Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was often illustrated in the form of an iceberg, as the id, lying beneath the surface of the conscious mind, is of great size and presence like the bottom of an iceberg. “Iceberg” image courtesy of Uwe Kil on WikiCommons under CC 3.0 , edited by Fletcher Varnson in photoshop.
Only just preceding literary modernism was the introduction of psychoanalytic theory to America. Psychologist William James of Harvard Annex was the first to provide a psychology course in American colleges in 1875, where the likes of Gertrude Stein had studied before becoming an emblem of the modernist movement (Belasco and Johnson 840; vol. 2). The impact Sigmund Freud’s theory had on modernist poets and writers was profound. The Austrian psychologist ‘reduced human individuality to sex drive” (Norton) kept hidden away in the unconscious mind. Thus, the behavior and attitudes people adopt, no matter how heroic or kind they were, became, for modernists, mere suggestions of an underlying urge for sex.
TS Eliot exemplifies this perspective on human individuality in his poem “ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The poem follows a titular narrator’s thoughts as he takes an unknown person on a walk, avoiding a question he has for them. In the poem, Eliot writes:
“Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window”.
– (8-17).
Eliot has his narrator take his unknown companion down streets he finds frightening and malicious, and he claims that the question he has for his companion is one of weight and importance; yet, all of the sudden, Prufrock finds himself alone in a room of women speaking of the Renaissance painter Michelangelo, and, despite the importance of his question, he would rather compare a billow of London smog to a cat.
A young J. Alfred Prufrock—er—TS Eliot at college.
The fragmented, confusing nature of the piece is meant to imply particular qualities of Prufrock’s mind. Just as psychoanalytic theory would suggest, Eliot’s poem insists that Prufrock, who ostensibly has something important to say, feels impotent—indeed, in a sexual manner—in comparison to the grandeur of Michelangelo.
The human individual is reduced to underlying thoughts of sexual competence in “Prufrock.” This stands in stark contrast with the romantic understanding of the mind seen with the Transcendentalists. For them, the human individual has an implicit relationship with the divine; modernists only see an implicit connection to the filthiness of sex.