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May I first of all draw your attention to the excellent fruits that have resulted from the harmonious collaboration of a historian and a psychoanalyst in this paper (this issue). It has been my good fortune to have Joan C. Ullman as a friend. Her deep-rooted knowledge of the history of Spain and the affectionate care with which she tackles her subject go a long way to explain the solid framework—based on the writer's life and historical background—around which the psychoanalytic approach to the novel has been developed.
The stimulating reading of this work raises quite a number of interesting points, but I can mention only a few in introducing the discussion.
After re-reading this novel, in the light of Allison & Ullman's study, I was prompted to several personal reflexions.
I was struck by the fact that the main key to Rubin's delusion should be frustrated parenthood. At the same time we should remember that this same source of conflict has been pointed out in the more recent re-examinations of Schreber's delusion. This is an aspect, furthermore, which not only appears in Rubin, but is also to be found in another male character: Moreno, who is in love with Jacinta in the last stage of his illness. At this point the phenomenon appears in the form of his anxiety regarding the possibility of having children. By a strange coincidence he dies of a haemorrhage, as does Fortunata at the end of the book.
The key theme of the novel would appear to me to be parenthood, the subject being handled with considerable psychoanalytic intuition, as is the evolution of the delusion itself. In the cases of Rubin and Moreno—and even in that of an animal character, when a bird-breeder declares: 'She's a bad bird, never bothering about her brood; if it weren't for the cock-bird, the poor little devils would starve to death'—fatherhood is seen to be tinted with strong feminine shades.
Motherhood is a problem which preoccupies several of the female characters. Guillermina, for example