Strindberg's Representation of Anxiety in The Father: Between Naturalistic Determinism and Existential Indeterminism

Abstract

Fadren (1887; The Father [1998]) has traditionally been considered one of Strindberg's naturalistic plays. However, it has also been read as a play that anticipates movements such as symbolism, nihilism, and expressionism.1 Some proponents of the naturalistic interpretation base their arguments on the thematics of the play, pointing to the power struggle between the sexes that takes place in the play and claiming that this is a prototypical naturalist trope. In this line of research, some scholars refer to Strindberg's personal ambitions to become part of the naturalist European theater scene, which became apparent as he mailed the manuscript to Émile Zola in order to achieve his recognition. Other scholars zero in on the play's various symbolic and mythopoeic tropes, arguing that the representation of ghosts, spiritualism, and mythological allusions goes beyond the naturalistic framework and foreshadows movements such as symbolism and expressionism. This line of interpretation finds support in the following remarks that Strindberg wrote to journalist Axel Lundegård in November 1887: Det förefaller mig som om jag går i sömnen; som om dikt och lif blandats. Jag vet inte om Fadren är en dikt eller om mitt lif varit det; men det tyckes mig som om detta i et gifvet snart stundande ögonblick skulle komma att gå upp för mig, och då ramlar jag ihop antingen i vansinne med samvetsqval eller i sjelfmord. . . . Ja, men det är ju rätta konseqvenserna af den nya verldsåskadningen, indeterminismen, och möjligt är att det är af ovana vid det nya jag häpnar och fruktar. (Strindberg 1958, 298)It seems to me as if I am walking in my sleep; as if poetry and life are mixed. I don't know if The Father is a poem or if my life has been one; but it appears to me as if this ought, in a given, soon approaching moment, to become clear to me, and then I shall collapse in madness and pangs of conscience or in suicide. . . . Yes, but these are of course the just consequences of the new world view, indeterminism, and it is possible that my unaccustomedness to the new is what amazes and terrifies me. (quoted in Bellquist 1986, 533)In these remarks, Strindberg blurs the distinction between fiction and reality, reason and madness. Remarkably, he also emphasizes “indeterminism” as the “new world view.” This notion is in stark contrast to a central philosophical tenet of naturalism: the idea that man is strictly determined by inheritance and environment, psychologically as well as behaviorally. Strindberg's emphasis on “indeterminism” reveals that he was clearly aware that The Father had the potential to transcend the grounding doctrines of naturalism. Or as John Eric Bellquist puts it: “The consolatory determinism of the naturalist had made way for an indeterminate chaos” (Bellquist 1986, 533). Thus, The Father is a play that in certain respects substantiates naturalistic determinism, but it is as much a play that paves the way for an existential indeterminism that challenges the naturalistic point of departure.In what follows, I show that the Captain's anxiety serves as an overarching structural principle that unites the two seemingly incompatible interpretations of the play. On the level of content, I demonstrate that the Captain's anxiety is determined by hereditary factors and environmental influences. I thereby wish to underpin the naturalistic reading of the play. On the level of form, however, I show that the Captain's states of anxiety are couched in images that challenge the scientific determinism of naturalism. I thereby want to provide further evidence in support of the mythopoeic emphasis on the play. Specifically, I show that the Captain's lapse into insanity stems from various states of anxiety predominantly expressed in irrational images that initiate the Captain's transition from reality into fictitious and mythological realms. Moreover, I show how Sigmund Freud's distinction between real anxiety and neurotic anxiety and Søren Kierkegaard's conception of existential objectless anxiety can positively shed light on the Captain's anxiety complex. Finally, I consider the implications of Strindberg's representation of anxiety for the question of whether the play is better read as a naturalistic or a non-naturalistic play.2One of the most notable stylistic tenets in The Father are the recurring images of anxiety, which are pervasive throughout the play. These images underwrite the non-naturalist reading of the play inasmuch as they challenge the scientific-objective ideals of naturalism.3 In the opening exchange in which the Captain and the Pastor discuss Bertha's future, the audience is provided with further knowledge about the Captain's anxiety that seems to stem from his deteriorated authority in the house. The Captain explains that his house is “full of women” who desire to exert an influence on Bertha's upbringing from various spiritual perspectives, vis-à-vis Methodist, Baptist, and Christian ones, all of which are incompatible with the Captain's deep-seated atheism. Laura, Laura's mother, Bertha's governess, old Margaret, and even the maids of the house are trying to influence Bertha's outlook. As the patriarch of the house, the Captain is aware of his legal right to decide Bertha's future, yet he senses that he is by no means able to get his way. He is concerned that Bertha cannot grow up to be a whole person when she is constantly being pulled in different spiritual directions. As the Captain puts it: “It's no way to patch a soul together” (Strindberg 1998, 6). The Captain, being the rationalist in the house, uses a surprisingly irrational image to describe his state of anxiety: PASTORN. Du har för mycket kvinnor, som regera i ditt hus.RYTTMÄSTARN. Ja, har jag inte det! Det är som att gå in i buren till tigrarna, och höll jag inte mina järn röda under näsen på dem, så skulle de riva ner mig vilken stund som helst! (Strindberg 1984, 17)PASTOR. You've too many women running your home.CAPTAIN. You can say that again! It's like being in a cage full of tigers. If I didn't keep a red-hot iron in front of their noses they'd tear me to pieces the first chance they got! (Strindberg 1998, 6)In this exchange, anxiety is represented in a simile that further grounds anxiety as a central theme in The Father. The Captain feels as if walking into his house is like walking into a cage full of tigers, representing the religious women of the household.4 He fears that he will be torn into pieces if he does not retain the ability to control these ferocious tigresses. Carl Reinhold Smedmark has read the Captain's downfall as a tragedy of “atheistic determinism,” a theme that is developed in the Captain's conflicts with the spiritual women of the house (Smedmark 1964, 194). Being the only atheist in the house, the Captain is constantly challenged by the women who surround him with metaphysical visions. Hence, the struggle for Bertha's future must not be interpreted merely as a naturalistic power struggle between man and woman. It is as much a struggle between modern atheism and various spiritual perspectives, a struggle between rationality and spirituality that brings the atheist scientist into an existential cul-de-sac. The Captain's epistemological and existential security are threatened by the women of the house, representing both concrete and abstract objects of his anxiety. The Captain is physically outnumbered as the single male in the house as well as ideologically outnumbered as the only atheist in the house. The Captain's anxiety derives, initially, from this trembling state of tension in the house. At the beginning of the play, the religious women constitute the atheist Captain's primary cause of anxiety.Laura is portrayed as the character who most directly embodies this threat. She is not willing to give up the fight for Bertha's future, and the battle between her and her husband develops rapidly in the last scenes of the first act. Here, the Captain refers to the law as an authority argument that he is entitled to decide Bertha's future. Laura, on the other hand, grasps the possibility of undermining the Captain's authority even further by involving the Doctor in a conspiracy to make it appear that the Captain has lost his mind. Sensing this conspiracy taking form, the Captain turns to Margret, his old nurse, to find comfort, revealing his escalating anxiety with a striking figurative expression of irrational paranoia: RYTTMÄSTARN. Men nu säger jag dig Margret, om du nu överger mig, så gör du synd. För nu spinnes här omkring mig, och den där doktorn är inte min vän! (Strindberg 1984, 37)CAPTAIN. Only to me, I know. But let me tell you, Margret, if you desert me now you commit a sin. There's a web being spun about me here, and that Doctor's no friend of mine! (Strindberg 1998, 18)This remark constitutes a shift in the representation of anxiety in the play. In the discussion between the Captain and the Pastor, the Captain despairingly pronounced that he was afraid of being torn apart by the female tigers of the house. However, in the dialogue with Margret, anxiety appears as an indefinite threat, a trap. The Captain is now afraid of something that he is no longer able to define: RYTTMÄSTARN. Hjälp mig, för jag känner att här kommer att hända något. Jag vet inte vad det är, men det är inte riktigt, det som nu tildrar sig—Skrik inifrån våningen. Vad är det! Vem är det som skriker! (Strindberg 1984, 38)THE CAPTAIN. Help me! Something's about to happen here, I know it is. I don't know what exactly, but it isn't right, whatever it is. [There is a scream from within.] What was that? Who screamed? (Strindberg 1998, 18)The object of the Captain's anxiety shifts from an external to an internal threat. The Captain is not only afraid of the women in the house, but also that something terrible will happen to him. Yet he does not know what it is. Moreover, the image of entrapment gives rise to a series of images associated with entanglement. As noted by Harry G. Carlson, images of envelopment, entanglement, and entrapment are pervasive throughout the play, all of which can be interpreted as pushing the Captain toward an anxious collapse and his ultimate withdrawal from reality into mythological realms (Carlson 1982, 54–5). Strindberg uses mythopoeic imagery to illustrate the Captain's state of mind in a way that marks a shift from realism to the more symbolic and transgressive “indeterminism” as Strindberg addressed in the aforementioned letter to Axel Lundegård. The key passages that illustrate the Captain's anxiety are the ones that contain the image of the tigers and the image of the web. The Captain feels as if he is walking in a cage of life-threatening tigresses. Moreover, he senses that a web of machination has been spun around him. The tiger represents, symbolically, wildness and strength, female threats to the masculine power, whereas the web indicates that the Captain is caught in a conspiracy, pushing him into a state of anxiety in which he loses his grip on reality.Thus, Strindberg's use of figurative language challenges the naturalist aesthetics. Strindberg's representation of anxiety appears, on the contrary, as a mythopoeic component within a naturalist framework. Bellquist notes how, in the 1880s, Strindberg “seemed to be moving towards a mythopoeic means of literary expressions and mythic interpretation of life” (1988, 1). It must be stressed that Bellquist mainly finds evidence of this movement in references to sleep and dreams in Miss Julie. Nevertheless, it is possible to find evidence in support of a mythopoeic interpretation of life in the anxiety imagery of The Father. Strindberg's anxiety images go beyond the naturalistic ideals of disinterested observation and objective truth. The images seem to instigate profoundly symbolic motifs and highly subjective psychology.5Act II arguably serves as a backdrop against which Strindberg's audience can better understand the Captain's mental condition. In this way, Act II provides the audience with further knowledge about the relation between the Captain and Laura and the Captain's background as such. In Act II, it becomes clear that the Captain's parents never wanted him in the first place, and that he acted as a child in the relationship with Laura. Moreover, Laura points to the fact that she came into the Captain's life as a “second mother” (Strindberg 1998, 36). In the beginning of their relationship, Laura loved him as a child, and she felt ashamed after lovemaking. The Captain tried to compensate for his lack of virility by “proving himself as a man,” that is, proving himself through scientific achievements and sexual encounters. But these attempts are exactly what Laura tried to prevent: LAURA. Ja, men däri låg misstaget. Modren var din vän, ser du, men kvinnan var din fiende, och kärleken mellan könen är strid. (Strindberg 1984, 70)LAURA. Yes, but that was your mistake. The mother was your friend, you see, but the woman was your enemy; love between the sexes is a battle. (Strindberg 1998, 37)From Laura pointing out the Captain's fatal mistake and her assertion of the eternal strife between the sexes, the deeper psychological causes of the Captain's anxiety may arguably be gleaned. In the marriage, he acted as a child, and whenever he tried to prove himself as a man, Laura managed to emasculate him. The cause of the Captain's anxiety is, then, to be found in his environment and background. The Captain's anxiety may be regarded as stemming from a lack of gratification. His mother did not love him when he was as a child, and Laura could not love him as a grown-up man. This spiteful lack of recognition and affection has shaped the Captain's anxiety complex.6 The Captain has—throughout his life—been anxious of female gratification, which is one of the reasons he is gradually collapsing under the pressure from Laura. The Captain exposes himself in total capitulation: RYTTMÄSTARN. Ser du icke att jag är hjälplös som ett barn, hör du icke hur jag beklagar mig som inför en mor, vil du icke glömma att jag är en man, att jag är en soldat, som med ett ord kan tämja människor och kreatur; jag begär endast medlidande som en sjuk, jag nedlägger min makts tecken och jag anropar om nåd för mitt liv. (Strindberg 1984, 69)CAPTAIN. Don't you see I'm as helpless as a child? Can't you hear me imploring your pity like a child its mother? Won't you forget I'm a man, a soldier, whose word both men and beasts obey? I ask only the pity you would show a sick man, I lay down the tokens of my power, and beg for mercy, for my life! (Strindberg 1998, 36)At the end of Act II, Laura succeeds in crushing the Captain, and in a last act of desperation, the Captain throws a lamp at Laura before he surrenders: he regresses to a helpless, childlike state; renounces his own manhood; pathologizes himself; and implores mercy for his life. The Captain, then, is left in a profound existential crisis, as his initial state of object-oriented anxiety about the women of the house has turned into a subjective, generalized anxiety of existence itself. This interpretation becomes clear as the Captain renounces his power and calls for mercy of his entire life. In Act II, the Captain's anxiety thus reaches an existential level.In Act III, the Captain's destiny is determined. The final Act serves as a final showdown in which the Captain suffers his ultimate defeat. Anxiety has driven him to a state of disillusion; he loses his grip on reality and withdraws into mythologico-literary realms. In this Act, as I show in the following, anxiety figures as a state with the potential to transcend the reality of everyday life.The Captain, entering the scene, is still obsessed with the question of fatherhood, and alludes to legends such as Telemachus, who was similarly obsessed with this question: “Who can know whose loins have begotten him?” (Strindberg 1998, 45). Furthermore, the Captain has become even more obsessed with the question of secure knowledge and has arrived at the conclusion that “a man never knows anything” (Strindberg 1998, 45). The Captain's scientific-deterministic worldview has been subjected to a process of epistemological dissolution as a consequence of his increasing state of anxiety. Likewise, his doubt about paternity has turned into a doubt of “anything.” The Captain arrives at the anti-foundationalist, indeed anti-epistemological conclusion that you cannot be sure of anything. Anxiety has left the Captain in a vacuum of utter meaninglessness, and his existential crisis has reached its peak. He cries out a series of existential questions: Men vad hjälper allt detta mig nu? Vad hjälper mig nu, när ni tog min evighetstanke från mig, vad gagnar mig vetenskap och filosofi när jag ingenting har att leva för, vad kan jag göra med livet när jag ingen ära har? (Strindberg 1984, 87)But what good's all this to me now? What's the good of anything now that you've taken away my hope of immortality? What's the point of science and philosophy when I've nothing to live for? What use is my life to me, without honour? (Strindberg 1998, 46)The Captain has lost his raison d’être, and he suffers from a bereavement of hope of immortality, science and philosophy, honor and will. The Captain realizes that his worldview is falling into pieces. Science and philosophy cannot help him when he has been deprived of his only hope of immortality: the passing on of his ideas through his daughter. The rationalist scientist recognizes that he cannot live without a hope of immortality. Strindberg thus shows how the atheist scientist falls short when the hope of immortality vanishes. The rationalist atheist is left in anxiety and despair when he realizes that science and philosophy cannot replace the continuation of his bloodline as well as the religious idea of eternal life. The Captain is confronted with emptiness and nothingness. He is staring into the abyss. Once again, he expresses his state of mind in a figure of speech. Just as when he tried to explain what it feels like to walk into his home, the Captain here, too, has to turn to figurative language to capture the meaninglessness of his situation; literal language simply cannot adequately capture the feelings of nothingness he harbors. He describes himself as a tree that has been “cut below the graft,”Life has lost its meaning for the Captain, and he now feels like he no longer exists. He gradually loses his grip on reality and becomes mad, as reflected in the dialogue with Bertha. Here, the Captain identifies with mythological figures: RYTTMÄSTARN. Ser du, jag är en kannibal och jag vill äta dig. Din mor ville äta mig, men det fick hon inte. Jag är Saturnus, som åt sina barn därför, att man hade spått att de skulle äta honom eljes. Äta eller ätas! Det är frågan! Om jag inte äter dig, så äter du mig, och du har redan visat mig tänderna! Men var inte rädd mitt älskade barn, jag ska inte göra dig illa! (Strindberg 1984, 89)CAPTAIN. You see, I'm a cannibal, and I want to eat you up. Your mother wanted to eat me, but I didn't let her. I'm Saturn, who ate his children because it was foretold that otherwise they'd eat him. To eat or be eaten! That is the question! If I don't eat you, you'll eat me, you've already shown me your teeth. But don't be afraid, my darling child, I shan't hurt you! (Strindberg 1998, 48)Referring to the Greek myth of Kronos (Romanized to Saturn), who ate all his children as he feared he would be overthrown by them when they grew up, the Captain withdraws from reality. The Captain thus identifies with an anxiety-driven mythical God, and his mind evaporates into a world of literary fiction, as can be seen in the allusion to Hamlet and the cannibalistic re-interpretation of his famous existential dilemma (“To eat or to be eaten!”). The Captain's identification with Saturn in his madness marks another shift in the representation of anxiety and serves to intensify it even further. The Captain now interprets his situation within a framework of myth and fiction. He is no longer preoccupied with the question of fatherhood as a marital conflict between him and Laura taking place in putative, objective reality. Moreover, the Captain turns into a barbaric figure: a cannibal struggling to overcome his own anxiety of being eaten by eating the people surrounding him.7 This atypical breach of the realistic framework is another mythopoeic element in the naturalist drama of Strindberg. In the final Act, anxiety is represented as a transcending phenomenon with an ability to go beyond the confines of everyday reality. Anxiety opens to mythical realms, universes perpetrated by pagan gods (Saturn) and literary heroes (Hamlet).Strindberg demonstrates, in this manner, how anxiety renders an epistemic possibility of transcending the reality of everyday life. Strindberg would have us believe that anxiety makes us capable of experiencing alternate realities and, granted, by so doing, an epistemic relation is established to the object of those realities. The Father, then, may be read as a play that carves a picture of anxiety as a phenomenon that is closely connected with imagination. Anxious mental states open up new experiential possibilities. Strindberg shows that anxiety and imagination are heavily intertwined.Relating Freud to Strindberg's authorship or to the author's neuropathological personality is nothing new.8 According to Karl Bachler, one of the first scholars to offer a psychoanalytic reading of the author, the problem of Strindberg's reactions to life “never left researchers in peace” (1931, 5). However, Strindberg's representation of anxiety in The Father has rarely been studied directly from a psychoanalytic point of view. An exception to this lack of scholarly focus on the topic of anxiety in Strindberg is Limanta and Sutanto's psychoanalytic reading, “The Captain's Psychological Problems and the Process of His Withdrawal from Reality in Strindberg's The Father” (2008). Limanta and Sutanto claim that the Captain suffers from two different kinds of Freudian anxiety: real anxiety and neurotic anxiety. In the 25th lecture of Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse (1916–1917), Freud named the first type, which he associates with fear and defines as “rational,” “real anxiety.” In Freud's own words: “Real fear seems quite rational and comprehensible to us. We may testify that it is a reaction to external danger, viz. harm that is expected and foreseen” (Freud 2013, 344). Real fear—or Realangst in German—is connected to external danger and emerges in situations where there is a concrete threat. In contrast to this object-oriented conception, Freud also operates with a second type, yielding a wider definition of anxiety, named “free-floating anxiety” or “neurotic anxiety,” which is a condition of anxiety that seems to develop even when no danger is present. Freud points out that free-floating anxiety is “ready to attach itself to any appropriate idea, to influence judgment, to give rise to expectations, in fact to seize any opportunity to make itself felt” (Freud 2013, 347).In their reading, Limanta and Sutanto consider the women of the household to be the cause of the Captain's real anxiety, since he turns anxious “whenever their decisions influence his power” (Limanta and Sutanto 2008, 165). In particular, the authors point to Laura as the main cause of the Captain's anxiety, as she is the one that makes him doubt whether he is the rightful father of Bertha (Limanta and Sutanto 2008, 167). Furthermore, the authors find evidence of neurotic anxiety in the figures of speech I have previously brought to the fore (tigresses, web). They interpret the tiger motif as an expression of neurotic free-floating anxiety, which they underpin with reference to the Captain's sensation of being spun in a web.The interpretation of the Captain's anxiety concerning the women in the house as a kind of real anxiety seems well-taken. The women constitute an external kind of danger to the Captain's psychological well-being, since his ego is threatened by the belief that he will lose any hope of immortality if he loses his influence over Bertha's future. The women are tangible objects of real anxiety (in the technical sense), external threats to the Captain's inner life. However, it may be discussed whether the tiger motif represents a perceptible shift from real anxiety to neurotic anxiety. The tigers are explicitly connected with the women as both concrete and abstract objects of anxiety, whereas neurotic anxiety seems unequivocally evident in the remark in which the Captain utters his fear that a web has been spun around him so that something terrible will happen. This, on the contrary, is a distinct example of Freudian neurotic anxiety. Recall that Freud defines neurotic anxiety as a free-floating kind of anxiety that is “ready to attach itself to any appropriate idea, to influence judgment, to give rise to expectations, in fact to seize any opportunity to make itself felt” (Freud 2013, 347).In fact, neurotic anxiety can be regarded as the Captain's state of anxiety par excellence. As outlined above, the Captain's initial real anxiety of the threatening women of the house evolves into neurotic anxiety. The Captain's anxiety relates to the rather unlikely idea that he is not the father of Bertha, and his judgment is gradually influenced by the dialectic power struggle with Laura. Anxiety has brought the Captain to a state in which he attaches to rather dubious ideas. The Captain's increasing anxiety is thus clearly compatible with an expression of Freud's neurotic anxiety. His development is similar to the symptoms associated with neurotic anxiety since his ideals, judgment, and expectations are encircled by a devastating free-floating anxiety that, again, seizes “any opportunity to make itself felt.” At first, he loses the ability to decide whether he is the father of Bertha or not. This is an example of his discouraging judgment while his ideals of science and atheism are undermined in the battle with Laura. The Captain is captivated by ideas that one can never be sure of paternity, and finally he identifies with a multitude of myths and literary figures, demonstrating how his state of anxiety will “attach itself to any appropriate idea.”Using Freud's theory on anxiety, we would have to home in on the Captain's libidinal conflicts to grasp the causes behind his anxiety neurosis. These conflicts announce themselves in the second Act, in which we gain a deeper insight into the relationship between Laura and the Captain. In Act II, Laura describes how she entered their relationship as a “second mother” to the Captain, with the effect that he tried to prove his worth as a man by taking her sexually: RYTTMÄSTARN. Och när jag trodde mig läsa ditt förakt över min omanlighet ville jag vinna dig som kvinna genom att vara man.LAURA. Ja, men däri låg misstaget. Modren var din vän, ser du, men kvinnan var din fiende, och kärleken mellan könen är strid. (Strindberg 1984, 70)CAPTAIN. And when I thought you despised me for my lack of masculinity, I sought to conquer you as a woman by being a man.LAURA. Yes, but that was your mistake. The mother was your friend, you see, but the woman was your enemy; love between the sexes is a battle. (Strindberg 1998, 37)The Captain's attempt to dominate Laura sexually, then, failed. Laura rejected the Captain's sexual advances because she was disgusted by the prospect of having sexual intercourse with a man she partly conceived of as her son—a disgust well-captured by the repulsed injection: “The mother became the mistress, ugh!” (Strindberg 1998, 37).This fatal dynamic may be said to constitute one of the central causes of the Captain's neurotic anxiety. As pointed out by Limanta and Sutanto, the Captain may suffer from phallic fixation. He is a male character with a vital need to prove his potency. In Limanta and Sutanto's words: “When his wife appears as a mother, a superior being, the thought of lack of masculinity occupies the Captain's mind. He needs to assure himself and his own wife that he is a real man, a masculine one” (Limanta and Sutanto 2008, 163). However, his attempts to prove his masculinity come to be the cause of his neurotic anxiety, as Laura, repelled by his sexual advances, responds by dominating the marriage. The Captain's phallic need of proving his masculinity turns out to be the instigation of his downfall. Whenever the Captain tries to demonstrate his patriarchal superiority, Laura, knowing the terms of the battle between the sexes well, responds with acts of war, as when she derails his scientific career by obstructing his incoming and outgoing mail. The cause of the Captain's neurotic anxiety can thus, partly, be traced back to the sexual conflicts in the marriage.Moreover, the Captain's phallic need to demonstrate his masculinity stems from his childhood and is in line with the core psychoanalytic insight that if one is an unwanted child, one will long for female gratification throughout one's adult life. But this is exactly what Laura could not give him. Thus, the Captain's various states of anxiety stem from libidinal conflicts as well as his lack of female gratification. In this way, a psychoanalytic reading of The Father not only gives us insight into the deeper causal history underlying the Captain's mental collapse but also provides a more differentiated and therefore arguably more precise framework within which to understand the nature and extent of the Captain's anxiety.9 The psychoanalytic reading also shows that the Captain is determined by nature and nurture, which in turn supports the naturalistic reading of the play.However, the Captain ends up in an existential crisis that goes beyond the relational conflicts with the women of the house. Laura's manipulations have caused and provoked the Captain's neurotic anxiety, and he now finds himself in betwee