1

CLINICAL NOTES

E.M. Forster (1974). ‘Notes on the English Character,’ Abinger Harvest (London: Penguin Books), pp. 13-26.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, there was a large-scale attempt by the monetary authorities to ‘stabilize’ the economy in the Anglo-American world. This involved a number of measures.

These measures included but were not restricted to the following: re-capitalisation of banks, an increase in the levels of prudential banking supervision, and stress tests.

These stress tests were initially aimed at banking and financial institutions to ascertain how they will manage in situations characterized by inadequate capital (including a simulated run on banks).

Later, the scope of these tests included not just banks considered as banking or financial institutions but encompassed their personnel as well.

There was also an attempt to identify the levels of inherent and acquired stability in these institutions and those who ran these institutions. These tests eventually encompassed ‘systemically important stakeholders.’

When the scope of these stress tests broadened beyond the confines of banking and finance, they became of interest to those working in areas like psychoanalysis.

That is because these tests presuppose a theory of human nature and behaviour.

What exactly are these presuppositions? Would it be possible to reconstruct them so that both the monetary authorities and psychoanalysts can think them through?

Furthermore, what will the give-and-take between these areas of expertise be like?

2

These then are some of the questions that are worth addressing in these clinical notes since such an interdisciplinary approach is an opportunity for those interested in theories of stability to learn from each other.

These clinical notes constitute a modest attempt to incorporate insights from an unexpected source – E. M. Forster - and not do all the things listed above.

In addition to being a novelist, E. M. Forster was a fairly prolific writer of essays and reviews. These notes will summarize some of the important points and relate the insights that he shares with his readers in his ‘notes on the English character.’

It will help the readers of these clinical notes to make sense of how to relate a theory of stability with the problem of national character, and explore an unexpected source like these notes to make sense of what exactly constitutes stability.

Let me start by listing the attributes of the English character that Forster identifies in his notes. They are ‘solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency, lack of imagination, and hypocrisy.’

These attributes however are not be understood in the reductive sense; they constitute not just the English character but the middle-classes everywhere.

Forster also points out that these attributes are the reason why Napoleon designated the English as ‘a nation of shopkeepers.’ So, in that sense, the notion of stability must be understood in the context of these middle-class attributes.

In order to differentiate the English character, it might be worth our while to compare it to say the Indians and the French with whom the English were preoccupied for the better part of their history.

That is exactly what Forster does in his notes.

Here are a couple of anecdotes that Forster shares with his readers to get across his points on the English character more effectively.

The first relates to a week’s holiday that Forster spent with an Indian friend. When they had to subsequently part with each other’s company, Forster took it in his stride but the Indian friend was rather upset.

Forster asked his friend to ‘buck up,’ but the Indian friend was unable to do so.

3

When Forster met his friend a month later, he felt compelled to ‘scold’ him for being more emotional than required at the end of their week’s holiday.

Forster’s Indian friend took offence because he felt that Forster was measuring his emotions like potatoes. Forster felt that was better than slopping his emotions around like the Indian did.

Forster’s friend justified his behaviour by stating that he felt deeply and therefore expressed his emotions freely. What was really important in such situations was ‘sincerity’ rather than the ‘appropriateness’ of the emotion.

The question that occurs to Forster when he wrote up his notes was why that should be the case.

Forster decided that the Indian friend had a point because it reminded him of Percy Shelley’s contention ‘that the wealth of the spirit is endless.’

Forster, on the other hand, was more sparing in his expression of emotions because he was afraid of running out of emotions.

In other words, Forster was afraid that if he spent too much of his emotions, he might become ‘bankrupt’ and that he would not be able to meet his liabilities.

The implicit assumption for him was that emotions are like money.

Shelley and the Indian friend however assume that the more you spend your emotions, the more emotions you will generate.

And, therefore, as Shelley put it, we can express our emotions ‘copiously, passionately, and always; and that we can never feel sorrow or joy too acutely.’

For Shelley and the Indian friend, emotions constitute a renewable resource; it is not a limited resource like money.

This anecdote makes its appearance incidentally in E. M. Forster’s novel, A Passage to India. The characters who correspond to Forster and his Indian friend are Henry Fielding and Dr. Aziz.

The question that will interest psychoanalysts and the monetary authorities then is this: Who is more stable in this anecdote?

Is it E. M. Forster or his Indian friend?

4

Forster is more stable if by stability what we mean is the ability to remain moderate in the expression of emotions.

The Indian friend however turns out to be more stable if we realize why he expresses his emotions more freely.

Not only does he have a different assumption on the nature of emotion, he is also preoccupied with the fact that the English are a bit ‘slow’ when it comes to managing their emotions.

Forster’s point is that there is a gap between an Englishman’s mind and his heart. That is because the Englishman’s heart is ‘under-developed.’

The Englishman’s notion of stability therefore tries to come to terms with this constitutive gap in his psyche. The Indian, on the other hand, is trying to ‘suture’ this gap by a display of emotion.

This gap, incidentally, is what the poet-critic T. S. Eliot referred to as the ‘dissociation of sensibility’ in his analysis of the history of English poetry.

Eliot’s point was that the metaphysicals were the last of the English poets who could write in a way that could bring together a thought and an emotion without being assailed by this gap in the psyche.

The poets who came later were either preoccupied with the thought or the emotion and could not bring it together to create the range of poetic effects that constitute the work of metaphysical poets like John Donne.

In Eliot’s terms, we might say that the Indian is preoccupied with those forms of consciousness that constitute the ‘dissociation of sensibility.’

That is why he prefers to think in a way that might be described as constituting an ‘association (rather than a dissociation) of sensibility.’

So what we mean by stability then depends on whether we assume the dissociation or the association of sensibility is the preferable socio-cultural norm in the construction of the human psyche.

5

So what appears as instability in the Indian friend has nothing to do with stability as such. It is more a question of what the implicit socio-cultural norm should be.

From the Indian friend’s point of view, Forster comes across as unnecessarily ‘retentive’ (by basing his emotional life on the false assumption that spending emotions is akin to spending money).

If Forster understood that emotions constitute a renewable resource, then, he will not have to worry about expressing himself more freely.

So the main difference between Forster and his Indian friend is this: Forster is preoccupied with stability; the Indian friend with not becoming retentive.

In other words, we have to accommodate socio-cultural differences when we make up our mind on who is stable and who is not stable.

Furthermore, stability itself has to be related to the specific contexts and socio-cultural norms that prevail in a given society.

There is a wide spread misunderstanding that stability is just a way of bottling up emotions; that is, it is nothing more than maintaining a stiff upper lip in situations that are fraught with emotions.

In order to illustrate this point, Forster introduces another anecdote relating to a comparison between the English and the French.

In this anecdote, Forster recounts the situation of English and French passengers who find themselves on a stagecoach driven by horses in the Alps.

When the horses temporarily lost their footing, the French feared the worst.

They expected the stagecoach to plunge into the ravine and expressed their sense of panic freely. The English passengers however remained calm.

Later, when the stagecoach reached an inn safely, the French were chatting gaily as though nothing had really happened. The English however had a nervous breakdown when they realised that they had a close escape.

Who was more stable in this anecdote? The English or the French?

This is not an easy question to answer for the following reason.

6

The French were ‘agitated’ in the stage coach but stable afterwards. The English were ‘calm’ in the stagecoach but not stable thereafter.

In other words, it appears that for both the English and the French being ‘calm and stable’ were inversely proportional.

The ‘more calm’ the English were, the ‘less stable’ they became later; the ‘more agitated’ the French were, the ‘more stable’ they became later.

This anecdote is important because the emphasis of the monetary authorities, for instance, has been not merely to stabilize ‘systemically important stakeholders’ but to ensure that they remain both calm and stable.

Is this actually possible?

When, if at all, should stakeholders subject to a stress test work-through their emotions?

Is stability merely a function of bottling up emotions? Or, is it an instance of being able to process the emotions?

Does it involve both? If so, in what kind of combination? Is there a trade-off between being calm and stable?

These then are a few of the questions that might interest theorists of stability.

Forster is an unexpected source for thinking through these questions.

My goal is not to answer all these questions decisively or pretend that I know the answers. Forster does not claim to know the answers either.

It will suffice if we understand that these clinical notes will benefit from being on the lookout for unexpected sources that will make it possible for both psychoanalysts and the monetary authorities to not only think-through these questions, but also seize such opportunities to learn from each other.

7

SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN