The conquistador and the dark continent: Reflections on the psycyhology of love

Abstract

begin this essay on love with a question about Othello: How do we hear the lines at the end of the play, when Othello speaks of himself as one that loved not wisely but too well? In this tragedy built upon stories, how do we hear this story of love? The sadness of the speech dispels an ironic reading of its text, and earlier in the scene it is clear that Othello is trying to reveal himself. Casting aside his heroic stories?Why should honour outlive hon esty? / Let it go all?he announces his wish to be seen; Uncle, he says, I must come forth. Look in upon me, he tells Gratiano; Behold, he says, presenting himself. Here am, he says to Lodovico, attaching the word honorable to murderer and renounc ing as vain his former boasts. Thus, when he asks these Venetian en voys, as they prepare to make known his fault to the state, to speak of me as am: nothing extenuate, we are inclined to believe the story he says they must tell. Yet, listening to his story of excessive love and looking at Desdemona dead on the stage, we wonder?if he loved her, why did he kill her? Why didn't he know who she was? The conquistador of my title, however, is Freud, the self proclaimed conqueror of an inner world: the dark continent, also his phrase, refers to women's experience of sexuality and relationships. If the tragedy of Othello raises the question of how we can talk about love without knowing about women, or conversely, if we know about women, what stories have darkened our reason, obscur