Imaginal Reality:
Madness in the Ordinary

By

Stephan A. George

Introduction

In a previous paper (1999), the white whale, Moby-Dick, was discussed as the personification of darkness.  The premise of that paper was that, in order to better understand madness, we must personify it.  In Hillman’s terms this personification is an “act of ensouling” (1976, p. 13).  Once ensouled, a container is provided for this configuration of the soul—madness.  Ishmael doubly personifies the madness of the Shadow in both the White Whale and Ahab.  But to personify is not enough.  The container created by this personification remains just a container; the contents remain to be studied and defined.

Many people, when reading Moby-Dick, are put off by the lengthy and detailed descriptions of the sperm whale’s anatomy, its skeleton, its color, its taste, and its propitious quantities of spermaceti oil.  “Get to the point, Ishmael!  Tell us whether Ahab gets his White Whale!”  These comments echo down the corridors of time as readers of all ages quickly skim those chapters.  If you want a good story from Moby-Dick, skim on, Reader.  If you want, at some level—conscious or unconscious—an experience of madness, then these chapters become as important as the epilogue.

Imaginal Reality

A short paper does not do justice to the longer themes of Moby-Dick.  As we read Ishmael’s musings on the sperm whale, try to imagine into these descriptions, not whale, but madness.  We shall attempt this “imagining into” as it applies to some of the chapters of Moby-Dick, especially as the story closes in on Ahab’s encounter with the White Whale.

Chapter 64. Stubb’s Supper.

Stubb is sitting on the capstan at midnight, eating the steak prepared for him from the sperm whale he has just slain.  Ishmael tells us:

Nor was Stubb the only banqueter on whale’s flesh that night.  Mingling their mumblings with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness. (1967, p. 249).

Madness is something each of us tastes in life.  Some savor it.  Our pride and hubris can lead to inflation as Stubb has experienced in the lancing of the whale.  Not only does he taste his pride but he relishes it bite for bite, admonishing the cook on how the steak should be prepared.  His lecturing continues through his meal and, as one reads, seems to become more and more pointless.  It is as if the nourishment of whale steak immediately manifests itself in madness.

Around him feast the sharks, eating as he eats, but without the ability to relish what they eat.  They are the more innocent species.  The cook finally has enough.  He has been a witness to the madness of Stubb and he has even served up the meat of that madness.  As witness and servant to Stubb, he now becomes the butt of Stubb’s humor and satire.  In the end, the cook answers in kind:

“Wish, by gor! whale eat him, ‘stead of him eat whale.  I’m bressed if he ain’t more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself…” (1967, p. 254).

Chapter 79.  The Prairie.

Ishmael takes a chapter to describe the “face” of the whale.  Imagine this as a description of the face of madness.  The sperm whale has no proper nose as man and the statues of men that man creates.  But Ishmael points out that “A nose to the whale would have been impertinent…” (1967, p. 291).  He calls the full front view of the whale’s head sublime.  It is all brow, a prairie with furrows plowed throughout.  From this frontal view, no eyes, ears, or nose are visible.  Not even in profile does this “wondrous brow diminish…” (1967, p. 292).  Now Ishmael goes inside the head to muse about the intelligence behind this brow:

“Genius in the Sperm Whale?  Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech?  No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it.” (1967, p. 292)

Has madness ever written a book, spoken a speech?  No, only the man or woman so consumed by it.  Madness is a condition, not a judgment.  Madness has no face.  It is only the characteristic behind the face.

Epilogue.

Madness has consumed the captain, his ship, and his crew, leaving only Ishmael afloat in the debris of madness, upon a coffin sealed against its depths.  The observer survives and concludes:

“It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan” (1967, p. 470)

The parables end here.  Order is restored.  What has gone before is given only as examples of the parables of madness that run throughout this novel.  But the parable is only seen by the reader’s willingness to create an imaginal reality.  Jung has said, simply, “…image is psyche…” (1966a).  Hillman elaborates, “In the beginning is the image; first imagination then perception; first fantasy then reality…” (1976, p. 23).  Ishmael presents the image to the reader’s imagination.  It is now the reader’s prerogative to hold the fantasy as fantasy or apply it to his or her reality.  The application to reality is the contest for every man.  With a profundity of data has Ishmael shown us Ahab and his whale.  The story is a classic and can rest there—a wonderfully engaging narrative, tragic and complete in its ending of survival.  But you, Reader, be the judge: Is there a story within this story?  Is there more to be imagined? 

The Psychology in the Fiction

As one reads Moby-Dick with an eye to the parables within, one is struck time and again with the images of pride, madness, revenge, humor, and others too numerous to mention.  A paper as short as this can only emphasize to the reader that every chapter is replete with secondary meaning.  If you read Moby-Dick and imagine into it from an altitude of 50,000 feet, one point is obvious:  Almost every chapter stands on its own as a source of insight into Psyche.  The warp and weave of the story has recurring themes such as this one of madness we have taken on.  Read it a second time and a new theme appears.  But all of this is true only if the reader comes to the story with imaginal reality in mind.  As was said earlier, without imaginal reality imposed upon Moby-Dick, it is just another fish story.

In the consulting room, the therapist is faced with a choice: imagine into the narrative the client relates or simply listen to the story as story.  Therapy is collaborative healing.  The client tells the story while the therapist becomes the catalyst to create the imaginal reality, to bring Psyche into the room.  With Psyche present, both client and therapist can move to this perch of 50,000 feet to observe the warp and weave of the client’s narrative.  Insight and healing can occur when both can sense the construction of the fabric, the story told.

Jung has said that,

“In general, it is the non-psychological novel that offers the richest opportunities for psychological elucidation.   Here the author, having no intentions of this sort, does not show his characters in a psychological light and thus leaves room for analysis and interpretation, or even invites it by his unprejudiced mode of presentation.” (1966b)

Moby-Dick is such.

REFERENCES

George, S. (1999).  Personification of shadow: Ahab & the white whale.  Unpublished paper, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Myth, Literature, & Religious Studies, CP-507.

Hillman, J. (1976).  Re-visioning psychology. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Jung, C. G. (1966a).  Alchemical studies.  CW 13, §75.

Jung, C. G. (1966b).  The spirit of man, art, and literature.  CW 15, §137.

Melville, H. (1967).  Moby-Dick.  A Norton Critical Edition, Eds., Hayford, H. & Parker, H.  New York: W. W. Norton & Company.