Freud - Complete Works (778 page)
A Disturbance Of Memory On The Acropolis
4829
It will be enough for my purposes
if I return to two general characteristics of the phenomena of
derealization. The first is that they all serve the purpose of
defence; they aim at keeping something away from the ego, at
disavowing it. Now, new elements, which may give occasion for
defensive measures, approach the ego from two directions - from the
real external world and from the internal world of thoughts and
impulses that emerge in the ego. It is possible that this
alternative coincides with the choice between derealizations proper
and depersonalizations. There are an extraordinarily large number
of methods (or mechanisms, as we say) used by our ego in the
discharge of its defensive functions. An investigation is at this
moment being carried on close at hand which is devoted to the study
of these methods of defence: my daughter, the child analyst, is
writing a book upon them. The most primitive and thorough-going of
these methods, ‘repression’, was the starting point of
the whole of our deeper understanding of psychopathology. Between
repression and what may be termed the normal method of fending off
what is distressing or unbearable, by means of recognizing it,
considering it, making a judgement upon it and taking appropriate
action about it, there lie a whole series of more or less clearly
pathological methods of behaviour on the part of the ego. May I
stop for a moment to remind you of a marginal case of this kind of
defence? You remember the famous lament of the Spanish Moors
‘
Ay de mi Alhama
’, which tells how King Boabdil
received the news of the fall of his city of Alhama. He feels that
this loss means the end of his rule. But he will not ‘let it
be true’, he determines to treat the news as ‘
non
arrivé
’. The verse runs:
‘Cartas le fueron venidas
que Alhama era ganada:
las cartas echo en el fuego,
y al mensajero matara.’
It is easy to guess that a further determinant
of this behaviour of the king was his need to combat a feeling of
powerlessness. By burning the letters and having the messenger
killed he was still trying to show his absolute power.
A Disturbance Of Memory On The Acropolis
4830
The second general characteristic
of the derealizations - their dependence upon the past, upon the
ego’s store of memories and upon earlier distressing
experiences which have since perhaps fallen victim to repression -
is not accepted without dispute. But precisely my own experience on
the Acropolis, which actually culminated in a disturbance of memory
and a falsification of the past, helps us to demonstrate this
connection. It is not true that in my schooldays I ever doubted the
real existence of Athens. I only doubted whether I should ever see
Athens. It seemed to me beyond the realms of possibility that I
should travel so far - that I should ‘go such a long
way’. This was linked up with the limitations and poverty of
our conditions of life in my youth. My longing to travel was no
doubt also the expression of a wish to escape from that pressure,
like the force which drives so many adolescent children to run away
from home. I had long seen clearly that a great part of the
pleasure of travel lies in the fulfilment of these early wishes -
that it is rooted, that is, in dissatisfaction with home and
family. When first one catches sight of the sea, crosses the ocean
and experiences as realities cities and lands which for so long had
been distant, unattainable things of desire - one feels oneself
like a hero who has performed deeds of improbable greatness. I
might that day on the Acropolis have said to my brother: ‘Do
you still remember how, when we were young, we used day after day
to walk along the same streets on our way to school, and how every
Sunday we used to go to the Prater or on some excursion we knew so
well? And now, here we are in Athens, and standing on the
Acropolis! We really
have
gone a long way!’ So too, if
I may compare such a small event with a greater one, Napoleon,
during his coronation as Emperor in Notre Dame, turned to one of
his brothers - it must no doubt have been the eldest one, Joseph -
and remarked: ‘What would
Monsieur notre Père
have said to this, if he could have been here to-day?’
A Disturbance Of Memory On The Acropolis
4831
But here we come upon the
solution of the little problem of why it was that already at
Trieste we interfered with our enjoyment of the voyage to Athens.
It must be that a sense of guilt was attached to the satisfaction
in having gone such a long way: there was something about it that
was wrong, that from earliest times had been forbidden. It was
something to do with a child’s criticism of his father, with
the undervaluation which took the place of the overvaluation of
earlier childhood. It seems as though the essence of success was to
have got further than one’s father, and as though to excel
one’s father was still something forbidden.
As an addition to this generally
valid motive there was a special factor present in our particular
case. The very theme of Athens and the Acropolis in itself
contained evidence of the son’s superiority. Our father had
been in business, he had had no secondary education, and Athens
could not have meant much to him. Thus what interfered with our
enjoyment of the journey to Athens was a feeling
filial
piety
. And now you will no longer wonder that the recollection
of this incident on the Acropolis should have troubled me so often
since I myself have grown old and stand in need of forbearance and
can travel no more.
I am ever sincerely yours,
SIGM. FREUD
January
, 1936
4832
LETTER TO GEORG FUCHS
(1931)
After reading your letter I felt a wave of the
deepest sympathy, but it was soon halted by two reflections - an
internal difficulty and an external obstacle. A sentence from your
own preface offers me an apt expression of the former: ‘No
doubt, however, there are people who have so poor an opinion of the
civilized humanity of to-day that they deny the existence of a
world conscience.’ I believe I am one of those people. For
instance, I could not subscribe to the assertion that the treatment
of convicted prisoners is a disgrace to our civilization. On the
contrary, a voice would tell me, it is in perfect harmony with our
civilization, a necessary expression of the brutality and lack of
understanding which dominate the civilized humanity of the present
time. And if by some miracle people suddenly became convinced that
the reform of the penal system is the first and most urgent task
before our civilization, what else would emerge than that
capitalist society has not now the means for meeting the
expenditure which that reform would demand? The second, the
external, difficulty is brought to light in the passages in your
letter in which you exalt me into a recognized intellectual leader
and cultural innovator and attribute to me the privilege of having
the ear of the civilized world. I only wish, my dear Sir, that it
were so: I should not in that case refuse your request. But it
seems to me that I am
persona ingrata
, if not
ingratissima
, with the German people - and moreover with the
learned and the unlearned alike. I hope most positively that you
will not think that I feel seriously aggrieved by these signs of
disapproval. It is tens of years since I have been so foolish;
measured by your example, moreover, it would be too ridiculous. I
only mention these trivialities to confirm the fact that I am no
desirable advocate for a book which seeks to kindle its
readers’ sympathies on behalf of a good cause. Let me add
that your book is a moving one, noble, wise and good.
4833
PREFACE TO RICHARD
STERBA’S
DICTIONARY OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
(1936)
July 3, 1932.
Dear Dr. Sterba, Your
Dictionary
gives
me the impression of being a valuable aid to learners and of being
a fine achievement on its own account. The precision and
correctness of the individual entries is in fact of commendable
excellence. English and French translations of the headings are not
indispensable but would add further to the value of the work. I do
not overlook the fact that the path from the letter A to the end of
the alphabet is a very long one, and that to follow it would mean
an enormous burden of work for you. So do not do it unless you feel
an internal obligation - only obey a compulsion of
that
kind
and certainly not any external pressure.
Yours sincerely,
Freud.
4834
PREFACE TO MARIE
BONAPARTE’S
THE LIFE AND WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE: A PSYCHO-ANALYTIC
INTERPRETATION
(1933)
In this volume my friend and pupil, Marie
Bonaparte, has directed the light of psycho-analysis upon the life
and work of a great writer of a pathological type. Thanks to her
interpretative efforts, we can now understand how much of the
characteristics of his work were determined by their author’s
special nature; but we also learn that this was itself the
precipitate of powerful emotional ties and painful experiences in
his early youth. Investigations of this kind are not intended to
explain an author’s genius, but they show what motive forces
aroused it and what material was offered to him by destiny. There
is a particular fascination in studying the laws of the human mind
as exemplified in outstanding individuals.
4835
TO THOMAS MANN ON HIS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY
(1935)
My Dear Thomas Mann, Accept as a friend my
affectionate greetings on your sixtieth birthday. I am one of your
‘oldest’ readers and admirers and I might wish you a
very long and happy life as is the custom on such occasions. But I
shall not do so. Wishing is cheap and strikes me as a relapse into
the days when people believed in the magical omnipotence of
thoughts. I think, too, from my most personal experience, that it
is well if a compassionate fate sets a timely end to the length of
our life.
Nor do I think the practice
deserves imitation by which affection on these festive occasions
disregards respect, and by which the subject of the celebration is
compelled to hear himself loaded with praise as a man and analysed
and criticized as an artist. I shall not be guilty of such
presumption. I can allow myself something else however. In the name
of a countless number of your contemporaries I can express to you
our confidence that you will never do or say - for an
author’s words are deeds - anything that is cowardly or base.
Even in times and circumstances that perplex the judgement you will
take the right path and point it out to others.
Yours very sincerely,
Freud
June
1935.
4836
MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
THREE ESSAYS
(1939)
4837
Intentionally left blank
Moses And Monotheism
4838
I
MOSES AN EGYPTIAN
To deprive a people of the man whom they take
pride in as the greatest of their sons is not a thing to be gladly
or carelessly undertaken, least of all by someone who is himself
one of them. But we cannot allow any such reflection to induce us
to put the truth aside in favour of what are supposed to be
national interests; and, moreover, the clarification of a set of
facts may be expected to bring us a gain in knowledge.
The man Moses, who set the Jewish
people free, who gave them their laws and founded their religion,
dates from such remote times that we cannot evade a preliminary
enquiry as to whether he was a historical personage or a creature
of legend. If he lived, it was in the thirteenth, though it may
have been in the fourteenth, century before Christ. We have no
information about him except from the sacred books of the Jews and
their traditions as recorded in writing. Although a decision on the
question thus lacks final certainty, an overwhelming majority of
historians have nevertheless pronounced in favour of the view that
Moses was a real person and that the Exodus from Egypt associated
with him did in fact take place. It is justly argued that the later
history of the people of Israel would be incomprehensible if this
premiss were not accepted. Indeed, science to-day has become
altogether more circumspect and handles traditions far more
indulgently than in the early days of historical criticism.
The first thing that attracts our
attention about the figure of Moses is his name, which is
‘Mosheh’ in Hebrew. ‘What is its origin?’
we may ask, ‘and what does it mean?’ As we know, the
account in the second chapter of
Exodus
already provides an
answer. We are told there that the Egyptian princess who rescued
the infant boy from exposure in the Nile gave him that name,
putting forward an etymological reason: ‘because I drew him
out of the water’. This explanation, however, is clearly
inadequate. ‘The Biblical interpretation of the name as
"he who was drawn out of the water"’, argues a
writer in the
Jüdisches Lexicon
,¹ ‘is
popular etymology, with which, to begin with, it is impossible to
harmonize the
active
form of the Hebrew word - for
"
Mosheh
" can at most only mean "he who draws
out".’ We can support this rejection by two further
arguments: in the first place, it is absurd to attribute to an
Egyptian princess a derivation of the name from the Hebrew, and
secondly, the water out of which the child was drawn was most
probably not the water of the Nile.
¹
Herlitz and Kirschner (1930),
4
(1),
303.
Moses And Monotheism
4839
On the other hand, a suspicion
has long been expressed, and in many different quarters, that the
name ‘Moses’ is derived from the Egyptian vocabulary.
Instead of enumerating all the authorities who have argued in this
sense, I will quote the relevant passage from a comparatively
recent book,
The Dawn of Conscience
(1934), by J. H.
Breasted, a writer whose
History of Egypt
(1906) is regarded
as a standard work: ‘It is important to notice that his name,
Moses, was Egyptian. It is simply the Egyptian word
"mose" meaning "child", and is an abridgement
of a fuller form of such names as "Amen-mose" meaning
"Amon-a-child" or "Ptah-mose" meaning
"Ptah-a-child", these forms themselves being likewise
abbreviations for the complete form
"Amon-(has-given)-a-child" or "Ptah-(has
given)-a-child". The abbreviation "child" early
became a convenient rapid form for the cumbrous full name, and the
name Mose, "child", is not uncommon on the Egyptian
monuments. The father of Moses without doubt prefixed to his
son’s name that of an Egyptian god like Amon or Ptah, and
this divine name was gradually lost in current usage, till the boy
was called "Mose". (The final
s
is an addition
drawn from the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It is not in
the Hebrew which has "Mosheh").’¹ I have
repeated this passage word for word and I am by no means ready to
share responsibility for its details. I am also rather surprised
that Breasted has failed to mention precisely the analogous
theophorous names which figure in the list of Egyptian kings, such
as Ahmose, Thoth-mose and Ra-mose.
¹
Breasted, 1934, 350.
Moses And Monotheism
4840
Now we should have expected that
one of the many people who have recognized that ‘Moses’
is an Egyptian name would also have drawn the conclusion or would
at least have considered the possibility that the person who bore
this Egyptian name may himself have been an Egyptian. In relation
to modern times we have no hesitation in drawing such conclusions,
though nowadays people bear not one name but two - a family name
and a personal name - and though a change of name or the adoption
of a similar one in fresh circumstances is not beyond possibility.
Thus we are not in the least surprised to find it confirmed that
the poet Chamisso was French by birth, that Napoleon Buonaparte, on
the other hand, was of Italian extraction and that Benjamin
Disraeli was indeed an Italian Jew, as we should expect from his
name. In relation to ancient and primitive times, one would have
thought that a conclusion such as this as to a person’s
nationality based on his name would have seemed far more reliable
and in fact unimpeachable. Nevertheless, so far as I know, no
historian has drawn this conclusion in the case of Moses - not even
any of those who, once again like Breasted himself (1934, 354), are
ready to assume that ‘Moses was learned in all the wisdom of
the Egyptians’.¹
What prevented their doing so
cannot be judged with certainty. Possibly their reverence for
Biblical tradition was invincible. Possibly the notion that the man
Moses might have been anything but a Hebrew seemed too monstrous.
However that may be, it emerges that the recognition that the name
of Moses is Egyptian has not been looked upon as affording decisive
evidence of his origin, and that no further conclusions have been
drawn from it. If the question of this great man’s
nationality is regarded as important, it would seem to be desirable
to bring forward fresh material that would help towards answering
it.
¹
Although the suspicion that Moses was an
Egyptian has been voiced often enough without reference to his
name, from the earliest times up to the present.
Moses And Monotheism
4841
That is what my short paper aims
at doing. Its claim to be given a place in the pages of
Imago
rests on the fact that the substance of what it has to
contribute is an application of psycho-analysis. The argument
arrived at in this way will undoubtedly only impress that minority
of readers who are familiar with analytic thinking and who are able
to appreciate its findings. To them, however, it will, I hope,
appear significant.
In 1909 Otto Rank, who was at
that time still under my influence, published, following a
suggestion of mine, a book bearing the title
Der Mythus von der
Geburt des Helden
.¹ It deals with the fact that
‘almost all the prominent civilized nations... began at an
early stage to glorify their heroes, legendary kings and princes,
founders of religions, dynasties, empires or cities, in brief their
national heroes, in a number of poetic tales and legends. The
history of the birth and of the early life of these personalities
came to be especially invested with phantastic features, which,
indifferent peoples, even though widely separated by space and
entirely independent of each other, present a baffling similarity
and in part, indeed, a literal conformity. Many investigators have
been impressed with this fact, which has long been
recognized.’ If, following Rank, we construct (by a technique
a little like Galton’s) an ‘average legend’ that
brings into prominence the essential features of all these stories,
we arrive at the following picture:
‘The hero is the child of
the
most aristocratic
parents; usually the son of a
king.
‘His conception is preceded
by difficulties, such as abstinence or prolonged barrenness or his
parents having to have intercourse in secret owing to external
prohibitions or obstacles. During the pregnancy, or even earlier,
there is a prophecy (in the form of a dream or oracle) cautioning
against his birth, usually threatening danger to his father.
¹
It is far from being my intention to
belittle the value of Rank’s independent contributions to the
work.
Moses And Monotheism
4842
‘As a result of this the
new-born child is condemned to death or to
exposure
, usually
by the orders of
his father or of someone representing him
;
as a rule he is given over to the
water
in a
casket
.
‘He is afterwards rescued
by animals or by
humble people
(such as shepherds) and is
suckled by a
female animal
or by a
humble woman
.
‘After he has grown up, he
rediscovers his aristocratic parents after highly variegated
experiences,
takes his revenge on his father
, on the one
hand, and is
acknowledged
on the other and achieves
greatness and fame.’
The oldest of the historical
figures to whom this myth of birth is attached is Sargon of Agade,
the founder of Babylon (c. 2800 B.C.). For us in particular it will
not be without interest to quote the account of it, which is
attributed to him himself:
‘Sargon, the mighty King,
the King of Agade am I.
My mother was a Vestal, my father I knew
not
, while my father’s brother dwelt in the mountains. In
my city, Azupirani, which lies on the bank of the Euphrates, my
mother, the Vestal, conceived me.
Secretly she bore me. She laid
me in a coffer made of reeds
, closed my doorway with pitch, and
let me down into the river
, which did not drown me. The
river carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of
water, lifted me out in the kindness of his heart.
Akki, the
drawer of water, brought me up as his own son
. Akki, the drawer
of water, made me his gardener, While I worked as a gardener,
Ishtar grew fond of me, I became King and for forty-five years I
held kingly sway.’
The names most familiar to us in
the series which begins with Sargon of Agade are Moses, Cyrus and
Romulus. But in addition to these Rank has brought together a whole
number of other heroic figures from poetry or legend, of whom the
same story of their youth is told, either in its entirety or in
easily recognizable fragments - including Oedipus, Karna, Paris,
Telephos, Perseus, Heracles, Gilgamesh, Amphion and Zethos, and
others.
Moses And Monotheism
4843
Rank’s researches have made
us acquainted with the source and purpose of this myth. I need only
refer to them with some brief indications. A hero is someone who
has had the courage to rebel against his father and has in the end
victoriously overcome him. Our myth traces this struggle back as
far as the individual’s prehistory, for it represents him as
being born against his father’s will and rescued despite his
father’s evil intention. The exposure in a casket is an
unmistakable symbolic representation of birth: the casket is the
womb and the water is the amniotic fluid. The parent-child
relationship is represented in countless dreams by pulling out of
the water or rescuing from the water. When a people’s
imagination attaches the myth of birth which we are discussing to
an outstanding figure, it is intending in that way to recognize him
as a hero and to announce that he has fulfilled the regular pattern
of a hero’s life. In fact, however, the source of the whole
poetic fiction is what is known as a child’s ‘family
romance’, in which the son reacts to a change in his
emotional relation to his parents and in particular to his father.
A child’s earliest years are dominated by an enormous
overvaluation of his father; in accordance with this a king and
queen in dreams and fairy tales invariably stand for parents.
Later, under the influence of rivalry and of disappointment in real
life, the child begins to detach himself from his parents and to
adopt a critical attitude towards his father. Thus the two families
in the myth - the aristocratic one and the humble one - are both of
them reflections of the child’s own family as they appeared
to him in successive periods of his life.
We may fairly say that these
explanations make the widespread and uniform nature of myths of the
birth of heroes fully intelligible. For that reason it is all the
more deserving of interest that the legend of the birth and
exposure of Moses occupies a special position and, indeed, in one
essential respect contradicts the rest.
Moses And Monotheism
4844
Let us start from the two
families between which, according to the legend, the child’s
destiny is played out. According to the analytic interpretation, as
we know, the families are one and the same and are only
differentiated chronologically. In the typical form of the legend,
it is the first family, the one into which the child is born, which
is the aristocratic one, most often of royal rank; the second
family, the one in which the child grows up: is the one that is
humble or has fallen on evil days. This tallies, moreover, with the
circumstances to which the interpretation traces the legend back.
Only in the legend of Oedipus is this difference blurred: the child
which has been exposed by one royal family is received by another
royal couple. It can scarcely be by chance, one feels, that
precisely in this example the original identity of the two families
may be dimly perceived in the legend itself. The social contrast
between the two families provides the myth - which, as we know, is
designed to stress the heroic nature of a great man with a second
function which becomes of special significance when applied to
historical personages. For the myth can also be employed to create
a patent of nobility for the hero, to raise his social standing. To
the Medes, Cyrus was a foreign conqueror; but by means of a legend
of exposure he became the grandson of their king. The same applies
to Romulus. If any such person existed, he must have been an
adventurer of unknown origin, an upstart; the legend, however, made
him offspring and heir of the royal house of Alba Longa.