Intellectual Provocateur

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For 50 of his 83 years Sigmund Freud has insisted on talking seriously about subjects that other people did not want to discuss. When he began lecturing on the sexual basis of neuroses, in Vienna in 1896, his worldly colleagues regarded him with the embarrassed annoyance reserved for those who hammer away at something people would rather not talk about, even if talking would teach them something. But for laymen, as Freud's theories spread, he emerged as the greatest killjoy in the history of human thought, transforming man's jokes and gentle pleasures into dreary and mysterious repressions, discovering hatreds at the root of love, malice at the heart of tenderness, incest in filial affections, guilt in generosity and the repressed hatred of one's father as a normal human inheritance.

Last week, from his home in exile in London, this 83-year-old disturber of human complacency calmly turned his attention to another topic generally and understandably avoided. This time he psychoanalyzed antiSemitism. What, he asked, are the reasons for a phenomenon of such intensity and lasting strength as popular hatred of the Jews? Economic and political reasons Freud leaves to others; in Moses and Monotheism* he is concerned with hidden motives.

Most of the book is given over to an account of the infancy of the Jewish people--not as it is known historically, but as it emerges in their legends, beliefs and religious customs. Its purpose is not to relate a factually, but a psychologically accurate picture, thereby uncovering, Freud believes, the reasons for popular hatred of the Jews and the reasons for the Jewish attitudes toward the persecutions that have darkened their history.

Background. Only in view of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis is Moses and Monotheism intelligible. And the history of psychoanalysis is the history of Sigmund Freud.

When young Dr. Freud, fresh from five years' research on the nervous system, returned to his native Vienna and with high hopes hung out his shingle, the gay city was thronged with neurotics, "who hurried, with their troubles unsolved, from one physician to another." Some were afraid of animals; others constantly washed their hands, stammered, endured blinding headaches, lingering illnesses, or even developed strange paralyses of the arms and legs. All balanced precariously on the slender line between sanity and insanity. That the cause of their maladies was psychological, the 30-year-old psychiatrist was certain. But how these maladies arose, and how they could be cured--that was his great problem.

In his Paris clinic, Hypnotist Charcot had often commanded drowsy neurotics to shed their symptoms. But only a few obeyed the doctor's powerful will and woke up cured. Yet hypnotism was the only scientific light which could prick the deep caverns of the unconscious mind, and even if it brought no lasting cures, young Dr. Freud could not very well do without it.

His first great step toward the development of psychoanalysis came one day when his old friend, Dr. Josef Breuer, a brilliant, popular family doctor, told him the remarkable story of "Anna O."

Anna O. was an intelligent girl of 21, who, while nursing her father during a fatal illness, suddenly developed paralysis of her right arm and both legs. To Dr. Breuer's amazement, when he asked her questions under hypnosis, she explained to him the origin of her symptoms, one by one. While nursing her father, she had suppressed a swarm of impulses as frivolous, selfish or immoral. And each suppressed desire had somehow turned into a physical symptom.

One evening, for instance, as Anna was sitting by her father's bed, she heard dance music floating over from the house next door. She longed to join the party, but sternly repressed the wish. Afterward, whenever she heard the strong rhythm of dance music, she began to cough, almost as though she were beating time. Most astounding part of the case, said Dr. Breuer, was this: as soon as Anna understood the origin and nature of her symptoms, they disappeared.

Greatly excited, Freud joined Breuer, tried the new method of conversing with hypnotized neurotics. Their aim: to "purge" constipated minds of unhealthy, repressed ideas.

"Irresistible Attraction." Long after Breuer, discouraged by criticism, had left the partnership, Freud continued his attempts to find a more efficient method of mining buried thoughts. One day an alert patient, when asked if he could remember his recent experiences under hypnosis, repeated everything that had been said to him, everything that he himself had said.

This was a crucial discovery. Freud finally abandoned hypnosis, merely invited his patients to lie on a couch in his shaded office and talk of whatever entered their minds. This "free association," Freud soon discovered, was not free at all. For his patients, at first reluctantly mumbling trivialities, gradually wandered back into the past, on to forgotten paths, stumbling painfully over hidden, moss-covered memories, dabbling in streams of old affection. Through sharp observation and almost poetic analysis, Freud was able to interpret the mass of material his patients dredged up, and explain the origin of their symptoms.

Why his patients were "suggestible," why they accepted his explanations, overcame their resistance, strove to know themselves and conquer their symptoms, was at that time a problem to Freud. One day, during her treatment, a woman patient suddenly threw her arms around his neck.

"The unexpected entrance of a servant relieved us from a painful discussion," wrote Freud. "I was modest enough not to attribute the event to my irresistible personal attraction." This emotional "transference," which appeared as passionate, sensual love or fierce hatred, arose in every analysis, accounted for the powerful influence of an analyst over his patients. "[It is] the best instrument of the analytic treatment," Freud wrote,

. . and it is resolved by convincing the patient that he is re-experiencing emotional relations which had their origin [in early childhood]." Thus Freud gained, in his patients' minds, the authority of a dearly loved (or violently hated) father, or mother.

Storms of Childhood. After examining a large group of neurotics, Freud was surprised to discover that they all had one thing in common: a frustrated sex life. The neuroses," he declared, "[are] without exception disturbances of the sexual function."

But it was not the unhappy marriages or love affairs of adult life that were mainly responsible for neuroses. For the same experiences that normal .persons took in their stride were sufficient to bowl neurotics over. The foundations of neuroses, Freud discovered, were laid in the sex experiences of early childhood. Upon this astonishing fact, which Freud painstakingly confirmed in hundreds of cases, he built his famous theories of the libido (Latin for lust) and the Oedipus complex.

Most powerful force which drives human beings, said Freud, is a primeval sex instinct, the libido. During childhood the libido is bound up with such experiences as eating, excreting and thumbsucking. In later years the libido may be transferred to another person (marriage), may remain grounded in childish sex play (perversion), or may overflow as artistic, literary, or musical creation (sublimation). In fact, said Freud, greatest source of creative work is the sex instinct.

Driven by libido, all children fall in love with their mothers, hate and fear their fathers as rivals. Sometimes they may love their fathers too (ambivalence), but the fundamental hostility remains throughout childhood. (Later on girls often fall in love with their fathers.) This Oedipus complex-sets the pattern for a child's response to other persons throughout the rest of his life. Normal persons outgrow the Oedipus situation by the time they reach maturity. But weaker characters cannot tear themselves away from their parents, hence, "fall into neuroses."

There is no escaping the Oedipus complex, said Freud, for it is our heritage from primitive ancestors, who killed their fathers in fits of jealous rage. "We are all omnibuses in which our ancestors ride, and every now and then one of them sticks his head out and embarrasses us," perceptively observed Oliver Wendell Holmes in his pre-Freudian novel The Guardian Angel (1867).

Friends & Enemies. In light-hearted pre-War Vienna, which boasted of its sexual freedom, Freud was jeered at and shunned. Prudish physicians complained that he made too much of sex, that he destroyed beautiful illusions (such as the innocence of childhood), that he invaded his patients' privacy.

After the War, when Victorian taboos were thrown aside, and cries of sex freedom rang in every parlor, Freud's doctrines were eagerly gobbled up. Such words as "repression" and "mother fixation" became a part of the common language. Many people still mistakenly think that Freudianism is a doctrine of licence. On the contrary, Freud believes that self-discipline is essential for civilized living, that there is a middle road between unhealthy repression, which bursts forth as neuroses, and free abandonment to sexual pleasures.

Among the most outstanding and faithful of Freud's U. S. pupils: Dr. Abraham Arden Brill, who translated Freud's works for U. S. readers; Dr. Fritz Wittels, Freud's biographer; Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, Dr. Herman Nunberg, all of Manhattan; Dr. Isador Henry Coriat of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute.

Because they do not believe in the primacy of the Oedipus complex, a small group of analysts have seceded from the Freudian union. Some of them do not agree that men are bound by primeval, rigid instincts. Others hold that society inflicts more wounds upon personality than the sex instinct. For these rebels, orthodox Freudians, whose feelings run high, have nothing but contempt.

Most famed among the secessionists are Carl Jung of Zuerich, who has "retreated from psychoanalysis" into semi-religious therapy, and Alfred Adler, who died in Aberdeen two years ago. Adler held that man's mainspring is not sexual desire but a desire for superiority. Physical infirmity or family bullying produces an "inferiority complex." This complex, in turn, forces "overcompensation," or a transformation of weakness into strength. Because Demosthenes stuttered and Beethoven was deaf, said Adler, they developed inferiority complexes. Demosthenes compensated in magnificent oratory, Beethoven in magnificent music.

Exile. When the Nazis took Vienna last year they seized Freud's property, money and psychoanalytical publishing house.

Although tortured by advanced cancer of the jaw, Freud at first refused to leave his home. In vain did his nephew, Manhattan Publicist Edward Bernays, plead with him to spend his last days in the U. S. He surrendered only when London's famed Dr. Ernest Jones flew to Vienna with a cargo of shrewd arguments.

Early last June Freud went to England "for peace," joined his son Architect Ernst. With him went another son, Lawyer Martin, and his gentle, brown-eyed daughter Anna, a practicing psychoanalyst. In a comfortable London house near Regent's Park, filled with his Greek and Egyptian treasures, Freud answers letters, continues his writing, even treats a few old patients. Every Sunday evening he settles down in the parlor, coddles his five young grandchildren, enjoys a lively card game called tarot with his sons. Always at his call is his nine-year-old chow dog, Lun. During his 16 years of suffering, throughout his 15 operations, he has never uttered a word of complaint. Patient and resigned, secure in his fame, he spins out his last thoughts, and basks in the sun.

Anti-Semitism. In the shadow of exile Moses and Monotheism was written. But no trace of lamentation shows in the tone of the book. We live, says Freud imperturbably, in remarkable times. For a long period it seemed that progress had made an alliance with barbarism, as in Russia, where a great attempt to lift the people to a higher standard of life was coupled with a ruthless suppression of free speech and thought. But in Germany this unnatural marriage has been dissolved, and barbarism proceeds alone.

In psychoanalytic procedure it is customary to counter the patient's own history of his case with the analyst's interpretation. Whether or not this psychoanalytic version is "truer," it sometimes succeeds in shattering the patient's preconceptions, in opening his mind to other alternatives of thought and action. Thus, in reviewing Jewish history, legends and attitudes, Freud very provocatively suggests: Moses, the founder of the Jewish religion, was no Jew, but an Egyptian.

Concrete evidence to support this belief is sparse; in fact, "to my critical faculties," says Freud, "it seems like a dancer balancing on one toe." Nevertheless, he proceeds, if Moses was an Egyptian, Jewish history becomes psychologically intelligible. If he was an Egyptian, he must have been an Egyptian monotheist. In the reign of Amenhotep IV, monotheism, the worship of one god, flourished briefly, when Amenhotep drove out the multitude of local deities in which Egypt abounded. After Amenhotep's death his religion was soon overthrown and the older worship returned, but here & there disciples kept alive the monotheistic idea. If Moses was an Egyptian, argues Freud, he must have been one of these; in the period of anarchy that followed Amenhotep's death he must have converted the enslaved Jews, leading them out of Egypt, giving them laws, customs, social order. He must have been an irascible, hot-tempered, gifted, energetic and ambitious upper-class Egyptian administrator. For the purposes of Freud's argument, the Jews must eventually have killed Moses. But monotheism remained, its soaring religious abstractions, ideals ef truth and justice replacing the worship of idols, of graven images, of magic, of the spirits of the dead.

If the Jews killed Moses, his memory must have persisted, like the image of the father in childhood, as stern, implacable, good. Yet, because of the crime of his murder, his memory is also associated with feelings of guilt. That little plausible evidence indicates that Moses was killed does not worry Freud--it is precisely what an individual or a people forgets, he believes (and which can only be recovered to the conscious memory by psychoanalytic treatment), that reveals the source of their psychological dilemmas.

Hatred of the Jews, says Freud, is fundamentally hatred of monotheistic religion. The Germans, who now excel in the practice of antiSemitism, were Christianized within historical times, often to the accompaniment of cruel repressions whose traces persist in their unconscious minds; their latent resentment toward Christianity is diverted against the upholders of another monotheistic religion. And meanwhile, the Jews themselves suffer from a guilt-obsession arising from the forgotten murder of Moses--an unconscious obsession from which they would presumably be freed by the admission of their guilt.

Moses and Monotheism is full of logical holes, doubtful history, fanciful anthropology. But in spite of the book's finespun hypotheses, Freud's psychoanalytic approach to the Semitic and anti-Semitic "neuroses" still remains a bold attempt in pioneering a dark continent.

Mankind is not, Freud believe, so far removed from either barbarism or animals as it likes to think. But the mood of his last book is calm. If it does not answer all the questions that anti-Semitism raises, it shows that Freud is no more dismayed by this disorder than by the dark neuroses and perversions that he has studied all his life.

* Knopf ($3). * After the old Greek myth of Oedipus, son of the King of Thebes, who killed his father, married his mother.

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