Abschlussbewegungen: Goethe, Freud, and Spectral Forms of Life

Abstract

Abschlussbewegungen:Goethe, Freud, and Spectral Forms of Life Bryan Klausmeyer On June 21, 1831—less than a year before his death on March 22, 1832—Goethe writes to his friend and fellow botanist E. H. F. Meyer, "Daß ich nahe am Ende meiner Laufbahn noch von dem Strudel der Spiraltendenz ergriffen werden sollte, war auch ein wunderlich Geschick" (LA 1.4:251; That I, at the end of my life, should still be seized by the vortex of the spiral tendency, was also a wondrous fate).1 Here Goethe alludes to his discovery late in life of a "Spiraltendenz" (spiral tendency) said to inhere in all plants, a claim that he first put forth in his late essay "Über die Spiraltendenz der Vegetation" (1830–31; "The Spiral Tendency of Vegetation"). In the introduction to that text he asserts: "Wir mußten annehmen: es walte in der Vegetation eine allgemeine Spiraltendenz, wodurch, in Verbindung mit dem vertikalen Streben, aller Bau, jede Bildung der Pflanzen, nach dem Gesetze der Metamorphose vollbracht wird" (FA 24:777; We must assume that a universal spiral tendency presides in vegetation through which, in connection with vertical striving, every structure, every formation of plants, is realized according to the laws of metamorphosis). Although Goethe insists that his new theory of the spiral tendency ought to be understood as conforming to and buttressing his first published treatise on plant metamorphosis from 1790, his letters, notes, and journal entries attest to the profound difficulties he encountered in bringing this later discovery into harmony with his earlier botanical theory. In light of this unacknowledged problematic in his published scientific writings, I would like to begin this article by delving further into Goethe's fascination with the spiral in order to show how his revisions to the theory of metamorphosis some forty years later call into question the viability of key aspects of his morphological method. More specifically, while numerous scholars have persuasively argued that Goethe's initial treatise on the metamorphosis of plants is grounded in a method of "anschauende Urteilskraft" (intuitive judgment), which depends on the morphologist's ability to unite the "Geistes-Augen" (eyes of the mind) with the "Augen des Leibes" (FA 24:432; eyes of the body),2 scant attention has been paid to the problems introduced by Goethe's later theory of the spiral tendency, which resists such ocular dissection. This is because the spiral tendency appears as an uncanny force at the threshold of perception; rather than attaining a determinate shape or form, it continually eludes representation, manifesting itself as a monster, specter, and even as an abyssal "Strudel" (vortex) within the field of vision. [End Page 163] Second, I argue that the problem of perception introduced by the spiral tendency can only be understood in relation to Goethe's belief that the latter is not opposed to, but closely associated with, the possibility of death, an assertion that undermines the teleological and vitalist assumptions inherent in his earlier theory of metamorphosis. On the basis of Goethe's view of the spiral tendency as a force toward death, which imbues the latter with an economy of motion to which he lends aesthetic dignity, I will conclude by analyzing the compelling correspondences between Goethe's idea of the spiral tendency and Sigmund Freud's conception of life in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (1920; Beyond the Pleasure Principle). Taking as his starting point the claim that the lifespan of an organism can be regarded as an "Umwege zum Tode" (detour to death), Freud substantially revised his previous neuroeconomic theories of the mind by introducing into psychoanalytic discourse his new theory of the "Triebe" (drives) as a counterpart to prevailing biological ideas. At the same time, Freud's metapsychology—like Goethe's morphology—also raises questions of representability in a radical way by drawing attention to the limits of discursive knowledge in relation to observation and intuition. Through this comparison it will be shown how Goethe and Freud not only conceive of life in relation to death, but also how both proceed methodologically by way of numerous detours—Umwege—into the contemporaneous discourses of the sciences of life, and thereby transgress the boundaries between the human...