Poetry and The Primal Scene: Intimations towards psychopathy
“Truly, the history of progress is often also the history of regression.”
One of my favorite Shakespearean Sonnet titled “The Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame” (Sonnet CXXIX) describes quite adequately human appetite and desire.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action’ and till action, lust
Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy’d no sooner, but despised straight;
Past reason hunted, as a swallow’d bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, -and prov’d, a very woe;
Before, a joy propos’d; behind, a dream:
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
I’ve been reviewing modern music lyrics because music is poetry and poetry is literature. There have been many songs penned about “psychos” in the annals of literary music. In men’s struggles to overcome their appetites, desires, and conflicts the “psycho” emerges as a common theme in literary music. Even when written about in songs regarding drug addiction, the psychosis is presented as resulting from some type of conflict that arises in direct opposition to the person’s personal pursuits.
In many of the lyrics written about “psychos” there is a themed reference to primal scene fantasy and violence. Primal scene is the essence of all conflict, which, in my opinion, validates Jessica Benjamin’s statement “Sex is violence” and in the fierce emergence of drives, appetites, and desires it sometimes appears to lie in the shadows of the abject experience connected closely to intimacy and the primal scene of the inner triangle. In this, there is a persistent inability to rationalize and control emotions and actions emanating from primal scene intimacy. Of all that which man fines desirable, he struggles with appetites. Shakespeare knew this and in the first song I analyzed, Alphaville’s “Forever Young,” which was released in 1984 which was in direct response to a very real human fear regarding impending nuclear holocaust. The reference to the primal scene in this song is in the idea of nuclear devastation. This song opens with a direct question,
“Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while
Heaven can wait, we’re only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?
The lyrics go on further to read,
“Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders, we’re getting in tune
The music’s played by the, the mad man.”
The next song I analyzed was the Talking Heads “Psycho Killer.” This song seems, in my opinion, opens with a heightened level of arousal, most likely sexual in nature. Again, we hear in this song like the other examples, overtones of arousal and blind glory,
“I can’t seem to face up to the facts
I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax
I can’t sleep ’cause my beds on fire
Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire”
The next, most explicit, revealing details are spoken in French,
“Ce que j’ai fait, ce soir-là
Ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir-là
Réalisant mon espoir
Je me lance, vers la gloire, okay
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-yeah
We are vain and we are blind
I hate people when they’re not polite”
The French in this song translates in English to:
“What I did that night
What she said that night
Realizing my hope (although the meaning is closer to “realizing my dreams” in English)
I throw myself towards glory.
We are vain and we are blind
I hate people when they’re not polite”
Shakespeare wrote ten tragedies, all have overlapping themes of conflict and deception, mental illness, and murder. One writer viewed Richard III as Shakespeare’s greatest psychopath, but there are many characters who could be classified as psychopaths as well in Shakespeare’s plays. Let us take Puck in “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” He is a devilish sprite as Oberon’s servant and jester. This type of psychopath may also be widely understood as the “Prankster.” However, a more clinical diagnosis might arrive as a “disingenuous psychopath” which is a far cry from a “malevolent killer.” In this, we might think of the evolution of Batman’s villain “The Joker.” Is character destiny, as the ancient Greeks thought, or is it the other way round? Are people made, or do they make themselves?
From Hamlet’s metaphor:
“To be, or not to be; that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them” . . .
to Dave Matthew’s “Space Between”:
“The Space Between
The wicked lies we tell
And hope to keep safe from the pain
We’re strange allies
With warring hearts
What wild-eyed beast you be
You know you went off like a devil
In a church in the middle of a crowded room”
Might not this thing we call psychopathy, be a shape-shifting elusive psychic state of human personality that emerges as environmental factors align? Unless devoutly trained by Buddhist monks in a monetary to meditate daily and calm the mind persistently, we are always at risk of becoming a form of any variant of psychopathy at any given moment in time especially during heated moments of conflict and frustration. We may not be classified as actual psychopaths, but that doesn’t mean we won’t present as one in any one particular moment in time.
Every moment of the timeline possesses an infinity of possibilities for alternate outcomes. This is especially true when it comes to conflict and choice of action.
Macbeth’s witches come pretty close to Ava Max’s “Sweet but Psycho” character formulation:
“Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”
Ava Max’s “Sweet but Psycho” lyrics:
“She’ll make you curse, but she a blessing
She’ll rip your shirt within a second
You’ll be coming back, back for seconds
With your plate, you just can’t help it
See, someone said, “Don’t drink her potions
She’ll kiss your neck with no emotion
When she’s mean, you know you love it
She tastes so sweet, don’t sugarcoat it.”
And the connection between narcissistic fulfillment and haughty pretension in Queen’s “Killer Queen”:
“She keeps Moet et Chandon
In her pretty cabinet
“Let them eat cake,” she says
Just like Marie Antoinette
A built-in-remedy
For Khrushchev and Kennedy (Ooh, ooh)
At any time an invitation
You can’t decline (Ooh, ooh)
Caviar and cigarettes
Well versed in etiquette
Extraordinarily nice
She’s a Killer Queen
Gunpowder, gelatine
Dynamite with a laser beam
Guaranteed to blow your mind
(pa-pa-pa-pa) Anytime
Ooh”
To the novel by E.L. James “Fifty Shades of Grey,” although not lyrical poetry, it can practically make the cut in its profile for psychopathy and poetry:
“Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian?” Holy shit. Did I just say that? His mouth drops open slightly, but he recovers quickly.
“No, Anastasia it doesn’t. Firstly, I don’t make love. I fuck… hard. Secondly, there’s a lot more paperwork to do, and thirdly, you don’t yet know what you’re in for. You could still run for the hills. Come, I want to show you my playroom.”
My mouth drops open. Fuck hard! Holy shit, that sounds so… hot. But why are we looking at a playroom? I am mystified.
“You want to play on your Xbox?” I ask. He laughs, loudly.
“No, Anastasia, no Xbox, no PlayStation. Come.”… Producing a key from his pocket, he unlocks yet another door and takes a deep breath.
“You can leave anytime. The helicopter is on stand-by to take you whenever you want to go, you can stay the night and go home in the morning. It’s fine whatever you decide.”
“Just open the damn door, Christian.”
He opens the door and stands back to let me in. I gaze at him once more. I so want to know what’s in here. Taking a deep breath, I walk in.
And it feels like I’ve time-traveled back to the sixteenth century and the Spanish Inquisition.
Holy fuck.”
After reading this many may feel a tinkling of arousal and it is here, we come to the conclusion that these themed writings are part of the human unconscious experience of the primal scene playing out in the reality of our relational worlds that often finds itself at war with other human hearts and desires with multiple symbols directing us to the primal scene and what it means to be the signified by a signifier.
To demonstrate this, we have Sarah Jeffery’s “Queen of Mean” upon finding out the man she’s interested in has selected another:
“I never thought of myself as mean
I always thought that I’d be the queen
And there’s no in-between
’Cause if I can’t have that
Then I would be the leader of the dark
And the bad
Now there’s a devil on my shoulder
Where the angels used to be
And it’s calling me the queen”
And then there’s always Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” from her “Reputation” album:
“But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time
I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined
I check it once, then I check it twice, oh!
The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama
But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma
And then the world moves on, but one thing’s for sure
Maybe I got mine, but you’ll all get yours”
In Shakespeare’s King Richard III, Richard seems to be that disconcerting character, the natural-born criminal, who delights in evil. He proves, in fact, an ardent and successful wooer of women. He seduces not one, but two, women whose husbands or children he has killed. After he has seduced Anne, he exults with all the pride of his evil:
“Was ever woman in this humour wooed?
Was ever woman in this humour won?
I’ll have her; but I will not keep her long,
What! I, that kill’d her husband his father
To take her in her heart’s extremest hate;
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of her hatred by;
Having God, her conscience, and these bars
against me,
And I no friends to back my suit withal,
But the plain devil and dissembling looks,
And yet to win her, — all the world to nothing!”
It is worth recalling that serial killers of women seldom lack declarations of love or offers of marriage immediately afterward. The same is not true of serial burglars.
References:
William Shakespeare. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Stamford Connecticut. Longmeadow Press. Reprinted from the original manuscript dated 1632. pg. 1212–1213.
Ibid. Hamlet’s Metaphor pg. 1088.
Ibid. Macbeth’s Witches’ Metaphor pg. 1060.
Ibid. King Richard III. pg. 632
Marian Gold, Bernhard Lloyd, Frank Mertens. (1984). Forever Young. Forever Young. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1TcDHrkQYg&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=2
David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth. (1977). Psycho Killer. Talking Heads: 77. [Audio File] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKti7QixnJI&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=3
David J. Matthews & Glen Ballard. (2001). The Space Between. Everyday. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiVav5nBmOE
Amanda Ava Koci, Andreas Andresen Haukeland, Henry Walter, Madison Love, William Lobban-Bean. (2020). Sweet but Psycho. Heaven & Hell. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXBHCQYxwr0&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=5
Freddie Mercury. (1974). Killer Queen. Sheer Heart Attack. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZBtPf7FOoM&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=4
E.L. James. Fifty Shades of Grey: Volume 1. New York. Doubleday, a division of Random House.
Adam Schmalhoz, Thomas Sturges, Tim James & Antonina Armato. (2019). Queen of Mean. Descendants 3 Soundtrack. [Audo File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9o1QS-itsU&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=8
Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, Fred Fairbrass, Richard Fairbrass, Rob Manzoli. (2017). Look What You Made Me Do. Reputation. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tmd-ClpJxA&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=10
Additional Musical References to Consider:
Katy Perry, Jordan Houston, Lukasz Gottwald, Sarah Hudson, Max Martin and Henry Walter. (2013). Dark Horse. Prism. [Audio File]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KSOMA3QBU0&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=6
Ashley Frangipane & Peder Losnegard. (2015) Castle. Badlands. [Audio File] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk0xkd8qs9I&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=7
Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Max Martin, Shellback. (2015) Bad Blood. 1989. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcIy9NiNbmo&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=9
Pink & Max Martin. (2009). Please Don’t Leave Me. Funhouse. [Audio File] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eocCPDxKq1o&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=11
Ben McKee, Adam Baachaoui, Daniel Platzman, Dan Reynolds, Wayne Sermon, Alexander Grant, Josh Mosser. (2013) Demons. Continued Silence. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWRsgZuwf_8&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=12
Marshall Mathers, Bleta Rexha, Robyn Fenty, Aaron Kleinstub, Jon Bellion, Bryan Fryzel, Marki Athanasiou. (2013). Monster. The Marshall Mathers LP2. Bebe Rexha and Jon Bellion wrote the song and Mathers collaborated with Rihanna. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHkozMIXZ8w&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=14
Rob Thomas & Matt Serletic. (1998) Back 2 Good. Yourself or Someone Like You. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X5Dr-uFVGw&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=15
Anthony Kiedis, John Frusciante, Flea, Chad Smith. (2013). Soul To Squeeze. Blood Sugar Sex Magik. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XcN12uVHeQ&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=16
Tom Cochrane. (1981) Lunatic Fringe. As Far As Siam. [Audio File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTFVMMCwsss&list=PLkJLMdNdqVfo3qGz0fSz57EzTHnsGqIJK&index=18
