Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Edward D. Joseph commented that while the family romance fantasy was extraordinarily prominent in Conrad's life, his search for a hero was also motivated by the search for his real hero-father, a revolutionary honored by Polish nobility and granted the unique distinction, for a proscribed man, of a public funeral. His uncle's efforts to lure him away to his mother's side were unavailing. Ford was not the only, nor even the greatest, male influence in his adult life. His letters to Garnett evidence a son-father relationship as well as gratitude for inspiration to create. The search for males was determined, additionally, by fear of women whom he conceptualized as distant, predatory, and lethal.

Dr. David Beres stated that conflict, which is ubiquitous, is ordinarily dealt with by fantasy or action or, failing these, symptom. The artist has open to him the additional outlet in that he can communicate and externalize his conflict in creation and thus share his anxiety and guilt. The question remains, why Conrad wrote fiction rather than poetry, or why he did not adopt another artistic medium. Many authors (e.g., Anna Freud, Friedlander, Peller, Sachs) have noted the relationship of the story to the masturbation fantasy. Dr. Meyer pointed out the relevance of his hypothesis for Conrad as exemplified by his inhibitions in writing, his dilatoriness and suffering; and, on the other hand, by his physically exhausting, orgastic method of working. Conrad's writing illustrates the principle that what makes the artist is the ability to deal with conflict by the creative act. There is an optimum distance from the conflict where it can be experienced and stated without the individual's being overwhelmed by it. Where Conrad's neurosis supervened, his art failed, e.g., in his relationship with women.

Dr. Phyllis Greenacre offered an explanation for the ubiquity of the specific kind of biographic formula described by Kris: the poor shepherd boy discovered,