Bad Habits of the Heart: Werther’s Critique of Ill Humor in the Context of Contemporary Psychological Thought

Abstract

The importance of contemporary psychology and philosophical anthropology to an understanding of late eighteenth-century German literature has been highlighted in several major studies published in the last four decades.1 Although Werther has been interpreted in the context of diverse aspects of contemporary psychophysiological thought,2 the discussion of ill humor (uble Laune) in the text has not been subjected to renewed scrutiny against this backdrop. This article endeavors to close this gap, placing Werther's views on ill humor in their contemporary psychological context and exploring anew their significance for the novel as a whole. In so doing, it challenges the interpretation of in Werther put forth by Stuart Atkins in 1948 in his seminal article J. C. Lavater and Goethe, and largely unquestioned sincenamely, that Werther succumbs to the very vice against which he inveighs.3 Situating the treatment of in Werther in the context of contemporary psychology, this article urges reassessment of this position, in particular because discussions of ill humor by eighteenth-century German psychologists raised issues of free will and responsibility that render Atkins's interpretation problematical. Furthermore, this article also highlights the importance of the theme of ill humor in underscoring the ambiguity of Werther's suicide.Werther's Speech in the Light of Contemporary Psychological Discussions of 111 HumorIn his letter of July 1,1771, Werther relates delivering his impassioned speech on to an audience of Lotte, the old pastor of St. and his wife, their daughter Friederike, and her suitor Herr Schmidt, whose apparent ill humor and its assumed impact on the assembled company have served to provoke Werther's indignation. Werther's curiously precise description of in this speech as innerer Unmuth uber unsere eigene Unwurdigkeit, ein Misfallen an uns selbst, das immer mit einem Neide verknupft ist, der durch eine thorichte Eitelkeit aufgehetzt wird (an inner with our own unworthiness, a with ourselves forever tied to envy that is stimulated by foolish vanity),4 has been the source of some critical debate. The most straightforward part of this statement, the identification of ill humor as dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness and displeasure with ourselves, refers to a tendency inherent in to be self-perpetuating that was also remarked on by contemporary writers on psychology. Dissatisfaction and ill humor lock us in a vicious cycle, for we become bad-tempered over our bad temper. In a contribution to his own journal of psychology from 1788, Karl Friedrich Pockels describes how the shame felt by victims of bose at their bad behavior generates more of the same because it produces a defensive response:Wir fuhlen es nicht selten, das wir dabei gefehlt haben, das wir in unsrer bosen Laune zu weit gegangen sind;-allein diese innere Scham bringt uns oft noch mehr auf. Wir wollen nicht gern das Ansehn haben, als ob wir gefehlt hatten, und wir suchen alsdenn eine noch grosere Hitze zum Beweise unsrer gerechten Sache zu machen.5[We often realize that we've made a mistake, and that we've gone too far in our bad mood-but this inner feeling of shame just makes us more irritable. We don't want to be seen to have done wrong, so we try to defend the justice of our cause by being even more ill-tempered.]Similarly, for Lavater in his Jonah sermons, the defensiveness that characterizes sufferers of threatens to undermine their entire moral character:Ach! wenn man einmal unzufrieden gethan hat, einmal murrisch und launisch gewesen, so will man es nicht gestehen, und die erste uble Laune mit der zweyten rechtfertigen und gleichsam bedecken. Man will den andern abschrecken, uns Vorwurfe zu machen; Man fugt Unrecht an Unrecht; Man will Sunde durch Sunde verdrangen.... So schrecklich zerruttet Unzufriedenheit und uble Laune das Herz, und den ganzen Character des Menschen. …