Peter Gay’s biography of Freud (Freud A Life for Our Time) has provided me with the sweeping arc of the man’s life and especially articulated his often abstract if not abstruse theories in lucid prose. I was a mere lad in my twenties when I picked up Beyond the Pleasure Principle; I don’t recall much of anything about the book except that it did excite my intellectual interest, that life is an elliptical journey back to the womb, that the organic returns to the inorganic, the death wish, etc (leave it to me to pick one of his most dense works). Over the years I went on to read Moses and Monotheism, The Interpretation of Dreams, and Leonard da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood. In any case I nibbled at Freud by reading his most accessible books first, although the pleasure principle was like chewing through teflon. On some level I was hooked. Years later I went on to become a therapist. Perhaps serendipity is a kind of repetition compulsion (huh?).
I entered a psychoanalytic institute in my 40s. I recall a young woman student having a conniption about Freud — mind you, this was a course and school that focused on psychoanlytic psychotherapy — going after his attitudes on woman. What was interesting to observe was the dismissal of what he had written as if his sole life was dedicated to writing about women. The telling thing to mention here was when the instructor asked her if she could share with the class what books she had read that provided this information, she was stopped dead in her tracks. (She never read Freud!) She was sharing partial truths, and “truth”s about Freud without really having read what he did say. The instructor was also bemused by the fact she entered a school that had to focus on Freud to accomplish its end. The point here is that we often share our ignorances about Freud without having read him (think Sarah Palin).
One can dismiss Freud, and one can accurately portray his Victorian and bourgeois attitudes but like Darwin he will not go away. I tend to favor the old man. What I find, rather what I identify with, is his take on people in general, his atheistic approach to Christianity and Judaism, his stoicism — 15 years of cancer in his mouth and the use of an often ill-fitting prosthesis to keep his jaw in place, his relentless pursuit of the truth no matter how it might hurt or repel, his cheerful pessimism on life which is dead on and his scholarship. His knowing and being a Jew in anti-semitic Vienna yet celebrating Easter and Christmas in secular fashion in his household; however, mind you, he didn’t go and get himself baptized so that he could make his way in the world. (And what can you say about a man who mastered 7 languages by the age of 17.)
As a student I found his theoretical works difficult to absorb; he constantly, I recall, had to be reread; his prose is a series of tied together firecrackers and his writing clear but in some fashion so knotty and intense with such far-seeing complications that I had to work on not being frustrated. His works on theory and technique fit into a small paperback yet they have to be studied more than read for their implications. And yet he can write terrific prose. He is the first one to use psychoanalytic techniques in assessing art. His take on Michelangelo’s Moses is fascinating and riveting yet accomplished in a short essay. Sir Kenneth Clark shared Freud’s insights about the idealzed women in Leonardo’s paintings. I just had a wild association to Pollack’s painting style as he shits all over the canvas. I am not being reductive here, but it is a kind of intellectual delight, a madeleine, if you will, to apply Freud’s precepts to the world at large and especially to the human race. It is a worldview (Weltanschauung) and one needn’t be rigid about it. It is a context from which to see, such as one’s ethnicity or nation. It is a kind of truth, a kind of seeing, if one keeps one’s eye on not being conditioned. We live in an age and time, Auden called, “a climate of opinion” which is esssentially Freud-driven and we take his early truths for granted and oedipally attack big daddy when we can. But he will not go away.
Enthused by Gay’s biography which I highly recommend, I went to EBay and scouted for hardback editions of particular works. I no longer can abide paperback print especially when you are reading Freud. Since I was in therapy between 1968 to 1972 I recall the complete standard edition of Freud’s works in my shrink’s office. At that time all 25 volumes cost about $500. On EBay used and beaten versions can be as high as $1700. There are some individuals no doubt who have read the edition more than once, bless their souls. I decided to select hardback versions put out by decent presses, what else do I have to do as I age into molecular dust. I bought Civilization and Its Discontents, Moses and Monotheism and Totem and Taboo, books that would stoke the bonfires of the Nazis. (The Future of an Illusion and The Interpretation of Dreams are next. )Two of these I have read, two I look forward to. The books he wrote in his last ten years are a summing up, applying the tenets of psychoanalytic thought to group behavior, mass psychology, religion (a favorite of his) — his Moses book which posits that he was an Egyptian, that there were two Moses, one murdered by the tribes of Israel (are you hooked?) and gives a superior spanking to Christianity on levels it does not want to examine — the Oedipal struggle between the father religion (Judaism) and the son religion (guess who) and what the son needs to do unconsciously. Does anti-Semitism stem from all this?You betcha.
Since the state of Nevada will not allow me to practice my craft without taking state tests and being supervised by those with fewer years of experience than myself, I decided to take a nap and just let it pass me by; America, I love thee. How many times do you have to prove you’re not a virgin? So I will revisit the realms of the master and have masturbatory fantasies. While on the subject if you want a tiny sip of the analytic approach (couch free) I will share an anecdote from my training. An experienced therapist juiced in Freud encounters a young male adult who proceeds to remove his penis from his fly and begins to masturbate; the therapist is a woman if that makes any difference. I heard the tale from her. In any case as he works himself up, she says to him: “Can you try to put that into words?” Words! Yes and yes and yes again. One more anecdote to die for: In a kind of halfway house for “wayward” youth as the old term states it, one of the young teenagers decided to visit the school therapist at her campus home. He knocks on the door and he is invited in; he is asked if he would care for some tea and cookies. He is invited to sit down and talk. All the while he is agitated and unnerved, for it is a response he is totally unprepared for. For, you see, he is as naked as a jay bird. He makes his excuses and leaves. Like Adam with hand over crotch, he exits Eden. Agreed, of course, not all shrinks would handle things this way — nor I. However, there is much to be said for the analytic approach. All of life is an expression, our expression, to put things into words or to act upon the world. Choose your flavor; I became a writer, others harpoon whales. We all need to make the unconscious conscious, a working definition of psychotherapy that has Freudian salt in it, like a good lox.
Since I am beginning to have medical issues, I am working on my fears, my anxieties. Freud provides me with some courage and substance. He had a dark view of humanity, yet he enjoyed life; he did say once that life is essentially two themes — work and love: not a bad assessment. In fantasy I can only imagine what telling, riveting and perspicacious essays he would have written about the Holocaust — he lost several sisters in the concentration camps. He was not jaded about men and women, nor did violence in the Great War take him back; nor did the Nazis surprise him with their barbaric viciousness. He had learned all he needed about humanity with an analysand and a couch, quite remarkable.You can make the case that his pessimism was a defense, if you choose to; be reductive if you wish. I believe he was, like Darwin, a great observer and humanity reveals itself very well if you are silent and look as if for the first time. After all, as he states in his autobiographical study childhood sexuality has been around since Cro-Magnon but no one took a real look ( except, as he would grant, the exceptional artists)– human beings do not want to know! Given what he has taught, our inhibitions may very well fray and there goes the planet. I remember a cartoon that has stayed with me for decades. An infant is in a crib with a mobile hanging over his mattress, and In his chubby little hand he has nuclear missiles and he is waving them to and fro. The species is in arrested childhood. Good luck!
His pessimism took no prisoners, no expectations were made and especially no judgments on behavior were given — his theories were not religions. I like his pessimism because it makes me aware as Freud rubs my eyeballs with sandpaper. I’d rather be shaken into awareness.
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