Freud - Complete Works (665 page)

   My view is that when the painter
first came to Mariazell he spoke only of one bond, written in the
regular way in blood, which was about to fall due and which had
therefore been signed in September, 1668 - all exactly as described
in the village priest’s letter of introduction. In Mariazell,
too, he presented this bond in blood as the one which the Demon had
given back to him under compulsion from the Holy Mother. We know
what happened subsequently. The painter left the shrine soon
afterwards and went to Vienna, where he felt free till the middle
of October. Then, however, he began once more to be subjected to
sufferings and apparitions, in which he saw the work of the Evil
Spirit. He again felt in need of redemption, but was faced with the
difficulty of explaining why the exorcism in the holy Chapel had
not brought him a lasting deliverance. He would certainly not have
been welcome at Mariazell if he had returned there uncured and
relapsed. In this quandary, he invented an earlier, first bond,
which, however, was to be written in ink, so that its supersession
in favour of a later bond, written in blood, should seem more
plausible. Having returned to Mariazell, he had this alleged first
bond given back to him too. After this he was left in peace by the
Evil One; but at the same time he did something else, which will
show us what lay in the background of his neurosis.

A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis

4021

   The drawings he made were
undoubtedly executed during his second stay at Mariazell: the
title-page, which is a single composition, contains a
representation of both the bond scenes. The attempt to make his new
story tally with his earlier one may well have caused him
embarrassment. It was unfortunate for him that his additional
invention could only be of an earlier bond and not of a later one.
Thus he could not avoid the awkward result that he had redeemed one
- the blood bond - too soon (in the eighth year), and the other -
the black bond - too late (in the tenth year). And he betrayed the
double editing of the story by making a mistake in the dating of
the bonds and attributing the earlier one as well as the later to
the year 1669. This mistake has the significance of a piece of
unintentional honesty: it enables us to guess that the supposedly
earlier bond was fabricated at the later date. The compiler, who
certainly did not begin revising the material before 1714, and
perhaps not till 1729, had to do his best to resolve its not
inconsiderable contradictions. Finding that both the bonds before
him were dated 1669, he had recourse to the evasion which he
interpolated in the Abbot’s deposition.

   It is easy to see where the weak
spot lies in this otherwise attractive reconstruction. Reference is
already made to the existence of two bonds, one in black and one in
blood, in the Abbot’s deposition. I therefore have the choice
between accusing the compiler of having also made an alteration in
the deposition, an alteration closely related to his interpolation,
or confessing that I am unable to unravel the tangle.¹

  
¹
The compiler, it seems to me, was between
two fires. On the one hand, he found, in the village priest’s
letter of introduction as well as in the Abbot’s deposition,
the statement that the bond (or at any rate the first bond) had
been signed in 1668; on the other hand, both bonds, which had been
preserved in the archives, bore the date 1669. As he had two bonds
before him, it seemed certain to him that two bonds had been
signed. If, as I believe, the Abbot’s deposition mentioned
only one bond, he was obliged to insert in the deposition a
reference to the other and then remove the contradiction by the
hypothesis of the post-dating. The textual alteration which he made
occurs immediately before the interpolation, which can only have
been written by him. He was obliged to link the interpolation to
the alteration with the words ‘
sequenti vero anno
1669
’
, since the painter
had expressly written in his (very much damaged) caption to the
title-page:

  
‘A year after He

   ...
terrible threatenings in

   ...
shape No. 2, was forced

   ...
to sign a bond in blood.’

   The
painter’s blunder in writing his
Syngraphae
- a
blunder which I have been obliged to assume in my attempted
explanation - appears to me to be no less interesting than are the
actual bonds.

A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis

4022

   The reader will long ago have
judged this whole discussion superfluous and the details concerned
in it too unimportant. But the matter gains a new interest if it is
pursued in a certain direction.

   I have just expressed the view
that, when the painter was disagreeably surprised by the course
taken by his illness, he invented an earlier bond (the one in ink)
in order to be able to maintain his position with the reverend
Fathers at Mariazell. Now I am writing for readers who, although
they believe in psycho-analysis, do not believe in the Devil; and
they might object that it was absurd for me to bring such an
accusation against the poor wretch -
hunc miserum
, as he is
called in the letter of introduction. For, they will say, the bond
in blood was just as much a product of his phantasy as the
allegedly earlier one in ink. In reality, no Devil appeared to him
at all, and the whole business of pacts with the Devil only existed
in his imagination. I quite realize this: the poor man cannot be
denied the right to supplement his original phantasy with a new
one, if altered circumstances seem to require it.

   But here, too, the matter goes
further. After all, the two bonds were not phantasies like the
visions of the Devil. They were documents, preserved, according to
the assurances of the copyist and the deposition of the later Abbot
Kilian, in the archives of Mariazell, for all to see and touch. We
are therefore in a dilemma. Either we must assume that both the
papers which were supposed to have been given back to the painter
through divine Grace were written by him at the time when he needed
them; or else, despite all the solemn assurances, the confirmatory
evidence of witnesses, signed and sealed, and so on, we shall be
obliged to deny the credibility of the reverend Fathers of
Mariazell and St. Lambert. I must admit that I am unwilling to cast
doubts on the Fathers. I am inclined to think, it is true, that the
compiler, in the interests of consistency, has falsified some
things in the deposition made by the first Abbot; but a
‘secondary revision’ such as this does not go much
beyond what is carried out even by modern lay historians, and at
all events it was done in good faith. In another respect, the
reverend Fathers have established a good claim to our confidence.
As I have said already there was nothing to prevent them from
suppressing the accounts of the incompleteness of the cure and the
continuance of the temptations. And even the description of the
scene of exorcism in the Chapel, which one might have viewed with
some apprehension, is soberly written and inspires belief. So there
is nothing for it but to lay the blame on the painter. No doubt he
had the red bond with him when he went to penitential prayer in the
Chapel, and he produced it afterwards as he came back to his
spiritual assistants from his meeting with the Demon. Nor need it
have been the same paper which was later preserved in the archives,
and, according to our construction, it may have borne the date 1668
(nine years before the exorcism).

A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis

4023

V

THE
FURTHER COURSE OF THE NEUROSIS

But if this is so, we should be dealing not
with a neurosis but with a deception, and the painter would be a
malingerer and forger instead of a sick man suffering from
possession. But the transitional stages between neurosis and
malingering are, as we know, very fluid. Nor do I see any
difficulty in supposing that the painter wrote this paper and the
later one, and took them with him, in a peculiar state, similar to
the one in which he had his visions. Indeed there was no other
course open to him if he wished to carry into effect his phantasy
of his pact with the Devil and of his redemption.

   On the other hand, the diary
written in Vienna, which he gave to the clerics on his second visit
to Mariazell, bears the stamp of veracity. It undoubtedly affords
us a deep insight into the motivation - or let us rather say, the
exploitation - of the neurosis.

   The entries extend from the time
of the successful exorcism till January 13 of the following year,
1678.

   Until October 11 he felt very
well in Vienna, where he lived with a married sister; but after
that he had fresh attacks, with visions, convulsions, loss of
consciousness and painful sensations, and these finally led to his
return to Mariazell in May, 1678.

   The story of his fresh illness
falls into three phases. First, temptation appeared in the form of
a finely dressed cavalier, who tried to persuade him to throw away
the document attesting his admission to the Brotherhood of the Holy
Rosary. He resisted this temptation, whereupon the same thing
happened next day; only this time the scene was laid in a
magnificently decorated hall in which grand gentlemen were dancing
with beautiful ladies. The same cavalier who had tempted him before
made a proposal to him connected with painting¹ and promised
to give him a handsome sum of money in return. After he had made
this vision disappear by prayer, it was repeated once more a few
days later, in a still more pressing form. This time the cavalier
sent one of the most beautiful of the ladies who sat at the
banqueting table to him to persuade him to join their company, and
he had difficulty in defending himself from the temptress. Most
terrifying of all, moreover, was the vision which occurred soon
after this. He saw a still more magnificent hall, in which there
was a ‘throne built up of gold pieces’. Cavaliers were
standing about awaiting the arrival of their King. The same person
who had so often made proposals to him now approached him and
summoned him to ascend the throne, for they ‘wanted to have
him for their King and to honour him for ever’. This
extravagant phantasy concluded the first, perfectly transparent,
phase of the story of his temptation.

  
¹
This passage is unintelligible to
me.

A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis

4024

   There was bound to be a revulsion
against this. An ascetic reaction reared its head. On October 20 a
great light appeared, and a voice came from it, making itself known
as Christ, and commanded him to forswear this wicked world and
serve God in the wilderness for six years. The painter clearly
suffered more from these holy apparitions than from the earlier
demoniacal ones; it was only after two and a half hours that he
awoke from this attack. In the next attack the holy figure
surrounded by light was much more unfriendly. He issued threats
against him for not having obeyed the divine behest and led him
down into Hell so that he might be terrified by the fate of the
damned. Evidently, however, this failed in its effect, for the
apparitions of the figure surrounded by light, which purported to
be Christ, were repeated several more times. Each time the painter
underwent an
absence
and an ecstasy lasting for hours. In
the grandest of these ecstasies the figure surrounded by light took
him first into a town in whose streets people were perpetrating all
the acts of darkness; and then, in contrast, took him to a lovely
meadow in which anchorites were leading a godly life and were
receiving tangible evidence of God’s grace and care. There
then appeared, instead of Christ, the Holy Mother herself, who,
reminding him of what she had already done on his behalf, called on
him to obey the command of her dear Son. ‘Since he could not
truly resolve so to do’, Christ appeared to him again the
next day and upbraided him soundly with threats and promises. At
last he gave way and made up his mind to leave the world and to do
what was required of him. With this decision, the second phase
ended. The painter states that from this time onwards he had no
more visions and no more temptations.

A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis

4025

   Nevertheless, his resolution
cannot have been firm enough or he must have delayed its execution
too long; for while he was in the midst of his devotions, on
December 26, in St. Stephen’s, catching sight of a strapping
young woman accompanied by a smartly dressed gentleman, he could
not fend off the thought that he might himself be in this
gentleman’s place. This called for punishment, and that very
evening it over took him like a thunderbolt. He saw himself in
bright flames and sank down in a swoon. Attempts were made to rouse
him but he rolled about in the room till blood flowed from his
mouth and nose. He felt that he was surrounded by heat and noisome
smells, and he heard a voice say that he had been condemned to this
state as a punishment for his vain and idle thoughts. Later he was
scourged with ropes by Evil Spirits, and was told that he would be
tormented like this every day until he had decided to enter the
Order of Anchorites. These experiences continued up to the last
entry in his diary (January 13).

   We see how our unfortunate
painter’s phantasies of temptation were succeeded by ascetic
ones and finally by phantasies of punishment. The end of his tale
of suffering we know already. In May he went to Mariazell, told his
story of an earlier bond written in black ink, to which he
explicitly attributed his continued torment by the Devil, received
this bond back, too, and was cured.