The Problem of Paul Morphy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Chess

Paul Morphy is one of the world's greatest chess grandmasters and world champions in chess history. His life appears to be a demonstration of a strange connection between genius and psychopathology.

Before the British Psychoanalytic Society in November 1930, Dr. Ernest Jones presented "The Problem of Paul Morphy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Chess."  He put it this way, analyzing Morphy's mind and extending it to the rest of chess players:  "the unconscious motive actuating the players is not mere love of pugnacity characteristic of all competitive games, but the grimmer one of father-murder." In Freudian psychoanalytical framework, the appeal of chess then lies in its capacity to gratify hostile "Oedipal impulses." To win over an opponent and checkmate the King is to render the "king" father sterile and incapacitated, aided by the mother (the Queen).

Noting Morphy's phenomenal performances in world chess happened just a year after the shock of his father's sudden death, Dr. Jones surmised that Morphy's "brilliant effort of sublimation was, like Shakespeare's Hamlet and Freud's Traumdeutung, a reaction to this critical event." Morphy's chess genius, continued Dr. Jones, reflected his capacity for sublimation of parricidal and homosexual impulses, all of which served a defensive function for him.

When a fellow world contender, Staunton, persistently refused Morphy's challenge to fight on the chess board, his sublimation broke down. His psychological defense failed. And Morphy could no longer use his chess ability to medicate his overwhelming id impulses and inner wounds. Stripped bare and deprived, Morphy collapsed and became mentally ill.