Freud - Complete Works (742 page)
If the addiction to gambling,
with the unsuccessful struggles to break the habit and the
opportunities it affords for self-punishment, is a repetition of
the compulsion to masturbate, we shall not be surprised to find
that it occupied such a large space in Dostoevsky’s life.
After all, we find no cases of severe neurosis in which the
auto-erotic satisfaction of early childhood and of puberty has not
played a part; and the relation between efforts to suppress it and
fear of the father are too well known to need more than a
mention.¹
¹
Most of the views which are here expressed
are also contained in an excellent book by Jolan Neufeld
(1923)
Dostoevsky And Parricide
4569
APPENDIX
A
LETTER FROM FREUD TO THEODOR REIK
April 14, 1929
. . . I have read your critical
review of my Dostoevsky study with great pleasure. All your
objections deserve consideration and must be recognized as in a
sense apt. I can bring forward a little in my defence. But of
course it will not be a question of who is right or who is
wrong.
I think you are applying too high
a standard to this triviality. It was written as a favour to
someone and written reluctantly. I always write reluctantly
nowadays. No doubt you noticed this about it. This is not meant, of
course, to excuse hasty or false judgements, but merely the
careless architecture of the essay as a whole. I cannot dispute the
unharmonious effect produced by the addition of the Zweig analysis;
but deeper examination will perhaps show some justification for it.
If I had not been hampered by considerations of the place where my
essay was to appear, I should certainly have written: ‘We may
expect that in the history of a neurosis accompanied by such a
severe sense of guilt a special part will be played by the struggle
against masturbation. This expectation is completely fulfilled by
Dostoevsky’s pathological addiction to gambling. For, as we
can see from a short story of
Zweig’s . . . etc.’ That is to say,
the amount of space given to the short story corresponds not to the
relation: Zweig-Dostoevsky, but to the other one:
masturbation-neurosis. All the same, the outcome was clumsy.
Dostoevsky And Parricide
4570
I hold firmly to a scientifically
objective social assessment of ethics, and for that reason I should
not wish to deny the excellent Philistine a certificate of good
ethical conduct, even though it has cost him little
self-discipline. But alongside of this I grant the validity of the
subjective psychological view of ethics which you support. Though I
agree with your judgement of the world and mankind as they are
to-day, I cannot, as you know, regard your pessimistic dismissal of
a better future as justified.
As you suggest, I included
Dostoevsky the psychologist under the creative artist. Another
objection I might have raised against him was that his insight was
so much restricted to abnormal mental life. Consider his
astonishing helplessness in face of the phenomena of love. All he
really knew were crude, instinctual desire, masochistic subjection
and loving out of pity. You are right, too, in suspecting that, in
spite of all my admiration for Dostoevsky’s intensity and
pre-eminence, I do not really like him. That is because my patience
with pathological natures is exhausted in analysis. In art and life
I am intolerant of them. Those are character traits personal to me
and not binding on others.
Where are you going to publish
your essay? I rate it very highly. It is only scientific research
that must be without presumptions. In every other kind of thinking
the choice of a point of view cannot be avoided; and there are, of
course, several of these . . .
4571
SOME DREAMS OF DESCARTES’
A LETTER TO MAXIME LEROY
(1929)
4572
Intentionally left blank
4573
SOME DREAMS OF DESCARTES’
A LETTER TO MAXIME LEROY
On considering your letter asking me to
examine some dreams of Descartes’, my first feeling was an
impression of dismay, since working on dreams without being able to
obtain from the dreamer himself any indications on the relations
which might link them to one another or attach them to the external
world - and this is clearly the case when it is a question of the
dreams of a historical figure - gives, as a general rule, only a
meagre result. In the event my task turned out to be easier than I
had anticipated; nevertheless, the fruit of my investigations will
no doubt seem to you much less important than you had a right to
expect.
Our philosopher’s dreams
are what are known as ‘dreams from above’
(‘
Träume von oben
’). That is to say, they
are formulations of ideas which could have been created just as
well in a waking state as during the state of sleep, and which have
derived their content only in certain parts from mental states at a
comparatively deep level. That is why these dreams offer for the
most part a content which has an abstract, poetic or symbolic
form.
The analysis of dreams of this
kind usually leads us to the following position: we cannot
understand the dream, but the dreamer - or the patient - can
translate it immediately and without difficulty, given that the
content of the dream is very close to his conscious thoughts. There
then remain certain parts of the dream about which the dreamer does
not know what to say: and these are precisely the parts which
belong to the unconscious and which are in many respects the most
interesting.
In the most favourable cases we
explain this unconscious with the help of the ideas which the
dreamer has added to it.
This way of judging ‘dreams
from above’ - and this term must be understood in a
psychological, not in a mystical, sense - is the one to be followed
in the case of Descartes’ dreams.
Some Dreams Of Descartes'
4574
The philosopher interprets them
himself and, in accordance with all the rules for the
interpretation of dreams, we must accept his explanation, but it
should be added that we have no path open to us which will take us
any further.
In confirmation of his
explanation we can say that the hindrances which prevented him from
moving freely are perfectly well known to us: they are a
representation by the dream of an internal conflict. The left side
represents evil and sin, and the wind the ‘evil genius’
(
animus
).
The different figures who appear
in the dream cannot of course be identified by us, although
Descartes, if he were questioned, would not have failed to identify
them. The bizarre elements, of which, incidentally, there are few,
and which are almost absurd - such as ‘the melon from a
foreign land’, and the little portraits - remain
unexplained.
As regards the melon, the dreamer
has had the - original - idea of seeing in it ‘the charms of
solitude, but presented by purely human inducements’. This is
certainly not correct, but it might provide an association of ideas
which would lead to a correct explanation. If it is correlated with
his state of sin, this association might stand for a sexual picture
which occupied the lonely young man’s imagination.
On the question of the portraits
Descartes throws no light.
4575
THE GOETHE PRIZE
(1930)
4576
Intentionally left blank
The Goethe Prize
4577
LETTER TO DR. ALFONS PAQUET
Grundlsee, 3.8.1930
My dear Dr. Paquet,
I have not been spoilt by public
marks of honour and I have so adapted myself to this state of
things that I have been able to do without them. I should not like
to deny, however, that the award of the Goethe Prize of the City of
Frankfurt has given me great pleasure. There is something about it
that especially fires the imagination and one of its stipulations
dispels the feeling of humiliation which in other cases is a
concomitant of such distinctions.
I must particularly thank you for
your letter; it moved and astonished me. Apart from your
sympathetic penetration into the nature of my work, I have never
before found the secret, personal intentions behind it recognized
with such clarity as by you, and I should very much like to ask you
how you come by such knowledge.
I am sorry to learn from your
letter to my daughter that I am not to see you in the near future,
and postponement is always a chancy affair at my time of life. Of
course I shall be most ready to receive the gentleman (Dr. Michel)
whose visit you announce.
Unfortunately I shall not be able
to attend the ceremony in Frankfurt; I am too frail for such an
undertaking. The company there will lose nothing by that: my
daughter Anna is certainly pleasanter to look at and to listen to
than I am. We propose that she shall read out a few sentences of
mine which deal with Goethe’s connections with
psycho-analysis and defend the analysts themselves against the
reproach of having offended against the respect due to the great
man by the analytic attempts they have made on him. I hope it will
be acceptable if I thus adapt the theme that has been proposed to
me - my ‘inner relations as a man and a scientist to
Goethe’ - or else that you will be kind enough to let me
know.
Yours very sincerely,
Freud
The Goethe Prize
4578
ADDRESS DELIVERED IN THE GOETHE
HOUSE AT FRANKFURT
My life’s work has been directed to a
single aim. I have observed the more subtle disturbances of mental
function in healthy and sick people and have sought to infer - or,
if you prefer it, to guess - from signs of this kind how the
apparatus which serves these functions is constructed and what
concurrent and mutually opposing forces are at work in it. What we
- I, my friends and collaborators - have managed to learn in
following this path has seemed to us of importance for the
construction of a mental science which makes it possible to
understand both normal and pathological processes as parts of the
same natural course of events.
I was recalled from such narrow
considerations by the astonishing honour which you do me. By
evoking the figure of the great universal personality who was born
in this house and who spent his childhood in these rooms, your
distinction prompts one as it were to justify oneself before him
and raises the question of how
he
would have reacted if his
glance, attentive to every innovation in science, had fallen on
psycho-analysis. Goethe can be compared in versatility to Leonardo
da Vinci, the Renaissance master, who like him was both artist and
scientific investigator. But human images can never be repeated,
and profound differences between the two great men are not lacking.
In Leonardo’s nature the scientist did not harmonize with the
artist, he interfered with him and perhaps in the end stifled him.
In Goethe’s life both personalities found room side by side:
at different times each allowed the other to predominate. In
Leonardo it is plausible to associate his disturbance with that
inhibition in his development which withdrew everything erotic, and
hence psychology too, from his sphere of interest. In this respect
Goethe’s character was able to develop more freely.
The Goethe Prize
4579
I think that Goethe would not
have rejected psycho-analysis in an unfriendly spirit, as so many
of our contemporaries have done. He himself approached it at a
number of points, recognized much through his own insight that we
have since been able to confirm, and some views, which have brought
criticism and mockery down upon us, were expounded by him as
self-evident. Thus he was familiar with the incomparable strength
of the first affective ties of human creatures. He celebrated them
in the Dedication to his
Faust
poem, in words which we could
repeat for each of our analyses:
Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten,
Die früh sich einst dem trüben Blick gezeigt,
Versuch’ ich wohl, euch diesmal festzuhalten?
. . . . . . . .
Gleich einer alten, halbverklungenen Sage
Kommt erste Lieb’ und Freundschaft mit herauf
He explained to himself the strongest impulse
of love that he experienced as a mature man by apostrophizing his
beloved: ‘Ach, du warst in abgelebten Zeiten meine Schwester
oder meine Frau.’
Thus he does not deny that these
perennial first inclinations take figures from one’s own
family circle as their object.
Goethe paraphrases the content of
dream-life in the evocative words:
Was von Menschen nicht gewusst
Oder nicht bedacht,
Durch das Labyrinth der Brust
Wandelt in der Nacht.
Behind this magic we recognize the ancient,
venerable and incontestably correct pronouncement of Aristotle -
that dreaming is the continuation of our mental activity into the
state of sleep - combined with the recognition of the unconscious
which psycho-analysis first added to it. Only the riddle of
dream-distortion finds no solution here.
The Goethe Prize
4580
In what is perhaps his most
sublime poetical creation,
Iphigenie
, Goethe shows us a
striking instance of expiation, of the freeing of a suffering mind
from the burden of guilt, and he makes this catharsis come about
through a passionate outburst of feeling under the beneficent
influence of loving sympathy. Indeed, he himself repeatedly made
attempts at giving psychological help - as for example to the
unfortunate man who is named as Kraft in the Letters, and to
Professor Plessing, of whom he tells in the
Campagne in
Frankreich
; and the procedure which he applied goes beyond the
method of the Catholic Confessional and approximates in some
remarkable details to the technique of our psycho-analysis. There
is an example of psychotherapeutic influence which is described by
Goethe as a jest, but which I should like to quote in full since it
may not be well known and yet is very characteristic. It is from a
letter to Frau von Stein (No. 1444, of September 5, 1785):
‘Yesterday evening I
performed a psychological feat. Frau Herder was still in a state of
tension of the most hypochondriacal kind over all the unpleasant
things that had happened to her at Carlsbad. Particularly through
the woman who was her companion in the house. I made her tell and
confess everything to me, other people’s misdeeds and her own
faults with their most minute circumstances and consequences, and
at the end I absolved her and made it clear to her, jestingly, in
this formula, that these things were now done with and cast into
the depths of the sea. She herself made fun of it all and is really
cured.’
Goethe always rated Eros high,
never tried to belittle its power, followed its primitive and even
wanton expressions with no less attentiveness than its highly
sublimated ones and has, as it seems to me, expounded its essential
unity throughout all its manifestations no less decisively than
Plato did in the remote past. Indeed, it is perhaps more than a
chance coincidence when in
Die Wahlverwandtschaften
he
applies to love an idea taken from the sphere of chemistry - a
connection to which the name of psycho-analysis itself bears
witness.
I am prepared for the reproach
that we analysts have forfeited the right to place ourselves under
the patronage of Goethe because we have offended against the
respect due to him by trying to apply analysis to him himself: we
have degraded the great man to the position of an object of
analytic investigation. But I would dispute at once that any
degradation is intended or implied by this.
The Goethe Prize
4581
We all, who revere Goethe, put
up, without too much protest, with the efforts of his biographers,
who try to recreate his life from existing accounts and
indications. But what can these biographies achieve for us? Even
the best and fullest of them could not answer the two questions
which alone seem worth knowing about. It would not throw any light
on the riddle of the miraculous gift that makes an artist, and it
could not help us to comprehend any better the value and the effect
of his works. And yet there is no doubt that such a biography does
satisfy a powerful need in us. We feel this very distinctly if the
legacy of history unkindly refuses the satisfaction of this need -
for example in the case of Shakespeare. It is undeniably painful to
all of us that even now we do not know who was the author of the
Comedies, Tragedies and Sonnets of Shakespeare; whether it was in
fact the untutored son of the provincial citizen of Stratford, who
attained a modest position as an actor in London, or whether it
was, rather, the nobly-born and highly cultivated, passionately
wayward, to some extent
déclassé
aristocrat,
Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, hereditary Lord Great
Chamberlain of England. But how can we justify a need of this kind
to obtain knowledge of the circumstances of a man’s life when
his works have become so full of importance to us? People generally
say that it is our desire to bring ourselves nearer to such a man
in a human way as well. Let us grant this; it is, then, the need to
acquire affective relations with such men, to add them to the
fathers, teachers, exemplars whom we have known or whose influence
we have already experienced, in the expectation that their
personalities will be just as fine and admirable as those works of
art of theirs which we possess.
The Goethe Prize
4582
All the same, we may admit that
there is still another motive force at work. The biographer’s
justification also contains a confession. It is true that the
biographer does not want to depose his hero, but he does want to
bring him nearer to us. That means, however, reducing the distance
that separates him from us: it still tends in effect towards
degradation. And it is unavoidable that if we learn more about a
great man’s life we shall also hear of occasions on which he
has in fact done no better than we, has in fact come near to us as
a human being. Nevertheless, I think we may declare the efforts of
biography to be legitimate. Our attitude to fathers and teachers
is, after all, an ambivalent one since our reverence for them
regularly conceals a component of hostile rebellion. That is a
psychological fatality; it cannot be altered without forcible
suppression of the truth and is bound to extend to our relations
with the great men whose life histories we wish to investigate.
When psycho-analysis puts itself
at the service of biography, it naturally has the right to be
treated no more harshly than the latter itself. Psycho-analysis can
supply some information which cannot be arrived at by other means,
and can thus demonstrate new connecting threads in the
‘weaver’s masterpiece’ spread between the
instinctual endowments, the experiences and the works of an artist.
Since it is one of the principal functions of our thinking to
master the material of the external world psychically, it seems to
me that thanks are due to psycho-analysis if, when it is applied to
a great man, it contributes to the understanding of his great
achievement. But, I admit, in the case of Goethe we have not yet
succeeded very far. This is because Goethe was not only, as a poet,
a great self-revealer, but also, in spite of the abundance of
autobiographical records, a careful concealer. We cannot help
thinking here of the words of Mephistopheles:
Das Beste, was du wissen kannst,
Darfst du den Buben doch nicht sagen.