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CLASSICAL ESSAY |
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by Ludwig Klages
The typical hysterical person is incapable of not following his longing to represent; but that does not mean at all that he cannot control himself. If, for example, it is necessary to represent self-control, then he can endure with remarkable equanimity insults, mockery, degradations, and bodily torments of the severest kind. One thing only he can never repress -- his desire to represent. For he has not a single substantial interest of real importance to oppose to this desire, and the rich store of energy at his disposal pours undivided and not to be dammed into this one craving. If one wanted to call him a mere actor, it would be necessary to add that he suffers from a passion to simulate passions, and that no genuine passion could be more irresistible, overpowering, and consistent (that is, like an impulse) than this. And if one wanted to call him thoroughly sophisticated, then it would have to be considered again that a permanent spice of intentionality does in fact flavor his every attitude, but in a different manner, and in one harder to recognize than a man who has ceased to be naive merely because he has inhibitions; for here the mask itself has become sovereign. He is not an actor so much as a man wearing a mask which has grown into his flesh; or rather, he carries behind the mask no living being but a clockwork, ready to follow the suggestions of the mask. In Klen Zaches oder Zinnober, Amadeus Hoffman has prophetically dealt with the reflective nature which assimilates everything, and, by excelling makes it valueless; and, in the Sandmann, has given a fantastic treatment to the life-mimicking automaton. The definite characteristic of the hysterical attitude is, that there is a relationship to the spectator. Those who must represent something, represent it for the benefit of a spectator; by choice a real stranger, if not an imaginary one, or as a last resource the spectator within himself. Accordingly no hysterical person is ever attentive to the matter in hand, and whatever he does or leaves undone is not done or left undone with a view to the effect, but is itself the effect by anticipation which itself suggests the idea of the goal from moment to moment; hence a change of surroundings may be accompanied by a change in behavior of a kind which shows some points of similarity with that of a medium. Here the type of hysterical exaltation is sharply distinguished from the vain man and from those who require to please or to win approval. The latter wish to appear superior in some respect, or to evoke affection or gain esteem' but the hysterical type wishes to excite attention either by creating amazement or admiration, or by challenging those other feelings, which are even more suitable for the purpose, of aversion, loathing, disgust, horror, indignation, contempt, and fury. It happens quite commonly that faults are invented, that a hysterical woman claims to have been raped, and a man to have raped, and even fictitious confessions of alleged murder have been known. The typically hysterically crime of Herostratus may here be recalled.
Excerpted from The Science of Character, by Ludwig Klages |
The
science of
character, Handschrift
und Charakter,
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