The Hobbit - The Reluctant Psychoanalyst Reads A Tale of Positive Transference

The Reluctant Son is reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings this summer.  He and a friend have decided to focus on reading things they have read before – last summer they reread the Harry Potter novels and this summer it is Tolkien.  He was OK with my joining in this summer.  I thought he was reading the Hobbit, too, which is a prequel to the trilogy, so I started on that.  He then told me that the introduction in the first book of the Lord of the Rings was enough for him and he didn’t feel the need to read it.  I think that’s too bad.  My memory of reading these books when I was 12 or 14 is that the Hobbit was fun and the Lord of the Rings was overwhelming.  This reading of the Hobbit helps me get a sense of what I was experiencing then about the Hobbit.  We’ll see about the Lord of the Rings as I read that.

I think there are two sets of relationships that Tolkien sets up that make the Hobbit such a pleasure to read.  The first is the relationship between him, the author, and the reader.  This avuncular relationship, where he speaks to us and clearly cares about us and about our understanding the world he has created exudes warmth.  Various introductions to the work state that Tolkien wrote the book for his children and it has that feel.  We feel engaged with someone who cares about us – we feel cared for as a father cares for his children.

This avuncular or paternal relationship is reflected, then, in the relationship between the wise wizard Gandolf and the hero of the tale, Bilbo Baggins.  The wizard puts Bilbo up to the adventure – there is a little bit in Bilbo’s genetics that suggests that he might be able to pull off a little bit of an adventure – and Bilbo eventually more than lives up to billing, though we all have our doubts at the beginning that he is going to be able to do that.

Bilbo Baggins is essentially a stay at home kind of guy – he likes the regularity of his six meals a day – and he is short.  He is, from the paternal perch where I am now reading, like the kids who hang around my house – happy to have me take care of things for them – but also delighted to connect with others and hang out in a place that we have created for them that is relatively safe and very social.  And I wonder about their ability to get out there on their own – and then they do – and I, like Gandalf, am frequently surprised at their capacities once they do.  And I take a special interest in them when they do.  I drop in on them now and then – now that they have mostly left the nest – to see how they are doing.  And Gandolf does this, too, disappearing from the adventure once Bilbo and the Dwarves get will underway, and he only returns when it is time for the battle of the five armies – after Bilbo has made the definitive choice that shifts the balance of power among what will turn out to be the allied armies.

The interesting thing, as I’m reading it from this perspective, is that Tolkien keeps emphasizing the smallness of the consequences of what occurs – especially in the introduction to the Lord of the Rings – while also articulating the heroism of all involved.  It reminds me, on the one hand, of reading about the Peloponnesus wars – which meant a lot to the Greeks, but had little impact on me, and, on the other, of the investment that I have in the various affairs of my children – I am keenly concerned with how they manage themselves on the various battlefields they encounter – though the wars they're engaged in are of little consequence to anyone much beyond the immediate circle of those effected.

Today, I am serving my first day of jury duty – waiting to be called and convinced that this is not going to happen.  But it was actually quite moving to have a judge and then the clerk in charge thank us for engaging in a civic duty that is a defining characteristic of our democracy.  Only one group has been called to sit for duty – and I have no idea what kind of case it was – and it likely will not be reported in the papers – but it is none the less a cornerstone of who it is that we are and what it is that we do.  It actually matters, these little actions of ours – and these little actions – heroic or mundane as they may be – determine – in aggregate – what kind of community we live in.

So, from the other perspective, of being the child reading the tale, it is reassuring to have the guidance of Gandalf – and the narrator – as new foes are being met and odd and interesting new friends are being made.  Gandalf turns out to be tricky – as is this world which is filled with Goblins and Elves and Shape Shifters – and I (as Bilbo) turn out to have skills that I didn’t know that I had.  And I develop skills along the way.  And I get tools in unexpected places – I become the burglar that Gandalf has predicted I will become – and, I think in part because Gandalf has given me permission – I use my abilities (as a burglar) to act in moral and ethical ways.  I use my illegal skills in the service of justice and a higher cause.

Tolkien, from this perspective, is offering a counterpoint to Freud’s vision of civilization dehumanizing us – Tolkien is proposing that despite the ways in which the primitive aspects of human drives get expressed – and here I am thinking primarily of war – we can still engage in that activity with honor.  Of course, it is easier to do this when the other armies are wolves and Goblins – not other human beings.  And there is more honor in hand to hand combat than when we are pulling strings from a distance as increasingly happens in modern warfare (see Eye in the Sky).  The challenges to our sense of integrity and honor may be greater in our modern times than even in his, but I think his point is still valid.  Through education and nurture, which he demonstrates as much in the careful way that he tells the tale as through any morals in the tale itself, he believes that we can develop ourselves in ways that allow us to contribute to the world – not just enjoy being in it – and that we can leave our safe dens and engage with the world in all its complexity.

I think that Tolkien is portraying here a variety of relationships.  He is likely drawing on his relationship with his father, who died while he was young - about nine - and his mother who died a few years later - and then the Roman Catholic Priest into whose care he was sent when his mother knew she was dying.  In this sense these are inherited relationships and Tolkien is the child.  But he is also being or becoming the father - and presenting an idealized version of that - perhaps as he is shepherding himself through parenting (where he is both Gandalf and Bilbo) and remembering aspects of Gandalfian parenting - but also as he hopes his children will respond - as Bilbo - to the father figure that he wants to become.  Would that we could all aspire to be paternal with Gandalf and Tolkien as our models - as our positive transference figures.

At the end of the book, Tolkien reassuringly returns Bilbo to his hearth and home – and suggests that after our adventures we can be safe again and have our memories to return to.  I think this version of things is the one that is most appropriate to younger children.  But as those children age, it is important for them to come to grips with the idea that the world is even more complicated than they initially imagined – and that their own wishes and desires are more powerful than they initially appeared.  Perhaps this will be what is addressed in the Lord of the Rings.  Perhaps I simply wasn’t ready for this level of engagement when I read this through the first time.  I think that I wanted a simpler tale (just as I am reluctant in my identification with the complexities of the psychoanalytic perspective).  It does appear, just reading the introduction to the Lord of the Rings, that the author’s tone shifts dramatically – he is “pretending” to be a scholar – which of course Tolkien was – the pretense is that he is writing in a scholarly fashion about a history that does not, in fact, exist.  But he is writing as a professor, not as a father, and he is showing his chops as an adult functioning in the world, not as a safe, warm and fuzzy protector who is making everything – even the really scary things – OK.  I think the Lord of the Rings will likely still be difficult for me…

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