ELLIOTT M. AVEDON AND
BRIAN SUTTON-SMITH
Teachers College, Columbia University

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York (London, Sydney, Toronto)

Copyright © 1971, by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada.

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nor translated into a machine language without the written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 7 4-136709 ISBN 0-471-03839-3
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Chess, Oedipus, and the Mater Dolorosa

by NORMAN REIDER

The psycho-analytic study of play and games has been particularly rewarding, but no game is so full of possibilities for such study as that of chess. Chess is the royal game for many reasons. It crystallizes within its elaborate structure the family romance, is replete with symbolism, and has rich potentialities for granting satisfactions and for sublimation of drives. Not without reason is it the one game that, since its invention around A.D. 600, has been played m most of the world, has captivated the imagination and interest of millions, and has been the source of great sorrows and great pleasures.

My introduction has two purposes. First, it indicates the numerous facets inherent in a study of chess: the fascination and the extent of the addiction to the game; the psychological factors involved in its historical development; its social and therapeutic value; its legal involvements; its relation to love and aggression; the problem of genius in chess; the characterological problem of its players and their style of play; and ego functions as manifested in play, especially the distinctions between the psychological meanings of the game, its pieces and rules, and the psychology of the players. My intention is to develop these themes more extensively in later essays and to stimulate the interest of others in these problems. Secondly, this exposition is also meant to convey some of the quality and flavor of the game, especially to non-players, or to those who have never been addicted to or fascinated by chess, so that they may be prepared for the complexities of the legends.

SOURCE. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 40, 1959, pp. 320-333.

 

THE ATTRACTION OF THE GAME
Throughout the ages chess has been praised in poetry, prose, painting, and even music, as witness a few testimonials from devotees. "Chess is the art of the intellect" (42). “Chess is so ancient that by that distinction alone it seems taken beyond the category of games altogether; and it has been said that it probably would have perished long ago, if it had not been destined to live forever” (6, p. 1). “There must have been a time when men were demigods or they could not have invented chess. Could it indeed have been invented? I am almost tempted to believe that chess is a discovered fragment of inexhaustible, ever-creative nature” (69). “Chess is catholic and common to every country. It possesses a history, language, literature, poetry, prose, science and art of its own” (73, p. 5). "I have always had a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity the man who has remained ignorant of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy" (74, p. 4).

The universality of chess provides a wide range of satisfactions, from the pragmatic and practical to the aesthetic and poetic. At one extreme is the utilitarian Benjamin Franklin (29), who wrote: "The game of chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it so as to become ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of chess in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence or the want of it." At the other extreme are those who are impressed with its beauty (46, 68). "The chess board is a microcosm; and like Greek drama it fixes our minds on what is high and noble. It deals with the fate of kings and queens, and yet, like the Christian religion, it teaches that the meanest pawn has the stuff of royalty in it and may win its crown. It is a lesson in political science, showing the limited range of royal power and yet in- sisting on its ultimate importance" (60).

Others, by contrast, are fascinated by the libidinal elements of chess and disturbed by its destructiveness, realizing that aggression is the soul of the game. Burton (10), though acknowledging that chess has been recommended as a cure for depression, had his own opinion of it. "Chess play is a good and witty exercise of the mind for some kind of men...

442 Structure and Function
and fit for such melancholy persons that are idle and have impertinent thoughts, or are troubled with cares; nothing better to distract their mind and alter their meditation; invented (some say) by the general of an army in a famine to keep the soldiers from mutiny. But if it proceed from overmuch study in such a case it may do more harm than good; it is a game too troublesome for some men’s brain, too full of anxiety, and all out as bad as study; and beside it is a testing cholerick game and very offensive to him that loseth the mate." In a milder yet still disparaging mood, he reported: "In Muscovy, where they live in stoves and hothouses, all winter long, come seldom or little abroad, it is a game very necessary and therefore in those parts much used."

Chess has had for many a diabolical attraction, which enchained them, as if its play were an evil habit. "The devil was a great fool to use so many machinations to make poor Job lose his patience. He had only to engage him in a game of chess" (52). This remark, made in 1693, was echoed by H. G. Wells (78) more than 200 years later. "The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable-but teach him, inoculate him with chess."

The great damnation of the game has come from those who have been plagued by it. None has expressed so convincingly his sad and resigned self-denial as a minister who in 1680 wrote a letter, giving ten reasons why he refused to play the game (50). Among them is one of the most beautiful lines in English literature: "It hath not done with me when I have done with it." Truly this one sentence could be the motto for all addictions.

 

THE VICISSITUDES OF CHESS
The early history of chess is filled with developments and episodes which are worthy subjects for psychological study, of which a few will be mentioned: (a) its moral and legal aspects; (b) its historical and cultural aspects; and (c) its libidinal and aggressive elements. Chess lent itself easily during the Middle Ages as a model for education and morality. Around 1200 Rabbi ben Ezra wrote the first didactic poem in Hebrew on the subject of chess and about the same time Pope Innocent III wrote a morality on chess. The second book, in English, published in 1474 by Caxton, was a morality based on chess. Chess has been encouraged; it has also been forbidden. In times of

THE FUNCTION OF GAMES 443
stress, when authorities felt people should be punished, the game was forbidden, along with games played with cards and with dice. But some- how its appeal made possible many exceptions. For instance, Jews in the Middle Ages were forbidden to play on the Sabbath all games except chess (40). Pregnant women were allowed to indulge in a game of chess at a time when everyone else was forbidden to do so (25, p. 181).

One practically uncharted field is the derivation of the game from the board games in which magic played a part. Another area of inquiry is the study of the changes that the game, its rules and the power of the pieces underwent in different social and cultural settings—for example, the brilliant research by Colby (16), who turned his attention to the problem of the appearance of the queen on the board and the increase in the strength of the queen in the latter part of the fifteenth century. Originally, the piece now known as the queen was the vizier, a title understandable historically, because in the Arabic world the king was accompanied in battle by his vizier. At one time in the twelfth century the queen began replacing the vizier, and this may very well have cor- responded to the time of the glorification of Mary by the Church. But as yet the queen had only those powers that the king had, or perhaps a few more. Suddenly, about 1485, in Italy, the queen began to be the most powerful piece on the board. Colby presented some historical evidence that this "wild game" may very well have originated in Northern Italy. Studying the prominent women in Italian history of the time, he found that Caterina Sforza was married to a weak prince who did not take care of his duchy. She herself donned armour, led troops into the battle, collected taxes, and protected her partner. Since then the queen has been the most powerful piece on the board.

Future researches into the psychological aspects of chess must of necessity take into consideration historical and cultural factors, as Colby has done. For example, one of the most interesting features is how, in the past, the royal game was definitely restricted to royalty. Commoners were at times even punished for being caught playing the game. In this early era, when chess was a royal game, many a court had its chess master attached to it, just as it had its musician or jester. The chess master taught the young women of the court to become accomplished in chess because in those days much love play took place over the chess board. Some of the tenderest love poems and allegories (46, 68, 56) are in the language of chess. Nowadays the combination of chess and love is ex- tremely rare. The one exception is Gustav Schenk’s publication (69) in 1937 of a book of love letters in chess terms, truly an anachronism.

Likewise, in its early days chess was a violent game. In numerous stories (56, pp. 95, 113, 356, 413, 431-432, 436, 443, 501) the chess board

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was the scene of violence and murder, and in one reference (81) of actual castration. But all this violence and love have slowly dwindled away, as the game has become a democratic one; it has been sublimated into a mathematical science with a somewhat masculine, homosexual flavor. For example, one chess journal in the 1880s was named "Bruder- schaft"; alas, it was shortlived.

Chess also had its humor and its insights. In a contest held by a British newspaper on why chess does not appeal to the English, one contributor explained that "Britons never, never shall be Slavs" (59). And as to the proficiency of the Slavs at chess: "In a free government the Russian might appear with equal advantage as in the military department; intelligent, active, reflecting, and endowed with a spirit of calculation. He might succeed in every pursuit; at present he excels only in chess." This was not written by a present-day anti-Soviet writer. It appeared in the Critical Review of June 1792 (46, p. 296). How much the world moves can be illustrated by the fact that more than 150 years later Bosshard (9) similarly tried to explain the cause of the Russian superiority in chess by an "ethnopsychological origin." According to his neoracist theory, the specific talent of "Eastern people" for chess is due to innate intellectual powers, slyness, among others, which reveal the qualities that make primitive peoples superior in chess to the "cultured nations."

 

A SUBJECT FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY
Because of its fascination, chess has lent itself easily to psychological inquiry. I wish now to indicate the areas of some of these efforts, dividing them into three groups. First is the group of speculations and cogitations on the subject, which might well come under the general heading of the "Philosophy of Chess." Writings by Wekerle (79), Junk (44) and Lasker (49) belong to this group. Of these Lasker, once chess champion of the world, styling himself a philosopher, made perhaps the most consistent efforts of anyone not a trained psychological investigator towards under- standing the mysteries of the game. He suggested that competition is one of the necessary elements of life and that chess provides artistic, competitive outlets. He also observed that our satisfactions with the game are directly proportional to the kind of obstacles we have to over- come in winning. A quite insightful remark was that of Reti (66, p. 4) who wrote of the emotional impact made by a successful sacrifice in the game, "since it comes at the risk of material and the victory of the weaker material over the stronger material, it gives the impression of a symbol of the mastery

THE FUNCTION OF GAMES 445
of mind over matter." Reti also tried to understand the psychology of various chess masters, that is, the nature of their particular style of play. The non-psychological literature is full of such common-sense attempts to understand the success and failure of the masters, and some of these works are remarkably good on an intuitive basis, considering the general lack of sound psychological training on the part of the authors. Among these is a study of the psychology of defeat by Vityazev (76). Writers in this first group are also preoccupied with whether chess is a science or an art, and even as late as 1954 Bykov (12) showed concern with this topic.

These writers were struggling with one of the central themes in chess, the problem of man’s mastery over a sublimated aggressive situation, al- though they themselves did not wholly appreciate this aspect of their inquiries. Chess as a military game provides warfare which is organized, controlled, circumscribed, and regulated. These contrasts between magic and reason, chance and planning, and primary and secondary processes, Collins (17) nicely epitomized: "There are two classes of men, those who are content to yield to circumstances, and who play whist; and those who aim to control circumstances, who play chess." A second group of writers, the academic psychologists, dealt more systematically with some aspects of chess. The earliest classic in the field, Binet’s (5), a study of chess players, and especially of those who played chess blindfolded, is interesting even though not particularly productive. Comparable studies were made by Cleveland (14), who studied the learning process and intelligence in relationship to ability to play, and Buttenwieser (11), who compared the relationship of age to skill in chess playing. A more modem attempt to deal with the problem of intelligence and skill in chess was made by H. Davidson (21, pp. 190-196).

The recent increase of interest in chess in the Soviet Union has turned some of its psychologists to formal studies of the psychological processes in chess playing and especially to its psychological effects upon the per- sonality. Diakov, Petrovsky and Rudik (24) gave the participants in the International Chess Tournament in Moscow in 1925 a series of psycho- metric tests concerning memory, attention, various other intellectual functions, and also the Rorschach Test. These Soviet efforts were not followed up and gave way, obviously under the influence of official attitudes, to a new kind of moralizing and philosophizing about chess, such as appeared in the writings of Vasilevsky (75), who was concerned about the value of chess in the development of intellect and in the maintenance of proper mental hygiene. Likewise, Rochlin (67) discussed creativity in chess, obviously struggling with the problem of whether chess was crea- tive enough to justify continued Soviet governmental sponsorship.

446 Structure and Function
The formal psychological studies that Diakov and his colleagues initiated were not resumed until DeGroot (23) published his thorough study of the thought processes of a number of chess masters during the process of play; this comprehensive work analyzes the structure and dynamics of the planning, formation of alternative planning, the selection of moves, and elimination of moves in chess play. Some of the analysis in a way anticipates the programming of the chess-playing electronic machines, about which a considerable literature now exists (58). A connected problem is that having to do with genius in chess (3) and the general area of ability to conceptualize. Similarities already have been pointed out between the precocious ability to conceptualize in geniuses in chess, music, and mathematics (1, p. 23). I plan in a later work to discuss this topic. (Consider, for example, the fact that the histories of at least three child prodigies in chess are marked by each one beating his father in the first game at chess played between the pair.)

The third group of psychological writings on chess, the psycho-analytic, began a new type of insight into the nature of the game. It is fitting that Freud (31, p. 342) was the first to make mention of the game in the psychoanalytic literature. He likened learning of the game to the learn- ing of psychoanalytic technique: "He who hopes to learn the fine art of the game from books will soon discover that only the opening and closing moves of the game admit of exhaustive systematic description; and that the endless variety of moves which develop from the opening defies description; the gap left in the instructions can only be filled in by the zealous study of games fought out by master hands. The rules which can be laid down for the practical application of psycho-analysis in treatment are subject to similar limitations."

The first paper on chess from the psycho-analytic point of view, pre- sented to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society on 15 March, 1922 and duly recorded in the minutes, was never published (39, p. 117). Dr. Fokschaner, a dentist, entitled his paper, "Über das Schachspiel." Hoffer (36) recalls that it drew some parallels between chess and obsessional neurosis, with an attempt to interpret symbolically the pieces and their movements on the chessboard. In his discussion Freud was critical of Fokschaner’s simplifications, and that ended the topic (15).

The classical psychoanalytic paper on chess is the study by Jones (42) on the famous American prodigy of 100 years ago, Paul Morphy. Jones developed the thesis that chess is a game of father-murder, which became the pattern for most psychoanalytic studies on the subject. Yet the same theme was advanced by an earlier writer, Alexander Herbstman (35), whose work, published in Moscow in 1925, could not have influenced the psychoanalytic literature. Herbstman, a physician, and a chess problemist, made a systematic study of the form and content of chess. He paid tribute to Freud, Sachs, Ferenczi, Rank, Jung, Richlin, Abraham, and Jones for elucidating the unconscious. He began his essay by considering the preoccupation of the game with royal figures, espe- cially the king and queen, and quoted Freud as follows: "In dreams the parents assume a royal or imperial form as a couple. You find a parallel to this in stories. ‘There lived once a king and a queen’ when obviously the account is about the father and mother." He then developed the thesis that the whole play of the game is an elaboration in numerous varieties and derivatives of the oedipal situation. To him the game con- sists primarily of the king, queen, and pawn, with the other pieces being displaced images of king or queen. Herbstman also discussed the concept of ambivalence as represented in chess, analyzed some dreams of chess, and attempted to explain certain early legends of chess, on the basis of the oedipal conflict.

 

PATHOBIOGRAPHY
Jones’s study of Morphy set a model for pathobiography in chess. Other studies followed in somewhat different directions. One is the use of clinical studies and psycho-analytic therapy, as in Pfister’s (61) work, the first convincing analysis of the chess player by his chess play. Coriat (18) discussed the general problem of the symbolism of the pieces and also the way in which the styles or habits of play revealed the players’ motivations. Fleming and Strong (27) reported the first systematic effort to use chess therapeutically in the case of a 16-year-old boy who worked through a problem of inhibition of aggression by mastering the game, thus achieving a sort of belated mastery over his own impulses. In an- other such study, Slap (72) paid considerably more attention to details of the ego factors involved in a patient’s preoccupation with chess. The practising psychoanalyst’s interest will often lie in the clinical aspects of the game, and to him it should not be surprising that a player’s interest in chess and his style of play reveal dynamics consistent with his charac- ter structure; however, consideration must also be given to the fact that the nature of skill in chess does not depend only on derivatives of conflictual forces.

Another trend in pathobiography was taken by Karpman (45) and Fine (26), whose studies are biographical and descriptive rather than clinical. Other psycho-analytic writings on the subject, covering phases in the main described above, are by S. Davidson (22), Menninger (53),

448 Structure and Function
and Ibanez (38). Menninger’s reflections on the game as a hobby are unique in the sense that its informal therapeutic values are delightfully discussed.

 

OEDIPUS AND CHESS
At long last I come to the legends of the origin of the game, the study of which may reveal insights into the psychological factors it lets loose. Chess is unique among games in that its origin has been the subject of so much creative imagination, made attractive, I believe, because the family romance of the game in conjunction with its artistic character lends itself as a ready vehicle for displacement on to it of elements of psychic conflicts. Moreover, the mystery of the actual origin of the game adds impetus to its use in myths. Here, as in other phenomena involving historical and psychological factors, the treatment by the created myth may bear little or a most obscure relation to the historical facts. Culin (20) holds that the prehistory of chess is involved in the magical origin of all board games via arrow divination. Murray expatiates on the argument whether chess was a new invention or was a development from a prior game of chance. But these speculations give no basis of actual historical data to tie in with the psychological considerations of its origin.

A total of twenty-four legends have been extracted from the works of Lambe (47), W. Jones (43), Bland (8), Crawley (19), Forbes (28), Raverty (62), Murray (56) and Wilkinson (80). As the legends were copied or retold by one author from another, distortions and elaborations naturally occurred. Therefore, only those myths considered to be the basic ones are cited; almost all of them come from Murray, the most scholarly of the authorities.

The themes of the legends are as follows:

(a) father-murder, with chess as the therapeutic agent;

(b) chess as a preparation for war;

(c) chess as a substitute for war;

(d) chess as a diversion;

(e) chess as an intellectual struggle;

(f) chess as an educative process for morality; and

(g) the Mater Dolorosa theme.

Several approaches to the study of the myths are possible: from their cultural origin, Moslem, Hindu, or Christian; in their chronological order; or by a consideration of their inherent motivations. I have chosen the last, combining with it the other two. I shall therefore begin with a myth that reflects primitive impulses in their frank crudity, one that represents no displacement of the psychic reality and constitutes no projection.

First to be considered are two European legends, one of them by Jacob de Cessolis (c. 1275) (56, p. 541), which contains the naked theme of father-murder. An Eastern philosopher, named Xerses or Hyerses by the Chaldeans and Philometer by the Greeks, invented the game in the reign of Evil-Merodach, who is presented regularly in medieval works as a monster of cruelty. Evil-Merodach chopped up the body of his father Nebuchadnezzar into 300 pieces and threw them to 300 vultures. The sages then invented chess in order to cure him of his madness. In an attenuated version of this story, Galvan de Levanto (c. 1291) (56, p. 549) related that a philosopher named Justus invented chess in order to reform a Persian tyrant, Juvenilis.

Here is seen, in all frankness, the son (note that in the second tale the tyrant is called Juvenilis) committing murder of the father and a wise man inventing the game for a therapeutic purpose. (It is of paramount significance that the cure is a disguised version of the crime in these two stories, since it is recognizable that some processes and devices in psychotherapy contain this principle.) The substitute for father-murder that chess represents is seen more clearly here than in any of the other legends, and one can speculate as to why this theme appears so openly in medieval Christian literature, whereas in Hindu and Moslem literature it is extensively masked. Herbstman, not content with a relatively undis- torted demonstration of the thesis of the Evil-Merodach legend, felt the need to include the symbolism of the number three and that of the vul- ture in his explanation, but these are not convincing. He does mention, however, that in chess part of the game is a defence of one’s own king, and this affords the "patient-player" a way of redeeming his own guilt. Thus chess can be both patricide and a defence against it.

Now it may be considered presumptuous to take for granted that these two stories are oedipal stories inasmuch as patricide is only one part of the oedipal myth. But, presumptuous though it may be, it has to be acknowledged that omission of some details, often important ones, is a

450 Structure and Function
characteristic of myths as it is of dreams. It is justified to accept by implication the omitted portions as part of the work of the unconscious. Moreover, in one of the above stories the omitted element, the taking over of the mother, is present by substitution, i.e., by taking over of the kingdom, an element which will appear later also.

The theme of father-murder is therefore considered central and all other themes are derivatives, displacements, substitutions and taking distance from the central theme. Thus I cannot prove that when chess is clearly intended to be a military substitute the psychological equating of patricide and war is a valid one, but this is my hypothesis. The legends are therefore arranged in increasing distance from the central theme.

The next group are the legends derivative of the aggressive part of the oedipal theme, which portray chess as a preparation for war (56, pp. 211- 212). As told by al-Adli, the game was "invented to assist in the military education of a young prince who pleaded that he was incompetent to lead his armies into war owing to his want of experience."

At a greater distance from the original theme is a series of legends in which chess is a substitute for war. The original of this group (56, p. 212) goes as follows: "A certain king of India, who was peaceably inclined, procured the invention of chess in order that his fellow monarchs might settle their disputes over the board without effusion of blood." In tales following this pattern the inference is clear that a philosopher or sage invented the game; but variations occur. In some tales a Chinese king, in another a Buddhist priest, and in still another the queen of the warlord, invents the game.

The next theme, a natural step from the last, has to do with the inven- tion of chess as a distraction or diversion from war. In the earliest legend (56, p. 211) a king, passionately fond of war, had overcome all his enemies and was bored and ill. He instructed a sage to distract him; whereupon chess was invented, and he was shown how to manipulate forces and devise tactics. "The king tried the game, ascertained that the philosopher had spoken truly, and found distraction and health in playing chess." Note here again the therapeutic role of the game. The European versions of this story (56, p. 501) make Ulysses or Palamedes invent the game to relieve boredom during the siege of Troy.

The next step might likewise have been expected. The story is divested of its openly military nature and becomes a preparation for an intellectual struggle, via chance. Some of the Moslem legends of the origin of chess, and these are not the earliest ones, have to do with its development from the dice game, emphasizing consistently the motif of the control of fate. In one of the legends (56, pp. 208-209) an Indian monarch named Hash- ran appealed to an Indian sage, Qaflan by name, to devise a game that

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should symbolize man’s dependence upon destiny and fate and depict how these forces work. Accordingly, Qaflan invented the game of nard, an elaborate dice game, in which the players move their men in obedience to the throws given by the two dice. Nard thus exemplified man’s dependence upon fate for good or evil fortune.

Many of these legends continue with the story of the reward to the philosopher (56, p. 217). When the royal person invited him to choose his own reward he is said to have asked for a quantity of corn, to be placed on the chess board in a particular way: The first square was to hold one grain, the second two, the third four, the fourth eight, and so on. The quantity of corn asked for is of course enormous (enough to cover England to a uniform depth of more than 38 feet), the total being 264 - 1. The king did not know which to admire most, the invention of nard or the ingenuity of the request.

All the endings of the legends of reward run much the same except for one interesting variation. A sultan who used to challenge all comers in chess, beheading all whom he defeated, after beating ninety-nine op- ponents, met his superior in a dervish. The latter claimed the usual reward in gold pieces.

The explanation cited by Murray for the recurrent story of the reward seems to be a relic from the invention of chess out of magic and chance: "The Indians describe a mysterious interpretation of the doubling of the squares of the chess board. They establish a connection between the First Cause, which soars above the spheres and on which everything depends, and the sum of the square of its squares. The Indians explain by these calculations the march of time and of the ages, the higher influences which govern the world and the bonds which link them to the human soul" (56, p. 210).

In this ending to many of the legends of the origin of chess we see a return of the repressed, a return of the magical influence. I feel, also, that the story of the reward repeats the theme of the origin of chess, in that the wise man vanquishes the king and proves superior to him, thereby representing the superiority of the intellect over might and force. It is another derivative of the oedipal situation, a derivative of the cultural trends which betray the ambivalence to royalty, the father figure—pleasing him on the one hand and impoverishing him on the other.

The transition from nard as a game of chance to chess as a game of reason is recorded in the following story:

"A little later there arose another king, Balhait, who was advised by a Brahman that this game (nard) was contrary to the precepts of his religion. The king accordingly planned to replace it by a new game which

452 Structure and Function
would demonstrate the value of such qualities as prudence, diligence, thrift, knowledge, and in this way oppose the fatalistic teaching of nard. The new game was made on the model of war, because war was the most effective school for teaching the value of administration, decision, prudence, caution, arrangement, strategy, circumspection, vigour, courage, force, endurance, and bravery. Balhait was charmed with the game and did his best to induce his subjects to adopt it in place of nard" (56, p. 210). A Moslem commentary goes to the root idea of the story: One philosopher "maintained that the inventor of chess was a believer in freedom of the will, while the inventor of nard was a fatalist who wished to show by this game that man could do nothing against fate, and that true wisdom is to hold one’s life in agreement with the decrees of chance" (56, p. 210).

In the new trend in legends of chess, several points are noteworthy. We see that the cast of characters includes a king, a queen, a priest, a general, a sage, and a philosopher. True, these are all royal personages; but the point is, they are people. The growth of rationality diverts man- kind from gods and goddesses and from the sons of gods or prophets, the dramatis personae of so many myths and legends. Indeed, the absence of the divine, the religious, or the magical in chess is striking. It is as if at some time in man’s history he set out to devise a game quite devoid of religious or magical elements. In games of dice and cards, factors of luck, chance, and magical propitiation are still important and can still be used for divination. Chess, both in its present form and from the point of its invention, has as an essential element the elimination of the gods of fortune. Skill alone was to determine the outcome. The victory was to be a victory of reason. Only one element of chance remains in chess: the toss for colours. Still, in it are now fused reason and aggression.

Viewed in the terms of psychoanalytic theory, the invention of chess expressed the triumph of secondary process thinking over the primary process. Actual warfare is fluctuating, unpredictable, and chaotic, while the military game of chess, nay, the intellectual game of chess, provides a struggle which is organized, controlled, circumscribed, and regulated. Recall once more the remark by Collins: "There are two classes of men, those who are content to yield to circumstance, and who play whist; and those who aim to control circumstance, who play chess."

Interesting also is another legend of the origin of chess. It contains some premonitions of the rise of the new concept of democracy, of the age of the common man: "A commoner, subject of a Hindu king, an- noyed at his monarch’s arrogance, violence, and cruelty, invented the game to demonstrate to him that a king unsupported by his subjects, not

THE FUNCTION OF GAMES 453
protected by his pawns, is weak and likely to get into trouble." The king appreciated the moral implied in the invention and changed his ways (47). This story, told by Lambe, I can find in no earlier author. Hence it seems justified to say it is an invention of Lambe’s era, by which time royalties were not as absolute as in the times of origin of the other legends.

 

THE THEME OF THE MATER DOLOROSA
One manuscript (56, p. 219) suggests that chess was invented by Adam to console himself for the death of Abel, and includes Shem, Japhet, and King Solomon among the chess players. From the time of al-Ma’mun onwards, the writings of the famous Greek philosophers became known to the Moslem world in translation. It was, perhaps, inevitable that the scattered allusions to the Greek board games which occur in Plato and other writers should be misapplied to chess, and to this we owe the statements in the manuscript mentioned (56, p. 219) and in later chess books that Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen were also chess players. Murray comments that the Moslems, who for some time were involved in an argument as to whether chess was permissible on religious grounds, distorted references about the origins of the game and invented legends about Biblical characters in order to gain religious support that it was indeed permissible. Their reference to Biblical characters is understandable, but why the Greeks were included is not clear, since the one legend needed in this regard they also invented, namely that Mohammed himself played chess.

The legend that Adam invented chess to console himself for the death of Abel, a fifteenth-century story, contains the element of therapy, and is an inversion of the oedipal theme, in that it is the son who dies. This story is a masculinization of the two earliest legends of chess. One (56, pp. 190, 212), recorded in the first century of Islam (c. 875), tells of a queen-prophetess whose favorite son was killed by a rebel. The men of her kingdom tried to prevent her from learning of his sad fate, for they feared her reaction. They went to a philosopher, Qaflan, for counsel on the problem. After three days of thought he summoned a carpenter who fashioned him a chess board according to his direction. Then he in- vented the game with the remark, "This is war without bloodshed." The news of the invention was permitted to reach the queen, who then asked to see the philosopher and his invention. "He called his disciple and they played before the queen, and the winner said, ‘Shah Mat’ and she re- membered and knew what he wished her to know, and she said, ‘My son is dead’."

454 Structure and Function A slightly later version of the same story, related by Firdawsi (56, pp. 213-215), had the queen’s two sons, each by a separate marriage, quarrel and finally resort to war. One died in battle, though not through being slain, and when the news came to the queen, she accused the brother of murder. He could not satisfactorily explain to his mother how the death happened, and so he called together the wise men of his king- dom and laid his case before them. They invented the game of chess and made clear how a king can fall in battle without having been slain. The son then took his game of chess to his mother and thus explained the death of his brother. She continued to study the board all that day and night without desiring food until death released her from her sorrow, "and from that time the chess board has remained in the knowledge of mankind."

The question arises as to why in these two oldest legends the central figure is a queen, and why the queen is so important in the folklore of the game even before it became a piece on the board. Why, indeed, did the early Moslems, whose literature has such sparse mention of women not hesitate to put women into these legends—when they have to do with India? I would speculate that the importance of the queen-mother in these earliest legends is a relic of the myths of matriarchy. Note the absence of the king in both of these legends and note the sorrowing queen-mother. The stories repeat and strongly remind one of the theme of the Mater Dolorosa. In the first of these legends the theme of father-murder may be the unconscious one, that both mother and son are punished for the death of the father which has been accomplished in the unknown and unmentioned past, and that this is the crime for which the son must die. It is remarkable that Jones (42) anticipated this thesis, without referring to the earliest legends, by considering only the rise in power of the queen on the chessboard, speculations which, coming before Colby’s suggestion, rested largely on etymological evidence. He stated, "Whatever may be the truth, therefore, about the linguistic speculations I have just men- tioned, it will not surprise the psycho-analyst when he learns of the effect of the change; it is in attacking the father (that) the most potent assistance is afforded by the mother (= queen)."

 

THE MAGNA MATER
It is logical to explore the earlier legends pertaining to the mother-son relationship, to see what light they may throw on the Mater Dolorosa theme. By far the most widespread of the ancient cults and myths were those of the Magna Mater, the Great Mother. These early legends, that illustrate a particular kind of mother-son relationship, suggest how they

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may be precursors or masks of the oedipal story. It is not strange that eventually the Magna Mater is considered the source of all things. As MacKenzie (51) pointed out: "As Isis interceded with Osiris, she interceded with Nebo, on behalf of mankind." But this did not signify that she was the least influential of the divine pair. A goddess played many parts: she was at once mother, daughter, and wife of the god; the servant of one god or the "mighty queen of all the gods." The Great Mother was, as has been indicated, regarded as the eternal and undecaying one; the gods passed away, son succeeding father; she alone remained. Thus too, did Semiramis survive in the popular memory, as the queen-goddess of widespread legends, after kings and gods had been forgotten. To her were ascribed all the mighty works of other days in the lands where the indigenous peoples first worshipped the Great Mother as Damkina, Nina, Bau, Ishtar, or Tashmit, because the goddess was anciently believed to be the First Cause, the creatrix, the mighty one who invested the ruling god with the powers he possessed.

How powerful was the force of the queen-mother in the form of Semiramis may be seen in the persistence of the belief in her power, even in regard to chess, where one fantasy, contrary to all historical evidence, attributed to Semiramis a role in the game. Hone, cited by Mitchell (54), suggested that the chess queen was so named in honor of Semiramis because the queen on the board has qualities once ascribed to this ancient queen-goddess. "Strangely inconsistent with our ideas of propriety and probability, the queen is the chief character in the contest. She is not merely the soft excitement of the war who bids her king go forth with her blessing; no, she is the active, undaunted, indefatigable leader of an army, herself a host!" Let us now examine the general characteristics of these Magna Mater stories. Are they precursors of the oedipal myths? Are they masked or partial oedipal themes? The theme of the Magna Mater and the wish of the son to displace his father, weak or absent as he may appear, has been dealt with in two admirable contributions. Jones (41) showed that the whole system of mother-right may indeed represent one mode of defence among others that have been adopted against oedipal hostility; by way of taming or assimilating the oedipal complex, man instituted the mother- right. In other words, by establishing matriarchal rights and the priority of the mother, it appears as if the conflict with the father is rendered unimportant. This kind of denial can obviously be institutionalized in matriarchies.

Weigert (77) showed even more convincingly that the rites of the Magna Mater contain the oedipal theme, but her thesis is different from that of Jones; to her the rite of sexual union with the mother and the rite

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of sacrificial castration, as in the Attis myths, serve the dual function of a sacrifice and an approach to the nature of the goddess. The sin, to call it thus, is the wish for sexual union. Weigert explained the rite of castra- tion, of death and of resurrection on the basis of the youth’s childish fear of the all-devouring power of the mother. In his craving for union he sacrifices the organ of procreation as if at her command, in order to iden- tify himself with her and to be resurrected—these to be the evidences of not having lost her. In this dyad the primal father can be indeed a shad- owy figure. Weigert tends thus to explain the total relationship as being between mother and child alone, an erotic and hostile one. There is no trace of the father figure, no need to call him into the picture.

Let us now argue against this thesis from the point of view which posits or assumes a triangular situation. The sin of the son lover, Atis, in sexual union with its attendant sense of guilt, cannot come simply from the wish for union, the wish for identification with the mother (and the fear of being forsaken), but must contain underneath, hidden as it were, the element of aggression against the father. Her explanation of mother and youth as a sole relationship may indeed be the case in their early infantile relationship. But when genitality is involved, as it is in these rites and myths, Weigert’s explanation seems inadequate. For a son to wish to achieve sexual union with his mother need not in itself necessitate castration; guilt must be a necessary component of this complex; even if the wish were for a type of primary identification with the mother, self- castration with all its punitive aspects is indeed not the mode of achieve- ment of this goal. Introjective and incorporating trends are the mode of such an aim. Again, guilt must underlie the castrative aspects, and this guilt must stem from a destructive component. Even if it be granted that guilt can derive from the oral incorporative destruction of the mother in the passionate drive to become one with her, why the self- castration as the way of punishment?

My criticism can be held invalid if one assumes that the rites and castration are explicable from the complexities of the mother-son relation alone. Certainly this is the implication of Graves’s (34, pp. 12-18) views from his study of myths, even though the motivation for the castration is not dealt with by Graves. Bettelheim (4) is clear and to the point in giving examples of puberty rites as illustrations of the need for boys to identify with women. I cite this work as a tenable hypothesis for the explanation of self-mutilation in males on other than a self-punitive or guilt-motivated basis.

I am still not content with Weigert’s hypothesis, one derivative of which could be the thesis that the classical oedipal situation can be a screen for the more important bipolar mother-son relationship. To such a derivative Jones holds the opposite idea of why the father continues to be shadowy or absent in these legends, and to it Weigert subscribes in part. That is, the father figure is denied in order to avoid the semblance of the son’s rivalry with him. Herein also lies, I believe, the fascination that the mother-goddess cults have had throughout the ages—the apparent absence of the murderous intent against the father. His absence or shadowiness has, nevertheless, accomplished the unconscious aim.

Still another approach presents itself. Despite Melanie Klein’s con- clusions, most of the present work points to a bipolar relationship as preceding the triangular one. Therefore, if one permits a parallelism, it is to be expected that myths of the bipolar relationship should exist and should precede historically the triangular ones. Graves (34) demonstrates this in regard to Greek myths by implication, since he demonstrates the primary role of the mother-goddess in the earliest myths, indicating by what politico-religious factors the father-king is introduced later. Does the Mater Dolorosa myth follow this pattern? Partly; for example, the Demeter-Kore myth wherein Demeter mourns her abducted daughter. Frazer (30) recognizes an important point in myths in picking out the ease of substitution which occurs in them; he stresses that in later versions of this myth a son is substituted for the daughter. This facile displacement of roles, the condensation in one person of many roles, and the splitting of one role into many are characteristics of myths, as in dreams and other primary process displacements, which I feel are central to the understanding of the development of the form of the triangular oedipal pattern. Let me cite two examples of "transitional" myths: "Adad-nirari desired to be regarded as the legitimate heir to the thrones of Assyria and Babylonia. . . . It is not too much to assume that he was a son of a princess of its ancient royal family. Sammummat (Semiramis) may therefore have been his mother. She could have been called his ‘wife’ in the mythological sense, the king having become ‘hus- band of his mother’. If such is the case, the royal pair probably posed as the high priest and high priestess of the ancient goddess cult—the in- carnations of the Great Mother and the son who displaced his sire" (51, p. 410). This myth has the additional element of the displacement of the father by the son.

The second example goes further: "As the divine sower of seed, Ninip may have developed from Tammuz as Horus did from Osiris. Each was at once the father and the son, different forms of the same deity at various seasons of the year. The elder god was displaced by the son (spring), and when the son grew old his son slew him in turn" (51, p.

458 Structure and Function
302). Isis was an early Mater Dolorosa, since Horus, when he grew up to be Osiris, died for the salvation of his people. The birthplace of Horus was a cave, later to be associated with the birth of Jesus.

These easy changes of identity so characteristic of the most ancient legends remind one of what happens in mental ontogenetic development, when the infant in a non-discriminatory phase can without difficulty exchange one ‘object’ for another.

As soon as the triangular form of the myth takes on an oedipal nature, interchangeability disappears and a more stable myth pattern is obvious. Perhaps it is from paternalistic cultures alone that these appear, centuries earlier than the Greek bipolar myths. For example, let us proceed to a legend in which the Mater Dolorosa appears more in the setting of the usual family, with the father more obviously present. A Sumerian hymn describes the wailing of the mother of Tammuz, generally represented "to have been a human being, who suffered death at the hands of a king. There is direct evidence that Tammuz, always designated as a god in Sumerian, was originally a defied man. . . . On the whole it is probable that Dumuzi(d) meant originally the ‘faithful’ son, and that the myth of a beautiful young god arose in prehistoric times when a king sacrificed his son for the welfare of his people. The calamity which instigated this sacrifice may have been some impending national disaster; in Sumerian religion it was the death of a god who perished annually at midsummer with the withering grass and drying soil of the drought-afflicted Mesopo- tamian valley. One son of a divinely appointed king had died for man, a perpetual atonement and a sacrifice to the merciless powers of the Underworld; a perpetual atonement in that he returned each year with the returning rains and spring sun only to die again in the torrid heat, when the flocks longed for water, and Tammuz their shepherd departed again to the mournful sound of the shepherd’s lute and the cries of weep- ing women . . ." (48). Note the theme of a son who is killed, not for his sins, but as a sacrifice for mankind. Reik (64, p. 158) believes that the sacrificial aspect masks the sin of incest of all the son gods, Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris, who die violent deaths and are mourned for by their lovers and mothers. Once more the question can be raised as to the nature of the sin. We see the main characteristics of the mother-son relationship in these various legends leading to the problem of the death of the son, the reasons for which have been explained as some kind of sacrifice.

I now raise the point whether the guilt of the son (and the mother’s role of grief) cannot be better elucidated. Let us use the example of the problem of the death of Jesus, who had but to deny or explain his assumption of the Messianic role in order to avoid death. This he would

THE FUNCTION OF GAMES 459
not do in face of what clearly threatened to be the consequences of his assumption. Schweitzer (71) dealt with this problem extensively and con- cluded that Jesus accepted death in the expectation that it would result in a "parousia" or manifestation of himself at an appointed time, which would be evidence that he was the "Anointed One." The eschatological and counter-eschatological arguments in Schweitzer’s book impress me as ignoring, with understandable reasons, the psychological factor of Jesus’s unconscious sense of guilt, for which he had to die, for his aspiration to be the King of Heaven or at least God’s equal. Psychoanalytically, his presumption can be understood to be culpable. This, it may be argued, was Jesus’s sin, for which he had to die. Reik (65, pp. 271-273, 278, 301-302) deals extensively with this theme and yet con- cludes that Jesus was sinless, and took the sins of others and was executed for the crimes of others. But I propose the thesis of emphasizing Jesus’s primary guilt as being a personal one, and thus de-emphasizing the secondary guilt, that which he acquired by taking it over from others.

This thesis about Jesus finds some psychological substantiation in two sets of data. The first concerns Talmudic references to Jesus as lame. Goldstein (32, pp. 57-66) reviews these references and concludes that the need to equate Balaam (who is referred to as lame, and in one story as blind in one eye) with Jesus, is historically untenable. Whatever the historical facts are, Graves (33) is closer to the psychological facts when he recognizes the deep unconscious need to equate Jesus with Oedipus.

The other set of data is derived from the Judas legends. Reik (63, pp. 100-120) first emphasized that the need to exculpate, glorify, and eventually deify Jesus led to a concomitant splitting of the image of Jesus into two parts, the evil being posited in Judas, who was made a scape- goat. The crowning artistic and psychological touch, the development of the medieval legend of Judas, the pious intention of which was to further blacken Judas’s name, Baum (2) has studied in almost a hundred ver- sions of the Judas legend; they arose in Europe in the latter part of the eleventh century when incest became of great interest because of the controversy over the law of Justinian regarding the marriage of near relatives.

The essential features of the Judas legend are the mother’s dream of a son predestined to a wicked career; the setting loose of the infant in a cask on the sea; his rescue and being reared by a king; his banishment because of killing the king’s son (in one story the murder occurs over a chess-game!); his return to his native land, the murder of his father and incestuous relation with his mother. Baum is exceptionally skillful in treating the relation of the Judas legend to the oedipal story.

If we now return to Reik’s thesis that the evil posited in Judas was what

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was unconsciously felt as being true of Jesus, the incest motive is thus psychologically valid in these legends of Judas.

In what way Mary was unconsciously an accomplice is not clear. It would be unfair to deprive her in these speculations of the virtue of having maternal ambitions for her son in his quest for the Kingdom of Heaven. At any rate, one possible factor in her glorification may have been an absolution of her guilt in the aspirations of her son. In his psychiatric study of Jesus, Schweitzer (70) does not discuss the possi- bility of any sin or guilt on the part of Jesus. Nor does he consider the role of Mary, whom he mentions only in a footnote. The theme of the unconscious implication of the mother in the oedipal story, of increasing mention in current psychoanalytic literature, is hardly ever mentioned in belles-lettres. An exception is the famous old ballad, "Edward" (13). Jones mentions this theme in his paper on Morphy.

 

EPILOGUE
To return to the legends of chess: there exist in them legends of matriarchal and patriarchal settings, of bipolar or oedipal character; there exists also in them a syncretistic tendency to be found in the treatment of all folktales of all times and places. They reveal some part of the family romance, however distorted, condensed, or elaborated.

Since I have been dealing primarily with psychological facts and not historical ones, it should not be surprising if the character of the game itself should include only incompletely and partially its prehistory. Its invention and development, after all, were at a time in the world’s history in which paternal figures, especially the royal ones, were ascendant. Its prehistory has the unconscious ingredients of all artistry in which the intellect plays a part. Its character is that of a game of the family romance, for which thesis the works of Herbstman, Jones, Pfister, and Coriat adduce sufficient evidence. The theme of father-murder is not the only one which is enacted, but many derivatives of the family situation, including denials of the general theme of patricide, are also evident. It may even be argued that the fact that women in general find no fascination in chess is explained in the psychological event that they have no need for father-murder.

I wish to conclude by returning to some additional evidence that the game includes not only the theme of patricide but also denials of it. If it can be shown that kings or people of high station approve of the game, it helps a player to be comfortable in his fascination or addiction to it. Therefore these tangential evidences seem in order. First, there is the general tendency for chess journals, newspaper

THE FUNCTION OF GAMES 461
columns, and anthologies to collect the games of famous people, for the value of the great names and not of the games. Thus, a to-do has been made from time to time about the games reputedly played by Napoleon, J. J. Rousseau, Karl Marx, Tolstoy, Woodrow Wilson, Lenin, and others. Many an American has taken pride in the fact that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin played chess. Participation with the great, via their hobbies, both lessens the sense of guilt over whatever special con- scious, personal (and unconscious) meaning the game has—the addic- tion, the waste of time, masturbation, patricide—and at the same time enhances the pleasure via the indulgence thereby bestowed from on high.

Second, it is noteworthy that many coats-of-arms include chess pieces (56, pp. 772-775). So, likewise, our modern hallmarks of aristocracy, advertising trademarks, have included more and more the royal figures and other chess pieces, notably the knight. Third, after political revolutions, attempts have occurred to change the names of the chess pieces to conform more with the democratic tradition. One such effort (7), which sought after the American Revolu- tion to replace king, queen, and pawn by governor, general, and pioneer, etc., failed. After the Russian Revolution attempts were made to get rid of the royal family, and one such effort succeeded. The other, on the chess board, failed, and tradition and the strength of the unconscious prevailed; the pieces are still called Korol and Krala (or Ferz).

Fourth, even before Jones’s paper, some writers explained that "check- mate" (shah-mat, schach-matt, etc.) which literally means, "The king is dead," indicates something else, e.g., the king is trapped or abandoned or surprised (21, pp. 70-71). After Jones’s paper had appeared there was a flurry of writings by modern scholars, especially Moghadam (55), to make further distance from the theme of father-murder. It is asserted that actually in chess the king is not killed; he is indeed simply "forced into helpless immobility" (53). Moreover, after the end of a game another can always be begun.

Ingenious as these proposals are, it seems obvious that the publication of Jones’s paper necessitated the marshalling of crudite forces of denial to place the game as far as possible from its unconscious intent; an intent which is supported by considerable etymological evidence ("Mat" means

462 Structure and Function
dead, a finality, Moghadam’s niceties notwithstanding). My dismissal of Moghadam’s explanations, held by some scholars as far back as Hyde (37), may seem a bit cavalier: All the fuss to prove their point has other motivations in the scholars than that of accurate definition. My point, echoing Jones, is that these extenuations ilustrate to what length some authors will go to attempt to substantiate the denial of the intent of murder. This sort of polemic is an amusing example of how a thesis regarding a historical fact and its significance calls up protagonists and antagonists who have obvious emotional investment in the so-called scientific aspect. In this connection, Jones (42) remarked, ". . . from the point of view of the King, it makes very little difference."

Thus it appears that the fascination of the game may very well depend in part on the fact that its devotees experience, sometimes with full measure of affect, the passions and the mysteries of the unconscious. These break through the defensive intellectual formalism and structure and add to the pleasure of the game. It is as if in the enjoyment of the game one experiences a kind of unio mystica with kings and queens, with their family romance, and in participating in its royal richness, a part of lost omnipotence is recaptured.