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IDIOT LOVE

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IDIOT LOVE and the Elements of Intimacy

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Abstract

This chapter presents the book’s central theoretical contribution–the idiot love cycle–and suggests that literary representation helps us understand the symbolic dynamics of intimate relations. It begins with a discussion of the death drive in love as a self-preserving element of the psyche, which aims to lower stimulation even when it is ‘good.’ It then explores the influence of this negative element in love throughout the trajectory of the book’s two novels, The Idiot (1869) by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Bad Love (2007), creating an anatomy of relational breakdown in the tragic love story. Starting with a state of simple integration, the idiot love cycle develops through cerebral infatuation, emotional fusion, suicide in life, emotional terror, and disintegration–all of which offer readers the possibility of reintegration in complexity. The chapter articulates some of the psyche’s dynamics, including the expression of creative and destructive impulses that can emerge in intimacy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Breillat (2007) 143, 141, 142. All references to the original French edition. English translation by Marie-Claire Merrigan and David Stromberg.

  2. 2.

    Breillat (2007) 141.

  3. 3.

    Gary Adelman (2001) claims that the “insanely jealous Rogozhin murders the insanely suicidal Nastasya” (131), F. F. Seeley (2009) comments that “her surrender to Rogozhin is equivalent to suicide” (44), and Katya Tolstaya (2013) suggests that “she opts for a form of suicide by escaping from the prince to [Rogozhin ]” (230).

  4. 4.

    Breillat (2007) 37.

  5. 5.

    Breillat (2007) 40.

  6. 6.

    Breillat (2007) 39.

  7. 7.

    Breillat (2007) 143.

  8. 8.

    Breillat (2007) 143.

  9. 9.

    Breillat (2007) 138.

  10. 10.

    Breillat (2007) 141, 143, 144, 145.

  11. 11.

    Robert Rowland Smith (2010) xi, 2.

  12. 12.

    Smith (2010) 69.

  13. 13.

    Smith (2010) 69.

  14. 14.

    Smith (2010) 71.

  15. 15.

    Smith (2010) 71.

  16. 16.

    Smith (2010) 198.

  17. 17.

    Smith (2010) 198.

  18. 18.

    Breillat (2007) 145.

  19. 19.

    John Krapp (2002) 155.

  20. 20.

    Freud (2010a).

  21. 21.

    Smith (2010) 194.

  22. 22.

    Smith (2010) 194.

  23. 23.

    Lacan (1960–1961) 12.

  24. 24.

    Smith (2010) 194.

  25. 25.

    Lear (2005) 222.

  26. 26.

    Lear (2005) 222.

  27. 27.

    Lear (2005) 223.

  28. 28.

    Riviere (1967) 51.

  29. 29.

    Breillat (2007) 11.

  30. 30.

    Breillat (2007) 20.

  31. 31.

    The rendering of the Russian golovnoe as “cerebral” in English is influenced in part by the translation made by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The word itself relates to things originating in the head or mind–so that another rendering could be mental passion. The idea, regardless, is that there is the experience of emotion that is rooted in an idea of the mind rather than a genuine emotion rooted in the heart. It is emotion driven by an idea or fantasy.

  32. 32.

    Freud (1963) 20.

  33. 33.

    Freud (1963) 20.

  34. 34.

    Sigmund Freud (1959) 186.

  35. 35.

    Sigmund Freud (1957) 213.

  36. 36.

    Meira Likierman (2001) 180.

  37. 37.

    Breillat (2007) 23, 27.

  38. 38.

    Breillat (2007) 26.

  39. 39.

    Breillat (2007) 26.

  40. 40.

    Breillat (2007) 32.

  41. 41.

    Breillat (2007) 32.

  42. 42.

    Breillat (2007) 33.

  43. 43.

    Breillat (2007) 35.

  44. 44.

    Breillat (2007) 33–34, 36.

  45. 45.

    Breillat (2007) 38.

  46. 46.

    Breillat (2007) 38, 42.

  47. 47.

    Freud (2001) 94. J. David Velleman (1999) criticizes Freud’s notion of overvaluation as undermining love’s “moral standing” and “embedd[ing] love deep within the tissue of fantasy” (351). This criticism reveals his project, as his title suggests, to describe love in only positive rather than in both positive and negative terms, since nothing stops love from being both a moral emotion and an immoral emotion.

  48. 48.

    Freud (2010b).

  49. 49.

    Klein (1996) 168.

  50. 50.

    Otto Kernberg (1995) 39, 43, 61.

  51. 51.

    Kernberg (1995) 39. He continues: “…the earliest idealization, the primitive idealization characterized by the predominance of splitting processes that dissociate such idealization from ‘all-bad’ or persecutory experiences, preserves the sexual disposition toward the idealized object and protects sexual excitement from being overwhelmed by aggressive impulses.”

  52. 52.

    Kernberg (1995) 39.

  53. 53.

    Klein (1996) 177.

  54. 54.

    Jerome Neu (2000) 72–73.

  55. 55.

    Freud (2010b).

  56. 56.

    Klein (1967) 66.

  57. 57.

    Kernberg (1995) 24.

  58. 58.

    Freud (2006) 211.

  59. 59.

    Plato (2008) 24.

  60. 60.

    Plato (2008) 24–25.

  61. 61.

    Plato (2008) 25.

  62. 62.

    Plato (2008) 25.

  63. 63.

    Malcolm Jones (1999) 111.

  64. 64.

    Aristotle (1987) 13, 17.

  65. 65.

    Breillat (2007) 66, 68.

  66. 66.

    Breillat (2007) 67.

  67. 67.

    Breillat (2007) 70–71.

  68. 68.

    Breillat (2007) 72.

  69. 69.

    Breillat (2007) 81.

  70. 70.

    Breillat (2007) 81, 86.

  71. 71.

    Breillat (2007) 84.

  72. 72.

    Riviere (1967) 23.

  73. 73.

    Riviere (1967) 21.

  74. 74.

    Kernberg (1995) 43.

  75. 75.

    Smith (2010) 69. See both Lesser (1958) and Dalton (1979) on Myshkin and the classical understanding of masochism.

  76. 76.

    Smith (2010) 71. This is perhaps strengthened by Riviere’s (1967) claim that “a suicide has localized all badness and evil in himself” (23).

  77. 77.

    Smith (2010) 71.

  78. 78.

    Smith (2010) 71.

  79. 79.

    Breillat (2007) 90.

  80. 80.

    Breillat (2007) 96.

  81. 81.

    Breillat (2007) 97.

  82. 82.

    Breillat (2007) 102.

  83. 83.

    Joanne Brown (2006) 102.

  84. 84.

    Brown (2006) 104.

  85. 85.

    Riviere (1967) 12–13.

  86. 86.

    Klein (1996) 166.

  87. 87.

    Klein (1996) 166.

  88. 88.

    Klein (1996) 169.

  89. 89.

    Brown (2006) 102.

  90. 90.

    Klein (1986a) 90.

  91. 91.

    Klein (1986a) 90.

  92. 92.

    Klein (1996) 167.

  93. 93.

    Klein (1996) 166.

  94. 94.

    Klein (1996) 166.

  95. 95.

    Klein (1996) 166.

  96. 96.

    Klein (1986b) 148.

  97. 97.

    Breillat (2007) 31.

  98. 98.

    Breillat (2007) 32–33.

  99. 99.

    Breillat (2007) 111.

  100. 100.

    Breillat (2007) 113, 114.

  101. 101.

    Breillat (2007) 116.

  102. 102.

    Breillat (2007) 116.

  103. 103.

    Breillat (2007) 120.

  104. 104.

    Breillat (2007) 120.

  105. 105.

    Breillat (2007) 121.

  106. 106.

    Breillat (2007) 121.

  107. 107.

    Breillat (2007) 123.

  108. 108.

    Breillat (2007) 126–127.

  109. 109.

    Breillat (2007) 135.

  110. 110.

    Breillat (2007) 136.

  111. 111.

    Breillat (2007) 137.

  112. 112.

    Breillat (2007) 138.

  113. 113.

    Breillat (2007) 140.

  114. 114.

    Breillat (2007) 140.

  115. 115.

    Breillat (2007) 140.

  116. 116.

    Breillat (2007) 141.

  117. 117.

    Breillat (2007) 142.

  118. 118.

    Breillat (2007) 143.

  119. 119.

    Klein (1996) 166.

  120. 120.

    Klein (1996) 170.

  121. 121.

    Klein (2011) 144.

  122. 122.

    Breillat (2007) 141–142.

  123. 123.

    Breillat (2007) 143.

  124. 124.

    Breillat (2007) 143.

  125. 125.

    Breillat (2007) 143.

  126. 126.

    Breillat (2007) 144.

  127. 127.

    Breillat (2007) 144.

  128. 128.

    Breillat (2007) 144.

  129. 129.

    Klein (1996) 175.

  130. 130.

    Breillat (2007) 146.

  131. 131.

    Breillat (2007) 146.

  132. 132.

    Liza Knapp (1998) 37.

  133. 133.

    Nina Pelikan Straus (1998) 124.

  134. 134.

    Liza Knapp (1998) 36.

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    David Stromberg

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Stromberg, D. (2020). IDIOT LOVE. In: IDIOT LOVE and the Elements of Intimacy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42695-8_5

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