and space, in close connection with phenomenology. In what way do these categories enhance our understanding of “William’s ghost,” in terms of emotion and feeling, repetition of the primal scene, and Isabel’s fateful decision to return to Rome?

CRITICAL INTEREST IN WILLIAM’S GHOST More than a few critics have focused on the disciplined process through which Ralph guides Isabel in her development as an artist. This perspective was especially prevalent in the early 1970s and 1980s. Juliet McMaster, for instance, examines Isabel as both artifice and artificer. She treats the protagonist as a free spirit who eventually finds herself at the mercy of the duplicitous Madame Merle and her secret lover, Osmond, both of whom McMaster presents as skilled craftsmen. Ralph, on the other hand, encompasses the qualities of both free spirit and skilled craftsman, which positions him to guide Isabel along her artistic journey. In a similar vein, Lyall H. Powers interprets Ralph’s ghost as the spirit of art, a veritable source of James’s art, and a means through which Isabel is transformed, like James, into an artist (1986, 113). Diana Collecott’s interpretation of Ralph as

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a reflection of Henry James’s spirit raises pertinent questions about what the author’s “treatment of his female subject reveals of James’s position as an artist” (1989, 62). Coming from a slightly different vantage point, Daniel M. Fogel i­ dentifies James’s interest in Isabel with the author’s own imaginative process, which produces a bond of sympathy between creator and creature that could not have been more personal (1986, 2). Meanwhile, William T. Stafford ­interprets Madame Merle as a symbol of artistic deception (a form of art), even as he associates Isabel with pure consciousness, or freedom without form. Ultimately, Isabel will master an intricate and deceptive form of art. However, critics who examined the novel in the context of art were ­disinclined to discuss the influence of William James in any detail. Since 2000, interpretations of the novel have shifted away from art and the artist, while moving decisively in the direction of cognition and the ethics of reading. This trend is exemplified by Laurel Anne Bollinger’s “The Ethics of Reading: The Struggle for Subjectivity in The Portrait of a Lady” (2002). Bollinger focuses on William’s concept of cognition, which is characterized as personal, flowing, and constantly changing. She also draws a contrast between the characters of Osmond and Ralph and notes that, while the former views Isabel as his property, the latter treats her as a free individual. If Bollinger addresses the ethics of reading with a focus on William James’s concept of psychology, J. Hillis Miller engages the subject from a slightly different perspective, in his article “What is a Kiss? Isabel’s Moments of Decision” (2005). Miller’s essay is notable for the space that he dedicates to Isabel’s final decision, a subject that I will discuss more fully later on. Another shift in critical focus occurred during the 2010s, when readings of Henry James’s novel reflected an emphasis on body, space, and materiality, which were placed in the context of a phenomenology that corresponded with William James’s psychology. In her essay “Isabel Archer’s Body” (2010), for instance, Sarah Blackwood argues in favor of a corporeal consciousness and points out that physiological psychologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries posited the materiality of consciousness against a Cartesian model that disassociated body and consciousness. Drawing upon William James’s groundbreaking essay “What is an Emotion?” and James-Lange’s theory of emotion, Blackwood argues that we first experience a physiological change and then feel accordingly. For example, we laugh and then experience happiness, not vice versa. Furthermore, she contends that emotion is an effect of our most materialist self. Hence, the body’s actions themselves comprise a form of cognition. Although her essay does not draw a clear connection between William James’s psychology and recent developments in ­neuroscience, her research has a strong bearing on the subject of this essay.

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As noted earlier, Michael Gorra, an especially influential critic of this period, delves deeply into the psychological theories of William James. Gorra, who coined the term “William’s ghost,” argues that “the novelist recognized the logic of Williams’ demand for something larger, and with a clear sense of his own development, he now felt ready to work on a greater scale” (43). Meanwhile, Casey M. Walker’s “Intimate Cities: The Portrait of a Lady and the Poetics of Metropolitan Space” (2013) examines a phenomenology of mind that is closely attuned to place: “Isabel’s feeling of bereavement reaches its peak as she takes a carriage ride through Rome” (173). Walker notes that Isabel’s sense of loss corresponds precisely with the bleak and desolate suburb of Rome in which she makes her home with Osmond. This situation reflects the fact that the continuity of materiality of consciousness, or cognition, is inseparably related to one’s surroundings, as well as intentional thought. The three categories of research I have outlined shed some degree of light on the subject of William’s ghost. Materiality of consciousness, for instance, contains the themes of not only emotion and feeling, but also those of art and the artist. At the same time, it provides insights into Isabel’s fateful decision to return to Rome. These subjects cannot be viewed in isolation, given that they are deeply interconnected. Even recent developments in neuroscience should find a place in any discussion of these topics, since traces of William’s ghost abound in such research. This should not be altogether surprising, given that Kandel and Edelman have recognized William James, along with Freud, as a pioneering figure in the emerging field of psychology.2 As we examine the character that Gorra has described as William’s ghost, we are forced to confront Ralph’s memorable distinction between feeling and seeing, which is a central element of his cautionary remark to Isabel. Can our appreciation of this distinction be enriched by drawing upon William James’s psychological theories? Moreover, is it possible to gain additional insights into this distinction by referring to recent developments within the field of neuroscience? Overall, this investigation will seek to highlight the primary difference between the concepts of emotion and feeling, which entails the difference between feeling and thinking. If, as the narrator hints, Isabel’s knowledge of the world reflects a degree of ignorance, we must ask ourselves the following questions: What was the nature of that ignorance, and why did it lead her to make such a tragic error?

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IGNORANCE IN HER KNOWLEDGE: EMOTION, FEELING, AND THINKING Henry James foreshadows Isabel’s tragic error in a memorable scene that involves her introduction to the inscrutable Madame Merle. We sense that the meeting has an overwhelming impact on Isabel, who is determined to see Europe, a continent of which she has little understanding. Following her bold refusal of a marital proposal from the dashing and highly eligible Lord Warburton, Isabel stands at the threshold of a complicated culture that bears scant resemblance to her semirural neighborhood in Albany. While she is enthralled by each new experience, few encounters make a deeper impression upon her than a piano performance by Madame Merle, a woman of exquisite taste and refinement. As the music fills the cozy room, which is pelted from without by an autumn rainstorm, the pianist’s seamless blend of strength and tenderness strikes a deep chord within Isabel. So charmed is she by the performance that she cannot imagine Madame Merle as anything but a loving and benevolent figure. James describes the primal scene as follows: The lady played in the same manner as before, softly and solemnly, and while she played the shadows deepened in the room. The autumn twilight gathered in, and from her place Isabel could see the rain, which had now begun in earnest, washing the cold-looking lawn and the wind shaking the great trees. At last, when the music had ceased, her companion got up and, coming nearer with a smile, before Isabel had time to thank her again, said: “I’m very glad you’ve come back; I’ve heard a great deal about you” (PL, 181).

Interestingly, James’s narrative concentrates less on the performance than it does on the rain-soaked atmosphere beyond the window through which Isabel is gazing. The nocturnal autumn storm and shivering tree are in sync with the soft and solemn tones of Madame Merle’s performance, and Isabel’s material atmosphere evidently elicits a feeling of the sublime. James’s description of the scene calls to mind the very passage in which Kant postulates the concept of the sublime. The philosopher indicates that, while watching fearful natural forces—such as a heavy storm or powerful flood—from a position of relative safety, we experience a mysterious feeling that he describes as “the sublime.” During such moments, the human soul is enlarged through its confrontation with fearful forces that are beyond human control. In short, the image Isabel views through the window connects her with the mysterious power of human consciousness to overcome powerful natural forces. This unspeakable feeling could account for Isabel’s enchantment with the pianist and her performance. During the recital, she speculates that the pianist is a French woman of noble birth, or the product of some

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aristocratic line from an unknown foreign land. In his narrative, James sheds light on Isabel’s attraction to the performer, highlighting the fact that her outward strength and stability arise from her broad experience of the world. He stresses, however, that Madame Merle is not an imposing figure. She is “a woman of strong impulse kept in admirable order” (PL, 183). Her grace and poise appear to reflect her broader experience of life, an experience to which Isabel aspires. From the moment of their introduction, Isabel draws Madame Merle into her life, and the pianist, for her part, seems determined to cultivate a relationship with the young American. Over time, Isabel becomes more infatuated with her new friend, whose rhetorical gifts and artistry bespeak a rare order of genius. Even so, her cousin Ralph expresses skepticism about Madame Merle’s motives. When Isabel, at the pianist’s urging, announces her plan to marry Gilbert Osmond, Ralph tries to dissuade her. Notably, Ralph is not the only member of Isabel’s circle to question this decision. How can we account for the protagonist’s staggering level of ignorance, especially in the face of prudent counsel from close friends and confidants? Isabel apparently remains entranced by her initial impression of the pianist, and she harbors no doubts about the purity of the woman’s motives. The degree to which Isabel has been moved by the natural visual display that had accompanied Madame Merle’s performance seems to lend credibility to Ralph’s remark, “you want to see, but not to feel.” If this is correct, what is the distinction between seeing and feeling, given that seeing has facilitated such tragic folly? Is this yet another case in which Henry James sets out to depict the workings of consciousness in a manner that is fully compatible with the theories of his brother, William? In his landmark work, The Principles of Psychology, William James proposes five basic characteristics of consciousness. He contends that consciousness is neither a solid nor independent entity. On the contrary, it flows. Hence, one’s thoughts change according to time and in the context of those experiences that have been stored in the brain as memory. We recognize the object in light of our episodic memory, which differs markedly from habits that reflect the memory of the body. Episodic memory, or so-called recollection, is continuously renewed as one’s experience develops in accordance with one’s personal environment. Moreover, thought is not an absolute truth. It is personal and intentional, given that cognition is always about something and someone in time (PP, 1: 150). In this vein, Isabel’s experience of Madame Merle’s performance is unavoidably colored by her earlier personal experiences in Albany, which are stored in the upper part of the brain, the so-called prefrontal cortex. The relevance of William’s proposition to the current topic is that the subject is no less independent from past memories than is the present object. In other words, our consciousness cannot function in isolation from past

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experiences and the present object. Thought is invariably a part of the object, so it is not only intentional but also a product of a particular time and place. What Isabel experiences cannot be understood as pure cognition of the performance. Significantly, her experience is enriched by her perception of the autumn twilight and the windy, rainy day, as well as her proximity to the window from which she gazes at the scene, “washing the cold-looking lawn and the wind shaking the great trees” (PL, 181). Her consciousness is not a pure entity but, rather, part and parcel of her material environment. As Freud observes, consciousness is an agency through which we accept the present experience and transform it into memory traces, clusters of neurons, that are stored in the upper cortex of brain. These neurons are unique to humans, as a result of evolution. This agency is not only charged with encoding memory, but it also retrieves a memory at the moment one is remembering the past and grasping the present situation. Thus, remembering does not maintain a firm distance from cognition, as neuroscientist Gerald Edelman argues. Edelman defines cognition as “the remembered present” and recollection as the past remembered within the present (2004, 8). Both recollection and cognition are already part and parcel of one’s external material environment and, at the same time, the memory traces stored within. Whether we remember the past or perceive the present, consciousness works together with the prefrontal area of the brain, with neurons depositing past experience that are continuously updated to a specific time and place. Crucially, emotion, as an organ of the bodily response, interferes continuously with consciousness and plays a considerable role in the process of remembering and thinking. In this way, Isabel perceives Madame Merle’s musical performance, not only through a veil of past memories—which, in turn, are shaped by her bookishness and New England Idealism—but also in the context of her material environment. Her naïve belief in what she has seen and heard is, in some sense, equivalent to her initial inability to see the ghost when Ralph responds to her question, “Please tell me,—isn’t there a ghost?” (PL, 58). Ralph reacts in a similar way to Isabel’s stated wish to “see” Europe. In spite of her faith in the essence, the materiality of consciousness, so-called “feeling,” plays a crucial role in her ability to judge reality. William places a good deal of emphasis on the impact of emotion on the emergence of judgment: I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole theory, which is this: If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no “mind-stuff” out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. (PP, 2: 309, italics original)

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For William James, psychology and neuroscience are virtually inseparable fields, as he indicates when he writes, brain and mind are “different aspects of the same process” (PP, 1:95). He affirms this view when he asserts that the rearrangement of molecules occurring in the higher regions of brain brings about a simultaneous change of consciousness (PP, 1: 95). In short, consciousness is a feeling, for it is an agency of selection, directed by its interest, in line with one’s memories. We might be tempted to ask, in what way is William James’s argument on the nature of emotions reflected in the work of recent neuroscientists? As early as 1993, Jefferson A. Singer and Peter Salovey, in “The Remembered Self: Emotion and Memory in Personality,” indicated that it was not until the late 1970s that “the mutual influences of emotion and information processing on each other began to be studied with equal respect” (135). Taking into account the bottom-up process in the global interaction of neurons, they argue that the brain stem, which is in charge of the bodily response to external impulses, and the amygdala, which is in charge of emotion that is posited in the limbic system, have an impact on the upper region of brain, the so-called prefrontal cortex, which stores memories. Hence, the phrase, “the mechanism that prioritizes memory is emotion” (1993, 122), echoes in William James’s well-known argument that “warm and intimate feelings” are important to enhance and incite memory. If emotion affects the direction of our awareness, as well as the encoding and retrieval of personal memories, we can assume that Isabel felt Europe rather than saw (knew) it, for she was “affected by everything,” as she readily acknowledges. In this sense, Ralph is correct when he implies that Isabel is more likely to feel than to see. Erick R. Kandel, in The Age of Insight (2012), likewise accepts the bottomup process, along with James’s theory of emotion: the body’s reaction occurs ahead of feelings that emerge in the cerebral cortex. If this is so, embodied emotion is a form of information processing that can also be understood as a form of cognition (352). Kandel notes that the amygdala plays a central role in appraisal by coordinating emotions of the body with the working memory of the prefrontal cortex. He not only sheds light on the bottom-up process for dopaminergic-reinforcement or serotonergic-mood, but also on the top-down modulation of reappraisal through the reevaluation of past memories (423). In James’s novel, Isabel, after marrying Osmond at Madame Merle’s insistence, reevaluates her marriage after four years and realizes that her judgment has been faulty. If indeed emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive process—including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving—and if “the amygdala and prefrontal cortex cooperate with the medial temporal lobe (limbic system) in an integrated manner,” as Chai M. Tyng and others (2017) argue, feeling appears to be not very different than

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thinking.3 To shed further light on this issue, it will be necessary to examine the mechanism of emotion and its difference from feeling in greater detail. Antonio Damasio, in Self Comes to Mind (2010), also defines emotion as life regulation, a dynamic process known as homeostasis (25). This process achieves a bodily balance between outer impulses and inner responses, which is marked by its range. Monitoring the range for homeostasis is critical, for we do not directly approach the body’s reaction, although we do feel it. As Damasio suggests, this means that feeling is the mental expression of homeostasis. In his book, Anxious (2016), Joseph Ledoux defines emotion as a mechanism of survival that has been inherited from ancient ancestors (animals) in order to keep the body in a constant state, which we refer to as homeostasis. Interestingly, the process through which the body defends itself from threatening external impulses can be described as non-consciousness. If this is so, how do we grasp the range of homeostasis? Due to the evolution of the upper part of brain, humans, unlike other animals, do not directly approach the body’s response. Hence, the only way to be aware of one’s bodily response is to consult with the higher cerebral cortex, which is mediated by such limbic systems as the amygdala, the hippocampus, or the thalamus. Thus, the conscious experience of emotion is the product of global circulation, which ensures that it will be personal, ever-changing, and intentional. Given that emotion interacts with memories in the prefrontal cortex, feeling is closely related to thinking and remembering. More recently, Ralph Adolphs and David J. Anderson have analyzed the circuit of transition from emotion to feeling in terms of cognitive neuroscientific theories that are consistent with William James’s original hypothesis. They write, for instance, that “a fear-inducing stimulus causes activation of the amygdala or hypothalamus, which in turn causes changes in the body, which are sensed by the insula, which make you feel afraid” (2018, 120). This is precisely the view William James expressed in his much-earlier essay, “What is an Emotion?” (1884). My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the excited fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion . . . that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colourless, destitute of emotional warmth. (189–190, James’s italics and my abbreviations)

The gist of James’s claim has been affirmed by the work of such modernday neuroscientists as Kandel, Ledoux, and Damasio. However, his theories

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also served as the ground of American Pragmatism, in the context of empiricism. In his view, you see something not because you know it, but instead because you believe it, that is, you feel it. Neither feeling nor believing emerge as objective truth. On the contrary, they are subjective cognition based on personal memories that are stored in the prefrontal cortex. Hence, Isabel is reluctant to see Madame Merle for what she is and tries to avoid that painful argument with Ralph, who strongly opposes her plan to marry Osmond. In his narrative, Henry James suggests that Madame Merle knows the world all too well, while Isabel cannot see beyond her supposed friend’s talent and cultivation (PL, 197). This insight is revealed in a telling conversation between Isabel and Madam Merle, which exposes the degree to which Isabel’s ignorance is imbedded within her knowledge, a clear example of the materiality of thinking. As Ralph cautioned Isabel, we do not see it but feel it. In a particularly revealing comment, Madame Merle observes: I know a large part of myself is in the clothes I choose to wear. I have a great respect for things! One’s self—for other people—is one’s expression of one’s self; and one’s house, one’s furniture, one’s garments, the books one reads, the company one keeps—these things are all expressive. (PL, 207)

Isabel’s response is equally revealing, as she asserts that “nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; everything’s on the contrary a limit, a barrier and a perfectly arbitrary one” (208). This exchange highlights the profound differences between these two characters. On the one hand, Madame Merle, as an experienced woman, recognizes that materials, the body, and emotions are already part and parcel of consciousness. On the other hand, Isabel betrays her innocence when she affirms her belief in the pure self, one that has nothing whatsoever to do with the body or the material world. At one point, she acknowledges, “I don’t know anything about money” (40). As an individual possessed of a noble imagination, she is determined to treat the world as a place of bright possibilities that is free of evil. Moreover, she denies the possibility of her own involvement in materiality. Imbued with a spirit of self-righteousness, Isabel never imagines that she can do anything wrong. Yet, her innocence and dogmatic idealism are not fixed qualities, for they work in combination with her passionate excitement and desire to know the world. If we take into consideration the bottom-up process of the neuro-circuit, we understand that it is impossible for the spiritual self to be decoupled from the material self and social self. Indeed, these three levels of the self are bound to work together to form the one normal self. Indeed, Damasio terms these, respectively, as the proto self, which operates at the level of brain stem; the core self, which operates between the organism and the object mediated by the limbic system; and the autobiographical self, which operates

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at the level of the cerebral cortex (2010, 181). For William James, such levels were self-evident, as he indicated in his psychological writings: We see then that we are dealing with a fluctuating material. The same object being sometimes treated as a part of me, at other times as simply mine, and then again as if I had nothing to do with it at all. In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. (James’s italics and emphasis, PP, 1: 193)

Madame Merle proves to be extraordinarily shrewd in her dealings with Isabel. After learning that the younger woman has inherited Mr. Touchett’s fortune, she hatches a plot through which Isabel will become the stepmother of her own child, Pansy, who is the product of her secret union with Osmond. It is not altogether surprising that Isabel fails to see through her charismatic new friend. Notably, however, even Ralph misjudges Madame Merle, advising Isabel at one point that “she [Madam Merle] is a capital person for you to know. Since you wish to see the world you couldn’t have a better guide” (PL, 255). In retrospect, Ralph’s observation seems ironic, given that Isabel will indeed learn something of the world. The lesson, however, will be achieved at the expense of tragic folly. In a sense, the two women are a study in contrasts. If Isabel is an idealist with little awareness of the material self, Madame Merle appears to be a sophisticated materialist whose spiritual life is exceptionally barren. Yet, Isabel seems uncommonly naïve, which leads us to question to source of her ignorance. A clue can be found in the writings of William James, who asserted that emotion is a material, bodily reaction that is also part of consciousness. Hence, all of our thinking is bodily thinking. A problem arises from the fact that we do not perceive that bodily response, for it belongs to the realm of the unconscious, which is centered in the brain stem (PP, 2:313). As a result of the evolution of the upper part of the human brain, we cannot encounter the lower portion directly and are left to speculate upon an image. In other words, only a human being can consciously feel that non-conscious process of bodily response as his or her own. Damasio, in The Strange Order of Things (2018), explains that this image in associated with a technical term, qualia. “If you had been born without feeling tracks, the rest of the images would have traveled in your mind unaffected and unqualified,” he writes. “Once feeling would have been removed, you would have become unable to classify images as beautiful or ugly, pleasurable or painful, tasteful or vulgar, spiritual or earthy” (101). Since qualia emerges through the mediation of

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personal memories stored in the upper part of the brain, “every one of the bodily changes, whatsoever it be, is felt, acutely or obscurely, the moment it occurs” (James’s italics, 1884, 192). If each bodily change is felt only obscurely, and if it is nothing but an image, then reality itself is an illusion. Kandel describes this as the deception that occurs in the process of thinking, for feeling is evaluated on the basis of the individual memory traces, or past experience (2013, 326). He argues that the amygdala is a key structure involved in triggering the affective/emotional signals of an immediate outcome and a “reflective system” which can be likened to the superego where the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a key structure. This bottom-up process occurs entirely “outside of awareness.” Thus, we believe what we see, for without consciousness, we cannot shape thought or feeling, or, above all, any kind of behavior or action to deal with the present situation. Consciousness is deceptive by its very nature, for it places a veil over the material portion of the brain. More than a few neuroscientists have observed that, as humans, we lack direct access to the physical world. Yet, in spite of this, we feel as though we benefit from direct access. In James’s novel, this confidence is reflected in Isabel’s tendency to firmly believe whatever she sees. Significantly, here lies the great dichotomy of evolution, which, on the one hand, depends on the inevitable deception of consciousness, while, on the other hand, produces what has become the most powerful animal on earth. We are bound to create illusions and treat them as though they were true. Owing to these illusions, we make mistakes and undergo painful learning experiences. Consciousness, of course, always adapts to the newest version of information in its effort to deal with reality, and it continuously updates our memories. In this sense, knowledge is essentially experience, and cognition is an essential part of emotional experience, although it often occurs beyond our awareness. Indeed, philosopher Robert C. Solomon suggests that “feelings are not just sensations, nor are they mysterious ‘affects,’ but felt bodily engagement with the world” (2004, 88). This may be why Henry James stresses the importance of experience, not only for the virtue of an artist but also for the benefit of his characters. Nevertheless, the question remains: if we adapt the latest version of memory and experience, in what form do we receive the lesson of life? It seems clear that it may not come from any form of speech or persuasion.

LEARNING AS REPETITION During his lifetime, Henry James identified The Ambassadors as his finest novel, primarily because its theme of deception was deeply embedded

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within the narrative. The novel’s protagonist, Strether, a lifelong resident of New England, has been dispatched to Paris to secure the wayward son of his employer and fiancée, Mrs. Newsome. When Strether encounters the young man, who is known as Chad, he becomes uncomfortably aware of his own ignorance of European culture. Unable to read the social cues of Parisian society, Strether repeatedly misreads situations. For instance, when he finds Chad in the company of Madame de Vionnet and her daughter, the older man naturally assumes that the young woman is the object of Chad’s interest. Given Parisians’ tendency to avoid discussing one’s private affairs, he remains trapped in this illusion for some time. Meanwhile, Strether’s mission is further complicated by the fact that he has become infatuated with the rich cultural life of Paris, as well as the alluring Madame de Vionnet, who becomes for him a symbol of all that the city has to offer. As the story progresses, Strether comes to the conclusion that he has wasted decades in America and seeks to live a fuller life. Yet, as the story approaches its climax, the older man becomes aware of the true nature of Chad’s relationship with Madame de Vionnet and realizes that he has been deceived by their elaborate performance. The revelation occurs during an otherwise uneventful outing in a rural area near Paris, where Strether takes advantage of the relative solitude to stroll along the river. He thinks back upon a time, years earlier, when he had considered purchasing a landscape by the painter, Lambinet, while visiting a Boston gallery. At that very moment, he spots “a boat advancing round the bend and containing a man who held the paddles and a lady, at the stern, with a pink parasol” (AB, 418). The figures in the boat are Chad and Madame de Vionnet, who are spending a day in the country together. In that instant, he grasps the depth of their deception, for they are indeed lovers. In James’s novel, both revelations and life lessons arise from a repetition of the primal scene, which has the effect of deferral, or Nachträglichkeit, to use the Freudian term. Virginia Llewellyn Smith, in Henry James and the Real Thing (1994), treats deception as the central theme of James’s fiction. She points out that it serves as the backbone of the plot in nearly every one of his novels. Yet, James’s work transcends a mere “portrayal of false expectations excited by cultural change” (39). While Strether’s case is unexceptional, one may be tempted to question why James presents the revelation of deception in line with the second scene, the so-called repetition of the primal scene. In response to Smith’s argument that deception is the gist of any work of art, I propose another level of deception, that is, an innate property of human consciousness, in liaison with episodic memory, emotion, and cognition. The primal image of the landscape represented in Lambinet’s painting is repeated in the real form of a boat floating along the river, whose passengers are a man and woman enjoying their afternoon. The difference between the

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two scenes highlights the marked differences in Strether’s vision, which reflects the updating of new experiences in his brain in the weeks since he left America for Paris. When he first spotted the landscape painting years earlier, it was little more than the pleasing depiction of a natural scene. His view of the couple boating on the river, however, lifts the veil that has concealed a deception. The memories in Paris that have been stored in his frontal cortex have enabled him to see something he was unable to see before. There is, after all, no pure consciousness, as Isabel earlier insisted. Instead, materials and environment are inseparable parts of consciousness, as Madame Merle perceives all too well. In other words, “to see” does not mean “to know” but “to feel” as Ralph implied. For vision is no less personal, intentional, and flowing than thought itself. Human cognition arises when the hippocampus interacts with the frontal cortex, so as to form an image that is based on memories that are continually updated. In a repudiation of Cartesian cogito, William James not only argues that every thought tends to be subjective, given that it is a part of personal consciousness, but he also suggests that thought is constantly changing and continuous, while the chain of consciousness is nothing but “a sequence of differents” (PP, 1: 153). Hence, we do not have an isolated sensation, but, rather, a stream of resemblance. Hence, without the primal scene, there will be no repetition that produces the effect of a deferred image. In our memory system, consciousness follows time in order to deal with the present object, while the timeless memory traces provide stored information through which each new experience is continuously updated over previous ones. As James observed, “such a revival is obviously not a memory, whatever else it may be; it is simply a duplicate, a second event, having absolutely no connection with the first event except that it happens to resemble it” (PP, 1: 435). Our emotions take a similar course and turn out to be feelings in the form of cognition. In reference to the recurring images, Damasio contends that remembering, feeling, and cognition are linked to one system characterized by flow and repetition. He holds that the process of mind is a continuous flow of such images, some of which correspond to actual, ongoing business outside the brain, while some are being reconstituted from memory in the process of recall. Minds are a subtle, flowing combination of actual images and recalled images, in ever-changing proportions. (2010, 71)

Grounded on this system of neurons, deception is not merely the backbone of the plot in a work of art; it is also an innate property of memory, feeling, and cognition. While an image appears solely as a resemblance, a temporary truth, we tend to view it as a solid truth. Hence, the revelation

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of truth arises at the very moment that the old form recurs in a sequence of differents. In the context of Henry James’s verbal art, language proves no less treacherous than consciousness. We should recall that, prior to her marriage, Isabel engages in an angry conversation with Ralph, who questions her choice of Osmond as a husband. Despite their close relationship, Isabel angrily dismisses each of her cousin’s objections. Ralph cautions her that Osmond is narrow-minded, selfish, narcissistic, and the incarnation of a superficial dilettante. Isabel eventually wears him down, and Ralph ends up feeling sick and ashamed. It is Isabel who, ultimately, experiences the deepest shame, given that her cousin’s assessment of Osmond turns out to be accurate. Now, let us examine the means by which she grasps the deception behind her marriage, which had been jointly orchestrated by Madame Merle and Osmond. After four years of marriage, Isabel returns home from a walk with her step-daughter, Pansy, and encounters a scene. The scene strikes her as familiar and yet somehow different: Just beyond the threshold of the drawing-room she stopped short, the reason for her doing so being that she had received an impression. The impression had, in strictness, nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as something new, and the soundlessness of her step gave her time to take in the scene before she interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her bonnet, and Gilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute they were unaware she had come in. Isabel had often seen that before, certainly, but what she had not seen, or at least had not noticed, was that their colloquy had for the moment converted itself into a soft of familiar silence, from which she instantly perceived that her entrance would startle them. Madame Merle was standing on the rug, a little way from the fire; Osmond was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her. Her head was erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck Isabel was that he was sitting while Madame Merle stood; there was an anomaly in this that arrested her. (PL, 404)

While the scene lasts only a moment, it sets off within Isabel “a sudden flicker of light” (405). The pair are old friends, so it is typical to see them talk and laugh while exchanging ideas. However, this meeting is imbued with an intimacy that she had never encountered, as Madame Merle and Osmond remain locked in a mutual gaze. Isabel is compelled to reflect on the long years of their association and to question the nature of their relationship. Certainly, the scene has been observed as a revelation by critics including George Smith, who comments that “full and opulent maturity in the Major Phase can be traced back to this one scene” (1992, 374).4

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The revelation scene is the culmination of Isabel’s lengthy ordeal. After all, her experiences of the past four years have been stored and updated in her brain as a source of information, and this leads quite naturally to her recognition of the couple’s duplicity. Thus, she discovers that she had been wrong all along, while Ralph was correct in his view that she should reject Osmond’s proposal of marriage. In what has emerged as a well-established pattern, Isabel’s bitter lesson is delivered through a scene of repetition. This new scene bears some resemblance to the older one, in a way that is fully compatible with the flow of consciousness. We might ask, is this image of resemblance related, somehow, to the ghost Isabel was unable to see? A clue is provided by Henry James’s letter of 1895 (October 11) to Francis Boott, which states, “But I see ghosts everywhere.”5 It would appear that Isabel’s curiosity regarding the ghost foretells her potential to learn a lesson. At the beginning of her adventure, she asks Ralph about the kind of frightening specter that traditionally haunts an old estate. Her cousin’s response is telling: It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it. I saw it long ago. (60)

As an innocent soul who denies the materiality of consciousness, Isabel is unable to grasp his meaning, and her ignorance is foregrounded in her conversation with Madame Merle, who asserts the validity of the material self. The older woman’s shrewd understanding of the material world enables her to manipulate Isabel into becoming Pansy’s stepmother and financial benefactor. Ultimately, the primal scene Isabel had witnessed was little more than an illusion, the product of the flow of time intermingling with her experiences. In line with Ralph’s passing but prescient comment, she did not see it, but instead felt it. Yet, Isabel’s pain and suffering entail the enlargement of her consciousness, enabling her to encounter Ralph’s ghost, the sublime image of surplus emotion. She is well aware that her cousin has been tortured by his role in securing the fortune that eventually drew Madame Merle into Isabel’s life. After six years, Isabel is prepared to appreciate the depth of her cousin’s love for her. On his deathbed, Ralph cries: “Dear Isabel, life is better; for in life, there’s love. Death is good—but there’s no love” (PL, 567). Devastated by the loss of her beloved cousin and pained by her belated recognition of the truth, Isabel senses a spirit in her presence: It seemed to her for an instance that he was standing there—a vague, hovering figure in the vagueness of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his white

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face—his kind eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not afraid; she was only sure. (570)

Indeed, Ralph’s ghost appears to Isabel as a source of strength and energy that enables her to face the world. In this sense, the ghost Isabel perceives is a benevolent one that promises to make her life more meaningful. The specter of Ralph stands in marked contrast to the malevolent ghost encountered by the governess in The Turn of the Screw. Indeed, Ralph demonstrates to Isabel the true nature of love, as if to tell her she cannot possess the object, for it is already a part of herself. Unlike Ralph, who never seeks to control Isabel, the governess is utterly convinced that she can possess young Miles. Overall, Henry James’s multifaceted use of specters lends credence to his confession to Francis Boott that he saw ghosts everywhere. Through his introduction of Ralph’s ghost, James appears to suggest that we should open our minds with curiosity and wonder rather than certitude. This point is made by Jonathan Flatley, in Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (2008), where he advises, “do not trust the will to knowledge; it does not deliver what it promises” (103). In place of epistemological certainty, James proposes the continuous development of experience, which contributes to the plasticity of the brain. Due to the intentionality and materiality of consciousness, the object cannot be grasped. It does, however, leave a surplus, namely the ghost. In this sense, Isabel’s recognition of the surplus appears to be consistent with her attunement to the space and time of Rome. In the course of her suffering, Isabel opens her mind toward other people and recognizes that she has a duty to protect Pansy and Edward Rosier, a young couple who are struggling against Osmond’s perverse demands. When she encourages Warburton to be kind to Pansy, Isabel remarks: “I like you, however that may be, for putting yourself in his [Rosier’s] place. It shows imagination” (PL 440). Her empathy toward the couple inspires the reader to speculate on the true reason Isabel returns to Rome, which has been the scene of her imprisonment. Perhaps she is motivated by a desire to free the couple from Osmond’s oppressive influence. In the end, though, the novel’s conclusion remains ambiguous and open to various readings. The reader might ask why Isabel would choose to return to Rome after learning of the conspiracy that led to her marriage. No less perplexing is her decision to return in the immediate aftermath of an unwanted suitor’s kiss. She is, after all, welcome to remain at Gardencourt, even if she rejects the advances of the ardent Caspar Goodwood, who has traveled from America to woo her. So, what is behind her hasty return to the dreary apartment she shares with Osmond at Palazzo Roccanera?

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WHY ROME? In the history of American fiction, few topics have generated more critical controversy than the conclusion of The Portrait of a Lady. Even contemporary reviewers questioned the ambiguity of Isabel Archer’s final choice. For instance, a review that appeared in the New York Tribune in 1881 (December 25, P. 8) observed, “It is claimed that the heroine is of all the characters the one least clearly painted, least perfectly understood.”6 Some critics assumed that Isabel’s decision to go back to Osmond reflected her desire to assist Pansy, who begged her to return. Other critics attributed her resolution to the influence of Caspar, who exudes an American spirit of strength and resilience. Among more recent reviewers of the novel, I am especially drawn to the work of Hillis Miller, whose conclusions overlap with some of my own, while demonstrating a crucial difference on the issue of embodied consciousness or emotion. In his essay “What is a Kiss? Isabel’s Moments of Decision” (2005), Miller draws a distinction between a normal kiss and a perverse kiss, mostly on the basis of whether or not it is linked to a sexual act motivated by a desire to reproduce. Miller goes on to speculate about Isabel’s decision to return to Rome in the immediate aftermath of Caspar’s kiss. He states that Isabel has been inspired by the American’s indomitable courage. While this interpretation is not uncommon, Miller’s argument proves to be rather ingenious. Denying the priority of the self to make a decision, he notes that there is no self before committing an act or a judgment: “Selfhood is created and created anew from moment to moment by speech acts. You do not have a self first and then decide on the basis of that” (741). Since a character decides and acts for reasons that remain mysterious and incommunicable, there is considerable room for a reader to engage in conjecture. In accordance with the aesthetic space that is reserved for the act of reading, the self that is created by the reader is chiefly based on information previously provided by the writer. Given Miller’s focus on enhancing space for the reader’s role, his proposal seems to be an extension of the ethics of reading that he previously postulated. Although Miller’s interpretation of Isabel’s final choice has a good deal of merit, I disagree with certain aspects of his argument. In place of his emphasis on the priority of the self to act or make decisions, I prefer to focus on the priority of emotion as a bodily reaction to feeling, a cognitive act. In other words, unlike Miller, I argue that one’s act and one’s decision should not be treated in the same dimension. They are distinctive concepts that are grounded on William James’s psychology or neuroscience: the former is the body’s reaction to an external impulse, while the latter can be understood as awareness mediated by consciousness, as in the case of emotion versus feeling, which I discussed earlier. In short, Miller’s concept of the self is shifted

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to James’s concept of consciousness, which flows and is intentional. Conversely, I would prefer to explore the reasons behind Isabel’s rejection of her two suitors, Warburton and Caspar. Her repudiation of the two men may help to explain her decision to flee from Caspar’s embrace and return to Rome, a move that underscores the integrity of her personality. Far from arguing that Isabel was inspired by Caspar’s physical power and courage, I suggest that she reacts against what she regards as his suffocating kiss. When seeking to answer the question, “why Rome?”—and, finally, why so immediately—I will turn to clues provided by James’s narrator. The first suitor, Lord Warburton, appears to be an ideal match for Isabel, and her decision to reject astonishes Ralph and his family. Handsome, frank, and warm-hearted, Warburton’s buoyant temperament is balanced by an impressive degree of erudition, along with a taste for radical politics. While he lacks confidence in certain respects, Warburton shows a sophisticated appreciation for art, literature, and even science. While few observers doubt his suitability for Isabel, she herself is irritated by the seemingly “perfect” nature of the match. Isabel is evidently intimidated by his aristocratic family, not to mention his enormous fortune and status. These supposed assets could put on limit her independence, while also denying her the experience afforded to an ordinary person. She concludes that this match would insulate her from the struggles of everyday life, and she observes, “It’s that I can’t escape my fate,” because “it’s giving up other chances” (PL, 141). Eager to expand her consciousness, she desires the freedom to breathe, even if it leads to errors and heartbreak. The second suitor, Caspar Goodwood, could not be more different than Warburton. Yet, the two men, in a very different manner, leave Isabel with the distinct feeling that she would lose her independence. While Warburton seems ideal in almost every respect, leading her to conclude that he would be an attentive husband, Caspar is strict and uncompromising in both his thoughts and actions, and there is little chance he will change over time. As a successful businessman from Boston, he values willpower over romantic notions. Given his aptitude for all things mechanical, Caspar manages his life with the utmost efficiently, but “his jaw was too square and set and his figure too straight and stiff: these things suggested a want of easy consonance with the deeper rhythms of life” (127). His appetites and goals are basic and unimaginative, and his proposal to Isabel reflects his utilitarian values: “I don’t care a cent for your admiration. . . .When will you marry me? That is the only question” (PL, 165 my abbreviation). In short, his consciousness seems markedly static, incapable of either error or improvement. Moreover, he clearly lacks empathy for others. As his worldview is unmoored from the concrete experience of the living moment, Caspar is inclined to jump to conclusions. Indeed, James’s flowing concept of materiality of consciousness

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seems incompatible with this simple mindset, which is blinded by its intentional and relational nature, as Bonney Macdonald notes.7 Caspar’s suffocating kiss is nothing less than an act of possession, for he believes that he can possess the other.

WHY ROME IMMEDIATELY? Despite the availability of other interpretations, we can certainly connect Isabel’s decision to return to Rome to her rejection of her two suitors. For Isabel, Rome offers a venue in which she can find room to breathe: an assertion that may seem contradictory, given her living conditions with Osmond. Yet, her experience of Rome is hardly limited to the dreary apartment at Palazzo Roccanera. Indeed, Osmond himself describes the space of Rome as “inexhaustible” (PL, 475). To better understand Isabel’s ability to become attuned to a particular place, it is helpful to compare her to the pragmatic journalist, Henrietta Stackpole, who experiences Rome in an entirely different manner. Given her tendency to place a priority on utility, Henrietta advises, “Make yourself useful in some way, and then we’ll talk about it” (101). Simplistic, strong-minded, and self-righteous, the journalist does not hesitate to impose her own opinions on others, and she continually promotes Caspar as Isabel’s most promising suitor. Like Caspar, she believes in things prior to her actual experience of them, “I’m quite content to be myself; I don’t want to change” (129). Lacking emotional depth, imagination, and empathy for others, these two characters do not believe in the plasticity of the brain or its capacity to be shaped by experience and learning. In line with this view, Henrietta views Rome as an unchanging space, “She had seen the place before and carefully inspected it; her present act was a simply sign of familiarity, of her knowing all about it” (482). For Henrietta, consciousness is a pure entity that is unaffected by materiality. Hence, it is changeless. Unlike Isabel, Henrietta is incapable of experiencing Rome in ways that resonate with the passage of time and her accumulation of new experiences. Not surprisingly, Isabel’s initial encounter with Osmond is informed by her sense of place. If the meeting has been choreographed by the manipulative Madam Merle, it is no less true that Isabel has been excited at the prospect of traveling to the European Continent. She finds herself overwhelmed by the charm of the Mediterranean coast, the threshold of Italy, which stretches before her like a grand promise. Her love of art and beauty, combined with her insatiable desire for knowledge, shapes her response to Osmond’s home in Florence. James takes care to describe the atmosphere in detail:

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This antique, solid, weather-worn, yet imposing front had a somewhat incommunicative character. It was the mask, not the face of the house. It had heavy lids, but no eyes: the house in reality looked another way—looked off behind, into splendid openness and the range of the afternoon light. (PL, 231)

If this vivid description offers clues to the owner’s taste and personality, any unsettling details are bound to be lost on Isabel. She is, as usual, more affected by the external atmosphere, in the same way that she had permitted the rainstorm to color her response to Madame Merle’s piano recital. In this case, she is swept up by the splendid openness of Florence and the crisp afternoon light. Frank G. Novak, Jr., in his essay “‘Strangely, Fertilizing’: Henry James Florence and Isabel Archer’s Rome,” describes the manner in which Osmond’s villa enchants Isabel. Novak argues that, for Isabel, Osmond is inseparable from his Italian setting, as “the human embodiment of the beautiful city” (155). The place and its inhabitants appear to offer Isabel the promise of a rich and meaningful life. Unlike Stackpole, Isabel is deeply attuned to the time and space in which she finds herself. During her initial visit to Rome, she is overwhelmed by the “large and bright” vastness of Saint Peter’s Basilica (PL, 289, 296, 297). Four years of life with Osmond at the Palazzo Roccanera, however, have left her disillusioned and downhearted. For she is likewise attuned to that dark and suffocating structure, which is situated on the outskirts of the crowded city. Her awareness of the ways in which she has been manipulated, as well as Ralph’s key role in facilitating her inheritance, causes Isabel deep emotional pain. As she wanders along Rome’s Appian Way, passing by the ruins of the old imperial capital, she hears the mournful voices of elderly people who have walked that narrow path and draws a lesson of endurance. She finds herself in harmony with space and time, as though she has finally accepted the materiality of consciousness, which she had so long repudiated. After all, consciousness, as part of the material world, is always intentional toward something. By seizing the virtue of empathy with alterity, Isabel is now prepared to perceive the ghost she once aspired to encounter. Henry James famously observed, “I’ve seen Rome, and I shall go to bed a wiser man than I last rose—yesterday morning.”8 Likewise, Isabel opens her eyes toward the otherness of consciousness. In light of her new found wisdom, we can surmise the true reason behind her decision to leave for Rome immediately after Caspar’s aggressive and uninvited kiss. On some level, Isabel accepts the inevitable fact that we cannot possess the object, given that we are attuned to materials. However, she is not consciously aware of this fact, which is accessible to the reader only through interpretation. Her flight in the wake of Caspar’s suffocating and possessive kiss amounts to a bodily

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reaction, as it arises on the spur of the moment—that is, unconsciously—as though she is desperately seeking light in the darkness. It is not yet a true feeling, but instead an emotional response. As William James observes, The love of man for woman, or of the human mother for her babe, our wrath at snakes and our fear of precipices, may all be described similarly, as instances of the way in which peculiarly conformed pieces of the world’s furniture will fatally call forth most particular mental and bodily reactions, in advance of, and often in direct opposition to the verdict of our deliberate reason concerning them. (1884, 190)

Given that Isabel’s bodily response precedes any cognitive feeling, the reader is left to speculate on the motives behind her departure for Rome. I believe my interpretation of Isabel’s final act rests firmly on information provided by the narrator, who is, after all, a personification of Henry James. In line with these assumptions, I propose that Ralph serves as an avatar of the author (James), while Isabel is essentially his creation. In reaching this conclusion, I have drawn upon the theoretical work of the author’s brother, William James, along with recent neuroscientific research that aligns with his revolutionary concept of emotion. These sources, in combination, have guided my interpretation of the novel’s controversial ending. NOTES 1. William James, “What is an Emotion?” Mind 9.34 (1884): 188–205. 2. Erick R. Kandel compares psychology of Freud to that of James in line with neuroscience. See Kandel, The Age of Insight, 53–61. Gerald M. Edelman mentions James’s words that mind is not a stuff, but a process in his books, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, 6 and James’s phenomenology of thought in Wider than the Sky, 7–8. 3. Martha Nussbaum observes that “the word feeling now does not contrast with the cognitive words, perception and judgment, it is merely terminological variety for them” (195). “Emotions as Judgement of Value and Importance.” In Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions, 183–199. 4. See Kaja Silverman, “Too Early/Too Late: Subjectivity and the Primal Scene in Henry James.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 21 (1988): 147–173. George Smith in “James, Degas, and the Emersonian Gaze” points out the scene as the revelation: Madame Merle is standing while Osmond is sitting. Novel 25.3 (1992): 360–386. 5. Henry wrote to Francis Boot (Oct 11, 1895), “But I see ghosts everywhere.” See Leon Edel ed., Henry James Letters Vol. IV. 1895-1916, 24. 6. See John May, “James’s The Portrait of a Lady.” In Henry James’s The Contemporary Reviews, 134. For all those contemporary reviews on the fiction, see 121–149.

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7. Bonney McDonald, “The Force of Revelation: Receptive Vision in Henry James’s Early Italian Travel Essays.” In The Sweetest Impression of Life, 128–148. See 138: “Consciousness is referential or intentional and does not operate in isolation from lived experience.” 8. Leon Edel, “The Italian Journeys of Henry James.” In The Sweetest Impression of Life: The James Family and Italy, 8–21. See 15.

Chapter 5

“Goblin” Speech and Empathy in The Turn of the Screw

The more innocent, the more suspicious Teckyoung Kwon

Since its serial publication in 1898, Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw has inspired an extraordinary amount of critical scholarship, which belies its initial characterization as a traditional ghost story. The history of that criticism reflects the shifting paradigms that have transformed literary criticism over the decades. Much of this criticism revolves around a series of fundamental questions: Is the ghost in The Turn of the Screw “real” or simply a manifestation of the governess’s anxieties? Does the governess demonstrate the diabolical impulse to harm an innocent child, or does she sincerely set out to protect the children in her care? Are the children in the novella innocent or wholly corrupt? Not surprisingly, critiques of the novella have tended to reflect the underlying ideological assumptions of the critics involved. Critics inspired by Freudian psychoanalytic criticism, for example, are inclined to focus on the issue of sexuality, while Marxist literary critics have centered more on the issues of gender and class. One might ask whether this diversity of opinion is a natural outcome of critical debate or reflects inherent deficiencies in James’s narrative. In his groundbreaking work, Rhetoric of Fiction (1983), Wayne C. Booth asserts that in order for readers to achieve a stable and coherent understanding of a given work of fiction, they must be attentive to the author’s voice, which invariably lurks beneath those of the individual characters. Booth contends that, since the author’s rhetoric shapes a work of fiction, readers who find it insufficiently informative are bound to develop a wide variety of opinions, “in the form of disputes like the famous trial of the poor narrator of James’s The Turn of the Screw” (311). In light of this assertion, we can assume that 110

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Booth took exception to the varied critical readings of James’s novella. Indeed, he would be expected to raise the question of whether Henry James himself is responsible for the plurality of opinion surrounding his most controversial work. In this vein, it is worth noting that James’s public and private comments on his novella are somewhat ambiguous. Before going further, it seems appropriate to examine critiques of the novella that made their appearance before and after the release of Booth’s influential treatise. This exercise will enable us to identify the overall shape of this plurality of opinion, as well as the remains of various critical interpretations. Secondly, if we set out to trace the author’s intentions, I think it is important that we examine the novella’s prologue, which many critics have tended to neglect. My interpretation of the prologue will reflect the proposition that Freud and William James held compatible views on the subject of psychology, especially in terms of the functions of memory and consciousness. While the ghost in The Turn of the Screw could easily be identified with “the memory trace,” as Freud would put it, it can also be identified with those experiences stored in one’s brain, as William James would have described it. It is therefore no surprise that Henry James’s ghost seems far removed from the chain-clanking specter of a Victorian stage production. The ghosts that appear in his novella are demonic, mischievous, and insidious “goblins,” as Henry James described them in Prefaces to the New York Edition, “as loosely constructed as those of the old trials for witchcraft” (1908, 1187). This characterization appears to reflect their strong association with the act of speech. Thirdly, I believe that a detailed reading of the dialogue between the governess and Miles, her young male charge, suggest that their divergent perspectives essentially give rise to this spectral “goblin.” Their dialogue, after all, is informed by a cavernous epistemological gap that is, in itself, a consequence of the divergent experiences stored within their respective memories, along with the dramatic differences in their age and background. The governess, however, seems wholly ignorant of the goblin’s origins, and her evidently unshakeable belief in its objective reality informs her behavior. Ultimately, her lack of empathy toward her youthful charge, Miles, contributes to the story’s tragic ending. My final analysis of the governess’s perspective suggests that, in contrast to Booth’s assertion, the authorial voice in The Turn of the Screw provides enough information to give readers a stable and coherent understanding of the story, while at the same time preserving enough ambiguity to allow for varied (even contradictory) interpretations. These interpretations, in turn, have reflected the influence of changing paradigms, not to mention recent neuroscience, the topic that I will venture to explore in this essay.

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THE REMAINS OF CRITICISMS An unusual development in the critical history of The Turn of the Screw has been a tendency to ignore or deemphasize Booth’s critique of Henry James’s “impersonal narration” or method of dramatization. This seems strange, given that Booth, in the second edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction, devotes two entire chapters to James’s famous novella. In those chapters, he contends that the author fails to provide readers with enough information to formulate a consistent interpretation of the story. Although his book was intended as a rebuttal to modern criticism’s call for the “eradication” of authorial presence within a given text, Booth’s review of The Turn of the Screw is relevant and well worth reading for reasons that are distinct from his overall purpose. Yet, many critics of the novella have virtually ignored Booth’s analysis, and his work is discussed only intermittently in historical overviews of criticism concerning James’s work. As recently as 2008, Kimberly C. Reed failed to even mention Booth in her four-page survey of criticism, which ranged from early twentieth-century figures like Goddard, Kenton, and Wilson to subsequent critics who analyzed the novella from Deconstructive, Marxist, and Gender perspectives (102–105). When discussing the unreliability of the governess’s narrative, Reed relies on Todorov’s concept of the “fantastic,” a genre of literature informed by a “hesitation” to distinguish the natural from the supernatural. Reed also suggests that the challenges involved in interpreting the story are rooted in James’s idiosyncratic use of silence and vision. A welcome exception to this rule has been Peter G. Beidler’s second edited edition of The Turn of the Screw (2004), which includes an overview of criticism that references Booth, highlighting his characterization of various critical readings of the novella as “ethics” for the reader, while nevertheless retaining his original position on the work’s alleged deficiencies. Before venturing further, however, it is important to identify the main thrust of Booth’s argument on the narrative inadequacies of The Turn of the Screw, which, in his view, account for the plurality of opinions surrounding the novella. Booth points out that James himself, in correspondence with H. G. Wells, characterizes The Turn of the Screw as “a pot-boiler,” albeit one of the most beautiful things he has ever created (James, 1955, 151). In the same message, James explains that the grotesque business I had to make her picture and the childish psychology I had to make her trace and present, were, for me at least, a very difficult job, in which absolute lucidity and logic, a singleness of effect, were imperative. (150)

For Booth, these statements suggest that James worked hard to produce a clear narrative. He then quotes a passage from The Notebooks in which

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James expresses his intention to endow the governess with “authority” (1987, 312–13). Based on these statements, the critic concludes that, despite James’s best efforts to achieve a high degree of narrative clarity, his novella possesses an ambiguous quality that has fueled an endless critical debate. Naturally, such disagreements tend to focus on the character of the governess. While Edmund Wilson insists upon her inherent untrustworthiness, other critics, including Rebecca West, argue that the governess accurately reports what she sees. Meanwhile, critics like Leon Edel have sought to achieve a compromise between these divergent perspectives. Booth is clearly dissatisfied with this state of affairs, asserting that few of us feel happy with a situation in which we cannot decide whether the subject is two evil children as seen by a naïve but well-meaning governess or two innocent children as seen by a hysterical, destructive governess. (1983, 346)

His evident frustration with the novella’s ambiguity leads him to pose a direct question, “Have we proved that James included in the story, and not simply in his statements of intentions in the notebooks, unequivocal evidence that the ghosts are really there, turning that screw?” This query gives rise to yet another question. Indeed, Booth goes on to ask whether “it is James, rather than the governess, who has lost his ‘grasp of reality’” (369). Booth’s concerns revolve around the issue of James’s success in realizing his stated intentions, given that the author indicated, on various occasions, that he aimed for clarity. Yet, he ultimately achieved a bedeviling ambiguity. In the wake of this critique, we are compelled to ask whether James’s text contains the sort of explicit rhetoric that serves to clarify his intentions to an attentive reader. Before examining the text, however, I will explore the various critical interpretations that we encounter. In the early twentieth century, critical readings of The Turn of the Screw often focused on the governess’s state of mind and, to a lesser extent, on the emotional state of her young wards. In this vein, critics have speculated on the possibility that the governess was insane, while others have argued that the children have been corrupted. An oppositional relationship soon arose between those critics who held Freudian and anti-Freudian perspectives. In his 1934 essay “The Ambiguity of Henry James,” Edmund Wilson set the tone for subsequent Freudian readings of the novella when he characterized the governess as a spinster who is suffering from a neurotic case of sexual repression, a view embraced by critics like Edna Kenton. In contrast, Robert B. Heilman in his essay “The Turn of the Screw as Poem” describes the story as an ingenious reframing of the archetypal Christian view of the human condition. Heilman contends that, when the governess becomes convinced of the

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children’s corruption, she willingly assumes the role of savior in an effort to protect them from the malevolent spirits. By the 1950s, however, readings of the novella had become more nuanced, complicated, and difficult to categorize. In “A Pre-Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw,” for instance, Harold C. Goddard proposes an equivocal authorial voice that effectively frees us “to believe that Governess sees the actual spirits of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel.” Goddard adds: “Nothing in the tale, I have tried to show, demands that hypothesis. But nothing, on the other hand, absolutely contradicts it” (33). This observation appears to confirm Booth’s criticism of James’s overall approach. Nevertheless, Goddard seems to come down, at least to some extent, on the side of those who believe the governess is unbalanced. He suggests that the children, far from being corrupt, are victims of their governess’s delusions. Furthermore, he asserts that they show great courage under challenging circumstances. Unlike Wilson, though, Goddard relies exclusively on James’s text, without making reference to the concepts contained in Freudian psychology (Later, I will draw upon James’s text to explore further Goddard’s critical reading of the novella). In contrast to Heilman’s characterization of the governess as the savior in a reworked Christian parable, John Lydenberg stands with those who view this central character as the primary source of the children’s difficulties. He strongly criticizes Kenton’s tendency to downplay the significance of the governess and goes on to argue that the governess is the one who effectively “tightens the screw” on her young charges. The children, meanwhile, are quite blameless, possibly even angelic. If so, Lydenberg must conclude that the governess is a false savior—anxious, fearful, possessive, domineering, and hysterical. Indeed, he goes on to describe her as “a compulsive neurotic who with her martyr complex and her need to dominate finally drives to destruction the children whom she wishes to possess” (1957, 41). Yet, he fails to support this assertion with convincing evidence, and his interpretation begs the question of whether James intended to produce a horror story or one firmly rooted in reality (55). After all, if the ghost is a figment of the governess’s troubled imagination, we are left with a realistic tale that presents itself as a fantasy. When it comes to the corruption of the children, Booth acknowledges that critics are equally divided. This question, of course, is closely related to how those critics perceive the character of the governess. Alexander E. Jones, in his essay “Point of View in The Turn of the Screw,” sets out to “defend” the governess from Wilson’s Freudian interpretation. In the process, he refers to the frequently overlooked prologue, in which James’s insists upon the governess’s authority. In Jones’s view, she is neither insane nor an “unreliable narrator.” On the contrary, she desperately tries to live up to her responsibility to shelter the children from danger, and her failure to do so is rooted in her

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fear and inexperience. Jones would argue that the evil spirits actually appear and that they actively participate in the children’s corruption. Thus, while he protects the governess from Wilson’s characterization of her as a Freudian neurotic, he does so at the expense of the children, whom he barely discusses. Neither the children nor the identities of the ghosts managed to attract much critical attention until the late twentieth century. In 1963, when Leon Edel published his edited volume, Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, he included one essay that reflects a serious effort to uncover the identities of the ghosts. Significantly, in “The Ghost Stories,” British writer Virginia Woolf contends that James’s ghosts have little to do with the violent, bloodthirsty specters one might find in a Gothic novel. Instead, they represent something unnamed within ourselves, something that occurs “whenever the ordinary appears ringed by the strange” (53). Although Woolf does not specifically identify this element, her view of the ghost as “the baffling things that are left over, the frightening ones that persist” (53) is consistent with Freud’s concept of the memory trace. In short, the publication of this essay signals a significant move away from Freud’s sexually repressed neurotic toward the concept of the memory traces. Yet, the question remains: How do the psychological theories of William James fit into this scheme, if at all? Notably, Woolf’s identification of the ghost with the unconscious inspires a detailed response from Edel, who interprets the ghost as little more than an individual’s sense of the past. To support this view, he refers to remarks that James made at Lamb House on August 9, 1900: The ideal is something as simple as The Turn of the Screw, only different and less grossly and merely apparitional. I was rather taken with Howells’s suggestion of an “international ghost”—I kindle, I vibrate, respond to suggestion, imaginatively, so almost unfortunately, so generously and precipitately, easily. (Edel, 1987, 189)

While Edel does not appear to enjoy examining James’s texts in any depth, he nevertheless produces insights that push our understanding of the author in new directions. It was Edel, after all, who, in his essay “The Late James,” highlighted the important influence of William James. Edel presents the image of two brothers locked in a “subterranean relation.” He calls attention to Henry’s reference to “two lives, two beings and one experience,” which is consistent with William’s words to his brother (1989, 104). Edel also renders an important clue (one that I will discuss further) when he points out that Freud’s view of fantasy, dreams, and the role of the unconscious are deeply rooted in reality. For the first time, he identifies the influence of two great psychologists upon Henry James’s novella: a

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contribution that remains invaluable. In 1988, Karen Halttunen engaged in a deeper examination of the James brothers’ relationship in her essay “Through the Cracked and Fragmented Self: William James and The Turn of the Screw.” Her analysis of The Turn of the Screw within the context of William James’s theories represents a general appreciation of the influence of nineteenth-century psychology. This, in turn, facilitates a departure from psychoanalytical or supernatural readings of the story. Halttunen notes that “the conscious self was to the subliminal self like an island in the sea” (477). Instead of interpreting the governess as a Freudian hysteric, she seeks to examine the protagonist’s family background. As the youngest daughter of a country vicar, the inexperienced governess has been thrust into a new and challenging situation. Accordingly, Halttunen takes into account these circumstances as she engages in a fresh reading of the character. Before moving on to critical interpretations of the next century, I should linger briefly on an essay that seeks to frame the story within the context of the prologue. In 1994, T. J. Lustig not only examines the ghost in terms of the concept of a doppelganger, but he also calls attention to a narrative frame in which past events involving the governess are related by Douglas within the present. Lustig argues that the “ghosts enable him to explore the effects of the past on the present without needing to represent intervening periods of time” (95). We must ask why the idea of the past spoken about in the present is so critical to the story’s meaning. No less important is the question surrounding the prologue’s importance to our understanding of the governess. While traditionally ignored by reviewers, the prologue must be closely examined in order to answer Booth’s assertion that the author failed to provide sufficient information to the reader. Critical readings of the twentieth-first century have tended to place more emphasis on the psychological theories of Freud and William James, with a focus on the evolution of consciousness. Greg Zacharias, in his 2011 essay “The Complexion of Ever so Long Ago: Style and Henry James’s Ghosts,” exemplifies this tendency when he posits the ghost as a representation of memory—especially a “persistent memory” that bears the truth of past experiences (14). His presentation of the ghost as an embodiment of past experiences, memories, consciousness, and truth has inspired further examinations of this kind. His reading of the novella raises questions about how these components of consciousness are related to one another and function globally within the human brain, while also inspiring examinations of the ways in which these topics are presented within the story itself. Similarly, Andrew Smith connects the ghost to the continual push and pull between past and present (2014, 192). We are now approaching the most recent stage of criticism about this disturbing and controversial ghost story. Given that this stage comprises

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inquiries into the nature of the ghost itself, Henry James’s own comments on the subject should serve as a guide to any interpretation. In “Prefaces to the New York Edition” (1908), James observed, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not “ghosts” at all, as we now know the ghost, but goblins, elves, imps, demons as loosely constructed as those of the old trials for witchcraft; if not, more pleasingly, fairies of the legendary order, wooing their victims forth to see them dance under the moon. (1187)

If we take James at his word, the traditional ghost has little, if anything, to do with his novella. He invites us to view the ghost as a “goblin,” a maker of illusions, an entity capable of creating something larger or smaller than the real. This entity attaches itself to language, which is itself a product of individual experiences, memories, and cognition. Notably, the play of the goblin in the dialogue between the governess and Miles appears crucial. Indeed, Kalliopi Nikolopoulou argues that, while the ghost as unconscious fantasy is virtually absent from the story, it becomes fully present through discursive language. In short, language creates the ghost or, to put it differently, the ghost creates language. Could it be that this mischievous and demonic goblin creates a vague and meandering language that reflects the yawning epistemological gap between the governess and Miles? That is a question I will pursue later in some detail. Two essays from this period seem especially relevant, given their analysis of the ghost in the contexts of both realism and the power of language. In 2005, Pericles Lewis published an impressive essay “The Reality of the Unseen: Shared Fictions and Religious Experience in the Ghost Stories of Henry James,” which engages in a novel exploration of the nature of consciousness. Lewis argues that, within consciousness, there resides an unconscious element that is well beyond our grasp—an element that William James described as the language of ideas, for social practice as well as religious experience. Lewis says that the power of language has the capacity to move people and alter society, even though it consists of little more than fiction, that is, the ghost. Hence, a perspective rooted in realism should not underestimate this intangible element. Although it cannot be seen or proven to exist through any scientific means, it nevertheless wields a powerful influence upon people, inspiring them to engage in activities which they believe are in the interest of the larger society. For Lewis, William’s idea of the embodied mind enters Henry’s fiction through the enigmatic figure of the ghost, who reflects the inner desire to make things happen. A weakness in Lewis’s analysis, however, is that he firmly adheres to William James’s view of language only as an element that influences social practices and religious creeds. This is far removed from the sort of dialogue—speech at a personal level—that

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occurs among characters within Henry James’s novella. Pragmatic Richard Rorty in his 2016 essay “Getting Rid of the Appearance: Reality Distinction,” sheds light on the effect of language on the human mind.1 He indicates that this process involves embracing something unreal within the realm of realism. Rorty goes on to argue that, if reality is subjective, then so is reason. Hence, reason should not be employed as a truth-tracking faculty. Instead, it should be used to “take part in social practices that make possible richer and fuller human lives” (70). If this embodied language, or “goblin speech,” is involved in the construction of thought and cognition—not to mention rationality—the border separating the real and unreal is likely to be disturbed. As I have noted, early twentieth-century critical readings of the novella frequently took opposing views on the character and mental stability of the governess. From there, criticism tended to reflect increasingly complicated interpretations of the ghost, which, in turn, reflected the prevailing influence of certain theoretical paradigms. Over time, critical interpretations of the ghost ranged from the sort of specter one would encounter in a Gothic novel to the kind of apparition produced by the human mind: one closely aligned to the unconscious or memory traces. Sigmund Freud eventually found his way back into the critical debate, although this time, as more an explorer of the brain than an analyst in charge of talking cure. Meanwhile, critics have shown a deeper appreciation of William James’s writings on the nature of consciousness, which evidently influenced the work of his brother, Henry. From a psychological perspective, the ghost can be interpreted as the surplus of the real, the product of personal experiences stored within the brain. This surplus gives rise to a language that is essentially subjective. Hence, the governess is less neurotic than naïve. Her failure to deal effectively with the children, who are essentially innocent, reflects her lack of experience. If, however, the ghost arises from previous experiences stored within the mind that, in turn, influence our language, how can we hope to communicate effectively with others? Did the author provide us with an appropriate amount of information as he lurked behind the story’s characters? Does James’s characterization of the ghost as a “goblin” help us to interpret the failures of the governess, or to assess the relative innocence of Miles? If the ghost is interpreted as a remembrance of things past, we can confidently conclude that James’s approach is essentially realistic. Operating under that assumption, it is still unclear whether James provided the reader with enough information to interpret the story in a way that is consistent. In order to do justice to the author, I will examine every portion of the text, including the prologue. In the process, a range of questions will become evident. Not least of all, we must ask ourselves why Douglas has waited forty years to share with others the governess’s written record of her experiences at Bly. In the following section, I will address those and other issues.

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FUNCTION OF PROLOGUE IN THE NARRATIVE FRAME James uses his prologue to furnish the reader with information that he considers relevant to the reader. We are presented with the story’s narrative frame, along with the information that Douglas, an apparent acquaintance of the governess, chooses to provide. We learn of the governess’s background and her state of mind at the time of her interview for the position at Bly. We also discover that the eventual narrator of the novella has reserved the title “Turn of the Screw” for his own retelling of the tale. This information is clearly deserving of the reader’s attention, for in a sense, the prologue is part of the work of fiction that follows.2 In the prologue, we experience the ghost story as related by Douglass at a Christmas Eve gathering that occurs forty years after the events he describes. Douglas indicates that the governess who experienced these strange events was twenty years old at the time they occurred. Furthermore, the manuscript in which she described them had been locked away for twenty years until her death. The narrator, an avatar of the author, indicates that he is recounting the story after Douglas’s death. This raises a question: Why, in the first place, did Douglas choose to wait so long before sharing the governess’s story with an audience? Clues to the answer can be found in Douglas’s seemingly contradictory statements regarding the governess. His characterization of her confession as an “uncanny, ugly, painful, horrible story” is at odds with his description of the governess herself as “the most agreeable person I’ve ever known” (TS, 4), as though she were somehow unchanged by this experience. Yet, he also indicates that the governess has changed considerably over time, adding that she wished to learn from her experience, and “she did learn” (TS, 8). We want to know what lessons she gleaned from her ordeal, in which she evidently wronged the children who were in her care. Indeed, we must be extremely attentive to any information provided about the governess, including her family background and her state of mind at the time she arrived at Bly. Douglas indicates that the governess was “the youngest of several daughters of a poor country parson” (6). Callow and untested, she has benefited from no experience in the care of children. This concise description gives the reader a sense of the governess’s character, which has been shaped by her rural upbringing in a home that is undoubtedly guided by a strict Christian moral code. She possesses little awareness of the evil that flourishes in the larger world, and she appears to retain a romantic view of life. She is, not surprisingly, swept away by her encounter with the handsome, confident, and pleasant bachelor who is seeking to employ a governess for his orphaned nephew and niece. From the perspective of this sheltered young woman from a Hampshire vicarage, the splendid young man appears to have leapt from

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the pages of a romantic novel. Her infatuation is implied in the narrator’s description of the young man, who is fashionable, maintains “expensive habits,” and has “charming ways with women.” While this is never stated directly, the governess appears to be deeply impressed by her employer, and she is charmed, at least initially, by the rarefied atmosphere of Bly. If this setting were not idyllic enough, she will soon find herself as the guardian of two beautiful children. Determined to impress her employer and trouble him as little as possible, she assumes her job with a fierce sense of duty, vowing that she will handle alone any crisis that presents itself. In his “Prefaces to The New York Edition,” James characterizes the novella as “a piece of ingenuity pure and simple, of cold artistic calculation, an amusette to catch those not easily caught” (1984, 1185). As such, The Turn of the Screw appears to begin as a sort of coming-of-age story, in which the heroine faces a challenging situation and sets out to prove her worth. Granted enormous freedom in the discharge of her duties, the governess recognizes that any failure to perform will prove humiliating. This is a familiar pattern in James’s works. In The Portrait of a Lady, for instance, Isabel, too, derives knowledge from a painful experience. In light of this strategy, we can appreciate the narrator’s decision to place the story’s title at the end of the prologue (TS, 9). The narrator freely permits Douglas to read the late governess’s confession in the same way that the handsome employer has granted the governess the freedom to handle her duties independently. In the case of Douglas, however, this freedom has been granted with one condition. The title will be none other than that which the narrator chooses. We are compelled ultimately to consider whether the governess, in turn, grants the same degree of freedom to Miles. Indeed, it seems that a crucial thematic element in James’s work is the freedom to make life choices, for better or worse. This theme, closely related to the author’s focus on empathy, was a factor in Free Indirect Discourse that he fully developed in The Ambassadors. Although a good deal of attention has been devoted to the governess, the children, and the ghost, one cannot ignore the significance of the children’s guardian, who personally hires the governess to care for them. If relatively little space is dedicated to this pivotal character, James nevertheless takes care to describe the guardian’s liberal approach to the welfare of his nephew and niece, which, at times, borders on indifference. Additionally, he supplies telling details about the young man’s fashionable lifestyle. While the governess is clearly taken with her glamorous employer, the reader cannot help but discern the gap that separates them socially. James informs us that these differences in social status also contribute to a crippling communication gap between the governess and the children. This gap becomes especially evident when the governess tries to determine the cause of Miles’s sudden dismissal from school, which leads to his unexpected return to Bly. To gain a deeper understanding

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of these characters’ inability to interact effectively one can do no better than to refer to William James’s The Principles of Psychology. In this important work, James explains that the concept of consciousness, far from a static entity, flows according to specific circumstances. Ultimately, consciousness cannot be separated from an individual’s environment, which includes his or her material circumstances. Thus, my consciousness is subjective and intentional, although it changes as time goes by. Hence, any individual’s thought processes are bound to depend heavily upon his or her environment. As James observes: No thought even comes into direct sight of a thought in another personal consciousness than its own. Absolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law. It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought but my thought, every thought being owned. Neither contemporaneity nor proximity in space, nor similarity of quality and content are able to fuse thoughts together which are sundered by this barrier of belonging to different personal minds. The breaches between such thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature. (PP, 1: 151, James’s italics)

Since cognition is deeply informed by one’s personal environment, empathy for others is challenging to achieve. This is true of the untested governess in The Turn of the Screw. She is the product of a poor and deeply religious family, so little, if anything, in her experience has prepared her for the fashionable and morally liberal individuals she will encounter in Essex. Given the experiential gulf that separates the governess from her employer, as well as her young charges, it is little wonder that she is confused, even embarrassed. Her perspective is limited and highly subjective, and she is thoroughly ignorant of the sort of pluralistic mindset that might be achieved through exposure to various environments. To make a difficult situation worse, the governess is driven by a sense of duty that is tinged with romantic passion, and she receives little in the way of outside assistance. When we view the situation in this context, we can understand why she is the only member of the household to see the ghosts. Indeed, James’s ghost can be seen as the surplus of the governess’s present cognition. Since her confusion apparently arises from her distorted perspective, which is deeply influenced by memories of her upbringing as the child of a country pastor, we can discern a parallel in Strether’s encounter with the unfamiliar world of Paris in James’s later novel, The Ambassadors. Strether initially experiences Paris as someone whose formative years have been spent in Woollett, Massachusetts, although his reaction to this situation differs dramatically from that of the naïve governess. James, as noted, referred to this sense of the past within the present as the “international ghost,” a concept first suggested by Howells.

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Perhaps James borrowed this concept in anticipation of his development of a very different kind of protagonist, namely Strether. If we were to compare and contrast these two protagonists, we might choose to focus on the starkly different manner in which they cope with the tug of the past within the present. The governess interprets the environment at Bly through the prism of her strict religious upbringing, which has rendered her sensitive to any suggestion of evil. This tendency informs her behavior in critical ways during her tenure at the country estate. If we turn to Henry James’s observations about the ghost, the entity can be experienced in a wide variety of settings. We can infer that the ghost is little more than the surplus of past experience making itself felt within the present moment. Hence, the ghost is not the product of any mental pathology. On the contrary, it arises from a perfectly normal psyche. That has led some to inquire about the ways in which the psychology of memory, as well as that of consciousness, supports the idea of the ghost as the product of memory traces. If we turn to the writings of William James and Freud, who both developed theories grounded on the biology of evolution, we find that they jointly insisted that humans alone possess an episodic memory distinct from bodily memory, which James terms as “habit.” Other animals clearly possess this “habit,” or primary memory, which contributes to their survival in nature. That being said, a bird’s habit of flying is distinct from a human’s developed skill of swimming, since a person might well remember what happened to him on the day, not to mention bodily skill of how to swim. Indeed, a crucial characteristic of episodic memory is its extraordinary individuality. In short, it is “my” memory, not yours. This sense of personal memory, in turn, gives rise to loneliness and a self-conscious awareness of oneself, while entailing personal emotion and thought. This thought, as noted earlier, is intentional and free-flowing. Inseparable from materiality, it addresses changes in time, the so-called stream of consciousness. Hence, memory of the past is invariably contained within the present thought, in the same way that cognition of the present relies on memory traces stored from past experiences. William James notes that memory is the association of present images with others known to belong to the past and further proposes that, without memory no consciousness is known outside of itself (PP, 1: 398, 432). In essence, Freud’s memory system is remarkably similar to the one James proposes, although Freud places a greater emphasis on remembering than he does on consciousness. On December 6, 1896, one year after Freud completed “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” a paper that remained unpublished during his lifetime, the psychologist stated in a letter to Wilhelm Fliess that “W [Wahrnehmungen (perceptions)] are neurons in which perceptions originate, to which consciousness attaches, but which

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in themselves retain no trace of what has happened. For consciousness and memory are mutually exclusive” (1985, 207–208, Freud’s italics). Thus, he proposes a mnemic system comprising two divided systems. While the perceptive neuron receives external experiences, the permeable neuron is responsible for storing those experiences. Freud refers to the former system as perceptive consciousness, while describing the latter as memory traces. Once again, he insists that these two systems are involved in mutually exclusive activities. Freud would continue to build on this concept throughout his life, as reflected in his essay “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’” (1925). Elaborating on his earlier work, he observes that “an unlimited receptive capacity and a retention of permanent traces seem to be mutually exclusive properties in the apparatus which we use as substitutes for our memory” (227). Freud evidently considered this formula critical to our understanding of human memory and cognition. In the essay, he stresses that, since consciousness retains no permanent traces when the neurons behind the perceptual system preserve them, consciousness is receptive to each new perception, like a clean sheet, in the flow of time. As a result of this dual system, the past is remembered in the present situation, in the same way cognition in the present comprises past memories, as if touched by the magic hand of goblin. Once again, in this context, it is easier to understand why the governess is apparently the only character in the novella who sees the ghost. Likewise, we gain insights into Henry James’s reference to the ghost as a “goblin,” as opposed to the kind of frightening apparition one might encounter in a horror story. If our thoughts are personal and intentional, language cannot serve as an ideal means of communication. In short, my speech reflects my experiences, as well as my desires, a residue of which is leftover when I attempt to communicate with you. If, however, a “goblin” attaches itself to human speech and frustrates the goal of effective communication, how is it possible to reach the mind of another through language? This is where empathy enters into the picture, and there is no better place to begin this discussion than with a description of the governess’s awkward conversation with Miles, as she seeks to discern the reason for his dismissal from school. I suspect that most readers can imagine a more productive interaction than the one the narrator presents, in which a naïve and insecure governess seeks to wring a confession from the young boy in her care, generating the kind of fearful environment that works against genuine communication. In the prologue, James adopts a narrative frame in which a past event is recounted within the present. Perhaps, the governess’s impulse to view the present moment from the vantage point of the past has sharply limited her capacity to empathize with Miles.

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“GOBLIN” SPEECH AND EMPATHY In order to shed light on the governess’s confusion as it relates to her distorted perspective, I examine two challenges that she encounters. First of all, she is forced to confront the stark differences between her own family’s circumstances and those of the affluent family at Bly. Secondly, she finds herself in a sumptuous estate that bears little resemblance to the modest abode of her upbringing. Regarding it as the embodiment of freedom and beauty, the governess initially idealizes this new environment. She even compares the lovely children in her care to “Raphael’s holy infants” (TS, 11). This initial impression, however, gives way to suspicion when she happens to read a letter indicating that the school has expelled young Miles. Although the letter contains few details, it notes that this seemingly angelic ten-year-old boy has been dismissed for causing “injury to the others” (TS, 14). Stunned by this news, the governess struggles to understand how this idyllic child has somehow emerged as a threat to his peers. Her desire to understand the boy takes a dark turn when she starts to consider the implications of the school’s accusation. Given her strict Christian upbringing, with its dualistic emphasis on the struggle between good and evil, the governess concludes that this “angel” has been influenced by an evil spirit. At this point in the story, snatches of information about the former governess and valet, who have left the household and are now deceased, serve as raw material for the governess’s theory about the manner in which the boy has been corrupted. Driven by a passionate desire to impress her employer, she seizes upon an apparent opportunity to prove her worth: “I fancied myself in short a remarkable young woman and took comfort in the faith that this would more publicly appear” (19). The dichotomy between angel and demon shapes her decision to serve as the child’s self-appointed savior. At that moment, she confronts the ghost, an emblem of evil that is essentially a leftover of her past memories. Driven by her ambition and conceit, the governess attempts to secure details from the boy about his conduct at school. While the little boy strikes her as “extraordinarily sensitive, yet extraordinarily happy” (TS, 24), he appears reluctant to discuss the circumstances of his dismissal. The governess’s nagging suspicions about the youth’s possible corruption are galvanized when she encounters the ghosts. Long preoccupied with the struggle between good and evil, the governess envisions an existential battle involving an angel and demon. While she initially considers the possibility that even Miles might be unaware of the circumstances surrounding his difficulties at school, she eventually concludes that he is deliberately concealing information. Furthermore, she suspects that Miles is secretly communicating with the ghost. With

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remarkable speed, the governess’s reading of the situation evolves from a vague suspicion of otherworldly interference to absolute confidence that the malevolent ghost of Quint is seeking out young Miles. This surety is reflected in her response to Grose’s question concerning her interpretation of the situation, to which she responds, “I know, I know, I know!” (TS, 31). Convinced that Miles is fully aware of the ghost’s presence, she sets out to protect him from what she views as the dangerous seduction of an evil and obscene spirit. Aware of the fact that she has been granted authority in all matters involving the children, she envisions herself as a lone warrior whose task is to rescue the boy from the grip of evil. Unlike James’s young and untested governess, his later protagonist, Stretcher, takes time to experience a new environment before drawing any firm conclusions. He initially views Paris as a city in which people live fully, and he compares it favorably to his native New England. Yet, Stretcher is not confident about his first impressions, and he takes a rather measured approach as he copes with an unfamiliar environment. In time, he falls in love with a new place and becomes smitten with a woman. He appears to be fully involved in the present moment and advises Bilham, a young acquaintance: “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had?” (AB, 176). In short, he seeks to immerse himself in the present, even though he is not completely insulated from memories of the past. As time goes by, Strether recognizes that some of his judgments were inaccurate, and he becomes aware of secrets lurking behind outward appearances. That being said, reality is changing constantly, so it appears as a series of appearances as James preferred them over the real one in his short story “The Real Thing.” In contrast to Strether, the governess in The Turn of the Screw fails to immerse herself in the present moment and becomes fully convinced of judgments that are rooted in her past. Indeed, the more convinced she becomes of the reality of her impressions, the more fearful she becomes. Furthermore, the suspicion she directs toward the child is never accompanied by an impulse to question her own distorted perspective: “The more I see in it the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see, what I don’t fear!” (TS, 37). In time, her unshakeable certainty about the presence of evil in the household affects Grose, who also begins to wonder why such a gentle boy has been expelled from school. Ironically, the more innocent and gentle Miles appears, the more the governess suspects he has been corrupted. Her search for a truth that she herself has conceived becomes obsessive, and she rules out all other possibilities. Unlike Strether, who savors every moment of his life, the governess consistently views the present through the prism of the past. She develops a possessive love for her charges

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and engages in a battle of wills with the malevolent ghosts, who are ultimately products of her own memories: “They’re not mine—they’re not ours. They’re his and they’re hers!” (57). If Strether’s love for a woman proves to be a mistake, he nevertheless learns a lesson from the experience and does no harm whatsoever to the woman involved. The governess, on the other hand, does grave harm to the young boy whom she purports to love. This is one viable interpretation of the story. From another perspective, we might conclude that Miles is deliberately misleading the governess and has been in secret communion with a malevolent spirit, which the governess suspects all along. We might ask whether James has provided the reader with enough information to arrive at a proper understanding of young Miles’s character and the circumstances in which he operates. Is it possible that the author, as Booth famously asserted, supplied the reader with an unclear and confusing narrative that opens the door to varied interpretations? To address that question, we need to investigate James’s narrative for information about Miles’s character. We should also take this opportunity to determine the extent to which the boy is presented as an ambiguous figure. In the novella, we learn that Miles is free-spirited and seems open to new experiences. He possesses a generally positive outlook and seems extremely adaptable. When Miles asks about the possibility of returning to school, he says that he would be happy enough anywhere. Above all, the boy expresses a desire to “see more life” (66). Furthermore, we see little evidence of the troubled and corrupted youth the governess perceives. Her perception of the boy is based on limited information, including a disturbing (but vague) letter about his behavior at school, her assessment of the children’s previous guardians, and the alleged appearance of the ghosts. Endlessly preoccupied with the memories and impressions accumulated in the course of her conservative upbringing, the governess fails to understand the boy’s easygoing temperament and, if her words are any guide, she has considerable difficulty appreciating other perspectives: “I want my own sort!” (66). Had the governess considered a wider range of possibilities for the boy’s apparent ignorance of the reasons behind his dismissal, the story might have ended differently. Miles himself seems confused about the whole affair and wonders aloud whether the governess would be willing to “clear up with my guardian the mystery of this interruption of my studies” (68). His lightness of spirit stands in sharp contrast to the governess’s dogged disposition. As we might recall, Douglas, in the prologue, states that the governess, as a young woman, had been charmed by these Raphaelite infants, especially Miles. Yet, it would appear that this young woman is even more infatuated with herself. So eager is she to serve as the boy’s savior that she stops at nothing to justify her twisted interpretation of his overall situation. Unwilling to consider the possibility that her own views are the product of her preconceptions, she

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has little choice but to question the boy’s character: “For wickedness. For what else—when he’s so clever and beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured?” (72) Her purported love for the child, ultimately, does not lead her to empathize with him, and she remains wholly self-absorbed. The governess’s distorted perspective is reflected in an equivocal voice that is marked by elusive language. For example, when she states, “To see his little brain puzzled” (TS, 74), her words contain within them a double meaning. Miles, after all, is more than likely ignorant of the reasons for his dismissal from school and the governess’s words inadvertently convey the true state of affairs. Regardless, the governess persists in her mistaken belief that the boy is being seduced by an evil apparition. She is also convinced that no resolution is possible unless Miles confesses everything that has happened at school. Over time, she becomes so obsessed with the prospect of the children’s corruption that she watches them continuously; if they are out of sight, she joyfully concludes that “the trick’s played,” for any evidence of their treachery justifies her suspicion which is neither cruel nor mad (TS, 78). In this way, James cleverly guides the reader toward the climactic final scene. While the governess remains embroiled in her struggle with a supposed evil spirit, the attentive reader will grasp the true reason for Miles’s dismissal from school. This scene shows that the governess has been misled by “goblin” speech, a manifestation of her own preconceptions, because she lacks empathy for Miles and does not think in the child’s position. At this point, James introduces yet another mystery, one that will not be solved until the final scene. Grose reports that she has heard things, horrible and appalling language, from Flora. Is the young girl also in communion with an evil spirit, as the governess suspects? In any event, this revelation is likely to justify the governess’s desire to force a confession from Miles. The fearsome nature of this scene is compounded by the appearance of the ghost, as we learn that “Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison” (99). Indeed, the “goblin” is continually poised to interfere with their attempts to communicate. Miles ultimately confesses that he stole the governess’s letter to his master and burned it. He, too, wants to know presumably the reason for his dismissal from school. Like Flora’s obscene words, Miles’s behavior provokes the reader’s suspicions and likely to lend support to the governess’s view of the situation. However, James once again employs his strategy of withholding critical information until the final scene. In the end, Booth’s characterization of James’s narrative as insufficient can be answered by carefully investigating the passage in which Miles appears to be thinking of something that occurred in the past. The boy says, “Well—I

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said things” to a few of those he liked. This gives the governess pause, and she thinks: Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent what then on earth was I? . . . I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. (TS, 101, my abbreviations)

This momentary insight is driven away by the governess’s deep-seated fear of losing the boy. As Miles’s anxiety reaches a fever pitch, he reveals the truth behind his dismissal from school. He indicates that certain students at the school had repeated obscene words to those they liked, and this situation eventually came to the attention of the headmaster. The boy further shows that the words employed were too vulgar to be included in any note to be sent home. James infers that the child is far too innocent to grasp the meaning behind these obscenities. For a ten-year-old boy, the words amount to mere sounds, empty signifiers. Devoid of the vulgar meaning that would have been grasped immediately by an adult, the obscenities are little more than sounds the students uttered to those they liked. Indeed, the same words can signify very different meanings, based on an individual’s experiences, memories, and environment. In this case, Miles’s age is a critical factor in his interpretation of the words. Hence, the governess, along with the school’s administrators, has failed to take into account the epistemological gap that exists between an adult and a child. In her misguided effort to protect the child, the governess has become convinced of the existence of the ghost, as well as the possibility of Miles’s moral corruption. She fails to grasp that her interpretation of the situation cannot be separated from her own fearful emotions, along with her memories of the past. In this sense, experience is related to “the education of the emotions,” as Leon Edel observes (1989, 104). Far from responding to this momentary awareness of the child’s innocence, the governess remains intent on achieving victory over the evil spirit. She takes one final step to justify her view of the situation when she asks, “What were those things?” (TS, 102). The governess then adds, “It’s he?” (103). At that point, she becomes convinced that Miles has learned these obscene words from Quint, perhaps at a point when the boy overheard the valet sharing intimacies with Miss Jessel. The governess is so angered by this possibility that she exclaims, “Peter Quint—you devil” (103). Once again, however, “goblin” speech stands in the way of effective communication. For Miles, after all, Peter Quint was simply the household’s valet, and he was alive and well at the time he knew him. For the governess, however, Quint is deceased,

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and his ghost is the insidious spirit whom she seeks to check. At her moment of victory over Peter Quint, the governess loses forever the lovely boy. For, loving someone requires that we accept them as they are. If, indeed, the boy had overheard intimate conversations involving Quint and Miss Jessel, there is little chance he grasped the sexual implications of their language. Miles’s innocence seems beyond question. If we closely examine the prologue, along with Miles’s confession, Henry James hints at the fact that it is impossible to fully grasp the mind of another individual. This view is consistent with William James’s contention that each human consciousness is as independent as an island, given that emotions and language develop in accordance with an individual’s experiences. This is no less true of our perception of reality. Since the evolution of consciousness has been informed by a strong sense of individuality, along with a sense of the other, humans (as self-conscious animals) rely primarily on language when they operate in society. Given that each person possesses a different degree of experience and materiality, two steps are required to enter into the mind of another. First of all, it is essential to imagine his or her feelings or thoughts. Secondly, we must understand that their feelings are not the same as ours. As John Deigh observes: To empathize with other, by contrast, one must recognize him as separate from oneself, a distinct person with a mind of his own, and such recognition requires that one retain a sense of oneself even as one takes up the other’s perspective and imaginatively participates in his life. (1995, 759)

Similarly, Matthew Ratcliffe reminds us of the danger involved in seeing the world as the object of knowledge, as though it were a concrete entity (2010, 139). Meanwhile de V. Frederique asserts that, if we seek to gain insights into the mind of another, two steps are necessary: “mirror empathy” and “reconstructive empathy” (2010, 290).3 If considering the concept of empathy in line with remembering, we can say: I cannot remember the past precisely as events unfolded, so it is impossible to fully perceive the mind of another person.

CONCLUSION Given the overwhelming influence of “goblin” speech upon the governess, her only path to a different outcome would have involved a level of empathy that is nowhere evident in her dealings with Miles. Despite her claims to love the child, she continually objectifies him and fails to take into account his own feelings and personal perspective. To avert the tragedy with which the

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story concludes, she would have needed to engage in an imaginative identification with the child. In doing so, it would have been necessary for her to assess his emotional state based on his age and other factors. This process would have involved a cognition that is directed toward a deeper understanding of the child in her care, as opposed to one that serves an impulse toward self-confirmation. This is likely the primary reason why the title of the story appears in the prologue. James recognizes that the world in which we live is not informed by certainty. Learning can be achieved only through one’s experience of the world. It is therefore essential that the governess should be granted freedom of choice, even as she makes a series of blunders that, in retrospect, seem almost inevitable. In the prologue, the figure that will emerge as the novella’s narrator listens attentively to Douglas as he reads a firsthand account of the governess’s story. When the narrator chooses to share the story under a title, he seems to mirror the attitude of the governess’s employer, who granted her authority in all matters related to the care of the children. Once again, freedom to make an error, even a costly one, is critical to the governess’s emotional education, for empathy is a means to correspond with the plasticity of knowledge. Based on this analysis—and in spite of Booth’s criticism—I argue that James has provided enough information in The Turn of the Screw to ensure that readers will achieve a stable understanding of his narrative. NOTES 1. This essay was published in Philosophy as Poetry, the 2004 Page-Barbour Lectures delivered by Richard Rorty from the University of Virginia Press (October 2016). I read the essay published in New Literary History 47 (2016): 67–82. 2. The frame of James’s novella reminds me of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), although their strategies are slightly different. In this novella, Marlow told the story of Kurtz to the four persons in the deck of Nellie, and one of them is the anonymous narrator who told the story to the reader. 3. Robert Elliott proposes three process of empathy emerging in the three places inside of the brain: (1) an emotional stimulation process: to identify with other’s experience with brain activity centering in the limbic system and elsewhere, (2) a conceptual perspective-taking process localized in parts of the prefrontal and temporal cortex, and (3) an emotion regulation process used to soothe personal distress at the other’s pain or discomfort, based in parts of the orbitofrontal, prefrontal, and right parietal cortex (43). See “Empathy.” Psychotherapy 48.1 (2011): 43–49. In his essay published in 1981, Heinz Kohut beautifully describes the role of empathy. Kohut attempts to clarify the role of empathy in psychoanalysis in terms of mother’s love for children based on bodily contact. See “On Empathy” p. 129.

Chapter 6

The Ambassadors The Remembered Present in the Circuitous Paths

Good memories are all that we can have in this world. Teckyoung Kwon

While the theories of William James cast a long shadow in Henry’s works, to the extent that they are virtually treated as “an accomplished fact,” we can detect few references to the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud. This omission seems rather unusual, given the recent assessments of leading neuroscientists such as Eric Kandel and Gerald Edelman, who stress that both William James and Freud served as intellectual pioneers in the scholarship of neuroscience. Indeed, there is no question that Freud’s dedication to the investigation of consciousness equaled that of his contemporary, William James. The two men did, however, approach the subject from decidedly different perspectives. While Freud developed his theory and practice as a psychoanalyst, James’s markedly different approach gave rise to the philosophy of pragmatism and phenomenology. Nevertheless, the question remains: Can our understanding of Freudian consciousness serve to enrich our appreciation of Henry James’s work? Moreover, is it at all worthwhile to read The Ambassadors in tandem with Freud’s theoretical work, epitomized in his well-known essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”? Finally, we ask whether such a reading has any bearing on Henry’s words that he reaches beyond the laboratory brain. I begin with a concise overview of the novel’s plot narrated “in time.” Lewis Lambert Strether, the protagonist, is a cultivated, middle-aged man of comfortable means who has been dispatched by his wealthy fiancée, Mrs. Newsome, to travel from Woollett, Massachusetts, to the international cultural center of Paris. His object is to persuade Mrs. Newsome’s wayward son, Chadwick, to return home and take his rightful place in the family 131

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business. The errand is inspired, in part, by Mrs. Newsome’s deep-seated fear that her son has become involved with a young woman who may be an adventuress. Strether’s first task is to identify the woman with whom “Chad” is romantically involved, which proves more challenging than anticipated. Strether’s efforts are further complicated by the fact that his memories of the past continuously color his experience of the present. To understand better this phenomenon, it is helpful to refer to such Freudian concepts as memory traces and transference, which are linked together as basic components of consciousness in time. Indeed, Gerald Edelman encapsulates these linked concepts in the term, the remembered present (8). Early in his European adventure, Strether falters badly, when he fails to discern the deceptiveness that lies beneath Chad’s outward charm and refinement. This limitation calls to mind the prudent advice Strether has received from his newfound guide and confidant, Miss Maria Gostrey, who urges him to view a given object in relation to another. Over time, Strether manages to transcend his limitations due to his rich imagination and eventual openness to another culture. Hence, the second question goes to the process of his transformation, from his early state of confusion to his later capacity to view the same situation from a different vantage point. The deception he experiences is manifested in a unique way as transference or detouring, which Freud describes as, “the circuitous paths to death,” or to “nothing.” Stretcher’s sublime view of Madame de Vionnet, who emerges as the secret object of Chad’s affection, is formed by the materiality of consciousness, which, in turn, has been influenced by the majestic atmosphere of Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, the setting of a fateful encounter between the two characters. Yet, it has also been shaped, to some extent, by the words, “virtuous attachment.” At this point, it seems natural to examine Strether’s apparent defeat at the hands of Chad, who has planned all along to separate his prospective stepfather from his wealthy mother and thereby deny him access to the family’s fortune. In the end, though, it seems rather simplistic to treat Strether’s inability to accomplish his mission as an unequivocal defeat. Strether’s “mission impossible” could be interpreted oddly enough as a “mission accomplished.” If nothing else, he gains the wherewithal to live a fuller life, buoyed by his memories of the “illusion of freedom” he enjoyed in Paris. Unlike the ambassadors who arrive in his wake, Strether’s feelings of empathy toward others enable him to experience the sublime—the circuitous paths to nothing— and this gives him the inner strength he will need to resist the traps of the oncoming consumer society. After all, one cannot possess the object, a point Freud makes when he describes the compulsion to repeat. My argument will examine James’s narrative style, “Free Indirect Discourse,” in the context of Freudian concepts. In what process does the reader learn to prolong one’s life while adapting a focalizer’s circuitous paths to nothing?

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FREUD’S MEMORY TRACES IN THE PROCESS OF COGNITION Upon his arrival in France, a country with which he is totally unfamiliar, Strether finds himself preoccupied with memories and impressions of his former life, a situation that limits his capacity to appreciate the present moment. This becomes clear during his initial interactions with Miss Maria Gostrey, who serves as his primary guide to European culture. During their conversations, Strether reveals an obsession with Mrs. Newsome and the errand on which she has sent him: one that he fears could determine the future of their relationship. He seems wholly focused on his mission, even though he recognizes that he is “a perfectly equipped failure” (AB, 49) whose chances of success are minimal. As an editor for one of Mrs. Newsome’s publications, Strether has sacrificed his own happiness on the altar of his professional responsibilities. Now middle-aged, he has never traveled outside of the United States. Hence, the urbane Miss Gostrey, a veteran expatriate, is well positioned to serve as Strether’s conduit to a new culture. Intimidated by her unusual poise and elegance, he recoils, at first, from her influence. In time, though, Strether is won over by Miss Gostrey’s sensitivity and good taste; he even concludes that she is “a moral swell” (AB, 67). All the same, he remains focused on his mission to persuade Chad to return to America, given that his success will most likely preserve his relationship with Mrs. Newsome, a woman of wealth and influence. He evidently believes that he would be nothing in the absence of this powerful personal connection. When he addresses the issue of Chad and his love interest, Strether chooses to form his own conclusions and avoids relying too heavily on the impressions of others. This approach differentiates him from the latter ambassadors Mrs. Newsome sends to replace him. While he initially seeks out the opinions of Chad’s acquaintances, he is struck by the diversity of views he encounters. This leads him to reflect upon the fact that residents of Woollett show a certain uniformity of opinion on most topics. Once again, his memories of his past life hinder his ability to live fully in the present. He is especially unsettled by Parisians’ extreme reluctance to shed light on an individual’s delicate personal affairs. The cryptic secondhand accounts he receives leave him with the vaguest impressions of Chad’s personal life, and the ambiguity is reflected in the opening pages of The Ambassadors. As Paula M. Cohen observes, these opening passages leave readers with the impression of parents’ murmuring in the next room. The hushed tones inspire one to listen more closely, even as they spur one’s imagination and creative forces (2015, 20). Notably, James employs this effect to convey the feelings and judgments of the focalized third-person character, whose perspective is shaped by the repeated interference of his memories of past experiences.

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Strether is gradually awakened to the fact that he is always thinking of something other than the moment at hand, and this awareness gives rise to his subsequent effort to open himself to the charms of Paris. In time, he finds that he enjoys many aspects of Parisian life: the cheerfulness of morning sojourns and the availability of fine art, to name a few. He even learns to appreciate the company of the youthful expatriate and struggling artist, John Little Bilham, a friend of Chad who resides in the young man’s house during his absences. James provides no hint that Little Bilham will emerge as a significant character, since the narrative is constructed in such a way that it focuses exclusively on Strether’s vision in the narrative frame of Free Indirect Discourse. Thus, the protagonist’s eventual encounter with Chad is intertwined with the character’s consciousness, which is streamed in time, reflecting traces of past events that, later on, are remembered and reinterpreted through his retrospective vision. If we seek to discern hints of the plot in Chad’s comments to Strether, the reader should wait until the protagonist himself experiences these events. Strether’s first encounter with Chad appears to leave the older man at a disadvantage. He comes off as naïve and inexperienced, and his behavior reflects his misgivings about a potential confrontation. Already concerned about the seriousness of his task, Strether is further unsettled by the positive change he perceives in the young man. Contrary to Strether’s expectations, Chad is no longer the spoiled playboy he anticipated. On the contrary, the young man impresses him as confident, refined, physically striking, and elegant. Unlike the older man, who is slow to interpret social cues and fails to grasp subtle nuances of language, Chad is quick to understand situations, and he immediately recognizes that Strether poses an existential threat. After all, the older man is a rival for his mother’s affections, as well as her material wealth. The young man wastes no time addressing the issue weighing on his mind: “Your engagement to my mother has become then what they call here a fait accompli?” (AB,127). As the protagonist struggles to maintain his dignity, Chad notes irreverently that Strether is determined to bring him back to Massachusetts “in triumph as a sort of wedding-present to Mother” (128). The impact of this statement is heightened by the fact that Chad delivers it in a measured tone. In spite of himself, Strether finds Chad a tasteful young man, who shows signs of being reserved, even shy. Yet, Chad possesses a maturity and savoir faire that exceeds that of his older rival. While James highlights Chad’s sophistication, he is nevertheless determined to let the reader choose the victor of this contest, whether it turns out to be the middle-aged provincial or the young cosmopolitan. The reader may detect a certain irony in this encounter. Although Strether is determined to identify the woman who is supposedly manipulating Chad, he himself is at the beck and call of the formidable Mrs. Newsome.

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Furthermore, as the story develops, one cannot help but notice the profound differences between the refined Madame de Vionnet, who is eventually revealed to be Chad’s secret lover, and the imperious Mrs. Newsome. When a defiant Strether insists that he is acting as a free agent, Chad responds with a cutting remark: “Do you think one’s kept only by women?” (134). This question turns out to be a critical one, in light of what transpires. Yet, Strether is not yet positioned to grasp its significance. At this point, he remains in a state of confusion, unable to decide whether Chad is a common sensualist or a refined young gentleman. As Strether’s past experiences continuously inform his perception of the present, he all at once finds Chad intriguing and perplexing: a sensation that might be compared to the experience of overhearing murmuring voices in the next room. Strether is especially curious about the identity of Chad’s mysterious lover. Yet, when he finally encounters Madame de Vionnet, he assumes that Chad is involved with the older woman’s grown daughter, Jeanne. Time and again, we find that Strether fails to act on Miss Gostrey’s advice: “Don’t judge her at all in herself. Consider her and judge her only in Chad” (AB, 142). Miss Gostrey’s assessment of the intimate and inseparable bond between the lovers calls to mind William James’s concept of vision, or thought, that is, our thoughts in relational as well as intentional terms. Since cognition depends upon past experiences that are stored in the brain, we perceive the other in the context of previous perceptions. Along with Stretcher, the reader’s experiences proceed in time, and perception emerges in line with that process. Accordingly, thought cannot be independent from the process, as it relies not only on former experiences, but also on the flow of time and a changing environment; in short, it is continuous and relational in narrative form of Free Indirect Discourse. For a newcomer, it is always prudent to deal with a new environment with curiosity and an open mind. At the same time, one should avoid being overly confident about one’s knowledge. Unlike the innocent Isabel in The Portrait of the Lady, who chooses Osmond as her husband on the basis of her superficial impressions of Europe, Strether distrusts his senses and waits patiently for the truth of the situation to reveal itself. He understands that appearances can be deceptive, and the true nature of things becomes apparent only when one has achieved a degree of maturity. He also understands that, until then, it is critical to experience each moment as intensely as possible. Indeed, Susan M. Griffin observes that “Strether’s role as a representative Jamesian perceiver marks him not as a passionless intellect who stands apart and waits for impressions, but as an active, interested self who survives by perceiving” (1991, 43). When viewed in this context, Miss Gostrey’s words to Strether take on a new meaning: “Wasn’t what you came out for to find out all?” (AB 155).

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One of the more cryptic lines in the narrative, however, is uttered by Little Bilham, who initially strikes the reader as an innocuous character. As mentioned earlier, Strether is continuously challenged by the unfamiliar style of communication he encounters in Paris. The manner of speaking in this cosmopolitan center differs markedly from the straightforward approach that prevails in his native Massachusetts. In Paris, the act of speech is adventurous, playful, and speculative. Accustomed to the narrow certitude of language in Woollett, Massachusetts, Strether is unable to appreciate fully Little Bilham’s attempt to update him on the status of the relationship between Chad and his lover. His gradual openness to the Parisian style of conversation is facilitated, in large part, by Miss Gostrey. As Louise K. Barnett observes, “He begins his mission with total loyalty to the public language of Woollett, but by undermining this position in the probing language of Paris, Maria prepares the ground for his own reassessment” (1983, 220). Miss Gostrey, for her part, also alludes that Little Bilham is essentially decent, and her assessment of the young man encourages Strether to treat him more seriously. Apart from Miss Gostrey’s belated warning, “they’ve got you,” she is disinclined to interfere with the adventure of James’s protagonist, and that leaves him to engage independently in his search for truth. As he seeks to gather more information about Chad’s romantic relationship, Strether interprets Little Bilham’s comments quite literally: Chad is not playing a game; he is not happy and wants to be free; he isn’t used to being so good. That leads Strether to ask, “Why isn’t he free if he’s good?” (AB 148). Bilham’s unequivocal response is, “because it’s a virtuous attachment” (149). While the young man is fully aware of the nature of Chad’s affair, he also tends to focus on the positive aspects of a relationship that is open to many interpretations. Yet, the literalminded Strether accepts Bilham’s assessment as the final verdict, and the young man’s words shape his perception of the affair—that is, until the final revelation. Why does Strether, throughout the novel, grasp the truth so belatedly, in the retrospective mode? In his essay “The Articulation of Time in the Ambassadors,” Albert A. Dunn identifies the retrospective mode as one of James’s primary devices, describing it as “part of the novel’s technical apparatus, which continually and unobtrusively moves backward and forward along the continuum of social time to present Strether’s consciousness from various temporal perspectives” (85). As I noted earlier, Strether’s thoughts and feelings are entirely dependent upon his reinterpretation of the past in light of the present. At this point, it is helpful to examine this tendency in the context of the theoretical work of Sigmund Freud. We should begin by examining Freud’s psychology in terms of the memory system, which is the basic apparatus for psychoanalysis. From the outset of his career, Freud, as a faithful adherent to Darwin’s theories, treated the memory structure as the core of human

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consciousness. Thus, on the evolutionary scale, he sharply differentiates the act of recollection from the bodily memory of habit. This view was articulated in his early neuroscientific essay “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895), in which he posits three components of neurons. While many have contended that Freud concluded this neuroscientific project when he focused on psychoanalysis, I would propose that he remained true to his initial proposal. That being said, he sought to rearrange and refine his complicated initial theses in order to develop a more precise formulation of the mnemic system. This approach is further developed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), “A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’” (1925), and “The Ego and the Id” (1923). The perceptive neuron represents the ego function and mediates the permeable neuron, which represents the superego, along with the impermeable neuron that represents the unconscious, or id. Let us examine the ways in which this thesis is reflected in Freud’s work over time, with a focus on the ways in which it shaped psychoanalysis. On December 6, 1896, shortly after he finished “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” Freud wrote a letter to Wilhelm Fliess in which he outlined the ideas delineated in his essay. He indicated that perceptions (W) are “neurons in which perceptions originate, to which consciousness attaches, but which in themselves retain no trace of what has happened. For consciousness and memory are mutually exclusive” (1985, 207–208, italics original). What Freud described was nothing short of the relationship between the two apparatuses of the memory system. He posited the absolute division of the receptive neuron, which accepts an external stimulus, from the memory traces, which stores that stimulus inside. Thus, consciousness accepts stimuli without limit in the process of time, while the memory traces are updated with each experience. The former neuron is an area that recent neuroscientists have identified as the hippocampus, while the latter is currently known as the cerebral cortex, or the frontal cortex. By 1925, Freud had reformulated the gist of his earlier postulation in a simple and precise form, which he presented in his short essay “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad.’” In this essay, he presents the device of the mystic writing-pad as a simple model for the human mnemic system. Crucially, in Freud’s development of psychoanalysis, the materialized portion of the mnemic apparatus is treated consistently as the key component of consciousness, a point that he makes clear when he observes, “Thus an unlimited receptive capacity and a retention of permanent traces seem to be mutually exclusive properties in the apparatus which we use as substitutes for our memory” (S.E., 19, 1925, 227). A model of consciousness that is based on the mnemic structure is the starting point of one of Freud’s important essays, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” We might ask how Freud presents the same idea in such a different context, while drawing upon the key concepts of psychoanalysis: repetition,

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the compulsion to repeat, the death drive, transference, and above all, the circuitous path to death. Throughout his career, the pioneering Freud continued to revisit and refine the theory he developed as a relatively young man. Presently, I will examine how he repeated the same idea differently after twenty-five years: Consciousness is not the only distinctive character which we ascribe to the process in that system. On the basis of impressions derived from our psycho-analytic experiences, we assume that all excitatory processes that occur in the other systems leave permanent traces behind in them which form the foundation of memory. Such memory-traces, then, have nothing to do with the fact of becoming conscious; indeed they are often most powerful and most enduring when the process which left them behind was one which never entered consciousness. . . . Though this consideration is not absolutely conclusive, it nevertheless leads us to suspect that becoming conscious and leaving behind a memory-trace are processes incompatible with each other within one and the same system. (S.E., 18, 1920, 24–25)

From the above passage, we can construe that our sense of time—the socalled past, present, and future—is the product of human evolution. Unlike habits (bodily memory), recollection (episodic memory) emerges at the interconnection of consciousness and the memory traces. The former arises, in the stead of a memory trace, to deal with passing time, while the latter is static. Freud concluded that “unconscious mental processes are in themselves ‘timeless’” (1920, 28). The dualism inherent in one system gives rise to our sense of time: the past within the present and the present within the past. We recall past events in the context of the present situation, for consciousness visits the past while flowing forward. When we make a judgment regarding the present event, we, similarly, evaluate it based on past memories. Indeed, prominent neuroscientist Gerald Edelman, in his book, Wider than the Sky (2004), refers to consciousness as “the remembered present” (8). He further asserts that, just as recollection or “the episodic memory depends on interactions between the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex” (51), cognition as the remembered present depends on “the dynamic interaction between memory and ongoing perception that gives rise to consciousness” (55). In the same way that pure memory is unreachable, pure feeling, or cognition, is impossible to experience due to the mutually exclusive relationship between consciousness and the memory trace. Since the perception of time relies on the existence of dualism within one system—like the past within the present, in the case of recollection, and the present within the past, in the case of cognition—Freud presents the mnemic system as the core of evolution. Given the workings of the mnemic system, it is little wonder that Strether experiences Paris through the prism of his previous experiences in Woollett,

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Massachusetts. Yet, if memory itself is a value of perception, how then is it possible to remember the present intensely in order to store it within the memory trace so that it will be available as the source of a future life? Looking at the situation in the context of Henry James’s novel, we might ask, is it possible for Strether to live in the moment without being profoundly affected by the past, even if he cannot entirely escape from it? Compared to the other ambassadors, who are single-mindedly focused on their task, Strether tends to open his mind to new experiences and listens intently to others before making personal decisions. Above all, he can be differentiated from his fellow ambassadors because of his enormous capacity to feel things. Their behavior, on the other hand, is informed by a narrow-minded assertiveness. As we follow the protagonist’s progress, we find that Strether appears to be acting upon the advice of William James, who contends that, in order to own the moment, we should experience it directly with “warmth and intimacy,” as characterizing all experiences “appropriated” by us (PP, 1: 436). Indeed, remembering is closely associated with emotion. As neuroscientists have learned, the amygdala, which deals with emotions, and the hippocampus, which is charged with memory, are located side-by-side in the human brain. Not surprisingly, Strether’s transformation occurs when he opens himself to the sensory experience afforded by a visit to the home of a prominent sculptor named Gloriani. Although the protagonist remains perplexed by the Parisian approach to verbal communication and tends to grasp situations only in retrospect, he agrees to attend a party at the sculptor’s house. Since Strether’s vague perceptions of Chad’s affair depend upon the comments of those who are reluctant to discuss anyone’s private affairs in a direct manner, he latches on to their pithy descriptions of the young man’s lover. They indicate that she is perfect, charming, and wonderful. As Strether becomes caught up in the gaiety of the event, he is inspired to deliver a speech (AB, 176), whose themes are echoed by the narrator. James, in his preface to The Ambassadors, identifies this very speech as one that conveys the gist of the story: Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your own life. If you haven’t had that what have you had? I’m too old—too old at any rate for what I see. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. Still we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t, like me to-day, be without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it, and now I‘m a case of reaction against the mistake. (AB, 1–2)

After directing these words to young Bilham, with whom he identifies, Strether encounters Madam de Vionnet and her grown daughter, Jeanne. Drawing upon the norms and standards of his native New England, Strether

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naturally assumes that the younger woman is Chad’s lover. The young man, after all, is an appropriate age for Jeanne, who is unattached and youthful. Misled by the phrase, “virtuous attachment,” Strether never entertains the possibility that Chad is romantically involved with a married woman who is considerably older than he. Thus, he misinterprets the beautiful Madame de Vionnet’s insistence on spending time with Chad as part of a strategy to persuade him to marry her daughter. This delusion remains intact until Strether inadvertently uncovers the truth of their relationship. In time, he will come to recognize that Chad’s extended stay in Paris was motivated by his desire to maintain this secretive affair. At this point, however, Strether is hardly in a position to guess the meaning of Chad’s cryptic words, “if I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you’ll surrender yourself to me?” (AB, 190). It seems curious, however, that this sequence of events unfolds shortly after Strether’s address to young Bilham. When he recognizes his mistake, Strether will reflect that, if nothing else, he will cherish “a memory of the illusion of freedom.” This response leads us, quite naturally, to Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” which explores the human memory system in relation to the circuitous path to death. In this context, we ask, why is detouring so critical to retaining “a memory of the illusion of freedom,” when our cognition emerges in the form of the remembered present?

TRANSFORMATION THROUGH CIRCUITOUS PATHS When Strether first arrives in France, he feels “a taste as of something mixed with art” along the streets of Paris (AB, 76). Even though his impressions of the city are influenced by his memories of the past, he experiences a dramatic awakening during his visit to the home of Gloriani, where he is inspired to deliver an impassioned speech to Little Bilham. He advises the young man to live fully, even if he is inspired by a memory of the illusion of freedom. Regretting the missed opportunities of his own youth, Strether decides to remain in Paris a bit longer, if only to unravel the mystery behind Chad’s newfound charm. When he finally does experience a revelation, it comes, once again, through his mediation with a work of art. At one point, he encounters a painting, Lambinet’s Sur La Seine, which he had been tempted to purchase in a Boston gallery, years earlier. For Strether, the painting comes to symbolize his broader view of life, which has been made possible by his exposure to Parisian society. As Hazel Hutchison writes, “James presents art as a phenomenon of deep transforming power” (2006, 97). Yet, if many of his transformative experiences are associated with art, we cannot ignore the impact of his personal encounter with Madame de Vionnet.

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During the party at Gloriani’s home, Strether eavesdrops as the guests discuss the mysterious woman who is responsible for Chad’s transformation. We come to recognize that he is listening with “the third ear,” a term Theodor Reik refers to in Listening with the Third Ear (1948). The term calls to mind the Freudian concept of transference, which occurs between the past and the present. During a meandering conversation with Madame de Vionnet, the protagonist absorbs a portion of what she is saying with his third ear, which belongs to the realm of the unconscious. He understands, for example, that her difficulties are more profound than he had imagined, even as she seeks to persuade him that he can bear almost everything. At the same time, Strether misinterprets the motive behind Madame de Vionnet’s question, “Has she [Mrs. Newsome] given you up?” (AB, 201). He assumes—incorrectly, as it turns out—that she is seeking more time to make arrangements for her daughter to marry Chad. Strether’s sympathy for her is inspired, in part, by his appreciation for her great taste and refinement. Unlike the controlling Mrs. Newsome, Madame de Vionnet is “one of the rare women he had so often heard of, read of, thought of, but never met” (201). James underscores the value of the third ear during a scene in which Strether engages in a conversation with the shrewd Miss Barrace, whose comments enable the reader to grasp the truth of the situation in retrospective mode, while the protagonist remains oblivious. The signifiers among her statements include the following: “she is just brilliant”; “fifty women”; “Why should she marry Chad?”; and “The wonder is their doing such things without marrying” (211). Given his failure to employ the third ear when listening to Miss Barrace, the protagonist fails to catch the clues she drops in the course of their conversation. Hence, his report to Mrs. Newsome is straightforward but incomplete. At the same time, it is difficult to ignore the extent to which Strether is moved by his various personal encounters with art. For instance, his momentous meeting with Madame de Vionnet at Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris influences his overall impression of her. Upon glimpsing her figure in the massive cathedral’s dim interior, he is struck by what he perceives as her mysterious and exotic beauty, “She was romantic for him far beyond what she could have guessed” (235). At the same time, her appearance in this sacred space reinforces his view of her relationship with Chad as wholly innocent. The signifier, “virtuous attachment,” continues to shape his perceptions, and he sees within this elegant woman a sublime nobility. This sensation moves him to invite Madame de Vionnet to a dinner that James describes with a delicate attention to detail: Opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, she thanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their talk,

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back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their human questions. (AB, 238–239)

Strether is struck by the fact that the exquisite table settings appear to be in complete harmony with the balmy breeze that plays gently over the dining party. This leaves a strong emotional impression upon the protagonist, which deepens his positive assessment of Madame de Vionnet’s character. The whole scene calls to mind Freud’s observation that there can be no such thing as pure cognition directed at an isolated object, given that consciousness is integrally bound up with body, senses, and the materials with which one surrounds oneself. Hence, Strether’s conception of Madame de Vionnet as an ideal woman is, in part, the product of his emotional response to his surrounding material environment. Since perception can never be independent from materials, there will always be surplus, that is, things that are leftover. As a result of this surplus, the deception that informs Strether’s gaze is beyond his notice, for it belongs to the unconscious. This is no less true of the deception we encounter within art. Sophocles, for instance, describes a hero, Oedipus, who is entirely ignorant of his unconscious. Oedipus, on a conscious level, is unaware of the fact that he is a criminal who has slain his father and married his mother. Based on that deception and ignorance, Freud formulates the concept of Oedipus Complex, the intrinsic motivation of the infantile sexuality lurked in the unconscious. Creon, the king of Thebes, similarly, is unaware of the fatal force represented by Antigone, whose rebellion against him is the surplus of the very law he himself established. In the end, Creon’s refusal to permit Antigone to bury the corpse of her brother has disastrous consequences for an illustrious family. Thus, art reveals a surplus that is beyond the grasp of our consciousness, and in this way, it alerts us to the fact that human knowledge is inherently bound up with ignorance. For this reason, all direct efforts to seek truth involve a degree of danger, as seen in the governess’s ill-fated quest for truth in The Turn of the Screw. Psychology of Freud, which draws heavily on neuroscience, recognizes that deception is an inherent element of our understanding of the world. Therefore, some psychologists propose the use of art as a means to delay our hasty, assertive, and decisive mind. In The Ambassadors, art imitates the character’s consciousness in its manner of detouring while, at the same time, revealing a surplus. It commences in a state of ignorance and concludes with a painful realization. James perceives within this detouring function of art the transformative power of consciousness. He suggests that one creates an image of the sublime and, over time, the deception is revealed. As Zachary Seager writes, James identified a perfect vehicle through which to explore

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this phenomenon: “If Impressionism is pre-eminently the art of the instant, then the novel, for James, is the art of duration” (2020, 137). When Strether is emotionally caught up in the sublime image of Madame de Vionnet, he recognizes that she is very different than Mrs. Newsome and decides she is worth saving. In time, Strether will recognize that he was mistaken about Madame de Vionnet’s use of the word us when she had invited him to stay with us. He initially assumed she was speaking of herself and her daughter, not herself and Chad. Nevertheless, this misinterpretation, along with the deception inherent in his view of her, provides Strether with an opportunity to focus on the present moment, while at the same time, achieving emotional distance from his hometown of Woollett.

THE SUBLIME AND “BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE” It is the novel’s supreme irony that misrecognition proves to be the ground upon which Strether will build a fuller life, given that he can now experience the present moment more intensely. The transformative power of art is significantly involved in this kind of deception, and so is our consciousness. At this point, in order to explore Freud’s concept of the sublime, which he describes as the circuitous paths to death (nothing) in his essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” I will briefly mention William James’s concept of consciousness, along with the view of recent neuroscience. We might ask, in what way does the dualism in one system of memory produce not only cognition, as the remembered present, but also the sublime image, as a means of detouring death? Given that he defines consciousness as a function rather than an entity, William James argues that “all brain-processes are such as give rise to what we may call Figured consciousness” in his essay “Does Consciousness Exist?” (506). He goes so far as to suggest that consciousness is a nonentity while asserting that the sensation is one thing and the perception is another, and neither can take place at the same time with the other, because their cerebral conditions are not the same. They may resemble each other, but in no respect are they identical states of mind. (505)

He concludes that human understanding is exclusively reproductive: a view that has been confirmed through recent neuroscientific research. The evolution of consciousness does not permit us to approach directly the lower portion of the brain, which is in charge of the body, emotions, and the senses,

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including the material environment. Since we cannot respond to external impact in a spontaneous manner, as other animals do, our responses, as mediated through consciousness, are not an exact copy of bodily responses, but they do resemble them. For instance, consciousness makes an image of a sensation that is mediated by a past experience stored in the upper part of brain, including the frontal cortex. That view is consistent with that of Freud. For Freud, consciousness stands for a function that gives rise to the perception of things in the manner of resemblance. Indeed, when Freud interprets a patient’s repressed unconscious, he relies on the memory that is stored in the preconscious, such as the frontal cortex, which is the means of remembering the past. Thus, cognition is little more than an image of the synthesis between a sensation and a past experience, which is repeated in time and space. Thus, a remainder of that sensation is inevitable. All through Freud’s career, despite critical controversies, he insisted that psychology and psychoanalysis were inseparable, insofar as they are grounded on the common dimension of the memory system. As he noted in his earliest scientific paper, perceptive neurons and memory traces are mutually exclusive. Hence, consciousness receives experiences without preserving them, for it requires vacancy to receive a new experience, along with the continuous withdrawal of memory. Consciousness follows time in order to respond to the present situation, whereas the memory trace does not. As James proposes that thought is intentional and flows in time, Freud observes that “time and space are necessary forms of thought,” due to “unconscious mental processes are in themselves ‘timeless’” (S.E., 18, 1920, 28). Accordingly, dualism in one system of memory gives rise to the phenomenon of transference: in recollection, the past memory is retrieved in the present, and in thinking, cognition is nothing but the remembered present, as reflected in the case of Strether’s vision and thought. Hence, Freud’s early formula, which was introduced in “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” has been extended to the concept of sublimation that is associated with the compulsion to repeat, the death drive, and finally the circuitous paths to death in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” In the essay, Freud introduces us the case of a one-and-a-half-year-old boy who had developed a simple game to entertain himself during his mother’s absences. The boy continuously threw and pulled back a wooden reel that had a piece of string tied around it. As he joyfully repeated these actions, he uttered the words, fort (gone) and da (here). Freud indicated that the toddler was motivated to develop this game in order to replace feelings of unhappiness with those of pleasure, and the habit enabled him to cope with his mother’s disconcerting absences. The impulse to repeat, in this case, is compulsive and demonic, while reflecting an innate tendency to move beyond the pleasure principle, because “the re-experiencing of something identical, is clearly in itself a source of pleasure” (S.E., 18, 1920, 36). The compulsion

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to repeat an identical action belongs to the unconscious, and pleasure on this level is demonic in its excessive force. Freud describes it as “a kick,” comparing it to an adult’s impulse to repeat. He points out that, unlike a child’s desire to repeat an identical action, “novelty is always the condition of enjoyment” for adult (35). A child, for instance, enjoys hearing the same story or eating the same foods, while an adult becomes impatient with this kind of repetition. The distinct differences between the child and the adult are no less evident in the two stages of narcissism put forth in Freud’s construction of the self. In the first stage, primary narcissism, the child inaccurately perceives others as identical to himself or herself. In the secondary stage, however, a child has developed the capacity to be self-conscious and establishes a degree of distance from the other. Crucially, the two stages do not exist as separable entities but coexist in a dualistic relationship within the adult’s libido, in the same way that remembering arises from one dimension of a dual structure. Although it is repressed by consciousness, in the manner of disguising it, the compulsion to repeat arises anytime repetition with a difference loses its power. As always, Freud postulates dualism within a single system. In this case, the death drive operates in opposition to the life instinct. Freud’s words lose some of their weight in translation as James Strachey writes, Trieb “bears much more of a feeling of urgency than the English ‘instinct’” (S.E., 18, 1920, 35). He asserts that the death drive, in line with the compulsion to repeat, reflects the universal tendency to restore an earlier state for every organism beyond the pleasure principle: It seems, then, that an instinct is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things which the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces; that is, a kind of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the expression of the inertia inherent in organic life. (Freud’s Italics, S.E., 18, 1920, 36)

Calling attention to the behavior of certain species of fish, as well as the migratory flights of certain birds of passage, Freud asserts that all forms of life possess an innate tendency to return to the form from which they have sprung. Hence, the death drive arises from our inherent desire to return to the inanimate state that existed before the advent of life, which means that “the aim of all life is death” (38). While death is unavoidable, there exists a contradictory force that works against the short circuit. Freud presents the life instinct as a force that works in opposition to the death drive. He goes on to characterize the short-circuit as “purely instinctual as contrasted with intelligent efforts” (39). What, then, are such “intelligent efforts”? Could it be the instinct for self-preservation, a force that interrupts the opposing desire

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to achieve the perfect satisfaction of death? Can we compare it to the young boy’s urgent repetition of an identical act? In contrast to the child’s act of repetition, an adult’s preferred repetition with a difference represents a circuitous path to death, which is evident in works of art, as well as the functioning of the normal human brain. Art, as a transformative medium, contains the surplus of consciousness, which it reveals at the climax of the narrative. In other words, through a circuitous path to death, The Ambassadors sublimates the surplus into a sublime image whose underside is nothing (or death), as shown in the case of Strether’s delusion. In the process of seeking to unravel the mystery behind Chad’s mysterious relationship, Strether arrives at a distorted view of Madam de Vionnet. He perceives her as a noble figure who is worthy of his assistance. This image of her leads him to extend his stay in Paris, even though new ambassadors have already arrived, under the careful supervision of Chad’s older sister, Sarah Pocock. At this point, a new dynamic enters the story. Sarah, interestingly, is accompanied by her charming sister-in-law, Mamie Pocock, whom Mrs. Newsome believes would be an ideal match for Chad. Mamie, however, promptly becomes infatuated with Chad’s friend, Little Bilham. When Strether becomes aware of the attraction, he urges Bilham to marry Mamie, whom he considers as charming as the young women he has encountered in Europe. Lurking beneath this advice, however, is Strether’s preference that Chad marry Jeanne de Vionnet and become the son-in-law of her captivating mother. His emotional attachment to Madame de Vionnet is such that he practically views the world through the prism of his romanticized view of her. His emotions are so self-evident that Madame de Vionnet is inspired to comment, “No one feels so much as you. No—not any one” (AB 320). Miss Gostrey makes a similar observation, when she indicates that Strether’s imagination is rich and powerful, unlike those of either Mrs. Newsome or Chad, who are utterly lacking in imagination. This leads us to consider whether the protagonist’s misconceptions are, in any way, linked to his capacity to respond emotionally and imaginatively to the world around him. Ultimately, he is willing to exchange his future life with Mrs. Newsome for the life of which he has long dreamed, or, if nothing else, the memory of the illusion of freedom he enjoyed during his stay in Paris. Strether’s desire to be free from those surrounding him leads him, at one point, to embark on a sojourn to the countryside, where he takes in scenic views of the river. Moved by the beauty of his natural surroundings, his imagination flies to the landscape painting by Lambinet that he was once tempted to purchase during a visit to Boston. In the novel, the painting functions as the primal scene, and Strether’s journey to the countryside involves an encounter with the secondary scene, which is repeated in a somewhat different manner: “a boat advancing round the bend and containing a man who

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held the paddles and a lady, at the stern, with a pink parasol” (AB, 418). He finds that the new experiences that have been stored during his days in Paris enable him to see things he was unable to see before. At first, he is deceived by the performance of Chad and Madame de Vionnet, who are enjoying a discreet love affair in the Parisian manner. Furthermore, he unconsciously identifies with the charming Chad, who has undergone a magnificent transformation under the influence of this beautiful and refined woman. It seems clear that Strether has already surrendered spiritually to Madame de Vionnet. While he assumed that his admiration for her was the product of free will and signaled his emancipation from Mrs. Newsome, this freedom turns out to be an illusion. In a desolate moment, he understands that he has tried “all along to suppose nothing” and that his labor’s lost for naught (425). Although art possesses the transformative power which enables him to view the world differently, there remains the question of what his imagination has ultimately achieved. Has it, in the end, served for nothing, as when the primal scene is repeated in a different manner, in the Freudian sense of detouring? In his analysis of the novel, William Righter stresses that Strether experiences art with an unusual emotional intensity (2004, 52), and his response to Paris’s evocative atmosphere inspires him to extend his stay. At the same time, Strether’s artistic imagination gradually enables him to perceive Chad’s true character. He recognizes that Chad has used the older man’s presence in Paris as a means to prolong his secret relationship with Madame de Vionnet. Meanwhile, the younger man has effectively sabotaged Strether’s relationship with Mrs. Newsome. After all, he has served, in a way, as Chad’s ambassador. Yet, not all has been lost. In the end, the older man will apply the wisdom he has gained from exposure to the refined Madame de Vionnet. This wisdom will enable him to cope successfully with the country’s emerging consumer society. If Strether feels cold and isolated as he faces the illusion of the sublime image, he nevertheless understands that his abundant emotional life and empathy for others will enable him to live a fuller life through the circuitous path to nothing. As Ruth Bernard Yeazell observes, in her essay “Remembrance of Things Present in The Ambassadors,” that “to feel his loss so intensely is paradoxically to regain it,” so that “he’ll always have Paris” in his mind (2017, 237). Strether’s experiences in Paris have been inscribed in his memory with an exceptional warmth and intimacy. As he set out to experience Parisian life, Strether resisted the temptation to be overly assertive or to prejudge situations: an approach that did not prevent him from making his share of mistakes. Nevertheless, his memories are infused with the illusion of freedom, which inspires him to live more fully. Here, we find an echo of Freud’s words in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. At the end of the lengthy essay, Freud makes an observation that he included in a letter to Fliess, on October 20, 1895 (1985, 147): “We may take comfort, too,

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for the slow advances of our scientific knowledge in the words of the poet: What we cannot reach flying, we must reach limping. . . . The Book tells us it is no sin to limp” (S.E., 18, 1920, 64). Limping too seems evident in James’s narrative. One of the most striking aspects of James’s narrative is his treatment of characters. In the course of the novel, the behavior of James’s protagonist evolves dramatically. As we watch his progress, we are reminded of Freud’s descriptive words, “flying” and “limping.” Strether, for his part, moves haltingly as he embarks on his quest for truth, and the obstacles that he encounters include his own misconceptions. Yet, he is able to savor each moment of his experience in Paris, because of his rich emotional life and abundant imagination. As Strether tries to secure accurate information from the accounts of his various sources, he inadvertently reminds the reader of the fact that he will soon confront the rhetoric of advertising that permeates a consumer society. His skepticism and growing insistence upon personal autonomy inform his response to Mrs. Newsome’s dispatch of a new group of ambassadors, the Pococks. When he meets with Chad who anticipates the ambassador, Sarah Pocock, Strether states, “I am not ready [to go]” (AB, 253). It soon becomes evident that Strether and Sarah are polar opposites. Sarah, the daughter of a wealthy matron, moves through the world with a confidence and certitude that is wholly distinct from Strether’s clumsy faltering. Determined to carry out her task, she has little patience with mistakes and discounts details which she considers extraneous. She fails to even take notice of the dramatic change Chad has undergone since his arrival in Paris. Throughout her stay, the selfassured Sarah reports regularly to her mother and remains laser-focused on her mission. She is immune to the charms of Paris and mechanically sets out to separate her prospective step-father from her mother, while also working hard to lure Chad back to the United States. She understands that her success will entail substantial compensation (394). While Sarah does not come off as mean-spirited, she consistently fails to recognize that human thought flows and is transferred. She is inclined to treat people and things as static entities, and at one point she declares, “I’ve been to Paris. I know Paris” (294). ONE’S MANNER OF LIVING AS A STYLE OF WRITING Sarah has been in the French capital for little more than two weeks, while Strether arrived a few weeks earlier. Nevertheless, their perspectives could not be more different. Strether finds himself captivated by Paris and opens himself to a range of new experiences. His view of the city is fresh and inventive. He understands that Paris, far from a static entity, is a sensory feast that requires personal engagement. He also recognizes that he himself is

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changing in relation to Paris, a city that he cannot claim to possess. This view is consistent with Freud’s perspective, given that the psychologist asserted that one can never possess the other because of the dualism that exists in one system. While the compulsion to repeat is a function of the death drive, Strether’s sublime image of Madame de Vionnet is a product of the protagonist’s life instinct. In short, Strether unconsciously follows his own advice to Little Bilham, “live all you can; it’s a mistake not to” (AB, 176). As death and life are mutually exclusive (even though they are combined into one memory system), Strether views Madame de Vionnet from the vantage point of the sublime, in the same way that he views an unfamiliar country from the vantage point of the past. Thus, he has not freed himself from repetition, in the form of transference. Strether limps slowly along, in what amounts to a detour of the compulsion to repeat. Beyond his sublime image of Madame de Vionnet, however, lurks deception, and the void awaits him. Once again, James appears to suggest that the surest way to live a full life is to feel each moment intensely and inscribe it into your memory. Indeed, Strether advises Little Bilham that good memories are all that you can have in this world. In light of the dualism that exists in one system, one cannot possess anything, but one can experience it. Strether’s approach to life differs sharply from that of Sarah, a flying character, who lives only for tomorrow. For the protagonist, Madame de Vionnet not only represents a sublime image of beauty, but she is reflected in a milliard (billion) forms of repetition. Her artful approach to life has inspired within Chad a new capacity for personal charm. Yet, upon solving the mystery of the couple’s relationship, Strether comes to the realization that the influence of high art will be minimal in the emerging era of mass culture and commercialization. In the end, Chad is the same man that he was before his arrival in Paris, and he is destined to return to America and take up the advertisement business. At this point, Strether compares Madame de Vionnet to the tragic figure of Marie Jeanne Roland, a gifted political leader in the days of the French Revolution. Madame Roland, despite her intellectual gifts and political contributions, was targeted by other, more radical, revolutionaries. After months of imprisonment, she was guillotined: yet another victim of the Great Terror. In reference to Madame Roland, Anna Kventsel notes that “a vision of passion is wrought into the fabric of the novel” (2007, 27). She contends that Madame Roland’s image is treated as a kind of historic incarnation of sacrifice. To put it in another way, she represents the vulnerable woman who is betrayed and deserted by the mob, partly because of the insistent commercial forces that are shaping the future. When it comes to the forces of commercialism, the curmudgeonly figure of Waymarsh proves to be another flying figure, like his ally of convenience, Sarah. Neither is inclined to savor the novelty and color of Paris. They are

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bored by the same elements of the city that Strether treats as a source of delight. Despite his years abroad, the discontented Waymarsh compares Paris unfavorably to his native Woollett, Massachusetts. Unsure how to spend the vast sums of money that he accumulated while practicing law in Connecticut, the aging expatriate seeks to fill the vacuum of his life with goods that he has acquired in the course of his travels. Hence, Waymarsh is especially vulnerable to the emerging values of the consumer society, as he lacks any sublime image that could enable him to detour around the void. Hence, Waymarsh has become, in Freudian terms, a fetish, an individual who chases after things that are not sublimated in the least. He mistakenly views commodities as a viable substitute for his absent Mother, engaging in a futile pattern of repetition in which he possesses nothing. The more he tries to fill the void, the faster the void grows. Standing in stark contrast to Waymarsh and Sarah are Strether and Miss Gostrey, who are not focused, in the least, on consumption. Strether, determined to avoid selfishness and base materialism, reveals a rare integrity when he states, “Not, out of the whole affair, to have got anything for myself” (AB, 470). His aesthetic sensibilities differentiate him from those characters whose behavior reflects a consumer mentality. As Richard Salmon observes, Strether’s emotional response to high art serves as “a means of preserving the pleasure of aesthetic experience which consumption itself prematurely forecloses” (1997, 169). Indeed, aesthetic experience effectively follows the path of detouring by slowly drawing one into an emotional response through identification and then facilitating a judgment. This resembles the normal function of the brain, which combines the faculties of the lower portion with those of the upper portion. In this sense, Leon Edel’s contention that detouring is the means through which we engage in our discovery of the world seems quite relevant: “We’re not fully informed of the facial appearances, the personae, the motives, the goals. We discover little bits and pieces of our story; we are given many glimpses” (1982, 207). James’s writing style, which offers the vaguest description of Strether’s surroundings, is constructed in a way that enables the reader to experience things with the protagonist in a step-by-step manner. Here, James proposes a distance, or freedom, from experience as a virtue of aesthetics. In other words, the author should neither interfere with nor seek to control the narrative, effectively leaving his protagonist to cope with his environment as the reader follows along. In this case, the space that allows for a degree of freedom between the author and protagonist has been referred to as the Free Indirect Discourse. The narrative distance he achieves through this technique has at least two primary effects: It gives the protagonist the space to experience reality on his or her own terms, and it invites the reader to experience the protagonist’s process of trial and error in the search for truth.

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As Ruth Bernard Yeazell notes, “Although James’s style indirect libre keeps us at a certain distance from his men and women, we experience their shocks and fears with a peculiarly disturbing immediacy” (1976, 28). In certain respects, James’s role as Strether’s guide resembles that of Miss Gostrey, who essentially introduces the protagonist to Europe. Miss Gostrey is not only refined, civilized, and fashionable; she is also well-acquainted with Madame de Vionnet and has no illusions about the nature of her relationship with Chad. She is equally aware of the fact that the secret relationship is destined to come to an end. Yet, Miss Gostrey chooses not to intervene directly in the situation. She is impressed with Strether’s personal qualities, including his impulse to assist others and his artistic imagination. Although she offers occasional hints concerning Chad’s secret affair, Miss Gostrey prefers to give Strether the freedom he needs to experience a new culture as he slowly closes in on the truth of the situation. While she lacks her material means, Miss Gostrey is nevertheless equipped to enjoy each moment of her life, a virtue that will enable her to resist the soul-destroying values of the emerging consumer society. In the end, neither Miss Gostrey nor Strether are likely to fall prey to blind commercialism, unlike Chad, Sara, and Waymarsh, who will never have memories of the illusion of freedom. Throughout the novel, James grants his character the freedom to experience the world around him, while enabling us to view this journey from the perspective of the protagonist as well as that of the permissive narrator. In his preface to The Ambassadors, James sheds light on his style of representation when he observes that it has nothing to do with matter, but “has everything to do with manner” (AB, 17). Although he maintains a degree of distance from his protagonist, James’s narrator offers an occasional opinion, noting, for instance, that “Strether was not yet in line” (AB, 212). At other points, he refers to Strether as “our friend” (332). The narrator never assumes an omniscient, godlike authorial voice. He functions more like a colleague who shares the perspectives of others and then comfortably returns to his own vantage point. Isn’t this kind of generosity reflected in the attitude of an analyst toward a patient? Freud, for example, offers his patient the freedom to discuss past memories and present symptoms, and yet, he “encages” the patient in his theory of the unconscious, while struggling to identify the cause of the patient’s illness. Notably, Henry James’s approach to the character conforms to Heinz Kohut’s ideal image of the psychoanalyst. Kohut, in his essay “On Empathy,” remarks that a positive empathy toward the patient is part of a two-step move. As a psychoanalyst himself, Kohut invites us to imagine a young child who is enjoying a pleasant afternoon in the park under the watchful eye of his mother. Curious about the antics of a group of pigeons, a child moves away from his mother, only to come back to be encased by

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the mother’s arms again” (128). Like the mother Kohut describes, James allows his protagonist to be drawn away by his own curiosity and then welcomes him back to the safety of his arms. Kohut’s two-step move is fully compatible with Freud’s two stages of narcissism. In the first step of primary narcissism, one demonstrates an emotional identification with the other, only to return to oneself in the next step, secondary narcissism. Freud outlined this formula a second time in his essay “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” (1921). He indicates that, in the first step, which involves emotional identification with others, we resemble other animals. In the second step, however, we achieve the distance from others that is a characteristic of humans.

CONCLUSION The “remembered present” in Freudian consciousness can never escape alterity, since our cognition is inseparable from our memories of the past. In James’s literary works, alterity is represented in a variety of ways. In some cases, alterity manifests itself as the ghost, while in others, it is reflected in the style of the narrative, especially the Free Indirect Discourse. Angus Fletcher and John Monterosso write that the recent cognitive studies prove that the “free indirect style” can promote empathy in the readers by “an acceptance of alterity” (2016, 82). Beyond the occasional appearance of a ghost and James’s use of free indirect style, the writer further represents alterity through his arrangement of the various characters. Beyond the so-called flying characters, like Sara and Chad, who are ignorant of alterity, we find limping characters, like Strether and Miss Gostrey, who accept alterity, even though they possess nothing at all. In The Ambassadors, James sheds light on the acceptance of alterity on three distinct levels: between the narrator and the focalizer; between likeminded characters, for example, Miss Gostrey and Strether; and finally, among the protagonist and other characters, for example, Strether with Chad and Madame de Vionnet. In James’s novel, the reader can infer that Strether regrets the loss of his squandered youth and identifies unconsciously with the bold and youthful Chad, going so far as to fall in love with the younger man’s lover. Strether is destined, however, to uncover the truth, which will compel him to make a judgment. Overall, the evidence supports Leon Edel’s assertion that James’s The Ambassadors, with its vague narrative style, serves as one of “the first great psychological novels of our century” (1982, 213). Yet, until recently, few critics have acknowledged that the psychology the author applies in the novel derives not only from the work of William James, but also from that of Sigmund Freud, especially his essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.”

Chapter 7

Love as Dissimulation in “The Beast in the Jungle”

While1 various interpretations of Henry James’s novella “The Beast in the Jungle” have surfaced over the decades, few have concentrated on the function of memory and consciousness in unraveling the secrets of this complex narrative. In order to explore this topic further, it is important to shed light on the major components of the story that James tells us. The novella opens in London, as the protagonist, John Marcher, reunites with May Bartram, a woman he had known a decade earlier and to whom he had confided an unusual secret. At that time, Marcher revealed to Bartram his unshakeable conviction that his life would be defined by an extraordinary event, one that could be either positive or negative. For this reason, Marcher has avoided marriage, preferring not to entangle anyone in an event that might well be catastrophic. Nevertheless, in the wake of their reunion, Marcher agrees to accept friendship and generosity from May Bartram, who invites him to watch together with her for his mysterious fate. This odd relationship unfolds over the book’s first three sections, and it is not until the climactic fourth section that we grasp the long-term consequences of the arrangement. Despite their proximity and their involvement in the common activity of watching and waiting, there is nothing about the relationship that reflects a genuine feeling of communion. Throughout the novella, James deftly renders the gaps and slips that characterize their conversations, calling to mind Lacan’s play of the signifiers as well as his concept of love as deception—as an act of dissimulation. Indeed, William James’s formula regarding “habits,” “memory,” and “consciousness” casts a long shadow over the narrative, a shadow that puts one in mind of the Lacanian “thing,” the embodied language. As the reader gradually comes to understand, Marcher’s failure to apprehend May Bartram’s love is related not only to his misconception of 153

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memory as the accurate reflection of the past but, as a corollary to this, the stilted body language and verbal slips that inform their interactions. Drawing upon critiques by Eve Sedgwick and Leo Bersani, I will explore various concepts of memory, consciousness, and love as endless talking. The goal of this essay is to show that Marcher’s epiphany does not simply involve his recognition of the fact that he has wasted time that could have been spent in a meaningful relationship with May, as the author himself elucidated in his Notebooks (James, 1987, 199). It also encompasses his understanding that, as I have repeated, consciousness is not “a stuff” or an entity but rather a process, as William James defined it. This awareness is ironically achieved only as John Marcher abandons his search for knowledge. Leon Edel’s earliest commentary on James’s later work, which deals with the myth of the subject or “the use of psychoanalytical psychology,” remains relevant to our understanding of “The Beast in the Jungle,” given that the psychological theories of Freud and Lacan, along with those of William James, can enhance our perception of the nature of fantasy and the role of the unconscious (1989, 104). While their view of human psychology diverged in many ways, William James and Freud shared similar sensibilities as neuroscientists. Both men were deeply influenced by Darwin, and they were inclined to view the study of the human mind, or psyche, as a discipline that belonged within the realm of the natural sciences, as opposed to the humanities alone.2 James, for example, understood habits as repeated information or acts that were indelibly inscribed within the body, while Freud tended to interpret habits as products of the unconscious that are later recalled as repeated acts. In the same way, James’s differentiation of “primary memory” from “secondary memory” finds a close parallel in Freud’s categories of “childhood memory” and “recollection.” For Freud, childhood memory belongs to the unconscious (which corresponds to James’s term “habits”), while recollection is a type of remembering that is the sole province of human beings in possession of consciousness. We must bear in mind that recollection, or secondary memory, is not a mere duplication of things past. On the contrary, the process of remembering occurs within the context of the present moment. Hence, it is the bridge that connects the past and the present. Given that past events are recalled in the context of the present, they are bound to be remembered differently as time goes on. Interestingly, these concepts differ in terms of their strength, since James deals primarily with the nature of consciousness, cognition, and learning effects (which are the roots of Pragmatism and Phenomenology), while Freud focuses on remembering the past as the foundation of the unconscious and advocates the use of psychoanalysis to facilitate a patient’s cure. In The Principles of Psychology, William observes that remembrance is similar to direct feeling, given that “its object is suffused with a warmth and

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intimacy to which no object of mere conception ever attains” (PP, 1: 158). He goes on to argue that for a state of mind to survive within the memory it must have endured “for a certain length of time,” and this memory is lodged, not in one’s consciousness, but in one’s body and neurons; in the human brain, this phenomenon is described as the memory traces. In this work, William refers repeatedly to “the primary memory,” as he argues that without it consciousness would be impossible. He explains that “an object of primary memory is not thus brought back; it never was lost” (PP, 1: 433). Hence, the secondary memory is not an automatically repeated act but rather a recollection of one’s experiences past. But even this would not be memory. Memory requires more than mere dating of a fact in the past. It must be dated in my past. In other words, I must think that I directly experienced its occurrence. It must have that “warmth and intimacy” which were so often spoken of in the chapter on the Self, as characterizing all experiences “appropriated” by the thinker as his own. (PP, 1: 436)

William argues that remembering is not an act of knowing but a feeling and is produced in the present force. He puts forward that the past feeling must be acknowledged in order to be embraced by the present mental state and to be owned by it (PP, 1: 159). In the community of self, the past is not to be divided from either memory or present thought. While we are not ignorant of the time-gap, human consciousness, absorbing certain portions of the past, flows continuously. In this regard, James’s view precisely coincides with that of the recent neuroscientist, Gerald M. Edelman, who regards consciousness as the remembered present. In a similar vein, Freud’s influential essay “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through” argues, “We must treat his [the patient’s] illness, not as an event of the past, but as a present-day force” (S.E., 12, 1914, 151). What James and Freud essentially agreed upon was that human recollection does not involve a precise reflection of the past, in the same way that human consciousness does not reflect a precise reality. Consciousness ceaselessly follows the present moment, while, at the same time, the memory traces adapt the new experience. Even primary memory is subjective, since it depends essentially on an individual’s level of intimacy with a particular experience and her emotional state. The cause of Marcher’s obtuse failure to perceive May Bartram’s passion was his mistaken belief that she had knowledge of his secret that was grounded in her detailed memory. Marcher is incapable of personalizing his experiences because he lacks the attentiveness to store the present moment. Divorced from the present, he struggles to share his secret with May. And yet, he realizes, even as he takes her “so far into his confidence,” that he recalls very little about her. His apparent dearth of intimate feeling toward others is connected to the fact that

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he has few impressions of life. Over the years, his experiences have left few traces upon his mind. Henry James develops the opening of the story with such precision that his approach calls to mind the phenomenon of cause and effect as though he were a historian or even a natural scientist. The meeting of two characters after a long interlude and their recollection of things past lead to the establishment of the contract that informs the remainder of the story. The reader comes to appreciate that these early developments are indispensable to the construction of a net (a lure) that will shroud the characters’ friendship, complicate their interaction, and contribute to a tragic outcome. On an October afternoon, a mysterious man, who is uncomfortable with most of the assorted guests in a spacious house, encounters a woman whose face serves as “a reminder, yet not quite a remembrance” (BJ, 549). At this point in the narrative, James cautiously sheds light on the psyche of Marcher, who is immediately struck by May’s pleasant and “distinctly handsome” figure (BJ, 550). In addition, the protagonist is engaged by her initial words to him: “I met you years and years ago in Rome. I remember all about it.” These words resonate, evoking in his mind the image of a goddess of wisdom, “Her face and her voice, all at his service now, worked the miracle—the impression operating like the torch of a lamplighter who torches into flame, one by one, a long row of gas-jets” (551). He is not only flattered and impressed by her remarkable memory; he is also driven into a romantic fantasy, “It would have been nice if he could have been taken with fever all alone at his hotel, and she could have come to look after him” (552). Indeed, he feels a severe pang when he does not remember the least thing about her. James devotes much space to a description of Marcher’s state of mind at this point. The author’s emphasis on the degree to which Marcher is impressed by Bartram’s memory, along with the differing degrees of memory between the two characters, conveys two important things. Not only has May Bartram retained a passion for him since their first meeting, but Marcher also appears to be enamored with her, “They looked at each other as with the feeling of an occasion missed” (552). Therefore, despite the critical consensus regarding Marcher’s supposedly cold and selfish mindset, it is clear that James wanted his readers to appreciate that Marcher’s passion (far from being absent) is deeply repressed—and to such a degree that he, himself, does not become fully aware of it until May Bartram’s death. Many of the earliest critiques describe Marcher as a fundamental egotist, while Bartram is portrayed as generous and self-sacrificing, an approach exemplified in the arguments of Jessie Ryon Lucke and Michael C. Berthold.3 Unaware of his own deeply repressed feeling, Marcher does, however, struggle to avoid behaving selfishly toward May when they start to meet on a regular basis. Given this set of circumstances, we should make some effort to place his behavior in the

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context of his predicament. Indeed, it is Marcher’s repressed passion that helps the reader to understand May Bartram’s constant protection and devotion to a haunted, and stunted, figure like the protagonist. Shedding light on Marcher’s loneliness as he struggles with misgivings over his failure to establish a meaningful relationship, James takes readers deep inside the mind of the protagonist. It is tempting to ponder the author’s motives when he avoids a further exploration of May Bartram’s psyche and to consider the impact upon the reader. James evidently wanted the reader to understand Marcher’s situation—even as the protagonist, himself, remains blind to his dilemma—and he was content to present May Bartram as something of a mystery. Marcher’s ignorance of his own repressed self is rooted in his stubborn belief that he will experience “something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible” (BJ, 556). He does not anticipate a great achievement, but instead, he fears a future event that could destroy his consciousness and lead to his annihilation. Is he struggling with fears over the prospect of falling in love? He flatly denies this and insists that his fears have nothing to do with his desires. As far as Marcher is concerned, his fears are bound up with “a question of the apprehension” (557). This raises a question: What is the thing, which does not appear to be a violent entity, but one that is unmistakably natural? In the course of the novella, James subtly devises the thing, it, inviting the reader to join the characters in their extended effort to uncover its identity. The thing not only functions as a lure for the main characters, who dedicate their lives to watching and waiting for it, but also engages the curiosity of the reader, who plunges deeper into the narrative. Regarding the content of the thing, therefore, it becomes clear that possibilities exist beyond Eve Sedgwick’s a content and Leo Bersani’s “infinities.” BEYOND SEDWICK’S A AND BERSANI’S “INFINITIES” Nonetheless, the most groundbreaking analysis of “The Beast” was Sedgwick’s “The Beast in the Closet: James and the Writing of Homosexual Panic” (1990). Asserting that critics pointedly ignored the issue of sexuality, perhaps out of fear that they would marginalize James’s work in the context of the American literary tradition, she proposes that as one perspective of various readings, “Marcher’s secret has a content, [and] that content is homosexual” (1990, 201). Sedgwick argues that Marcher, panicked that he could be homosexual, develops a phobia toward homosexuality. At the same time, he cannot relinquish his hidden desire to luxuriate in a homosexuality that is unfettered by fear. While May Bartram is not, in any way, complicit in enabling Marcher to fortify an identity as a homosexual, she does help him to reinforce the

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closet, offering a gesture that later enables him to accept and appreciate the grief displayed by an unidentified male mourner at the grave of a woman he had evidently loved. Sedgwick’s association of Marcher’s propensity toward homosexuality with that of the author serves as a direct challenge to traditional readings of James—a development that would profoundly influence the conventions of criticism, as reflected in the numerous responses to her own work as well as Bersani’s announcement in “The It in the I” of a new analytic discourse that functioned as an alternative to the previous one. As a leading psychoanalytic critic, Bersani contends that “The Beast in the Jungle” is “a story about a confidence in time,” and he characterizes May’s false account of herself as “a virtual statement” (2008, 15). These words remind us of Bersani’s previous analysis, “The Jamesian Lie,” in which he defined James’s later works as “a richly superficial art,” devoid of depth in their depiction of a character’s mind (1978, 132). At the same time, Bersani reads James and his characters in the context of love and social conformity. He observes, for instance, that Marcher requires “a long act of dissimulation” to conceal his fear of the Beast, dissimulation achieved by means of a mask painted with the social simper (2008, 18). Bersani contends that, in spite of Bartram’s help that enables Marcher to pass for a man like any other, he cannot escape from a fate in which nothing happens in a time that consists of a remote past and an indefinite future. At this point, Bersani focuses upon James’s various uses of the enigmatic and indeterminate “it.” He interprets the free-floating signifier, “it,” as the signified of the Freudian Id, the hiding place of the repressed, and then segues into a discussion of Lacan. Considering that Bersani reads Lacan’s concept of the unconscious as an alternative to the view of depth psychology, it is not surprising that he substitutes Freudian psychic density for pure potentiality (25). Bersani ultimately interprets Marcher’s period of waiting as a product of his expectation of empty, infinitely deferred meanings, and he winds up his discussion by identifying Marcher as an emblem of art. In the wake of Sedgwick’s and Bersani’s influential readings, subsequent essays have called attention to significations of the Beast within the range of a content and without-content. Omri Moses, for instance, reacts against Bersani’s infinities and seeks to discern some content as he draws a comparison between Marcher’s passivity and denial of life’s pleasures and “the parody of an aesthete” (271). On the other hand, Matthew Helmers calls attention to elements that Sedgwick evidently missed, including the concept of time and Marcher’s paranoid interpretation of the past secrets. One wonders, however, if there is a way to escape from the tense dualism fueled by the ongoing debate between advocates of content and without-content. Can we interpret the Beast within the context of the dimensions of two different emblems associated with two different characters? To put it differently, for

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May Bartram, the Beast signifies the multiple and ever-changing meanings that are contained within the stream of consciousness, while for Marcher it symbolizes the concrete knowledge that is supposedly buried within May’s consciousness. John Marcher is, overall, a compelling character, given that he vainly attempts to shield himself from the experience of the present moment because of his abject fear of the Beast—a symbol of absolute knowledge that stands in opposition to May Bartram’s stream of consciousness. Therefore, it is possible to interpret the dialogue between the two characters as something more than a futile waste of time. In this regard, the thing may represent Passion or Death, and it could be that the protagonist is engaged in an impossible quest for pure, absolute “knowledge.” Marcher fails to respond properly three times when May asks, “Are you afraid?” Moreover, he entreats her to watch and wait with him in order to “know” the content of the thing (BJ, 558). In this way, Marcher conflates memory of the past with knowledge of the past, and that confusion plays a crucial role in determining the nature of his relationship with May Bartram. Acutely aware of the fact that she recalls his secret, he firmly believes that she also possesses knowledge of that secret. Consequently, he overlooks her passion for him and remains fixated on “the buried treasure of her knowledge” (559). Belatedly, he comes to recognize that years that could have been devoted to the development of a meaningful relationship were instead squandered in a futile effort to retrieve her supposed stock of knowledge. For Marcher, Bartram serves as a sanctuary that enables him to embark upon his search for knowledge of the thing. For Henry James, remembering is a feeling, and accordingly, knowledge, too, is a feeling, as his brother William contends in The Principles, “We never could have any knowledge except that of the present instant” (PP, 1, 403). Indeed, the moment the present sensation ceases, it is gone forever, and the next sensation is added to the former, because our consciousness is always in the successive states. Notably, the words of William James resonate when we analyze the significance of dialogue between Isabel and Ralph in The Portrait of a Lady. Shortly after Isabel’s refusal to marry Lord Warburton, she insists that she will not marry until she sees Europe for herself. In response, Ralph comments, “You want to see, but not to feel” (PL, 159). Through this vague statement, James effectively foreshadows Isabel’s failure to achieve her ambitions due to her misjudgment. In a similar vein, Marcher’s misconception of knowledge as seeing rather than feeling leads him to behave as if he were the most disinterested person in his social circle. He does not wish to burden others with the overwhelming secret that haunts him. Therefore, despite the fact that he has never been relaxed and settled for an hour in his existence, he struggles to hold his tongue and behave in a civil and cordial manner. Consequently, those who come into social contact with him regard Marcher as a man of cultivated manners, or to

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put it “a little sublimely—unselfish” (561). This mode of existence becomes second nature for Marcher, a habit, or the primal memory inscribed in body. When he establishes his contract with May, he also resolves to keep his distance from her, insisting that “she had also a life of her own, with things that might happen to her, things that in friendship one should likewise take account of” (560). Under these social circumstances, the pair’s extended act of dissimulation begins. Over the years, Marcher indulges his “selfishness” in the form of intermittent visits with May Bartram. And for her part, Bartram carefully conceals her passion for Marcher, though she hopes to sense that it is reciprocated. James meticulously constructs their act of mutual deception and acknowledges at one point that “the real form it should have taken on the basis that stood out large was the form of their marrying. But the devil in this was that the very basis itself put marrying out of the question” (561). The “very basis” in question is little more than their contradictory positions. From May’s perspective, the Beast crouching in the Jungle is Marcher’s dread fear of “the” thing, which effectively prevents him from living in the present moment. Meanwhile, Marcher mistakes May’s passion for her purportedly invaluable knowledge concerning “the” thing. However, this virtual friendship, paradoxically, enables them to enjoy an easy and comfortable life together. The protagonist, after all, has been freed of the tension and solemnity that mark his dealings with others, given that May Bartram is the one person who knows about his secret. As long as she is watching and waiting with him, the rest of the world really does not matter. At the same time, she keeps her supposed knowledge a secret, thereby enabling Marcher to relax and spend time with her, “He knew how he felt, but, besides knowing that, she knew how he looked as well” (563).

THE PLAY OF SIGNIFIERS AS ACT OF LOVE Hence, the secret serves as a tie, a lure, that connects the characters and becomes the source of the oblique dialogue that characterizes their “long act of dissimulation.” They grow older together, Marcher guised in the mask of the social simper, while May presents a false account of herself. As Marcher patiently awaits knowledge of the secret, May finds that their arrangement adds “shape and colour to her own existence” (BJ 564). Together, their attitudes function as a virtual statement, a slanted language, and the maintenance of appearances effectively conceals the tracks of their day-to-day existence. In his narrative, James introduces a new form of dialogue that highlights the difficulty, even the impossibility, of communication between these characters. For instance, when May urges Marcher to show courage by

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permitting himself to experience the present moment, he routinely responds by questioning her about the nature of the Beast—evidently unaware that he is asking her about something of which she has no knowledge. When her own passionate expectations are met with Marcher’s formal pronouncements, which indicate that he is “mindful of all you’ve done for me,” May Bartram, noting that “watching’s always in itself an absorption,” gravely replaces her own mask (BJ, 566). James communicates his own impatience with this charade when he writes, “Oh he understood what she meant!” This statement contains a marvelous double meaning. Beneath the narrator’s positive statement, we sense the presence of another sentiment: Oh you do not understand her at all, because, she does not know it. Thus, the language the characters share remains a surplus, given that their expectations are so different. James does not place May Bartram, along with Marcher, in the category of the virtual. They have distinctive roles to play and communicate in their own slanted language, as Eugene Goodheart has argued. In his effort to reconstruct Bersani’s idea of Marcher as “an emblem of art,” or an aesthetic potentiality, Goodheart closely scrutinizes James’s use of language, especially the oblique nature of its references, “as if the action of the story takes place in the language itself” (2003, 118), and relates it to James’s artistic achievement. He concludes that like Marcher James sacrificed a full life, but he was rewarded with success in his vocation as a writer. Indeed, the dialogue between the two central characters of “Beast” is remarkable in its complexity and circularity. More than anything else, this “language of slant” calls the reader’s attention to the surplus of their language, which is largely caused by the two characters’ divergent expectations. Grasping the theme of language as deception is crucial not only to our understanding of the story’s tragic ending, but it also enables us to appreciate James’s unique style of art. The characters grow accustomed to this slippery form of dialogue, and in time it becomes a habit. On a few occasions, this indirect language becomes a source of apparent humor between the characters themselves. When Marcher recalls “fear” and states, “I only know I’m exposed,” May Bartram responds, “You’ll never find out” (BJ, 569). Over time, their dialogue becomes a kind of labyrinth in which they perform an elaborate game of hide and seek. In this way, James appears to suggest that life is preserved not by authentic communication and a firm grasp of reality but, instead, by slanted communication and the maintenance of appearances. Knowledge is not to be searched for but to be felt. At one point in the narrative, Marcher, as a civil gesture, presents a birthday gift to May, prompting her to comment that “our habit saves you at least, don’t you see? because it makes you, after all, for the vulgar, indistinguishable from other men” (565). Deception, combined with a focus on appearances, informs their dialogue and shapes their habits to a degree that

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seems remarkable—the very type of situation that Lacan would term as the play of the signifier. Lacan explains that, when language is performed (in the medium of either speaking or writing), it ceases to convey meaning in a transparent manner. Given the differing experiences of the sender and the receiver (not to mention the fact that each possesses a distinctive unconscious), the signifier is only capable of producing another signifier. Let us, at this point, examine the process by which Lacan initiates this concept, based on Freud’s mnemic systems and Jamesian consciousness. What Lacan elucidates is the fact that the system of human memory is constructed in the same way that consciousness, or a system of signifiers, takes hold of materiality. This may be the primary reason that Lacan posits Freud’s mnemic apparatuses as a paramount influence upon his work, starting with Book II (62–63). Tellingly, he comments twice on Freud’s mnemic systems within a single text, Book III (151–54, 181), which is titled The Psychoses, and continues to make references to it in Book XI (most notably 40, 47–64). Moreover, he incorporates similar references into his later texts. In his initial stage of luminous ideas, in particular, we glimpse the long shadow of the mechanism of “remembering,” in connection to reproduction in transference. Freud’s “mystic writing-pad” (S.E., 19, 1925, 227–232) serves as the springboard for Lacan’s conception of the subject as “desire.” In Book III, Lacan redefines the memory trace as the phenomenon of memory and relates it to the neurons of an animal—in this case, an octopus. From there, he transcribes the deferred acts as recurring things “by the plurality of mnemic inscriptions” (1993, 181). If we remove neuronal elements from a living octopus, its movements will become sluggish, given that those neurons have a profound effect on its sensations. This phenomenon is common to octopi and human beings, although with one exception: a human’s memory is made up of messages, and it is a succession of little signs of plus or minus, contrary to that of the octopus (1993, 152–153). Lacan embraces Freud’s concept of the memory trace as material, or animal instinct, although he does not go so far as to place animals and humans on the same level. Therefore, when Lacan emphatically notes in Book XI that the English word “instinct” is an inappropriate translation for the German word “trieb” and substitutes “drive,” he has recourse to a clear distinction between human and animal on the basis of the mirror stage in the symbolic. He took this step in order to propose the urgency of human drive posited in the symbolic with such phrases as “trieb gives you a kick in the arse” (1981, 49). Significantly, he turns to speech (signifier) on the ground of remembering, treating seriously Freud’s “Letter 52” and adapting from it the idea that consciousness and materiality, or language and body, can be at once linked and mutually exclusive. In a letter to Wilhelm Fliess in 1896 Freud describes “neurons in which perceptions originate, to which

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consciousness attaches, but which in themselves retain no trace of what has happened” and adds, “for consciousness and memory are mutually exclusive” (1985, 207–208). The mutual exclusion of the phenomenon of consciousness and the memory traces, along with the psychic apparatus involved in the interpretation of dreams, are all equally important for Lacan as “an initial signifying a priori” within Freud’s thought. Yet, why does this continuously moving circle hold such meaning for him? For Lacan, the memory traces are like things, or the materials of the consciousness, upon which the concept of surplus is established. In the same way that James believed consciousness flows, Lacan places the signifier within the flow of time and space, due to the surplus. The signified, or the meaning, is only possible when time-bounded consciousness calls upon timeless things, thereby anchoring the signified in the retrospective. Things are never fully grasped by either consciousness or language, and, due to this excess, final satisfaction is delayed. In short, knowledge is a temporal and constantly changing thing for Lacan, just as it is for William James. Grounding himself in the mutually exclusive mnemic apparatuses, Lacan establishes a unique position that is situated beyond Jakobson’s structuralism and in the direction of the signifying chain, while exploring such concepts as lure or objet a, which is a cause of both remembering and desire, not to mention the stream of consciousness. If Freud situated the death drive beyond the dynamics of the pleasure and reality principles, which are a source of compulsive repetition, Lacan goes on to propose that this drive is the locus between the mutual exclusiveness of the symbolic and the imaginary. Hence, the death drive should not emerge as a destructive power, but instead as a source of life instinct, as Freud implies. Indeed, Lacan reformulates the death drive as a lure, which is required to sustain our talk and dialogue. From this perspective, it seems clear that we should be attentive to the excess involved in talk in order to avoid our essentially paranoiac understanding of knowledge, as readily apparent in James’s protagonists. Examples include Isabel’s naïve faith in knowledge prior to her encounter with evil in The Portrait of a Lady and the governess’s stubborn willpower, which leads to Miles’s death, in The Turn of the Screw. Lacan asserts that language, in the experiential realm, inevitably confronts the surplus that exists between the signifier and the signified, so as to maintain dialogue and defer consummation. Perhaps this is the reason he claims that there is no sex in love. In analytic discourse two persons communicate through transference as a result of that surplus, and, therefore, the dialogue continues unabated. Lacan describes this endless dialogue as ethical, given that it does not seek to possess, apprehend, or appropriate the other. In Book XI, he goes so far as to identify it as encore, or love: “The positive transference is love” (123). Indeed, for Lacan, love is possible only when the surplus is involved, a situation that calls to

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mind the dialogue that draws the other’s mediation. While Freud had earlier defined love as a harmonious balance of affectionate and sensual currents, Lacan sought to shed light on the surplus between those currents, which he identified as the source of the play of the signifiers. To love is essentially the desire to be loved, which suggests that love is sustained by a circle of deception. In this vein, Lacan proposes that love is essentially dissimulation: “I love you, but, because inexplicably I love in you something more than you.—the objet petit a—I mutilate you” (1981, 268). He indicates that the purpose of language is not to communicate but to enjoy each other, thereby sustaining love and, ultimately, deferring death. Thus, when Lacan formulates the subject of desire, he simultaneously indicates the subject of love. His theory also encompasses the aesthetic subject, given that the aim of art is to lay down your gaze between the creator and the reader through the performance of two subjects who are supposed to know (1981, 253). In short, art is an act of deception or dissimulation. At this point, let us consider an example of deception in the dialogue that unfolds between May Bartram and John Marcher. Here, we discern an excess, a guess, and a lure, within the veiled statements of the couple. Confronted with Marcher’s formality, Bartram responds that “you’ve had your woman, I’ve had my man” and refrains from revealing her emotions (BJ, 570). In spite of this, she does not abandon her effort to convey her message: “I don’t pretend it exactly shows that I’m not living for you. It’s my intimacy with you that’s in question” (571). Yet, one is tempted to ask whether her intimacy is little more than Jamesian surplus that is related to memory and the signifier. The protagonist, however, continues to respond with deep formality, “How shall I ever repay you?” Nevertheless, Marcher’s repressed passion for May Bartram, which does not surface, and her bodily passion for him, which is not signified to him, facilitates the continuation of their conversation—a development clearly reflected in May’s response: “By going on as you are.” It is obvious that this slip in their dialogue provides Marcher with a routine, an ordinary life. At the same time, however, lending support to Lacan’s comment in Book XX, it exacerbates his level of misapprehension and selfishness, “I love the person I assume to have knowledge” (67). The respectful distance he maintains from May Bartram allows him to imagine that she is hiding something from him, namely, knowledge of a secret that is so distressing that she refuses to share it with him. The difference between the two is that she possesses “finer nerves,” which enables her to feel a certain intimacy with Marcher, despite the careful formality that creates a barrier between them (BJ, 572). James describes Marcher’s obtuseness in such stark terms that the reader is apt to conclude that the protagonist is insensitive to May Bartram’s impending demise. While Marcher vaguely perceives that her death is imminent, he determines that his actions should be

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“decently proportionate to the posture he had kept, all his life, in the threatened presence of it” (575). He has only one desire left: that he should not have been “sold.” One wonders if it is indeed possible to bridge the gap between Marcher’s formality and May’s pretension. In the novella’s fifth section, it appears as though the secret Bartram intended to share with Marcher involves not only her passion but also her death. Her final attempt to communicate with him ends in failure, and Marcher, as always, adheres to the most literal meaning of her words. Predictably, he shows no capacity to grasp the nuances of bodily language, the language of metaphor (of love and passion), because his mind tenaciously clings to the Beast—a gnawing premonition that misfortune will befall him. In this way, the slanted language that develops between the two characters achieves a climax when Marcher comments that “there were others I couldn’t name,” and May, anxious and full of desire, asks, “They were too, too dreadful?” (BJ, 577). That said, some words have been unspoken, and unheard, as Lacan notes in Book XX: “The signified is not what you hear. What you hear is the signifier” (33). “The thing” May desires to hear is what has slipped away in the language—the intimacy (or body) that she so deeply desired. As she approaches death, she decides to tell Marcher the truth, “I’ve shown you, my dear, nothing” (BJ, 578). The word nothing, has a double meaning in this case. In a literal sense, it suggests that she possesses no knowledge regarding the secret, but, on a metaphoric level, it yields the remains: that is, the secret is her death as well as his imminent loneliness and suffering. Beyond this, however, there is another possible meaning: that she has shown him the void, which they have both sublimated—and should continue to sublimate by means of language—to the fantasy object: a move that enabled them to sustain their dialogue. It is possible to see May Bartram as the Lacanian lover who is aware of the remains of language, especially when she observes that “what I mean isn’t what I’ve always meant. It’s different” (580). Marcher gives voice to the truth without realizing it when he refers to “all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable” (579). The truth exists not elsewhere but in every moment of their conversations as a form of embodied language, and, in his case, recognition will be long in coming, given that the deception is too deeply buried to be discerned by Marcher in the various acts of dissimulation.

BEAST AS THE KNOWLEDGE It is tempting to ask why so many biographical readings of “The Beast in the Jungle” present Marcher as an embodiment of the author. Perhaps the

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answer lies in James’s technique of narrating. In the course of the novella, James focuses primarily on Marcher’s psyche and behavior. He devotes far less space to May Bartram. At certain points, we experience the story from Marcher’s point of view, although at other times the author employs a relatively distant narrative voice and perspective. The cumulative effect of this technique is to give the reader easy access to Marcher’s thoughts and feelings, which encourages the reader to sympathize with the protagonist, while also making judgments about his character. This self-reflective technique leaves the reader with the impression that James is somehow closer in spirit to Marcher, especially since May’s psyche remains largely unexplored. Despite the disproportionate amount of space James devotes to Marcher, it is important to consider the ways in which May reflects the author’s ethics and values, which are repeatedly outlined in her conversations with the protagonist, who promptly disregards them. In the course of the novella’s fifth section, it becomes apparent that May Bartram consistently expresses James’s point of view, while John Marcher repeatedly rejects this perspective: a development that is at odds with the arguments of critics who view Marcher as a selfportrait of the author, as Maxwell Geismar and Barbara Young have done.4 What, then, can we deduce of the author’s ethics and values, as outlined by his character, May Bartram? It was William James who argued that consciousness was not a solid entity but, instead, a process that could be altered. In The Principles, he describes consciousness as reflecting three major characteristics: flow, personal intimacy, and intentionality. At the same time, he refers to it as “the stream of thought” or the stream of consciousness (PP, 1: 150, 159). For William James, there was no such thing as an isolated sensation, given that knowledge is involved in a seamless relationship with the individual’s past experiences and present impressions: “Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it” (PP, 1: 169). This view is consistent with the ideas communicated by May, who indicates that our knowledge is not a thing to be apprehended, or buried somewhere, but rather, a process that is subject to continual change in the course of interaction between the subject and the other. In his essay “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” (1904), William James boldly declares that the time is ripe for the transcendental ego to be openly discarded. He redefines consciousness in terms of experience, relations, self-interest, and addition. It has the quality not of an entity so much as a function, enabling one to select and arrange the order of experiences in accordance with one’s pure self-interest. This impalpable inner flow is little more than “a selecting agency,” a view that has been echoed in both Freud and Edelman (2004, 83). By positing consciousness in the experiential field of the knower and in relation to the object known, James contends in his essay that, without the external object, there is

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no consciousness, a view consistent with the comments of Lacan, who indicated that, without things, there can be no words.5 This quality of flexibility is notably lacking in John Marcher, whose emotional isolation enables him to cling to a static concept of knowledge, symbolized by the Beast. In order to highlight the ways in which Marcher has behaved both foolishly and selfishly—while also calling attention to his abject fear of abandonment— James leaves the protagonist to puzzle over his recollection of May’s final words: “You’ve nothing to wait for more. It has come” (BJ, 584). At this point, the reader is encouraged to conclude that the thing that Marcher and May spent so much of their youth anticipating was little more than May’s passion, which reaches its conclusion upon her death (nothingness). In time, Marcher’s stubborn solitude will be replaced by suffering. Yet, it seems curious that he is untouched by this realization even during their last moments together, when May struggles to communicate her love for him and also to inspire within him some genuine feelings of intimacy. She asks him, “Did we ever dream, with all our dreams, that we should sit and talk of it thus?” (586). The other talk, it, of which they never dreamed, however, was the surplus that functioned as a lure for talk, enabling them to sustain their repressed love—that is, until Marcher successfully achieves a new cognition. Humans are bundles of habits that are composed of stored experiences. They are ceaselessly endowed with new experiences as well. William James refers to this phenomenon as the “plasticity” of habits. Among the habits Marcher developed during his years with May Bartram was that of remembering the past, an activity in which he did not engage beforehand. This development, however, does not show that Marcher has changed in a significant way, given that he continues to avoid immersion within the present moment. Indeed, his memories are colored by the obsessive notion that the Beast had made its appearance without his knowledge. After concluding that the Beast has stolen away, he determines that his years of waiting and watching with May were a waste of time. Yet, Marcher also ponders the meaning of May’s final words: “That was not necessarily to know it,” and “No—it’s too much” (587). She had forbidden him to guess, to know. She, eventually, denied him even the power to learn. He laments the unfairness of his predicament, complaining that his lack of attentiveness prevented him from securing “the lost stuff of consciousness” (590). In short, Marcher stubbornly rejects William James’s concept of the stream of consciousness, which informed much of May Bartram’s dialogue. As though searching for a lost child in the shrouded corners of the past, he embarks on a year-long pilgrimage to explore the historical sites of Asia, but this experience leaves him unsatisfied. Ultimately, he returns to his habit of visiting May’s grave, which serves as a touchstone to his past. The reader is tempted to ask why James devotes so much space to this particular habit, even going so far as to describe it as “a positive resource”

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(593). Does this burden of death function as a schoolyard for Marcher, who continues his quest for pure consciousness? Does the tomb of “his other, his younger self” function as an open page, a spot on which to settle? Most critics agree that John Marcher’s final epiphany occurs near May Bartram’s gravesite, where he spies a middle-aged man at the nearby grave of his beloved. Moved by the stranger’s ravaged demeanor, Marcher is compelled to ask himself whether he could survive such a loss. Critics usually stop at this point in the narrative, concluding that Marcher has belatedly grasped the potential value of his relationship with May. My reading, however, moves beyond this epiphany and toward a proposed final step in the protagonist’s understanding. There is no doubt, of course, that Marcher has come to recognize that loving May Bartram for her own sake (as opposed to treating her as an instrument of his egoistic obsession) would have enabled him to live a fuller life. Yet, this can be understood as the content of the Beast only in a temporary, not absolute, sense. Sedgwick divides the final scene into two stages of recognition. According to her interpretation, Marcher momentarily recognizes, and accepts, his identity as a homosexual male when he encounters the man at the grave. In the next moment, however, a shift occurs as he identifies with the mourner’s grief over the deceased woman. In the course of these two stages of recognition, he arrives at a heterosexual impulse without dissolving his self-ignorance. Sedgwick suggests that the process of opening the closet is so difficult that its successful completion demonstrates “how central to that process is man’s desire for man—and the denial of that desire” (1990, 211). In slight contrast to her reading, I view these two stages of recognitions as the flow of consciousness: if belated regret over his failure to live a full life was the true content of the Beast, Marcher’s final comprehension of it would scarcely have occurred after an initial moment of recognition. One must ask the following: If “it had sprung as he didn’t guess”—and if “it had sprung as she hopelessly turned from him” (BJ, 597)—then why did it suddenly leap into the open in the wake of this fatal moment of epiphany? This was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze. Through them, none the less, he tried to fix it and hold it; he kept it there before him so that he might feel the pain. That at least, belated and bitter, had something of the taste of life. But the bitterness suddenly sickened him, and it was as if, horribly, he saw, in the truth, in the cruelty of his image, what had been appointed and done. He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking Beast: then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him. (BJ, 597)

What is ultimately signified by the Beast? And why does Marcher fling himself, face down, upon May’s tomb in an effort to avoid it? Is it possible

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that May Bartram continues to share a dialogue with the protagonist, even in this gray garden of death? Whatever the case, it would appear that the Beast Marcher ultimately confronts is little more than the remains, the surplus, of the knowledge that he had attempted to fix as his final signified. In this sense, the protagonist has been forced to acknowledge that human consciousness is not mere stuff but, rather, a slippery—and constantly changing—force that flows like water in time and space. This quality, of course, prevents him from grasping it and fixing it as the knowledge. If this is the case, perhaps the Beast leaping out of the Jungle is little more than Marcher’s stubborn insistence on securing the knowledge. (Or perhaps it is repressed animality embodying the materiality of consciousness.) In the end, he can neither seek it out nor place it under close observation. It is simply felt. Notably, Lacan makes this point, in Book XI, with a memorable analogy involving a stone in the desert that is covered with obscure hieroglyphics that we cannot comprehend (199). This is the essence of the message that James conveys in “The Beast in the Jungle.” If love is indeed deception, and art is the remains, perhaps it is only possible to overcome death (the tomb) by deferring its meaning. NOTES 1. Copyright © 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in The Henry James Review, Volume 36, Number 2, Spring 2015. Published with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press. 2. In The Principles of Psychology, James defines the scope of psychology and says that “a certain amount of brain-physiology must be presupposed or included in Psychology” (PP, 1: 9). Freud also claims that “in the natural science, of which psychology is one, such clear-cut general concepts are superfluous and indeed impossible” in his Autobiography (1935, 117). 3. Early critiques of the novella generally focus on the affinities that inform the dark romance that appears to exist between the literary works of Henry James and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Many observers have noted, for instance, that Marcher’s egoism, which prevents him from living a full life, is a quality shared by many of Hawthorne’s male protagonists. Lucke and Berthold, in particular, have identified strong parallels between the works of the two writers, although their approaches differ in some ways. While the former regards “The Beast in the Jungle” as a virtual rewrite of The Blithedale Romance, the latter places James’s work within the broader context of the literary tradition in which Hawthorne operated. 4. Maxwell Geismar interprets Marcher’s egotism as “the true example of the Jamesian ‘self criticism’” posited in the literary convention of “a Jamesian epitaph on Henry James” (40). He contends that Marcher’s willingness to sacrifice the possibility of true love with May mirrors James’s own tendency to repress his emotions: a move that may have prevented him from exploring many of life’s possibilities. Geismar goes on to suggest that the word “beast” refers to little more than “animal passion,”

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which James had carefully suppressed in order to protect his fame and reputation. Meanwhile, Barbara Young makes a similar point, though much more emphatically. She argues that Marcher and James are so closely connected that Marcher functions, more or less, as a self-portrait of the author. She concludes that James was essentially “reborn” through Marcher, considering that the novella enabled him to achieve a fuller life not only as a writer, but also as a social being. 5. Gavin, in her essay “Thinking Room and Thought Streams in Henry and William James,” explores the concept of “the stream of thought” through a close reading of The Portrait of a Lady in the view of The Principles of Psychology. Her discussion uses Michel Serres’s “The Origin of Language” to prove that Isabel’s solid room is itself unsolid. On the other hand, Wells’s “What Henry Gave to William” focuses on the gaze of a black stranger in “The Jolly Corner,” foregrounding a racial formation compatible with William’s Pragmatism.

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Singer, Jefferson A. and Peter Salovey. The Remembered Self: Emotion and Memory in Personality. New York: The Free Press, 1993. Smith, Andrew. “Henry James’s Ghosts.” In A Companion to American Gothic, edited by Charles L. Crow, 189–200. Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Smith, Dorin. “Ghosts without Depth: The Recognition of Jamesian Ghosts.” The Henry James Review 37.3 (2016): 246–253. Smith, George. “James, Degas, and the Emersonian Gaze” Novel 25.3 (1992): 360–386. Smith, Virginia Llewellyn. Henry James and the Real Thing: A Modern Reader’s Guide. London: MacMillan, 1994. Solms, Mark. “Freud Returns.” Scientific American 290.5 (2004): 82–89. Solomon, Robert C. “Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings.” In Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions, edited by Robert C. Solomon, 76–88. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Sophocles. Antigone. Edited by Elizabeth Osborne. Translated by J. E. Clayton, Delaware: Thomas Prestwick House Inc., 2005. Stafford, William T. “The Enigma of Serena Merle.” The Henry James Review 7.2/3 (1986): 117–123. Stanzel, F. K. A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Sznycer, Daniel. “Forms and Functions of the Self-Conscious Emotions.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23.2 (2019): 143–157. Titchener, Edward. Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1909. Tyng, Chai M. et al. “The Influence of Emotion on Learning and Memory.” Frontiers in Psychology 8 (2017): 1454. Walker, Casey M. “Intimate Cities: The Portrait of a Lady and the Poetics of Metropolitan Space.” Studies in the Novel 45.2 (2013): 161–177. Watt, Douglas. “Toward a Neuroscience of Empathy: Integrating Affective and Cognitive Perspectives.” Neuro-Psychoanalysis 9.2 (2007): 119–140. Wells, Hannah. “What Henry Gave to William.” The Henry James Review 35 (2014): 34–47. Wheeler, Mark A., Struss, Donald T. and Endel Tulving. “Toward a Theory of Episodic Memory: The Frontal Lobes and Autonoetic Consciousness.” Psychological Bulletin 121.3 (1997): 331–354. Wilson, Edmund. “The Ambiguity of Henry James.” In The Question of Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by F. W. Dupee, 160–190. New York: H. Holt & Co., (1934–38) 1945. Woolf, Virginia. “The Ghost Stories,” In Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Leon Edel, 47–54. Englewood Cliffs: Englewood Cliffs. Prentice-Hall Inc., 1963. Yeazell, Ruth Bernard. Language and Knowledge in the Late Novels of Henry James. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. ———. “Remembrance of Things Present in The Ambassadors.” The Henry James Review 38.3 (2017): 231–237.

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Young, Barbara. “‘The Beast in the Jungle’: Henry James 1843–1916.” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 5.4 (2008): 225–237. Zacharias, Greg W. “The Complexion of Ever so Long Ago’: Style and Henry James’s Ghosts.” In Henry James and the Supernatural, edited by Anna Despotopoulou and Kimberly C. Reed, 13–33. New York: Palgrave, 2011. Zacharias, Greg W., ed. A Companion to Henry James. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. Zizek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

Index

Adolphs, Ralph, 95 aesthetic judgment, 35, 40–42 “Aesthetische Emfuhlung” (Lipps), 63 Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (Flatley), 103 The Age of Empathy (de Waal), 70 The Age of Insight (Kandel), 25, 30n1, 94 “The Agreeable,” 40 The Ambassadors (Holbein), 60n2 The Ambassadors (James), 4, 5, 8, 10, 15, 38, 45, 49, 52, 59, 61, 72, 84, 98–99, 120, 121, 131–32; memory traces in cognition process, 133–40; one’s manner of living, as style of writing, 148–52; sublime and “beyond the pleasure principle,” 143–48; transformation through circuitous paths, 140–43 “The Ambiguity of Henry James” (Wilson), 113 American Pragmatism, 95–96 American Realism, 9 The American Scene (James), 37 “Analytic of Aesthetic Judgement” (Kant), 40 “Analytic of the Sublime” (Kant), 41 Anderson, David J., 95 Antigone (Sophocles), 42, 58

Anxious (Ledoux), 26, 95 Arbib, Michael A., 22 Archer, Isabel, 15, 16 Aristotle: Poetics, 63, 73, 74, 76 Arnheim, Rudolf, 77 art: function of, 4; psychology and, 3, 41; unknown and uncontrollable forces of nature, 43 “The Articulation of Time in the Ambassadors” (Dunn), 136 “The Art of Fiction” (James), 11 Art Therapy (Kapitan), 62 as-if mode, 77–79 Atkinson, J. J., 51 The Atlantic Monthly (Howells), 8, 9 Baars, Bernard J., 50; “William James on the Mind and Its Fringes,” 46–48 Barnett, Louise K., 136 A Basic Theory of Neuropsychoanalysis (Bernstein), 26 “The Beast in the Closet: James and the Writing of Homosexual Panic” (Sedgwick), 6, 157–60 The Beast in the Jungle (James), 6, 19, 39, 47, 80, 153–57; as knowledge, 165–69; play of signifiers as act of love, 160–65; Sedgwick’s a and Bersani’s “infinities,” 157–60 181

182

Index

“The Beautiful,” 40, 41 Beidler, Peter G., 112 Bergson, Henri: Matter and Memory, 34 Berlin, Heather A.: “The Neural Basis of the Dynamic Unconscious,” 28–29 Bernstein, W. M., 34; A Basic Theory of Neuropsychoanalysis, 26 Bersani, Leo, 6, 154 Berthold, Michael C., 156, 169n3 “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Freud), 1, 5, 14, 41, 51, 55, 131, 137–38, 140, 144, 152; sublime and, 143–48 “The Birth of Tragedy” (Nietzsche), 43 Biven, Lucy, 78 Blackwood, Sarah: “Isabel Archer’s Body,” 89 Blakeslee, Sandra: “Cells that Read Minds,” 74 The Blithedale Romance (Hawthorne), 169n3 bodily memory, 13, 28 Bollinger, Laurel Anne: “The Ethics of Reading: The Struggle for Subjectivity in The Portrait of a Lady,” 89 Booth, Wayne C., 113, 114, 116, 127; Rhetoric of Fiction, 5, 110–12 Boott, Francis, 37, 102, 103 “Boring Howells” (McGrath), 9 bottom-up process, 20, 22, 23, 25, 32, 41, 52, 78, 98 Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind (Edelman), 30n1 Broca’s area, 64, 75 Castano, Emanuele, 81 catharsis, 63, 78 cave paintings, 62 “Cells that Read Minds” (Blakeslee), 74 cerebral cortex/frontal cortex, 2, 28, 64; evolution of, 27; memory traces in, 55 childhood memory, 154 Civil War, 8, 9

cognition, 6, 144; construction of thought and, 118; defined as, 2; human memory and, 123; memory traces in, 133–40; recollection and, 93 cognitive empathy, 4, 65–69, 73, 75, 76, 79 Cohen, Paula M., 133 Cohn, Dorrit: Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, 82–83 Collecott, Diana, 89 commercialism, 149–50 “The Complexion of Ever so Long Ago: Style and Henry James’s Ghosts” (Zacharias), 116 conceptual perspective-taking process, 130n3 Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness, 130n2 conscious memory, 13 consciousness, 1, 15, 16, 61, 155; central component of, 64; characteristics of, 44, 92; cognitive faculty of, 82; components of, 4, 6–7; conflict between unconscious and, 50; and emotion, 17–21, 23; as empathy, 62; evolution of, 3, 11, 26, 32, 78, 129; functions of, 12, 111; image-making process of, 40, 66–67; image of sensation, 144; inevitable deception of, 98; investigation of, 131; materiality of, 90, 102, 103, 105–6; mediation of, 44; as memory system, 12–17; and memory traces, 163; quality of, 23; relationship between memory and, 17; relationship between memory trace and, 138; stream of, 167; surplus of, 36 constructive memory, 20 courtly love, 58 The Craft of Fiction (Lubbock), 82 Creon’s law, 42, 58–59 Damasio, Antonio, 3, 12, 31, 32, 47, 96, 100; “A Second Chance for

Index

Emotion,” 78; Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 27–28, 34, 95; The Strange Order of Things, 23, 63, 97 Darwin, C., 16, 49, 51, 56, 73, 136, 154; theory of evolution, 12 death drive, 14, 15, 22 death instinct, 50, 55–56 deception, 153, 160, 161, 164, 165, 169 deferred meaning, 14 deferred memory, 14 Deigh, John, 76, 129 detachment, 64, 71, 72, 78, 84 de Vignemont, Frederique, 66 de Waal, Frans: The Age of Empathy, 70 Dissanayake, Ellen: Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why, 77 “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” (James), 18, 44, 67–68, 143, 166 doppelganger, 116 dual-aspect monism, 3, 12, 15, 16, 34, 82; dimension of, 84; elements in, 6; in memory system, 5; principle of, 67 dualism, 144, 158 Dunn, Albert A.: “The Articulation of Time in the Ambassadors,” 136 Edel, Leon, 11, 35, 36, 113, 128, 150, 154; Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, 115; “The Late James,” 115; The Life of Henry James, 8, 73–74, 80 Edelman, Gerald M., 1–3, 12, 15, 32, 90, 93, 131, 132, 155, 166; Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind, 30n1; Wider than the Sky, 37, 138 ego, 22, 26, 28, 31, 33, 34, 42, 52, 137; internal perceptions to, 32 “The Ego and the Id” (Freud), 1, 22, 31, 33, 43, 50, 52, 137 ego-libido, 70, 71 Einfulung, 63 Elliott, Robert, 130n3

183

emotional contagion, 4, 73, 75–76, 79; unconscious as, 69–73 emotional memories, 21, 23 emotional reaction, 5 emotional stimulation process, 130n3 emotion regulation process, 130n3 emotions, 2–4, 11, 12; as body’s reaction, 21–24; conscious experience of, 95; consciousness, 17–21, 23; difference between feeling and, 90; on emergence of judgment, 93–94; and feeling, 23–26, 32; ignorance in knowledge, 91–98; as mechanism of survival, 95; memory and, 62; primordial, 27–29; scientific interest in, 73 “Emotions as Judgment of Value and Importance” (Nussbaum), 25–26 “Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings” (Solomon), 29 empathy, 2–4, 12, 59–60, 63; cognitive, 65–69; consciousness as, 62; development of, 72; dual aspect of, 78; ethics of, 72; “goblin” speech and, 124–29; identification and distance, 61; origin as group psychology, 70; process of, 130n3; in recent neuroscience, 73–74; relationship between “goblin speech” and, 5; role in psychoanalysis, 64; scientific interest in, 73; speech as, 74–76; stages of, 66, 76, 78; unconscious stage of, 67 Empathy: Its Nature and Uses (Katz), 64 Empathy: Why it Matters, and How to Get it (Krznaric), 76 episodic memory, 27, 66, 92, 93, 138 “the episodic memory,” 27 “The Ethics of Reading: The Struggle for Subjectivity in The Portrait of a Lady” (Bollinger), 89 evolution: of consciousness, 26, 32, 78, 129; dichotomy of, 98; evidence of human consciousness, 61–62; of

184

Index

frontal cortex, 27; of human brain, 97; process of, 12 existentialism, 66 explicit memory, 20, 21, 32, 33 F5–PF frontoparietal cortical network, 75 fabula, 68 feeling: difference between emotion and, 90; emotion and, 23–26, 32; ignorance in knowledge, 91–98; traditional views on, 50 Feeling the Words (Mancia), 20 Fellous, Jean-Marc, 22 Fenichel, Otto: The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, 64 Fernandez, Guillen, 19 fiction, practice in reading, 4–7 Flatley, Jonathan: Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism, 103 Fletcher, Angus, 152; “The Science of Free-Indirect Discourse: An Alternate Cognitive Effect,” 80–81 Fliess, Wilhelm, 12, 122, 162 Fluck, Winfried: “Reading for Recognition,” 79 Fogel, Daniel M., 89 Free Indirect Discourse, 2, 4, 61, 64, 74, 79–84, 132, 134, 135, 150, 152 Free Indirect Speech, 84 French Revolution, 149 Freudian consciousness, 152 Freudian psychoanalytic criticism, 110 Freudian psychology, 114 “Freud Returns” (Freud), 69 Freud, S., 1–4, 11–13, 16, 18–22, 24, 25, 28, 30n1, 34, 35, 48, 64, 72–74, 90, 93, 111, 118, 132, 136, 142, 144, 145, 148, 162, 163, 166; “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” 1, 5, 14, 41, 51, 55, 131, 137–38, 140, 144, 152; concept of consciousness, 6; concept of memory trace, 115; “The Ego and the Id,” 1, 22, 31, 33, 43, 50, 52, 137; “Freud

Returns,” 69; “From the History of an Infantile Neurosis,” 28; “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,” 70, 152; memory traces in cognition process, 133–40; “mystic writing-pad,” 162; “A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad,’” 1, 14, 50, 123, 137; “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” 53, 71; “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” 1, 11, 13–14, 23, 50, 122, 137, 144; psychological theories of, 5, 116, 154; “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through,” 155; “The Sandman,” 53–54; “Totem and Taboo,” 51, 57; “The Uncanny,” 36, 49–51, 53, 55 “From the History of an Infantile Neurosis” (Freud), 28 Gallese, Vittorio: “Neuroscience and Phenomenology,” 78; “The Root of Empathy,” 75 Gavin, Alice: “Thinking Room and Thought Streams in Henry and William James,” 170n5 Geismar, Maxwell, 166, 169n4 Genette, Gerard: Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, 84 “Getting Rid of the Appearance: Reality Distinction” (Richard), 118 The Ghostly Tales of Henry James, 35 Ghost of Gardencourt, 86–87 ghosts: critical interest in, 88–90; as fringes, 44–49; as psychology, 35– 39; as surplus, 40–44 “The Ghost Stories” (Woolf), 36, 39, 115 “goblin” speech, 124–29 Goddard, Harold C.: “A Pre-Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw,” 114 “The Good,” 40 Goodheart, Eugene, 161 Gorra, Michael, 90; Portrait of a Novel, 87

Index

Griffin, Susan M., 135 Groddeck, Georg, 43 group psychology, 72 “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” (Freud), 70, 152 Halttunen, Karen: “Through the Cracked and Fragmented Self: William James and The Turn of the Screw,” 116 Hammond, Meghan M., 84; “Into Other Minds: William and Henry James,” 68–69 harmful memories, 19 Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Blithedale Romance, 169n3 Heart of Darkness (Conrad), 130n2 Hegel, G. W. F.: The Phenomenology of the Spirit, 22 Heilman, Robert B.: “The Turn of the Screw as Poem,” 113–14 Helmers, Matthew, 158 Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays (Edel), 115 Henry James and the Real Thing (Smith), 99 “Henry James’s Ghosts” (Smith), 36 “Henry James’s Idea of Consciousness” (Labrie), 81–82 Holbein, Hans: The Ambassadors, 60n2 homeostasis, 3, 21, 28, 62, 78, 95 Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why (Dissanayake), 77 Howells, William Dean, 10, 11, 121; The Atlantic Monthly, 8, 9 human brain: components of, 31; evolution of, 97 human cognition, 100 human consciousness: evidence of evolution, 61–62 “Human emotion and Memory” (Phelphs), 20 human evolution, circumstances of, 44 human instinct, 21, 50, 63, 74 human memory, 13; and cognition, 123 humans, dual nature of, 77 Hutchison, Hazel, 140

185

id, 22, 26, 28, 31, 33, 34, 42, 50, 52, 137 ideal-ego, 71, 72 identification, 64, 71, 72, 78, 84 image-making/body-mapping, 3, 34; function of consciousness, 40 impermeable neurons, 1, 23, 29, 50, 137 implicit memory, 20, 21 infantile amnesia, 27 infantile sexuality, 50 infinities, 157–60 In Search of Lost Time (Proust), 32 intentional consciousness, 44, 45 international ghost, 37, 121 “Intimate Cities: The Portrait of a Lady and the Poetics of Metropolitan Space” (Walker), 90 “Into Other Minds: William and Henry James” (Hammond), 68–69 “Isabel Archer’s Body” (Blackwood), 89 James, Henry, 1–4, 7–9, 17, 29, 33, 35, 43, 60, 63, 69, 79, 82, 169n3, 170n4; The Ambassadors, 4, 5, 8, 10, 15, 38, 45, 49, 52, 59, 61, 72, 84, 98–99, 120, 121, 131–52; The American Scene, 37; “The Art of Fiction,” 11; The Beast in the Jungle, 6, 19, 39, 47, 80, 153–70; ghosts as psychology, 35–39; The Notebooks, 112–13; oeuvre, 15; The Portrait of a Lady, 5, 10, 16, 18, 24, 38, 39, 43–45, 66, 67, 86–109, 120, 135, 159, 163, 170n5; “Prefaces to The New York Edition,” 10, 117, 120; The Principles of Psychology, 9, 11, 16, 18; “The Real Thing,” 9–10; The Turn of the Screw, 5, 36, 38–39, 45, 49, 55, 59, 64–65, 67, 72, 80, 83, 84, 103, 110–30, 142, 163 James, William, 1–3, 5, 8, 9, 11–14, 16, 18, 19, 21–24, 30n1, 31, 36, 37, 43, 45–51, 55, 57, 64, 69, 73, 74, 93–94, 97, 100, 104, 108, 111, 115, 122, 129, 131, 152–54, 163; cognitive empathy of, 65–69;

186

concept of vision, 135; critical interest in ghost, 88–90; “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?,” 18, 44, 67–68, 143, 166; phenomenon as “plasticity” of habits, 167; The Principles, 35, 65, 159, 166; The Principles of Psychology, 88, 92, 121, 154–55, 169n2, 170n5; psychological theories of, 116; “What is an Emotion?,” 3, 24–25, 87–89, 95 Jolly, Alison: “The Origin of Mind,” 74 Jones, Alexander E.: “Point of View in The Turn of the Screw,” 114–15 Kandel, Eric R., 1, 12, 15, 49, 73, 90, 98, 131; The Age of Insight, 25, 30n1, 94 Kant, I., 4, 33, 35, 39; “Analytic of Aesthetic Judgement,” 40; “Analytic of the Sublime,” 41; concept of sublime, 40–44; thing-in-itself, 43 Kapitan, Lynn: Art Therapy, 62 Katz, Robert L.: Empathy: Its Nature and Uses, 64 Kenton, Edna, 36, 113 Kidd, David, 81 King Oedipus (Sophocles), 43, 63 knowledge, 161; Beast as, 165–69; ignorance in, 91–98; misconception of, 159; static concept of, 167 Kohut, Heinz: “On Empathy,” 72, 151–52 Kris, Ernst, 11 Krznaric, Roman: Empathy: Why it Matters, and How to Get it, 76 Kventsel, Anna, 149 Labrie, Ross: “Henry James’s Idea of Consciousness,” 81–82 Lacan, Jacques, 4, 6, 39, 56, 71, 76, 162, 163, 167, 169; psychological theories of, 154; “The Splendor of Antigone,” 42, 49–51, 58; the sublime object, 56–59 “The Late James” (Edel), 115

Index

learning, 130; experience and, 106; as repetition, 98–103 Ledoux, Joseph, 3, 12, 29, 31; Anxious, 26, 95 leftovers, 37, 41; of ego, 34; of fearful force in mind, 40; kinds of, 33; of natural forces, 42; of representation, 43 Lehrer, Jonah, 78; Proust was a Neuroscientist, 77 Leslie, Alan M.: “Pretense and Representation: The Origins of Theory of Mind,” 77 Lewis, Pericles: “The Reality of the Unseen: Shared Fictions and Religious Experience in the Ghost Stories of Henry James,” 36, 80, 117 libidos, balance between, 72 The Life of Henry James (Edel), 8, 73–74, 80 Lipps, Theodor: “Aesthetische Emfuhlung,” 63 Listening with the Third Ear (Reik), 141 Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Zizek), 60n2 Lubbock, Percy: The Craft of Fiction, 82 Lucke, Jessie Ryon, 156, 169n3 Lustig, T. J., 116 Lydenberg, John, 114 Macdonald, Bonney, 106 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), 73 Mancia, Mauro: Feeling the Words, 20 Mangan, Bruce: “Sensation’s Ghost,” 49 materiality, 16, 31, 36, 46, 122; of consciousness, 90, 102, 103, 105–6 Matter and Memory (Bergson), 34 McGrath, Brian Seto: “Boring Howells,” 9 McMaster, Juliet, 88 memory/memories, 12, 19; and consciousness, 17; and emotion, 62;

Index

functions of, 111; of “illusion of freedom,” 132; relationship between consciousness and, 17 memory system, 1–4, 122; consciousness as, 12–17; dual-aspect monism in, 5 memory traces, 17, 25, 31, 45–46, 115, 122, 144; in cognition process, 133–40; consciousness and, 163; in frontal cortex, 55; relationship between consciousness and, 138; and transference, 132 mental disorders, 76 Merle, Madame, 17, 18 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 66 Miller, J. Hillis, 5; “What is a Kiss? Isabel’s Moments of Decision,” 89, 104–5 mimicking, 72 mirror empathy, 66 mirror neuron system, 75 mnemic systems, 137, 138, 162 Monterosso, John, 152; “The Science of Free-Indirect Discourse: An Alternate Cognitive Effect,” 80–81 Morris, Richard G. M., 19 Moses, Omri, 158 “the mystic writing-pad,” 14 narcissism, stages of, 71, 145, 152 Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Genette), 84 nature: intrinsic properties of human, 65; unknown and uncontrollable forces of, 43 “The Neural Basis of the Dynamic Unconscious” (Berlin), 28–29 neurons, components of, 1 neuroscience, 31; active engagement with, 11; developments in, 14; empathy in, 73–74; psychology and, 94 “Neuroscience and Phenomenology” (Gallese), 78 Nietzsche, Friedrich: “The Birth of Tragedy,” 43 The Notebooks (James), 112–13

187

“A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’” (Freud), 1, 14, 50, 123, 137 Novak, Frank G., Jr.: “‘Strangely, Fertilizing’: Henry James Florence and Isabel Archer’s Rome,” 107 Nussbaum, Martha, 108n3; “Emotions as Judgment of Value and Importance,” 25–26 Oatley, Keith, 81 object-libido, 50, 52, 53, 70, 71, 77 Oedipus, 142 Oedipus Complex, 142 oeuvre (James), 15 “On Empathy” (Kohut), 72, 151–52 “On Narcissism: An Introduction” (Freud), 53, 71 “The Origin of Language” (Serres), 170n5 “The Origin of Mind” (Jolly), 74 Panksepp, Jaak, 12, 33–34, 78 parole, 57 perceptive neurons, 1, 17, 123, 144 permeable neurons, 1, 2, 23, 50, 123, 137 persistent memory, 116 personal consciousness, 44, 45 personal feeling, 27–29 personal memory, 26, 27, 122 Phelphs, Elizabeth A.: “Human emotion and Memory,” 20 “The Phenomenology and Neurobiology of Moods and Emotions” (Ratcliffe), 21–22 The Phenomenology of the Spirit (Hegel), 22 Philosophy as Poetry (Rorty), 130n1 plain-thinking approach, 9 pleasure principle, 15, 50, 52, 54 Poetics (Aristotle), 63, 73, 74, 76 “Point of View in The Turn of the Screw” (Jones), 114–15 The Portrait of a Lady (James), 5, 10, 16, 18, 24, 38, 39, 43–45, 66, 67, 86–88, 120, 135, 159, 163, 170n5; critical interest in ghost, 88–90;

188

Index

ignorance in knowledge, 91–98; learning as repetition, 98–103; Rome, 104–8 Portrait of a Novel (Gorra), 87 positive empathy, 151 Positron Emission Tomography (PET), 73 Powers, Lyall H., 88 preconscious, 31, 32 “Prefaces to The New York Edition” (James), 10, 117, 120 “A Pre-Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw” (Goddard), 114 prefrontal cortex, 2, 20, 31 “Pretense and Representation: The Origins of Theory of Mind” (Leslie), 77 primal father, surplus of, 51–56 primary memory, 155, 160 primary narcissism, 34, 70, 145, 152 primordial emotion, 27–29 The Principles (James), 35, 65, 159, 166 principles of psychology, 11 The Principles of Psychology (James), 9, 11, 16, 18, 88, 92, 121, 154–55, 169n2, 170n5 “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (Freud), 1, 11, 13–14, 23, 50, 122, 137, 144 prologue, function of, 119–23 Proust, Marcel: In Search of Lost Time, 32 Proust was a Neuroscientist (Lehrer), 77 psychoanalysis, 13, 31; empathy role in, 64; ethics of, 57, 59 The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (Fenichel), 64 psychodynamics, 31 psychological principles, 11, 12 psychological theories, 11; of Freud and Lacan, 154 psychology, 3; and art, 41; ghosts as, 35–39; nature of, 11; and neuroscience, 94; principles of, 8

qualia, 47 Ratcliffe, Matthew, 67, 129; “The Phenomenology and Neurobiology of Moods and Emotions,” 21–22 Rawlings, Peter, 84 “Reading for Recognition” (Fluck), 79 realism, 4, 8, 9, 11, 20, 36, 37, 74, 84; and power of language, 117; realm of, 1–2, 118 “The Reality of the Unseen: Shared Fictions and Religious Experience in the Ghost Stories of Henry James” (Lewis), 36, 80, 117 reality principle, 50, 52, 57 “The Real Thing” (James), 9–10 recollection. See episodic memory reconstructive empathy, 66 Reed, Kimberly C., 112 reflective system, 98 Reik, Theodor: Listening with the Third Ear, 141 relational consciousness, 44, 45 relations, 16 “religion of consciousness,” 11 “The Remembered Self: Emotion and Memory in Personality” (Singer and Salovey), 94 “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through” (Freud), 155 “Remembrance of Things Present in The Ambassadors” (Yeazell), 147 Rhetoric of Fiction (Booth), 5, 110–12 Richard, Pragmatic: “Getting Rid of the Appearance: Reality Distinction,” 118 Ricoeur, Paul, 79 Righter, William, 147 Roland, Marie Jeanne, 149 Romanticism, 11 Rome, 104–8 “The Root of Empathy” (Gallese), 75 Rorty, Richard: Philosophy as Poetry, 130n1 Russian Formalism, 68

Index

Salmon, Richard, 150 Salovey, Peter: “The Remembered Self: Emotion and Memory in Personality”, 94 “The Sandman” (Freud), 53–54 Schacter, Daniel L., 21; Searching for Memory, 20 Schopenhauer, Arthur: The World of Will and Representation, 42–43 Schuetz, Alfred, 46 “The Science of Free-Indirect Discourse: An Alternate Cognitive Effect” (Fletcher and Monterosso), 80–81 Seager, Zachary, 142 Searching for Memory (Schacter), 20 secondary memory, 13, 155 secondary narcissism, 34, 70, 145, 152 “A Second Chance for Emotion” (Damasio), 78 Sedgwick, Eve K., 6, 154, 168; “The Beast in the Closet: James and the Writing of Homosexual Panic,” 6, 157–60 Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (Damasio), 27–28, 34, 95 self criticism, 169n4 self-destructive impulse, 70 self-reflective technique, 166 “Sensation’s Ghost” (Mangan), 49 Serres, Michel: “The Origin of Language,” 170n5 Shelden, Pamela Jacobs, 35 Singer, Jefferson A.: “The Remembered Self: Emotion and Memory in Personality”, 94 sjuzhet, 68 Smith, Andrew, 116; “Henry James’s Ghosts,” 36 Smith, Dorin, 39 Smith, George, 101 Smith, Virginia Llewellyn: Henry James and the Real Thing, 99

189

social ego, 31 The Society for Psychical Research, 35 Solms, Mark, 69 Solomon, Robert C., 98; “Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings,” 29 Sophocles, 142; Antigone, 42, 58; King Oedipus, 43, 63 speech, as empathy, 74–76 “The Splendor of Antigone” (Lacan), 42, 49–51, 58 Squire, Larry R., 73 Stackpole, Henrietta, 106, 107 Stafford, William T., 89 Stanzel, Franz. K.: A Theory of Narrative, 84 Strachey, James: Trieb, 145 “‘Strangely, Fertilizing’: Henry James Florence and Isabel Archer’s Rome” (Novak), 107 The Strange Order of Things (Damasio), 23, 63, 97 stream of consciousness, 45, 46, 50, 57 structuralism, 56 sublimation, 57, 58, 71; defined as, 53; and ethics of empathy, 72 sublime, 91; and “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” 143–48; concept of, 40–44 the sublime object, 56–59 superego, 22, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 137 surplus emotion, 27, 29, 37 surplus jouissance, 56–59 Sznycer, Daniel, 27 talking cure, 12, 69, 118 theory of emotion, 89, 94 A Theory of Narrative (Stanzel), 84 thinking: construction of, 118; ignorance in knowledge, 91–98; process of, 16; traditional views on, 50 “Thinking Room and Thought Streams in Henry and William James” (Gavin), 170n5

190

Index

“Through the Cracked and Fragmented Self: William James and The Turn of the Screw” (Halttunen), 116 time-gap process, 45 Titchener, Edward, 63–64 totalism, 70 “Totem and Taboo” (Freud), 51, 57 “Toward a Neuroscience of Empathy” (Watt), 76 Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction (Cohn), 82–83 Trieb (Strachey), 145 Tulving, Endel, 12, 13, 27, 66 The Turn of the Screw (James), 5, 36, 38–39, 45, 49, 55, 59, 64–65, 67, 72, 80, 83, 84, 103, 110–11, 129–30, 142, 163; “goblin” speech and empathy, 124–29; prologue function in narrative frame, 119–23; remains of criticisms, 112–18 “The Turn of the Screw as Poem” (Heilman), 113–14 Tyng, Chai M., 94–95 “The Uncanny” (Freud), 36, 49–51, 53, 55 unconscious, 144; characterization of, 42; conflict between consciousness and, 50; destructive power of, 70; as emotional contagion, 69–73; layers of, 31, 32; quality of, 23; realm of, 97, 141 unconscious emotional contagion, 76, 84 unconscious memory, 16, 18 “the use of psychoanalytical psychology,” 154

Vionnet, Madame, 61 Vischer, Robert, 63 Walker, Casey M.: “Intimate Cities: The Portrait of a Lady and the Poetics of Metropolitan Space,” 90 Watt, Douglas: “Toward a Neuroscience of Empathy,” 76 Wells, Hannah: “What Henry Gave to William,” 170n5 Wells, H. G., 112 West, Rebecca, 113 “What Henry Gave to William” (Wells), 170n5 “What is a Kiss? Isabel’s Moments of Decision” (Miller), 89, 104–5 “What is an Emotion?” (James), 3, 24–25, 87–89, 95 Wider than the Sky (Edelman), 37, 138 “William James on the Mind and Its Fringes” (Baars), 46–48 Wilson, Edmund, 36, 113; “The Ambiguity of Henry James,” 113 Woolf, Virginia: “The Ghost Stories,” 36, 39, 115 The World of Will and Representation (Schopenhauer), 42–43 Yeazell, Ruth Bernard, 151; “Remembrance of Things Present in The Ambassadors,” 147 Young, Barbara, 166, 170n4 Zacharias, Greg: “The Complexion of Ever so Long Ago: Style and Henry James’s Ghosts,” 116 Zizek, Slavoj, 52; Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, 60n2

About the Author

Teckyoung Kwon is a professor, literary critic, and noted authority on psychoanalytic theory in the Republic of Korea. She has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, including the National Research Foundation of Korea’s Fellow of “Excellence Scholar in Humanities” (2012–2017). A prominent figure in academic circles, Dr. Kwon has served as president of the Korean Society for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (2002–2004), the American Fiction Association of Korea (2005–2007), and the American Studies Association of Korea (2009). Her Korean-language publications include several books: What is Post-Modernism? (1990), How to Read Fiction (1995), Writing in the Multicultural Age (1997, winner of the Kim Hwan-Tae Critic Award), and Bio-Humanity (2014). Her more recent books are Nabokov’s Mimicry of Freud: Art as Science (2017), an English-language publication that won the Ministry of Culture’s Year-Achievement award; Deception in Thinking (2018); and Emotions: Importance of Warm and Intimate Feeling (2021). Dr. Kwon’s numerous journal articles on literary theory, psychology, and fiction include “Materiality of Remembering” (New Literary History 41.1, 2010), “Nabokov’s Memory War against Freud” (American Imago 68.1, 2011), and “Love as an Act of Dissimulation in ‘The Beast in the Jungle’” (Henry James Review 36, 2015). In collaboration with Geon Ho Bahn and Minha Hong, she contributed a chapter, “Empathy in Medical Education,” to Psychology and Neurobiology of Empathy (2016), a U.S. publication edited by Douglas F. Watt and Jaak Panksepp. After completing her doctoral studies at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Teckyoung Kwon accepted a position as a professor of English at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, where she currently serves as professor emeritus.

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