RELATIONAL AMBIVALENCE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY: RE-READING FREUD'S RAT MAN

Abstract

This article offers a close reading of Freud's 1909 case study ‘Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose’ (‘Rat Man’). I build on Andrew Webber's observation that both psychoanalytic case studies and the literary genre of the novella use the exceptional case to confirm the norm. Arguing that Freud's text simultaneously constructs and undermines a model of drive-based non-relational masculinity, the article explores how Freud integrates the pathology of obsessional neurosis into a gendered binary in contrast to the female-coded pathology of hysteria. I show how Freud's framework neglects the patient's relational needs by reducing the patient's ambivalence to intrapsychic Oedipal hostility. By foregrounding an attachment-oriented understanding of rage and the childhood experiences of abuse that remain overlooked by Freud, the analysis demonstrates how the case both reproduces and unsettles cultural norms. Moreover, I highlight the ways in which the text is haunted by the elements of sexual violence and relational vulnerability it obscures. This produces a novella-like slipperiness through which the case escapes Freud's theoretical grasp. The Rat Man case illuminates the ongoing cultural and clinical consequences of normative constructions of drive-based masculinity.