Freud

The Unconscious and World Affairs

Rene Major, Chantal Talagrand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429882272
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book sheds a new light on Freud who, from the beginning, was aware that the edifice he was constructing – psychoanalysis – which revealed in each individual an "ego not master in its own house" –, had clear implications for understanding collective human behaviour. This man was profoundly concerned with matters of peace and war, religion, morality and civilisation.

The authors' political focus is unusual, and their choice of quotes from lesser-known sources holds great interest. Freud's interlocutors include Oskar Pfisrer, Swiss pastor and lay analyst; Einstein; and the American diplomat William Bullitt, with whom Freud wrote a study of President Wilson, entitled Thomas Widrow Wilson. A Psychological Study. In the Introduction to this book, written in 1930, Freud describes Wilson as a person for whom mere facts held no significance; he esteemed highly nothing but human motives and opinions.

CHAPTER ONE

Why burn Freud’s books?

On the night between 10th May and 11th May 1933, at exactly 11 p.m., an hour when perfect peace usually reigned on the Opernplatz in Berlin, a chorus of patriotic chants suddenly filled the air, accompanying a simulated opera performance organised by the university, and troops of students were seen descending upon the square, followed by their professors, carrying burning torches. Those who witnessed this nocturnal choreography performed by jubilant youths flanked by strange SA and SS groups could see books handed from hand to hand, and hear terrifying incantations against the nine categories of “works deemed un-German” (Undeutsche Schriftmaterial). One of the students shouted: “Against class struggle and materialism, for the national interest and an idealistic attitude to life, I consign the works of Karl Marx to the flames”. A short time later, another voice chanted: “Against the soul-disintegrating exaggeration of the instinctual life, for the nobility of the human soul! I commit to the flames the writings of Sigmund Freud” (Molnar, 1992, p. 149).

Freud’s comment on this book-burning orgy, which we have since seen repeated over and over in some form or other, has become famous:

“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me: nowadays they are content with burning my books”. (Molnar, 1992, p. 149)

Of course, this brings to mind Freud’s discussion on irony in Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious: “Its essence lies in saying the opposite of what one intends to convey to the other person, but in sparing him contradiction by making him understand—by one’s tone of voice, by some accompanying gesture, or (where writing is concerned) by some small stylistic indications—that one means the opposite of what one says. Irony can only be employed when the other person is prepared to hear the opposite, so that he cannot fail to feel an inclination to contradict” (Freud, 1905b, p. 174).

Freud often uses this device in his writings and his correspondence, at the risk of being misunderstood. This seems to have created a problem for some of his biographers. Recourse to irony is a talent we can assume Freud to have possessed, since analysis caused him to give up his illusions and thereby affirm the triumph of the spirit over life’s adversities.

Did Freud foresee the wave of savagery that was about to submerge Europe? On 30 January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany; on 8 March 1933, Wilhelm Frick, German Minister of the Interior, announced the creation of concentration camps. On 22 March 1933, the first concentration camp opened in Dachau; it was intended for political opponents of the Nazi regime. On 1 April 1933, the boycott of Jewish businesses and shops came into effect; on 7 April 1933, Jews were forbidden to teach in universities and hold public service jobs. On 26 April 1933, the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei—a secret state police) was established by Herman Göring. On 2 May 1933, German trade unions were dissolved. On 10 May 1933, a book-burning took place, to destroy books written by Jews, political opponents, or anyone whose work was not in conformity with the spirit of the party in power. On 14 July 1933, a law was passed revoking the German citizenship of Eastern European refugees. The Nazi party became the only party in power. After Hindenburg’s death, on 19 August 1934, Hitler was elected President, while remaining Chancellor of Germany. On 15 September 1935, the Nuremberg Race Laws were passed, “for the protection of German blood”. On 3 March 1936, Jewish doctors were forbidden to practise. On 7 March 1936, German occupation of Rhenania was re-established. On 12 July 1936, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp opened, and Gypsies were deported to Dachau. On 15 July 1937, the construction of the Buchenwald concentration camp was completed. On 13 March 1938, Austria was annexed to the Reich (Anschluss). On 26 April 1938, it became mandatory to register all goods and property belonging to Jews in Germany. On 1 August 1938, Adolf Eichmann established the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. On 8 August 1938, the Mauthausen concentration camp opened. The Munich Conference was held on 30 September 1938; France and England consented to the occupation of the Sudetes by Germany. On 9 and 10 November 1938, known as “crystal night”, pogroms were carried out throughout Germany. On 12 November 1938, a decree was passed liquidating all businesses owned by Jews. On 15 November 1938, Jews were barred from all German public schools and universities. In December 1938, the Ravensbrück concentration camp was built. On 30 January 1939, Hitler announced “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”, in the event that a war should be declared.

Some historians have portrayed Freud as a man of science, taking refuge in his office, entirely focused on the work he turned out at a steady pace, and on its publication. And yet, on the morning when President Hindenburg received Hitler, together with the German Chancellor von Papen, on the very day when Hitler was officially named the new Chancellor of Germany, while public opinion held unanimously that his lack of a coherent political program would lead to his rapid downfall, Freud’s reaction was much more clear-headed. He wrote to Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, a Dutch physician who, after being in analysis with him became a psychoanalyst herself, and was then a close friend: “We are all curious what will come of the program of Reichs Chancellor Hitler, whose only political theme is pogroms” (Molnar, 1992, p. 141).

Another one of Freud’s “favourite women” was Marie Bonaparte, great-grandniece of Emperor Napoleon, and Princess of Greece by marriage, who was a loyal disciple and a pioneer of psychoanalysis in France, and who played a crucial role by negotiating with the Nazis Freud’s departure to London in 1938. On 10 June 1933, in a letter to her, Freud described his impression of seeing the world change into a giant prison:

The world is turning into an enormous prison. Germany is the worst cell. […] They began with Bolshevism as their deadly enemy, and they will end with something indistinguishable from it—except perhaps that Bolshevism after all adopted revolutionary ideals, whereas those of Hitlerism are purely medieval and reactionary. (Jones, 1957, p. 181)

Between 1933 and 1938, in his writings and particularly in Moses and Monotheism, Freud dedicated a major portion of his work to the analysis of the foundations of antisemitism. From the start, in his preliminary remarks, he observed: “We are living in a specially remarkable period. We find to our astonishment that progress has allied itself with barbarism” (Freud, 1939a, p. 54).

The notion of progress invoked here is somewhat ambiguous. It is not clear whether the reference is ironic, like the comment regarding the burning of his books, whether it speaks of the so-called progress sought by the “conservative revolution”, or whether it notes that the progress already made is making an alliance with barbarism. In general, Freud has confidence in scientific advancement, but is pessimistic regarding the use humanity will make of it. The rest of his discussion further develops the comparison between the illusory progress linked with the advent of Bolshevism, and the conservative revolution advocated by National Socialism. In fact, a remark Freud made on Bolshevism surprised Ernest Jones, the founder of psychoanalysis in Great Britain, who played a major role in the political history of Freudianism, and became Freud’s official biographer. When Jones visited him in Vienna in 1919, at the end of the First World War, which had interrupted their contact, Freud commented on the changes that had taken place in Europe, telling his visitor that he had “been half converted to Bolshevism” (Jones, 1957, p. 17).

Seeing Jones’ surprise, he went on to say that he had met an ardent believer in communism, who predicted that the advent of Bolshevism would usher in a period of misery and chaos, but that these years would be followed by prosperity, peace and happiness (Jones, 1957, p. 17). Freud had answered that he sincerely believed in the first part of the project. This is what he writes in his Prefatory Notes to Moses and Monotheism:

In Soviet Russia they have set about improving the living conditions of some hundred millions of people who were held firmly in subjection. They have been rash enough to withdraw the “opium” of religion from them and have been wise enough to give them a reasonable amount of sexual liberty; but at the same time they have submitted them to the most cruel coercion and robbed them of any possibility of freedom of thought. […] we see in the case of the German people that a relapse into almost prehistoric barbarism can occur as well without being attached to any progressive ideas. (Freud, 1939a, p. 54)

These reflections clearly reveal Freud’s concerns. While he was writing his Moses and Monotheism, in a letter dated 30 October 1934, he confided to Arnold Zweig—a German writer with whom he had an ongoing exchange of letters, and who shared his political views—in laconic terms, his reflections on the millenary persecutions of the Jewish people.

In view of the recent ordinances one asks oneself again how Jews have become what they are, and why they have drawn on themselves such undying hatred. I soon discovered a formula for it: Moses created the Jews. (Jones, 1957, p. 193)

Knowing that the first words of this work dare to assert that Moses was not a Jew but an Egyptian, we might wonder how Freud’s interpretation of history would be judged by the very people he wanted to defend when he explored the roots of antisemitism. The first paragraph of the book reads as follows:

To deprive a people [the Jews] of the man [Moses] whom they take pride in as the greatest of their sons is not a thing to be gladly or carelessly undertaken, least of all by someone who is himself one of them. But we cannot allow any such reflection to induce us to put the truth aside in favour of what are supposed to be national interests; and, moreover, the clarification of a set of facts may be expected to bring us a gain in knowledge. (Freud, 1939a, p. 7)

Writing this book caused Freud much torment in the last years of life. On several occasions he even hesitated to publish it, knowing he would hurt the feelings of Jews in particular, but he concluded that he could not do otherwise, as he wrote in a letter to Charles Singer on 31 October 1938.

I have spent my whole long life standing up for […] scientific truth, even when it was uncomfortable and unpleasant for my fellow men. I cannot end up with an act of disavowal. (Freud, 1961, p. 453)

Invoking the irrational foundation of every religion—the Jewish religion being no exception—Freud dared to state, as an attempt at an explanation, that the madness which had seized Europe, ignited by the Third Reich, was the envy of a people claiming to be God’s chosen people, and was rooted, like any delusion, in historical truth. Freud was speaking specifically of the restitution of self-esteem to the Jews by a great man, Moses, not belonging to these people but inspired by a monotheistic period in ancient Egypt: the era when Akhenaton imposed worship of one deity, a period subsequently forgotten after the ancients returned to polytheism. When he proposed his archaeological analysis of the situation, Freud was well aware that by revealing the most solid foundation of the Nazi delusion, metaphysical rivalry, he would risk being misunderstood. His arguments only convinced readers such as Arnold Zweig or Max Eitingon—a Polish psychoanalyst who was among the first to be analysed by Freud, as early as 1909, and who remained a steadfast friend. But, at the same time, the book attracted the most virulent criticism Freud ever had to endure. In Jerusalem’s The Palestine Review (30 June 1939), J. M. Lask called Freud an Am Haaretz or vulgar ignoramus. Abraham Yahuda charged that Freud’s words were like those “one of the most fanatical Christians” might utter “in his hatred of Israel” (Jones, 1957, p. 194).

Martin Buber, a renowned expert in Hasidic lore, felt obliged to write a refutation of the Moses in which he went so far as to call it “regrettable” that Freud “could permit himself to issue such an unscientific work, based on groundless hypotheses” (Buber, 1988, p. vii). As a Jewish philosopher and sociologist of religion, Buber had already found little to agree with in Totem and Taboo, nor had he accepted Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. When Max Eitingon told Freud about his discussion with Martin Buber, Freud demonstrated great lucidity, as well as a certain irony:

Martin Buber’s pious phrases won’t do much harm to The Interpretation of Dreams. The Moses is much more vulnerable and I am prepared for an onslaught by the Jews on it. (Schur, 1972, p. 520)

Criticism from Christians was no less virulent. In London’s Catholic Herald (14 July 1939), Father Vincent McNabb considers that he cannot quote certain pages of Moses and Monotheism, which “incite us to ask ourselves if the author is not sex-obsessed”. Clearly, this comment can only stem from a preconceived preoccupation with sex in all of Freud’s work, since sexuality cannot really be said to play a central role in Moses and Monotheism! Rather, the focus is on the repression inherent to the history of a people, and on the resurgence of this repressed material: the murderous intention directed at the instigator of the law, producing the same effects in the unconscious as those engendered by the actual act of murder. McNabb goes on to say, “Professor Freud is naturally grateful to ‘free, generous England’ for the welcome it has given him. But if his frank championship of atheism and incest is widely recognised we wonder how long the welcome will remain in an England that still calls itself Christian”. But whether Freud is speaking of repressed wishes fulfilled in dreams, of incestuous desires whose prohibition leads to the need for instituting exogamy, of archaic desires underlying myths and religions, or perhaps most importantly of that which is transmitted through “the unconscious of a people” and serves to establish its identity and nurture its hate of all others—and especially of the other which is most similar—all of Freud’s writing was and still is disturbing. Doubtless the most controversial of his works, Moses and Monotheism provoked an avalanche of protest in every Jewish community. There were also countless letters (often anonymous) wishing Freud to suffer the torments of Hell (“it’s too bad that the German ruffians did not send you to a concentration camp, because it’s where you belong” (Anonymous, 1939)), as well as protests from scholars who begged him not to publish the book, in light of the Nazi persecutions going on in Europe.

As for Freud’s position on Zionism, he voiced repeated reservations, despite his support for the cause. In a letter to J. Dwossis, sent to Jerusalem and dated 15 December 1930, he wrote: “Zionism awakened my strongest sympathies, which are still faithfully attached to it today” (Gay, 1987, p. 125).

A few years later, in a letter to L. Jaffe dated 20 June 1935, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Keren Hayessod Foundation for the resettlement of Jews in Palestine, he reaffirmed his support:

want to assure you that I know full well how powerfully and beneficently effective an instrument this foundation has become for our people in the endeavor to found a new home in the old fatherland. [I see this as] a sign of our invincible will to live which has so far successfully braved two thousand years of burdensome oppression! Our youth will continue to carry on the fight. (Gay, 1987, p. 123)

However, it is clear that although Freud does not repudiate his Jewish identity, he remains estranged from the religion of his ancestors and nurtures no nationalist ideal whatsoever. In 1930, when he was asked for his official support of the Keren Hayessod Foundation, he made his position very clear to Chaim Koffler in a letter dated 26 February:

I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of an Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives. (Yerushalmi, 1991, p. 13)

A letter written to Einstein the same day conveys the same idea in almost identical terms, when it speaks of “the misguided piety that makes a national religion from a piece of the wall of Herod” (Gay, 1988, p. 598).

Who, then, is this man, Sigmund Freud, explorer of the continent of the human soul—imagined since the beginning of time but still unknown in his era—founder of a new practice so far ahead of traditional psychiatry, author of an immense body of work that has left its imprint, like it or not, on the entire field of human sciences? Who is this man who wrote to Romain Rolland: “A great part of my life’s work has been spent [trying to] destroy illusions of my own and those of mankind” (Freud, 1961, p. 453).

Is Freud indeed the thinker whose influence has marked the culture of our era indelibly, as we believe, or is he, as others believe, a perverter of youth, an unrepentant atheist, a great trickster, a renegade turning his back on the heritage of his forefathers to unleash the powers of hell? Acheronta movebo (Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 7, line 312), “I’ll stir the Acheron” is, in fact, the exergue he chose for The Interpretation of Dreams. Undeniably, there is an astonishing contrast between the imaginary portrait of this man as a Sadian figure, and the reality of a Viennese family man, member of the bourgeoisie, who remained faithful all his life to his wife Martha (despite some unfounded claims to the contrary made by unscrupulous historians), to whom he addressed an

impressive number of love letters during their long engagement. This type of loyalty, different in nature from the observance of a moral obligation, and more intimately tied to the keeping of the given word, is precisely what is unbearable for those who misinterpret the Freudian revolution, seeing it as an invitation to anarchy of the senses. Whenever Freud subverts a way of thinking, he does so while maintaining respect for certain conventions. The same is true of the language he uses to set his ideas in writing. He always starts out with concepts borrowed from the medical or philosophical tradition, and then modifies their meaning and their scope. While totalitarian language invents speech that establishes a new rule intended to break wit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• FOREWORD
• CHAPTER ONE Why burn Freud’s books?
• CHAPTER TWO Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century
• CHAPTER THREE Family portraits
• CHAPTER FOUR Kindred spirits in literature and philosophy
• CHAPTER FIVE Revenants
• CHAPTER SIX Questioning the teachers
• CHAPTER SEVEN A fortunate contretemps
• CHAPTER EIGHT The lure of the south
• CHAPTER NINE Theories of sexuality
• CHAPTER TEN Freud the man
• CHAPTER ELEVEN The circle of the first followers
• CHAPTER TWELVE Case histories
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN The war years
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN Death
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN Life without illusions
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN The right to psychoanalysis
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Why war?
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The unpromised land
• CHAPTER NINTEEN Timeline of life events
• REFERENCES
• INDEX