matricide and creativity: the case of two hungariancousin-writers from the perspectiveof...

7/27/2019 Matricide and Creativity: The Case of Two HungarianCousin-Writers from the Perspectiveof Contemporary Psycho

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Matricide and Creativity: The Case of Two HungarianCousin-Writers from the Perspective

of Contemporary PsychobiographyZoltn Kvry

University of Szeged, Hungary

In the history of human sciences we find a special type of creator who is somehowtrapped between the worlds of the arts and the sciences. This condition leads tospecial ways of self-actualization, like in the cases of Plato, Leonardo, Nietzscheor Freud. In the history of Hungarian human sciences and modern arts one of themost exciting representatives of the Renaissance man was Gza Csth (originalname Jzsef Brenner), a talented psychiatrist trying to use psychoanalysis for thefirst time in treating paranoid schizophrenia, and also a triple artist (writer, musicianand painter) best known for his short stories. While living the life of a doppelgngerand doing a wild analysis with his psychotic patient, he became a morphineaddict and, at the age of 32, murdered his wife and committed suicide. I use here themethod of multiple case psychobiography to compare the life and works ofCsth with those of his cousine and friend Dezs Kosztolnyi, one of the mostoutstanding writers of the time in Hungary. By analysing their personalities, theirchoices in life and characteristics for short stories about matricide we can take alook at the personal roots of their creativity and the goals and discontents of beingsuch a complex personality as Gza Csth certainly was.

ARTISTIC VS SCIENTIFIC CREATIVITY

By the 19th century, artistic creation became one of the most important expressions ofselfhoodand human freedom; from Romanticism onwards we can talk about the cultof creativity (Baumeister, 1987). At the same time, mostly because the developmentof sciences, the value of scientific creativity caught up to its artistic counterpart and,in the 20th century, when psychologists began to explore the psychological backgroundof the creative process and creative personality, they focused in research on bothareas (Runco & Albert, 2010).

There are some outstanding creative persons in the history of (human) sciences,

whose works belong to both the domain of art and science. For example, in the writingsof Plato we can find an intoxicating mixture of philosophy and poetry, of scienceand art (Durant, 2012, p. 21). On the contrary, in the case of Leonardo da Vinci according to Freud the investigator in him never in the course of his developmentleft the artist entirely free, but often made severe encroachments on him and perhapsin the end suppressed him (Freud, 1910, 64.). In his bookHuman, all too human,

Nietzsche (who was also the same type) wrote that this kind of man have to use

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Zoltn Kvry, 1066 Budapest, ZichyJeno utca 23. 1/9. Hungary. E-mail: [email protected]

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CREATIVITY & PROBLEM SOLVING2013, 23(1), 103-118


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conciliatory central powers between the domains, with the dominating strength tosettle, if need be, any quarrels that break out (1986, p. 130).

What can be said about the psychological effects of being artistically andscientifically creative at the same time? In the case of Leonardo, these two parts ofhis self, the scientist and the artist, were in prolonged conflict with each other, andlater the investigator surpressed the artist. Freud is also an outstanding example: he

identified himself with the scientist part, but he won the Goethe-prize in 1930 thatwas given to witers (Lohmann, 2008), although he was very ambivalent when somebodycalled psychoanalyis an art. To explore this conflict in detail, I will examine GzaCsth, who was one of the most complex and interesting figures in the history of thehumanities in Central Europe. Csth, as a writer and a physician of the mind, tried toestablish the nietzschean conciliatory central powers in a very special and fruitfulway but, after some successful years, this architecture collapsed, he became morphineaddict, murdered his wife and committed suicide.

PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY

In my investigation I use psychobiography as a method, which I believe is one of themost remarkable modes to explore the personality of the creator (Schultz, 2005c).Psychobiography is a qualitative research method that has been used since the beginningof the 20th century by psychoanalysts and personality psychologists like Allport orMurray (Runyan, 2005a). This method was criticized strongly for decades for beingnot scientific, but since narrative psychology came into view, psychologists beginto realize that this is a fruitful approach to explore complex psychological phenomenalike identity or examine how life history influences creativity and self-actualization(Kvry, 2011). Todays psychobiography integrates modern dynamic psychology withthe personological tradition and narrative personality psychology, and tries to developa systematic approach to life history analysis both theoretically and methodologically

(Elms, 2007). There are some important questions in personality and creativityresearch (like the motivation of creating, the influence of life events, the dynamics ofcreative process, the meaning of being a creator and artist) that cannot be examinedon the level of personality traits using quantitative methods, and in these cases weneed a holistic and idiographic approach and have to use case studies and interpretativemethods to avoid reductionism and oversimplification (Runyan, 1997; McAdams &Pals, 2007). These methods are not based on the linear structure of quantitativeapproaches but rather use the hermeneutic circle; Rennie (2007) believes thatqualitative methods have to apply methodological hermeneutics as a metatheoretical

background. Psychobiographers in the US are tend not to reflect on the epistemological

premises of their work; they rather use the phrase iterativity instead of hermeneuticcircle (Elms, 2007).It is also an important question that, if we have to use life history analyes, why do

we study biographies and autobiographies rather than deal with living persons? Thereare different reasons for this. If we are studying a living person, we cannot evenunfold her/his identity, which means that we have to keep a lot of important details(relationships, affairs, events, reactions) hidden because of ethical reasons. Onecannot examine the validity of our interpretations, because case studies are not basedon public data accesible for everyone. And finally, if we want to judge the value ofsomeones artistic creativity, if it really belongs to the domain of Big C (Kozbelt,


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Bighetto & Runco, 2010) we need distance in time. Philosophers like Gadamer(2006) agree that the value of contemporary art is almost impossible to discern and so,if we want to explore eminent creativity, we have to chose someone from the past,and apply phenomenological contextualism (Atwood, Stolorw & Orange, 2011),which means that we are exploring the protagonists affective experiences in theirsocial and historical context.

Gza Csth: triple artist and innovative psychiatristGza Csth (1887-1911) was a member of a progressive Hungarian intellectualmovement unfolding at the turn of the 19th-20th century and lasting for about twodecades, until about the end of World War I. At that time, Hungary was the part of theAustro-Hungarian Monarchy, and had strong connections with Vienna, one of themost important artistic and scientific centers in Europe (Schorske, 1981). In 1908, twoimportant events happened that shaped the intellectual life in Hungary (especially inBudapest) for the following years. On the first of January, the first issue of the literary

journalNyugat(West) was published, edited by Miksa Feny and Ern Osvt, and ledby Ignotus (Hug Veigelsberg).Nyugatunited the most important writers and poets

of the time: Endre Ady, Mihly Babits, Dezs Kosztolnyi, Frigyes Karinthy, ZsigmondMricz, Miln Fst, rpd Tth, Gyula Krdy and Dezs Kosztolnyis cousin,Gza Csth among several others (Czigny, 1984).

In the same year, a 35 year old physician, Sndor Ferenczi, met and made friendwith the inventor of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. In the following years, Ferenczi

became one of the closest collegues of Freud, and helped him develop the ideas ofpsychoanalysis and spread them worldwide. A few years later, in 1913, Ferenczifounded the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association (Szkcs & Keve, 2009). Ferenczifound friends and followers among writers; that is why Hungarian psychoanalyis hada very special intellectual character which made it different from other associations(Ers, 2004). There were some inquiring writers like Kosztolnyi, Karinthy and Fst,who were close friends with Ferenczi, and often visited him to get some psychoanalyticeducation. Some of them used this inspiration in their novels and short stories succesfully(Valachi, 2008). Although well known as a psychiatrist and writer using the Freudian

perspective, Csth never became the part of the Hungarian psychoanlytic movement,which was probably connected with his prevailing morphinism in the 1910s.

Csth, alias Jzsef Brenner, was born and grew up in Szabadka, which was acultural center in Hungarys southern part called Vajdasg today Vojvodina, Serbia(Szajbly, 1989). His father was a lawyer, his mother died when he was 8, whichcaused him an unprocessable trauma. The common grandfather of Csth and DezsKosztolnyi was a well known pharmacist; as children, they experienced the power of

drugs, which affected their subsequent lives. Csth and Kosztolnyi grew up as bestfriends, and they began to create short stories and poems together in high school inthe first years of the 1900s. Csth was also a talent in music and painting, thats whyhis cousine named him a triple artist. As a high school student, Csth was one ofthe first who discovered the genius of young Bla Bartk. In 1904, Csth tried toenter the music academy, but failed, and became a medical student in Budapest.Beside his medical studies he kept on writing and worked forBudapesti Napl as amusic critic.

In 1908, Csth released his first collection of short stories, The magicians garden(A varzsl kertje, 1994a); meanwhile, in the next year, he began to work at the


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famous Moravcsik Clinics department of psychiatry and neurology as a trainee. The23-year old Csth was already into the ideas of Freud and Jung, and began to applythe elements of depth-psychology in the case of a paranoid schizophrenic woman(Szajbly, 1989). That was problematic in many ways: Csth had no experience in

psychoanalytic treatment, and he began to analyse a psychotic patient, which was notusual and rather dangerous at that time. Because of the early loss of his beloved

mother, he had unsolved psychological problems that could give rise to seriouscountertransference effects in psychotherapeutic work (Harmat, 2004). Kosztolnyiwrote in Csths necrology (1919) that the choice of psychiatry was Csths unconsciousstrive to cure himself from his melancholy and he also thought that this was the

psychological source of his penmanship. During the time of this mentioned wildanalysis, a doctor examined Csths lungs and told him he might have tuberculosis.It was the writers secret fear and, to control his anxiety, he began to use morphine.The psychotic patient he treated that time had the same fear of TBC because of her illmother, and that probably influenced Csths anxiety. In the same year, Csth alsomet Olga Jns, whom he married two years later.

In 1911, Gza Csth released his second significant short story-collection, Afternoon

dream (Dlutni lom, 1994b), including some of his finest materials, likeMatricide(Anyagyilkossg) orpium (he wrote the latter one year before the begining of hismorphine use) Criticians believed his literary style has dramatically changed sinceThe magicians garden: it became more naturalistic, full of pathological and bizarreelements. Kosztolnyi (1919) stated that this was the first sign of Csths laterdisintegration.

Though slowly he became a morphine addict, these years were the highlights ofGza Csths career. In 1911, he wrote his psychiatric work called The psychicmechanism of psychoses (Az elmebetegsgek psychikus mechanismusa) which later

became part of his literary oeuvre under the name The diary of a mad woman (Egy

elmebeteg n naplja, 1983). This book was released in 1912 along with his thirdshort-story collection (Schmith, the gingerbread baker - Schmith mzeskalcsos,1994c) and the German version of his paper on Puccini. From 1913, his problemswith morphine got more and more severe, he left Budapest, and started to work as a

physician in different small town spas, where although he was a married man hehad plenty of of sexual adventures. His marriage was unbalanced; he had manyquarells and fights with Olga Jns. Between 1913 and 1919, he enetered someunsuccesful drug rehabilitations, his physical and mental status became more andmore hopeless; from his letters to Kosztolnyi (Szajbly, 1989) we know that hesuffered from losing ability and motivation to write short stories (his last book,

Musicians [Muzsikusok] was released in 1913). As a part of his disintegration, Csthdeveloped paranoid ideas about his wifes disloyalty. In 1919, July the 22nd he shotand killed Olga Jns, and tried to commit suicide. He survived and was sent to amental hospital, first to Baja, then to Szabadka. He escaped from the latter and triedto cross the border (following the Trianon peace treaty, Szabadka as Subotica

belonged to Serbia). He got caught, took a great quantity of pantopol (substitute formorphine), which killed him at the age of 32.


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QUESTIONS AND THE METHOD USED

The cousins Gza Csth and Dezs Kosztolnyi wrote more stories about matricide.Although Mller-Freienfers (1973) stated that matricide is a recurrent subject inliterature, and post-Lacanian authors like Kristeva (Bass, 2006) dealt a lot with the

psychoanalysis of symbolic matricide and its connection with creativity and language,one cannot say that it is a very common literary theme. Dezs Kosztolnyi wrote a

novel about Emperor Nero (1922/1972), who killed his mother Poppea for power, andthe title of the book (Nero, the bloody poet Nero a vres klt) refers to the emperorwishing to be a writer. His Anne Sweet(des Anna)(1926/1992) is a very complexstory about an ambivalent relationship between a lady whose baby had died and amaid who lost her mother. Their growing conflict ends up in a murder; Anne killedthe woman and her husband. Criticians agree that the crime comitted by the girl is asymbolic matricide to set herself free from an unbearable bound (Lengyel, 1998a).

Gza Csth was more explicit in his writings than his cousine. In 1911 as Imentioned above he released Afternoon dream (1994b), including Matricide (thisstory inspired Hungarian filmmaker Jnos Szsz to create a film called The Wittman-

boys; later, Szsz directed another film, Opium,about Csth-Brenner). This is not theonly short story about the death of the mother in Csths oeuvre; in his first book, Themagicians garden (1994a), we can read a story calledI met with my mother(Tallkoztamaz anymmal) which is a fantasy written in first person singular. The protagonist losther mother when he was born (indirect matricide), feeling guilty about falling in lovewith another women and imagining meeting his mother at the age when she died(Csths mother died as a young woman).

My research questions are, in this context, the following. Is it an accident that thecousin-writers paid attention to the extreme subject of matricide in their stories, orcan we find any psychological factors that might have determined their artistic choiceof subject? According to psychoanalysis, artistic creativity is connected with

unconscious fantasy and dreams (Freud, 1908). Fantasies and dreams are most of thetime about working through psychic traumas and conflicts (Segal, 1991). We knowthat the cousins both had traumatic mother-child relationships. Csths mother diedearly, which caused him a personality disorder that we would call narcissistic nowadays(Harmat, 2004). Heavily ill of addiction, he asked Kosztolnyi to write a book abouthis life and forthcoming death which would have called Stepmother, and in hisinstructions to him he wrote: Degenerate birth must be empashized. Illusions on thedead mother (Szajbly, 1989, pp. 16-17). Because of some family onflicts with thematernal grandfather, Dezs Kosztolnyis attachment to his mother was troubled,that is why he had separation anxiety and fear of death throughout his whole life

(Kosztolnyin, 1990; Nemes, 1994). Are these circumstances special enough to explaintheir common choice of the special subject matter, or should we look for somethingelse?

My second question concerns the differences between the two men. Their interestfor the subject of matricide, their positive attitudes towards psychoanalyisis, theiridentity as writers and their drug using habits were common motifs, but showimportant differences as well. When I found these motifs for analysis, I realized thatthese factors are overlaping with the categories that Leopold Szondi identified whenhe described the so called familial unconscious. Szondi, the Hungarian-then-Swiss

psychiatrist, believed that there are different unconsciouses: beside Freuds personal


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unconscious, and the Jungian collective unconscious, there is a familial unconsciousthat uses the language of choices (Szondi, 1996). Szondi was talking about four areaswithin this: the choice of love (libidotropism), the choice of ideas (idealotropism), thechoice of profession (operotropism) and the choice of illness and death (morbotropism).Szondi stated that these choices are determined by the familial unconscious, though ifthe person becomes aware of these powers, she/he has a chance to make other

decisions. Szondis theory is contested (e.g. he connected familial unconscious togenes) and accepted only in a few countries; in my paper I do not use it as an explanation,but I think his categories (which are based on scientific explorations) can be appliedphenomenologically to conceptualize data for psychobiographical analysis.

To get appropriate answers to these complex questions I used the above mentionedpsychobiography or life history analysis. Psychobiographers use first person andsecondary documents as a source (Allport, 1942), and apply special models to organizelife history data, for example primary indicators of psychological saliency (Alexander,1990), prototypical scenes in life histories (Schultz, 2005), or check some structuralcomponents variables in them (McAdams, 1988). To evaluate psychobiographicalinterpretations we have to take into account cogency, narrative structure, comprehen-

siveness, logical soundness, consistency, and viability. The convergence of data andscientific theoretical support are also very important, and the interpretations credibilityhas to be comparable to that of other interpretations (Schultz, 2005, a; Runyan, 2005).Beside single cases there is a growing interest nowadays towards comparative

psychobiography (Elms, 2007). As literature historian Zoltn Dr (1980) called Csthand Kosztolnyi twin stars, their relationship and the similarity of their interestsgave me the idea to use the special form of life history analysis called multiple case

psychobiography (Isaacson, 2005). We can use this method if we want to look at awork that is a product of two individuals, look at both parties of a relationship, orcompare two people who have something in common and are connected by a direct or

indirect relationship. In this case, I will compare two people who, besides categoricalpairing, also had direct contact. Due to the iterative nature of psychobiography, I hadto decide whether we make a serial itertation (one analysis after another) or a parallelone. In the latter case, all of the data for the subjects is treated as a single set; in myanalysis I chose this approach.

Twin stars analysis and interpretation via Szondis categoriesOpreotropism being an artistDezs Kosztolnyi was a homo aestheticus: language, reading and writing were his

passions. He believed that the usage of language is the functioning of the psyche: hewrote a complete book about it (Language and soul Nyelv s llek, 2002). Istvn

Holls, who was the Hungarian translater of Freuds Interpretation of Dreams, triedto develop a psychoanalytic theory of language, and he used the help of Kosztolnyi;during their sessions they found out the adequate Hungarian translation of many

psychoanalytic terms. Holls was the model for an important physician in KosztolnyisAnne Sweet(Lengyel, 1998b). According to Nemes, Kosztolnyis love for his mothertongue is connected with his frustrated primary love towards his mother (Nemes,1994). Language was an extremely important object of attachment hroughout his wholelife, even on his death bed, when due to his illness he lost the ability of speaking andused writing to communicate (Kosztolnyin, 1990). We can say that Kosztolnyisidentity was stable, he identified himself with the role of the writer, and although he


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had a lot of neurotic problems and used different drugs language amd literatureprovided him the coherence of the self throughout his life.

The case of Csth is much more complicated. He chose medicine as a profession which astonished Kosztolnyi and as a psychiatrist he kept his original name: JzsefBrenner; meanwhile he wrote and published his short stories and criticism under hischosen name: Gza Csth. This kind of organization of the self points to the phenomenon

of the romantic doppelgnger, the double, which is best known through the novel ofRobert Louis Stevenson, The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2002). In thisbook a well respected physician is turning into a human beast under the influence ofsome self-made drugs. This image of the double arose the interest of psychoanalysisfor a long time. We can find it in Freuds writing The Uncanny (1919), Otto Rankwrote an entire book on this subject (1989), there is a similar concept under the nameof The Shadow in Jungs theory (1966), and also in Heinz Kohuts view of thetripolar self as twin or alterego needs (1984). Kohut said that the need for analterego is part of the persons narcissistic and self developement. According to him(1971), creativity is a mature form of narcissism, so its not a surprise that modernartists and thinkers of the Romanticism often had twin-like friendships, for instance,

Goethe and Schiller, Wordsworth and Colereidge, or Friedrich Schlegel andSchleiermacher (Doorman, 2006).

Kosztolnyi and Csth both had their double, but they elaborated their need for analterego in a different way. Kosztolnyi published a short story collection in 1933called Esti Kornl (2011); it is about the adventures of a figure that represents hisdarker side. That is an optimal artistic solution for an unintegrated part of the self,

because - according to Scheff (Kahn, 1981) - it creates an optimal aesthetic distancefor the subject. George Hagman (2000) called this action transmutative externalization,which helps the artist to reestablish his inner coherency not through the accrual ofself-structure, but through alteration of the artwork (p. 289). If the solution is too

close to the self, it raises anxiety and threatens its coherency. Csth created hisdouble within his personality, which is an unstable position. He was Jzsef Brenner,the phisycian, and Gza Csth, the writer. In 1910, when he started to use drugs,everything became confused, because he slowly began to lose his ability to writeliterature; meanwhile, as I mentioned above, his psychotic patient, Gizella, was agraphomaniac and that permenently reminded him of that. Seeing a graphomaniacwhile loosing the ability to write short stories was a curved mirror to Brenner/Csth,which undermined his self esteem (Mszly, 2004). Csths self-organization hadanother special characteristic. He was not a single but a triple artist; his artistic partwas divided into three sub-parts: a writer, a musician and a painter (Szajbly, 1989).These were, of course, not equal, but music for example played and extremelyimportant role in his life. If his artistic self were not a writer but an explicit musicianor a painter, it could have been easier for him, because literature and psychologystand so close that they are easily confused (Moghaddam, 2004). According toLinville (1987), high complexity of the self is a buffer against stress and depression,

but also a source of inner conflicts, because each part is eager for expression. As such,being such a complex man has both its advantages and disadvantages psychologicallyand Csths problems might have been connected with this state.


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Idealotropism analyis of the psychePsychoanalysis played a very important role in the cousins lives. They both met withthis theory and practiced it in the first decade of the 20th century; Kosztolnyi, whilehe was studying in Wien, Csth, as a medical student. They were both impressed byFreuds science, but the way they incorporated it into their thinking was different.Kosztolnyi, although he believed that psychoanalysis was the most important

intellectual revolution since reformation, and wrote a poem about Freud, usedpsychoanalysis as a tool softly, and was also able to keep a healthy distance fromdepth psychology. In his poemEsti Kornl neke (The song of Esti Kornl) he speaksironically about the divers of the deep soul, and although he suffered from differentneurotic symptoms and had a lot of psychoanalyst friends, he refused to attend

psychoanalytic treatment - maybe in order to defend the source of his creativity(Harmat, 1994).

Gza Csth was different and ambivalent. As a psychiatrist, he was very much intopsychoanalyis; as a doctor, he used it; and, as a theoretic writer, he propagatedFreuds ideas as true knowledge about human nature (Szajbly, 1989). In his 1912

book,Diary of a mad woman (original title: Psychic mechanism of psychoses,1983)

he not only applied psychoanalyis but, in a theoretical chapter, he developed his ownpsychoanalytic model for the psyche which was criticized strongly by Ferenczi(Harmat, 1994).

As a writer, in his first bookThe magicians garden, Gza Csth used psychological-psychoanalytic knowledge about human soul in a sophisticated way. These stories arefull of emotions, nostalgic moods, impressionistic visuality and art noveau sensitivity.His second significant volume, Afternoon dream, three years later, has a differenttonality. His voice became more realistic and naturalistic and, as his critics wrote, the

book includes short stories of the Freudian doctor (Szajbly, 1989). Kosztolnyi(1919) stated that this change was the first sign of his later disintegration. How can

we conceptualize these changes? According to Loewald (1980), the necessary balancebetween the primary and secondary process (or emotional and intellectual) componentsof his language capsized, and Csth began to lose his artistic tools to sublimate andexpress his conflicts and waving of his affective life. For some years on, he succeededin covering this erosion of emotional creativity (Averill & Thomas-Knowles 1991)with his non-emotional psychiatric stories, but later some of these writings becametoo theoretical, and the theoretical model he elaborated about the psyche in hisscientific works began to dominate and bind his thinking (Harmat, 1994). Csthsuffered badly from losing his ability and mood for writing, and also had a paranoidfear that, if he had written something, some other people could have read his hiddenwishes from the texts as he did with others using his psychoanalytic knowledge(Csth, 1989).

Morbotropism litany of the poisonsAs I mentioned earlier, the grandfather of the two writers, Jzsef Brenner the eldest,was a famous pharmacist in Szabadka, so the cousins had an early experienceconcerning drugs they were the masters of life and death. Drugs played importantrole in their lives. In the October of 1933, Kosztolnyis wife discovered that hishusband had been using morphine for about 8-10 years, which helped her touderstand a lot of strange things about the poets behaviour (Kosztolnyin, 1990). Inhis poem,Litany of the poisons (Mrgek litnija) Kosztolnyi wrote: I love them all.


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And they love me all too (1984, p. 302). In Kosztolnyis novelAnne Sweet, a youngman, Patikrius Jancsi (roughly Johnny Pharmacist), seduces and conceives the

protagonist, and later they carry out the necessary abortion with some poison whichnearly kills Anne (1992). Kosztolnyi, who was a heavy smoker and drank manycoffees each day, never became fatally addicted to morphine. When his wife discoveredhis secret, he decided to give up his habit; he was suffering from severe withdrawal

symptoms but finally he succeeded without any institutionalized rehabilitation. Hedied at 51, after a long struggle with gum cancer.The details of Gza Csths morphinism are well known (Szajbly, 1989). He

began to use the drug in 1910, in a few years he became an addict and, as we knowfrom hisDiary1912-1913 (1989), he was desperately trying to get rid of the drug first

by himself, then in 1913 and 1915 in closed institutions unsuccesfully. In 1919 hespent more then one month in a psychiatric department in Baja, and in his agony hedealt with the idea of suicide. He escaped from the hospital and committed the murder,than killed himself.

What made this brilliant young man a morphine user? According to Harmat (2004),the trauma of his mothers death when he was 8 deeply wounded this sensitive child.

Kosztolnyi believed that his drug use (just like his choice of being a psychiatrist)was an unconscious endeavor to cure himself from the melancholy that came from theloss of his childhood paradise. That is how he escaped from the soul-chasing of Themagicians garden andAfternoon dream, from thenervous exaltation which he wastrying to cure with morphine Morphinism is always an effect, not a cause. When he

began to apply this poison, he unconsciously knew that he had chosen the smallerdanger instead of the bigger one. He tried to escape from the melancholy whichreverberates in his writings through after-life sweet songs (Kosztolnyi, 1919, pp.16-17). As I mentioned above, Csth took the drug for the first time when he learnedhe might have tuberculosis, and it happened during the time he was in a wild

analysis with a psychotic woman fearing the same desease (Addiction is self-medicalization, an unconscious endeavor to create self-coherency that is missing inthe case of personality disorders, especially in borderline and narcissistic ones; Ulman& Paul, 2006). Gza Csth had to pay a lot for this medication: he lost his incentive to

be creative, than he became a murderer and finally lost his life.

Libidotropism love and matricideWe know that the cousine writers both had troubled early relationships with theirmothers and it might have caused them a basic fault, a serious early emotionaldevelopment disorder (Balint, 1989) Can this be the psychological source of theirartistic interest for the subject of matricide, or is there something more? It is

remarkable that their pharmacist grandfather, Jzsef Brenner, lost his mother when hewas born (just like the storyteller in CsthsI met with my mother!) and was raised bya stepmother who caused him emotional problems (Czeizel, 1997). We have to keep itin mind that Stepmother would have been the title of Csths life story novelwritten by Kosztolnyi, and the lady that was killed by Anne Sweet in Kosztolnyisnovel was also a kind of stepmother to Anne. It is also important to mention that theHungarian title of Kosztolnyis book, des Anna, refers to the Hungarian worddesanya which means the biological mother. The indirect matricide that wascaused by the birth of the grandfather could it be the source of a transgenerationaltrauma? This trauma might have remained unprocessed and become a family taboo in


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the cousins family, and during their childhood they could have develop fantasiesabout that (Fantasy is always an effort to overcome the trauma). Although, we cannever be sure about that, this interpretation is worth considering. The theory of Hungarian

born French psychoanalyst Nicolas Abraham about transgenerational traumas mighthelp us in this regard. Abraham says that, if an emotional loss is impossible to integrate,it creates an encapsulated intrapsychic structure he called the crypt. The crypt can

become a phantom to the next generations causing the same symptoms and problemsas the crypt (Abraham & Torok, 1984). In trauma research there is en evident thatfor example traumas of the holocaust can seriously harm the children of the survivors(Jucovy, 1992). The matricide caused by the grandfather that combined with thereal (Csth) and symbolic (Kosztolnyi) loss of their own mother - could it be thesource of the boys fantasies, that later transformed into stories about killing themother?

Matricide fantasies have psychoanalytic interpretations. Freudian psychoanalysiswith its oedipal focus dealt mostly with the motif of parricide, for example, in thecase of Dostoyevsky (Freud, 1928). The question of matricide became more importantwhen the object-relational theories of Melanie Klein or Margaret Mahler became well

known and important in the second half of 20 th century (Mahler, 1981; Segal, 1980).Matricide fantasies are about depenedency, loss and aggression; the latter helps thesubject to break out from the symbiosis with the mother and makes individuation

possible. Kiremidjian (1976) had this kind of interpretation for Dostoevskys Crimeand punishment; meanwhile,after Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristveainterpreted the fantasy of matricide as a necessary action to step in the fathers worldof language, to create ones real self and to be creative (Bass, 2006).

There are some remarkable differences between Kosztolnyis and Csthselaboration of this subject. Kosztolnyis choice of title is very sophisticated, whileCsth is very direct with hisMatricide. The protagonist, Ann Sweet in Kosztolnyis

novel is a woman, but the model of this character in some respects was Kosztolnyihimself (Lengyel, 1998b). Csths heroes in Matricide, the Wittman boys who killtheir mother, remind very much of Kosztolnyins (1990) description of the youngcousins life in Szabadka. This distinction can be also interpreted. According to Krisidea (2000), artwork is similar to dreamwork: during the creative process theunconscious self uses condensation, displacement, representation and symbolizationto transform the fantasy material into an acceptable format and establish an optimalaesthetical distance (Kahn, 1981) and help the transmutative externalization (Hagman,2006). If the trauma is not worked through extensively enough, the transformedmaterial remains too close to its unconscious origins, and might cause problems, forexample anxiety or fear of losing control. The unrevised unconscious fantasy can be apsychic explosive because of the raw impulses it contains; and in certain circumstancesit can cause an acting out. This might had happened to Gza Csth who had a troubledrelationship with Olga Jns. The couple had a lot of arguments and sometimes physicalfights, and as Csths self got more and more disintegrated, he became suspiciousabout his wifes loyalty, although he was the one who had different sexual adventureswith his patients (Szajbly, 1989). When he lost his literary instruments to sublimateand externalize his passions and fantasies in a symbolic way, and his personality

became disorganized because of his addiction, the fantasy of (symbolic) matricidebecame a bloody reality, and Gza Csth murdered his wife.


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DISCUSSION

Using multiple case or comparative psychobiography (Isaacson, 2005) as a method, Iintended to analyse the characteristics of two outstanding Hungarian writers from the

begining of the 20th century. Dezs Kosztolnyi and Gza Csth (Jzsef Brenner) werecousins, they were part of Hungarys outstanding intellectual movement organized bythe literary journal Nyugat, they were interested in psychoanalysis, used drugs and

wrote stories about matricide, which can not be an accident. I referred to the fact thattheir early traumatic attachment experiences are probably not enough to explain theirspecial subject choice, because they are not specific enough: according to Barron(1953) and Cskszentmihlyi (1996), a lot of creative persons experience earlydeprivation. I suggested that the pharmacist grandfathers indirect matricide as atransgenerational trauma or phantom (Abraham & Torok, 1984) could be a sourceof their fantasies that later became raw material for artistic creation, in agreementwith psychoanalytic theories.

I also tried to evince that the differences in their attitudes, behaviour and identificationsin these particular domains are very distinctive. Kosztolnyi had a stable identity as a

writer and homo aestheticus; he applied his psychanalytic knowledge in his art in asophisticated way but also kept a distance, he used drugs but got rid of his addictionby himself. His need for an alterego was elaborated in his stories aboutKornl Esti,his relationship with his wife, Ilona Harmos, was not without problems but lasted fora lifetime (Kosztolnyin, 1990). His version of matricide is discerning, the materialseems to be worked through enough psychologically. Csth was more troubled andcomplicated. His multiple identities divided his self which was a source of conflictsand vulnerability. He was Dr. Jzsef Brenner, a psychiatrist, and Gza Csth, writer,musician and painter, and he became his own alterego. He went too deep in

psychoanalysis: did a wild analysis with a psychotic woman and probably developedunresolved countertransference. When he wrote his case study about her, he not only

used psychoanalytic concepts but developed his own version which Sndor Ferenczifound causeless. In the begining of his writering career, psychoanalys inspired Csth,later it imprisoned his mind in its own theory of complexes, and it consumed hiscreativity. He became a heavy user of morphine, which indirectly led to his early deathat 32 years of age. He had a troubled marriage, marked by promiscuity and severeconflicts and, after he lost his capability to sublimate his inner conflits and passion, helost control, murdered his wife and comitted suicide.

This analysis can suggest that Gza Csth was a man with more serious self-disorders, but I didnt intend to prove that; contemporary psychobiography avoids theways of pathography (Schultz, 2005a). I also didnt want to state anything about the

aesthetic value of the creations of these pensmen, because it belongs not to art psychologybut aesthetics; I focused on some personal sources of their artistic creativity. I believethat psychobiography is a useful method to study artistic states, and we have anumber of reasons to prefer this method when we want to understand the complexityof the creative person and the creative process (Kvry, 2011). We also have to keepin mind that outstanding psychologists like Rank, Rogers, Maslow, Cskszentmihlyi

believe that creativity is not only a concept in the psychology of arts, but a keyconcept to understand the functioning of the mind and human personality as a whole.That is also the final aim of a psychobiographical investigation of an artist (Schultz,2005c).


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Key words: Artistic creativity, Scientific creativity, Psychoanalysis, Doublepsychobiography

matricide and creativity: the case of two hungariancousin-writers from the perspectiveof...

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