Pleasure and confusion. A footnote to Freud's translations of Mill
Molnar, M.; Freud, S.; Taylor Mill, H.; Mill, J.Stuart.; Gomperz, T.
Luzifer-Amor Zeitschrift Zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse 27(53): 7-19
2014
ISSN/ISBN: 0933-3347 PMID: 24988804 Document Number: 678187
In 1863 Theodor Gomperz came to England to propose to Helen Taylor Mill, step-daughter of J. S. Mill. For several months he delayed the proposal while studying transcripts of the Philodemus papyri in the Bodleian Library. There a threatening note, supposedly left on his desk, triggered an attack of paranoia. My study of this incident, initially a mere footnote, expanded into an examination of the obscure causes of this attack. The philosophical question of the nature of desire and the researcher's passion to reconstruct a fragmented classical text are related to Gomperz's unfocussed relationship with both Mill and his step-daughter, and his ensuing confusion between reality and fantasy. The incident is considered paradigmatic of the perils of scholarly research, when the desire to possess knowledge becomes entangled with transferential relationships.