viii) CONTENTS Index of Jokes General Index

SIGMUND : A BRIEF LIFE by Peter Gay

It was Freud's fate, as he observed not without pride, to "agitate the sleep of mankind." Half a century after his death, it seems clear that he succeeded far better than he expected, though in ways he would not have appreciated. It is commonplace but true that we all speak Freud now, correctly or not. We casually refer to oedipal conflicts and sibling rivalry, narcissism and Freudian slips. But before we can speak that way with authority, we must read his writings attentively. They repay reading, with dividends. was born on May 6, 1856, in the small Moravian town of Freiberg. I His father, , was an impecunious merchant; his mother, Amalia, was hand­ some, self-assertive, and young-twenty years her husband's junior and his third wife. Jacob Freud had two sons from his first marriage who were about 's age and lived nearby. One of these half brothers had a son, John, who, though Sigmund Freud's nephew, was older than his uncle.

lHis given names were Sigismund Schlomo, but he never used his middle name and, after experimenting with the shorter form for some time, defini· tively adopted the first name Sigmund--on occasion relapsing into the original formulation-in the early 187os, when he was a medical student at the University of . Freiberg, now in Czechoslovakia, bears the Czech name "Pribor." x) FREUD: A BRIEF LIFE Freud: A Brief Life (xi Freud's family constellation, then, was intricate enough to tough-minded positivists who disdained metaphysical specu­ puzzle the clever and inquisitive youngster. Inquisitiveness, lations about, let alone pious explanations of, natural phe­ the natural endowment of children, was particularly marked nomena. Even after Freud modified their theories of the in him. Life would provide ample opportunity to satisfy it. mind-in essence barely disguised physiological theories-­ In 186o, when Freud was almost four, he moved with his he recalled his teachers with unfeigned gratitude. The most family to Vienna, then a magnet for many immigrants. This memorable of them, Ernst Briicke, an illustrious physiologist was the opening phase of the Hapsburg Empire's liberal era. and a civilized but exacting taskmaster, confirmed Freud's Jews, only recently freed from onerous taxes and humiliating bent as an unbeliever. Freud had grown up with no religious restrictions on their property rights, professional choices, instruction at home, came to Vienna University as an athe­ and religious practices, could realistically harbor hopes for ist, and left it as an atheist-with persuasive scientific argu­ economic advancement, political participation, and a mea­ ments. sure of social acceptance. This was the time, Freud recalled, In 1882, on Briicke's advice, Freud reluctantly left the when "every industrious Jewish school boy carried a Cabinet laboratory to take a lowly post at the Vienna General Hospi­ Minister's portfolio in his satchel."2 The young Freud was tal. The reason was romantic: in April, he had met Martha encouraged to cultivate high ambitions. As his mother's Bernays, a slender, attractive young woman from northern first-born and a family favorite, he secured, once his family Germany visiting one of his sisters, and fallen passionately could afford it, a room of his own. He showed marked gifts in love. He was soon secretly engaged to her, but too poor from his first school days, and in his secondary school, or to establish the respectable bourgeois household that he and Gymnasium, he was first in his class year after year. his fiancee thought essential. It was not until September In 1873, at seventeen, Freud entered the University of 1886, some five months after opening his practice in Vienna. He had planned to study law, but, driven on by Vienna, with the aid of wedding gifts and loans from affiu­ what he called his "greed for knowledge," instead ma­ ent friends, that the couple could marry. Within nine years, triculated in the faculty of medicine, intending to embark, they had six children, the last of whom, Anna, grew up to not on a conventional career as a physician, but on philo­ be her father's confidante, secretary, nurse, disciple, and sophical-scientific investigations that might solve some of representative, and an eminent psychoanalyst in her own the great riddles that fascinated him. He found his work in right. physiology and neurology so absorbing that he did not take Before his marriage, from October 1885 to February his degree until 1881. 1886, Freud worked in Paris with the celebrated French A brilliant researcher, he cultivated the habit of close neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who impressed Freud observation and the congenial stance of scientific skep­ with his bold advocacy of hypnosis as an instrument for ticism. He was privileged to work under professors with healing medical disorders, and no less bold championship of international reputations, almost all German imports and the thesis (then quite unfashionable) that hysteria is an ailment to which men are susceptible no less than women. 2The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), SE IV, 193. Charcot, an unrivaled observer, stimulated Freud's growing xii) FREUD: A BRIEF LIFE Freud: A Brief Life (xiii interest in the theoretical and therapeutic aspects of mental published it, some four years later, in his Interpretation of healing. Nervous ailments became Freud's specialty, and in Dreams. In the fall, he drafted, but neither completed nor the 18905, as he told a friend, psychology became his tyrant. published, what was later called the Project for a Scientific During these years he founded the psychoanalytic theory of Psychology. It anticipated some of his fundamental theories mind. yet serves as a reminder that Freud had been deeply en­ He had intriguing if somewhat peculiar help. In 1887, he meshed in the traditional physiological interpretation of had met a nose-and-throat specialist from Berlin, Wilhelm mental events. Fliess, and rapidly established an intimate friendship with Increasingly Freud was offering psychological explana­ him. Fliess was the listener the lonely Freud craved: an tions for psychological phenomena. In the spring of 1896, intellectual gambler shocked at no idea, a propagator of he first used the fateful name, "." Then in provocative (at times fruitful) theories, an enthusiast who October his father died; "the most important event," he fed Freud ideas on which he could build. For over a decade, recalled a dozen years later, "the most poignant loss, of a Fliess and Freud exchanged confidential letters and tech­ man's life."3 It supplied a powerful impetus toward psycho­ nical memoranda, meeting occasionally to explore their analytic theorizing, stirring Freud to his unprecedented self­ subversive notions. And Freud was propelled toward the analysis, more systematic and thoroughgoing than the discovery of psychoanalysis in his practice: his patients frankest autobiographer's self-probing. In the next three or proved excellent teachers. He was increasingly specializing four years, as he labored over his "Dream book," new discov­ in women· suffering from hysteria, and, observing their eries crowded his days. But first he had to jettison the "se­ symptoms and listening to their complaints, he found that, duction theory" he had championed for some time. It held though a good listener, he did not listen carefully enough. that every neurosis results from premature sexual activity, They had much to tell him. mainly child molestation, in childhood.4 Once freed from In 1895, Freud and his fatherly friend , a this far-reaching but improbable theory, Freud could appre­ thriving, generous internist, published , ciate the share of fantasies in mental life, and discover the assigning Breuer's former patient "Anna O." pride of place. , that universal family triangle. She had furnished fascinating material for intimate conver­ Freud's Interpretation of Dreams was published in No­ sations between Breuer and Freud, and was to become, quite vember 1899. 5 It treated all dreams as wish fulfillments, against her-and Breuer's-will, the founding patient of detailed the mental stratagems that translate their causes psychoanalysis. She demonstrated to Freud's satisfaction that hysteria originates in sexual malfunctioning and that >Ibid., xxvi. •Freud never claimed that sexual abuse does not exist. He had patients who symptoms can be talked away. he knew had not imagined the assaults they reported. All he abandoned The year 1895 was decisive for Freud in other ways. In when he abandoned the seduction theory was the sweeping claim that only July, Freud managed to analyze a dream, his own, fully. He the rape of a child, whether a boy or a girl, by a servant, an older sibling, or a classmate, could be the cause of a neurosis. would employ this dream, known as "Irma's injection," as 5The book bears the date of 1900 on the title page and this date is usually a model for psychoanalytic dream interpretation when he given as the date of publication. xiv) FREUD: A BRIEF LIFE Freud: A Brief Life (xv into the strange drama the awakening dreamer remembers, a Jack of censoriousness and an openness hitherto virtually and, in the difficult seventh chapter, outlined a comprehen­ unknown in medical literature. Again in 1905, Freud sive theory of mind. Its first reception was cool. During six brought out his book on jokes and the first of his famous case years, only 3 51 copies were sold; a second edition did not histories: "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria," appear until 1909. However, Freud's popularly written Psy­ nicknamed the "Dora case." He published it to illustrate the chopathology of Everyday Life of 1901 found a wider audi­ uses of dream interpretation in psychoanalysis, and expose ence. Its collection of appealing slips of all sorts made his failure to recognize the power of in the Freud's fundamental point that the mind, however dishev­ analytic situation, but its lack of empathy with his embattled eled it might appear, is governed by firm rules. Thus-to teen-age analysand has made it controversial. give but one typical instance-the presiding officer of the In the following decade, Freud enriched the technique of Austrian parliament, facing a disagreeable season, opened it psychoanalysis with three more sophisticated case histo­ with the formal declaration that it was hereby closed. That ries-"Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy" ("Little "accident" had been prompted by his hidden repugnance Hans"}, "Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis" ("Rat for the sessions ahead. Man") in 1909, and "Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobio­ Gradually, though still considered a radical, Freud ac­ graphical Account of a Case of Paranoia" ("Schreber Case") quired prestige and supporters. He had quarreled with Fliess in 1911. Despite recent reanalyses, they remain lucid exposi­ in 1900, and, though their correspondence lingered on for tory models across a wide spectrum of mental ailments. some time, the two men never met again. Yet in 1902, after Then, from 1910 on, Freud published pioneering, exceed­ unconscionable delays, apparently generated by anti-Semi­ ingly influential papers on technique, to establish psychoan­ tism combined with distrust of the maverick innovator, he alytic method on sound foundations. Nor did he neglect was finally appointed an associate professor at the University theory; witness such an important paper as "Formulations of Vienna. Late that year, Freud and four other Viennese on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning" (1911), in physicians began meeting every Wednesday night in his which he differentiated between the "primary process," the apartment at Berggasse 19 to discuss psychoanalytic ques­ primitive, unconscious element in the mind, and the "sec­ tions; four years after, the group, grown to over a dozen ondary process," largely conscious and controlled. regular participants, employed a paid secretary (Otto Rank) During these years, Freud also broke out of the circum­ to take minutes and keep records. Finally, in 1908, it was scnbed bounds of clinical and theoretical specialization by transformed into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. At publishing papers on religion, literature, sexual mores, biog­ least some medical men (and a few women) were taking raphy, sculpture, prehistory, and much else. "Obsessive Ac­ Freud's ideas seriously. tions and Religious Practices" (1907), "Creative Writers In 1905, Freud buttressed the structure of psychoanalytic and Daydreaming" (1908), '"Civilized' Sexual Morality thought with the second pillar of his theory: the 11zree and Modem Nervous Illness" (1908}, and his widely de­ Essays on the 11zeory of Sexuality. It outlined perversions bated study of the origins of homosexuality, "Leonardo da and "normal" development from childhood to puberty with Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood" (1910), are only (xvii xvi) FREUD: A BRIEF LIFE Freud: A Brief Life samples of his range. Freud took all of culture as his prov­ and was appointed, the following year, editor of a newly ince. He was realizing the program he had outlined for founded Yearbook. Freud, delighted with Jung, anointed himself in his youth: to solve some of the great riddles of him his son, his crown prince--accolades that Jung wel­ human existence. comed indeed encouraged. Hence, when the International Yet Freud also found the decade from 1905 to 1914 Psychdanalytic Association was founded in March 1910, in agitating with the progress of, arid disagreeable splits within, Niirnberg, Jung was Freud's logical, inevitable, choice for a rapidly emerging international movement--.:his move­ president. Freud's Viennese adherents saw ~heir ci~ dis­ ment. Psychoanalytic politics took center stage. Two princi­ placed by Zurich as the center of psychoanalysis, and did _not pal sources of hope for the future of Freud's ideas, and later like it. A compromise was hammered out, and for some time of envenomed contention, were the intelligent, Socialist peace reigned in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. But Viennese physician Alfred Adler (1870-1937), and the orig­ Adler was developing distinctive psychological ideas, which inal, self-willed Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung ( 1875-1961 ). featured aggressiveness· over sexuality, and "organ inferior­ Adler had been among Freud's earliest adherents and re­ ity" as a dominant cause of neuroses. A split became inevita­ mained for some years his most prominent Viennese advo­ ble, and, in the summer of 1911, Adler and some of his cate. But as professional interest in psychoanalysis-not all adherents resigned, leaving Freud and the Freudians in con­ of it benevolent-grew apace, as Freud's upsetting ideas trol of the Vienna society. were being explored at psychiatrists' congresses, Freud as­ Freud was not without accolades. In September 1909, he pired to enlarge the reach of psychoanalysis beyond its place had received an honorary doctorate at Clark University in of origin. Vienna, with its handful of followers, struck him Worcester, Massachusetts, as had Jung. But like Adler, Jung as provincial, unsuitable as headquarters. increasingly diverged from Freud's ideas. He had never been The first breakthrough came in 1906, when Jung, then easy with the prominence Freud assigned to the sexual principal psychiatrist at the renowned clinic Burgholzli in drive-. By early 1912, these reservations took a per­ Zurich, sent Freud an offprint. Freud responded promptly; sonal tum. In response, , Freud's principal a cordial correspondence blossomed, and the friendship was English lieutenant, formed a defensive secret band of like­ cemented by Jung's visit to Freud in early 1907. Freud was minded analysts, the Committee. It consisted of himself, only fifty, vigorous and productive, but he had long brooded Freud, Sandor Ferenczi (a brilliant adherent from Buda­ on himself as aging and decrepit. He was seeking a successor pest), the witty Viennese lawyer Hanns Sachs, the astu~e who would carry the psychoanalytic dispensation to later Berlin clinician and theorist Karl Abraham, and Freud s generations and into a world larger than the Viennese, Jew­ amanuensis, the autodidact Otto Rank. It seemed needed: ish ambiance to which psychoanalysis was then confined. by late 1912, the correspondence between Jung and Freud Jung, a formidable presence and energetic debater, was an had grown acrimonious and in January 1914, Freud ter­ inspired discovery: he was not old, he was not Viennese, he minated his friendship with Jung. A split was only a matter was not Jewish. Jung was prominent in the first international of time; in the spring of 1914, Jung resigned from his power­ congress of psychoanalysts at Salzburg in the spring of 1908, ful positions in the psychoanalytic movement. xviii) FREUD : A B RIEF L I FE Freud: A Brief Life (xix The strains of psychoanalytic politics did not keep Freud fused to gather them into the basic textbook he had from continuing his explorations of an impressive variety of planned. He published five of the papers between 1915 and topics. In 1913, he published an audacious, highly specula­ 191 7, and destroyed the rest. His enigmatic dissatisfaction tive venture into psychoanalytic prehistory, Totem and with them hints at the discontent that had fueled his paper Taboo, which specified the moment that savages, in some . His map of the mind was inadequate to the dim, remote past, entered culture 'by murdering their father evidence he had accumulated in his clinical experience. But and acquiring guilt feelings. Then, in 1914, he published he still lacked a satisfactory alternative. That would have to (anonymously) "The Moses of Michelangelo," uniting his wait until after the war. admiration for Michelangelo's brooding sculpture with his Another wartime activity, though more successful, gave powers of observation. In the same year, with an unsettling Freud only modest pleasure: beginning in 1915, he delivered paper on narcissism, he subverted crucial aspects of psycho­ lectures at the university, published as a single volume in analytic thought by throwing doubts upon his theory of 1917 as Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. With the drives-hitherto divided into erotic and egoistic. cunning of the born popularizer, Freud opened with a series But harrowing events on the world stage shouldered aside on ordinary experiences, slips of the tongue, "unmotivated" Freud's reassessment of psychoanalytic theory. On June 28, forgetting, then turned to dreams and concluded with the 1914, Austria's Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his consort technical topic, neuroses. Frequently reprinted and widely were assassinated. Six weeks later, on August 4 Europe was translated, these Introductory Lectures finally secured Freud at war. The first casualty for psychoanalysis was Freud's a wide audience. eventually best-known case history, "From the History of an The war dragged on. Originally, somewhat to his surprise, Infantile Neurosis" ("Wolf Man"), written in the fall of an Austrian patriot, Freud wearied of the endless slaughter. 1914 but not published until 1918. Psychoanalytic activity He grew appalled at the chauvinism of intellectuals, the almost ground to a halt. Many potential patients were at the callousness of commanders, the stupidity of politicians. He front; most psychoanalysts were drafted into the medical had not yet fully acknowledged the theoretical significance corps; communications between "enemies" like Ernest of aggression, even though psychoanalysts had regularly en­ Jones and Freud were severely truncated; psychoanalytic countered aggressiveness among theit patients. But the war, publications almost vanished; and congresses, the lifeblood beastly as it was, confirmed the skeptical psychoanalytic of communication, were out of the question. For Freud, appraisal of human nature. these were anxious times in other ways: all three of his sons Signs of revived activity came shortly before the end of were in the army, two of them almost daily in mortal danger. hostilities. In September 1918, for the first time since 1913, Yet the war did not idle Freud's mind. Having too much psychoanalysts from Germany and Austria-Hungary met in time on his hands, he used it to good purpose. Work was a Budapest. Two months later, the war was over. To the defense against brooding. Between March and July 1915, he family's immense relief, all of Freud's sons survived it. But wrote a dozen fundamental papers on metapsychology-on the time for worry was far from over. The defeated powers the unconscious, on repression, on melancholia; but he re- were faced ·with revolution, drastically transformed from xx) FREUD: A BRIEF LIFE Freud: A Brief Life (xxi empires into republics, and saddled with stringent, vindic­ emphasizing the distance of thoughts from awareness-as tive peace treaties stripping them of territory and resources. either conscious, or , or wholly unconscious. Vienna was hungry, cold, desperate; food and fuel shortages But he now made the decisive point that many of the mental produced deadly ailments-tuberculosis and influenza. In operations of the ego, and of the super-ego as well, are this stressful situation, Freud, who wasted no tears on the inaccessible to direct introspection. departed Hapsburg Empire, proved an energetic, imagina­ Meanwhile, the psychoanalytic movement was flourish­ tive manager. The portrait of Martha Freud shielding Herr ing. Freud was becoming a household word, though he Professor from domestic realities needs revision. Freud dis­ dete8ted the sensationalized attention the popular press gave patched precise requests abroad to relatives, friends, associ­ him. Better: in 1920, at the first postwar congress at The ates, specifying what nourishment and clothing his family Hague, former "enemies" met as friends. Freud was accom­ needed most, and how to send packages safely. Then, in panied by his daughter Anna, whom he was then analyzing January 1920, postwar misery struck home with deadly and who joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1922. force: Freud's beloved second daughter Sophie, married and In that year, the analysts convened in Berlin. It was the last living in Hamburg, mother of two children, died in the congress Freud ever attended. In April 1923, he was oper­ influenza epidemic. ated on for a growth in his palate. While for months his It has been plausibly argued that her death suggested the doctors and closest associates pretended that the growth was pessimistic drive theory that Freud now developed. Actu­ benign, by September the truth was out: he had cancer. ally, he had virtually completed Beyond the Pleasure Princi­ Severe operations followed in the fall. From then on Freud, ple (1920), which first announced Freud's theory of the compelled to wear a prosthesis, was rarely free of discomfort death drive, the year before. Once Freud had adopted this or pam. construct, in which the forces of life, Eros, dramatically But he never stopped working. While he had trouble confront the forces of death, Thanatos, he found himself speaking, he continued to analyze patients, many of them unable to think any other way. In 1923, in his classic study American physicians who came to Vienna as his "pupils" , he completed his revisions. He now and returned to analyze in New York or Chicago. He con­ proposed a "structural theory" of the mind, which visualizes tinued to revise his theories. From the mid-192os on, he the mind as divided into three distinct yet interacting agen­ wrote controversial papers on female sexuality, and, in 1926, cies: the id (the wholly unconscious domain of the mind, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiefy, which reversed his ear­ consisting of the drives and of material later repressed), the lier thinking on anxiety, now treating it as a danger signal. ego (which is partly conscious and contains the defense Moreover, he wrote essays that found a relatively wide pub­ mechanisms and the capacities to calculate, reason, and lic: The Future of an Rlusion, a convinced atheist's dissec­ plan), and the super-ego (also only partly conscious, which tion of religion, in 1927, and, in 1930, Civilization and Its harbors the conscience and, beyond that, unconscious Discontents, a disillusioned look at modem civilization on feelings of guilt). This new scheme did not lead Freud to the verge of catastrophe. abandon his classic characterization of mental activity- In 1933, that catastrophe came. On January 30, Hitler xxii) FREUD: A BRIEF LIFE Freud: A Brief Life ( xxiii was appointed chancellor in Germany, and from then on found" Jewish jokes. But it was not until 1905 that he Austrian Nazis, already active, increasingly intervened in published his study, Jokes and Their Relation to the Uncon­ politics. The old guard was disappearing: Karl Abraham had scious, in which jokes other than Jewish jokes also found died prematurely in 1925; Sandor Ferenczi followed him in their (admittedly subordinate) place, and which was not 1933. Freud's closest friends were gone. But Freud was designed to amuse. It is true that Freud Jiked to hear jokes unwilling to leave the Vienna he hated and loved: he was and to tell them, partly to illustrate a difficult point and too old, he did not want to desert, and besides, the Nazis partly for sheer pleasure, yet he offered Jokes not as a joke would never invade his country. On the morning of March book but as a contribution to psychoanalytic theorizing. 12, 1938, the Germans proved him wrong. As the Nazis Freud is arguing that the "joke-work" is intimately related marched in, a jubilant populace greeted them. Spontaneous to the "dream-work" which he had analyzed in detail in his anti-Semitic outrages surpassed anything Germans had wit­ Interpretation of Dreams, and that jokes (like all forms of nessed after five years of Nazi rule. Late in March, Anna was humor) are a saving of mental expenditure. Jokes, then, are summoned to Gestapo headquarters; while she was released a mental activity which, like a11 such activities, attest to unharmed, the trauma changed Freud's mind: he must emi­ the fundamental orderliness of the human mind. After con­ grate. It took months to satisfy the Nazi government's extor­ centrating in the 18905 on his patients, on hysteria and tions, but on June 4' Freud left for Paris, welcomed by his obsessive neuroses, and after performing an unprecedented former analysand and loving disciple, Princess Marie Bona­ self-analysis, Freud was ready to try conquering the whole parte. On June 6, Freud landed in London, preceded by realm of the mind, healthy as well as neurotic, mundane as most of his family, "to die in freedom." we11 as exceptional. While in this book Freud te11s some Aged and ill, he kept on working. Freud's last completed good stories with his customary verve and economy, its point book, Moses and Monotheism, irritated and dismayed his is wholly serious. Jewish readers with its assertion that Moses had been an Egyptian: he ended life as he had lived it-a disturber of the peace. He died bravely on September 23, 1939, asking his physician for a lethal dose of morphine. Freud did not be­ lieve in personal immortality, but his work lives on.

AeouT Ta1s Boore

Late in the 18Qos, Freud told his intimate friend in Berlin that he was making a collection of "pro-