THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CREATIVITY & PROBLEM SOLVING 2013, 23(1), 103-118

Matricide and Creativity: The Case of Two Hungarian Cousin-Writers from the Perspective of Contemporary Psychobiography
Zoltn Kvry
University of Szeged, Hungary
In the history of human sciences we find a special type of creator who is somehow trapped between the worlds of the arts and the sciences. This condition leads to special ways of self-actualization, like in the cases of Plato, Leonardo, Nietzsche or Freud. In the history of Hungarian human sciences and modern arts one of the most exciting representatives of the Renaissance man was Gza Csth (original name Jzsef Brenner), a talented psychiatrist trying to use psychoanalysis for the first time in treating paranoid schizophrenia, and also a triple artist (writer, musician and painter) best known for his short stories. While living the life of a doppelgnger and doing a wild analysis with his psychotic patient, he became a morphine addict and, at the age of 32, murdered his wife and committed suicide. I use here the method of multiple case psychobiography to compare the life and works of Csth with those of his cousine and friend Dezs Kosztolnyi, one of the most outstanding writers of the time in Hungary. By analysing their personalities, their choices in life and characteristics for short stories about matricide we can take a look at the personal roots of their creativity and the goals and discontents of being such a complex personality as Gza Csth certainly was.

ARTISTIC VS SCIENTIFIC CREATIVITY By the 19th century, artistic creation became one of the most important expressions of selfhoodand human freedom; from Romanticism onwards we can talk about the cult of creativity (Baumeister, 1987). At the same time, mostly because the development of sciences, the value of scientific creativity caught up to its artistic counterpart and, in the 20th century, when psychologists began to explore the psychological background of the creative process and creative personality, they focused in research on both areas (Runco & Albert, 2010). There are some outstanding creative persons in the history of (human) sciences, whose works belong to both the domain of art and science. For example, in the writings of Plato we can find an intoxicating mixture of philosophy and poetry, of science and art (Durant, 2012, p. 21). On the contrary, in the case of Leonardo da Vinci according to Freud the investigator in him never in the course of his development left the artist entirely free, but often made severe encroachments on him and perhaps in the end suppressed him (Freud, 1910, 64.). In his book Human, all too human, Nietzsche (who was also the same type) wrote that this kind of man have to use
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Zoltn Kvry, 1066 Budapest, Zichy Jeno utca 23. 1/9. Hungary. E-mail: kovary.zoltan@gamil.com

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conciliatory central powers between the domains, with the dominating strength to settle, if need be, any quarrels that break out (1986, p. 130). What can be said about the psychological effects of being artistically and scientifically creative at the same time? In the case of Leonardo, these two parts of his self, the scientist and the artist, were in prolonged conflict with each other, and later the investigator surpressed the artist. Freud is also an outstanding example: he identified himself with the scientist part, but he won the Goethe-prize in 1930 that was given to witers (Lohmann, 2008), although he was very ambivalent when somebody called psychoanalyis an art. To explore this conflict in detail, I will examine Gza Csth, who was one of the most complex and interesting figures in the history of the humanities in Central Europe. Csth, as a writer and a physician of the mind, tried to establish the nietzschean conciliatory central powers in a very special and fruitful way but, after some successful years, this architecture collapsed, he became morphine addict, murdered his wife and committed suicide. PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY In my investigation I use psychobiography as a method, which I believe is one of the most remarkable modes to explore the personality of the creator (Schultz, 2005c). Psychobiography is a qualitative research method that has been used since the beginning of the 20th century by psychoanalysts and personality psychologists like Allport or Murray (Runyan, 2005a). This method was criticized strongly for decades for being not scientific, but since narrative psychology came into view, psychologists begin to realize that this is a fruitful approach to explore complex psychological phenomena like identity or examine how life history influences creativity and self-actualization (Kvry, 2011). Todays psychobiography integrates modern dynamic psychology with the personological tradition and narrative personality psychology, and tries to develop a systematic approach to life history analysis both theoretically and methodologically (Elms, 2007). There are some important questions in personality and creativity research (like the motivation of creating, the influence of life events, the dynamics of creative process, the meaning of being a creator and artist) that cannot be examined on the level of personality traits using quantitative methods, and in these cases we need a holistic and idiographic approach and have to use case studies and interpretative methods to avoid reductionism and oversimplification (Runyan, 1997; McAdams & Pals, 2007). These methods are not based on the linear structure of quantitative approaches but rather use the hermeneutic circle; Rennie (2007) believes that qualitative methods have to apply methodological hermeneutics as a metatheoretical background. Psychobiographers in the US are tend not to reflect on the epistemological premises of their work; they rather use the phrase iterativity instead of hermeneutic circle (Elms, 2007). It is also an important question that, if we have to use life history analyes, why do we study biographies and autobiographies rather than deal with living persons? There are different reasons for this. If we are studying a living person, we cannot even unfold her/his identity, which means that we have to keep a lot of important details (relationships, affairs, events, reactions) hidden because of ethical reasons. One cannot examine the validity of our interpretations, because case studies are not based on public data accesible for everyone. And finally, if we want to judge the value of someones artistic creativity, if it really belongs to the domain of Big C (Kozbelt,

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Bighetto & Runco, 2010) we need distance in time. Philosophers like Gadamer (2006) agree that the value of contemporary art is almost impossible to discern and so, if we want to explore eminent creativity, we have to chose someone from the past, and apply phenomenological contextualism (Atwood, Stolorw & Orange, 2011), which means that we are exploring the protagonists affective experiences in their social and historical context. Gza Csth: triple artist and innovative psychiatrist Gza Csth (1887-1911) was a member of a progressive Hungarian intellectual movement unfolding at the turn of the 19th-20th century and lasting for about two decades, until about the end of World War I. At that time, Hungary was the part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and had strong connections with Vienna, one of the most important artistic and scientific centers in Europe (Schorske, 1981). In 1908, two important events happened that shaped the intellectual life in Hungary (especially in Budapest) for the following years. On the first of January, the first issue of the literary journal Nyugat (West) was published, edited by Miksa Feny and Ern Osvt, and led by Ignotus (Hug Veigelsberg). Nyugat united the most important writers and poets of the time: Endre Ady, Mihly Babits, Dezs Kosztolnyi, Frigyes Karinthy, Zsigmond Mricz, Miln Fst, rpd Tth, Gyula Krdy and Dezs Kosztolnyis cousin, Gza Csth among several others (Czigny, 1984). In the same year, a 35 year old physician, Sndor Ferenczi, met and made friend with the inventor of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. In the following years, Ferenczi became one of the closest collegues of Freud, and helped him develop the ideas of psychoanalysis and spread them worldwide. A few years later, in 1913, Ferenczi founded the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association (Szkcs & Keve, 2009). Ferenczi found friends and followers among writers; that is why Hungarian psychoanalyis had a very special intellectual character which made it different from other associations (Ers, 2004). There were some inquiring writers like Kosztolnyi, Karinthy and Fst, who were close friends with Ferenczi, and often visited him to get some psychoanalytic education. Some of them used this inspiration in their novels and short stories succesfully (Valachi, 2008). Although well known as a psychiatrist and writer using the Freudian perspective, Csth never became the part of the Hungarian psychoanlytic movement, which was probably connected with his prevailing morphinism in the 1910s. Csth, alias Jzsef Brenner, was born and grew up in Szabadka, which was a cultural center in Hungarys southern part called Vajdasg today Vojvodina, Serbia (Szajbly, 1989). His father was a lawyer, his mother died when he was 8, which caused him an unprocessable trauma. The common grandfather of Csth and Dezs Kosztolnyi was a well known pharmacist; as children, they experienced the power of drugs, which affected their subsequent lives. Csth and Kosztolnyi grew up as best friends, and they began to create short stories and poems together in high school in the first years of the 1900s. Csth was also a talent in music and painting, thats why his cousine named him a triple artist. As a high school student, Csth was one of the first who discovered the genius of young Bla Bartk. In 1904, Csth tried to enter the music academy, but failed, and became a medical student in Budapest. Beside his medical studies he kept on writing and worked for Budapesti Napl as a music critic. In 1908, Csth released his first collection of short stories, The magicians garden (A varzsl kertje, 1994a); meanwhile, in the next year, he began to work at the

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famous Moravcsik Clinics department of psychiatry and neurology as a trainee. The 23-year old Csth was already into the ideas of Freud and Jung, and began to apply the elements of depth-psychology in the case of a paranoid schizophrenic woman (Szajbly, 1989). That was problematic in many ways: Csth had no experience in psychoanalytic treatment, and he began to analyse a psychotic patient, which was not usual and rather dangerous at that time. Because of the early loss of his beloved mother, he had unsolved psychological problems that could give rise to serious countertransference effects in psychotherapeutic work (Harmat, 2004). Kosztolnyi wrote in Csths necrology (1919) that the choice of psychiatry was Csths unconscious strive to cure himself from his melancholy and he also thought that this was the psychological source of his penmanship. During the time of this mentioned wild analysis, a doctor examined Csths lungs and told him he might have tuberculosis. It was the writers secret fear and, to control his anxiety, he began to use morphine. The psychotic patient he treated that time had the same fear of TBC because of her ill mother, and that probably influenced Csths anxiety. In the same year, Csth also met Olga Jns, whom he married two years later. In 1911, Gza Csth released his second significant short story-collection, Afternoon dream (Dlutni lom, 1994b), including some of his finest materials, like Matricide (Anyagyilkossg) or pium (he wrote the latter one year before the begining of his morphine use) Criticians believed his literary style has dramatically changed since The magicians garden: it became more naturalistic, full of pathological and bizarre elements. Kosztolnyi (1919) stated that this was the first sign of Csths later disintegration. Though slowly he became a morphine addict, these years were the highlights of Gza Csths career. In 1911, he wrote his psychiatric work called The psychic mechanism of psychoses (Az elmebetegsgek psychikus mechanismusa) which later became part of his literary oeuvre under the name The diary of a mad woman (Egy elmebeteg n naplja, 1983). This book was released in 1912 along with his third short-story collection (Schmith, the gingerbread baker - Schmith mzeskalcsos, 1994c) and the German version of his paper on Puccini. From 1913, his problems with morphine got more and more severe, he left Budapest, and started to work as a physician in different small town spas, where although he was a married man he had plenty of of sexual adventures. His marriage was unbalanced; he had many quarells and fights with Olga Jns. Between 1913 and 1919, he enetered some unsuccesful drug rehabilitations, his physical and mental status became more and more hopeless; from his letters to Kosztolnyi (Szajbly, 1989) we know that he suffered from losing ability and motivation to write short stories (his last book, Musicians [Muzsikusok] was released in 1913). As a part of his disintegration, Csth developed paranoid ideas about his wifes disloyalty. In 1919, July the 22nd he shot and killed Olga Jns, and tried to commit suicide. He survived and was sent to a mental hospital, first to Baja, then to Szabadka. He escaped from the latter and tried to cross the border (following the Trianon peace treaty, Szabadka as Subotica belonged to Serbia). He got caught, took a great quantity of pantopol (substitute for morphine), which killed him at the age of 32.

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QUESTIONS AND THE METHOD USED The cousins Gza Csth and Dezs Kosztolnyi wrote more stories about matricide. Although Mller-Freienfers (1973) stated that matricide is a recurrent subject in literature, and post-Lacanian authors like Kristeva (Bass, 2006) dealt a lot with the psychoanalysis of symbolic matricide and its connection with creativity and language, one cannot say that it is a very common literary theme. Dezs Kosztolnyi wrote a novel about Emperor Nero (1922/1972), who killed his mother Poppea for power, and the title of the book (Nero, the bloody poet Nero a vres klt) refers to the emperor wishing to be a writer. His Anne Sweet (des Anna) (1926/1992) is a very complex story about an ambivalent relationship between a lady whose baby had died and a maid who lost her mother. Their growing conflict ends up in a murder; Anne killed the woman and her husband. Criticians agree that the crime comitted by the girl is a symbolic matricide to set herself free from an unbearable bound (Lengyel, 1998a). Gza Csth was more explicit in his writings than his cousine. In 1911 as I mentioned above he released Afternoon dream (1994b), including Matricide (this story inspired Hungarian filmmaker Jnos Szsz to create a film called The Wittmanboys; later, Szsz directed another film, Opium, about Csth-Brenner). This is not the only short story about the death of the mother in Csths oeuvre; in his first book, The magicians garden (1994a), we can read a story called I met with my mother (Tallkoztam az anymmal) which is a fantasy written in first person singular. The protagonist lost her mother when he was born (indirect matricide), feeling guilty about falling in love with another women and imagining meeting his mother at the age when she died (Csths mother died as a young woman). My research questions are, in this context, the following. Is it an accident that the cousin-writers paid attention to the extreme subject of matricide in their stories, or can we find any psychological factors that might have determined their artistic choice of subject? According to psychoanalysis, artistic creativity is connected with unconscious fantasy and dreams (Freud, 1908). Fantasies and dreams are most of the time about working through psychic traumas and conflicts (Segal, 1991). We know that the cousins both had traumatic mother-child relationships. Csths mother died early, which caused him a personality disorder that we would call narcissistic nowadays (Harmat, 2004). Heavily ill of addiction, he asked Kosztolnyi to write a book about his life and forthcoming death which would have called Stepmother, and in his instructions to him he wrote: Degenerate birth must be empashized. Illusions on the dead mother (Szajbly, 1989, pp. 16-17). Because of some family onflicts with the maternal grandfather, Dezs Kosztolnyis attachment to his mother was troubled, that is why he had separation anxiety and fear of death throughout his whole life (Kosztolnyin, 1990; Nemes, 1994). Are these circumstances special enough to explain their common choice of the special subject matter, or should we look for something else? My second question concerns the differences between the two men. Their interest for the subject of matricide, their positive attitudes towards psychoanalyisis, their identity as writers and their drug using habits were common motifs, but show important differences as well. When I found these motifs for analysis, I realized that these factors are overlaping with the categories that Leopold Szondi identified when he described the so called familial unconscious. Szondi, the Hungarian-then-Swiss psychiatrist, believed that there are different unconsciouses: beside Freuds personal

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unconscious, and the Jungian collective unconscious, there is a familial unconscious that uses the language of choices (Szondi, 1996). Szondi was talking about four areas within this: the choice of love (libidotropism), the choice of ideas (idealotropism), the choice of profession (operotropism) and the choice of illness and death (morbotropism). Szondi stated that these choices are determined by the familial unconscious, though if the person becomes aware of these powers, she/he has a chance to make other decisions. Szondis theory is contested (e.g. he connected familial unconscious to genes) and accepted only in a few countries; in my paper I do not use it as an explanation, but I think his categories (which are based on scientific explorations) can be applied phenomenologically to conceptualize data for psychobiographical analysis. To get appropriate answers to these complex questions I used the above mentioned psychobiography or life history analysis. Psychobiographers use first person and secondary documents as a source (Allport, 1942), and apply special models to organize life history data, for example primary indicators of psychological saliency (Alexander, 1990), prototypical scenes in life histories (Schultz, 2005), or check some structural components variables in them (McAdams, 1988). To evaluate psychobiographical interpretations we have to take into account cogency, narrative structure, comprehensiveness, logical soundness, consistency, and viability. The convergence of data and scientific theoretical support are also very important, and the interpretations credibility has to be comparable to that of other interpretations (Schultz, 2005, a; Runyan, 2005). Beside single cases there is a growing interest nowadays towards comparative psychobiography (Elms, 2007). As literature historian Zoltn Dr (1980) called Csth and Kosztolnyi twin stars, their relationship and the similarity of their interests gave me the idea to use the special form of life history analysis called multiple case psychobiography (Isaacson, 2005). We can use this method if we want to look at a work that is a product of two individuals, look at both parties of a relationship, or compare two people who have something in common and are connected by a direct or indirect relationship. In this case, I will compare two people who, besides categorical pairing, also had direct contact. Due to the iterative nature of psychobiography, I had to decide whether we make a serial itertation (one analysis after another) or a parallel one. In the latter case, all of the data for the subjects is treated as a single set; in my analysis I chose this approach. Twin stars analysis and interpretation via Szondis categories Opreotropism being an artist Dezs Kosztolnyi was a homo aestheticus: language, reading and writing were his passions. He believed that the usage of language is the functioning of the psyche: he wrote a complete book about it (Language and soul Nyelv s llek, 2002). Istvn Holls, who was the Hungarian translater of Freuds Interpretation of Dreams, tried to develop a psychoanalytic theory of language, and he used the help of Kosztolnyi; during their sessions they found out the adequate Hungarian translation of many psychoanalytic terms. Holls was the model for an important physician in Kosztolnyis Anne Sweet (Lengyel, 1998b). According to Nemes, Kosztolnyis love for his mother tongue is connected with his frustrated primary love towards his mother (Nemes, 1994). Language was an extremely important object of attachment hroughout his whole life, even on his death bed, when due to his illness he lost the ability of speaking and used writing to communicate (Kosztolnyin, 1990). We can say that Kosztolnyis identity was stable, he identified himself with the role of the writer, and although he

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had a lot of neurotic problems and used different drugs language amd literature provided him the coherence of the self throughout his life. The case of Csth is much more complicated. He chose medicine as a profession which astonished Kosztolnyi and as a psychiatrist he kept his original name: Jzsef Brenner; meanwhile he wrote and published his short stories and criticism under his chosen name: Gza Csth. This kind of organization of the self points to the phenomenon of the romantic doppelgnger, the double, which is best known through the novel of Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2002). In this book a well respected physician is turning into a human beast under the influence of some self-made drugs. This image of the double arose the interest of psychoanalysis for a long time. We can find it in Freuds writing The Uncanny (1919), Otto Rank wrote an entire book on this subject (1989), there is a similar concept under the name of The Shadow in Jungs theory (1966), and also in Heinz Kohuts view of the tripolar self as twin or alterego needs (1984). Kohut said that the need for an alterego is part of the persons narcissistic and self developement. According to him (1971), creativity is a mature form of narcissism, so its not a surprise that modern artists and thinkers of the Romanticism often had twin-like friendships, for instance, Goethe and Schiller, Wordsworth and Colereidge, or Friedrich Schlegel and Schleiermacher (Doorman, 2006). Kosztolnyi and Csth both had their double, but they elaborated their need for an alterego in a different way. Kosztolnyi published a short story collection in 1933 called Esti Kornl (2011); it is about the adventures of a figure that represents his darker side. That is an optimal artistic solution for an unintegrated part of the self, because - according to Scheff (Kahn, 1981) - it creates an optimal aesthetic distance for the subject. George Hagman (2000) called this action transmutative externalization, which helps the artist to reestablish his inner coherency not through the accrual of self-structure, but through alteration of the artwork (p. 289). If the solution is too close to the self, it raises anxiety and threatens its coherency. Csth created his double within his personality, which is an unstable position. He was Jzsef Brenner, the phisycian, and Gza Csth, the writer. In 1910, when he started to use drugs, everything became confused, because he slowly began to lose his ability to write literature; meanwhile, as I mentioned above, his psychotic patient, Gizella, was a graphomaniac and that permenently reminded him of that. Seeing a graphomaniac while loosing the ability to write short stories was a curved mirror to Brenner/Csth, which undermined his self esteem (Mszly, 2004). Csths self-organization had another special characteristic. He was not a single but a triple artist; his artistic part was divided into three sub-parts: a writer, a musician and a painter (Szajbly, 1989). These were, of course, not equal, but music for example played and extremely important role in his life. If his artistic self were not a writer but an explicit musician or a painter, it could have been easier for him, because literature and psychology stand so close that they are easily confused (Moghaddam, 2004). According to Linville (1987), high complexity of the self is a buffer against stress and depression, but also a source of inner conflicts, because each part is eager for expression. As such, being such a complex man has both its advantages and disadvantages psychologically and Csths problems might have been connected with this state.

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Idealotropism analyis of the psyche Psychoanalysis played a very important role in the cousins lives. They both met with this theory and practiced it in the first decade of the 20th century; Kosztolnyi, while he was studying in Wien, Csth, as a medical student. They were both impressed by Freuds science, but the way they incorporated it into their thinking was different. Kosztolnyi, although he believed that psychoanalysis was the most important intellectual revolution since reformation, and wrote a poem about Freud, used psychoanalysis as a tool softly, and was also able to keep a healthy distance from depth psychology. In his poem Esti Kornl neke (The song of Esti Kornl) he speaks ironically about the divers of the deep soul, and although he suffered from different neurotic symptoms and had a lot of psychoanalyst friends, he refused to attend psychoanalytic treatment - maybe in order to defend the source of his creativity (Harmat, 1994). Gza Csth was different and ambivalent. As a psychiatrist, he was very much into psychoanalyis; as a doctor, he used it; and, as a theoretic writer, he propagated Freuds ideas as true knowledge about human nature (Szajbly, 1989). In his 1912 book, Diary of a mad woman (original title: Psychic mechanism of psychoses, 1983) he not only applied psychoanalyis but, in a theoretical chapter, he developed his own psychoanalytic model for the psyche which was criticized strongly by Ferenczi (Harmat, 1994). As a writer, in his first book The magicians garden, Gza Csth used psychologicalpsychoanalytic knowledge about human soul in a sophisticated way. These stories are full of emotions, nostalgic moods, impressionistic visuality and art noveau sensitivity. His second significant volume, Afternoon dream, three years later, has a different tonality. His voice became more realistic and naturalistic and, as his critics wrote, the book includes short stories of the Freudian doctor (Szajbly, 1989). Kosztolnyi (1919) stated that this change was the first sign of his later disintegration. How can we conceptualize these changes? According to Loewald (1980), the necessary balance between the primary and secondary process (or emotional and intellectual) components of his language capsized, and Csth began to lose his artistic tools to sublimate and express his conflicts and waving of his affective life. For some years on, he succeeded in covering this erosion of emotional creativity (Averill & Thomas-Knowles 1991) with his non-emotional psychiatric stories, but later some of these writings became too theoretical, and the theoretical model he elaborated about the psyche in his scientific works began to dominate and bind his thinking (Harmat, 1994). Csth suffered badly from losing his ability and mood for writing, and also had a paranoid fear that, if he had written something, some other people could have read his hidden wishes from the texts as he did with others using his psychoanalytic knowledge (Csth, 1989). Morbotropism litany of the poisons As I mentioned earlier, the grandfather of the two writers, Jzsef Brenner the eldest, was a famous pharmacist in Szabadka, so the cousins had an early experience concerning drugs they were the masters of life and death. Drugs played important role in their lives. In the October of 1933, Kosztolnyis wife discovered that his husband had been using morphine for about 8-10 years, which helped her to uderstand a lot of strange things about the poets behaviour (Kosztolnyin, 1990). In his poem, Litany of the poisons (Mrgek litnija) Kosztolnyi wrote: I love them all.

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And they love me all too (1984, p. 302). In Kosztolnyis novel Anne Sweet, a young man, Patikrius Jancsi (roughly Johnny Pharmacist), seduces and conceives the protagonist, and later they carry out the necessary abortion with some poison which nearly kills Anne (1992). Kosztolnyi, who was a heavy smoker and drank many coffees each day, never became fatally addicted to morphine. When his wife discovered his secret, he decided to give up his habit; he was suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms but finally he succeeded without any institutionalized rehabilitation. He died at 51, after a long struggle with gum cancer. The details of Gza Csths morphinism are well known (Szajbly, 1989). He began to use the drug in 1910, in a few years he became an addict and, as we know from his Diary 1912-1913 (1989), he was desperately trying to get rid of the drug first by himself, then in 1913 and 1915 in closed institutions unsuccesfully. In 1919 he spent more then one month in a psychiatric department in Baja, and in his agony he dealt with the idea of suicide. He escaped from the hospital and committed the murder, than killed himself. What made this brilliant young man a morphine user? According to Harmat (2004), the trauma of his mothers death when he was 8 deeply wounded this sensitive child. Kosztolnyi believed that his drug use (just like his choice of being a psychiatrist) was an unconscious endeavor to cure himself from the melancholy that came from the loss of his childhood paradise. That is how he escaped from the soul-chasing of The magicians garden and Afternoon dream, from the nervous exaltation which he was trying to cure with morphine Morphinism is always an effect, not a cause. When he began to apply this poison, he unconsciously knew that he had chosen the smaller danger instead of the bigger one. He tried to escape from the melancholy which reverberates in his writings through after-life sweet songs (Kosztolnyi, 1919, pp. 16-17). As I mentioned above, Csth took the drug for the first time when he learned he might have tuberculosis, and it happened during the time he was in a wild analysis with a psychotic woman fearing the same desease (Addiction is selfmedicalization, an unconscious endeavor to create self-coherency that is missing in the case of personality disorders, especially in borderline and narcissistic ones; Ulman & Paul, 2006). Gza Csth had to pay a lot for this medication: he lost his incentive to be creative, than he became a murderer and finally lost his life. Libidotropism love and matricide We know that the cousine writers both had troubled early relationships with their mothers and it might have caused them a basic fault, a serious early emotional development disorder (Balint, 1989) Can this be the psychological source of their artistic interest for the subject of matricide, or is there something more? It is remarkable that their pharmacist grandfather, Jzsef Brenner, lost his mother when he was born (just like the storyteller in Csths I met with my mother!) and was raised by a stepmother who caused him emotional problems (Czeizel, 1997). We have to keep it in mind that Stepmother would have been the title of Csths life story novel written by Kosztolnyi, and the lady that was killed by Anne Sweet in Kosztolnyis novel was also a kind of stepmother to Anne. It is also important to mention that the Hungarian title of Kosztolnyis book, des Anna, refers to the Hungarian word desanya which means the biological mother. The indirect matricide that was caused by the birth of the grandfather could it be the source of a transgenerational trauma? This trauma might have remained unprocessed and become a family taboo in

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the cousins family, and during their childhood they could have develop fantasies about that (Fantasy is always an effort to overcome the trauma). Although, we can never be sure about that, this interpretation is worth considering. The theory of Hungarian born French psychoanalyst Nicolas Abraham about transgenerational traumas might help us in this regard. Abraham says that, if an emotional loss is impossible to integrate, it creates an encapsulated intrapsychic structure he called the crypt. The crypt can become a phantom to the next generations causing the same symptoms and problems as the crypt (Abraham & Torok, 1984). In trauma research there is en evident that for example traumas of the holocaust can seriously harm the children of the survivors (Jucovy, 1992). The matricide caused by the grandfather that combined with the real (Csth) and symbolic (Kosztolnyi) loss of their own mother - could it be the source of the boys fantasies, that later transformed into stories about killing the mother? Matricide fantasies have psychoanalytic interpretations. Freudian psychoanalysis with its oedipal focus dealt mostly with the motif of parricide, for example, in the case of Dostoyevsky (Freud, 1928). The question of matricide became more important when the object-relational theories of Melanie Klein or Margaret Mahler became well known and important in the second half of 20th century (Mahler, 1981; Segal, 1980). Matricide fantasies are about depenedency, loss and aggression; the latter helps the subject to break out from the symbiosis with the mother and makes individuation possible. Kiremidjian (1976) had this kind of interpretation for Dostoevskys Crime and punishment; meanwhile, after Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristvea interpreted the fantasy of matricide as a necessary action to step in the fathers world of language, to create ones real self and to be creative (Bass, 2006). There are some remarkable differences between Kosztolnyis and Csths elaboration of this subject. Kosztolnyis choice of title is very sophisticated, while Csth is very direct with his Matricide. The protagonist, Ann Sweet in Kosztolnyis novel is a woman, but the model of this character in some respects was Kosztolnyi himself (Lengyel, 1998b). Csths heroes in Matricide, the Wittman boys who kill their mother, remind very much of Kosztolnyins (1990) description of the young cousins life in Szabadka. This distinction can be also interpreted. According to Kris idea (2000), artwork is similar to dreamwork: during the creative process the unconscious self uses condensation, displacement, representation and symbolization to transform the fantasy material into an acceptable format and establish an optimal aesthetical distance (Kahn, 1981) and help the transmutative externalization (Hagman, 2006). If the trauma is not worked through extensively enough, the transformed material remains too close to its unconscious origins, and might cause problems, for example anxiety or fear of losing control. The unrevised unconscious fantasy can be a psychic explosive because of the raw impulses it contains; and in certain circumstances it can cause an acting out. This might had happened to Gza Csth who had a troubled relationship with Olga Jns. The couple had a lot of arguments and sometimes physical fights, and as Csths self got more and more disintegrated, he became suspicious about his wifes loyalty, although he was the one who had different sexual adventures with his patients (Szajbly, 1989). When he lost his literary instruments to sublimate and externalize his passions and fantasies in a symbolic way, and his personality became disorganized because of his addiction, the fantasy of (symbolic) matricide became a bloody reality, and Gza Csth murdered his wife.

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DISCUSSION Using multiple case or comparative psychobiography (Isaacson, 2005) as a method, I intended to analyse the characteristics of two outstanding Hungarian writers from the begining of the 20th century. Dezs Kosztolnyi and Gza Csth (Jzsef Brenner) were cousins, they were part of Hungarys outstanding intellectual movement organized by the literary journal Nyugat, they were interested in psychoanalysis, used drugs and wrote stories about matricide, which can not be an accident. I referred to the fact that their early traumatic attachment experiences are probably not enough to explain their special subject choice, because they are not specific enough: according to Barron (1953) and Cskszentmihlyi (1996), a lot of creative persons experience early deprivation. I suggested that the pharmacist grandfathers indirect matricide as a transgenerational trauma or phantom (Abraham & Torok, 1984) could be a source of their fantasies that later became raw material for artistic creation, in agreement with psychoanalytic theories. I also tried to evince that the differences in their attitudes, behaviour and identifications in these particular domains are very distinctive. Kosztolnyi had a stable identity as a writer and homo aestheticus; he applied his psychanalytic knowledge in his art in a sophisticated way but also kept a distance, he used drugs but got rid of his addiction by himself. His need for an alterego was elaborated in his stories about Kornl Esti, his relationship with his wife, Ilona Harmos, was not without problems but lasted for a lifetime (Kosztolnyin, 1990). His version of matricide is discerning, the material seems to be worked through enough psychologically. Csth was more troubled and complicated. His multiple identities divided his self which was a source of conflicts and vulnerability. He was Dr. Jzsef Brenner, a psychiatrist, and Gza Csth, writer, musician and painter, and he became his own alterego. He went too deep in psychoanalysis: did a wild analysis with a psychotic woman and probably developed unresolved countertransference. When he wrote his case study about her, he not only used psychoanalytic concepts but developed his own version which Sndor Ferenczi found causeless. In the begining of his writering career, psychoanalys inspired Csth, later it imprisoned his mind in its own theory of complexes, and it consumed his creativity. He became a heavy user of morphine, which indirectly led to his early death at 32 years of age. He had a troubled marriage, marked by promiscuity and severe conflicts and, after he lost his capability to sublimate his inner conflits and passion, he lost control, murdered his wife and comitted suicide. This analysis can suggest that Gza Csth was a man with more serious selfdisorders, but I didnt intend to prove that; contemporary psychobiography avoids the ways of pathography (Schultz, 2005a). I also didnt want to state anything about the aesthetic value of the creations of these pensmen, because it belongs not to art psychology but aesthetics; I focused on some personal sources of their artistic creativity. I believe that psychobiography is a useful method to study artistic states, and we have a number of reasons to prefer this method when we want to understand the complexity of the creative person and the creative process (Kvry, 2011). We also have to keep in mind that outstanding psychologists like Rank, Rogers, Maslow, Cskszentmihlyi believe that creativity is not only a concept in the psychology of arts, but a key concept to understand the functioning of the mind and human personality as a whole. That is also the final aim of a psychobiographical investigation of an artist (Schultz, 2005c).

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