SOURCE: “Billy Budd: A Psychological Autopsy,” in American Imago, Vol. 34, No. 1, Spring, 1977, pp. 28–49.

In the following essay, Floyd offers a psychological interpretation of Billy Budd.

“I see your drift. Ay, there is a mystery … a ‘mystery of iniquity,’ a matter for psychologic theologians to discuss.”

—Captain Vere in Billy Budd, Sailor Herman Melville

“Keep still! … you must keep quite still now, or your screaming will frighten the horses even more, and the coachman will not be able to hold them at all.”

—Emmy Von N. (speaking of the origin of her stammering) in “Studies in Hysteria” Sigmund Freud

Foreword

With so much written about Billy Budd, so much subjected to analysis and interpretation, why should a psychologist come to meddle here in this, perhaps, the most poetic of Melville's work? Is it the attraction of an unfinished piece, still germinal and growing? Cut off from the author's labor...