Art and psychopathology: the sadomasochistic defense and the transcendence of evil. An enigma that brings together the life and work of Franz Kafka. A study of Jungian Symbolic Psychopathology

Abstract

Within the conceptual framework of Jungian Symbolic Psychology, the author studies the relationship between Art and Psychopathology and considers sadomasochism to be the defensive core of all psychological relationships. He postulates its formation mainly through the fixation of the Ego-Other polarity in the primary negative parental identifications, including the meaning of the relationship between father and mother and the reactions of the ego towards them. This fixation involves the interaction between the structuring function of love (affection and aggression) and that of power (obedience and control). The author illustrates these concepts in the life and work of Franz Kafka, describing his ego’s identification in consciousness predominantly with the gentle, affectionate and sensitive introversion of his positive mother complex and of his ego in the shadow with the masochistic cowardly passivity of his negative mother complex. He also describes the identification of the other in consciousness predominantly with the vital exuberance, the productivity and the dedication to work and to the family of his positive father complex, and of the other in the shadow dominantly with sadistic egocentric and aggressive extroversion of his negative father complex. The result of this severe fixation was a sadomasochist relationship of the ego-other polarity in his personality expressed clearly in the famous letter to his father and in most of his work, including his wish to destroy it. Byington concludes by mentioning some aspects of the relationship between art and psychopathology and postulates that the Central Archetype encompasses the fixated complexes of the shadow’s defensive system, and tries to go beyond them in the creative self-realization of the individuation process. In the case of Kafka, this could not occur in the individual Self, but was realized through the archetypal image of resurrection in the cultural Self.