Pain and Suffering in Freuds Fraulein Elisabeth Von R and Goethes the Sorrows of Young Werther - Essay Example

?Pain and Suffering in Freud’s “Fraulein Elisabeth von R” and Goethe's “The Sorrows of Young Werther” Pain and Suffering in Freud’s “Fraulein Elisabeth von R” and Goethe's “The Sorrows of Young Werther” Introduction Pain and suffering have certain manifestations that may root from actual physical condition or emotional experiences that are restrained and kept for their nature. In this essay, the cases of two characters from different literatures will be compared and juxtaposed in order to determine relations between Freud’s theory about hysteria and physical pain to a human’s emotional turmoil using Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther”. Discussion In “Fraulein Elizabeth von R,” Sigmund Freud described the case of a young woman from a well-to-do Hungarian family who had several tragedies in her life prior to experiencing the malaise she consulted Freud with – pain in her legs and difficulties in walking (1). Freud, throughout the therapy, noted the repressed content of Fraulein Elizabeth’s confessions and recollections of what happened to her life. Freud suggested that it was the repressed secret and emotion that has been causing her pain and walking difficulty. Juxtaposed with Werther in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, certain similarities can be noted between the young man Werther and Fraulein Elizabeth (2). Both are of their prime, Fraulein Elizabeth being only 24 when under the care of Freud, and Werther was a young man sent forth in a village called Wahlhein by his mother for some business. Freud suspected that Fraulein Elizabeth have fallen in love with her brother-in-law while caring for her sick sister. On the other hand, Werther fell for a young woman named Charlotte who also grew fond of him. However, Charlotte was already engaged to Albert whom Werther also developed friendship with. On both cases, the main characters were in a situation where their emotions or feelings of passion cannot be publicly acknowledged or shown due to their association with the object of their love, their relationships, and the people surrounding them. Both relationships were unacceptable: Fraulein Elizabeth loving her sister’s husband, and Werther loving his friend’s fiancee. The cases differentiated on their latter conditions: Fraulein Elizabeth’s sister died, thus, freeing her from repression; whereas Werther was not, for soon, Charlotte and Albert got married. Charlotte, after a passionate kiss and embrace confirming her feelings for Werther, asked him to stop visiting her. This is where Werther’s plan of suicide was also affirmed. On the part of Fraulein Elizabeth, Freud would soon learn from his friend Wilhelm Fleiss that she got engaged with another man (3). Her daughter also denied Freud’s allegation that Fraulein Elizabeth had been in love with her brother-in-law (4). The differences on both cases also became stark. It could be highly probable that Freud was wrong about his perception and allegations on Fraulein Elizabeth. However, she could also be infatuated with a man not necessarily her brother-in-law, which, may be taken as the reason how she was soon engaged and actually married with another man. There is only an assumption on the part of Freud or Fraulein Elizabeth’s case. When compared further with Werther’s case, there is sufficient pain and emotional torture on the part of the fictional Werther as he might have been experiencing the reciprocal feelings of Charlotte his beloved even while he had been unaware of it. This has kept his own feelings of love for her grow and nurtured. However, it should also be noted that Fraulein Elizabeth had also been into emotional pain for the deaths of her father and sister. This may also be linked to her hysteria or experiences of pain in her legs. The pain and torture on the part of Werther was the nearness of his beloved and yet the impossibility of reciprocal relationship, thus in his solitude, he was akin to asking Charlotte, what was Albert to her. On this portion, it is very apparent that the cause of Werther’s pain was his unrequited love for Charlotte while Fraulein Elizabeth’s was an unrequited or suppressed love for an unknown person. In the cause of the authors, Goethe and the reader was aware who caused Werther’s pain, while on the part of Freud and the Freud’s readers, there was uncertainty on who or which might be really causing Fraulein Elizabeth’s experience of pain. It is highly possible too, that Freud might have been mistaken all along. As indicated in his Studies of Hysteria, the case of Fraulein Elizabeth was inconclusive. She has stopped seeing Freud for the apparent betrayal of her suspected secret. For the reader, there is a hanging conclusion: was Freud right or wrong? If Freud was right about a repressed emotion or unrequited love on the part of Fraulein Elizabeth, then, who was the object of her love? There are three levels of mistake that is probable on the opinion of Freud: her case of repressed love, the object of her feelings, and the actual cause of her pain. As Freud admitted, too, “the case histories I write should read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science. I must console myself with the reflection that the nature of the subject is evidently responsible for this, rather than any preference of my own. The fact is that … a detailed description of mental processes such as we are accustomed to find in the works of imaginative writers enables me, with the use of a few psychological formulas, to obtain at least some kind of insight into the course of that affection…” (5). On Werther’s case, it was clear that his pain and emotions of love caused his pain, and the ultimate sacrifice of his life. There was no question about that because he was overwhelmed with the thoughts of Charlotte, of what she felt for him, and how she might love Werther more than Albert. All these thoughts cause him much sorrow that he decided it has to end: one of them – Werther, Albert or Charlotte had to die. But it was his own experience of pain he want to stop, and it would only stop if he stopped living, thus he opted to take his own life. Conclusion Pain on both the case of Fraulein Elizabeth and Werther are both fictional in a sense that the while Werther’s story was clear and conclusive, there was only opinion and allegation for Fraulein Elizabeth coming from Sigmund Freud. While it may be true that an actual Fraulein Elizabeth came or was referred to his clinic for therapy, Freud was only able to unearth, in his own account, some portions of Fraulein Elizabeth’s background, which may or may not be at all related to her experiences of leg pain and walking difficulties. On the part of Werther, his pain was realistic in a fictional sense that he acknowledged the source of his emotional sorrows and turmoil. These were rooted on her unrequited love for Charlotte, his friend and also the wife of his own friend Albert. On the id and latter part of the fiction, Werther already dismissed the purity of his friendship for Albert because he finally admitted him as his rival to Charlottes love. However, the admission did not change the fact that Charlotte was married to Albert and that he was a third party on their marriage attempting to destroy the lawful union. It is therefore conclusive that reality and scientifically-grounded studies about human experiences of pain and emotions may have more parallel than imagined. Footnotes: 1. Freud, 2004 2. Goethe as translated by Hulse, 1989 3. Freud2, 1950 4. Gay, 1988 5. Micale, 2008, p 249. Reference: Freud, Sigmund. Fraulein Elisabeth von R: from Studies of Hysteria, translated by Nicola Luckhurst, Penguin Books, 2004, P139 - P186. Freud, Sigmund (2). 1950 [1887-1902]). Extracts from the Fliess papers. SE, 1: 173-280 Gay, Peter. 1988. Freud: A life for our time. London-Melbourne: Dent. Goethe, J.W. The Sorrows of Young Werther. the Penguin Classics edition, 1989, Translated by M. Hulse. Micale, Mark S. 2008. Hysterical men: the hidden history of male nervous illness. Harvard University Press. Read More