Sigmund Freud* (9 page)

The relationship with Jung, however, was beyond repair. Jung had challenged Freud a few too many times. Jung believed, for example, that the mother could be a protective figure, not an object of desire. Childhood trauma was not solely responsible for mental illness. Nor was the libido
the
force driving behavior. Jung hunted for new information, researching different cultures from different periods in history to uncover universal patterns of behavior. (In contrast, Freud looked at other cultures mainly to confirm his existing theories.) Jung saw value to finding evidence that challenged preconceived ideas: “It was a good thing to make occasional incursions into other territories and to look at our subject through a different pair of spectacles.”

Freud saw disagreement as betrayal of golden Sigi: “Psychoanalysis is my creation. I consider myself justified in maintaining that. . . . No one can better know than I do what psychoanalysis is.” Jung countered that Freud’s protégés all became “slavish sons or impudent puppies” because of the way Freud treated them.

Jung was certainly no slavish son. But his research led him to some extreme places—phrenology, UFOs, astrology, alchemy, and many topics that fall under the “New Age” umbrella. Freud himself was interested in the occult. He published three papers on mental telepathy or mind reading (since then totally debunked). For a while he worried his office might be haunted, because of groans coming from two Egyptian grave-markers atop the oak bookcases. Still, he considered himself much more scientific—Jung was dismissed as being positively “mystical.” Freud took great pains to defend psychoanalysis from quackery and occultism—“the black tide of mud.”

In 1913, after six tumultuous years, his stimulating conversation with his crown prince was over. Jung wrote poetically, quoting
Hamlet
, “The rest is silence.” Jung went on to become an extremely influential psychologist in his own right, writing major books, helping the United States during World War II by doing psychoanalytical profiles of Nazi leaders. He died in 1961.

“The truth is for me the absolute aim of science,” wrote Freud loftily. Yet as much as he aspired to scientific objectivity, his personal relationships pulled him in the opposite direction. They obscured his ability to see clearly. The more supporters he had, the more possibility of challenge, so the more he closed himself off. He was still open to some new ideas, but mostly if they fit in with his existing theories or came from his own highly original mind.

In the world of science, Freud’s continual combativeness could be counterproductive: He had to win. That was more important than listening to new ideas.

“God!” Jung exclaimed years later. “If he had only gotten over himself, it would have been crazy to ever want anything other than to work with him.”

CHAPTER TEN

The War Years

I
N TALKING ABOUT science, Freud was fond of using military terms, even more so than archeological ones. He himself was not opposed to war in general. In fact he thought it cleansed society of corruption and brought out the best in men—loyalty, heroism, dedication.

From 1914 to 1918, Freud saw firsthand what war brought out in men.

On June 28, 1914, the assassination of an Austrian duke by a Serbian revolutionary was the match that lit the fire of World War I. Austria-Hungary—to which Freud was fiercely loyal—declared war on Serbia, and soon the conflict was global. Russia defended Serbia, while Germany declared war on Russia and then France. England joined the conflict in support of France, and three years later so did the United States. World War I eventually involved more than twenty-five countries.

As for the Great War’s effect on Freud and his ideas, the long and terrible years of fighting both hindered and helped.

At first, it all but halted the spread of psychoanalysis as well as its development. Up until now, a relatively stable Europe had allowed for a free flow of ideas. Doctors and patients traveled to other countries to give or receive treatment. Now there were enemy borders. Doctors were to unable to meet for conferences to exchange new ideas or circulate the findings of their research.

Freud remained pro-war. Unlike fellow scientist Albert Einstein (and many other scientists), he declined to sign a petition for peace. He was far too old to fight in the army. But he had nothing but pride for his three sons who were in combat.

Then the reports starting coming in of the particular devastation of this “modern” war. Technological advances of the past decades—the telephone, the car, the airplane—had certainly enhanced the quality of life. The nineteenth century saw itself as an age of progress. But “progress” also changed the way war was fought, making it far deadlier. Airplanes dropped bombs, tanks were armed with long-range guns, submarines torpedoed enemy ships, poison gas destroyed soldiers’ lungs, and machine guns and artillery made trench warfare shockingly brutal. Death tolls reached staggering numbers. On a single day, five thousand men died within twenty minutes in the trenches of northeast France and Belgium. By the end of the war, Austria-Hungary had lost 1.2 million men.

Every family was affected in some way. Increasingly nervous about his sons, Freud was also concerned about the future of psychoanalysis. “I am living . . . in my private trench,” he wrote. He felt more isolated than ever.

During these tense, awful years, he somehow stayed productive, seeing patients and working on his “science of unconscious mental processes.” His books became increasingly lofty. He revised his earlier thinking about the divisions of the mind—into conscious and unconscious—as too simplistic.

He proposed a new structure for the mind, dividing it into three parts. In the original German he called them “
es
(it),” “
ich
(I),” and “
überich
(over-I).” In Latin, still the most respectable language in science, they became the Id, Ego, and Superego.

Freud borrowed the term “Id” from the work of German psychoanalyst Georg Groddeck,
The Book of the Id
. An infant is all Id. The Id is not logical, and strives only to gratify primitive needs. It can’t distinguish fantasy from reality, thought from deed, moral from immoral. People driven only by Id do whatever is needed to get what they want.

As a healthy child grows older, the Ego develops. Partly conscious and aware of the consequences of behavior, the Ego can apply logic, solve problems, and exercise self-control. Freud liked to compare the Ego to a man on horseback: The horse (Id) is more powerful, but the rider can rein the horse in and lead it down acceptable paths. The more control the rider has, the healthier the person is.

The Superego is last to develop, an internal voice that judges, rewards, and punishes. It represents our conscience and counteracts the selfish Id with ethical rules. “The Id is quite amoral, the Ego tries to be moral, and the Superego can be hyper-moral and cruel,” as Freud put it—too judgmental. The three parts of the mind war with one another constantly, in complicated ways, but in a healthy person they operate according to a system of checks and balances.

So the unconscious, according to Freud’s latest thinking, was not one homogeneous blob. A healthy Ego adapts to reality and interacts with the outside world in a way that accommodates both Id and Superego. All too often, though, the irrational Id remains in control of people, not the rational Ego.

This was breathtaking—an entire personality theory explaining how healthy minds behave, not just unhealthy ones. Freud boldly proceeded to apply his three-part structure to whole countries.

As the war dragged on and on, naturally his thoughts turned to the psychological basis for war. The conflict knocked over old assumptions about progress and the advancement of civilization—nations were using science and technology
against
each other. Here was hard evidence that the rational mind, even in so-called civilized countries, was not in control. Instead, primitive Id urges, like the instinct to fight and kill, were running amok. Wasn’t the war, this ultimate irrational event, proof that his ideas were right? Freud thought so. He wrote, “The world will never again be a happy place. . . . And the saddest thing is that it is exactly the way we should have expected people to behave from our knowledge of psychoanalysis.”

The end of the war saw the defeat and collapse of the once-mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire. Besides the 1.2 million casualties, millions more were wounded, or died of starvation or an epidemic of influenza. The victorious Allies wanted to make Germany and Austria pay for starting the war, and to ensure they never became powerful enough to start another. Now a small country, Austria was desperately poor and chaotic. Along with many others, Freud lost his life savings. He grew thin, and was sometimes too cold to work. He needed food more than money, and once asked to be paid for an article in potatoes. He wrote to everyone he knew outside the country, requesting food, clothes, and of course cigars.

But in a strange turn of events, World War I gave psychoanalysis more credibility. All three of Freud’s sons had returned from the war without permanent injuries. But many other soldiers were coming back from the unspeakable carnage with a mysterious new ailment. Its symptoms were nightmares, waking flashbacks of being in battle, disabling depression. At first doctors diagnosed the ailment as physical, perhaps the result of concussions from explosions. “Shell shock,” it was labeled. Men suffering from shell shock were often dismissed as weak, in need of more self-control.

But when even officers and soldiers of “good character” started succumbing to shell shock, doctors became desperate to find helpful treatment. At the war’s end, 250,000 men around the world were officially diagnosed with “severe mental disability.”

In England of 1911, before the war, an entire audience of doctors had stood up and left during a presentation of Freud’s ideas. But now British doctors noticed something surprising and revised their earlier contempt for analysis. Like the women discussed in Freud’s first book,
Studies on Hysteria
, these soldiers were traumatized. Talk therapy seemed to release the pent-up emotions, relieve the symptoms, allow a man to weave the trauma of battle into his life and move on. Respect for Freudian analysis soared.

To many, the success of psychoanalysis in treating shell shock was solid evidence that unconscious emotions and concealed memories made people sick. Mental illness
was
an illness. Literal shell shock—the physical effect of loud noise or concussion—came to be rejected as a diagnosis. Men were suffering from the psychological effects of war. Twenty years later, by the time America was preparing to enter the second World War, military doctors were required to learn basic psychoanalysis. For the first time the army examined the mental health of its recruits, rejecting almost one out of ten as psychologically unfit for the trauma of war. (Finally, in 1980, after American soldiers who had come back from the Vietnam War showed persistent symptoms similar to shell shock, the syndrome was officially recognized as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.)

The casualties of war brought respectability to Freudian theory. By the early 1920s, psychoanalysis institutes had sprouted in London, New York, and Germany. Freud’s theories now served to explain cultural, social, artistic, religious, and anthropological trends—leading to changes in sexual attitudes and new developments in the arts. Literature, painting, all forms of creativity were seen to have their roots in the unconscious.

Freud wrote: “I am swimming in satisfaction. . . . My life’s work is protected and preserved for the future.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Becoming a Household Word

AFTER THE ONE and only time Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein met, Freud joked, “He understands as much about psychology as I do about physics, so we had a very pleasant talk.” But when friends of Einstein suggested he undergo psychoanalysis, he declined. “I should like very much to remain in the darkness.”

Plenty of people—on both sides of the Atlantic—disagreed with Einstein; they preferred to be enlightened. After the war, hundreds of psychoanalysts set up shop in New York. Going beyond serious treatment, psychoanalysis became trendy. “How Freudian” was a common, even chic thing to say.

By the 1920s Freud was a household word. In 1924 he appeared on the cover of
Time
magazine (the first of four times). An American newspaper offered him $25,000 to analyze two notorious murderers. A movie mogul was willing to pay $100,000 if he consulted on a Hollywood love story. Freud declined both offers as tacky publicity stunts that would harm his reputation as a serious scientist. (At the same time, his American nephew, Edward Bernays, was showing corporations how to use advertising to make people want things they didn’t need—by appealing to unconscious desires.)

Again and again, Freud refused requests to write articles for popular magazines on subjects like “The Wife’s Mental Place in the Home.” Psychoanalysis needed to be taken seriously. And yet Freud himself was “evolving” over the years, reconsidering earlier attitudes. His views on women broadened—perhaps because women were some of his most enthusiastic followers. In 1910, he had voted to allow women to join his International Psychoanalytic Association. He gave financial support to Lou Andreas-Salome, one of the first woman psychoanalysts. And he took pride in the fact that his desperately needed “crown prince” turned out to be a princess. In the last year of the Great War, he began psychoanalyzing his own daughter. As she grew up, Anna Freud devoted herself to him, never married, and became a distinguished psychoanalyst in her own right. Considered the founder of the field of child psychoanalysis, she trained noted psychoanalyst Erik Eriksson, who classified the stages of child development still being taught.