Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists - Part 4

J. Bogousslavsky, L. Tatu

• Publisher: S. Karger
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783318063943
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Neurology

In this fourth volume of the popular series 'Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists' we once again delve into the minds of writers, painters, and poets in order to gain better insight on how neurological and psychiatric diseases can influence creativity. The issue of schizophrenia, the interaction between psychological instability and drug abuse, and the intricate association between organic wounds and shell-shock disorders are illustrated with the examples of Franz Kafka, Raymond Roussel, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline and their writings. Dementia has been specifically studied before, including in the previous volumes of Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists. It is revisited here in order to present the striking and well-documented case of Willem de Kooning, which inspired a new approach. Apart from issues that sometimes border on neuropsychiatry, purer neurological cases such as post-amputation limb pain (Arthur Rimbaud) or tabetic ataxia (Edouard Manet) are presented as well. Other fascinating life trajectories associated with cerebral or psychological changes include those of the writers Bjornsen, Tolstoi, Turgeniev, Mann, Ibsen, and Pavese.

Bogousslavsky J, Tatu L (eds): Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists – Part 4.
Front Neurol Neurosci. Basel, Karger, 2018, vol 43, pp 196–220 (DOI: 10.1159/000490450)

Dissociation, Delusion and the Splitting of the Self in The Trial by Franz Kafka: Phenomenology and Neurobiology of Schizophrenia

Elisabete Castelon Konkiewitz^a, Edward Benjamin Ziff^b

^aFaculdade de Ciências da Saúde (FCS), Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados (UFGD), Dourados, Brazil; ^bDepartment of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

Abstract

In this essay, we propose an association between Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, and phenomenological and neurobiological processes in schizophrenia. We begin by presenting a summary of the plot, pointing to some of its remarkable literary aspects. We next compare the mental processes of dissociation, disorientation and delusion as represented in the novel with phenomenological processes that take place in the prodromal states of schizophrenia. We discuss how such disorders of the self and disorders of thought, both crucial aspects of the schizophrenic experience, appear in The Trial and in other literary and private writings by Franz Kafka. We relate how these disorders may arise from the false attribution of salience and false associative learning caused by hyperactivity of dopaminergic function associated with chaotic firing of dopaminergic neurons. Finally, we show how Kafka leads not just the protagonist of The Trial, but even more the reader to experience a quasi-delusional state. We discuss the relationship between the perturbation of thought and disorientation of mind evoked by the novel in the reader and the need of our brains for empathy and predictability.

© 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel

Kafka’s works evoke complex feelings and perceptions that are difficult to grasp. They allow us to experience states and feelings that go far beyond our ordinary life. This enhancement of emotional intensity is stimulating, even when it is related to negative emotions such as threat, cluelessness, or suspense. As classic works of literature, they have the power to kindle the emotional brain networks of readers even when recounting stories from different times and places or about a remote past or fantastic, absurd happenings.

So profound are the characteristics of this literary universe that they gave rise to the term “Kafkaesque,” which refers to experiences of oppression, or nightmares, or to experiences marked by a menacing, disorienting, senseless complexity. Kafkaesque evokes diffuse feelings of fear, insecurity and estrangement, and situations of being at the mercy of circumstances dominated by a bureaucratic and anonymous power, experiences of absurdity, of guilt, of despair, of having no way out. In the words of Frederick Robert Karl [1991], Kafkaesque would be:

when you enter a surreal world in which all your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior, begins to fall to pieces, when you find yourself against a force that does not lend itself to the way you perceive the world. You don’t give up, you don’t lie down and die. What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have. But of course you don’t stand a chance. That’s Kafkaesque. [Edwards, 1991]

According to Kafka’s biographer, Reiner Stach:

Most of the time people use the term Kafkaesk to refer to something absurd and strange. Generally, these concern relations of power, in which those who occupy the ultimate authority, the center of power, are unknown, obscure. From this come the feelings of Kafkaesk. In Kafka’s novels, the summit of the pyramid remains invisible. In our society, despite the apparent transparency, nobody knows for sure what is the state of things in the last instance. We would like to know how things are going at the top, but we do not even know if there is in fact such a center of power. We would like to know how things are going at the high point, but we are only aware of the intermediary and mediating instances… Exactly this is the state of being in The Trial. (Free translation by the authors)¹

Kafka’s novel, The Trial, was written between 1914 and 1916, but first published posthumously in 1925. We propose that the mental processes of perception, construction of causal relations, inferences, predictability and the sense of reality of the protagonist, as manifested by the plot and literary style of The Trial, correspond to phenomenological processes that take place in the prodromal states of schizophrenia. We explore neurobiological models of schizophrenia that are based on the chaotic firing of dopaminergic pathways and the resulting false attribution of salience and false associative learning. We discuss how disorders of the self and disorders of thought, both crucial aspects of the schizophrenic experience, appear in the novel and in other literary and private writings by Franz Kafka. We suggest that not just the protagonist, but also the reader experiences a quasi-delusional state. We discuss how this quasi-delusional state compromises the need of the individual for empathy and predictability.

Fig. 1. Arrested. Illustration by Daniel Salmi Valadão Borges, 2018, reproduced with kind permission of the artist.

The Trial: Summary and Literary Features

The Trial [Kafka, 1998] begins abruptly, when the main character, Josef K., is surprised in his bed on the morning of his thirtieth birthday by two unknown men (Fig. 1). He discovers that these men are guards who came to announce that he is under arrest. The guards, however, do not know, and are not in able to explain to him who has accused him, or what his offense was. They are only fulfilling their orders, and their job is to inform Josef K. about this new fact of life and to watch over him from that moment on.

The text does not provide any introductory explanations about the context of the plot. The reader is not told about the time, or the location of the plot, nor does the reader learn anything about the prior life story of Josef K. There is no description of his personality, no attempt of a psychological analysis. It is just stated that he is 30 years old, single, the chief financial officer of a bank who is in an ascending phase of his career, and that he lodges in a room in a rooming house. The remaining aspects of his biography will be implied or inferred during the course of the novel, but only in outline and gradually.

Strangely enough, Josef K.’s imprisonment does not imply any change in the ordinary and everyday aspects of his life. He can continue to work in the bank and to follow his regular duties. Initially, he has just to be conscious that his trial has started and that after this moment, he is not a free man anymore.

The entire novel focuses on Josef K.’s attempts to prove his innocence. The reason for his arrest is never revealed. The atmosphere is one of increasing bizarreness. Absurd concatenations are explained with extreme logical rigor and concern for detail, often with long-winded and pedantic speech. Each new encounter brings a new revelation, in which a new character presents relationships and facts hitherto completely unknown to Josef K., facts that force him (and the reader) to change, over and over again, his orientation in the labyrinthine web of the court that is trying his case.

The story is fragmentary, as the chapters are not related to each other, each one being a separate element, and enclosing its own plot. The figures appear out of nowhere, and disappear again, in many cases not to return to the story. The connecting thread is the dogged pursuit by Josef K. of victory in the battle against the enemy, which is the entire system of the Court and its many bureaucrats, a threatening, but invisible and unattainable enemy.

Josef K. is not a subordinate or resigned figure, but, on the contrary, he shows a haughty, challenging and confident attitude. He struggles to understand his reality and to impose his will upon this reality by attempting to apply the same logical and strategic resources he has used in his professional life. Apparently, he is coherent and acts in accord with the facts of the world about him. However, the events and relationships within the complex network of the court follow laws that he and only he (and the reader) does not understand, and therefore his attitudes are always incorrect and they worsen his chances of acquittal. With each new chapter, and with each new encounter, he finds himself more and more trapped in the tangled web of the court.

The role of power hangs over and dominates the whole story. It is the central theme, being absolute and immutable and at the same time, unreachable and unknowable. Josef K. will never learn who has condemned him and what his fault was, but this lack of consciousness does not acquit him, nor does it reduce his guilt and the need for his punishment. Power is the currency, the link that governs the relationships between the characters. Forms of domination take grotesque shapes and intensities, culminating in comic situations. For instance, in the first chapter, the guards, after intruding upon the privacy of Josef K., and invading his bedroom without permission, force him to dress in formal attire, as he would be presented to the inspector, although this inspector himself acknowledges afterwards he was just a low-level employee. In another chapter, Josef K., while passing through the halls of the bank, hears screams coming from a storage room and discovers there the same guards who had arrested him, being whipped by a flogger. Another example is the episode in which Josef K.’s lawyer abuses another client in his presence, just to demonstrate how he was being kind to and patient with Josef K. The scene evolves into a sadomasochistic ritual. Even Josef K. himself plays a sadistic role and psychologically abuses Frau Grubach – the landlady where he lives – changing his behavior towards her from almost loving attention to rejection.

The female characters are also presented as part of this tight game, whose aims are to approach, and keep a connection, albeit remote, with power [for a review, see Leich, 2003]. Occupying socially inferior positions, they actually employ their sexuality to raise and maintain some degree of influence over powerful men. Attracted by Josef K., the women try to seduce him and they promise to help him by their means. He, in turn, although also feeling sexually attracted by them, approaches the women in an attempt to use them as instruments for his goal towards the court. In addition, possession of these women is a way to subvert the power, which resides in the hands of the male members of the court.

The environments of the court are decadent, poorly maintained, impoverished and dirty. The physical decay of environments is described together with signs of unconstrained sexuality. For instance, there are a lot of children playing outside [Kafka, 1998, p. 39], half grown-up girls, corrupted early in life, who stare at Josef K. invitingly [Kafka, 1998, p. 141], and a pornographic book lies on the examining magistrate’s table [Kafka, 1998, p. 47]. These spaces are the underground, the hidden aspects of life, which reside behind the towering beauty of the bank.

As in Kafka’s other works (for instance, The Condemnation, The Rural Doctor, The Castle, and The Metamorphosis), many scenes in The Trial happen in dormitories, more specifically with one of the personages lying in bed. First, Josef K. is surprised by the guards upon awakening in the morning in his bed. Then there is an audience in Fräulein Bürstner’s bedroom. That same day, late at night, Josef K. talks to her, also in this room. As she reclines on the couch, he explains what has happened, but finds himself distracted by her pose and gesture. In the empty courtroom, the court usher’s wife explains to Josef K. that her apartment must be assigned to the court whenever there is an audience. She also recounts the episode in which the magistrate came in the middle of the night to her bedroom to give her back a lamp that she had lent him, and that he was enchanted by seeing her in bed sleeping next to her husband. Josef K.’s lawyer is constantly sick and receives him and other clients in his bed. While reclining in it, he advises, orders, decides, and humbles: although an invalid, still a powerful man. The painter Titorelli also receives Josef K. in his atelier, which is at the same time his bedroom, and invites Josef K. to pass over his bed to reach an alternative exit door, just this door goes to the court room! Finally, it is in his room that Josef K. receives his executors in the last chapter.

What space would the dormitory be? A place of intimacy, which few are allowed to enter, a space that refers to sex, but also to the surrender and passivity of sleep, disease, disability and death. It is a place of recollection and rest, where masks are not worn. Social roles are left out; people are in underwear with which it would be inappropriate to show themselves in public. In the novel, however, this space of privacy is always penetrated by strangers and serves as the venue for discussions about Josef K.’s trial. This means a break with taboo, in which social exposure is sometimes embarrassing (Josef K. sees himself in pajamas before the guards), and sometimes inviting (in Fräulein Bürstner’s room as she reclines on her bed). Voyeurism appears at several points, for instance in the figure of the examining magistrate observing the wife of the court usher sleeping, but also exhibitionism is present in scenes when the lawyer allows Josef K. to witness the cares and caresses that he receives from his nurse, Leni.

If, on the one hand, this contrast of bureaucratic and juridical issues being discussed in intimate spaces makes the plot even more surreal, improbable and distorted, on the other hand it may also imply that, in fact, the plot is not about bureaucratic or juridical issues, but rather about issues that can only be dealt with inside the four walls of a bedroom. Although the characters remain reserved and keep a formal distance from each other, consistent with their degree of relationship (addressing each other in the formal way), the content of their talk always shifts progressively to a tone of intimacy and revelation, for example, when the painter Titorelli asks like a confessor, if Josef K. is really innocent. The process is a secret of Josef K., and his guilt, or his innocence, are issues that cannot tarnish his image in the bank; they are matters for a dormitory. Similarly, the inquiry takes place on Sunday, which is the day reserved for private life.

Despite the absurdity of the plot, the atmosphere is not exactly that of a dream. Indeed, elements typical of a dream universe, such as inaccuracies, lack of clarity, condensations of time, space and persons, are absent. On the contrary, The Trial, like other works of Kafka, is characterized by accuracy and objectivity. The dialogues are long and logically well elaborated; they often turn into complicated rhetorical speeches, revealing clarity of thought, concentration and criticism. Visually, the descriptions of spaces and individuals resemble those of a film camera: technical, rich in detail, and objective, not resembling the images of a dream. This syntactic and semantic accuracy intensifies the feeling of strangeness in the reader, as it reassures him that things are indeed happening in the reported way.

Kafka develops a peculiar narrative technique: accounts are told in the third person through the reflective figure (“Reflektorfigur” in German), although, at the same time, the perspective is of the first person, that is, they are subjective and single minded (monoperspectivism) [Pascal, 1982]. For this reason, the narrator is not omniscient, but is limited to the protagonist’s perceptions and thoughts, to whose mind he has open access. With this narrative technique, the reader has no chance to learn about the reality beyond the protagonist’s experiences. The reader progresses along the plot with this alienated and disoriented protagonist; he has no one else to guide him and for this reason cannot himself be other than alienated and disoriented.

Moreover, this technique of narration amplifies the surreal and discomforting atmosphere of the text, as it infers a dissociation of the ego. The narrator is reporting the impressions and thoughts of someone else, who apparently is not himself, but who actually can only be himself, as it is the only element to whom the narrator has complete access and through which everything is realized and experienced. It seems as if someone were speaking about himself as a third person, giving a detailed, accurate, and intimate account, but keeping at the same time a strange emotional detachment. Furthermore, there is a sp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Front Matter
• Joan Miró and Cyclic Depression
• Abstract Expressionists and Brain Disease
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline: From First World War Neurological Wound to Mythomania
• Creative Minds in the Aftermath of the Great War: Four Neurologically Wounded Artists
• Writers as Shell Shock Witnesses during World War I
• Édouard Manet’s Tabes Dorsalis: From Painful Ataxia to Phantom Limb
• Thomas Mann and Neurology
• Arthur Rimbaud: “The Man with Wind Soles” – Riders’ Osteosarcoma with Postamputation Stump Pain
• Travelling into Alienation and Neurology with a Painter: Georges Moreau (1848–1901)
• Neurology in Russian Writers: Tolstoy and Turgenev
• Raymond Roussel’s Cure with Pierre Janet
• Henrik Ibsen’s Battle with Cerebrovascular Disease
• Letter to His Father by Franz Kafka: Literary Reconstruction of a Traumatic Childhood?
• Dementia and Change of Style: Willem de Kooning – Obliteration of Disease Patterns?
• Machado de Assis’ Original Sin
• Cesare Pavese: The Laboratory of Loneliness – A study of Among Women Only
• Dissociation, Delusion and the Splitting of the Self in The Trial by Franz Kafka: Phenomenology and Neurobiology of Schizophrenia
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover Page