Narrative lessons for the psychotherapist. Kafka's The Metamorphosis

Abstract

Literature has much to offer the psychotherapist. This paper has discussed some lessons for the psychotherapist contained in Franz Kafka's short story, The Metamorphosis. The therapist, like the therapist-reader of this story, can empathize with Gregor's monstrous change but still must hold him personally accountable. At the same time, the therapist-reader becomes increasingly impressed with the malignant nature of the Samsa household, and its role in generating Gregor's capacity for self-deception. The story also instructs about the paradox of catastrophe: Gregor is treated no less respectfully after his metamorphosis than he was before it. The therapist is thereby reminded of the centrality of feelings in human affairs. The constriction of Gregor's space does not cut him off from human feeling; rather, Gregor's inability to access, know, and take responsibility for his own feelings, especially his destructive ones, results in his constrictedness and detachment. In thinking about the story as dream, or in imagining a patient's account of a reality situation as if it were a dream, unseen mental process and content become more apparent. The disgusting, loathsome arrangements that people make with each other can evoke, be it in the therapist-reader or the therapist, reactions of aversion or hate. Such arrangements become more understandable when the importance, sometimes the necessity, of human attachment is appreciated. And finally, Kafka's The Metamorphosis alerts us to a sometimes but powerful preference and countertransference pitfall: we don't want to be bugged.