Social Security Document Submission: June 1993

Page 124 of Social Security Document Submission

Dear Stell,

1. Police line up.

2. Musical “A Chorus Line.”
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1. Efraim Zimbalist, Jr.: Actor who portrayed FBI agent.

2. Efraim Zimbalist, Sr.: World-class violinist and head of Curtis Institute of Music.

[The examples are offered as polar opposites.]

Pages 125-126 of Social Security Document Submission

Dear Stell,

Please check out the last paragraph. Another overvalued idea whose time has come.

GF

[The following is a page from my writing: "The Caliban Complex: An Attempt at Self-Analysis."]

ego strength characteristic of the creative. Eissler writes: “The [average] person needs a dissolution of the Oedipus conflict, or at least a substantial reduction in its intensity, in order to survive; whereas, . . . the [creative person] is not only strong enough to endure the stress of the severest conflicts, but actually needs intense conflicts as a vis a tergo in order to be incited over and over again to renewed accomplishments.” Eissler, K.R. Talent and Genius: The Fictitious Case of Tausk Contra Freud, at 289 (Quadrangle Books: 1971).

Indeed, the persistence of even a vigorous Oedipus complex in the unconscious may not necessarily vitiate, or preclude the development, of an equally vigorous father identification. The dramatic tensions in Wagner’s opera, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, which owe their syncretic strength in part to an integration of the temporally-opposed psychic forces of Oedipal conflict and father identification suggest the unconscious psychological concerns of the opera’s creator. One can infer, based on analysis of the opera, that in Wagner’s unconscious an intense Oedipal conflict raged against an equally intense father identification. Three of the central male characters, Walther von Stolzing, Sixtus Beckmesser, and Hans Sachs are each in love with Eva Pogner, while Walther and Beckmesser vie for her hand in marriage. The characters’ relations fall into two triangles, one comprising Walther-Beckmesser-Eva, and the other comprising Walther-Sachs-Eva. The relationship between Walther (symbolic son) and Beckmesser (symbolic father) is characterized by bitter rivalry and antagonism. Sachs, on the other hand, acts as a benign and benevolent mentor with whom Walther identifies. The two dramatic characters, Sachs and Beckmesser, are, in a psychoanalytical sense, simply two separate images of a single figure -- the "Father." Beckmesser (a personification of the castrating father imago) represents the son’s image of the father during the Oedipal period (“messer,” i.e., “knife,” suggests castration), while Sachs (a personification of the pre-Oedipal idealized father imago) represents a later, more mature image of the father as mentor. The disparate roles of Sachs and Beckmesser undoubtedly reflect the dual and conflicted image of the father in Wagner’s unconscious.

(The idealized father figure who first discerns the unique talents of a symbolic son and promotes his entry into a specialized community of brothers [here represented by the Mastersinger guild], and protects that son from the machinations of castrating father representatives, form a complex of identity elements that find antithetical expression in Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables. In Hugo’s novel, the police inspector Javert, a castrating father representative, first identifies the upstanding Maledeine as the escaped convict Valjean, and seeks Valjean’s return to prison, itself a kind of “specialized community of brothers,” despite the best efforts of Valjean’s protectors. See conclusion of paragraph 13.)