A Country Doctor: How Many Lit Critics does it take screw in some meaning?
“A Country Doctor” depicts a physician who is summoned to the call of a sick child, yet is unable to accomplish any valuable action. He is surrounded by the absurd at every angle, yet accepts it as a standard- there is never any reflection on the logic of the events, merely the practical difficulties they cause. The story has been of particular interest for scholars seeking the trace the lines that link Freud and Kafka because of its seeming allusions to Freudian concepts like condensation and displacement.
Louis Leiter, writing in 1958, comments on the disorientation the reader faces “who like the psychoanalyst can approach dream only from a rational frame of reference” (Leiter 337) For Leiter, the doctor represents the figure of humanity when it fails in the face of conflict, to transcend absurdity: “As a doctor, he is a thing, an object, a tool; as a man he is nothing” (340)
Leiter believes that “To work from a psychoanalytical orientation in interpreting “A Country Doctor” is a valid means of procedure”- procedure- like at a dentists office- a mere conglomeration of applied techniques that reveal “truth” or “insight” (342). His mechanic treatment of the text accounts for his limited view of it.
Searching for a more concrete frame of reference for the Kafka-Freud connection, Eric Marson and Keith Leopold engage in a historical investigation of Kafka’s approach and attitude towards Freud. Through their intricate breakdown of the text, they read a severe criticism of Freud- establishing it as a parody of psychoanalysis. The doctor is the embodiment of the psychoanalyst himself as he is ultimately unable to “cure” any ailment with his choice of treatment. Once he finally reaches the boy, he reluctantly decides to appreciate the source of his affliction; apparently, this is the reluctance associated with a formation of a new science. It is only when the doctor finally sees the wound, pink and filled with worms that he appreciates the boys psyche. The story mocks psychoanalytic logic.
Hans Guth, in “Symbol and Restraint” is far less myopic in scope. He begins by criticizing the shortsighted earlier approaches to Kafka and his relationship to Freud, asserting that “unrestrained symbolical interpretation often does violence to the structure of a work” (427). Unfortunately, he too falls into the pit of interpretation by relating to characters and setting as metaphor. He is hard-pressed to find an instance of obsession over the incapacity to act- if anything there is a sort of calm that envelopes the doctor as the world around him unravels. In fact, at one point, the doctor is naked and describes it as “Then I’m naked, calmly surveying the people”(Kafka 127). And while Guth observes rather accurately that “The events of the story repeatedly frustrate the common human impulse toward effective control of experience” he attributes the doctor’s apparent lack of anxiety to the overall interplay of “attitude and thought” (428).
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All the images on this page can be found at the wonderful Country Doctor Museum
Read more:
Kafka Meets Freud... and Whatever that Means: Introducing the link between them
Just what makes Kafka so Kafkaesque?
One popular (and quite possibly missguided) way of reading Kafka’s Dreams:
More than Metaphor
A Country Doctor: How Many Lit Critics does it take screw in some meaning?
Kafka on Trial: THE TRIAL and its Potentiality
Concluding (Somewhat) Inconclusively
Further Reading
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