1914: One or Several Wolves?
Introduction
The Wolf-Man initially feels a sense of fatigue, realizing the limitations of Freud's understanding of his complexities. He believes Freud will declare him cured, despite knowing his treatment is a continuous journey. The usage of the moniker "Wolf-Man" signifies a deeper connection to his identity, representing a singular experience.
Freud's Clinical Insights
Freud, in his 1915 article "The Unconscious," distinguishes between neurosis and psychosis. Neurosis involves global comparisons between objects, such as a sock versus a vagina, while the psychotic perceives multiplicities, which neurotics cannot. This leads to Freud's clinical discovery regarding their contrasting styles. The psychotic's ability to make erotic comparisons, for example, comparing goosebumps to rhinoceros horns, indicates a shift towards madness. Freud's tendency to revert to unifying themes like the father, penis, and vagina highlights limitations in addressing multiplicities.
Freud's Reductionism
Freud believes that names restore unity when identity splinters, making the relation between objects and names pivotal in analyzing the unconscious. However, Freud's method often simplifies multiplicities into singular identities, as exemplified by wolves being represented merely as substitutes for the father.
The Wolf-Man's Dreams
In a dream where the Wolf-Man observes wolves, Freud questions the number of wolves, emphasizing his reductionist view. The associations made by Freud strip the complexity of wolf-multiplicity and link them to narratives and Oedipal themes. Furthermore, Freud misinterprets the dream, failing to grasp the underlying meanings and connections of wolves, which are significant to the Wolf-Man; for him, wolves symbolize more than mere representations of parental figures.
The Concept of Multiplicity
The unconscious embodies a crowd-like phenomenon, contrary to Freud's singular interpretations. The Wolf-Man's experiences highlight a 'body without organs' filled with intensive, molecular multiplicities, rather than simple organic representations. Canetti’s distinction between mass (crowds) and pack (small groups) multiplicities illustrates how individuals navigate their multiplicities. Crowd multiplicities focus on hierarchy and organization, while pack multiplicities emphasize individual movement among smaller groups.
Key Characteristics of Multiplicities
Mass is characterized by a large quantity, divisibility, organization, concentrated social relations, and territorial emission of signs. In contrast, a pack is defined by smaller numbers, non-decomposable distances, Brownian variability, and individualized yet collective behaviors.
Conclusions and Implications
Psychoanalysis historically tends to reduce the complexities of identity to simple Oedipal narratives. The Wolf-Man's narrative demonstrates how psychoanalysis fails to account for the rich multiplicities of human experiences, viewing them instead through a rigid familial lens. Ultimately, the Wolf-Man concludes that a deeper understanding of nature and zoology could provide richer insights into psychology and the intricacies of human identity, rather than being confined to simplistic psychoanalytic narratives.
