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© Copyright 2002, Jim Loy
When I read Ruben Fine's The Psychology of the Chess Player, I was amused to find that I was murdering my father through chess. Supposedly, my father is represented by the king, my mother by the queen, and (like all chess players, and seemingly everyone else), I was out to kill my father and seduce my mother. Right. Sounds like a lot of hooey to me. And I suppose that ideas like that are not taken too seriously by psychologists anymore.
Let's take the metaphor seriously for just a moment. Why is my father over there, fraternizing with my opponent? Because that's not my father. If either king has anything to do with my father, it has to be my king. And I protect him (not so much because he is weak, but because he is important), and patiently wait for the endgame where he can show that he is not the weak guy that everyone thought he was (I had faith in him). My king sacrifices are not things that I am proud of. The queen is a strong weapon, zipping about and catching some people by surprise (doesn't sound like my mother; where can I find a woman like that? Sounds like Brunhilde or Xena). And most of the time, I don't even think about checkmate (killing the king), but about winning pawns and pieces, and protecting pawns and pieces.
Maybe my subconscious is having raging sexual thoughts about chess? Who knows? But somehow I think that most of us view the pieces as tools to enforce our wills over a difficult puzzle. Some of these tools are weak, some strong. Some are delicate, some crude. But we combine them in clever ways to accomplish this task. And saying that I have a desire to kill a king (even the other guy's king) is like what a few people have said to me: "You use your knights very well." It is a superficial observation that really has nothing to do with chess strategy or truth. Yeah, my knight was able to move from here to there, where it will do some good, and you didn't see how it was going to get there, or that it was going to be strong when it got there. I think I use my bishops, rooks, and pawns well too (on occasion). You didn't notice that, did you.