Homospatial Thinking and Significant Moments

Albert Rothenberg, M.D. first described or discovered a process he termed "homospatial thinking," which consists of actively conceiving two or more discrete entities occupying the same space, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities. Homospatial thinking has a salient role in the creative process in the following wide variety of fields: literature, the visual arts, music, science, and mathematics. This cognitive factor, along with "Janusian thinking," clarifies the nature of creative thinking as a highly adaptive and primarily nonregressive form of functioning.

There is a section of my book Significant Moments whose manifest content describes a visit by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to the opera to see a performance of Wagner's opera Tannhauser, which inspires him to write his book, Human All Too Human.

Superimposed on this manifest content are other images or metaphors:

1. The emergence of spring as a metaphor for puberty, or emerging sexuality -- as well as the "rebirth" of the Jewish people via return to their "motherland."

2. A Boy having sex with his mother.

Leonard Shengold reports the case of a pubescent boy who had sexual relations with his mother: "One day on coming home from school the boy found himself as usual alone with his mother.  She had just emerged from a bath and left open the bathroom door.  As he approached she bent over, as if to wipe her feet with a towel.  She gave him a look of invitation and again bent over, presenting another open door.  The boy was overwhelmed with excitement and, penis erect, advanced toward her "as if in a trance."  He penetrated her vagina.  She had an orgasm.  It was felt as a wonderful experience.  This sequence was repeated several times over the next few week, always without words; and it was never mutually acknowledged.  Then, not long after the incestuous contact began, the boy achieved ejaculation after penetrating his mother.  She noted it, became violently disturbed and rushed away, shrieking, "No! No! No!"  The incest was never repeated and never again mentioned; it was as if it had never happened.  And the boy repressed it, which seems almost incredible in retrospect given that the recall was marked by such passionate and sensual intensity.  The memory emerged only after several years of analysis."  Shengold, L. Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Deprivation and Abuse at 166-67 (New Haven, Yale University Press: 1989).  I discuss this case in The Dream of Milton's Successor (Part II).

Note that Dr. Shengold uses the terms "too much" and "too-muchness" throughout the book Soul Murder to describe a state of sexual or emotional overstimulation.  Wagner used the phrase "Too much!  Too much!" ("Zu viel!  Zu viel!") in the first act scene between Tannhauser and his sexual partner, the goddess Venus.

3. The return of Jews to Palestine:, their re-entry to the "motherland."   Paradoxically, Wagner's musical nationalism struck a chord in Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. As the Israeli author Amos Elon writes in his biography of Herzl:  "For inspiration and to dispel occasional doubts, Herzl turned to Wagnerian music. He was enraptured by the music of the great anti-Semite . . . and faithfully attended every performance of Wagner's Tannhauser at the Paris Opera. 'Only on those nights when no Wagner was performed did I have any doubts about the correctness of my idea.' "  The pomp and ritual of "Tannhauser" made the profoundest impression. Herzl vowed that the new Jewish state would construct a splendid opera house and "cultivate majestic processions on great festive occasions." This was scarcely a bizarre response: that song and ceremony could bind and energize stateless peoples was an article of nationalist faith that Wagner personified.

Tannhäuser, a knight and poet who found the Venusberg, the subterranean home of Venus, spent a year there worshipping the goddess and having sexual relations with her.


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Human, All-Too-Human is the monument of a crisis. It is subtitled "A Book for Free Spirits"; almost every sentence marks some victory—here I liberated myself from what in my nature did not belong to me. Idealism, for example; the title means: "where you see ideal things, I see what is—human, alas, all-too human!"—I know man better.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
But today . . .
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace.
Oh, today, today!
Henry James, The Aspern Papers.
Today, I should think . . .
E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Malefactor.
. . . it an impossible book: I consider it badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image confused, sentimental, in places saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, without the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore disdainful of proof, mistrustful even of the propriety of proof . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Attempt at Self-Criticism.
But . . .
Patrick Carnegy, The Paris Version of Tannhauser.
. . . I realize how . . .
H.P. Lovecraft, Beyond the Wall of Sleep.
. . . All Too Human . . .
George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education.
. . . is about a human personality conflict so fundamental that we may perhaps see the artistic fault as congruent with . . .
Patrick Carnegy, The Paris Version of Tannhauser.
. . . the book’s . . .
Mark Twain, Christian Science.
. . . central theme.
Patrick Carnegy, The Paris Version of Tannhauser.
Discontinuity is both the theme and the form, deflation the theme and the . . .
George and Portia Kernodle, Invitation to the Theatre.
. . . creative . . .
Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets: American Playwright.
. . . method.
George and Portia Kernodle, Invitation to the Theatre.
To this extent . . .
Patrick Carnegy, The Paris Version of Tannhauser.
. . . All Too Human . . .
George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education.
. . . is about itself and supplies its own critique.
Patrick Carnegy, The Paris Version of Tannhauser.
No matter how intense the intellectual effort that absorbed him before hand,the moment of vision seemed to require an almost blind surrender to something other than himself.
Maria Shrady, Moments of Insight.
Be it a daemon or a genius that often rules us in hours of crisis—enough:
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner quoting Wagner, Letter to Arrigo Boito.
High noon . . .
Robert Lowell’s Poems: A Selection by J. Raban, Excerpt from “Fourth of July in Maine.”
. . . one Saturday . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . in a small chestnut grove, high above the lake . . .
Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner.
. . . I fell into a kind of somnolent state, in which . . .
Richard Wagner, My Life.
. . . overcast by a strange melancholy . . .
Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons.
. . . there came to me the promptings . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner quoting Wagner, Letter to Arrigo Boito.
. . . from my true self.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
One can guess at the precise spot . . .
Paul Ferris, Dr. Freud: A Life.
. . . where I . . .
Richard Wagner, My Life.
. . . succumbed to the persistent and irresistible desire . . .
Zane Grey, The Light of Western Stars.
. . . to dream,—
Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister.
. . . but it hardly matters any more. Air, branches and a bird or two . . .
Paul Ferris, Dr. Freud: A Life.
. . . now . . .
Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons.
. . . fill the space.  I stretched myself, . . .
Paul Ferris, Dr. Freud: A Life.
. . . dead tired, . . .
Richard Wagner, My Life.
. . . atop the . . .
Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons.
. . . hilly country, . . .
Richard Wagner, My Life.
. . . where . . .
Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question.
. . . on a good day it is possible to see mountaintops fiftymiles away, swimming in the distant heat on pillows of pellucid air. This was sucha day.
Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons.
From the heights the sound of sheep-bells is heard. On a rocky eminence a young shepherd is reclining, turned towards the valley, playing on his pipe.
Richard Wagner, Tannhauser.
The hilltops and . . .
Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons.
. . . valley stretching . . .
Richard Wagner, Tannhauser.
. . . around the mountain city were not yet parched by the summer sun, but freshened by the green of a brief spring.
Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons.
In his fantasy he raised himself above the realities of his existence and scaled dizzy heights of wish-fulfillment only to be hurled down . . .
Isaac Deutscher, Marc Chagall and the Jewish Imagination.
. . . from this plateau of insight to more conflict and suffering in the depths; but the heights were there to be scaled again.
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation.
In a dream of which he could afterwards recall only a few fragments, he saw a door that looked like the . . .
Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner.
. . . mysterious, dark, and inviting . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation.
. . . entrance to a theater. On it a large poster with huge lettering (this was undecided) either . . .
Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner.
Tannhauser
Amos Elon, Herzl.
. . . or "Wagner." He entered.
Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner.
Turning right, . . .
Edmund Engelman, Berggasse 19: Sigmund Freud’s Home and Offices,Vienna, 1938.
. . . he . . .
Norman H. Finkelstein, Theodor Herzl: Architect of a Nation quoting Theodor Herzl.
. . . walked up a massive, wide staircase which . . .
Edmund Engelman, Berggasse 19: Sigmund Freud’s Home and Offices, Vienna, 1938.
. . .was light and brilliant, an immense affair of white marble overlaid with agates and alabasters, and swept up to a magnificent foyer, a long golden corridor with high doors that opened into the auditorium.
Sheldon M. Novick, Henry James: The Young Master.
Then, . . .
Charles Baudelaire, Richard Wagner and Tannhauser in Paris.
. . . as if in a trance . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation.
“I,” . . . –that is, . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
. . . the dreamer himself . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . penetrated . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation.
. . . a wonderful place arranged like a theatre, where, in a gilded gallery . . .
Henry James, An International Episode.
. . . I evoked the delectable state of a man possessed by . . .
Charles Baudelaire, Richard Wagner and Tannhauser in Paris.
. . . fantastic notions—
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Celestial Railroad.
. . . notions of return to the “womb” of history, . . .
Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons.
. . . by a profound reverie in total solitude with vast horizons and bathed in a diffused light; immensity without other décor than itself. Soon I became aware of a heightened brightness, of a light growing in intensity so quickly that the shades of meaning provided by a dictionary would not suffice to express this constant increase of burning whiteness. Then I achieved a full apprehension of a soul floating in light, of an ecstasy compounded of joy and insight, hovering above and far removed from the natural world.
Charles Baudelaire, Richard Wagner and Tannhauser in Paris.
It was felt as a wonderful experience.
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation.
But—Oh!
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan.
. . . an experience that . . .
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery.
. . . was linked with the terrifying feeling that . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation.
. . . it seemed somehow . . .
Henry James, The Ambassadors.
—I can use no other phrase—
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw.
It seemed . . .
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Too much! Too much!
Richard Wagner, Tannhauser.
Waking from this deep sleep, he saw with astonishment the trees above him.
Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner.
“How changed it all is!” cried Friedrich. “There’s been a miracle here.”
Theodor Herzl, Old-New Land.
He was stiff lying on the hard ground, but refreshed. With a faint note of dreadfulness, the dream reverberated within him.
Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner.
But that beautiful dream . . .
Franz Kafka, The Burrow.
. . . of mingled delight and dread . . .
Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea.
. . . is past and I must set to work
Franz Kafka, The Burrow.
I knew what I had to do. Nothing else mattered.
Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons quoting an early Zionist pioneer.
“If you will it, . . .
Norman H. Finkelstein, Theodor Herzl: Architect of a Nation quoting Theodor Herzl.
I thought
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . it is no dream.”
Norman H. Finkelstein, Theodor Herzl: Architect of a Nation quoting Theodor Herzl.
And indeed I started on a morning in spring. Everything was starting to bud.  Beautiful weather.
John Lahr, Making Willy Loman quoting Arthur Miller.
May, May had come!
Richard Wagner, Tannhauser.
Life was springing from her nourishing flank, buds were bursting into green leaves, . . .
Emile Zola, Germinal.
. . . fresh green leaves . . .
Richard Wagner, Tannhauser
. . . fields were trembling . . .
Emile Zola, Germinal.
. . . there . . .
Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question.
. . . under the push of the grass. On all sides seeds were swelling and stretching, thrusting through the plain in search of warmth and light.
Emile Zola, Germinal.
A breeze came up and blew from the maples a shower of spermatozoic soft headed green buds.
E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime.
And soon this germination . . .
Emile Zola, Germinal.
. . . a splendid, manifold, jungle like growth and upward striving, a kind of tropical tempo in the competition to grow, . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
. . . would sunder the earth.
Emile Zola, Germinal.
And then once more . . .
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan.
. . . the dream . . .
Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner.
. . . a dream in iridescent colors, . . .
Shimon Peres, The Imaginary Voyage with Theodor Herzl in Israel.
. . . reverberated within him.
Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner.
What strange, naive, and African games of the imagination! he thought, smiling for a moment as the door with its invitation to enter the "Wagner" theater returned to his memory. What an idea, to represent his relationship with Wagner in this way. The spirit of the dream was coarse, but brilliant. It hit the nail on the head. The theater called "Wagner"—was that nothimself, was it not an invitation to enter into his own interior being, into the foreign land of his true self? For Wagner was himself—Wagner was the murderer and the hunted man within him, but Wagner was also the composer, the artist, thegenius, the seducer, lover of life and the senses, luxury—Wagner was the collective name for everything repressed, buried, scanted in the life of Friedrich . . .
Hermann Hesse, Klein and Wagner.
I quickly understood the very essence of my own nature: the stream of life was not to flow to me from without, but from within.
Richard Wagner, My Life.
During the next two or three weeks, . . .
Amos Elon, Herzl.
. . . Nietzsche . . .A
Desmond Stewart, Theodor Herzl: Artist and Politician. A Biography of the Father of Modern Israel.
. . . neglected his job and closeted himself in his hotel room. . . . He wrote day and night, standing, sitting at his desk, walking along the street, at dinner, in bed, strolling in the park. For hours he tramped about. . . .
Amos Elon, Herzl.
. . . Basel . . .
Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library.
. . . “to dispel the pangs of new trains of thought.” The hot June air inflamed his body. His days passed in a state of feverish exaltation. At night the idea crept into his sleepy consciousness, and he would awake with a start,unable to fall asleep again. For inspiration and to dispel occasional doubts, . . .
Amos Elon, Herzl.
. . . he . . .
Norman H. Finkelstein, Theodor Herzl: Architect of a Nation quoting Theodor Herzl.
. . . turned to Wagnerian music. He was enraptured by the music of . . .
Amos Elon, Herzl.
. . . Tannhauser:
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . an allegory of a modern society impoverished by precisely those Christian values it claims to represent.
The Penguin Opera Guide.
I’ve been a man who’s been waking up, . . .
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words.
. . . he wrote, . . .
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
. . . cured of a long, bitter-sweet madness.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words.
How I thought about myself at this time (1876), with what tremendous sureness I got hold of my task and its world-historical aspect—the whole book bears witness to that. . . . Only, with my intuitive cunning, I avoided the little word"I" once again and bathed in world-historical glory . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
It sort of unveiled itself. I was the stenographer.
John Lahr, Making Willy Loman quoting Arthur Miller.
I suppose . . .
Luc Sante, The Factory of Facts.
I, the authorial voice,
Richard Selzer, Raising the Dead.
. . . suppose I am never completely present in any given moment, since different aspects of myself are contained in different rooms of language . . . .Given desire and purpose, I could make my home in any of them. I don't have a house, only this succession of rented rooms.
Luc Sante, The Factory of Facts.
So, he was less than somebody in any category; he was more nobody than atany other time. And in the anonymous period immediately ahead of him he found decided happiness—for a while.
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
What was certain, although he did not realize it, was that he was no longer the same man. Everything in him was changed.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
He had undergone a complete evolution.
Emile Zola, Germinal.
“One book of my life is ending. A new one is beginning. Of what kind?”
Norman H. Finkelstein, Theodor Herzl: Architect of a Nation quoting The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl.