for venancio

i was rummaging through my files ( i know i'm supposed to be doing noteworthy things, but i am a great procrastinator, apart from being a lazy bum) and found a folder that contained papers i have written for some of my courses in graduate school some years back. now what follows is a paper that holds a very special place in my hypothalamus, for this is my first gs paper, which i submitted to the legendary v.m., a kick-ass professor who has a very uncharming way of worming into graduate students' consciousness - and yes, hearts.

Transference and Counter Transference in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night

Already with thee! tender is the night,
* * * * * * * * *
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
-John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”

A silent but unsettling darkness pervades the novel, Tender is the Night, the story of Dick Diver, a promising young psychologist who falls from fame as he lives with his wife Nicole Warren, a wealthy and beautiful schizophrenic patient.

The Author
The analysis of the novel would be incomplete if not seen side by side with the biography of the author, as Tender is the Night, just like most of Fitzgerald’s works, is autobiographical as much as it is psychological. Looking into the novel, one would find a lot of parallels between the life of the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald and the lives of the characters, especially that of the Diver couple.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St Paul, Minnesota, and was sent to local Roman Catholic boarding schools. At Princeton University, instead of concentrating on formal study, he opted to receive his education from writers and critics. In 1917 he was commissioned to the army, and, while in training camps, wrote the novel This Side of Paradise (1920). While at a camp in Alabama, he fell in love with 18-year-old Zelda Sayre, who later became an integral figure in Fitzgerald's fiction, which paid for his and Zelda's extravagant society lifestyle.

In 1924 the Fitzgeralds left their Long Island home for Paris, where they met Gerald and Sarah Murphy, who took them to the French Riviera. Here Fitzgerald finished The Great Gatsby (1925). Although the novel is generally regarded as his masterpiece, it sold poorly, marking the end of his writing career, and the beginning of the degradation of his life. Despite Zelda's slide into insanity (she was hospitalized periodically from 1930 to her death in 1948) and his into alcoholism, he continued to write, mostly for magazines. It was not until 1934 that Tender is the Night appeared.

Fitzgerald recovered sufficiently to become a screenwriter in Hollywood, where he met Sheilah Graham, who tried to save him from his alcoholism. He died of a heart attack in December 21, 1940 without completing The Last Tycoon (1941), his most mature novel. Even so, the book's brilliance prompted critics to re-evaluate Fitzgerald's talent and eventually to recognize him as one of the finest American writers.


Transference and Counter-transference
The novel is analyzed through the concepts of transference and counter-transference, two important principles in psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy is the process of interaction between a therapist and the patient. This therapy is aimed at dispelling distress arising through disorders of emotion, thinking, and behavior. (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2003)
Transference is a phenomenon that occurs when patients displace onto the therapist feelings of love or hatred which they had previously attached to a significant other, often a parent. (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992)

Counter transference refers to the emotional response of the analyst to the patient. It may be seen as an impediment to the therapeutic process, as the therapist’s unresolved conflicts are introduced into the relationship with the patient, reducing the therapist’s objectivity. This type of counter-transference is known as an “abnormal” or “proactive” counter-transference.
Alternatively, emotions elicited in a therapist who has retained objectivity can be thought of as induced by the patient. This pattern of relating, which is often derived from the patient's past, may then be the basis of interpretation and may be used in the service of the therapeutic process. Counter-transference of this type is termed “reactive”.

Reactive counter-transference may further be divided into complementary and concordant types. In the complementary type, feelings are matched; for example, the patient feels afraid while the therapist feels protective. In the concordant type, the therapist feels the same feeling the patient feels—for example, the therapist feels afraid when the patient is afraid. In the latter case, counter-transference feelings occur from the therapist's identification or empathy with the patient. (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2003)

Life, Love and Loss in the Tenderness of the Night
At 29, Doctor Richard Diver has everything going on for him - He has had a Yale education and has been a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford in 1914, has attained a degree from John Hopkins University in 1915, and has written a psychiatry book in Vienna in 1916. In 1917, he is drafted to France for the war, but is given orders not to take up arms but to finish his degree and to be part of a neurological unit. In 1919, Dick, discharged, returns to Zurich and meets up with Franz Gregorovius, a colleague. As they make their way to Doctor Dohmler’s clinic, Franz tells Dick the history of Nicole Warren, the beautiful and wealthy schizophrenic patient who undergoes treatment at the clinic, and whose progress Dick has influenced indirectly through their exchange of letters – which, according to Franz, was “the best thing that could happen to her. A transference of the most fortuitous kind.”(p.9) In these letters, the principle of transference has started to take effect, as Nicole begins to displace to Dick the feelings she has for her father, who has been advised to stay away from her. The letters gave Nicole “somebody to think of outside,” (p.20) and the doctors an insight into her wellness.

At first Nicole is “a perfectly normal, bright, happy child,” (p.16) but later her sister Baby notices that Nicole “isn’t right in the head,” (p.15), so her distressed father brings Nicole to Doctor Dohmler, who later discovers that the father and daughter have figured in a case of incest brought about by the death of Nicole’s mother when the girl was twelve. The incident brings about Nicole’s schizophrenia, which does not manifest itself until she becomes 16.

After eight months of correspondence, Dick and Nicole meet. Dick visits her regularly, until Franz and Dohmler tell Dick that getting too close with Nicole, who has apparently fallen in love with Dick, might interfere with her treatment. The doctors are afraid that the situation will manifest the principle of counter-transference as Dick might begin to see Nicole as a lover, and not as a patient who needs therapy. Dick, indeed, has fallen for Nicole, but he is first a doctor, who sees it fit to terminate the budding relationship, difficult as it is for both of them. To divert himself from Nicole, Dick begins writing his second book. Nicole gets discharged from the clinic, having been declared cured.

By chance, Dick and Nicole meet again. This time he meets her with her sister Baby, who over dinner talks to Dick about buying a doctor who would also be a husband for Nicole. The idea seems to Dick absurd at first, but he and Nicole eventually marry – not because of Baby, but because Dick decides that he loves Nicole enough to marry her. Nicole gives birth to two children, Lanier and Topsy, whose births almost trigger her illness again. They build a home, the Villa Diana, on the French Riviera with Warren money.

Rosemary Hoyt, a budding American actress famous for her first movie “Daddy’s Girl” comes to the Riviera with her mother, Elsie Speers, for a three-day vacation. On the beach Rosemary meets Albert and Violet McKisco, Luis Campion and Royal Humphrey, and Mrs. Abrams – a group of people she desperately wants to get away from, and the group of Dick, Nicole, Abe and Mary North and Tommy Barban. Young and idealistic, Rosemary falls in love with the Divers, especially with the attractive, enigmatic Dick.

The Divers throw a party – one “where there’s brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette” (p.84) - for their guests at the Riviera. Violet Mckisco finds Nicole babbling incoherently in the bathroom. She runs to tell the group what she saw, but Tommy Barban shushes her up, and later finds himself in a duel with Albert Mckisco. Alone with Dick, Rosemary confesses her feelings to him. Dick dismisses the thought, and laughs her confession off.

Drawn to Dick, Rosemary decides to extend her and her mother’s 3-day stay on the Riviera, and comes along with the Divers on their trip to Paris. Rosemary offers herself to Dick, who, not wanting to hurt Nicole, nor destroy Rosemary’s innocence, politely declines. But Rosemary is persistent; Dick eventually admits being in love with her too, but he could not promise her anything.

“Nicole mustn’t suffer - she loves me and I love her – you understand that.”
She did understand; it was the sort of thing she understood well, hurting people.

She knew the Divers loved each other because it had been her primary assumption.

She had thought, however, that it was a rather cooled relation, and actually rather

like the love of herself and her mother. (p.136-137)

But Dick’s perception of Rosemary’s innocence is smashed when Collis Clay, a guy whom Rosemary used to date, nonchalantly tells Dick that Rosemary is “not so cold as he’d (Dick) probably think.” (p.150) Apparently Rosemary and Hillis, Collis’ friend, had an argument with a train conductor because the two, wanting to be alone, locked the door and closed the curtain of their train compartment. The uncertainty of Rosemary’s virginity repeatedly plays in Dick’s mind “as a kind of refrain,” (Poston, 1974) the lines

-Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?
-Please do. It’s too light in here. (p.150)

mentioned six times in the novel.

Dick’s succumbing to Rosemary’s charms ignites a spark that will begin his deterioration, and which follows through with his acquiescence to Nicole’s suggestion that he call Maria Wallis’ sister instead of following Maria to the police station. Maria, an acquaintance, suddenly shoots an Englishman in the station where the group is seeing Abe North off for America. Dick finally does himself in when he tries to save Rosemary from being implicated in the murder of a Negro whose corpse is found on Rosemary’s bed. He places the corpse on the hotel hall while asking Nicole for a change of sheets for Rosemary’s bed. This incident sets off Nicole’s madness, and this time Rosemary sees for herself what Violet Mckisco saw in the bathroom in Villa Diana.

“It’s you! It’s you who come to intrude on the only privacy
I have in the world – with your spread with red blood on it.
I’ll wear it for you – I’m not ashamed, though it was such
a pity. On All Fools Day we had a party on the Zurichsee
and all the fools were there, and I wanted to come
dressed in a spread but they wouldn’t let me – “ (p.174)

Rosemary and her mother finally decide to go back to Hollywood, but before they do Mrs. Speers meets up with Dick to thank him and Nicole for accommodating her daughter. Dick reveals to Mrs. Speers that he is in love with Rosemary, and he himself is surprised at the revelation. But he needs to preserve both his and Nicole’s sanity, so he has to let go of this love for Rosemary. He is Nicole’s doctor and husband, and these roles he has to play, no matter how empty and tired he has become.

Dick further crumbles as he allows himself to again be “purchased” by Warren money. Upon Franz’s suggestion and Baby’s funding, he agrees to put up a clinic in a ski resort. Dick can finally practice his career again, but he realizes that Franz offers him the project not because of his capabilities as a psychologist, but because of the easy capital he can get from Baby, who was once able to buy a doctor for Nicole, and now is buying a clinic for her.

The clinic pushes Dick’s self-esteem downward even further – he has to work full-time with his patients and be on guard with Nicole, who is very dependent on him, feeding on his strength. Counter-transference is at work - Dick’s unresolved conflicts are introduced into his relationship with Nicole. The concordant-reactive type of counter-transference is seen in this situation – Dick and Nicole are “so involved with each other that he cannot see her broken and suffering without becoming so himself.” (Poston, 1974) He begins to take alcohol at greater amounts.

Nicole again loses herself to madness when she receives a letter from a former patient who says that Dick has seduced her daughter. This time the madness occurs in a carnival, when Dick decides to take the family out.

Exhausted from Nicole’s swings of insanity, Dick leaves for a psychiatric convention in Berlin. On his way he meets Tommy Barban again, he who knows nothing but war, and learns of Abe North’s death. Dick’s father dies, too, and he returns to America for his father’s burial. He also meets Albert Mckisco again, who is now a very successful author. Then he meets Rosemary again, now more mature, lacking the innocence he has thought he loved her for. Dick gains the realization that it is Nicole he really loves, and his infatuation for Rosemary has caused Nicole’s frequent outbursts and his destruction.

Dick’s final straw comes when Dick and Nicole encounter Tommy Barban in a trip. Dick goes on a drinking binge and makes a fool out of himself, while Nicole seems to be in control. The complementary-reactive type of counter-transference is suggested here; as Dick plunges to oblivion, Nicole gets reborn. This sudden rebirth also brings forth Nicole’s sudden liking for Tommy Barban. He seduces her, and she agrees on having an affair with him, while Dick seeks to busy himself with finishing his second book .

Nicole attempts to save their marriage, but Dick drives her away.

“I didn’t come over here to be disagreeable.”
“Then why did you come, Nicole? I can’t do anything for you anymore. I’m trying
to save myself.”
"From my contamination?”
“My profession throws me in contact with questionable company sometimes.”
“You’re a coward! You’ve made a failure of your life, and you want to blame it
on me.” (p.319)

When Tommy comes to take Nicole away, Dick gives her up without a fight. Nicole wins. Dick no longer has his patient, no longer has his wife. He leaves the Riviera and starts a new life in America, no longer the Dick Diver he once was.