The Freud Files

by Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel; Shamdasani, Sonu;

  Freud to Fliess, 29 November 1895: Wernicke’s pupils, Sachs and C. S. Freund, have produced a piece of nonsense on hysteria (on psychic paralyses),304 which by the way is almost a plagiarism of my ‘Considerations, etc.’ in the Archives de neurologie.305 Sachs’s postulation of the constancy of psychic energy is more painful.306

  Freud to Fliess, 14 November 1897: I was able once before to tell you that it was a question of the abandonment of former sexual zones, and I was able to add that I had been pleased at coming across a similar idea in Moll. (Privately I concede priority in the idea to no one.)307

  Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, 11 November 1908: Strange as it may sound, infantile sexuality was really discovered by him – Freud; before that, no hint of it existed in the literature . . . Moll gleaned the importance of infantile sexuality from the Three Essays, and then proceeded to write his book. For that reason, Moll’s whole book is permeated by the desire to deny Freud’s influence.308

  Freud to Fliess, 10 March 1898: I opened a recently published book by Janet, Hystérie et idées fixes [Hysteria and Fixed Ideas]309 with a pounding heart and put it aside again with my pulse calmed. He has no inkling of the key.310

  Freud to Fliess, 31 August 1898: I found the substance of my insight stated quite clearly in Lipps, perhaps rather more so than I would like. ‘The seeker often finds more than he wished to find!’ . . . The correspondence [of our ideas] is close in details as well; perhaps the bifurcation from which my own new ideas can branch off will come later.311

  Fliess to Freud, 20 July 1904: I have come across a book by Weininger, in the first biological part of which I find, to my consternation, a description of my ideas on bisexuality and the nature of sexual attraction consequent upon it – feminine men attract masculine women and vice versa. From a quotation in it I see that Weininger knew Swoboda – your pupil – (before the publication of his book), and I learned that the two men were intimi. I have no doubt that Weininger obtained knowledge of my ideas via you and misused someone else’s property.312

  Freud to Fliess, 27 July 1904: For me personally you have always (since 1901) been the author of the idea of bisexuality; I fear that in looking through the literature, you will find that many came at least close to you. The names I mentioned to you are in my manuscript [the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality];313 I did not take books along with me, so I cannot give you more precise documentation. You will certainly find it in Psychopathia sexualis by Krafft-Ebing . . . I can without feeling diminished admit that I have learned this or that from others. But I have never appropriated something belonging to others as my own . . . So now, with regard to bisexuality, I also do not want to be in such a position vis-à-vis you . . . On the other hand, there is so little of bisexuality or of other things I have borrowed from you in what I say, that I can do justice to your share in a few remarks . . . P.S. Möbius has devoted a pamphlet, ‘Sex and Immorality,’ to Weininger’s book . . . He claims various ideas of Weininger as his own. It will certainly be of interest to you to look up which ones.314

  To affirm the embeddedness of the genesis of Freud’s work within the multiple intellectual networks and debates of his time is by no means to assert that he was a plagiarist or that there was nothing novel in his work – far from it. There is no denying the fact that Freud elaborated an original synthesis from the theories from which he drew, and it is precisely this which makes his work interesting. What Freud historians have contested is that psychoanalysis, unlike any other psychological theory, was born through a process of ‘immaculate conception’ (Peter Swales).315 Far from emerging ready-made from what Freud called its prehistory,316 it was embedded within historical and theoretical contexts, without which its emergence would be inexplicable and simply miraculous.

  2 The interprefaction of dreams

  Text for Psycho-analysts: ‘Seek and ye shall find.’ B Matt. vii. 7; Luke xi. 9.

  Wohlgemuth (1923), 223

  The ‘history of psychoanalysis’ which Freud and his followers recounted is by no means a history as generally understood. Rather it is an edifying fable, a scientific ‘family romance’, designed to negate the humble historical origins of psychoanalysis. How else can one understand why Freud devised such a mythic account, which could so easily be factually contradicted? Moreover, it is obvious that Freud would have been aware that many of his contemporaries would not have taken seriously his pretensions of originality. This was precisely what critics such as Hoche, Aschaffenburg, Forel and others stressed.

  Hoche: How is such a [psychoanalytic] movement possible? Without doubt a negative presupposition is the lack of a historical sense and philosophical training on the part of the followers able to be fanatical for the theory.1

  Aschaffenburg: When Freud strongly overestimates himself and the significance of his theory, and with sharp words presents the psychiatrists from whom he has much to learn, even concerning elementary knowledge, as incapable, then one must regard him as having been spoilt by the blind admiration of his disciples.2

  Forel: It does not occur to me to deny the great service of Freud and his particular school. Yet I must make two objections to him; first, that he ignores the works of his predecessors in a methodical manner, and second, that he presents all sorts of hypothetical things as facts . . . According to Hitschmann’s book, [Freud’s Theory of Neuroses3] one would believe that Freud discovered the unconscious! We need only refer to the numerous works of modern psychology, as well as to Dessoir’s more strictly defined concept of the ‘underconscious’ [Unterbewussten] . . . to show how incorrect such a view is . . . Freud would like to revolutionise the entire domain of psychology and psychopathology. As we have seen, he ignores his predecessors and those who do not agree with him with a sovereign silence.4

  Vogt, International Congress of Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 7–8 August 1910: I object that a man like myself who has collected his own dreams since the age of sixteen and has investigated the problems under discussion here since 1894, that is, almost as long as Freud has done and longer than any of his disciples, should be refused the right to discuss these questions by any Freudian!5

  Morton Prince: But in the pursuit of these [psychoanalytic] researches there has been too great a disregard of large numbers of facts, of psychopathological data which have been accumulated by the patient investigations of other observers. It is much as if a bacteriologist had confined his studies to the investigation of a single bacillus and had neglected the great storehouse of knowledge acquired in the whole bacteriological field.6

  Victor Haberman: Now why should Kraepelin, Ziehen, Hoche, Isserlin, Aschaffenburg, etc., men trained in psychology and psychiatry, men whose studies in association-psychology and in psychopathology (to say nothing of their neurological work) are familiar to every student in these fields, some of whose studies have become ‘classical’ and the fundamentals for subsequent work – why should these painstaking investigators be ‘ignorant of’ and ‘have no feel for the subject’? Why should they be ‘incompetent and unable to judge’? Why should it be that ‘they have not mastered the theory,’ these real masters of psychology and psychopathology! That they should not be able to comprehend and apprehend what these remarkable members of the Psychoanalytic Society have mastered with ease – some of them writing ex cathedra on the subject directly they were weaned to it – these wondrous wielders of the Deep Psychology, with their vast experience (whence derived?) and their profound learning in soul-analysis (whence acquired – all from the reading of Freudian literature?).7

  Wohlgemuth: Almost complete ignorance is manifested everywhere [in Freud] of the literature and the results of modern psychology, of experimental method and of logic.8

  In addition, most of the protagonists of Freud’s accounts were still living (notably Breuer and Bertha Pappenheim), and hence there was the risk that they might publicly contradict him. How are we to understand, then, this rescripting of history?

  To invoke Freud’s ‘megalomania’ o
r ‘desire for grandeur’ (openly avowed in The Interpretation of Dreams) or his ‘paranoia’ (the myth of the hostile irrationality of his colleagues, the invocation of ‘resistances to psychoanalysis’, the pathologising of adversaries, etc.) is insufficient and comes down to utilising the same sort of reductive psychopathological interpretations which Freud liberally applied to others. What such explanations leave out of account is that Freud’s histories were primarily directed towards a particular public: from ‘The history of the psychoanalytic movement’, Freud was principally preaching to the converted and was no longer preoccupied with the objections of his peers. The congresses leading up to Breslau had indicated that psychoanalysis was not going to get very far in open academic debate in psychiatric circles. Through the formation of the International Psychoanalytic Association, directed behind the scenes by the paladins of the Secret Committee, Freud now had the ideal vehicle to propagate his ideas. With its own societies, journals and publication house, the movement could spread with scant regard for the views of the medical, psychiatric and psychological professions. Henceforth, anyone who questioned Freud’s version of events could simply be expelled from the movement. Protected from the world by his disciples, Freud could recreate his own reality and his own history, without fear of being contradicted. From this perspective, the legend of the isolated and persecuted scientist is less the expression of Freud’s megalomania or mythomania, than the reflection of the institutional isolation of psychoanalysis. Conversely, the legend maintained the identity of the movement, portraying its mythic independence from and superiority over all other psychological and psychiatric theories. To view the legend simply as a means to satisfy Freud’s ambition and narcissism or simply as a means to promote psychoanalysis in the competing psychological marketplace misses the intimate connections between the legend and psychoanalysis itself.

  The immaculate induction

  It is critical to grasp the significance of the Freudian rewriting of history and the de-historicisation to which it led. The Freudian legend wasn’t simply a separate means of propagation or self-promotion added onto the theory. It was an integral part of it. Without the legend, the claim of psychoanalysis to scientific status would never have achieved the credibility that it did. We have already seen how the myth of Freud’s self-analysis served to protect psychoanalysis from the conflict of interpretations which threatened it from within. Likewise, the legend of the immaculate conception of psychoanalysis played the role of epistemological immunisation against internal as well as external critiques. If Freud dedicated so many pages to establishing his originality and his presuppositionless theoretical virginity, it wasn’t only because he was obsessed by questions of priority and intellectual propriety. It was pre-eminently because he wished to defend himself from the claim that he had imposed preconceived ideas onto clinical material, rather than having let himself be led by it. The myth of the immaculate conception of psychoanalysis enabled him to claim that he was free of all influence and that his observations were completely unprejudiced, free of any ‘anticipatory ideas’ which could contaminate the material. As we have seen, this was the main criticism which was constantly addressed to him by his critics. They claimed that psychoanalysis was an a priori system and that it applied a completely arbitrary interpretive framework on the material. To use the positive language which Freud shared with his detractors, it was a ‘speculation’ without an experiential basis.

  Breuer: If Freud’s theories at first give the impression of being ingenious psychological theorems, linked to the facts, but essentially aprioristically constructed, then the speaker [Breuer] can insist that it is actually a matter of facts and interpretations that have grown out of observations.9

  Freud to Fliess, 7 August 1901: You take sides against me and tell me that the reader of thoughts merely reads his own thoughts into other people, which renders all my efforts valueless.10

  Albert Moll: The impression produced in my mind is that the theory of Freud . . . suffices to account for the clinical histories, not that the clinical histories suffice to prove the truth of the theory. Freud endeavours to establish his theory by the aid of psycho-analysis.11

  William James to Flournoy, 28 September 1909: [Freud and his pupils] can’t fail to throw light on human nature, but I confess that he made on me personally the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas. I can make nothing in my own case of his dream theories, and obviously ‘symbolism’ is a most dangerous method.12

  Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon: Here is what the method of psychoanalysis consists in. It is hardly anything other than a provoked confession, with the advantages and risks which are well known, if the authors did not accept as an article of faith that thanks to such an analysis, old and forgotten states could be authentically restored . . . This is Freud’s main hypothesis. It is a bold and very interesting hypothesis and is very amusing from a literary perspective. But as for us, we find it dangerous and useless. Dangerous, because none of this has been proved, and one risks taking a veritable fancy for an authentic restoration.’13

  Arthur Kronfeld: [Freud] uses something as a means of proof which has already presupposed the correctness of what is to be proven . . . But the results of the psychoanalytic method are only correct according to the presupposition of the correctness and the validity of Freudian theory.14

  Janet: What characterises this method [psychoanalysis] is symbolism. When it is useful to the theory, a mental event can always be considered as the symbol of another. The transformation of facts, thanks to all the methods of condensation, displacement, secondary elaboration and dramatisation can be enormous, and it results in the situation where a fact can signify whatever one wants . . . It is a consequence of the confidence of the authors in a general principle posed at the outset as undiscussable that it is not a question of proving it by facts but of applying it to facts.15

  Haberman: We have then in Freud’s unconscious, to recapitulate, a metapsychological or mythopsychological subconscious, a conception remarkably interesting, but a vague hypothesis nevertheless, nowhere accepted by psychologists, built upon as yet undemonstrated fundamentals – and far removed from the path of factual science.16

  Forel: What I reproach the Freudian school with is a systematic, rash generalisation and dogmatisation of certain observations which are correct in themselves, bound up with an interpretative projection of their fantasies onto the latter . . . On the other hand, without exception one finds a tendency to turn the products of a fertile imagination into risky hypotheses, to dogmatise these fantasies and then to want to prop them through an almost talmudic exegesis, through constructions of all sorts of extreme hair-splitting (sometimes taken to absurdity), so that one becomes gradually led from the field of science into the field of sectarian theology.17

  Kraepelin: Here we meet everywhere the characteristic fundamental features of the Freudian trend of investigation, the representation of arbitrary assumptions and conjectures as assured facts, which are used without hesitation for the building up of always new castles in the air ever towering higher, and the tendency to generalization beyond measure from single observations.18

  Adolf Meyer: My attitude towards Freudianism is that of seeing in it a cult – an obsession by a formula useful and expressive of some facts commonly neglected, but still unheedful of the appeal to a frank acceptance of critical common-sense at its best in preference to a one-sided schema.19

  Wohlgemuth: Nowhere in the whole of Freud’s writings is there a shred of proof, only assertions, assertions of having proved something before, but which was never done, and mysterious reference to inaccessible and unpublished results of psycho-analyses.20

  H. L. Hollingworth: In other words, the ‘psychoanalogy’ [term given by Hollingworth to psychoanalysis] is all in the explanation, in the theory of the analyst, not in the material of the case. This indeed is quite opposed to the assumptions and quite explicable without them.21

  Joseph Jastrow: The time has come to make clear that th
e principles of psychoanalysis are not any such order of realities, but are conjectures, schemes, constructions of Freud’s fertile imagination . . . While following Freud’s course in developing such concepts as complexes, libido, the unconscious, conversion, regression, identification, transference, sublimation, and a score of similar postulates, we must have constantly in mind that they are not ‘discoveries’ in the sense that Freud came upon them, with all the features and garbs which he describes, in the jungles of the land of the psyche, or that had Freud not entered upon his Columbian voyage, they would have been similarly reported by any other qualified observer entering the same terrain and underbrush of an unexplored mental continent. The ‘discoveries’ are hypotheses – and they are nothing more.22

  These critiques of the speculative arbitrariness of psychoanalytic methodology were regularly accompanied by warnings against its suggestive aspects, in the sense of Bernheim and the Nancy school. Freud, according to his peers, was not content to see his own theories in the minds of his patients, he also involuntarily suggested the responses he needed to support them. Hence, contrary to his claims, his ‘observations’ had no objective validity and the testimony of patients could not be invoked as the support of his theories. Moreover, from being impartial witnesses of therapeutic efficacy, the psychoanalytic method often transformed such patients into disciples, hence into active protagonists on one side of the controversy.