Insane Freud
For good or ill, Sigmund Freud, more than any other explorer of the psyche, has shaped the mind of the 20th century.
(Mostly for ill).
Gay, Peter, March, Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalyst, Time, March, 29, 1999.
Tell me more, please, dear Sigmund, about your family's neuropathological taint.
Freud's hereditary taint
Freud's insanity - as he explained to his fiancé, Martha, in the letter on February 10, 1886 * -, may have been hereditary. To his credit, in the letter, Freud honestly recounted the Freud family's genetic taint. Surprisingly, the brave - or stupid (?) - Martha was undeterred, proceeding, on the morbid path, towards marriage.
I have never told you about my uncle in Breslau, Freud wrote, [but] the story of his family is very sad. Of the four children, only one daughter is normal ... One son is a hydrocephalic and feebleminded; another ... [like Freud?] went insane at the age of nineteen, and a daughter went the same way when she was twenty-odd.
Somehow, Freud managed to suppress this knowledge.
I have always thought of my own family as free of any hereditary taint, he revealed to her, but the fact that, one of the sons of the ... uncle in Vienna died an epileptic is something I cannot shift to the mother’s side, with the result that I have to acknowledge to a considerable “neuropathological taint,” as it is called.
That was almost the end of the bad news. Now comes the not so bad, news:
Fortunately, of us seven brothers and sisters there are very few symptoms of this kind to report except that we, Rosa and I (I don’t count Emanuel), have a nicely developed tendency toward neurasthenia.
.
Common stories
He wasn't telling Martha the whole truth, since his so-called neurasthenia was the smallest of his mental problems.
Now comes the real good news: Freud the healer wasn't worried. After all, he was almost (!) a real doctor.
As a neurologist, he explained to Martha, I am about as worried by such things as a sailor is by the sea. As it is apparent, Freud believed he knew how to travel the sea of insanity without a lifeboat and with no life jacket.
But the real onus was on Martha rather than on Freud the miracle man. As he severely told her: it is your duty to keep your nerves in good condition if the three children, of whom you have been prematurely dreaming, are to be healthy.
And he added: if the thought of medicine makes you shudder, darling, I can’t blame you, adding that, These stories are very common in Jewish families.
Freud ended his confession by telling Martha: that’s enough about medicine. If she had any brains, by now, she would be scared to death, running as far as she could from him, but she wasn't and she didn't
Why those stories were very common in Jewish families, Freud didn't explain, but, if he was right, one possible cause could have been inbreeding.
Many years later, still contemplating the family's mental plight, Freud revealed, in a letter to his nephew, Samuel, that there are many ‘weak spots’ in the family. **
And the weakest, spot. in Freud's extended family, was, without a shred of doubt, Freud himself.
* Freud, Sigmund, The Letters of Sigmund Freud, (1960, p. 210).
** Cohen, David, The Escape Of Sigmund Freud, (2012, p. 60).
Dr Prichard. Would recognise Freud as a monomaniac in no time...
Monomaniac
Writing to Fliess on May 21, 1894, Freud complained that, They [the doctors in Vienna] look upon me as pretty much of a monomaniac.* This is an interesting claim, although the term monomaniac is somewhat outdated. So what was monomania according to Dr Pritchard, as he defined it in 1837?
Monomania, or partial insanity, in which the understanding is partially disordered or under the influence of some particular illusion, referring to one subject, and involving one train of ideas, while the intellectual powers appear, when exercised on other subjects, to be in a great measure unimpaired. **
Actually, this is not a bad description of Freud's sexual affliction. Anything and everything, when it came to mental diseases, but not only, could be explained as a result of some kind of sexual mishap in one's life. No wonder, Freud was shunned by his contemporaries who, unlike Freud, who was a special case, believed that a person is more than an extension of one's sexual organ. In fact, considering his ubiquitous obsession with sex, Freud's partial insanity appears to have been the domineering factor in his life.
* Freud, S., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904, (1985. p. 73).
** Prichard, James Cowles, A Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders Affecting the Mind, (1837, p. 6).
Freud delusional meurotic
Fools, visionaries, sufferers from delusions, neurotics and lunatics have played great roles at all times in the history of mankind. … Such persons ... have made great discoveries … in spite of their abnormalities; … it is often precisely the pathological traits of their characters …, which give them the power ... to overcome the resistance of the world. *
The Introduction to Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study by Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, (1931, p. XVI).
Breuer, Freud's sugar daddy. Diagnosed Freud.
Morally insane
For most, in not all, of his university years, the bisexual Freud was a gigolo selling his services to the highest (male) bidder. Unable to finish his doctor's degree, and having no paying job, Freud came up with a brilliant idea. He would, like a leech, or a parasite, attach himself, to successful doctors, and scientists, and have them "lend" him money, so that he could survive till another day.
True, one day, thanks to academic fraud, Freud managed to pass the examination for the doctor's degree. One of the generous doctors - there were several - and Freud's sugar daddy - Dr Josef Breuer - supported Freud for many years. As a matter of course, Breuer, a successful physician, having almost daily contact with Freud, was able to diagnose him, without fail, early on, but, as long as they were a couple, he kept his observation to himself.
But not even love last forever. And a day came that Breuer felt he had to tell Freud the truth about who he was. At the time, the unfaithful Freud had already a new lover, Wlhelm Fliess, in Berlin. Possibly, on Breuer's part, it was jealousy talking when he told Freud what his diagnosis was.
More normal
Unsurprisingly, Freud didn't like what he was told. According to him [Breuer] - Freud informed Fliess, on March 1, 1896 - I should have to ask myself every day whether I am suffering from moral insanity or paranoia scientifica.
As every lunatic would, Freud denied there was any proof in Breuer's "accusation". And he proclaimed, I regard myself as the psychically more normal one. *
Isn't it what commonly a mental patient says? It's always the doctor, that diagnosed the mental illness, that is the crazy one.
So what does Breuer's diagnosis tell us about Freud? Paranoia, as it is well known, is the belief that one is being persecuted for no reason, but moral madness is no longer part of our vocabulary.
What is moral insanity?
This is how, Dr Pritchard, defined the term in 1837: Moral insanity or madness consisting in a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses, without any remarkable disorder or defect of the interest or knowing and reasoning faculties, and particularly without any insane illusion or hallucinations.**
This is not a bad definition of the young Freud's problem, that nowadays basically corresponds to the definition of a psychopath.
This is exactly who Freud was, a dangerous psychopath performing his evil deeds under the guise of a medicine doctor. Notably, over time, Freud developed insane pseudo-scientific illusions forming what he called the science of psychoanalysis.
* Freud, S., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904, (1985. p. 175).
** Prichard, James Cowles, A Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders Affecting the Mind, (1837, p. 6).
Freud talking about himself
Most of the examples of psychic disturbances of daily life that I have here compiled I was obliged to take from observation of myself.
Freud, Sigmund, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, (1901/1914, p. 10)
In the Freud's biography, Jones recounted a favourite anecdote of Freud's concerning an erratic doctor who was given a medical post in an asylum; it was said to be the most considerate way of getting him there. *
* Jones, Ernest, Jones, Ernest, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work: The Formative Years and the Great Discoveries, 1856-1900, (1953, p. 64).
Much more normal
To Freud's credit, Freud realised, he wasn't what you would call normal. Thus, in the letter of March 2, 1899, aged 43, Freud informed his bisexual lover in Berlin, Wilhelm Fliess, that things were improving, or rather that he believed that they did, writing, I am apparently much more normal than I was four or five years ago, (1) Freud wrote.
Unfortunately, he was deluding himself, things weren't changing. And, Freud remained a lunatic till the end of his life, which is apparent if one only reads his last written opus, Moses and Monotheism, published in 1938, only a year before his death.
The more normal Martha
No doubt, you are aware of the saying, tell me who you spend your life with, and I will tell you who you are. No wonder that Freud's fiancé, and wife, over time also became affected by Freud's lunacy, not as abnormal as her husband but not far from it. This is what Freud's authorised biographer, Ernest Jones, had to say about her, Martha’s [Freud's wife] temperament, being the more normal of the two, is the easier to describe. (2)
Most definitely, besides other things, Freud was a perverted sex maniac, just as he had been described by his more critical and sane contemporaries. Freud wasn't hiding his perverted nature. As he explained, recounting his contributions to the theory of sex (and perversions) - as he practised it - He who is in any way psychically abnormal … is, according to my experience, regularly so in his sexual life. (3)
This is a great explanation of who Freud was and what his sex life was like.
* Freud, S., The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904, (1985. p. 73).
** Jones, Ernest, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, (1953, p. 121).
*** Freud, S., Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, (1910, p. 13).
Freud's contemporary critic, Karl Kraus, about Freud's "science"
If mankind, with all its repulsive faults, is an organism, then the psychoanalyst is its excrement. Psychoanalysis is an occupation in whose very name ‘psycho’ and ‘anus’ are united.*
* Szasz, Thomas,Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors: A Pioneer Critic and His Criticism of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, (1976, p. 115).
Psycho as in mentally ill, and anus referring to Freud's anal obsession.
Psychoanalytical illness, a product of delusion
Reflecting the contemporaries' sentiment, in the late 1800s, the Viennese, Karl Kraus, satirist, and critic ... had described psychoanalysis as, the illness that pretended to be its own cure. (1) He may have had a valid point.
Things were different on the other side of the world, possibly, because the Freudian mindset was more in line with the American mentality, and its changing morality.
Thus, Freud was invited to lecture at the Clark University in 1909. He was surprised himself by the acceptance of his ideas.
As I stepped on to the platform, he wrote, to deliver my Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis it seemed like the realization of some incredible day-dream: psycho-analysis was no longer a product of a delusion, it had become a valuable part of reality. It has not lost ground in America since our visit. (2)
Just as Freud wrote, until that moment in time, his invention he called psychoanalysis, was the product of his delusion. After the lectures, though, the situation changed, at least in America. From now on, psychoanalysis, was, not only Freud's but, unfortunately, also an American delusion, lasting for almost a century.
A regular halluciné with fixed ideas
True, not all Americans were blinded by Freudian literary creations, although many were, Thus, the American philosopher and psychologist, William James, in his letter to Mary Calkin wrote in 1909: I strongly suspect Freud, with his dream theory, of being a regular halluciné (3) [a lunatic].
And, in the letter to Theodor Flournoy James revealed that Freud, made on me the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas. (4) In other words, James agreed with the Vienna doctors who diagnosed Freud as a monomaniac.
He's crazy
No wonder that, among psychologists it [Freud's name] tended to be followed by the verdict: “Oh, he’s crazy!” (5) Even so, the psychoanalytical bug was spreading all over the world, not unlike a locust plague, destroying all in its way, impossible to eradicate.
But Dr. Freud. What would your wife say?
Pornography
Some of the scientists pointed out that the psychoanalytical "science" was nothing more than a perverted person's view of human psychology. Thus, the famous brain anatomist Nissl told one audience in 1910, "It is enough to call this [psychoanalysis] pornography". (5)
Freud's wife, Martha, who knew firsthand what kind of treatments Freud was delivering, agreed. As she told Rene Laforgue, If I did not realise how seriously my husband takes his treatments, I should think that psychoanalysis is a form of pornography. (6)
Notably, even though she knew about the pornographic treatments of his patients on the Freudian couch, the always obedient wife didn't object.
Freud was too clever to be caught by the Austrian police.
A matter for the police
By 1910 the mere mention of Freud's theories was enough to provoke the chairman of a Hamburg congress of German neurologists and psychiatrists, professor Wilhelm Weygandt, to start banging his fist on the table, shouting: This is not a topic for discussion at a scientific meeting; it is a matter for the police. (5)
Unfortunately, like Don Quixote, Weygandt was fighting weather mills and lost. It was already too late to stop the Freudian craze that lasted almost a century, continuing, to a much lesser extent, to this very day.
(1) Clark, Ronald, Freud, the Man and the Cause, (1980, p. 39).
(2) SE, 20, p. 52. (An autobiographical study.)
(3) Clark, (1980, p. 271).
(4) James, William, The letters of William James, (1920, p. 328).
(5) Clark, (1980, p. 285).
(6) Laforgue, Rene, Personal Memories of Freud, (1956, p. 342), in Ruitenbeek, Hendrik M., ed., Freud as We Knew Him, (1973).
Jung about the insane Freud
He saw with the (mental) patient's eyes, so to speak, and so reached a deeper understanding of mental illness than had hitherto been possible.
Jung, Carl G., Memories, Dreams and Reflections, (1989), p. 168)
Vienna university: Freud was shunned, ignored, laughed at.
Laughed at
Freud’s contemporaries knew exactly what he was, a fraud. No wonder that Freud was shunned by the medical establishment in Vienna.
As one of his followers, Wilhelm Reich, recalled,
In 1919, there was a very small circle … about eight men. At the Psychiatric Clinic, they were laughed at. In the medical school, they were laughed at. Freud was laughed at. (1)
Yet another of Freud's followers, Max Graf, recalled that,
In those days when one mentioned Freud's name in a Viennese gathering, everyone would begin to laugh, as if someone had told a joke. Freud was the queer fellow who ... imagined himself an interpreter of dreams.
A sex maniac
More than that, he saw sex in everything. It was considered bad taste to bring up Freud's name in the presence of ladies. They would blush when his name was mentioned. Those who were less sensitive spoke of Freud with a laugh, as if they were telling a dirty story. (2)
No celebration
Notwithstanding Freud's bizarre international fame, on his 70th birthday, in 1926, Vienna university had, to the bitter end, shied away from giving him what was no doubt professional due. (3)
Most definitely, the university made the right decision to ignore Freud's birthday.
Freud didn't deserve any recognition, but rather a life-long imprisonment, or, why not, a death sentence.
(1) Reich, Reich Speaks of Freud: Wilhelm Reich Discusses His Work and His Relationship with Sigmund Freud, (1967, p. 36).
(2) Graf, Max. Reminiscences of Prof. Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 11.4.1942, pp. 465-76., p. 469.
(3) Clark, (1980, p. 39).
Freud the crank
Sometimes Freud could be quite self-deprecating, like in this letter, of June 5, 1917, to a physician, and pioneer of psychosomatic medicine, Georg Groddeck (1866-1934). Thus, talking, without a doubt, about himself, Freud explained that, experience [Freud’s own] has shown that a man with unbridled ambition is bound at some time to break away and, to the loss of science and his own development, become a crank. (1)
Did Freud show signs of unbridled ambition? Freud’s ambition was nothing less than pathological, which he realised, making him, literally, a lethal danger to his competitors. Just consider Freud’s statement in his dream book revealing that his craving to be addressed with a different title [‘of professor extraordinarius’] … showed a pathological ambition, (2) which meant that Freud would resort to virtually any means to get ahead on his scientific path. Consequently, as Freud explained, under the guise of a dream, he was. sacrificing to my [Freud’s] ambition people whom I [he] greatly value. (3) And what does this sacrifice stand for, if not for the removal of those people from his path to greatness?
Writing, no doubt, about himself - Freud liked to confess his sins under the guise of a patient - Freud explained that his, pathological anxiety about reading newspapers was to be explained as a reaction against his pathological ambition to see himself in print and to read of his fame in the newspapers. (4) This was one of the least dangerous expressions of his pathology.
(1) Freud, Sigmund, The Letters of Sigmund Freud, (1960, p. 317).
(2) SE 4, p. 192.
(3) SE 5, p. 422.
(4) SE 6, p. 108.
The Nobel medal Freud didn't deserve
Nobel Prize; But not for Freud
For many years, Freud was vying for the Nobel Prize. It wasn't to be. Even though some of his naive admirers, more than once, proposed him for the prize, the Nobel Committee wasn't swayed. Freud was never even considered for the prize.
Notably, One of the Nobel Prize winners who refused to support Freud’s candidacy was Albert Einstein, who explained on February 15, 1928, that he could not offer any dependable opinion on the truth of Freud’s teaching, much less offer a verdict that should be authoritative for others.
Moreover, Einstein cautioned, it seemed doubtful to him that a [amateur] psychologist like Freud should be eligible for the Nobel Prize in medicine, which is, he wrote, I suppose, the only one that could be considered. (1)
A clever man, Albert. He wasn't duped by Freud's, at the time, ubiquitous, furore.
Again, seven years later, writing, to his son, apparently about Freud, Einstein with no uncertain terms told him: I am almost positive that the thing with the Viennese doctor is a simple swindle. He also told his son, he wouldn’t be paying for his, crazy house of treatment. (2)
When, again, in 1936 Freud was nominated for the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Committee's report was scathing. Freud appears, it said, more than any of his patients, to be possessed by a sick and twisted imagination, which speaks volumes, since he has an abundance of unusually strange patients. (3)
The Committee, unlike the rest of the world, wouldn't be fooled.
Others shared the committee's view of the Viennese quack. Thus, Sir Peter Medawar (1972), a Nobel-Prize winner for Medicine called Freud’s theories “one of the saddest and strangest landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.” (4)
(1) Gay, Peter, Freud: A Life for Our Time, (1998, p. 456).
(2) Bachner, Michael, Freud’s a fraud? 110 unpublished Einstein documents unveiled by Hebrew University, The Times of Israel, March 6, 2019. "https://www.timesofisrael.com/110-previously-unpublished-einstein-documents-unveiled-by-hebrew-university/". 23.09.2024.
(3) Svensén, Bo, ed. Nobelpriset i litteratur. Nomineringar och utlåtanden 1901–50. vol. 2, (2001, p. 24).
(4) Clark (1980, p. 4).
Freud, the Viennese fraud
Freud's death didn't save him from personal attacks. This is how one of Nabokov's students recalled what happened during Nabokov's lecture in1957: about halfway through, the heating pipes began clanking and reached a literally deafening pitch, over which Mr. Nabokov shouted: The Viennese fraud is railing at me from his grave. (1)
Who knows? Maybe Freud did indeed attack him. Taking into account Freud's vindictiveness, Nabokov may have been right.
Notably, Freud’s publishers in England were dubious about having taken on the task of publishing Freud’s books. Thus, when in, 1924 the Hogarth Press … began to take over publication of psychoanalytical literature … Virginia Woolf [the publisher] was not enthusiastic.
We are publishing all Dr. Freud, she wrote, and I glance at the proofs and read how M. A. B. threw a bottle of red ink on to the sheets of his marriage bed to excuse his impotence to the housemaid but threw it in the wrong place, which unhinged his wife’s mind – and to this day she pours claret on the dinner table. We could all go on like that for hours; and yet these Germans think it proves something – besides their own imbecility. (2)
Accusing innocent Germans of approving of Freud’s folly was a total misconception. Freud was Austrian rather than German, and the fact is that Germans, Hitler in particular, did not take to his ideas. It was, rather abroad - in the first place in the United States - than at home, that Freud’s insane teachings had been accepted as the unassailable truth.
(1) Boyd, Brian, Vladimir Nabokov, (1991, pp. 307-308).
(2) Clark, (1980, p. 417).
In the lunatic asylum, where Freud belonged... Unfortunately, it never happened...
Mad doctor Freud
Dr Porter, a historian of medicine had a fitting description of Freud’s healing practice: it seems to me, he wrote, that in many of the encounters between 'mad people' and their doctors … Freud, and so forth - common humanity and often common sense perhaps lie squarely on the side of the mad. *
The mad, that visited Freud, weren’t as mad as their doctor, not even close. Unfortunately, even though a medical dilettante, as his boyfriend Fliess described him - Freud recounted Fliess’ statement, in the letter of May 21, 1894 - Freud, thanks to academic fraud, had a doctor’s diploma, (and thus a license to kill), and his patients didn’t.
A point in case: in his letter to Breuer on September 1, 1886, reporting that he had given, lectures … on medical service in the army, Freud wrote, So far I haven’t been locked up. ** One can only add, unfortunately.
* Porter, Roy, A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane (1988, p. 4).
** Freud, Sigmund, The Letters of Sigmund Freud, (1960, p. 218).