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The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/The Hitler Family: A Relational Approach to Norman Mailer: Difference between revisions
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On one level, Castle is a book about life of the lower classes of the German-speaking section of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy and about one man, Alois Hitler, who manages to rise above the humble origins of his family. It looks at the daily life of the peasants, the education of their children, their sexual relationships,and their sometimes desperate attempts to improve their limiting life conditions.But the family that is followed in this novel in great detail on almost five hundred pages is not an ordinary family. It is the family of a man who would fatally change the course of history causing a catastrophe whose terrible consequences we are still far from having overcome. | On one level, Castle is a book about life of the lower classes of the German-speaking section of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy and about one man, Alois Hitler, who manages to rise above the humble origins of his family. It looks at the daily life of the peasants, the education of their children, their sexual relationships,and their sometimes desperate attempts to improve their limiting life conditions.But the family that is followed in this novel in great detail on almost five hundred pages is not an ordinary family. It is the family of a man who would fatally change the course of history causing a catastrophe whose terrible consequences we are still far from having overcome. | ||
Norman Mailer has written another novel which functions very much the same way. In ''Oswald’s Tale'' (1995), he and his collaborators have sifted through and generated an incredible amount of material relating to Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union, his wife,Marina,and her family and friends.Reading through the hundreds of pages of this book, one comes to understand the tragic history of the Soviet Union and the way this history has shaped her citizens. Although readers are at times lost in the wealth of this material,at no time do they forget that the whole book has one focal point,namely the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963 in Dallas. From none of the many things we find out about Marina and her development can it be excluded that it may have influenced her in a particular way which may have contributed to the negative development of her marriage with Lee, and thus to Lee’s frustrated megalomania—or whichever else formative characteristic—which ultimately may have caused the murder of Kennedy. “This is,” says Mailer,“after all, a book that depends upon the small revelation of separate points of view.We are, in effect, studying an object... as he tumbles through the prisms of a kaleidoscope. It is as if by such means we hope to penetrate into the psychology of Lee Harvey Oswald.” | Norman Mailer has written another novel which functions very much the same way. In ''Oswald’s Tale'' (1995), he and his collaborators have sifted through and generated an incredible amount of material relating to Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union, his wife, Marina, and her family and friends.Reading through the hundreds of pages of this book, one comes to understand the tragic history of the Soviet Union and the way this history has shaped her citizens. Although readers are at times lost in the wealth of this material,at no time do they forget that the whole book has one focal point,namely the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963 in Dallas. From none of the many things we find out about Marina and her development can it be excluded that it may have influenced her in a particular way which may have contributed to the negative development of her marriage with Lee, and thus to Lee’s frustrated megalomania—or whichever else formative characteristic—which ultimately may have caused the murder of Kennedy. “This is,” says Mailer, “after all, a book that depends upon the small revelation of separate points of view.We are, in effect, studying an object... as he tumbles through the prisms of a kaleidoscope. It is as if by such means we hope to penetrate into the psychology of Lee Harvey Oswald.” | ||
In readers’ minds, the massive quantity of information ''Castle'' provides concerning Hitler’s family and early childhood is equally focused on a later historical development,although in a much different manner. The catastrophe is not the murder of a man with large possibilities and the meaning of that death for his culture, but rather the extinction of a whole culture itself, a genocidal horror unequalled in human history. Mailer, by focusing on Hitler’s family and early life, seems to suggest that there must be some explanatory potential here for what happened later on. | In readers’ minds, the massive quantity of information ''Castle'' provides concerning Hitler’s family and early childhood is equally focused on a later historical development,although in a much different manner. The catastrophe is not the murder of a man with large possibilities and the meaning of that death for his culture, but rather the extinction of a whole culture itself, a genocidal horror unequalled in human history. Mailer, by focusing on Hitler’s family and early life, seems to suggest that there must be some explanatory potential here for what happened later on. | ||
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Thus, compared to the extant historiography, which took long to become convinced of even the now-accepted incest thesis, Mailer’s book introduces a much larger incestuous network which becomes one of the dominant themes in his book. Incest had interested Mailer very early on—witness a famous statement in his ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959)—but it took some fifty years to make it the key moment in one of his novels novel. By having devil-narrator Dieter explain incest as a key to this extraordinary personality and by assigning to Hitler’s family at large so much importance, it seems to me that a look at Castle from a relational angle is called for. In fact, there is a book by a German,American-trained, family therapist, Helm Stierlin, ''Adolf Hitler: A Family Perspective'', published in German in 1975 and in English one year later, but it is not included in Mailer’s bibliographical listing and had probably not been consulted by him. This seems consistent because Stierlin’s book does not address incest as relevant to Hitler’s story, even though the model of family therapy out of which it grew is very strongly concerned with incest. | Thus, compared to the extant historiography, which took long to become convinced of even the now-accepted incest thesis, Mailer’s book introduces a much larger incestuous network which becomes one of the dominant themes in his book. Incest had interested Mailer very early on—witness a famous statement in his ''Advertisements for Myself'' (1959)—but it took some fifty years to make it the key moment in one of his novels novel. By having devil-narrator Dieter explain incest as a key to this extraordinary personality and by assigning to Hitler’s family at large so much importance, it seems to me that a look at Castle from a relational angle is called for. In fact, there is a book by a German,American-trained, family therapist, Helm Stierlin, ''Adolf Hitler: A Family Perspective'', published in German in 1975 and in English one year later, but it is not included in Mailer’s bibliographical listing and had probably not been consulted by him. This seems consistent because Stierlin’s book does not address incest as relevant to Hitler’s story, even though the model of family therapy out of which it grew is very strongly concerned with incest. | ||
Contextual family theory and therapy, as developed in the United States by the late Ivan Boszormeny-Nagy (a native of Hungary), looks at the world as a network of relationships. | Contextual family theory and therapy, as developed in the United States by the late Ivan Boszormeny-Nagy (a native of Hungary), looks at the world as a network of relationships.{{efn|1}} With its model of transgenerational ledgers or accounting systems that record acts of giving and receiving or care and exploitation among members of a family unit, it provides an intergenerational relational context for understanding human behavior. If an individual does not receive appropriate care and attention by his or her parents, this person then may turn to his or her own child in order to be compensated, at the detriment of the child, of course, who will in turn have to come to terms with this behavior. The child thus assumes the function of his own grandparents; in the language of contextual therapy, he or she is “parentified.” A parentified child is one who lacks the care and attention it deserves and instead is required to extend care, attention, and protection to a needy parent, thus entering a cycle of relational deprivation. In this cycle,one generation borrows resources from the next to rebalance what is missing. | ||
This relational deprivation sets in motion a destructive entitlement. Indeed, the whole world can become the substitutive context for working out destructive entitlement issues in the family of origin. In this way, this model of family therapy also explains the frequent occurrence of similar behavioral patterns in a family. | This relational deprivation sets in motion a destructive entitlement. Indeed, the whole world can become the substitutive context for working out destructive entitlement issues in the family of origin. In this way, this model of family therapy also explains the frequent occurrence of similar behavioral patterns in a family. | ||
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Obviously, through his fictional analysis of Hitler’s family, Mailer has not fully explained Hitler’s further development. In the rural regions of Austria, as elsewhere, incest was rampant and thousands of children in similar situations have not become monsters. But Mailer has described a situation that would favor such a development and at the time of its publication, he was,after all, not yet done with Hitler. What he has done in this “high risk” novel as it has been referred to by one critic, is to look at the Hitler phenomenon outside of an explicitly moralistic discourse. This is a relatively new mode in the discussion of Naziism—which, incidentally, does not deny the continued necessity of the moral discussion. That he has achieved this by introducing a devil as a narrator is maybe the most surprising and highly ironic moment of this remarkable novel. | Obviously, through his fictional analysis of Hitler’s family, Mailer has not fully explained Hitler’s further development. In the rural regions of Austria, as elsewhere, incest was rampant and thousands of children in similar situations have not become monsters. But Mailer has described a situation that would favor such a development and at the time of its publication, he was,after all, not yet done with Hitler. What he has done in this “high risk” novel as it has been referred to by one critic, is to look at the Hitler phenomenon outside of an explicitly moralistic discourse. This is a relatively new mode in the discussion of Naziism—which, incidentally, does not deny the continued necessity of the moral discussion. That he has achieved this by introducing a devil as a narrator is maybe the most surprising and highly ironic moment of this remarkable novel. | ||
== Notes == | |||
I would like to acknowledge the input and help of my friend Margaret Cotroneo,family therapist and Professor of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, for this paper. Some of the concepts discussed here are elaborated on in Margaret Cotroneo and Helene Moriarty, “Intergenerational Family Processes in the Treatment of Incest” {{sfn|Burgess|1992|p=293–305}}. | |||
==Works Cited== | |||
{{Refbegin}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Burgess |first=Anna |date=1992 |title=Child Trauma: Issues & Research |url= |location=New York & London |publisher=Garland |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1995 |title=Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2007 |title=The Castle in the Forest: A Novel |url= |location=New York |publisher=Random House |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Stierlin |first=Helm |date=1976 |title=Adolf Hitler: A Family Perspective |url= |location=New York |publisher=Psychohistory Press |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Stierlin |first=Helm |date=1976 |title=Hitler: Familienperspektiven |url= |location=Frankfurt |publisher=M. Suhrkamp |pages= |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite journal |last=Uplike |first=John |title=Beck in Czech |url= |journal=J.U. Bech at Bey |volume= |issue= |date=1998 |pages=3-36 |access-date= |ref=harv }} | |||
{{Refend}} | |||