Nothing Could Be Finer

     Possibly the strongest American player for a time during his peak years Reuben Fine gave up the life of a chess player for that of a psychoanalyst.  The old adage went that this career move was “a great loss for chess and at best a draw for psychoanalysis.”   
     Many people put a lot of stock in psychoanalysis,; many people put no stock in it. Whatever one's opinion might be, it will probably influence what one takes from Fine's analysis of certain chess masters.
     In 1956 Fine published a 74 page pamphlet immortalizing his attempt to delve into the psyche of chess players using all the world champions both dead and at that time living as his focus group.  
     Even if psychoanalysis is valid, trying to apply this technique on individuals one hasn't interviewed and using many supposed but possibly inaccurate or at least unsubstantiated (hearsay)"facts" about those individuals to form one's opinion puts everything into question.  
     I thought it might prove interesting to look at some short excerpts of Fine's analysis of the nine World champions and then some of his general conclusions:

1956

Howard Staunton

Aggression, organization and narcissism are the obvious threads which run through Staunton's life. The shift from acting to writing is part of the replacement of action by thought. Then comes the shift from writing to chess, a switch from thought to action. Later he changes back once more.
In chess his active career virtually stopped after his defeat at London. The simple explanation that he could not stand the narcissistic blow involved in losing is undoubtedly the correct one.
His genius was such that he attained the heights in both chess and literary criticism. His status as a Shakespearean scholar earned him a notice in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which states that in literary criticism "he showed the qualities of acuteness and caution which made him excel in chess."
Staunton's interest in Shakespeare fits in readily enough with chess : only the King of writers could attract his pen. He had his hero. One of his last papers, mentioned by the Encyclopedia, is entitled "Unsuspected Corruptions of Shakespeare's Text" ; he had to defend the King from attack.
. . .
The outstanding features of Staunton's chess style were its eclecticism and its placidity. No brilliant games of his have survived ; he won chiefly because of his ability to exploit his opponent's mistakes. He avoided the va banque gambits which were so popular at the time. This ultra-conservatism contrast markedly with his outspoken aggression away from the chessboard. Such apparent contradictions are not at all uncommon. The mild passive man can play brilliant chess let his aggression out on the chess board ; the aggressive man can compensate by playing quiet chess.

Adolf Andersson

Although he lost to both of his great rivals, Morphy and Steinitz, Anderssen was never bothered by defeat. He loved to play, and it seemed to matter little whether he won or lost.
It is clear enough what role chess played in the placid life of a bachelor school teacher ; it was his major libidinal outlet. In sharp antithesis to Staunton he never engaged in quarrels, and never made any enemies. His only complaints from the London 1 85 1 tournament were about the "scandalous" high prices there. In his letters home, some of which have been preserved, he goes into great detail as to how expensive everything was. He found all the players agreeable, the organizers courteous, the arrangements satisfactory. Everything else in life for him was secure and well-regulated ; it was only in chess that he could really let himself go.
His style i accordingly the most romantic of all the champions. Attack, sacrifice, with reason or without reason. The man who in real life could tolerate no change could not tolerate a quiet role in the fantasy world of chess. Everything had to be fluid, open, bold, dashing, adventurous. Despairingly he wrote of his successor that "He who plays with Morphy must abandon all hope of catching him in a trap, no matter how cunningly laid. . . ." The possibility of modifying his own style did not occur to Anderssen ; psychologically he could not change.

Paul Morphy

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 ­image, 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' [Ernest Jones' "The Problem of Paul Morphy" -batgirl] theory about Morphy, ingenious a 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.
. . .
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...
More importance must be attached to Morphy's repeated declaration that he was not a professional.
. . .
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 learn 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. A 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.
. . .
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.
. . .
In fact, if Morphy is compared stylistically with such major opponents as Anderssen and Paulsen, the chief difference lay in his grasp of the principle 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.

Wilhelm Steinitz

. . .

By 1882 he had so many enemies that he emigrated to the U.S., where he remained, with some interruptions, until his death.
For Steinitz chess was the great passion of his life. Unlike Morphy, he looked upon chess as more than a game, and was proud of his achievements in it.
. . .
In sharp contrast to Morphy's detachment, Steinitz was a fighter every inch of the way. So much so that, as Sergeant remarks, "Where Staunton's pen was dipped in gall Steinitz's pen was dipped in vitriol."
. . .
In Steinitz again the intellectualized aggression is brought out above all other qualities. He fought on the chess board, he fought in the chess columns, he argued endlessly with his friends. To his enemies he attributed anti-Semitism (in this there was certainly some element of truth ) , and at one time began to write a book on Jews in chess in order, as he said, to confound the anti-Semites.
Naturally, so much aggression must be accompanied by great anxieties. This in fact turns out to have been the case. Steinitz is described as a kind of male hysteric, who for thirty years suffered from recurrent "nervous" attacks, the main symptoms of which were over-excitability, nervousness and insomnia. To overcome these attacks he resorted to the "Kneip" treatment, a form of hydrotherapy which apparently involved cold baths ; there was at that time a Kneip Society in New York, and there were many firm believers in the method.
The gratification derived from being king of the chess world gradually led to a kind of Messiah complex in him.  He almost literally felt called upon to rescue the lost chess player from the wilderness.
. . .
As king of the chess world, Steinitz was able to maintain sufficient control over his anxieties But when he lost the championship to Lasker in 1 894, and lost the return match in Moscow in 1896, he had a brief psychotic episode. After his defeat he was trying to write his book on Jews in chess as rapidly as possible, and for his purpose hired a young Russian secretary who was fluent in both English and German. He developed a delusion that he could telephone without wire or receiver, and the secretary often found him waiting for an answer from the invisible telephone. He would also to the window, talk and sing and expect an answer. The secretary reported this to the American consul, who then suggested that he be confined to the Morossow sanatorium. This was on February 11 , 1897. On March 6, 1897 he wrote to a Viennese physician who was a childhood friend that "like all lunatics I imagine that the doctors are crazier than I am." He was also well enough to advise the psychiatrists : "Treat me like a Jew and kick me out."
. . .
The connection between Steinitz's personality and his chess style is fairly simple and fairly direct. In his youth he was a bold gambit player, who won by wild attacks and brilliant combinations; ironically his games from this period are typical of the way Morphy is supposed to have played but never did.
It is clear that he was dethroning the father by brute force. Once he was champion, he was the father, and he had to beat off the attacks by the sons. Accordingly his style underwent a radical transformation, and he became an invincible defensive player. But just as he had pushed the attack to extremes he pushed the defense in the same way. He would get into the most fantastically lopsided positions, from which only his genius helped him to escape. In one variation which he loved as Black, he would hold on to his Pawn at K4 against any and every onslaught, just as in real life he would stubbornly stick to his point regardless of what others said. Defensiveness may often have a provocative quality, and Steinitz could b extremely provocative.

Emanuel Lasker

Lasker was primarily an independent spirit, and most of his life was spent a a free-lance intellectual. His interests were many and varied ; he taught mathematics, wrote on philosophy, invented a kind of tank in World War I, wrote an Encyclopedia of Games and a book on board games and towards the end even projected a series of social reforms in a work called "The Community of the Futures."
As a personality Lasker was the direct opposite of his predecessor, Steinitz. He was affable, courteous and, on the surface at least, completely devoid of any kind of hostility. Those who knew him were impressed by his refusal to get into any kind of argument, or to utter an unkind word about anybody. He prided himself on his philosophical temperament.
. . .  
What role did chess play in the life of this detached intellectual?   We would have to assume that it supplied a major source of instinctual gratification in the only way that was acceptable to him, namely the intellectual.
. . .
Lasker's style is more difficult to define than that of any of the other champions, and this is in a way characteristic of him.  Two features stand out : one is his tactical superiority, and the other is his search for clarity and order.
That tactical superiority should be unique to one champion might seem odd ; one would expect all to have it. In Lasker's case, however, it was raised to the level of a style, in that, unlike the others, he would not commit himself to any doctrinaire point of view. Steinitz was often more anxious to prove his theories than to win ; Capablanca was out to simplify ; Alekhine to attack. Lasker could attack or defend. Though he usually preferred to defend, he could play opening, middle game and ending with equal virtuosity. He was a well-rounded chess artist —a quality which reflects the wish expressed in his own life to be expert in many different areas. He refused to be pinned down ; on the chess board this is an asset, since a thorough eclecticism provides the greatest number of victories in the long run. But in other areas it was a liability. The wish to be everything probably contributed to his early love for chess ; his choice stand out as a contrast to that of his equally gifted brother, who gave up serious chess and devoted himself to medicine,  We are told that his brother taught him the game, and we are well aware of the deep impact of sibling rivalry on personality formation.
The other feature of Lasker's style is his search for clarity.
. . .
The search for clarity would for Lasker be specifically tied up with the wish to deny or "regulate" his sexual impulses. We may recall his statement that when he married he became husband, father and grandfather all in one stroke. It is perhaps no accident that the two opening variations which bear his name (the Exchange Variation in the Ruy Lopez and Lasker's Defense in the Queen's Gambit Declined ) both involve an unusually early exchange of Queens ; that is, to clarify the situation he gets rid of women.

Jose Raul Capablanca

Capablanca's countrymen were enthusiastic about his exploits. He was given a position in the diplomatic service ; here his duties were light and he was free to devote much time to chess.
For the six years that Capablanca held the world title he was looked upon as almost invincible, a "chess machine" who never made a mistake. As with Morphy, the myth does not jibe with the reality ; for example, in the two tournaments in which he competed with Lasker the latter finished ahead of him both times. Many of his other rivals frequently played better than he did.
. . .
In his personal life, an early marriage ended unhappily, and he spent the rest of his life in a long series of casual sexual experiences, until his remarriage at the age of fifty to a Russian ex-princess. Physically he was quite handsome, and one always saw him surrounded by a bevy of admiring women. In many of his chess defeats the alibi would be spread (no doubt with his unconscious assent ) that he had been off with a woman.
When he lost to Tarrasch at St. Petersburg in 1914, he was supposed to have come to the game from the bed of the mistress of the Grand Duke. When he lost to Alekhine in 1927, it was because he was dallying with too many dancers. Capablanca was highly competitive in other game as well as in chess He was an expert bridge player, a competent tennis player and a member of the baseball team at Columbia University. To win at everything he undertook was obviously his goal in life. In analytic terminology he would be classified as a phallic-narcissistic character. As is typical with such men, the unconscious purpose of his sex life was to gain a conquest, and it appears that like the original Don Juan, Capablanca lost interest in a woman as soon as he had had her sexually.
Towards men he displayed contemptuous arrogance. His narcissism again stood out here. He was a notoriously poor loser. When he lost to Marshall at Havana in 1913 he had the mayor of the city clear the room of all spectators before he would admit defeat.
Not long after he won the world championship it became clear that Capablanca grew bored with chess He said the game was played out and proposed that the board be enlarged and new pieces added. He never studied, never gave exhibitions, in fact hardly played at all outside of tournaments. The illusion was that he had conquered chess that it was futile to bother with it any further. From this illusion the myth of hi invincibility arose. In My Chess Career he wrote :

"There have been times in my life when I came very near thinking that I could not lose even a single game of chess. Then I would be beaten, and the lost game would bring me back from dreamland to earth."

The dreamland where one can never be beaten is a familiar one : it is the return to the mother. In him the oral fixation was strong. It does not surprise us to learn that Capablanca was exceptionally fond of cooking, and that he had several favorite restaurants where he went to prepare his own meals. The incessant anxiety and rage which probably led to his hypertension are also the common symptoms of the orally fixated man who can never find the longed-for mother of his infancy.
The role that chess played in his life is quite clear : he was out to win, and through his native genius in chess he could win. Once he had succeeded in overthrowing the father (Lasker) he lost interest, which meant he was living out his fantasy of infantile omnipotence.
Capablanca's style can best be described as materialistic.
He would win a Pawn, or gain some positional advantage and the rest would be handled by hi flawless technique. Even his earliest games, such as those against Corzo when he was twelve, follow along these lines. He never seem to have gone through the romantic attack-at-all-costs period which so many young players go through.
The materialistic approach flows directly out of his phallic-narcissistic orientation : win something and the reward follows automatically. Capablanca was extraordinarily quick in his grasp of the board ; in his youth especially he played much more rapidly than any of his contemporaries. Once he had an advantage he no longer had to think ; he could retire to his land of Cockaigne.

Alexander Alekhine

In the postwar period Alekhine ranked third after Lasker and Capablanca. Since Lasker soon withdrew, only Capablanca remained. For years all of his efforts were devoted to beating the Cuban. He studied his games, worked hard, wrote some magnificent books and finally succeeded in winning the world title in 1927.
Once he had beaten Capablanca, Alekhine's attitude towards him took a sharp about-face. He avoided a return match by any trick that he could think of. Once when Capablanca had raised the $ 10,000 purse required, Alekhine demanded that it be paid in gold because the dollar was no longer of the same value! 
He barred Capablanca from tournaments in which he participated by increasing his fee to such an outlandish figure that the tournament committee could not meet it. The two did not meet again in tournament play until 1 936, when Alekhine had lost the championship and could no longer dictate terms.
Alekhine's avoidance of Capablanca was certainly neurotically determined. There is little doubt that in the years from 1928 to 1934 Alekhine would have won fairly easily ; his chess had in that period reached an extraordinarily high level, while the Cuban had declined. Alekhine even went to incredible lengths to avoid any mention of Capablanca's name. In 1937, at a chess tournament in Margate, England, Sir John Simon, then Home Secretary, made some opening remarks. What he said was of no particular consequence, but he happened to mention Capablanca's name in passing. Alekhine immediately got up and ostentatiously left the room. The enemy must be completely exterminated, and even his name must disappear.
. . .
In 1935 his aberrations lost him the title to the Dutchman, Dr. Max Euwe. Although he regained the title in 1937, it was clear that many of the younger generation were his equals or superiors at that time.
During the war Alekhine became a Nazi collaborator. He wrote a series of articles on the "Aryan" spirit in which he "proved" that Jews could not play chess, and that they spoiled the purity of the game. Since so many of his colleagues were Jewish he was boycotted by them after the war. Botvinnik, an exception, challenged him to a match in 1946, and it was arranged for London. Shortly before the date of the match Alekhine died of a heart attack in Lisbon.
. . .
Alekhine's relations to women were markedly disturbed. He was married five times. His last two wives were much older; one was thirty years his senior, the other twenty. It was said that he became impotent early in life. Towards his las wife he was openly sadistic.
In his later years Alekhine showed other eccentricities as well. He drank very heavily. He treated people a though they were merely Pawns on the chess board. Once when he was scheduled to give a simultaneous exhibition on forty boards in Mexico a latecomer appeared who had some political importance, and a forty-first board was added. Alekhine deliberately knocked it over. In one case he appeared at an exhibition so drunk that he began to urinate on the floor, and the exhibition had to be stopped. During his 1935 match with Euwe before one game he was found lying in a field drunk.
Unlike Capablanca, Alekhine loved chess. He played very often, and when he was not playing spent much time studying. He used to say that even on trips he would spend four hour a day at the chessboard.
Again one recognizes m him a strong phallic-narcissistic component. Chess to him was primarily a weapon of aggression, a way of destroying the rivals he could not defeat in any other way. In comparing him with Capablanca, two little details command attention : Alekhine was taught the moves by hi mother, Capablanca by his father. Hence for Alekhine to continue at chess meant winning the mother (he even used to say that he
played chess in bed with his last wife who was old enough to be his mother ) . For Capablanca to continue at chess meant staying away from the mother, so he became bored with it.
Alekhine's chess style is easily characterized : he was the great exponent of the surprise attack. He liked to think of himself as the greatest attacking player in chess history. It is clear that this attacking spirit represented for him a sublimation of the sadistic urges towards the father. Once he had a man down he wanted to destroy him ; what he tried in real life with Capablanca he carried out in symbolic form on the chessboard.
At the same time, especially towards the end, Alekhine showed a marked weakness in defense play. Psychologically the reason is clear : he projected his own sadistic urges to the opponent, and feared the utter annihilation that he would like to have inflicted.

Max Euwe

As a person Euwe stands again in marked contrast to his predecessor. He is married, has three children, and has lived an exemplary and by usual standards reasonably happy life.
There is no sign of any deep-seated neurotic conflict, no anxieties which exceed those of the ordinary well-adjusted individual in our society.
Euwe is a teacher by profession, and has been a teacher to the chess world. He has written numerous books and edited columns in leading papers and magazines for the past thirty years.
What role does chess play for such a man? The two choices which he had early in life were chess and mathematics : actually the difference lies in the fact that one i a contest, while the other i not. Chess i thus an intellectualized aggression, a successful sublimation. At the same time the aggression is kept within normal limits. Victories do not turn into megalomanic conquests, nor defeats into extermination.

Euwe's style is characterized by the emphasis on careful preparation and logic. He is one of the leading authorities on the openings, and rarely can be outplayed at the start. On the other hand, when he is taken by surprise by an opening innovation, he is bowled over too far-no doubt projecting his own thoroughness to his opponent.
It is clear that the well-ordered life of a school teacher is reflected in the careful preparation which is so typical of him.
Tactical surprises, which are out of place in such a life, are also out of place on the chess board.

Mikhail Botvinnik

Despite hi chess prowess Botvinnik remained in academic work and became an electrical engineer, a profession in which his accomplishments are also regarded as noteworthy.
. . . Botvinnik is married, with one child. He practices engineering and teaches at a university. The esteem in which chess is held in his country makes it easily possible for him to play when and where he pleases. He has been decorated with the Order of Lenin.
The Russians for many years have made a determined effort to prove that in their society artists need not be the tormented prima donnas so often encountered in other countries, but can lead socially normal lives. So far as we know Botvinnik's life has followed this pattern.
In a culture with such an attitude, chess must play a different role in the individual's psychic economy. It would be legitimate to inquire why chess has become a national sport in Russia ; inasmuch as it has one need not inquire too deeply into why the individual Russian citizen would become deeply absorbed in it. He is merely fitting in with those around him. The rest is a matter of native genius.
Botvinnik's style is typical of that of all the Russian masters of our time. Several years ago Botvinnik wrote an article on the "Soviet School in Chess" in which he described this style. It main feature is that it is dynamically ready to meet any situation that arises, as contrasted with more static "capitalist" conceptions that overstress the opening or the endgame, attack or defense. Such a style can readily be seen to be a translation to the chess board of the Soviet political feeling of encirclement and the need to be ready for any eventuality.
Botvinnik's article however, did not describe several other features which strike an outsider. His play (and that of the other Russians) is based much more on a counter-offensive strategy than on a direct offensive. This could well be the reflection of a social structure in which individual initiative is reduced to a minimum.
Another stylistic feature which Botvinnik does not mention is a weakness in handling a static defensive position, something in which masters like Steinitz and Lasker excelled. Again this could be a translation to the chess board of the "do or die" alternative in political realities.
One would expect, in addition, that certain aspect of Botvinnik's personality would be reflected in his chess to differentiate him from other masters but there is not enough information available to clarify this point.

The occupations from which the champions came show some similarities and some differences. Anderssen and Lasker were mathematicians, as is Euwe ; Botvinnik is an engineer. Capablanca began to study engineering but abandoned it in favor of chess Thus about half come from mathematical-scientific fields.
However, many other professions are represented among the chessmasters. While perhaps half come from scientific field allied with mathematics the other half do not. Ruy Lopez was an ecclesiastic ; Philidor was a musician ; Deschapelles was a soldier ; Lewis, M'Donnell and Saint-Amant, business men ; Kolisch a banker; Zukertort and Tarrasch, physicians ; Buckle a historian ; Tartakower a poet. The young Russian maser Taimanov is a concert pianist. There was a chess master named Harmonist who danced at the Opera House in Vienna. There was even one who was a professional strong man. There was a serf on an Indian estate, Sultan Khan, who was almost illiterate ; he comes closest to the chess champion of Stefan Zweig's novelette "The Roya' Game" , who is depicted as a kind of idiot savant.
The personality structures of the champion show some marked similarities if we divide them in two groups. In one we have Morphy, Steinitz, Capablanca and Alekhine, who devoted themselves almost exclusively to chess. Let us call these, for the sake of convenience, the heroes. The other who also pursue interests apart from chess would then be the non-heroes.
The hero group has been given this designation because myths have been built up about each of its members. Morphy is popularly looked upon as "the greatest chessplayer of all time", Steinitz as "the father of modem chess . Capablanca was known as "the chess machine" and publicly announced that he had mastered the game once and for all. Alekhine came to be talked about as "the greatest attacking player of all time".
Needless to say, all these superlatives derive from the chess player's need to find some hero whom he can worship. But the champions themselves played into the hands of their worshipers and obtained some of their most profound unconscious satisfactions from the idolatrous groups which grew up around them. Even Morphy's withdrawal from chess is perhaps most simply explained by saying that he knew that if he went back the illusion of his invincibility would be destroyed.
   All these men showed considerable emotional disturbance.
Morphy's illness was, of course, the most profound, and he gave up chess sooner than any of the others. Steinitz and Alekhine both had harmless megalomanic ideas towards the end of their lies. Capablanca suffered from extreme tension. All four display in marked degree the character traits of aggression and narcissism which our theoretical analysis indicated could so readily be brought out by the game. Underneath they all had fantasies of omnipotence ; to some extent they literally identified themselves with the King of the chess board.
With Steinitz the regression to a more omnipotent fantasy state came after his defeat by Lasker ; with the others it came after a series of victories.
In order to accomplish what they did all four had to work very hard. The grandiose wishes could not be satisfied by simple daydreaming. Their success could be achieved only after long and careful preparation. For this much ego strength is needed, which again fits in with the theoretical analysis. Some of these men, like Steinitz and Capablanca would have seemed more or less normal by customary standards. Only a more refined analysis serves to bring out the neurotic conflicts which troubled them.
All four were well endowed men who did not care to use their abilities outside of chess. Particularly striking is their gift for languages : Alekhine, Capablanca and Morphy were all fluent linguists, while Steinitz, although he was born in Prague, became a master of English prose.
The role which chess played in the lives of these men is clear enough : it served as a vehicle for the gratification of their omnipotence fantasies. As time went on, these fantasies, which were originally under control of the ego, became more and more libidinized, and suffused an increasing portion of the personality.
In almost every respect, the other group, the non-heroes, show exactly opposite tendencies. They had no myths built up about them, although they could easily have done so. Staunton and Anderssen both could have claimed the title of champion of the world, but they had other satisfactions in life, and did not have to do so. When Lasker was alive, the critics liked to say that he won because he was lucky or because he blew smoke into the eyes of his opponent. He did not bother to refute these airy-tales.
All of these non-heroes, except Anderssen, have substantial achievements to their credit outside of chess. Lasker, Euwe and Botvinnik have all held positions equivalent in rank to that of an American college professor and Staunton's literary fame has been mentioned.
For them, again in contrast to the hero group, chess is one of several intellectual pursuit i which they show varied degrees of competence. When we were able to penetrate beneath the surface, as with Staunton and Lasker, we saw that chess provided a libidinal outlet, especially for aggression, which the other intellectual areas did not.