Peter Brooks' "Freud's Masterplot"

Key Points in Article

Peter Brook’s “Freud’s Masterplot” attempts to explain why we desire to read narratives. When one reads a narrative, s/he encounters repeated themes; scripts; events; linguistic patterns; and sees that the beginning presupposes the end. The ending dictates the details and events that bring it about, so why go to the trouble of experiencing the sequence of events that perpetuate the ending? Brooks’ notes that Tzvetan Todorov, in an attempt to formalize narrative, suggests that narrative plots are comprised of the tension between “difference and resemblance” (1161). These elements of “difference” and “resemblance” and desire to get to the end but experience the transformative nature of the plot can be likened to Freud’s notion of “masterplot” in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The “masterplot” is “a total scheme of how life proceeds from beginning to end, and how each individual” repeats this process throughout his/her life (1164).

Freud argues the human psyche is comprised of two parts that are constantly in tension—the desire to self-preserve and the desire to return to a state of rest before life began—a desire for death. To deal with traumatic memories, the psyche continually returns to these memories via dreams but alters them in ways that allow the dreamer to work through them and transfer or expel them. So, humans are compelled to revisit or repeat irritating events and at the same time end or get rid of them.

Brooks argues the end of a narrative can be compared to one’s ultimate end, death, in that one’s life “acquires meaning at death” just as the end of a story “sheds light on all the other events” (1162-63). The narrative’s elements predict its end, but we are compelled to experience the plot’s transformative nature. We want to experience the sequence of events that perpetuate the end. In a way, this process becomes therapeutic. So, the narrative plot, like the human psyche is in constant tension between its generative and destructive forces. The narrative form allows for creative ways of making meaning (repetition of narrative elements put together in novel ways), but at the same time, the elements carry the reader to the story’s end—creation and destruction operating paradoxically. The plot serves to inhibit the progression to an immediate end. So, our desire to experience the plot mimics our desire to delay death. In addition, even though we know we are going to die, we are looking for a timely death, the right death. In the same way, the plot often accounts for possible ending misfires or “short circuits” by the way of subplots. Often a subplot offers an alternative, premature way of reaching the end of the plot, a warning of sorts, against the wrong ending.

To further complicate the matter, a reader’s return to a narrative provides new insights not previously noticed. Even though the narrative’s plot doesn’t change, our reading of it over time can. So, the repetitive nature of re-reading generates new possibilities in the text. Thus, engagement with a static text is always in some way dynamic.

Something I noticed

Completing the summary for this article reminded me of some key points in David Kaplan’s article “What is Involved in Reading and Writing.” In it he argues one must bring several pieces of information to a text in order to understand it: specialized vocabulary (jargon), ways the text generator might foreground or bury information, and how the writer may be invoking culturally-specific information (myth, humor, narrative structure, social roles). I found myself a bit lost in Brook’s article, as I had not read Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The article wasn’t completely inaccessible, but Brooks was obviously invoking an audience that was familiar with Freud’s psychology. True, he summarized pertinent parts of Beyond the PP, but I found myself a bit lost about the ways Freud assumes the psyche works and felt Brooks should have done more glossing. I probably missed several of Brooks’ key points entirely, as a result. Then, again, I’m not one of the Harvard geniuses for which he seemed to be writing this piece.