Death of Sigmund Freud: Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism 1582345376, 2007006634

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The Death of Sigmund Freud The Legacy of His Last Days

Mark Edmundson

BLOOMSBURY

The Death of Sigmund Freud

By the same author

Why Read? Teacher Nightmare on Main Street Literature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derritkz Wild Orchids and Trotsky (ed.) Towards Reading Freud

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©

2007 by Mark Edmundson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quocations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY IOorO. Excerpt from "Sailing to Byzantium" by W. B. Yeats reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Collected Works ofW. B. Yeats, Volume I: The Poems Revised, edited by Richard}. Finneran. Copyright © 1928 by The Macmillan company; copyright renewed © 1956 by Georgie Yeats. All rights reserved Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York Distributed to the trade by Holttbrinck Publishers All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable produCts made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. UBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-1N-PUBUCATION DATA

Edmundson, Mark, 1952The death of Sigmund Freud: the legacy of his last days I Mark Edmundson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-I3: 978-!-58234-537-6 (alk. paper) ISBN-ro: 1-58234-537-6 (alk. paper) I. Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939. 2. Psychoanalysts-Austria-Biography. I. Title. BFI09·F74f.36 2007 150.19' 52092---dC22 [B] 2007006634 First U.S. Edition 2007 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh Printed in the United Scates of America by Quebecor World Fairfield

For Willie, follow maker

I

Vienna

In the late autumn of 1909, two men who would each transform the world were living in Vienna, Austria. They were in almost every way what the poet William Blake would have called "spiritual enemies." One was Sigmund Freud, the creator of psychoanalysis, who would become the most renowned and controversial thinker of the twentieth century. In 1909, Freud was in vigorous middle age, fifty-three years old and at the height of his powers. The other man, whose impact on humanity would be yet greater, was young. The young man had come to Vienna in hopes of making his fortune as an architect and an artist. He lived with a friend in a small apanment, and there he spent his time reading, drawing, writing, composing music, and dreaming of future triumphs. The young man had inherited a small sum of money when his mother died, and on these funds he lived frugally, eating little and paying modest rent. His main indulgence was opera, Wagner's opera in particular. There were disappointments: he was rejected not once but twice by the state-sponsored an school, and this infuriated him. He had never gotten along well with teachers, and the faculty at the art school was no exception-they sneered at his work and told him that he had no real talent. The young man decided to take up a bohemian life and to succeed brilliantly as an architect, and perhaps as a

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

painter, poet, and composer too, despite Austria's corrupt establishment. Before he left for Vienna, the young man fell in love with a woman named Stefanie, whom he saw on the evening walks he took back in his home city of Linz. Though he never spoke a word to Stefanie, the young man was faithful. All the glories he would achieve in the city, he hoped to lay before her in tribute. So even in decadent Vienna, he tried to lead a moral life: he stayed away from prostitutes; he stayed away from women in general, despite the fact that they often found him alluring. They stared at him at the opera and sent him notes requesting liaisons. But the young man was determined to keep what he called his "Flame of Life" pure. From his boyhood, the young man was hypersensitive, prone to tantrums and bouts of weeping. He loved animals and could not bear to hear about any cruelty being inflicted on them, much less to see such a thing. He never drank and was sure that tobacco destroyed a person's health. He thought of himself as a humanitarian with a poetic nature. One of his major projects in Vienna was to design spacious, light-filled housing for the workers who lived in the city's slums, but no one outside his household ever saw the plans. Soon the one friend that the young man had in Vienna went back home to the provinces, and by the time his friend returned, the young man had left their shabby apartment, giving the landlady no forwarding address. He became lost, lonely, and his money all but ran out. For a while he lived on the street, sleeping in doorways and on park benches. Perhaps at times he was compelled to beg. Finally, he found a home 4

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in a men's shelter, a strictly run, almost monastic establishment. Here he lived until a year before the beginning of the First World War, taking a cenain kind of pleasure in the simplicity and order that now surrounded him. He made his living by painting postcards, which sold at kiosks on the street. He read a great deal, though he did not always understand what he read, and he gave speeches to the other residents of the shelter. He stood in the dayroom and held fonh about the Jews and the Communists and about Germany's exalted destiny among nations. Sometimes one of his fellow residents would secretly tie his coat to the bench he was sitting on, and then provoke him with a political question. The young man would leap up then, and begin pacing around the room, declaiming, while the bench clunked along behind him. People who met the man sometimes had doubts about his sanity: none of them imagined that Adolf Hitler, for that, of course, is who the young man was, would ever be of consequence in the world.

Sigmund Freud was in the prime phase of his life when Hitler was living in Vienna. In middle age, Freud was a robust, fullfaced man with a burgher's well-insulated body and a dense, regal brown beard, streaked with gray. His usual facial expression somehow conveyed both contentment and ambition. He had a hawk nose and bright, all-consuming eyes. Freud was not tall, only about five feet, seven inches, but his presence was formidable: he seemed to be more than a match for life. In his

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

fifties, Freud looked like a field marshal of intellect-worldly, urbanely humorous, and self-aware. In the fall of 1909, when Hitler was living on the streets, Freud was emerging from a protracted period of isolation. He had undergone an intense self-analysis; he had composed and published his first major work, The Interpretation of Dreams; and he was well begun in his exploration of the unconscious. Now Freud was writing constantly: he believed that once one understood the nature of the id-or the "it"-and its conflicted relation to the conscious mind, many previously puzzling matters in human life became understandable. Freud could offer unexpected truths not only about dreams, but also about jokes and slips of the tongue and pen. He had illuminating ideas about art, religion, the sources of human identity, and a great deal more. Now, after Freud had. struggled for many years to distinguish himself, brilliant younger men, and some gifted women as well, were gathering around him. He was creating something like a movement. As a young man, Freud confessed that he wanted to take on the major questions. He secretly aspired to be something of a philosophe, in the manner of Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire, and to make original contributions on matters like free will and fate, just government, love and death, and the good life. Finally, Freud believed that he had put himself in a position to begin doing precisely that. Mapping the dynamics of the unconscious brought him to the threshold of great things, giving him something new and consequential to say on all the questions that had preoccupied the West since at least Plato's time. At the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud 6

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was looking fOlWard to life, and more life, with an intensity that not all men of fifty-three can muster. In the fall of 1909, when Hitler was walking confused and lonely through Vienna, Freud had recently returned from a triumphal visit to the United States. Accompanied by his closest disciples, Carl J ung, Scindor Ferenczi, and Ernest Jones, he'd spent a week in New York touring the city, then gone off to Worcester, Massachusetts. There, at Clark University, he gave a celebrated set of talks, which were attended by, among others, America's preeminent philosopher and psychologist, William James, and by Emma Goldman-the formidable anarchist intellectual, who found herself in agreement with a good deal of what Freud had to say. Freud even received an honorary degree at Clark. Thinking back to the trip, he would write: "In Europe I felt as though I were despised; but over there I found myself received by the foremost men as an equal. It seemed like the realization of some incredible daydream." Freud returned from America with his confidence and his energies redoubled, ready to do what he believed would be great work. The work that Freud did do, following the American sojourn, went in an unexpected direction. Up until 1909, Freud, to speak broadly, had been fascinated with the dynamics of desire. He wanted to know how the unconscious, the seat and source of desire, worked and in particular how it expressed itselfin neuroses and dreams and in works of an. It was during this period that Freud was inclined to see erotic urges-and also, less consequentially, aggressive drives-at the root of human behavior. But as time went on, Freud became more and more preoccupied with the issue of authority, and with the agency that he thought of as the center of authority in the human psyche, the superego, or over-I. 7

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

In a few years, Freud would begin to write a sequence of books and essays that focused on authority that had become toxic, authority gone bad. He would become preoccupied with tyranny-with the human hunger for power and the human desire to be dominated. In Group Psychology and the Ana(ysis of the Ego, Totem and Taboo, The Future ofan Illusion, and many other works, Freud would reflect on what makes human beings respond to tyrants-not just obey them, but honor and love them. He would, in a certain sense, soon stan to think in depth about the man that the young Adolf Hitler, his fellow resident of Vienna in 1909, would become, and also about all the tyrants who have followed Hitler through the twentieth century and on into the twenty-first. If Hitler and Freud passed each other on the street on an afternoon during the cold late autumn of 1909, what would each of them have seen? In Hitler, Freud would have seen a rank denizen of the crowd, a street rat. (Freud was no populist.) But he probably would have felt sorry for the unfortunate man as well. For his pan, Hitler would have seen a Viennese burgher (he despised the upper middle class) and probably would have recognized Freud as a Jew. Hitler would have drawn back in shame at his threadbare overcoat and his broken-down shoes. If things were bad enough, he might have extended a hand to beg. Whether Freud gave or not-he could well have; he was generally good-hearted-would have made little difference; the encounter would still have left the young Adolf Hitler seething.

*

*

*

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But time passed and the world changed. Almost three decades later, in 1938, the former street rat was the chancellor of Germany and one of the most powerful men in the world. In 1933 he had been elected-no coup was involved (though some devious machinations were)-to the most important office in his nation. Twenty-five years after his desperate period in Vienna, Adolf Hider achieved the ascendancy he dreamed about when he was giving his speeches to the disbelieving crowd at the men's shelter. During the First World War Hider had come into his own. He became a dispatch runner in the German army, serving with stunning bravery and twice winning the Iron Cross. After the war, he joined a small political party in Munich-at the beginning there had been only a handful of members-and he turned it into a powerful alliance. He attempted a coup in 1923, failed, and was sentenced to prison. While he was there, he wrote Mein Kampf, where he described his past life and laid down his program for Germany's future. There followed a decade of astonishing work, campaigning, speaking, brawling, writing, forming and destroying alliances, until, at the end of it, Adolf Hitler was the preeminent man in Germany. Of course he had further ambitions: he wanted the world. But in 1938, Adolf Hitler desired one thing above all others, and that was Austria.

Soon Hitler would be headed again to Vienna, the city where he had been so badly abused and humiliated, but this time he would not be coming with a sketchbook and a pittance in his 9

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

pocket. He would arrive instead with thousands of troops at his back. On the first page of Mein Kampf, Hitler had announced that Austria must be made pan of the German nation, and now that he was in power, he was determined to bring this event to pass. Even in middle age, after he became chancellor, Hitler recalled time and again how he had spent the worst years of his life in Vienna. He said that he had come to the city as a mother's boy, and that Vienna had made him hard. Sometimes he joked with his intimates about how satisfying it would be to destroy the entire city and to start again from scratch. Waiting for Hitler in Vienna in that winter of 1938 was an old and desperately ill Sigmund Freud-as well as a hundred and seventy-five thousand other racial enemies. The Nazis hated Freud with a particular vehemence. When they burned his books at their outdoor rallies in Germany in 1933, the presiding officer had shouted out an indictment: "Against the souldestroying glorification of the instinctual life," he cried, "for the nobility of the human soul! I consign to the flames the writings of Sigmund Freud." Freud, hearing the news about the book burning, remarked, "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burnt me; nowadays they are content with burning my books." Five years later, the Nazis who were preparing to invade Austria, and the ones who lived there themselves-there were many-might not be content with merely the burning of books. Sigmund Freud did not appear to be ready for strife of any son. He was eighty-one years old and he seemed smaller than his modest height; he was bent and brittle and precariously thin. His beard had gone completely white, and was cropped 10

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dose to his cheeks; he wore black-framed oval glasses that gave him an owlish appearance. His skin, which was blanched and seemed thin as rice paper, stretched taut against his face. He could no longer speak with force and clarity because of the prosthesis implanted in his jaw to replace the teeth and bone that had been removed during the many operations for his cancer. His eyes, as almost everyone who knew him during those days attested, remained potent: at times, Freud did not stare at things, so much as through them to the other side. Overall, his presence was unnerving: by 1938, deep into old age, Freud looked like a dark fairy-tale version of Death himself.

Adolf Hitler's Austrian aggression-and the drama that composed the last two years of Sigmund Freud's life-began when Hitler summoned Kurt von Schuschnigg, Austria's chancellor, to his compound at Berchtesgaden. (Now the onetime street rat had the leaders of nations at his beck and call.) An introverted, scholarly man who wore rimless glasses and chain-smoked, Schuschnigg was no match for the fuhrer. Hitler issued ultimatums. He demanded that Austria legalize the Nazi Party; he demanded that Nazis be installed in the government; he demanded a military treaty between the two nations. He also required that Austria hold a plebiscite so its citizens could vote on unification with the grand German nation. Schuschnigg, nervous, badly in need of a cigarette, yet aware that no one, under any conditions, smoked in the presence of the fuhrer, had II

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

not gone to Germany expecting an easy interview. (Before leaving, he remarked that he should be bringing a psychiatrist along to help him contend with Hitler.) Still Schuschnigg was shocked by what he heard. "You don't seriously believe that you can stop me or even delay me for half an hour, do you?" the fuhrer asked. "Perhaps you will wake up one morning in Vienna to find us there-just like a spring storm. And then you'll see something. I would very much like to save Austria from such a fate, because such an action would mean blood." Hitler had been brooding on Austria for some time and he had a great deal to impart to Schuschnigg. "The whole history of Austria," Hitler told the chancellor during the meeting, "is just one uninterrupted act of high treason. That was so in the past and is no better today." Schuschnigg was so anxious that he refrained from reminding Hitler that he himself had been born in Austria. The fuhrer went on, his rage expanding: "And I can tell you right now, Herr Schuschnigg, that I am absolutely determined to make an end of all this. The German Reich is one of the great powers and nobody will raise his voice if it settles its border problems." "I have a historic mission," Hitler said, "and this mission I will fulfill because Providence has destined me to do so. I thoroughly believe in this mission; it is my life. . . Look around you in Germany today, Herr Schuschnigg, and you will find that there is but one will." Hitler told the Austrian chancellor that his triumph was inevitable: "I have made the greatest achievement in the history of Germany, greater than any other German." When Schuschnigg informed Hitler that France and I2

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England would not stand by and allow him to absorb Austria, the fuhrer laughed. Over the past decade, Hitler had nearly consolidated his power over the German people; he had done away with his party enemies in a quick, bloody purge, the Night of the Long Knives (Freud, hearing the news of the purge, expressed a wish that the Nazis might have killed each other off to the last man: that was just an hors d'oeuvre, he said, where is the main course?); Hitler had earned the friendship ofMussolini, the only national leader that he respected; he had become certain that the democracies were weak, irresolute, and would not risk war against him. Now he could look out to the world at large with an unlimited sense of possibility. In vigorous middle age, Hitler had never felt so potent, so much a man of destiny.

Freud's own situation was much more precarious. On January 22, he had been forced to undergo yet another operation for the cancer of the jaw that had been tormenting him for fifteen years. This time the tumor was hard to reach, because it was close to Freud's eye socket, so his surgeon, Hans Pichler, had to create a special implement to get at it. Freud spent two days in the sanatorium, and then, still in great pain, made his way home to rest. Freud knew that the cancer was the result of his incessant cigar smoking, and he had been told many times to stop, but he wouldn't. He loved cigars too much: at the height of his consumption, he smoked twenty a day. When things were especially bad, he sometimes used a clothespin to open I3

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

his frozen, aching jaw so as to wedge one more into his mouth. The January operation was especially brutal, and it was followed by another, on February 19, a few days after Hitler's meeting with Schuschnigg. In this operation, Pichler cut out a suspect wart in the cancerous region, and fortunately, the bioposy on the new growth was negative. This operation was less painful than the previous one, but the patient was eightyone years old, and physically at least, he was very frail. It wasn't at all clear how many more such ordeals Freud could take. Freud left the clinic and spent his time resting and recuperating at Berggasse 19, the apartment where he had been living for fifty years and that he now shared with his wife, Martha; her sister, Aunt Minna; and Anna, the Freuds' daughter. Here Freud had developed his psychoan 224-25 X-ray regimen for, 205-6 capitalism, profit motivation and, 41-4 2 cardiac asthma, 2H Chamberlain, Neville, 29, IIO, 179-80 Charcot, 184 children, Freud's views on, 18, 150-51, 163 Christianity, 124, 125, 150-55, 235, 240-42 Churchill, Winston, 29, 217-18 cigar smoking, 13-14, 105-8, 166, 177 civilization, essence of, 233, 237-38 Civilization and Its Discontents, 1718, 19, 152, 190, 221 Clark University (Worcester, Mass.), 7 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 191-92 collective superego. See leaders and leadership collective supreme fiction, 151-55 collective wisdom, unconscious as repository for, 64 "Comment on Anti-Semitism," 18 9-9 0 concentration camps, 186-87 "Concerning the Jews" (Twain), 190 conflict of Freud with social superego, 143-44,228 work and, 25-26

266

INDEX

conscious in surrealist paintings, 168 conventional visionary, Freud as a, 19-20, 17° counter-transference, 105 "Creative Writers and DayDreaming," 168-69 crowd behavior, 54-55, 83-84, 100-101, 125-27, 221 Czechoslovakia, 108-9, 122, 178-80 Dati, Salvador, 166-68, 170, 232 Danimann, Franz, 47-48 deamess, Freud's problems with, III, 168 death, imponance of way of, 13435, 223-24, 226-29 Death Drive, 18, 159, 220-21 Delillo, Don, 45 Demel, Hans von, 116 democracy anxiety from, 152-53, 239-40 Freud's fears about, 126-27, 148 fundamentalism versus, 242-43 as limiting to individual's growth, 31 desires acceptance of, 54 democracy and, 126-27 dynamics of, 7, 146-47 to find and follow Truth, 15253, 212, 242-43 Freud's desire for authority, 6, 63-64, 105, 129-30, 160, 22831 human desire for authority figures, 8, 54, 153-54, 156, 240-42 for inner peace, 102-3 sadistic nature of, 52-53 smoking as easily acquired, 1078

superego and, 98, 152 transference of feelings for, 20912 See also unconscious Deutsch, Felix, I7 4, 175 dogs, Freud's love for, 91-94, 149, 166, 214 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 22, 23, 41 domination, human hunger for, 54, 148. See also authority dying, importance of way of, 13435, 223-24, 226-29

Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, The (Anna Freud), 65, II2 Ego and the Id, The, 19, 98-99 ego (I), 98-99, 124, 224 Egypt, Freud's interest in, 69, 160 Einstein, Alben, 112 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 125, 129, 228-29 enemies and friends, value of, 25 England Freud family emigration to, 8788, 115-16, 121-22 Freud's feelings about, 140 Jewish children adopted in, 18889 war on Germany, 219 welcoming Freud, 140-41, 15859 Eros, 221 erotic love, 99-101, 123, 209-12

Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 19, 24-2 5, 40 external superego, god as, 152. See also authority; leaders and leadership

faith, Moses and Monotheism on, 231-35

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

fame, challenges presented by, 142-43,145 fantasy, literary art as, 169 fascism Freud on, 97-98, 123, 235-36 Freud on leader of, 237 as fundamentalism, 241-43 Plath's comment on, 156 See also group behavior February uprising of 1934, Vienna, 41 Ferenczi, Sandor, 7, 63, 108 Finzi, Dr., 206 fire, man's phallic view of, I? Fliess, Wilhelm, 16 France declares war on Germany, 219 Freud family Princess Bonaparte and, II9, 173, 21 5-16 emigration to England, 87-88, II 5-16, 121-22 Freud's sisters stay in Vienna, 173, 216 passports from Nazis, II4-15 Freud, Adolphine "Dolfi" (sister), 216 Freud, Alexander (brother), 105 Freud, Anna (daughter) as caretaker of Freud and his theories, 62-63, 65, 82-83, 176 Freud's love for, 60, 61, 84-85 at International Psychoanalytic Congress, 171-72 Nazi arrest and questioning of, 79-82, 83-84 and Nazis, 58-59, 71 on panic in Vienna, 21-22 personality of, 60-62, 80 preparing for Freud's death, 209 Freud, Anna (sister), 162, 216

Freud., Arthur, 187 Freud, Ernst (son), 182-83 Freud, Jacob (father), 24 Freud, Martha Bernays (wife), 14, 16, 62, 65, 70-72 Freud, Martin (son), 33, 35-3 6, 5760, II5-16 Freud, Sigmund about, 5-7, Io-n, 81-82, 83-84 assisted suicide of, 224-26 books owned by, 67, 161, 22224 dying as he lived, 226-29 goals of, 6 . intellectual identity, 6, 19-20, 62, 63-64, 105, 129-30, 160, 228-3 1 parents of, 162-63 personality of, 15-19, 26, 62-63, 74-75, 128-3 0 , 133-34, 144 relationship with his followers, 6, 63-64, 129-30 as second Moses, 236 "the stare," II, 71 See also writings, Freud's friends and enemies, value of, 25 fundamentalism, 154-55, 156-57, 240-42 Future of Illusion, The, 8, 146, 15055 Gay, Peter, 41, 199, 202 Gay Science, The (Nietzsche), 154 Gedye, G. E. R., 21, 34 Germany confusion and loss experienced in, 101-2 election of Hitler, 9 full-scale attack on Jews, 185-88 Guernica attack, 136-37 Hitler's success in Austria and, 94, 122-23

268

INDEX

Munich Accords, 180, 181 nonaggression pact with Russia, 217-18

Nuremberg Laws, 138 plebiscite on unification with Austria, 97 Gibbon, Edward, 1I8 Gilbert, Martin, 188-89 Gilman, James, 191-92 God, Moses and Monotheism on, 231-35

gods, humans' need for, 151-55 Goebbels, Joseph, 96, 120, 185, 187 Goethe, 230 Goldman, Emma, 7 Goring, Hermann, 120 Goring, M. H., 43 Graves, Robert, 138 group behavior, 54-55, 83-84, 100101, 125-27, 221

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, 8, 19, 54-56, 146, 16 5 Grynszpan, Herschel, 185 Guernica, German arrack on, 13637

Guilbert, Yverre, 68, 184 guilt as source of illness, 124 Hajek, Marcus, 174-75 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 86 Hannibal, 24 happiness from childhood wishes, 163 Freud's lack of attention to, 2526, 145-46, 147

Hapsburg, Karl and Zita, 45 hearing, Freud's problems with, III,

168

Heine, Heinrich, 88 Heldenplatz (Hero's Square), Vienna, 46-47

hero, essence of a, 233, 237-38 Hesse, Prince Philip of, 28, 35 Himmler, Heinrich, 120 Hitler, Adolf as adamant nonsmoker, 217 belief in his "historic mission," 12-13

and Czechoslovakia, 108-9, 122, 178- 80

demands for Austria, II-13, 2021

election as chancellor of Germany, 9 fiftieth birthday party and military display, 206-7 Freud on, 54-)5, 83-84, 103, 194 as "God's will," 97 on his love for German masses, 100

incongruity of message, 56 J ung on power of, 181 and Kubizek's sons, 95-96 on masses' love for doctrine, 126 and Mussolini, 13, 27-28, 109-10 personality of, 56, 95-96 and Poland, 218-19 and Stalin, 217-18 triumphal returns to Vienna, 45-46 , 49-5 0 , 96-97 in World War I, 9 as young man in Vienna, 3-5, IO

See also Nazi Party Hitler, Adolf, in Austria and Imperial Hotel, 45-46 invasion, 28-29, 34-35 speech at Heldenplatz, Vienna, 46-47 triumphal returns to, 37-38, 454 6,49-50 as young man in Vienna, 3-5 See also Nazi Party in Austria

THE DEATH OF S]GMUND FREUD

Hoare, Samuel, 87 Hodge, Alan, ]38 Hull, Cordell, 72 humanists as inheritors of psychoanalysis, 171-72 "Humour," 20

I. See ego id (it) commitment to safe feeling of childhood, ]51 ego and, 98, 224 sublimation of, 232-33 superego and, 124 Ikhnaton, 200 Imperial Hotel, Vienna, 45-46 inner peace, 102-3, 124-25, 234-35 internal conflict as conscience preventing bad behavior, 99 in democratic states, 126-27 Freud's urge to imagine and perfect, 170 of Moses as hero, 233, 237-38 as preferable to alternative, ]2325, 203-4 romantic love and, 99-100 International Psychoanalytic Association, 79 International Psychoanalytic Congress, 171-72 Interpretation of Dreams, The, 6, ]62-63 intoxicants and intoxication doctrines of unification as, 12324 fame and, 142-43, 145 fundamentalism as, 155 love as, 99-10] See also religious traditions Islam, 124, 125, 240-42 it. See id

James, William, 7, 155 Jews Austrian Nazis' attacks on, 34, 47-5], ]85-88 Princess Bonaparte and, 173 Londoners acceptance of, 138 suicides of, 48-49 See also Judaism Jones, Ernest career of, 73 and Freud in U.S., 7 at Freud's deathbed, 224 on Freud's staJ;e, 71 helping Freud leave Vienna, 7375, 87 personality of, 73-74 translator of Moses and Monotheism, 198 at Verlag during Nazi search of, 58 Judaism Freud and, 23-24, 81-82, 143-44 on inner peace, 124-25 Moses and Monotheism on, 23135 Nazis' view of psychoanalysis and,43-44 opposition as part of, 25 Twain on positive aspects of, 19 0 Yom Kippur, 225-26 See also Jews Jung, Carl on Aryan versus Jewish unconscious, 44 on developing inner peace, 125 Freud's break with, 64-65 Freud's relationship with, 7, 1617, 63 and German unconscious, 181 on Hitler, 181 on unconscious, 64

INDEX

Kafka, Franz, 174-75 Keats, John, lI8, 127 Kennan, George, 156 Keynes, John Maynard, 230 Koestler, Anhur, 176 Kraus, Karl, 39, 142, 187 Kristallnacht, 185-88 Kubizek, Gust!, 94-96 Lacassagne (French doctor), 205 Lange, Allen de, 198 Larkin, Philip, 169 leaders and leadership allure of fascism, 97-98, 123, 156, 235-36, 237, 241-43 confusion and loss as fenile ground for, 101-2 group behavior and, 54-55, 8384, 125-27, 221 inability to share power, 218 Moses, 236-37 power of being at one with oneself, 164-65 seeking un-self-interested people for, 156 See also Hider, Adolf Le Bon, Gustav, 55 libido of the id, 99 Lightoller (Titanic officer), 75 Linz, Austria, 37-38, 94-96 London, England concerns about German bombardment of, 136 Freud's arrival, 133-38 Freud's temporary home, 13840, 167 Jews' acceptance in, 138 Maresfield Gardens home, 18284, 191-97 Loos, Adolf, 39 love, 99-101, 123, 209-12 Lueger, Karl, 52

Maresfield Gardens, London, 18284, 191-97 Marx, Karl, 41-42, 101-2 masturbation, I07 McNabb, Father, 202 Mein Rampf(Hider), 9, IO mental labor of monotheism, 23334

Michelangelo's Moses, 68-69, 16365 militant atheism, 155 Milton, John, 144 Molnar, Michael, 149 monarchy in England, 135 money, Americans' obsession with, 30-3 1 monotheism, innovation of, 160, 200, 233

Moses and Monotheism anger of Moses, 71, 164-65, 23 2 -33

as critique of perverse authority, 85, 128 Freud as second Moses, 236 Freud on, 203 genealogy of culture, 236 on Judaism and faith, 231-35 message in, 199-201 Michelangelo's statue as basis of, 68-69, 163-65 pressure not to publish, 144-45, 149-50, 198 publication of, 198-99 purpose of, 157-58, 165 reviews of, 202-3 vulnerability of ideas in, 201-2 working on, 90 "Mourning and Melancholia," 20, 86, 208 Munich Accords, 180, 181 Murrow, Edward R., 48 Musil, Robert, 39

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

Mussolini (11 Duce) endorsement of invasion of Austria, 35 Hitler and, 13, 27-28, 109-10 Nazi Party burning Freud's books, 10, 88-89 "oneness" goal, 28, 34, 37, 42 Woolfs story about Heil Hiders from, 195-96 See also Hitler, Adolf Nazi Party in Austria abusing Jews in Vienna, 47-51, I13 before Anschluss, 21, 22-23, 2829, 34-35, 78-79

and Bonaparte, 80 collective unbinding of superego, 100-101 decorations for plebiscite on unification, 96 fenile fields of Austria and, 22, 41-43

invasion of Freud's home, 65, 70-72

post-Anschluss, 57-60, 84, III response to German invasion, 34-35, 37-38

and "statement of no impediment" required for departure, 88, I16, I19-20 See also Hitler, Adolf, in Austria Nazi 55, 22-23 Neue Freie Presse (Vienna), 35 neuroses, 104-6, 123 newness as anathema, 147-48 New York Times, 202-3 Nietzsche, 68, u8, 154, 161, 228 Night of the Long Knives, 13, 23 Nobel Prize, III nonaggression pact between Russia and Germany, 217-18 Nuremberg Laws of Germany, 138

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (Keats), u8

Oedipal complex, 147-48, 153 office of Freud, 65-69 oneness German's need for, 122-23 as leaders' alleviation of anxiety, 100

Nazi push for, 28, 34, 37, 4 2 , 122

as temptation to unbind inner tensions, 123 "On Narcissism,:' 20 opposition, importance of, 25-26 optimism in early work, 53 originality as anathema, 147-48 Outline of Psycho-analysis, An, 17273

over-I. See superego pagan antiquity, 1I8, 235 passports from Nazis, U4-15 past trumps present, 40, 42-43, 147-48

patriarchy. See authority patriarchy and anti-patriarchy of Freud, 238-39 patriarchy without authority, 237 patterns of behavior, 210-12 peace, 219, 220 peau de chagrin, La (Balzac), 222-24 personalities Bonaparte, Princess Marie, 7677

Freud, Anna, 60-62, 80 Freud, Martha, 70 Freud, Sigmund, 15-19, 26, 6263, 74-75, 128-3°, 133-34, 144

Hitler, 56, 95-96 Jones, Ernest, 73-74 leaders and their group, 54-56, 83-84, 97-98

INDEX

phallic view of fire, 17-18 Phillips, Adam, 161, 230--31 philosophy, 39-40 Picasso, 137, 230 Pichler, Hans, 17J, 175-76, 177-78, 204-5

Plath, Sylvia, 156 Plato, 126 Poland, 218-19 politics, Freud on, 31, 125-27, 135 postmodernism, 242 primal man, 127 profit motivation and capitalism, 41-42 prosthesis for Freud's jaw, II, 17 6 prudishness of Americans, 31 psyche as divided entity, 98-99, 143. See also ego (I); id (it); superego (over-I) psychoanalysis Americans' acceptance of, 7, 32 antiquities in Freud's office as pan of, Il7-18 of Bonapane, 76 by Freud, of his daughter Anna, 61

and Freud's divan, 15, 183 Freud's inability to see patients, 103, 106, 208-9

Freud's methods, 104-6 humanists as inheritors of, 17172 Krause on, 142 Nazi view of, 43-44 as science, 159 transference, 209-12 as window into inner self, 234-

training for, 171-72 transference and, 105, 209-12 "web of fantasies" about patients, 105 psychological poverty of groups, 31

Question

of Lay Analysis,

The,

171-

72 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 230 Raphael de Valentin (La peau de

chagrin),

222-24

Rath, Ernst vom, 185 reading, Freud's love for, 221-22 regressive dynamics of authority, 238-39

religious traditions authority and, ISO-55 fundamentalism, 154-55, 156-57, 240--42

peace as ideal, 124-25 repressed feelings, healthy relief from, 53, 123-24 Republic, The (Plato), 126 revenge of Hamilcar Barca, 24 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 29 Rieff, Philip, 161 righteous conviction and crowd behavior, 101 romantic love, 99-101, 123, 20912

Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 36 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 72 Royal Society of England, 87, 15859

Rushdie, Salman, 155 Russell, Bertrand, 137

35

psychoanalysts anists compared to, 169-70 Freud's analysis of, 208-9

sadistic side of humanity, 52-53 Saint Louis (ocean liner), 188 SakkM, Jochanan ben, 86-87

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

Sauerwald, Anton as bomb maker and bombing investigator, 78-79 Freud allowed to leave Vienna by, 120, 121 oversight of Verlag, 79 studying Freud's works, 89-90, 1I3-14 visit to Freud in London, 19697 Schiller, Friedrich, 201 Schoenberg, Arnold, 39 Schur, Max, 80, 121, 173, 177, 207-8, 213, 224-25 Schuschnigg, Kurt von, II-13, 2629, 33-34 science, Freud and, 26, 159-62, 170

Secret Life of Salvador Daft: The (Dall), 166-67 self-awareness, 242-43 severity of the superego, 98, 99101, 123-24 Seyss-Inquan, Arthur, 35 Shakespeare, William, 36, 86, 191 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, u8 Shirer, Tess, 48 Shirer, William, 34, 38, 47, 48-49 sight, pleasures of, 232-35 Singer, Charles, 198 Snow White (movie), 136 social superego, 143-44, 228 spiritual traditions, 124-25 Stalin, IIO, 217 "statement of no impediment," 88, n6, 119-20 StrOSS, Josefine, 121 "Study of Reading Habits" (Larkin), 169 sublimation, 148, 165, 220, 232-34, 236-37 suicide Freud's, 224-26

Freud's consideration of, 8587 of Jews in Vienna, 48-49, 186 superego (over-I) approval of faith, 233-34 desires and, 98, 152 ego and, 124 form and, 169 Freud's conflict with social superego, 143-44, 228 inconsistent nature of, 103 as internal agent of authority,

98

self-awareness ~ersus control by, 242-43 severity of, 98, 99-101, 123-24 See also unconscious surrealism, 167-68 Taylor, A. J. P., 138 terrorist bombings in Vienna, 7879

Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 19, 24-25, 40 Toland, John, 56

Topsy, chow-chow au poil d'or (Bonaparte), 91, 93-94, 128

Totem and Taboo, 8, 19, 63 transference, 105, 209-12 Trotter, William, 87 Truth, 152-53, 212, 242-43 Twain, Mark, 19C>-91 tyranny, Freud's predictions of, 239-40 "Uncanny, The," 20 unconsClOUS addiction to domination, 54 criminal behavior contained in, 52-54 Dall's renderings of, 167-68, 170

274

INDEX

effect of accepting desires, 54 Hitler as mirror of, 181 J ung' s theory about, 64 Nazi behavior and, 52 poets as students of. 159 sadistic nature of, 152 See also desires United States Freud's 1909 trip to, 7 Freud's beliefs about, 29-32,

Jews attacked and humiliated in, 34,47-51

opinions on Freud's practice in, 141-42

post-World War 1-1930S in, 22, 41-43

as pre-Hitler paradise for Jews, 51-52

terrorist bombings in, 78-79 See also Berggasse 19 Vienna Psychoanalytical Society,

126-27

Freud's invitation from Cleveland, Ohio, 141 Freud's offers from magnates in,

43

violence, Freud's views on, 21920

vision and conventionality, 19-20,

33

helping Freud leave Vienna, 72, 77-78 as inverse of Nazi Germany,

17°

vision (sight), pleasures of, 232-35 warfare, 137, 219-20 Weiss, Edoardo, 84 Weizsacker, Ernest von, 78 Wells, H. G., 192-93 Whitman, Walt, 239 "Why War?" 220-21 Wilde, Oscar, 229-30 Wiley, John, 32, 72 Wilson, Hugh Robert, 72, 78,

126-2 7

van den Berg, J. H., 147-48 Varieties of Religious Experience (James), 155 Verlag (printing press). 57-60, 79, 88-89, 119-20

Victor Emmanuel, King, 109 Vienna, Austria artists and intellectuals of, 39-

Il4

Wilson, Woodrow, 32-33 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 39, 40,

41

Berggasse, 14 Freud as a middle-aged man in,

41

Woolf, Leonard, 193-95, 198-

5-7

Freud as elderly man in,

99

Woolf, Virginia, 193-95 World War I, 9 writings, Freud's on Americans' dollaria, 30-31 on anti-Semitism, 189, 191 on Austria's future, 36-37 on leaders and group behavior,

10-II

Freud's attachment to, 23. 2526, 38-40, 74-75

Freud's willingness to leave, Il3, 121-22

Hitler as young man in, 3-5, 10

Hitler's triumphal returns to,

54-56, 83-84, 97-98

optimism in early work, 53

45-46,49-50, 96-97

275

THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD

passion in, 17-18 and productive conflict, 24-26 quality derived from rebellion and logic, 19-20, 170 on suicide, 86 on unconscious, 6 See also Moses and Monotheism; specific books and articles

X-ray regimen for cancer, 205-6 Yahuda, Abraham Shalom, 149-50, 202

Yeats, William Butler, 133, 134, 204 Yom Kippur, 225-26 Zweig, Arnold, 192 Zweig, Stefan, 51, 167-68

A Note on the Author Mark Edmundson teaches at the University of Virginia, where he holds the rank of University Professor. A prizewinning scholar, he has published a number of works of literary and cultural criticism, including Literature Agaimt Philosophy, Plato to

Derrida, Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference, and Why Read? He has also written for such publications as Raritan, the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, and Harper's, where he is a contributing editor.

A Note on the Type The text of this book is set Adobe Garamond. It is one of several versions of Garamond based on the designs of Claude Garamond. It is thought that Garamond based his font on Bembo, cut in 1495 by Francesco Griffo in collaboration with the Italian printer Aldus Manutius. Garamond types were first used in books printed in Paris around 1532. Many of the present-day versions of this type are based on the TypiAcademiaeofJeanJannon cut in Sedan in 1615. Claude Garamond was born in Paris in 1480. He learned how to cut type from his father and by the age of fifteen he was able to fashion steel punches the size of a pica with great precision. At the age of sixty he was commissioned by King Francis I to design a Greek alphabet, for this he was given the honorable tide of royal type founder. He died in 1561.