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Reuben Fine
(1914-1993), an American, was one of the best players in the first half of
the 20th century. While never winning the U.S. championship,
Fine came close to becoming the World Champion. He tied with Paul Keres in
the 1938 AVRO tournament, the winner of which unofficially earned the
right to challenge Alexander Alekhine, the current champion. With the
intervention of WWII and the subsequent death of Alekhine in 1946,
Fine declined to participate in the 1948 tournament designed to fill Alekhine's vacancy. Instead, Fine gave up professional chess for a new
career in psychology. He earned a doctorate in psychology from the
University of Southern California.
In 1956 he published an
article entitled, "Psychoanalytic Observations on Chess and Chess
Masters," in the professional journal Psychoanalysis which, in
turn, was later published in booklet form in 1967 under the title,
The Psychology of the Chess Player.
One of the players Fine
discussed and analyzed was Paul Morphy.
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PAUL MORPHY (1837-1884)
has attracted psychiatric attention because of his psychosis in later
life. He is the subject of the study by Ernest Jones mentioned earlier.
Morphy was born in New Orleans on June 22, 1837; his father was of
Spanish-Irish descent, his mother of French extraction. When he was ten
years old he learned chess from his father. By twelve he was able to beat
his uncle (father's brother), then chess king of New Orleans. Until 1857
he devoted himself to his studies. In that year he travelled to New York,
where he easily gained first place in the American championship, the first
ever held. The next year he visited London and Paris, where the world's
leading chess masters were then concentrated, and defeated every opponent
he played, including Adolf Anderssen. Only
Staunton refused to meet him,
in spite of all his efforts to arrange a match. He then returned to New
Orleans, where he issued a challenge to play anyone in the world at odds.
On receiving no response to this challenge he declared his chess career
closed; it had lasted barely eighteen
months, only six of which had seen him in public play. After his
retirement (at the age of twenty one!) he took up law-his father was a
judge-but was unsuccessful at it. He gradually relapsed into a state of
seclusion and eccentricity which culminated in unmistakable paranoia. At
the age of forty-seven he died suddenly of "congestion of the brain",
presumably apoplexy, as had his father before him.
About Morphy's symptoms during his later illness Jones reports the
following. He imagined himself persecuted by people who wished to render
his life intolerable. His delusions centered on the husband of his elder
sister, the administrator of his father's estate, who he believed was
trying to rob him of his patrimony. Morphy challenged him to a duel, and
then brought a lawsuit against him, spending his time for years in
preparing his case. In court it was easily shown that his accusations were
quite groundless. He also thought that people, particularly his
brother-in-law, were trying to poison him, and for a time refused to take
food except at the hands of his mother or his younger, unmarried sister.
Another delusion was that his brother-in-law and an intimate friend,
Binder, were conspiring to destroy his clothes, of which he was very vain,
and to kill him. On one occasion he called at the latter's office and
unexpectedly assaulted him. He was given to stopping and staring at every
pretty face in the street. During a certain period he had a mania for
striding up and down the verandah declaring the following words: "Il
plantera la bannière de Castille sur les murs de Madrid au cri de Ville
gagnée, et le petit Roi s'en ire tout penaud." see
note His mode
of life was to take a walk' every day, punctually at noon, and most
scrupulously attired, after which he would retire again until the evening
when he would set
out for the opera, never missing a single performance. He would see no one
except his mother, and grew angry if she ventured to invite even intimate
friends to
the house. Two years before Morphy's death he was approached for his
permission to include an account of his life in a projected biographical
work on famous
Louisianians. He sent an indignant reply, in which he stated that his
father, judge Alonzo Morphy, of the High Court of Louisiana, had left at
his death the sum of
$146,162.54, while he himself had followed no profession and had nothing
to do with biography. His talk was constantly of his father's fortune, and
the mere
mention of chess was usually sufficient to -irritate him. The question
naturally arises as to what connection, if any, there was between Morphy's
chess genius and
his psychosis. Jones attributes greatest significance to Staunton's
refusal to play Morphy. Staunton was for him the supreme father-imago, and
Morphy made the
overcoming of him the test of his capacity to play chess, and
unconsciously of much else besides. When Staunton, instead of meeting
Morphy on the chess
board, engaged in vicious and scurrilous attacks on him, Morphy's heart
failed him, and he abandoned the "wicked path" of his chess career. It was
as though
the father had unmasked his evil intentions and was now adopting a
similarly hostile attitude toward Morphy in retaliation. Chess, which had
appeared
to be an innocent and laudable expression of his personality was now
revealed to be actuated by the most childish and ignoble of wishes, the
unconscious
impulses to commit a sexual assault on the father and at the same time to
maim him utterly.
There is however one rather serious objection to Jones' theory about
Morphy, ingenious as it is. In 1858 the unacknowledged world champion was
no longer
Staunton, but Anderssen. Chess historians would certainly rank Anderssen
above Staunton at that time. In 1866, when Steinitz won the world
championship,
he did so by defeating Anderssen. And Morphy had beaten Anderssen, most
decisively. It is thus not clear why he should have been so disturbed by
Staunton's
refusal to meet
him.
More importance must be attached to Morphy's repeated declaration that he
was not a professional. When he 'returned to New York from his European
triumphs in 1858, his reception was overwhelming. It was widely felt that
this was the first time in history in which an American had proved
himself, not
merely the equal, but the superior of any representative in his field
drawn from the older countries, so that Morphy had added a cubit to the
stature of American
civilization. In the presence of a great assembly in one University he was
presented with a testimonial consisting of a chess board with
mother-of-pearl and
ebony squares and a set of men in gold and silver; he also received a gold
watch, on which colored chess pieces took the place of the numerals. At
this
presentation, Colonel Mead, chairman of the reception committee, alluded
in his speech to chess as a profession [see note], and referred to Morphy as its most
brilliant
exponent. Morphy took strong exception to being characterized as a
professional player, even by implication, and he expressed his resentment
in such a way
that Colonel Mead withdrew from the committee. In his speech on this
occasion Morphy also made the following remarks:
It is not only the most delightful and scientific, but the most moral of
amusements. Unlike other games in which lucre is the end and aim of the
contestants,
it recommends itself to the wise, by the fact that its mimic battles are
fought for no prize nor honor. It is eminently and emphatically the
philosopher's
game. Let the chess board supersede the card table and a great improvement
will be visible in the morals of the community. . . .
Chess never has been and never can be aught but a recreation. It should
not be indulged in to the detriment of other and more serious avocations
should not absorb or engross the thoughts of those who worship at its
shrine, but should be kept in the background, and restrained within its
proper provinces.
As a mere game, a relaxation from the severe pursuits of life, it is
deserving of high commendation.
Now Morphy's refusal to embrace chess as a profession was followed by his
refusal to embrace any profession. Such a deep refusal to take life
seriously must
have much deeper roots than the accident of Staunton's verbal dyspepsia.
In fact, the withdrawal from life must have been present very early and
compensated
by the overpowering interest in chess. He learned the game at the age of
ten, was champion of New Orleans at twelve, champion of the U.S. at twenty
and
champion of the world at twenty one. These feats have in broad outline
been repeated by many others since Morphy. But they can only be achieved
at the
expense of enormous time and effort. In other words, throughout his
adolescence, Morphy must have spent a major portion of his time playing
chess. So
far as is known, he never had any sexual experiences, or at best only
casual ones. Thus the usual competitive-sexual activities of the
adolescent boy were
abandoned by Morphy, in favor of chess. In effect, his chess playing
warded off the psychosis.
The accident of native genius catapulted him into a world famous celebrity.
As world champion, he could no longer take chess lightly, or look upon it
as a mere
game. If chess could not be recreation, it lost its defensive value, and
hence a further regression took place; the psychosis, previously
concealed, broke
out in full force. I would also like to call attention to one peculiarity
of the Morphy literature. Some four hundred of his games are preserved,
including
twenty-two from his earlier days, and more than fifty odds games. Of these
only some fifty-five are tournament or match games. Nowadays it is not
customary
for any master to keep records of off-hand games or games at odds. How is
it that so many of Morphy's games are recorded? Most of them have no
intrinsic
value; off-hand games rarely do. They must have been preserved by Morphy
(or with his consent) with an unconscious exhibitionistic intent, to
publish a
collection at some future date. By becoming famous, this exhibitionistic
desire threatened to be unmasked (in his mind) and only a regression could
rescue him
from the danger. Also the existence of so many recorded off-hand games
shows that Morphy could not take chess lightly. It was a deadly serious
matter to him
at the same time that he had to go to great lengths to deny this
repeatedly. When he became famous, his unconsciously determined
protestations that chess was
a mere game for him could no longer convince others; here again a
regression had to ensue.
The analysis of Morphy's style is complicated by an historic accident.
Morphy was active in chess for a period of a little over a year
(1857-1858), a period in
which the development of chess was most rudimentary, compared to its
present state. Because of the increased strength of the masters, the bold,
slashing style
which was so characteristic in his day has tended to recede and give way
to a much more subtle, refined, conservative type of game. Chess critics
have
lamented this tendency and have pointed to Morphy as an example of the
great genius of combinative play who would have defeated all these
frightened
moderns blindfolded. This is nothing more than the usual myth about the
past and the common complaint of the older generation that "in my day
there were real
he-men ball players, chess players, prize fighters" and so forth. If we
confine ourselves to the fifty-five serious games that are included in the
Morphy collection,
only a few can, by any stretch of the imagination, be called brilliant.
Many are quite stodgy. What Morphy had that his opponents did not have was
first, the
ability to see combinations clearly (which is a matter of strength, and
not of style) ; and second, the intuitive realization of the importance of
position play, which
was almost entirely unknown in his day. In fact, if Morphy is compared
stylistically with such major opponents as Anderssen and Paulsen, the
chief difference
lay in his grasp of the principles of development. In some way this must
have been an expression of the deepest roots of his personality. Position
play is
primarily the ability to organize the chess pieces in the most effective
manner. We have seen how over-organized Morphy became in his
psychosis-the walk at
noon, the afternoon with mother, the opera at night. We are also familiar
with such extreme organization in other obsessional and paranoid
personalities.
Morphy's development of position play thus arose out of his attempt to
arrange his world in a more meaningful manner. Its particular application
through chess
can, however, only be attributed to his native genius.
The theoretical discussion of the previous section furnishes a ready
explanation of Morphy's psychotic symptoms. The rivalry with the father
was first acted out
in chess, and then handled by a regressive psychotic identification.
During his chess career Morphy was famous for his "gentlemanly" qualities;
he repressed his
aggression completely. A further repression took place in the psychosis,
punctuated only by the homosexual assault on Binder, the man who allegedly
took his
clothes, i.e., unmasked him. The absence of anxiety which so many
observers noted was rather a sign of ego weakness than of strength; he had
to pretend to be
free of all human emotions. Morphy's breakdown revealed traits which had
previously been sublimated in chess: memory regressed to a fixation on his
childhood environment; visualization broke down into voyeurism, gratified
by the opera, by staring at women's faces, and by another eccentric habit
of arranging
women's shoes in a semicircle in his room. When asked why he liked to
arrange the shoes in this way he said: "I like to look at them." The
connection between
organization and paranoid systematization has been mentioned. The paranoia
was also a regressive expression of the fear of attack which had been
sublimated
in chess. Instead of being able to accept the imaginary chess world, he
lost the ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality (he became
his father through a
psychotic identification with him). In spite of all this, however, the ego
remained sufficiently intact to allow him to be maintained outside a
hospital.
Note: "He will plant the flag of Castille on the walls of Madrid with the
cry of the city won and the little King will go away all abashed." Jones
states that he
cannot find the origin of this saying. However it is clearly a cry of
victory over the King, a regressive expression in words of what he could
no longer do in
action. Compare the comments on conversation in the previous section.
TWO LETTERS BY ERNEST JONES
Jan. 25, 1956
DEAR MR. FINE:
I feel equally honoured and grateful for your courtesy in
letting me read your essay, which I have very much enjoyed.
It is certainly an important extension of my own.
I agree with all your psa [psychoanalytic] interpretations
and have very few comments to add. I still think there is a
mystery about the change from Grand Vizier to Queen; you
seem to accept the latter as fundamental. There is perhaps
a question of mother and father's penis behind it all.
On p. 62 there is an interesting Verschreiben, which I interpret
as indicating a preference for Capablanca over Alekhine
-understandable enough on personal grounds. I have made
a few other minor suggestions in pencil.
I think you dismiss the Morphy-Staunton affair too lightly.
There is plenty of evidence that he had set his heart on the
latter rather than on Anderson. There was doubtless an early
negative father=transference behind it. Do you remember his
early comment on Staunton's "devilish bad games", as if he
needed taking down?
It might be worth your commenting on the curious behaviour
that often happens of a rather quick player (like
Capa) choosing the best move almost at once and then in a
state of self-doubting going on speculating and dreaming
until in time trouble they dash at a poorer move. It shows
how important is self-confidence, such as Capa seems to
have had.
My own interest in chess has run a curious course. My
father taught me the moves when I was ten, the usual story,
and he cautioned me to be wary about playing with someone
who carried about a pocket set with him! After that I could
nearly count the games I ever played, in my overworked life,
until after being bombed out in London I came to live in my
cottage here when with fewer patients I had more leisure.
It was then, at the age of 63, that I found out what serious
chess meant. I have read most of the best-known books and
played the games of a dozen or more collections as well as
those in the fortnightly Chess magazine. Then I play half
a dozen correspondence games. I don't do too badly over
the board with ordinary amateurs, and they have even made
me President of the Chichester Chess Club, although I can't
often get there. I have your terrifying books on Chess Openings
and Basic Endings, but have not the powers of memory
any longer to get the best out of them, and I have greatly
enjoyed your World Great Games, which is very illuminating.
I am now working at Chernev's Thousand Best Short Games,
which is most deceptive in giving one the idea that nothing
is easier than to check your opponent in 15 or 20 moves!
Colby of San Francisco was here some time ago and played
a couple of Chernevs on me in reverse.
With kind regards and many thanks,
Sincerely yours,
ERNEST JONES
DEAR REUBEN FINE,
Many thanks for sending me your brochure on Chess,
which has greatly expanded since I saw it in embryo. It will
remain a classic.
It was a great pleasure meeting you in the flesh in New
York. You are more likely than I am to cross the Atlantic
again, and when you do I shall hope you will pay us a visit
in our country home.
Yours very sincerely,
ERNEST JONES
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