This blog post explores the metaphors of the unconscious and desire in Kafka’s literature through a psychoanalytic lens, focusing on ‘A Country Doctor’.
Beginning with the line “He was extremely perplexed,” this story is actually more perplexing for readers. Its dreamlike, surreal narrative unfolds in a way that defies comprehension. Imaginary beings suddenly appear, and strange, contextually incongruous words are exchanged. While this naturally invites a wide spectrum of interpretations, we will focus here on the psychoanalytic perspective. Above all, Freud was the first figure that came to mind while reading this work.
On a day of blizzard, the first-person narrator, a country doctor, must urgently make a house call to a distant village, but he has no horse to pull his carriage. The maid scours the entire village trying to find a horse, but it’s all in vain. Distracted, the doctor kicks “the broken door of the pigsty.” Surprisingly, a coachman emerges from there. To the bewildered master, the maid remarks, “People don’t even know what’s in their own house.” This resonates with Freud’s categorical declaration: “I am not the master of my own house!”
The visible ego is merely the tip of the iceberg; beneath lies the infinite unconscious, whose core is animalistic impulse. In this sense, the coachman is a metaphor for the rural doctor’s long-suppressed sexual urges, and the object of those urges is the “lovely” maid Rosa, who has lived in the doctor’s house for years. The absence of any mention of a wife in the work suggests the doctor is either unmarried or has somehow separated from his wife. In this situation, the doctor’s sexual impulses toward the beautiful maid, which he had previously paid little attention to, burst forth like a flood. The “pigsty unused for years” symbolizes the repression of pent-up sexual desire, while the coachman crawling out on “four legs” suggests animalistic instincts. Furthermore, the coachman’s violent embrace of the maid—clutching her, rubbing his face against hers, and biting her cheek—is a violent manifestation of this desire.
The two horses that emerge following the coachman’s cry are even more explicit. The two horses, “with full flanks and strong-looking muscles,” “bowed their handsome heads like camels, drew their legs inward, and wriggled their torsos to escape the narrow stall,” then immediately “stretched their legs and stood erect,” with “hot steam rising continuously from their bodies.” This evokes the image of a penis vigorously erecting upon liberation from confinement. However, the coachman declares he will stay with the maid Rosa instead of accompanying the doctor. Instantly, the doctor discerns the coachman’s intent and replies that if he does not go, neither will he. Yet this declaration lacks sincerity. For he climbs into the carriage “with a joyful heart,” thinking “never before had he ridden in such a splendid carriage.” Rosa, “foreseeing an inescapable fate,” flees into the house and locks every door. But once unleashed, sexual desire is not easily controlled. The moment the carriage shoots forward at the man’s clap, the sound of him smashing through the front door is heard.
The carriage arrives at the patient’s house in an instant. At first, the doctor dismisses the young man begging to be killed as a malingerer. But during the second examination, he discovers a wound the size of a palm on the patient’s right buttock. “The pinkish wound” was “darker toward the center and lighter toward the edges. Irregular, millet-grain-like rashes appeared where blood had pooled, and the wound was exposed like a skylight.” This evoked the image of a woman’s genitals. Moreover, within the wound, “insects as thick and long as a pinky finger, their bodies pink and covered in blood, cling to the inner wound. They wriggle, moving their white heads and countless legs, trying to crawl out into the light.” This seems to suggest male sperm. Furthermore, the pink hue of the wound (rasa) is the same as the name of the maid, Rosa. Therefore, the wound signifies Rosa becoming a victim of the coachman’s lust. The doctor calls this wound a flower, specifically a rose, and believes the patient will die because of it.
Yet the patient cannot bear to live with such a wound and begs to be saved. But this is beyond the doctor’s ability. Only priests and shamans of ancient times could heal such wounds. But people have now lost their faith. Instead, they demand that doctors, who only know how to treat the affected area with a scalpel, fulfill the role of priests. When scientific methods can no longer cure the patient, the villagers strip the country doctor naked and lay him beside the patient. This scene evokes ancient shamanistic healing practices. But the doctor is not a priest. Nor can he cure the patient. Now the country doctor thinks of his own salvation instead of the patient’s and resolves to flee. Here, the patient appears like the doctor’s mirror image—the doctor’s doppelgänger, bearing the wounds of sexual desire and yearning for salvation. In this sense, the novel gives the impression of a psychic drama born from the dream of sexual desire. Escaping the patient’s house as if fleeing, the doctor attempts to return home by carriage. Just as swiftly as he arrived. But the horses refuse to obey. “The reins were loosely slack, dragging along the ground; the two horses were not harnessed together; the carriage swayed and lost its way behind; the coat fluttered in the snow at the very rear of the carriage.” The incantation “Ilya!” that once enabled instantaneous movement no longer works. Now his aged body, stripped bare, “drifts aimlessly through the bitter cold of this wretched age, riding a carriage of this world drawn by horses of the other world.” Here, the other world represents the realm of animal instincts (Freud’s id) existing beneath our consciousness, while this world is the realm of the ego, which controls and represses those instincts through consciousness. Yet while the superego appears to harness the id, it is actually the animal instincts lurking at the very bottom of human consciousness that pull us along. Ultimately, when we shed the cloak of pretense like the country doctor, are we not destined to be wanderers, riding aimlessly through this world in a carriage drawn by the horses of desire…?
