Freud - Complete Works (680 page)

4173

PREFACE TO RAYMOND DE
SAUSSURE’S
THE PSYCHO-ANALYTIC METHOD

(1922)

It is with great pleasure that I am able to
assure the public that the present work by Dr. de Saussure is a
book of value and merit. It is especially well calculated to give
French readers a correct idea of what psycho-analysis is and what
it contains.

   Dr. de Saussure has not only
conscientiously studied my writings, but in addition he has made
the sacrifice of coming to me to undergo an analysis lasting
several months. This has put him in a position to form his own
judgement on the majority of those questions in psycho-analysis
which are still undecided, and to avoid the many distortions and
errors which one is accustomed to finding in French as well as in
German expositions of psycho-analysis. Nor has he failed to
contradict certain false or negligent statements which commentators
pass on from one to another: such as, for instance, that all dreams
have a sexual meaning or that, according to me, the only motive
force in our mental life is that of sexual libido.

   Since Dr. de Saussure has said in
his preface that I have corrected his work, I must add a
qualification; my influence has only made itself felt in a few
corrections and comments and I have in no way sought to encroach
upon the author’s independence. In the first, theoretical
part of this work, I should have expounded a number of things
differently from him: for instance, the difficult topic of the
preconscious and the unconscious. And above all, I should have
treated the Oedipus complex far more exhaustively.

Preface To Raymond De Saussure's The Psycho-Analytic Method

4174

   The excellent dream which Dr.
Odier has put at the author’s disposal may give even the
uninitiated an idea of the wealth of dream-associations and of the
relation between the manifest dream-image and the latent thoughts
concealed behind it. It demonstrates too the significance that the
analysis of a dream can have in the treatment of a patient.

   Finally, the remarks which the
author makes in conclusion on the technique of psycho-analysis are
quite excellent. They are entirely correct and, in spite of their
conciseness, leave aside nothing essential. They are convincing
evidence of the author’s subtle understanding. The reader
should not, of course, conclude that knowledge of these rules of
technique alone will make him capable of undertaking an
analysis.

   To-day psycho-analysis is
beginning to arouse in a larger measure the interest of
professional men and of the lay public in France as well; it will
certainly not find any fewer resistances there than it has
encountered previously in other countries. Let us hope that Dr. de
Saussure’s book will make an important contribution to the
clarification of the discussions that lie ahead.

FREUD

VIENNA
,
February
1922

4175

PREFACE TO MAX EITINGON’S

REPORT ON THE BERLIN PSYCHO-ANALYTIC POLICLINIC

(
MARCH 1920 TO JUNE 1922
)

(1923)

My friend Max Eitingon, who created the Berlin
Psycho-Analytical Policlinic and has hitherto supported it out of
his own resources, has in the following pages made public his
reasons for founding it and has also given an account of the
Institute’s organization and functions. I can only add to
what he has written my wish that individuals or societies may be
found elsewhere to follow Eitingon’s example and bring
similar institutions into existence. If psycho-analysis, alongside
of its scientific significance, has a value as a therapeutic
procedure, if it is capable of giving help to sufferers in their
struggle to fulfil the demands of civilization, this help should be
accessible as well to the great multitude who are too poor
themselves to repay an analyst for his laborious work. This seems
to be a social necessity particularly in our times, when the
intellectual strata of the population, which are especially prone
to neurosis, are sinking irresistibly into poverty. Institutes such
as the Berlin Policlinic are also alone in a position to overcome
the difficulties which otherwise stand in the way of thorough
instruction in psycho-analysis. They make possible the education of
a considerable number of trained analysts, whose activity must be
regarded as the sole possible protection against injury to patients
by ignorant and unqualified persons, whether they are laymen or
doctors.

4176

LETTER TO FRITZ WITTELS

(1924)

You have given me a Christmas present which is
very largely occupied with my own personality. The failure to send
a word of thanks for such a gift would be an act of rudeness only
to be accounted for by very peculiar motives. Fortunately no such
motives exist in this case. Your book is by no means hostile; it is
not unduly indiscreet; and it manifests the serious interest in the
topic which was to be anticipated in so able a writer as
yourself.

   I need hardly say that I neither
expected nor desired the publication of such a book. It seems to me
that the public has no concern with my personality, and can learn
nothing from an account of it, so long as my case (for manifold
reasons) cannot be expounded without any reserves whatever. But you
have thought otherwise. Your own detachment from me, which you
consider an advantage, entails serious drawbacks none the less. You
know too little of the object of study, and you have not been able
to avoid the danger of straining the facts a little in your
analytic endeavours. Moreover, I am inclined to think that your
adoption of Stekel’s standpoint, and the fact that you
contemplate the object of study from his outlook, cannot but have
impaired the accuracy of your discernment.

Letter To Fritz Wittels

4177

   In some respects, I think there
are positive distortions, and I believe these to be the outcome of
a preconceived notion of yours. You think that a great man must
have such and such merits and defects, and must display certain
extreme characteristics; and you hold that I belong to the category
of great men. That is why you ascribe to me all sorts of qualities
many of which are mutually conflicting. Much of general interest
might be said on this matter, but unfortunately your relationship
to Stekel precludes further attempts on my part to clear up the
misunderstanding.

   On the other hand, I am glad to
acknowledge that your shrewdness has enabled you to detect some
things which are well known to myself. For instance, you are right
in inferring that I have often been compelled to make
détours when following my own path. You are right, too, in
thinking that I have no use for other people’s ideas when
they are presented to me at an inopportune moment. (Still, as
regards the latter point, I think you might have defended me from
the accusation that I am repudiating ideas when I am merely unable
for the time being to pass judgement on them or to elaborate them.)
But I am delighted to find that you do me full justice in the
matter of my relations with Adler....

   I realize that you may have
occasion to revise your text in view of a second edition. With an
eye to this possibility, I enclose a list of suggested emendations.
These are based on trustworthy data, and are quite independent of
my own prepossessions. Some of them relate to matters of trifling
importance, but some of them will perhaps lead you to reverse or
modify certain inferences. The fact that I send you these
corrections is a token that I value your work though I cannot
wholly approve it.

4178

LETTER TO SEÑOR LUIS
LOPEZ-BALLESTEROS Y DE TORRES

(1923)

When I was a young student, the desire to read
the immortal
Don Quixote
in the original of Cervantes led me
to learn, untaught, the lovely Castilian tongue. Thanks to this
youthful enthusiasm, I am able to-day - at an advanced age - to
test the accuracy of your Spanish version of my works, the reading
of which invariably provokes in me a lively appreciation of your
very correct interpretation of my thoughts and of the elegance of
your style. I am above all astonished that one who, like you, is
neither a doctor nor a psychiatrist by profession should have been
able to obtain so absolute and precise a mastery over material
which is intricate and at times obscure.

4179

LETTER TO
LE DISQUE VERT

(1924)

Of the many lessons lavished upon me in the
past (1885-6) by the great Charcot at the Salpêtrière,
two left me with a deep impression: that one should never tire of
considering the same phenomena again and again (or of submitting to
their effects), and that one should not mind meeting with
contradiction on every side provided one has worked sincerely.

FREUD

4180

LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE
JEWISH PRESS CENTRE IN ZURICH

(1925)

. . .I can say that I stand as far apart from
the Jewish religion as from all other religions: that is to say,
they are of great significance to me as a subject of scientific
interest, but I have no part in them emotionally. On the other hand
I have always had a strong feeling of solidarity with my
fellow-people, and have always encouraged it in my children as
well. We have all remained in the Jewish denomination.

   In the time of my youth our
free-thinking religious instructors set no store by their
pupils’ acquiring a knowledge of the Hebrew language and
literature. My education in this field was therefore extremely
behindhand, as I have since often regretted.

4181

ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING
OF THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY

(1925)

Historians have told us that our small nation
withstood the destruction of its independence as a State only
because it began to transfer in its estimation of values the
highest rank to its spiritual possessions, to its religion and its
literature.

   We are now living in a time when
this people has a prospect of again winning the land of its fathers
with the help of a Power that dominates the world, and it
celebrates the occasion by the foundation of a University in its
ancient capital city.

   A University is a place in which
knowledge is taught above all differences of religions and of
nations, where investigation is carried on, which is to show
mankind how far they understand the world around them and how far
they can control it.

   Such an undertaking is a noble
witness to the development to which our people has forced its way
in two thousand years of unhappy fortune.

   I find it painful that my
ill-health prevents me from being present at the opening
festivities of the Jewish University in Jerusalem.

4182

EDITORIAL CHANGES IN THE
ZEITSCHRIFT

(1924)

Dr. Otto Rank has acted as editor of this
journal ever since its foundation in 1913, even though it is only
since 1920 that he has been named on its title-page as sole editor.
During his period of military service in the War, his place was
taken by Dr. Hanns Sachs, who was at that time in Vienna. Since the
beginning of the current volume Dr. S. Ferenczi has also had a
share in the editing.

   At Easter, 1924, Dr. Rank
accepted an invitation which took him to New York. On his return
home he announced that he had decided to transfer his activity as a
teaching and practising analyst to America - at least for a part of
the year. Thus it became necessary to place the editorship of the
Zeitschrift
in other hands. It is not within the rights of
the Director to give public expression to his opinion of the level
and achievements of this journal. No one who is inclined to
appreciate them should overlook or forget how much of its success
is due to the tireless devotion and exemplary work of the retiring
editor.

   Dr. Rank’s place will now
be taken by Dr. S. Radó of Berlin. He will be supported as
advisers and collaborators by Dr. M. Eitingon (Berlin) and Dr. S.
Ferenczi (Budapest). All communications and contributions for the
editor should be addressed to Dr. Sándor Radó,
Berlin-Schöneberg, Am Park, 20. The business side of the
Zeitschrift
will be conducted as before at the offices of
the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag in Vienna (Manager:
A. J. Storfer).

4183

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STUDY

(1925)

4184

 Intentionally left blank

4185

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STUDY

Several of the contributors to this series of
‘Autobiographical Studies’ have begun by expressing
their misgivings at the unusual difficulties of the task they have
undertaken. The difficulties in my case are, I think, even greater;
for I have already more than once published papers upon the same
line as the present one, papers which, from the nature of the
subject have dealt more with personal considerations than is usual
or than would otherwise have been necessary.

   I gave my first account of the
development and subject matter of psycho-analysis in five lectures
which I delivered in 1909 before Clark University at Worcester,
Mass., where I had been invited to attend the celebration of the
twentieth anniversary of the foundation of that body.¹ Only
recently I gave way to the temptation of making a contribution of a
similar kind to an American collective publication dealing with the
opening years of the twentieth century, since its editors had shown
their recognition of the importance of psycho-analysis by allotting
a special chapter to it.² Between these two dates appeared a
paper, ‘On the History of the Psycho-Analytic
Movement’, which, in fact, contains the essence of all that I
can say on the present occasion. Since I must not contradict myself
and since I have no wish to repeat myself exactly, I must endeavour
to construct a narrative in which subjective and objective
attitudes, biographical and historical interests, are combined in a
new proportion.

  
¹
The lectures were first published (in
English) in the
American Journal of Psychology
(1910); the
original German was issued under the title of
Über
Psychoanalyse
.

  
²
These Eventful Years
(New York,
1924). My essay, translated by Dr. A. A. Brill, forms chapter
lxxiii. of the second volume.

An Autobiographical Study

4186

   I was born on May 6th, 1856, at
Freiberg in Moravia, a small town in what is now Czechoslovakia. My
parents were Jews, and I have remained a Jew myself. I have reason
to believe that my father’s family were settled for a long
time on the Rhine (at Cologne), that, as a result of a persecution
of the Jews during the fourteenth or fifteenth century, they fled
eastwards, and that, in the course of the nineteenth century, they
migrated back from Lithuania through Galicia into German Austria.
When I was a child of four I came to Vienna, and I went through the
whole of my education there. At the ‘Gymnasium’ I was
at the top of my class for seven years; I enjoyed special
privileges there, and had scarcely ever to be examined in class.
Although we lived in very limited circumstances, my father insisted
that, in my choice of a profession, I should follow my own
inclinations alone. Neither at that time, nor indeed in my later
life, did I feel any particular predilection for the career of a
doctor. I was moved, rather, by a sort of curiosity, which was,
however, directed more towards human concerns than towards natural
objects; nor had I grasped the importance of observation as one of
the best means of gratifying it. My deep engrossment in the Bible
story (almost as soon as I had learnt the art of reading) had, as I
recognized much later, an enduring effect upon the direction of my
interest. Under the powerful influence of a school friendship with
a boy rather my senior who grew up to be a well-known politician, I
developed a wish to study law like him and to engage in social
activities. At the same time, the theories of Darwin, which were
then of topical interest, strongly attracted me, for they held out
hopes of an extraordinary advance in our understanding of the
world; and it was hearing Goethe’s beautiful essay on Nature
read aloud at a popular lecture by Professor Carl Brühl just
before I left school that decided me to become a medical
student.

An Autobiographical Study

4187

   When, in 1873, I first joined the
University, I experienced some appreciable disappointments. Above
all, I found that I was expected to feel myself inferior and an
alien because I was a Jew. I refused absolutely to do the first of
these things. I have never been able to see why I should feel
ashamed of my descent or, as people were beginning to say, of my
‘race’. I put up, without much regret, with my
non-acceptance into the community; for it seemed to me that in
spite of this exclusion an active fellow-worker could not fail to
find some nook or cranny in the framework of humanity. These first
impressions at the University, however, had one consequence which
was afterwards to prove important; for at an early age I was made
familiar with the fate of being in the Opposition and of being put
under the ban of the ‘compact majority’. The
foundations were thus laid for a certain degree of independence of
judgement.

   I was compelled, moreover, during
my first years at the University, to make the discovery that the
peculiarities and limitations of my gifts denied me all success in
many of the departments of science into which my youthful eagerness
had plunged me. Thus I learned the truth of Mephistopheles’
warning:

                               
Vergebens, dass ihr ringsum wissenschaftlich schweift,

                               
Ein jeder lernt nur, was er lernen kann.

   At length, in Ernst
Brücke’s physiological laboratory, I found rest and full
satisfaction - and men, too, whom I could respect and take as my
models: the great Brücke himself, and his assistants, Sigmund
Exner and Ernst Fleischl von Marxow. With the last of these, a
brilliant man, I was privileged to be upon terms of friendship.
Brücke gave me a problem to work out in the histology of the
nervous system; I succeeded in solving it to his satisfaction and
in carrying the work further on my own account. I worked at this
Institute, with short interruptions, from 1876 to 1882, and it was
generally thought that I was marked out to fill the next post of
Assistant that might fall vacant there. The various branches of
medicine proper, apart from psychiatry, had no attraction for me. I
was decidedly negligent in pursuing my medical studies, and it was
not until 1881 that I took my somewhat belated degree as a Doctor
of Medicine.

An Autobiographical Study

4188

   The turning-point came in 1882,
when my teacher, for whom I felt the highest possible esteem,
corrected my father’s generous improvidence by strongly
advising me, in view of my bad financial position, to abandon my
theoretical career. I followed his advice, left the physiological
laboratory and entered the General Hospital as an
Aspirant
.
I was soon afterwards promoted to being a
Sekundararzt
, and
worked in various departments of the hospital, among others for
more than six months under Meynert, by whose work and personality I
had been greatly struck while I was still a student.

   In a certain sense I nevertheless
remained faithful to the line of work upon which I had originally
started. The subject which Brücke had proposed for my
investigations had been the spinal cord of one of the lowest of the
fishes (
Ammocoetes Petromyzon
); and I now passed on to the
human central nervous system. Just at this time Flechsig’s
discoveries of the non-simultaneity of the formation of the
medullary sheaths were throwing a revealing light upon the
intricate course of its tracts. The fact that I began by choosing
the medulla oblongata as the one and only subject of my work was
another sign of the continuity of my development. In complete
contrast to the diffuse character of my studies during my earlier
years at the University, I was now developing an inclination to
concentrate my work exclusively upon a single subject or problem.
This inclination has persisted and has since led to my being
accused of one-sidedness.

An Autobiographical Study

4189

   I now became as active a worker
in the Institute of Cerebral Anatomy as I had previously been in
the physiological one. Some short papers upon the course of the
tracts and the nuclear origins in the medulla oblongata date from
these hospital years, and some notice was taken of my findings by
Edinger. One day Meynert, who had given me access to the laboratory
even during the times when I was not actually working under him,
proposed that I should definitely devote myself to the anatomy of
the brain, and promised to hand over his lecturing work to me, as
he felt he was too old to manage the newer methods. This I
declined, in alarm at the magnitude of the task; it is possible,
too, that I had guessed already that this great man was by no means
kindly disposed towards me.

   From the material point of view,
brain anatomy was certainly no better than physiology, and, with an
eye to pecuniary considerations, I began to study nervous diseases.
There were, at that time, few specialists in that branch of
medicine in Vienna, the material for its study was distributed over
a number of different departments of the hospital, there was no
satisfactory opportunity of learning the subject, and one was
forced to be one’s own teacher. Even Nothnagel, who had been
appointed a short time before, on account of his book upon cerebral
localization, did not single out neuropathology from among the
other subdivisions of medicine. In the distance shone the great
name of Charcot; so I formed a plan of first obtaining an
appointment as University Lecturer on Nervous Diseases in Vienna
and of then going to Paris to continue my studies.

An Autobiographical Study

4190

   In the course of the following
years, while I continued to work as a junior physician, I published
a number of clinical observations on organic diseases of the
nervous system. I gradually became familiar with the ground; I was
able to localize the site of a lesion in the medulla oblongata so
accurately that the pathological anatomist had no further
information to add; I was the first person in Vienna to send a case
for autopsy with a diagnosis of polyneuritis acuta.

   The fame of my diagnoses and of
their
post-mortem
confirmation brought me an influx of
American physicians, to whom I lectured upon the patients in my
department in a sort of pidgin English. About the neuroses I
understood nothing. On one occasion I introduced to my audience a
neurotic suffering from a persistent headache as a case of chronic
localized meningitis; they all quite rightly rose in revolt and
deserted me, and my premature activities as a teacher came to an
end. By way of excuse I may add that this happened at a time when
greater authorities than myself in Vienna were in the habit of
diagnosing neurasthenia as cerebral tumour.

   In the spring of 1885 I was
appointed Lecturer in Neuropathology on the ground of my
histological and clinical publications. Soon afterwards, as the
result of a warm testimonial from Brücke, I was awarded a
Travelling Bursary of considerable value. In the autumn of the same
year I made the journey to Paris.

   I became a student at the
Salpêtrière, but, as one of the crowd of foreign
visitors, I had little attention paid me to begin with. One day in
my hearing Charcot expressed his regret that since the war he had
heard nothing from the German translator of his lectures; he went
on to say that he would be glad if someone would undertake to
translate the new volume of his lectures into German. I wrote to
him and offered to do so; I can still remember a phrase in the
letter, to the effect that I suffered only from
‘
l’aphasie motrice
’ and not from
‘
l’aphasie sensorielle du
français
’. Charcot accepted the offer, I was
admitted to the circle of his personal acquaintances, and from that
time forward I took a full part in all that went on at the
Clinic.

An Autobiographical Study

4191

   As I write these lines, a number
of papers and newspaper articles have reached me from France, which
give evidence of a violent objection to the acceptance of
psycho-analysis, and which often make the most inaccurate
assertions in regard to my relations with the French school. I
read, for instance, that I made use of my visit to Paris to
familiarize myself with the theories of Pierre Janet and then made
off with my booty. I should therefore like to say explicitly that
during the whole of my visit to the Salpêtrière
Janet’s name was never so much as mentioned.

   What impressed me most of all
while I was with Charcot were his latest investigations upon
hysteria, some of which were carried out under my own eyes. He had
proved, for instance, the genuineness of hysterical phenomena and
their conformity to laws (‘
introite et hic dii
sunt
’), the frequent occurrence of hysteria in men, the
production of hysterical paralyses and contractures by hypnotic
suggestion and the fact that such artificial products showed, down
to their smallest details, the same features as spontaneous
attacks, which were often brought on traumatically. Many of
Charcot’s demonstrations began by provoking in me and in
other visitors a sense of astonishment and an inclination to
scepticism, which we tried to justify by an appeal to one of the
theories of the day. He was always friendly and patient in dealing
with such doubts, but he was also most decided; it was in one of
these discussions that (speaking of theory) he remarked,
‘
Ca n’empêche pas d’exister
’,
a
mot
which left an indelible mark upon my mind.