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FROM  THE  WORKS  OF  THEODOR  REIK 

The  Search  Within 

The  Inner  Experiences  of  a  Psychoanalyst 
by  THEODOR  REIK 


FARRAR,  STRAUS  AND  CUDAHY 
NEW  YORK 


©  1956  by  Theodor  Reik 

Library  of  Congress  catalog  card  number  55-11185 
First  printing,  1956 


The  author  is  indebted  to  Sigmund  Freud  Copyrights  Limited  for  permission 
to  publish  the  letters  of  Sigmund  Freud  which  appear  in  this  book. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 
American  Book-Stratford  Press,  Inc.,  New  York 


Contents 

Publisher's  Preface  vii 

Author's  Note:  A  Portrait  Comes  to  Life  ix 

Part  One        From  Thirty  Years  with  Freud  3 

Part  Two        The  Confessions  of  an  Analyst  79 

Part  Three     The  Gift  for  Psychological  Observation  247 

Part  Four        Psychoanalytic  Experiences  in  Life,  Literature, 

and  Music  S31 

Part  Five        Adventures  in  Psychoanalytic  Discovery  473 

Part  Six          Letters  of  Freud  629 


Publisher's  Preface 


THE  SEARCH  WITHIN  is  designed  as  the  first  of  a  series  of  vol- 
umes of  selections  from  Theodor  Reik's  works.  This  initial 
volume  is  a  synthesis  of  his  frank  reminiscences  of  his  personal 
life,  his  training,  practice  and  the  development  of  his  philosophy. 
The  final  third  of  the  book  is  recently  written  and  unpublished 
material,  an  extension  of  his  research  into,  for  him,  new  areas. 
This  particular  volume  contains  only  material  written  since  he 
left  Europe. 

Dr.  Reik  arrived  in  the  United  States  as  a  refugee  in  June,  1938. 
A  few  months  later  our  publishing  relation  began  and  has  con- 
tinued. Since  he  did  not  wish  to  edit  these  books  himself,  he  there- 
fore asked  us  to  do  so  and  to  write  this  brief  explanatory  note. 

Part  One  is  taken  from  his  memories  of  days  with  Freud,  origi- 
nally published  under  the  title,  From  Thirty  Years  with  Freud, 
except  for  the  essays  on  "Conversations  with  Freud"  and  "Je^lshi 
Wit/'  which  have  not  been  previously  published.  The  pupil- 
teacher  relation  is  tenderly  and  honestly  detailed  and  the  develop- 
ment of  friendship  which,  on  Reik's  part,  was  always  touched  with 
awe  but  never  lacked  affection.  It  is  lively,  clear,  human— a  remark- 
able portrait  of  the  great  Viennese  psychoanalyst  and  of  Reik 
himself. 

Part  Two,  "The  Confessions  of  an  Analyst,"  is  winnowed  from 
Fragments  of  a  Great  Confession.  Reik  never  spares  himself  in  this 
tense  narrative  and  self-analysis  of  the  most  rigorous  kind.  His 
episodes  of  self-revelation  are  as  uncompromising  as  are  his  many 
accounts  of  his  analyses  of  patients.  Continuing  comments  on 
Freud's  work  and  life  as  well  as  on  his  own  are  the  themes  that 
bind  the  whole.  More  and  more  the  sense  of  discovery  emerges, 
our  discovery  of  Reik,  his  discovery  of  new  analytic  principles, 
along  with  his  growing  ability  to  understand  his  own  compulsions 
and  obsessions  and  to  draw  universal  applications  from  them. 

VII 


VIII  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Part  Three,  "The  Gift  for  Psychological  Observation,"  is  a 
short  selection  from  Listening  with  the  Third  Ear,  in  which  Reik 
develops  his  confessions  into  an  explanation  of  the  precise  uses 
and  extensions  of  his  psychological  skills  and  gifts. 

Part  Four,  "Psychoanalytic  Experiences  in  Life,  Literature  and 
Music,"  is  drawn  from  The  Secret  Self  and  The  Haunting  Mel- 
ody, and  extends  some  of  these  discoveries.  There  are  new  inter- 
pretations of  Goethe,  of  Shakespeare,  of  Mahler,  of  folk  music,  of 
the  effect  of  remembered  reading  and  heard  music  echoing  in  the 
deep  self. 

Part  Five,  "Adventures  in  Psychoanalytic  Discovery,"  is  the 
lately  written  and  hitherto  unpublished  material.  It  is  a  study, 
with  constant  illumination  from  his  personal  experience,  of  how 
psychoanalytic  discovery  can  solve,  by  its  penetration,  problems 
which  have  resisted  the  efforts  of  other  sciences.  It  goes  beyond 
Freud  in  certain  fields  of  psychological  research,  into  pre-history 
and  the  early  phases  of  civilization.  It  shows,  without  specific  ref- 
erence, the  cleavage  between  Freud-Reik  and  Jung.  Leaving  litera- 
ture and  music,  it  studies  myth,  primitive  custom,  totemism,  the 
nature  of  religious  beliefs,  their  relation  to  magic  and  so  on.  The 
final  essay  is  a  study  of  superstition,  using  the  curse  of  Tutank- 
hamen as  the  thread,  a  kind  of  analytic  mystery  involving  Reik's 
own  obsessive  fear  of  publishing  Freud's  letters  and  his  personal 
conquering  of  the  fear  of  death. 

Part  Six  consists  of  all  the  letters  from  Freud  to  Reik,  most  of 
them  previously  unpublished,  together  with  Reik's  clarifying  com- 
ments and  memories  of  the  ideas  and  facts  with  which  they  deal. 

JOHN  FARRAR 


Author's  Note:  A  Portrait  Comes  to  Life 


IT  is  just  two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  I  am  still  sitting  at  my 
desk  struggling  with  the  book  that  has  occupied  me  for  many 
years.  I  am  discouraged  and  tired.  My  eyes  are  burning.  I  should 
like  to  bundle  up  the  pile  of  manuscript  and  notes,  stuff  it  into  a 
file  and  be  done  with  it.  Then  my  eyes  chance  upon  the  portrait 
that  hangs  above  my  desk.  The  light  falls  on  the  head,  and  for  a 
moment  it  seems  as  though  Freud  were  alive  again.  I  see  him 
again  at  his  desk,  see  him  stand  up,  come  forward  and  extend  his 
hand  to  me  with  that  bold,  characteristic  gesture.  I  see  him  shuf- 
fling the  manuscripts  on  the  desk  aside,  opening  a  box  of  cigars, 
and  holding  it  out  to  me. 

I  have  stood  before  this  portrait,  paced  up  and  down  the  room, 
and  now  I  have  returned  to  it  again,  strangely  moved.  I  remem- 
ber the  day  the  Viennese  etcher  Max  Pollak  first  exhibited  it  at 
Hugo  Heller's  galleries.  That  must  have  been  in  1913.  A  dimly 
lighted  room.  In  the  foreground,  on  the  desk,  antique  bronzes 
and  figurines,  dug  up  out  of  the  ruins  of  centuries,  phantoms  of 
the  past.  They  stand  out  starkly  against  the  picture's  white  bor- 
der. Freud's  head,  bent  forward  slightly,  outlined  distinctly. 
The  eyebrows  lifted  as  though  in  deep  attention.  Ridges  on  the 
high  forehead  and  two  deep  furrows  running  down  from  the 
mouth  to  the  short  white  beard.  The  eyes  gaze  into  the  beholder 
and  yet  see  beyond  him.  How  often  have  I  looked  into  those  eyes. 
They  have  an  expression  of  hardy  quest,  as  though  their  gaze  had 
wholly  merged  into  their  object;  and  yet  they  valued  that  object 
only  for  the  knowledge  it  gave.  One  hand  holds  the  pen  loosely, 
as  though  the  sudden  vision  of  a  long-sought  answer  has  inter- 
rupted the  writing.  The  other  hand  Jies  slack  on  the  paper.  The 
light  from  the  window  at  the  side  o£  the  room  highlights  but  one 
side  of  the  forehead.  The  face  is  in  shadow,  with  only  the  eyes 
gleaming  steelily.  ...  There  suddenly  come  to  my  mind  some 

IX 


words  of  his.  It  was  during  a  walk,  and  I  had  asked  him  how  he 
felt  when  he  first  captured  the  psychic  perceptions  contained  in 
Totem  and  Taboo.  I  probably  spoke  rather  floridly,  saying  some- 
thing  about  an  overwhelming  joy,  for  he  answered,  "I  felt 
nothing  like  that;  simply  an  extraordinary  clarity."  ...  He  was 
an  unusually  keen  observer  with  a  deep  respect  for  the  data  of  the 
senses,  but  he  had  the  gift  for  intuitive  perception,  for  unconscious 
observation  which  belongs  to  an  obscurer  realm.  Rembrandt  has 
been  greater  than  any  artist  for  strictness  and  exactitude  of  faith- 
ful observation  of  what  he  has  seen,  yet  the  French  have  called 
him  a  "visionnaire"  It  was  darkness  that  disclosed  to  him  the 
wonders  of  light.  Of  Freud  too  we  may  say  what  the  art  critic 
Eugene  Fromentin  wrote  of  Rembrandt:  "C'est  avec  de  la  unit, 
qu'il  a  fait  le  jour." 

How  often  since  that  first  momentous  visit  I  sat  with  him  at  this 
desk.  (I  remember  that  important  occasion  in  1912  when  I  an- 
nounced to  him  that  now  that  I  had  my  Ph.D.  I  intended  to 
study  medicine.  He  advised  me  strongly  against  it,  saying,  "I 
have  other  things  in  mind  for  you,  larger  plans."  He  insisted  that 
I  go  on  with  my  psychoanalytic  research  work.) 

For  a  moment  the  figure  in  the  etching  seemed  to  be  alive, 
seemed  to  step  out  of  the  past  into  the  present.  For  the  space 
of  a  few  quickened  heartbeats  I  thought:  He  is  alive. 

I  know,  now  that  the  impression  has  passed,  that  I  am  called 
again  to  fulfill  the  demands  of  the  day. 

For  me  the  demand  of  the  day  is  to  continue  my  work,  to  write 
those  books  which  I  have  so  long  borne  within  me,  to  complete 
the  researches  I  have  begun.  That  moment  when  Freud's  picture 
seemed  to  come  to  life  now  assumes  more  than  momentary  mean- 
ing. His  memory  has  given  me  new  heart,  has  set  before  me  his 
example,  his  unerring  and  tireless  striving. 

"The  demand  of  the  day"— that  is  one  of  Goethe's  favored  ex- 
pressions. My  glance  wanders  from  the  picture  of  Freud  to  the 
bust  of  old  Goethe  that  stands  on  the  bookcase.  One  day  in  April 
of  the  year  1825  the  seven-year-old  Walther  von  Goethe  came 
*with  an  album  in  his  hand  to  the  famous  poet  who  was  his  grand- 
father. Many  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  the  Weimar  Court  had 
akeady  inscribed  mottoes  in  the  little  book.  Among  them,  for  ex* 


AUTHOR  s  NOTE:  A  PORTRAIT  COMES  TO  LIFE         xi 

ample,  Frau  Hofmarschall  von  Spiegel  had  written  down  one  of 
the  melancholy  sentences  of  Jean  Paul:  "Man  has  two  and  a  half 
minutes;  one  for  smiling,  one  for  sighing  and  a  half  for  living  for 
in  the  middle  of  this  minute  he  dies."  The  seventy-six-year-old 
poet  thoughtfully  reading  the  line  felt  some  reluctance  against 
the  false  emotional  allure  of  the  dictum.  Abandoning  himself  to 
the  inner  protest  against  the  sentimental  wisdom,  he  took  up  his 
pen  and,  while  Jean  Paul's  sententious  apportionment  of  human 
life  still  echoed  within  him,  he  wrote  in  his  already  somewhat 
shaky  hand,  with  its  free,  generous  flow: 

Sixty  of  them  in  each  hour, 
A  thousand  in  a  single  day. 
Child,  may  you  soon  discover 
All  you  can  do  along  the  way. 


PART  ONE 


From  Thirty  Years  with  Freud 


4  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Certainly  I  do  not  wish  to  vaunt  an  intimacy  that  did  not 
exist.  In  his  books  and  in  conversation  Freud  often  named  me  as 
one  of  his  friends.  But  I  myself  have  never  ventured  to  claim  that 
I  was  one.  One  is  not  "intimate"  with  a  genius,  however  familiarly 
he  may  speak  to  one  as  a  friend.  In  conversation  with  me  Freud 
was  never  circumspect  or  aloof;  he  was  always  friendly  and  per- 
sonal—more so  than  ever  in  the  last  years.  But  there  was  always 
a  barrier.  My  late  friend,  Dr.  Hanns  Sachs,  admitted  that  he  had 
the  same  feeling.  In  the  beautiful  eulogy  he  wrote  after  Freud's 
death  he  closes  with  the  words:  "He  was,  so  to  speak,  made  out 
of  better  stuff  than  ordinary  people."  In  this,  however,  I  was 
at  odds  with  my  friend.  It  would  be  truer  to  say  that  Freud  was 
made  of  the  selfsame  stuff  as  all  of  us.  But  he  molded  and 
shaped  and  worked  this  paltry  material  with  unceasing  labor 
and  self-education,  strove  until  he  formed  himself  into  some 
greater  figure,  of  a  stature  unique  in  our  age. 

Let  us 'avoid  making  a  legend  of  him.  He  himself  would  not 
have  wished  it.  On  the  occasion  of  his  seventieth  birthday,  his 
disciples  were  preparing  a  birthday  celebration  in  Vienna.  Then 
came  the  sudden  death  of  Dr.  Karl  Abraham,  whom  Freud  per- 
haps considered  his  most  talented  follower.  Freud  had  heard  of 
our  preparations  and  asked  us  to  abandon  them.  "One  does  not 
celebrate  a  wedding  with  a  corpse  in  the  house/'  he  said.  He  re- 
quested me  to  speak  the  funeral  address  for  Abraham  at  the  meet- 
ing of  the  Vienna  Psychoanalytic  Society.  Freud  himself  was 
present,  of  course,  but  because  of  his  illness  he  refrained  from 
speaking.  After  I  had  given  the  address  he  pressed  my  hand 
silently,  but  on  the  way  home  he  commended  me  for  mentioning 
not  only  the  virtues  of  our  friend,  but  his  faults  also.  "That  is 
just  the  way  I  would  have  done  it,  Reik,"  he  said.  "The  proverb, 
'De  mortuis  nil  nisi  bonum/  is,  I  think,  nothing  but  a  relic  of 
our  primitive  fear  of  the  dead.  We  psychoanalysts  must  throw 
such  conventions  overboard.  Trust  the  others  to  remain  hypo- 
crites even  before  the  coffin." 

No,  let  us  have  no  legends  woven  around  Freud.  His  human 
weaknesses,  or  his  human  qualities,  manifested  themselves  in 
little  traits  left  over  from  his  earlier  development  They  were 
never  conspicuous.  He  was  capable  of  much  love,  but  he  was  also 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  5 

a  good  hater.  He  tried  to  suppress  his  desires  to  avenge  injustices 
he  had  received;  but  often  they  broke  forth  in  a  word,  a  gesture 
or  an  intonation.  In  old  age,  despite  his  self-control,  more  than 
one  bitter  word  broke  through  the  bars.  "Men  are  a  wolf  pack/' 
he  could  say  at  such  times,  "just  a  wolf  pack.  They  hunt  down 
those  who  would  do  good  for  them."  Such  remarks  startled  us. 
But  at  such  times  he  always  spoke  without  strong  emotion. 
These  remarks  sounded  quite  matter-of-course,  like  a  final,  calm 
judgment.  Once-and  only  once-I  saw  him  terribly  angry.  But 
the  only  sign  of  this  anger  was  a  sudden  pallor  and  the  way  his 
teeth  bit  into  his  cigar.  He  could  utter  curses  and  vituperation  as 
well  as  any  one  of  us,  but  he  preferred  not  to.  Once,  when  I  was 
railing  against  a  certain  professor  of  psychiatry  for  his  shabby 
conduct,  Freud  merely  smiled.  He  nodded  in  agreement  when 
I  used  an  expression  that  implied  the  man  came  from  no  human 
ancestry;  but  he  restrained  his  own  anger.  I  once  asked  him  how 
he  had  endured  the  hostility  of  a  whole  world  for  so  many  years 
without  becoming  enraged  or  embittered.  He  answered,  "I  pre- 
ferred to  let  time  decide  in  my  favor."  And  he  added,  "Besides,  it 
would  have  pleased  my  enemies  if  I  had  shown  that  I  was  hurt." 

He  was  not  insensitive  to  neglect  or  slights.  It  hurt  him  that  he 
had  not  yet  received  official  recognition  in  Vienna  itself,  at  a  time 
when  the  whole  world  already  honored  him.  But  he  would  never 
&ir  his  feelings  except  in  a  casual  joke.  Once  a  Vienna  tax  col- 
lector challenged  his  income  tax  statement  and  pointed  out  that 
Freud's  fame  was  spread  far  beyond  the  borders  of  Austria.  Freud 
wrote  in  reply,  "But  it  does  not  begin  until  the  border." 

He  was  not  vindictive,  but  he  did  not  forget  injuries.  For  many 
years  he  kept  away  from  the  Viennese  Medical  Society,  the  mem- 
bers of  which  had  once  jeered  at  him  when  he  lectured  before 
them  on  the  psychic  genesis  of  hysteria.  He  once  asked  me  to 
look  up  something  in  a  magazine.  I  found  that  the  volume  con- 
taining this  magazine  could  be  obtained  only  from  the  Medical 
Society,  and  since  I  needed  a  letter  of  recommendation  in  order 
to  use  their  library  I  asked  him  for  one.  He  promised  to  write  it 
for  me,  but  forgot,  which  was  very  unusual  with  him.  I  reminded 
him,  but  he  forgot  again.  Finally  he  confessed,  "I  couldn't  bring 
myself  to  do  it.  My  resistance  was  too  strong." 


6  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

He  once  said  to  me  that  character  was  determined  essentially 
by  the  prevalence  of  one  drive  over  others.  In  his  personality,  the 
particular  impulse  which  would  incline  a  man  toward  being  a 
healer  was  not  nearly  so  strongly  developed  as  his  impulse  to 
knowledge.  He  had  nothing  of  the  furor  therapeuticus  that  so 
many  doctors  manifest.  He  repeatedly  said  to  us  that  three  tasks 
were  "impossible"— to  govern,  to  educate,  and  to  heal.  By  this 
he  implied  that  these  actions  are  wholly  in  the  ideal  domain.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  he  was  not  over-happy  about  becoming  a  physi- 
cian. But  the  desire  to  contribute  some  vital  addition  to  man- 
kind's  volume  of  knowledge  awakened  early  in  him;  this  desire 
was  already  clearly  defined  when  he  was  still  in  high  school. 

His  capacity  for  self-control  was  extraordinary.  He  once  said 
that  we  are  indebted  for  our  cultural  achievements  to  great  per- 
sonalities with  powerful  impulses  who  had  the  gift  of  curbing 
them  and  turning  them  to  serve  higher  ends.  In  his  excellent  es- 
say on  the  "Moses"  of  Michelangelo  he  has  shown  us  an  example 
—or  rather  an  ideal— of  such  an  instinct-ridden  genius  who  tamed 
his  raging  emotions. 

He  invariably  expressed  impatience  or  irritation  by  twisting 
these  emotions  into  a  wry  joke.  It  must  have  been  in  one  such 
moment  of  annoyance  with  us  followers,  with  our  rivalries  and 
petty  quarrels,  that  he  cried,  "Oh,  if  all  of  them  had  but  a  single 
backside!"  With  this  parody  of  Nero's  cruel  sentiment  he  di- 
verted his  own  anger. 

Experience  bears  out  that  there  is  a  kind  of  functional  relation- 
ship between  literary  and  oratorical  gifts.  Master  stylists  are 
seldom  good  speakers;  ability  to  express  oneself  in  the  one  form 
seems  to  hamper  expression  in  the  other.  Freud  was  a  masterful 
stylist.  His  prose,  with  its  lucid,  tranquil,  richly  associative  flow, 
merits  comparison  with  that  of  the  great  writers.  Freud  revised 
the  well-known  maxim  to:  "Style  est  I'histoire  de  I'homme"  By 
that  maxim  he  did  not  mean  merely  that  literary  influences  fash- 
ioned the  style  of  the  individual,  but  that  the  development  and 
experiences  of  an  individual  do  their  part  in  molding  his  style. 

Certainly,  he  was  not  a  powerful  orator;  and,  in  fact,  he  dis- 
liked speaking.  He  always  had  to  overcome  a  certain  resistance 
before  delivering  a  lecture.  His  speaking  manner  had  nothing  of 


FROM   THIRTY  YEARS  WITH   FREUD  7 

the  demagogic  about  it,  nothing  of  the  impulsive  or  the  emo- 
tionally winning.  In  its  sobriety  and  lucidity,  its  slow,  logical 
development,  and  its  anticipations  of  objections,  it  had  none  of 
the  qualities  which  sway  the  masses.  On  the  other  hand,  it  pos- 
sessed all  the  qualities  which  convince  unprejudiced,  sympathetic, 
thoughtful  listeners.  There  was  something  curiously  compelling 
about  the  very  uncoercive  manner  of  his  speech.  His  lectures  at 
congresses  and  scientific  meetings  could  not  be  called  lectures  in 
the  rigid  academic  sense.  They  were,  rather,  free  accounts  of  his 
experiences  and  researches.  Their  manner  was  conversational 
instead  of  formal.  He  once  wrote  to  me  that  when  he  lectured  he 
chose  one  sympathetic  person  from  among  his  audience  and 
imagined  that  he  was  addressing  this  person  alone.  If  this  person 
was  absent  from  among  his  listeners,  he  would  not  feel  at  ease 
until  he  had  found  someone  to  understudy,  so  to  speak.  This 
attitude  explains  the  direct-address  form  of  his  lectures  and  the 
manner  in  which  he  anticipated  objections,  formulating  the 
doubts  and  questions  of  his  audience  as  though  he  could  read 
their  minds.  This  direct  approach  is  carried  over  into  his  General 
Introduction  to  Psychoanalysis  where  it  can  be  easily  detected. 

He  always  spoke  extemporaneously.  He  prepared  for  a  lecture 
simply  by  taking  a  long  walk  during  which  he  reflected  on  his 
subject.  He  never  liked  us,  his  assistants  and  disciples,  to  read  our 
lectures  from  manuscript.  He  believed  that  the  reading  distracted 
the  attention  of  the  listener  and  handicapped  his  identifying 
himself  with  the  lecturer.  He  thought  this  capacity  for  identi- 
fication would  be  encouraged  if  the  lecturer  spoke  freely,  de- 
veloping the  train  of  his  ideas  as  they  came  to  him  at  the  moment. 
This  would  be  true  even  though  he  had  often  reviewed  these 
ideas  in  his  mind,  for  in  speaking  he  would  be  re-creating  them. 
This  kind  of  lecturing  was  particularly  easy  for  Freud  because  of 
his  astonishing  memory,  a  memory  which  in  his  earlier  years  was 
almost  photographic. 

Sometimes  he  would  begin  his  lecture  with  an  assertion  that 
seemed  patently  improbable,  and  then  he  would  so  support  this 
assertion  by  the  citing  of  a  number  of  cases  that  no  attentive  and 
just  listener  could  disagree  with  him.  I  remember  once  that  he 
made  just  such  a  statement,  which  sounded  starkly  unbelievable, 


8  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

and  then  went  on  to  admonish  his  listeners  not  to  reject  it 
prematurely  as  paradoxical  or  impossible.  "Do  you  remember," 
he  said,  "how  in  Shakespeare's  play,  when  the  ghost  of  the  king 
cries,  'Swear!'  from  within  the  earth,  Horatio  cries  out,  'O  day 
and  night,  but  this  is  wondrous  strange!'  But  Hamlet  replies, 
'And  therefore  as  a  stranger  give  it  welcome/  So  I  too  shall  ask 
you  first  to  give  welcome  to  the  things  that  here  rise  so  strangely 
from  the  tomb  of  the  past." 

He  lectured  in  a  measured,  firm,  and  pleasant  voice,  although 
in  later  years  he  was  often  forced  by  his  illness  to  break  off  sud- 
denly to  clear  his  throat.  His  language  was  unadorned.  He  rarely 
used  adjectives,  preferring  understatement.  The  rich  current  of 
thought  flowed  along  without  any  marked  rise  and  fall  of  his  voice. 
I  never  heard  him  become  sentimental  or  emotional.  He  had  so 
strong  a  desire  for  clarity  that  he  could  not  help  making  every- 
thing clear  to  his  listeners,  and  where  he  could  not,  he  would 
frankly  point  out  the  obscurities  of  the  problem.  In  order  to  make 
his  points  clear  and  concrete  he  was  fond  of  adducing  analogies 
from  everyday  life.  In  a  lecture  given  in  1915,  where  he  was  dis- 
cussing the  place  of  masturbation  in  childhood  and  in  the  life 
of  the  adult,  he  first  waived  all  moral  evaluations  of  this  sexual 
activity  and  insisted  on  considering  the  problem  only  from  the 
standpoint  of  purpose.  He  drew  the  following  analogy:  "Bow 
and  arrow  were  once,  in  prehistoric  times,  man's  only  weaptm, 
or  at  any  rate  his  best  weapon.  But  what  would  you  say  if  a 
French  soldier  of  today  went  into  battle  with  bow  and  arrow  in- 
stead of  a  rifle?" 

In  the  discussions  which  followed  lectures  of  the  Psychoanalytic 
Society  he  usually  was  the  last  to  speak.  He  rarely  failed  to  find  a 
friendly  word  for  the  analyst  who  had  lectured,  but  he  also  freely 
offered  criticism  which  was  always  suaviter  in  modo,  fortiter  in  re. 
I  remember  a  lecture  by  a  young  colleague  which,  instead  of  be- 
ing an  examination  of  the  problem,  presented  merely  pretentious 
plans  for  the  treatment  of  scientific  questions.  During  the  lecture 
Freud,  who  sat  next  to  me,  slipped  me  a  sheet  of  paper  on  which 
he  had  written:  "Does  reading  menus  fill  your  stomach?" 

In  the  midst  of  a  serious  discussion  he  would  often  surprise  us 
with  a  humorous  remark.  In  a  lecture  before  the  Vienna  Psycho- 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  9 

analytic  Society  the  New  York  analyst,  Dr.  Feigenbaum,  once 
showed  that  even  the  speaking  of  intentional  nonsense,  which 
often  happens  in  card  playing,  for  example,  can  by  analytic  study 
be  shown  to  convey  unconscious  rhyme  and  reason.  Freud  re- 
marked that  though  it  is  no  easy  task  for  men  to  produce  de- 
liberately absolute  nonsense,  still  everyone  knows  that  the  books 
of  German  scholars  are  full  of  effortless  and  unconscious  non- 
sense. 

After  a  lecture  he  gave  (sometime  in  1910)  on  the  problem  of 
sex,  there  was  raised  in  the  course  of  the  discussion  the  question 
of  a  practical  solution  for  the  sexual  dilemma  of  young  students. 
For,  on  the  one  hand,  psychoanalysis  had  shown  that  sexual 
abstinence  was  one  of  the  most  important  factors  in  the  forma- 
tion of  neurosis.  On  the  other  hand,  the  economic  circumstances 
of  most  students  made  it  impossible  for  them  to  marry  early. 
Morality  forbade  the  seduction  of  young  girls,  the  danger  of  in- 
fection made  sexual  intercourse  with  prostitutes  inadvisable,  and 
so  on.  Freud's  advice  to  the  young  students  was,  "Be  abstinent, 
but  under  protest/'  He  felt  that  it  was  imperative  to  keep  alive 
the  inner  protest  against  a  social  order  which  prevented  mature 
young  men  from  fulfilling  a  normal  instinctual  need.  He  drew 
parallels  between  this  attitude  and  that  of  the  French  Encyclo- 
pedists of  the  eighteenth  century  who,  though  submissive  out- 
wardly to  the  power  of  the  Church  which  ruled  their  age,  dedi- 
cated themselves  to  tireless  protest  against  its  overwhelming  and 
unbearable  force.  Like  Anatole  France  whose  writings  he  loved, 
Freud  did  not  believe,  in  sudden  and  violent  revolutions.  (He 
cherished  the  lofty  wisdom  of  France's  writings  as  well  as  the 
subtlety  and  wit  of  his  art  I  remember  Freud  laughing  aloud 
when  I,  in  a  discussion  of  feminine  feelings,  reminded  him  of  a  re- 
mark in  a  novel  of  Anatole  France.  In  Monsieur  Bergeret  a 
Paris  a  young  man  attempts  to  seduce  a  lady.  Anatole  France,  the 
connoisseur  of  women,  concludes  his  description  as  follows:  "He 
came  to  her  again,  took  her  in  his  arms,  and  covered  her  with 
caresses.  Within  a  short  time  her  clothes  were  so  disarranged  that 
—aside  from  any  other  considerations— shame  alone  compelled  her 
to  disrobe.")  Freud  put  more  faith  in  the  steadily  mounting,  con- 
tinuous force  of  patient  resistance  to  bring  about  ultimately 


JO  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

changes  in  the  social  order.  He  believed,  also,  that  psychoanalysis, 
by  making  men  more  straightforward  and  upright,  was  one  of 
these  reforming  forces.  He  often  reiterated  that  in  regard  to 
money  and  to  sex  men  are  hypocrites.  In  both  these  realms  they  re- 
fuse to  confess  their  true  needs. 

He  was  convinced  that  an  individual's  sexual  behavior  pro- 
vided the  prototype  of  his  attitude  toward  other  aspects  of  life. 
Once,  while  we  were  discussing  a  case  of  neurosis,  he  related  an 
example  he  had  met  with  outside  his  practice.  This  example  was 
memorable  because  it  involved  two  famous  contemporaries.  The 
mathematician  and  physicist,  Christian  Doppler,  of  the  University 
of  Vienna,  had  early  done  remarkable  scientific  work;  it  was  he 
who  made  the  discovery  now  known  throughout  the  world  as 
Doppler's  principle.  Later  his  scientific  creativeness  ran  dry,  or 
ran  aground.  His  work  became  trivial;  much  of  the  time  he  busied 
himself  working  out  riddles  and  was  unable  to  publish  anything 
of  scientific  significance.  Freud  traced  this  striking  development 
to  the  fact  that,  though  Doppler's  marriage  was  extremely  un- 
happy, for  "moral"  reasons  he  could  not  attain  the  inner  freedom 
to  seek  a  divorce.  The  emotional  conflict  arose  out  of  Doppler's 
acquaintance  with  a  young  girl  toward  whom  he  was  strongly 
attracted;  but  he  had  decided  to  resign  himself  and  continue  his 
life  at  the  side  of  an  unloved  wife. 

Freud  contrasted  this  attitude  with  that  of  Doppler's  con- 
temporary, Robert  Koch.  Koch,  who  was  at  first  a  young  health 
officer  in  a  small  German  city,  had  won  considerable  fame  with 
the  publication  of  his  first  scientific  papers.  He  had  made  a  good 
middle-class  marriage  with  a  woman  whom  he  respected  but  did 
not  love.  Later  he  met  a  girl  whom  he  truly  loved  and  Koch 
resolved  to  have  a  frank  and  friendly  discussion  with  his  wife.  He 
requested  divorce,  and  she  finally  consented.  He  married  the  girl, 
who  proved  to  be  a  courageous  and  understanding  companion 
through  life.  Happy  and  fulfilled  in  marriage,  he  pursued  a 
scientific  career  that  grew  steadily  in  importance.  He  made  great 
discoveries  in  regard  to  tuberculosis,  sleeping  sickness,  and  ma- 
laria, and  contributed  to  medicine  those  theories  and  methods 
which  will  forever  be  associated  with  his  name.  Freud  respected 
Koch's  behavior  in  the  emotional  crisis  of  his  first  marriage  as  a 


FROM   THIRTY  YEARS  WITH   FREUD 

sign  of  greater  strength  of  character.  More  than  that,  he  felt  thSt 
it  sprang  from  a  higher  morality  than  Doppler's,  a  morality 
whose  values  were  honesty  and  courage. 

I  was  constantly  amazed  anew  at  the  extent  of  Freud's  reading 
and  the  diversity  of  his  knowledge.  He  read  in  almost  every 
branch  of  science.  He  followed  with  great  interest  the  progress 
of  medical  and  biologic  research,  and  read  widely  in  archeology 
and  history,  keeping  up  with  current  developments  in  all  these 
fields.  Until  almost  the  last  he  was  a  tireless  reader.  It  was  a  thing 
of  wonder  to  me  how  a  man  whose  days  were  crammed  with  so 
many  hours  of  exhausting  analytic  work,  and  whose  nights  were 
largely  devoted  to  writing,  could  find  the  time  for  such  extensive 
reading.  Nor  was  this  reading  in  the  field  of  science  alone.  He 
loved  biography  and  the  best  work  of  contemporary  writers  like 
Romain  Holland,  Arthur  Schnitzler,  Franz  Werfel,  and  Stefan 
Zweig. 

I  remember  once  talking  with  him  about  a  drama  of  Stefan 
Zweig's,  Jeremiah,  which  had  just  appeared.  I  expressed  the 
opinion  that  a  drama  making  use  of  related  material,  Der  Junge 
David  by  Richard  Beer-Hofmann,  was  far  superior  to  Zweig's 
work.  Compared  to  Beer-Hofmann's  work,  I  said,  the  Zweig 
drama  was  very  feeble.  Freud  was  surprised  at  this  criticism.  He 
told  me  that  such  an  attitude  was  altogether  strange  to  him,  for 
he  never  drew  comparisons  in  matters  of  aesthetic  pleasure.  (As 
a  matter  of  fact,  I  believe  that  this  is  an  attitude  he  adopted  later 
in  life.) 

For  analogies  in  his  scientific  work  he  usually  called  upon 
physics,  for  that  science  deals  with  the  interplay  of  forces;  but 
he  also  drew  comparisons  with  chemistry  and  biology,  and  with 
archeology,  which  was  particularly  interesting  to  him.  Let  me  re- 
call a  comparison  he  used  when  we  were  discussing  the  function 
of  trauma  in  the  structure  of  the  neuroses.  Freud  mentioned  the 
theories  of  Charles  Lyell  and  George  Cuvier,  the  great  geologists. 
He  disagreed  with  Cuvier's  theory  of  cataclysms,  which  held  that 
changes  in  the  surface  of  the  earth  are  wrought  by  great  catas- 
trophies.  He  inclined  to  Lyell's  theory  that  such  changes  are 
produced  by  constant  forces  working  imperceptibly  over  periods 
of  thousands  of  years.  I  remember  another  time  he  drew  an 


12  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

analogy  fom  geology.  We  were  discussing  how  in  psychoanalysis 
only  the  psychic  reality  holds  sway,  while  the  material  reality  is 
altogether  minor-so  that,  for  example,  it  does  not  matter  whether 
a  patient  really  dreamed  a  dream  or  only  imagined  it.  From  this 
we  went  on  to  discuss  the  psychic  significance  of  the  lie,  par- 
ticularly the  lie  in  children.  Freud  pointed  out  that  children's 
lies  are  frequently  composed  for  an  imaginary  gratification  of 
desire.  From  this  point  of  view  it  is  psychologically  unimportant 
whether  we  are  dealing  with  lie  or  truth,  since  the  boundary 
between  them—in  analysis,  though  not  in  life— is  vague  and  shift- 
ing. He  added,  "Imagine  that  the  human  eye  could  behold  at  one 
glance  all  the  changes  that  have  taken  place  over  eons  in  the 
surface  of  the  earth.  To 'such  a  vision  the  boundaries  between 
hill  and  valley,  water  and  land,  would  become  vague  and 
strangely  immaterial." 

Until  ripe  old  age  Freud  was  receptive  to  all  new  ideas  and 
original  thoughts  in  psychoanalysis.  He  met  them  without  preju- 
dice, even  when  he  did  not  agree;  but  he  required  a  long  time  to 
feel  at  home  in  new  views.  Although  he  always  evinced  a  lively 
and  open-minded  interest  in  all  intellectual  changes,  he  left  it  to 
the  younger  generation  to  extend  psychoanalysis  beyond  the 
specific  limitations  that  he  had  set  himself. 

He  impressed  upon  us  that  it  was  almost  always  a  bad  omen 
when  a  neurotic  patient  accepted  with  enthusiasm  the  results  of 
analysis.  The  best  attitude  toward  analysis  or  any  other  new  and 
radical  scientific  views  was,  he  maintained,  a  friendly  skepticism. 
Consider,  he  would  say,  the  way  housewives  tell  a  good  oven  from 
a  bad  one.  The  bad  ones  are  those  that  heat  up  right  away,  but 
also  cool  rapidly.  The  good  ones,  however,  grow  warm  slowly 
and  hesitantly,  but  hold  their  heat  for  a  long  time. 

This  was  his  own  attitude  toward  innovations  in  psychoanaly- 
sis; in  his  later  years  he  usually  avoided  expressing  an  opinion  on 
newly  published  analytic  works.  He  needed  a  long  time  for  a 
well-considered  verdict.  He  was  tolerant  enough  to  appreciate 
others'  efforts  in  analysis  along  paths  that  did  not  interest  him, 
although  he  himself  would  never  venture  out  upon  such  paths. 
After  a  lecture  by  one  of  our  colleagues  on  broad  problems  of 
character  neurosis,  he  remarked  that  he  had  limited  himself  to 


FROM   THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  13 

narrower  aspects  of  the  subject,  but  that  the  new  generation 
would  wish  to  explore  more  remote  regions.  "I  myself  have  al- 
ways sailed  upon  inland  lakes.  But  good  for  them  who  are  strik- 
ing out  into  the  open  sea." 

Whence  comes  the  view  so  prevalent  in  America  that  Freud  was 
dogmatic?  Throughout  thirty  years  I  never  noticed  a  single  trait 
of  narrow-mindedness  or  dogmatism  in  him.  In  this  book  I  have 
included  a  letter  of  his  (his  reply  to  my  criticism  of  his  Dostoyev- 
sky  essay)  which  testifies  that  he  was  critical  of  his  own  work  and 
freely  admitted  weaknesses  where  they  existed.  He  was  intolerant 
only  toward  false  tolerance.  He  insisted  that  psychoanalysis,  as  a 
science,  should  adhere  to  its  own  methods,  and  he  tried  to  keep  it 
free  of  the  methods  of  other  sciences. 

I  often  had  long  talks  with  Freud  about  the  qualifications  and 
education  of  the  analyst.  We  were  agreed  that  a  medical  educa- 
tion is  inadequate  for  the  profession  of  analyst.  In  the  course  of 
the  conversation,  Freud  pointed  out  that  poets  (Shakespeare, 
Goethe,  Dostoyevsky)  and  philosophers  (Plato,  Schopenhauer, 
Nietzsche)  had  come  closer  to  the  fundamental  truths  of  psycho- 
analysis than  had  the  physicians.  He  once  informed  me  that  the 
natural  scientist  and  philosopher,  Paracelsus  (1493-1541),  had  ad- 
vanced a  theory  of  neurotic  therapy  which  was  akin  to  that  of 
psychoanalysis.  This  scientist,  who  had  been  persecuted  as  a 
quack,  had  recommended  a  strengthening  of  the  ego  as  a  counter- 
poise to  the  instinctual  forces  which  are  morbidly  expressed  in 
neurosis.  "Just  what  he  himself  understood  by  it,  I  don't  know," 
Freud  added,  "but  there  is  no  doubt  as  to  its  correctness." 

On  the  question  of  the  education  of  the  analyst  Freud  differed 
with  me.  He  found  my  views  too  exacting  and  had  more  respect 
than  I  for  the  value  of  instruction.  He  admitted,  however,  that 
the  personal  inclinations  and  talent  of  the  individual  were  more 
important  than  is  generally  conceded.  In  a  conversation  on 
Dostoyevsky  he  smilingly  granted  my  assertion  that  this  poet  had 
more  psychological  talent  than  the  whole  International  Psycho- 
analytic Society;  but  he  felt  that  Dostoyevsky  was  a  phenomenal 
case.  I  replied  that  all  instruction  and  control  analysis  was  in  vain 
if  it  were  offered  to  individuals  who  had  no  innate  gift  and  did 
not  possess  that  "psychic  sensitivity"  he  had  once  spoken  of.  He 


14  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

nodded  to  this,  but  insisted  that  the  talent  of  understanding  un- 
conscious processes  was  more  widespread  than  I  would  have  it, 
and  that  analysis  augmented  and  developed  this  talent.  We  fi- 
nally agreed  that  the  ideal  would  be  for  those  who  were  born 
psychologists  to  learn  the  analytic  method  and  be  able  to  practice 
it  We  have  said  we  have  to  seek  out  such  "born  psychologists"  not 
only  in  the  circle  of  psychiatrists  and  neurologists.  In  my  opinion 
they  will  be  as  few  and  far  between  there  as  anywhere  else. 

Freud  occasionally  was  pessimistic  about  the  future  of  psy- 
choanalysis. I  am  told  he  once  said  that  analysis  would  suffer  a 
lingering  death  after  his  own  death.  Such  a  moody  remark  was 
certainly  only  the  reflection  of  momentary  bad  humor.  In  later 
years  he  was  always  confident  and  optimistic.  He  knew  that  the 
science  he  had  created  would  not  disappear.  He  knew  also  that 
that  science  would  undergo  modifications  and  corrections,  would 
be  supplemented  and  considered  from  new  angles.  But  what 
Freud  mined  from  the  profoundest  depths  and  abysses  of  the 
psyche  will  endure,  and  his  work  will  continue  with  ever  more 
fruitful  influence  upon  the  life  of  individuals  and  of  nations. 
Above  all,  his  method  of  research  will  endure;  that  method 'which 
accords  such  critical  attention  to  apparent  trivialities,  the  method 
whose  objects  are  the  inconspicuous,  the  hidden,  and  the  veiled. 

Here  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  development  of  his 
thoughts.  Greek  mythology  tells  the  story  of  the  Augean  stable, 
wherein  three  thousand  oxen  were  kept,  which  remained  un- 
cleaned  for  thirty  years.  The  misconceptions  and  distortions,  the 
falsifications  and  misrepresentations  to  which  psychoanalysis  was 
subjected  in  its  popularization  threaten  to  transform  the  magnifi- 
cent house  that  Freud  built  into  a  stable  similar  to  that  of  King 
Augeas.  It  too  was  not  cleaned  for  thirty  years  and  was,  alas, 
frequented  by  more  than  three  thousand  oxen  during  this  time. 
To  clean  it  is  a  task  compared  with  which  Hercules  had  an  easy 
job. 

A  small  circle  of  those  who  were  Freud's  followers  will  teach  the 
new  generation.  He  knew  that  after  a  short  period  of  lying  fal- 
low and  of  being  overrun  by  confusion,  disturbance,  and  ob- 
scurantism, psychoanalysis  would  come  into  its  own  in  the  lives  of 
civilized  peoples.  In  his  last  book  he  saw  a  great  vision  of  the  fate 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  15 

of  Moses  and  his  mission,  a  fate  that  may  well  be  his  own.  Does  he 
not  prophesy  the  great  work  of  his  little  circle?  He  recounts  the 
tale  of  the  Levites,  who  stood  fast  in  all  perils,  defying  all  the 
forces  that  opposed  them  to  save  the  intellectual  heritage  of  a 
genius  for  the  millenniums  to  come.  Is  this  not  an  outline  of  the 
task  of  his  little  group  of  followers?  Freud's  death  does  not  mean 
the  beginning  of  the  end  of  psychoanalysis,  as  his  foes  aver,  but 
rather  the  end  of  the  beginning. 

The  deepest  and  final  memory  Freud  left  with  us  is  the 
memory  of  his  utter  sincerity.  He  dared  to  pursue  to  the  end 
thoughts  which  some  few  had  encountered,  but  at  which  most 
men  had  turned  and  run— thoughts  on  sex  and  the  sexes,  on  life, 
love,  and  death,  and  on  the  powerful  instincts  th,at  live  beneath 
the  pitiable  artifices  we  invent  to  conceal  them  from,  ourselves 
and  others.  He  faced  the  psychic  processes  in  himself  and  others 
without  fear  and  favor.  He  was  more  courageous  than  his  time. 
And  these  qualities— talent,  utter  honesty,  and  the  ability  to  con- 
summate his  thoughts— seem  to  me  the  qualities  with  which  are 
endowed  those  rare  human  beings  whom  we  call  geniuses. 


II 


NEARLY  FORTY-FIVE  years  had  passed  since,  with  pounding 
heart,  I  first  ascended  the  steps  of  Number  19  Berggasse  and 
stood  face  to  face  with  Freud.  At  the  time  I  was  a  student  of 
psychology  at  the  University  of  Vienna.  About  a  half  year  previ- 
ously our  fine  old  professor,  Friedrich  Jodl,  had  for  the  first  and 
last  time  mentioned  Sigmund  Freud's  name  in  his  lectures.  Re- 
search into  the  psyche  at  the  time  was  completely  under  the  aegis 
of  experimental  psychology.  When  we  thought  of  psychic  proc- 
esses, we  thought  of  them  in  terms  of  laboratory  work,  tests,  ex-, 
periments  with  stimuli  and  blood  pressure. 

Professor  Jodl  had  been  lecturing  to  us  for  weeks  on  Wundt's 
laws  of  association.  At  the  close  of  his  lecture  he  mentioned  off- 


l6  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

handedly,  with  a  keen  ironic  smile,  that  there  was  one  instructor 
in  our  city  who  asserted  that  there  was  a  type  of  forgetting  that 
did  not  follow  Wundt's  laws,  but  the  laws  of  a  psychic  process  he 
called  repression.  We  students  also  smiled  ironically,  for  like  our 
professor  we  were  confident  of  our  knowledge  of  the  human  soul 

Some  time  later  a  book  by  this  instructor  fell  into  my  hands. 
It  bore  the  title,  The  Interpretation  of  Dreams.  I  began  to  read, 
but  soon  laid  the  book  aside.  It  seemed  altogether  preposterous 
—was  I  not  a  student  of  Wundtian  psychology?  But  a  few  days 
later  I  took  it  up  again— I  had  left  it  lying  on  my  desk  next  to 
Ziehen's  textbook  of  psychology— and  this  time  I  read  on  and  on, 
fascinated,  to  the  last  line.  In  the  following  weeks  with  growing 
wonder  I  read  everything  this  author  had  published.  Here  was 
the  psychology  that  had  been  sought  so  long,  a  science  of  the 
psychic  underworld.  Here  was  what  I  had  looked  for  when  I  first 
took  up  the  study  of  psychology  in  spite  of  all  the  warnings  of 
practical  people.  Here  was  something  derived  not  from  psy- 
chology textbooks  but  from  the  premonitions  and  visions  of 
Goethe,  Shakespeare,  Dostoyevsky,  Schopenhauer,  and  Nietzsche. 

Some  months  later  I  stood  for  the  first  time  in  the  room  where 
Freud  worked,  stood  by  his  desk,  surrounded  by  Egyptian  and 
Etruscan  figurines,  excavated  trophies  of  a  long-dead  world. 

In  the  following  years  scarcely  a  week  passed  that  I  did  not  see 
him.  The  lectures  in  the  old  psychiatry  clinic  in  the  Lazarettgasse, 
the  discussions  of  the  Vienna  Psychoanalytic  Society  and,  later 
on,  the  Wednesday  evenings  at  his  home  (for  he  was  then  already 
ill  and  received  only  his  closest  co-workers  on  these  occasions- 
"From  time  to  time  I  like  to  see  the  young  ones/1  he  said,  quoting 
Goethe)— these  are  unforgotten  and  unforgettable  times. 

One  who  was  not  close  to  Freud  cannot  conceive  of  the  stature 
of  the  man,  for  he  himself  was  greater  than  his  work,  that  work 
which  embodies  the  profoundest  insights  into  the  psychic  life  of 
man  that  have  yet  been  attained.  Many,  throughout  the  whole 
wide  world,  know  how  kindly,  helpful,  and  loyal  he  was.  I  can 
still  see  his  smile  as  he  appeared  unexpectedly  one  day  in  our  apart- 
ment in  Berlin,  after  toiling  up  four  flights  of  stairs.  It  was  in 
1915, 1  had  just  married  and  was  poor  as  only  a  Doctor  of  Philoso- 
phy can  be.  Freud  brought  the  news  that  the  Psychoanalytic  So- 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  Ij 

ciety  had  decided  to  award  me  the  prize  for  the  best  scientific 
work  in  the  field  of  applied  psychoanalysis.  It  was  like  a  fairy  tale, 
and  the  most  miraculous  feature  of  it  was  Freud's  smile.  Clearly, 
it  made  him  happy  to  hand  me  the  sum  of  money,  which  was  not 
large  but  to  me  in  my  circumstances  at  the  time  seemed  like  a 
fortune. 

Shortly  before  Hitler's  invasion  of  our  Austria  I  saw  him  for 
the  last  time.  This  was  after  an  interval  which  I  spent  in  Holland. 
I  still,  at  fifty,  felt  as  I  rang  the  bell  the  joyful  expectation  that 
had  surcharged  me  as  a  boy  of  twenty. 

I  found  him  greatly  changed,  his  skin  withered  and  his  eyes 
deep-sunken.  His  hands,  as  he  opened  a  cigar  case,  seemed  no 
more  than  skin  and  bones.  But  his  eyes,  his  curious  and  penetrat- 
ing eyes,  were  as  lively  and  kindly  as  always.  In  conversation  he 
showed  all  his  old  eager  interest.  Every  sentence  he  spoke  was 
characteristically  his.  We  talked  of  the  problems  of  our  science, 
and  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  wisdom  of  old  age  in  this  man  had 
revealed  to  him  mysteries  whose  existence  I  had  not  even  sus- 
pected. After  a  long  discussion  of  psychoanalytic  problems,  our 
conversation  turned  to  questions  of  the  day.  Freud  realized  how 
precarious  was  the  situation  of  Austria,  and  he  was  very  doubt- 
ful that  she  could  maintain  herself.  He  felt  no  fear  for  himself, 
but  he  foresaw  a  dark  future. 

Only  a  few  of  his  remarks  shall  be  recorded  here.  He  knew 
that  psychoanalysis  might  well  suffer  seeming  defeat  for  a  long 
time.  But  then  its  effect  would  be  profounder  than  ever.  He  was 
not  surprised  by  the  brutality  and  blind  cruelty  of  the  Nazi 
regime.  It  seemed  as  though  he  had  anticipated  it  and  was  armed 
to  meet  it.  What  surprised  him,  however,  was  the  intellectual 
attitude  of  the  majority  of  Germans,  whom  he  had  thought  more 
intelligent  and  capable  of  better  judgment.  While  we  were  speak- 
ing of  race  prejudice,  he  said  smilingly,  "Look  how  impoverished 
the  poet's  imagination  really  is.  Shakespeare,  in  A  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,  has  a  woman  fall  in  love  with  a  donkey.  The 
audience  wonders  at  that.  And  now,  think  of  it,  that  a  nation  of 
sixty-five  millions  have  .  .  ."  He  completed  the  sentence  with  a 
wave  of  his  hand. 


Z8  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

We  spoke  of  the  Jews  and  their  destiny.  (At  the  time  he  was 
still  working  on  the  manuscript  of  the  Moses  book.)  He  was  not 
downcast.  "Our  enemies  wish  to  destroy  us.  But  they  will  only 
succeed  in  dispersing  us  through  the  world."  Averse  to  national- 
istic prejudices,  he  loved  his  people  and  he  did  not  believe  that 
this  persecution  would  break  their  will  to  live.  When  I  com- 
mented on  the  tragedy  of  Jewish  destiny,  he  replied  with  a 
smile,  "The  ways  of  the  Lord  are  dark,  but  seldom  pleasant." 

While  on  this  subject,  I  should  like  to  record  Freud's  reply 
when  a  London  weekly  requested  him  to  express  his  opinion,  to 
be  published  in  a  symposium,  on  the  Nazi  persecution  of  the 
Jews.  Freud  refused,  citing  a  French  proverb: 

Le  bruit  est  pour  le  fat, 
Le  plainte  est  pour  le  sot; 
L'honnete  homme  trompe 
S'en  va  et  ne  dit  mot. 

He  did  not  show  much  surprise  at  the  outbreak  of  hatred  for 
the  Jews.  When  he  learned  that  in  Berlin  his  books,  together 
with  those  of  Heine,  Schnitzler,  Wassermann,  and  so  many  others, 
had  been  solemnly  consigned  to  perdition  and  burned,  he  said 
calmly,  "At  least  I  burn  in  the  best  of  company." 

A  journalist  reported  in  the  New  York  Times  Freud's  com- 
ment on  his  own  fate  at  this  time.  "  They  told  me/  he  said,  'that 
psychoanalysis  is  alien  to  their  Weltanschauung,  and  I  suppose 
it  is/  He  said  this  with  no  emotion  and  little  interest,  as  though 
he  were  talking  about  the  affairs  of  some  complete  stranger/' 

It  is  well  known  that  he  was  not  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  his 
own  people.  He  hailed  the  reconstruction  going  on  in  Palestine 
and  wrote  to  the  Jewish  organization,  Keren  Hajazoth,  on  June 
20,  1925:  "It  is  a  sign  of  our  invincible  will  to  live  which  for 
two  thousand  years  has  survived  the  worst  persecutions.  Our 
youth  will  carry  on  the  fight/' 

If  I  here  describe  some  more  personal  moments  of  this  last 
conversation,  I  do  so  to  show  how  charmingly  and  spiritedly  the 
octogenarian  expressed  himself.  I  want  to  give  some  hint  of  the 
graciousness  of  his  mind  and  the  modesty  and  kindliness  of  his 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH   FREtJD  ig 

character.  We  were  speaking  of  my  latest  book.  He  praised  it  in 
words  that  I  still  cherish  in  my  memory.  He  freely  criticized  some 
of  my  ironic  judgments  of  the  ideas  of  certain  colleagues.  Later 
on  I  explained,  "I  don't  care  much  what  my  colleagues  think  of 
my  books.  For  me  your  opinion  is  the  vital  one.  Only  what  you 
say  to  me  is  important."  "You  are  very  wrong,  Reik,"  he  an- 
swered. "You  must  regard  your  colleagues'  opinions  of  your 
work.  I  am  no  longer  important,  I  am  already  an  outsider— I 
no  longer  belong  .  .  .  You  know,"  he  added  after  a  short  pause, 
"your  position  is  so  unreasonable.  You  remind  me  of  the  hero  of 
a  fairy  tale  I  once  read— where  was  it? 

"A  barber  in  the  Orient,  let  us  say  Bagdad,  often  heard  his 
customers  talking  of  a  beautiful  princess  in  a  faraway  land  who 
was  held  captive  by  a  wicked  wizard.  The  brave  man  who  would 
free  the  princess  was  promised  both  her  hand  and  a  great  king- 
dom. Many  knights  and  princes  had  set  out  upon  the  adventure, 
but  none  had  succeeded  in  reaching  her.  Before  the  castle  in 
which  the  beautiful  lady  was  imprisoned  there  lay  a  vast,  gloomy 
wood.  Whoever  crossed  this  wood  would  be  attacked  by  lions  and 
torn  to  pieces.  The  few  who  succeeded  in  escaping  these  lions 
were  later  met  by  two  terrible  giants  who  beat  them  down  with 
cudgels.  Some  few  had  escaped  even  this  danger  and  after  years  of 
travail  had  reached  the  castle.  As  they  rushed  up  the  stairway, 
the  wizard's  magic  caused  it  to  collapse.  It  was  said  that  one 
brave  prince  had  nevertheless  managed  to  ascend  into  the 
castle,  but  in  the  great  hall  where  the  princess  was  enthroned  a 
fierce  fire  raged  which  destroyed  him. 

"The  adventurous  barber  was  so  deeply  impressed  by  these 
tales  of  the  beautiful  princess  that  by  and  by  he  sold  his  shop 
and  set  out  to  liberate  her.  He  had  singular  good  fortune;  he 
escaped  the  wild  beasts,  overcame  the  giants,  and  survived  many 
other  adventures,  until  at  last  he  reached  the  castle.  He  strode 
over  the  stairway,  although  it  toppled  beneath  him,  and  plunged 
intrepidly  through  the  roaring  flames  that  were  threatening  to 
consume  the  hall.  At  the  end  of  the  great  hall  he  could  dimly 
see  the  princess.  But  as  he  rushed  across  the  room  and  drew  near 
the  figure,  he  saw  a  gray  old  woman  supporting  herself  on  a 
cane  as  she  sat,  her  face  full  of  wrinkles  and  warts,  her  hair  drawn 


2O  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

back  in,  sparse,  snow-white  strands.  The  brave  barber  had  forgot- 
ten that  the  princess  had  been  waiting  sixty  years  for  her  deliverer 
.  .  .  No,  my  dear  Reik,  you  are  wrong  in  setting  such  store  on 
me  and  my  opinion.  You  must  listen  to  what  the  colleagues  say 
about  your  work." 
That  was  Sigmund  Freud's  way. 


Ill 


THE  MEMORIES  that  form  the  major  part  of  this  chapter 
emerged  during  the  last  years  on  different  occasions  and 
sometimes  by  most  surprising  detours.  Some  were  immediately 
recognized,  others  acknowledged  only  after  some  time.  A  few 
were  obviously  continuations  of.  conscious  thoughts  as,  for  in- 
stance, those  stimulated  by  reading  the  biography  of  Freud  by 
Ernest  Jones.  The  period  Jones  describes  antedated  my  acquaint- 
anceship with  Freud,  whom  I  first  met  in  1910,  but  the  reading 
of  the  book  renewed  impressions  I  had  received  in  later  years. 
These  reminiscences  varied  in  character:  sometimes  they  were 
clear  recollections  of  things  he  had  said.  The  perception  fre- 
quently was  accompanied  by  the  visual  image  of  Freud  sitting 
at  his  desk  across  from  me,  or  giving  a  lecture  in  the  psychiatric 
clinic  in  the  Lazarettgasse,  or  walking  beside  me  afterward  on 
the  way  home.  On  rare  occasions  I  even  remembered  the  precise 
place  where  he  had  spoken  this  or  that  sentence,  as  if  the  locality 
itself  had  some  significance.  Now  and  then  his  voice  was  recalled, 
its  timbre,  the  intonations  and  inflections,  the  modulation  of  a 
sentence,  even  the  clearing  of  his  throat.  Along  with  this  auditory 
memory  there  came  to  mind  how  in  later  years  he  coughed,  took 
out  his  handkerchief,  and  thoughtfully  looked  at  the  sputum  for 
a  moment.  (Gestures  are  very  rarely  remembered,  but  Freud  did 
not  use  many  gestures.)  Associations  easily  to  be  guessed  lead  from 
here  to  the  time  when  I  heard  Freud  mention  cancer:  he  spoke 
of  the  eagerness  of  young  psychoanalysts  to  help  their  patients, 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS   WITH  FREUD  21 

to  free  them  as  quickly  as  possible  from  their  neurotic,  often 
painful  symptoms.  He  declared  that  suffering  is  a  biological 
necessity  and  pointed  out  that  some  physical  illnesses—for  instance, 
cancer-are  so  dangerous  because  the  signal  of  suffering  is  absent 
in  their  first  phases. 

Many  of  these  recollections  occurred  to  me  during  psychoana- 
lytic sessions  with  patients,  either  while  listening  as  they  communi- 
cated certain  experiences  or  while  I  was  giving  an  analytic  inter- 
pretation myself.  Sometimes  such  a  memory  occurred  when  I  was 
giving  a  lecture  or  a  seminar,  trying  to  get  some  idea  across 
to  the  young  people  who  study  psychoanalysis.  Whenever  such 
reminiscences  emerged,  I  told  my  students  what  Freud  had  said 
on  this  or  that  occasion.  In  analytic  sessions,  from  out  of  some- 
where a  sentence  from  the  lips  of  Freud  summarizing  an  emo- 
tional attitude  or  explaining  a  dynamic  unconscious  process 
would  occur  to  me,  as  if  to  help  me  to  understand  the  actual 
situation.  In  other  cases  a  memory  occurred  to  me  after  I  had  said 
something  explaining  the  secret  meaning  of  a  dream  or  formulat- 
ing a  psychological  insight  in  a  poignant  sentence.  I  then 
suddenly  became  aware  that  it  was  my  voice  that  spoke,  but  that 
he  had  said  this  same  thing  in  a  conversation. 

I  often  remembered  on  such  a  detour  an  apt  simile  he  had 
used  or  a  surprising  insight,  and  the  mot  juste  he  had  found  was 
sometimes  pronounced  by  me  as  if  it  had  been  my  own,  only  to 
be  recognized  as  Freud's  expression  later  on.  In  those  early 
years  we  followers  of  Freud  were  often  criticized  because  we 
identified  ourselves  with  our  master.  We  did,  of  course,  but  one 
is  tempted  to  ask:  What  else  should  we  do  with  him?  Moreover, 
the  process  of  identification  is  psychologically  by  no  means  as 
simple  as  the  critics  imagined;  it  has  its  unconscious  motivations 
and  aims  and  naturally  has  also  its  hostile  aspect.  At  the  end  of  the 
emotional  process  it  is  almost  meaningless  to  decide  what  belongs 
to  the  object  of  identification  and  what  to  the  transformed  ego. 
The  Talmud  reports  that  Moses,  after  his  descent  from  Sinai, 
was  so  filled  with  the  spirit  of  God  that  he  said,  "I  am  giving  you 
the  Law."  Students  of  a  Hassidic  rabbi  once  asked  him  to 
interpret  this  passage  which  seemed  blasphemous  to  them.  He 
answered  with  a  fine  parable:  A  merchant  wished  to  undertake 


22  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

a  journey.  He  hired  a  clerk  to  replace  him  in  the  interval  and 
let  him  work  at  the  counter.  He  himself  made  a  practice  of 
remaining  in  the  adjoining  room.  From  here  he  might  often 
hear  the  apprentice  saying  to  a  customer,  "The  master  cannot 
give  it  to  you  at  that  price."  The  merchant  thought  the  time  was 
not  yet  ripe  to  leave  the  shop.  The  second  year  he  heard  the 
apprentice  saying,  "We  cannot  give  it  to  you  at  that  price/' 
Still  the  merchant  thought  it  would  be  wiser  not  to  leave.  At 
last,  in  the  third  year,  he  heard  the  clerk  in  the  next  room  de- 
claring, "1  can't  give  it  to  you  at  that  price/*  He  felt  then  he 
could  safely  go  on  his  journey. 

Even  everyday  impressions  sometimes  bring  back  memories 
of  Freud  to  me,  as  for  instance  the  paper  on  which  I  am  at  the 
moment  writing.  I  prefer  very  large  sheets  to  those  of  smaller 
size.  Freud  also  used  such  large  sheets,  and  when  I  once  asked 
him  about  this  habit  he  declared,  "When  I  have  to  restrict  my- 
self in  so  many  directions  in  life,  I  want  to  have  space  and 
freedom  at  least  when  I  am  writing/'  The  image  of  his  large 
slanting  handwriting,  with  its  left  to  right  ascending  character, 
comes  to  mind  together  with  a  remark  he  once  made  about 
graphology.  He  told  me  once  about  a  letter  he  had  received  from 
an  unknown  Russian  lady  who  suffered  from  a  serious  emotional 
disturbance  and  had  wandered  for  a  long  time  from  one  psychia- 
trist to  another.  She  had  spent  many  months  in  treatment  with 
Dr.  P.  Sollier  in  Paris  and  asked  Freud  whether  he  would  take 
her  as  patient.  She  warned  him  in  her  (French)  letter  that  she 
would  be  unable  to  speak  of  certain  matters.  After  I  had  read 
this  passage,  he  turned  my  attention  to  the  patient's  handwriting. 
"What  do  you  think  of  it?"  he  asked.  It  was  a  strange  way  of 
writing,  regular  in  its  character,  but  conspicuous  because  each 
letter  seemed  to  be  bent  to  the  left— as  if  the  handwriting  as  a 
whole  were  leaning  backward.  "There  is  no  doubt,"  said  Freud, 
"that  men  also  express  their  character  through  their  writing. 
What  a  pity  it  is  that  its  understanding  is  so  ambiguous  and  its 
interpretation  so  uncertain!  Graphology  is  not  yet  a  scientific 
exploration/' 

The  conversation  about  that  letter  brings  to  mind  that  Freud 
liked  to  use  comparisons,  similes  and  analogies  when  he  sought 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  2g 

vividly  to  illustrate  what  he  meant.  For  example,  this  patient  had 
expressed  her  eagerness  to  undergo  analytic  treatment  provided 
she  could  keep  certain  things  to  herself.  Freud  spoke  of  the  im- 
possibility of  such  reservations  in  psychoanalysis  and  of  areas 
set  apart  and  withheld  for  certain  reasons.  "Let  us  assume  that 
the  police  can  enter  any  quarter  of  Vienna  except  certain  streets 
or  sections.  Do  you  think  that  the  security  of  Vienna  would  be 
very  strong  in  such  a  case?"  He  was  amused  when  I  told  him 
about  a  patient  from  New  England  who  declared  during  the 
initial  interview,  "A  gentleman  does  not  speak  of  his  mother 
or  his  religion." 

Here  are  a  few  instances  noted  at  random,  which  show  Freud's 
liking  for  metaphor:  About  a  patient  who  intermittently  fought 
against  a  masochistic  perversion,  only  to  succumb  to  it  when  it 
seemed  as  if  he  had  already  conquered  it:  "He  acts  like  a  wan- 
derer who  returns  home  and  who  already  sees  the  lights  of  his 
house  from  a  distance,  only  to  stumble  into  the  last  tavern  on 
the  highway."  About  the  same  patient  who,  after  having  been 
separated  from  his  domineering  wife,  began  a  sexual  affair  with 
a  very  masculine  woman:  "He  has  broken  the  whip  that  lashed 
him  to  obtain  a  cat-o'-nine-tails  for  himself." 

In  speaking  of  the  fact  that,  unavoidably,  psychoanalysis  often 
affects  patients  who  seem  to  have  adjusted  themselves  to  intense 
inhibitions  and  symptoms  so  that  they  begin  to  feel  anxious  and 
emotionally  insecure  when  old  conflicts  are  explored  in  their 
analytic  sessions:  "Yes,  psychoanalysis  stirs  them  up.  Pour  faire 
une  omelette,  il  faut  casser  des  oeufs  (To  make  an  omelette, 
you  have  to  break  eggs)."  Another  comparison,  used  when,  dur- 
ing a  walk,  we  discussed  the  increasing  difficulties  one  meets  when 
exploring  the  repressed  motivations  and  origins  of  neurotic  dis- 
turbances: "When  you  dig  into  this  sandbank  as  those  children 
over  there  do,  the  work  is  at  first  easy,  but  when  one  gets  deeper 
into  the  ground  it  becomes  stony  and  often  seems  as  if  the  spade 
cannot  penetrate."  A  similar  comparison  was  used  when  he  spoke 
of  digging  a  shaft  into  the  depths,  or  making  a  mine  with  regard 
to  analytic  exploration.  Once  he  spoke  of  the  future  of  psycho- 
analysis and  said  that  the  analysts  and  the  researchers  of  endocri- 
nology and  allied  sciences  are  being  compared  to  groups  of  workers 


24  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

who  build  a  tunnel  from  opposite  sides  and  will  meet  in  the 
middle  of  it.  He  often  used  comparisons  from  archeology  and 
from  research  into  early  phases  of  mankind;  for  instance,  when 
he  called  early  infancy  the  prehistory  of  the  individual.  He  liked 
to  take  his  comparisons  from  everyday  life.  When  I  once  spoke 
of  a  patient  who  in  a  violent  scene  threatened  to  leave  her  hus- 
band, Freud  said,  "Dishes  are  never  eaten  as  hot  as  they  were 
cooked."  Discussing  the  part  unconscious  resistances  have  in 
reaching  certain  insights,  he  said,  "It  takes  hardly  more  than  a 
day  and  a  night  to  reach  Verdun  from  Berlin  by  train.  But  the 
German  army  needed  many  months  to  make  the  journey.  There 
were  the  French  divisions  that  considerably  slowed  the  march." 
I  sometimes  heard  Freud  quote  from  literature  in  his  conversa- 
tion. Here  are  two  examples:  I  spoke  of  a  patient  who  had  definite 
walking  difficulties  of  a  psychosomatic  kind.  I  mentioned  to 
Freud  that  some  doctors  had  suspected  that  these  difficulties  in 
walking  were  initial  symptoms  of  multiple  sclerosis.  When  I  then 
related  that  the  man  often  had  short  phases  in  which  there  was 
not  the  slightest  trace  of  his  walking  symptoms,  Freud  remarked, 
"Die  war's  nicht,  defs  geschah."  ("That  was  not  it,  if  that  hap- 
pened.") The  line  is  from  a  poem  by  the  old  Austrian  poet 
Friedrich  Halm  (1806-1871)  about  love.  The  line  asks:  "And  tell 
me  how  does  love  die?"  And  the  answer  is:  "It  was  not  love 
if  that  happened."  In  such  poetic  language  Freud  rejected  the 
diagnosis  of  multiple  sclerosis. 

On  another  occasion  I  told  him  that  I  could  not  interpret  an 
element  in  the  dream  of  a  patient  in  which  apples  played  a  sig- 
nificant part.  Instead  of  answering,  Freud  quoted  from  the  Wal- 
purgis  Night  scene  in  which  Faust  dances  with  a  young  witch  and 
says: 

Once  came  a  lovely  dream  to  me 

I  saw  there  an  apple  tree, 

Two  lovely  apples  on  it  shone; 

They  charmed  me  so  I  climbed  thereon. 

The  beauty  answers: 

The  little  apples  men  entice 
Since  they  were  in  Paradise. 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH   FREUD  25 

I  feel  myself  with  pleasure  glow 
That  such  within  my  garden  grow. 

These  lines— quoted,  of  course,  in  German— provided  the  inter- 
pretation that  had  eluded  me. 

In  a  discussion  about  the  psychopathology  of  criminals  Freud 
emphasized  the  differences  between  neurotic  and  criminal  per- 
sonalities. He  said  that  as  long  as  there  were  no  individual  ana- 
lytic case  explorations  of  delinquents,  analogies  with  the  attitude 
of  neurotic  patients  had  only  a  very  restricted  value,  since  certain 
traits,  conspicuous  in  criminals,  appeared  in  the  emotional 
life  of  neurotics  sporadically  isolated  "as  veins  in  the  ore." 

He  once  said  that  men  who  are  terrified  at  the  idea  of  the 
possibility  of  incest  with  their  mothers  will  be  only  weakly  potent 
or  impotent  because  they  "shy  from  this  potentiality  as  a  horse 
does  from  his  own  shadow."  He  added  that  a  little  of  one's  mother 
is  to  be  found  in  any  woman. 

He  was  far  from  considering  psychoanalysis  as  a  help  or  cure 
in  all  cases  of  emotional  conflicts  and  often  felt  that  analytic 
treatment  was  not  indicated.  In  a  case  known  to  me  in  which  a 
husband  had  deserted  his  wife,  who  in  her  unhappiness  asked 
Freud  for  analytic  help,  he  said,  "That  is  a  calamity  like  another 
("C'est  un  malheur  comme  un  autre")  and  one  has  to  deal  with 
it  as  with  others.  Psychoanalysis  cannot  help,  perhaps  resignation 
is  the  right  answer." 

For  a  long  time  Freud  mistrusted  all  attempts  at  short  cuts  in 
analytic  treatment  and  occasionally  made  sarcastic  remarks  about 
some  analytic  innovations.  We  once  visited  the  newly  furnished 
consultation  room  of  one  of  our  colleagues.  Freud,  pointing  to  the 
very  broad  couch,  said  smilingly  to  me,  "That  is  rather  for  group 
analysis." 

I  remember  that  one  of  the  first  patients  he  referred  to  me 
was  a  young  man  with  serious  nervous  complaints.  The  patient 
had  told  me  in  the  first  interview  that  he  had  violin  lessons  with 
a  well-known  virtuoso.  At  one  of  the  next  analytic  sessions  he 
brought  his  violin  case  with  him  and  put  it  on  my  desk  where  my 
manuscripts  were.  When  I  told  Freud  about  it,  he  blamed  me 
because  I  had  charged  the  patient  too  low  a  fee.  Freud  interpreted 


26  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

the  placing  of  the  violin  case  as  symptomatic  action  in  which 
the  patient  had  expressed  his  unconscious  contempt  toward  me, 
to  whom  he  paid  so  much  less  than  to  his  music  master.  When 
I  told  Freud  later  about  certain  features  of  this  case,  he  expressed 
the  opinion  that  the  strange  behavior  of  my  patient  was  perhaps 
to  be  traced  to  some  unknown  traumatic  events  of  his  child- 
hood which  he  unconsciously  remembered.  Much  later  this  con- 
jecture was  confirmed:  the  uncle  in  whose  house  the  boy  had 
been  brought  up  told  me  a  secret  which  had  been  kept  back  from 
all  members  of  the  family.  The  mother  of  the  patient  had  become 
insane  and  had  treated  the  boy  very  badly.  The  patient  had  no 
conscious  knowledge  that  his  mother  had  died  in  an  asylum. 

I  have  often  wondered  about  Freud's  attitude  to  women.  He 
certainly  did  not  share  the  American  concept  of  equality  of  the 
sexes,  and  was  of  the  opinion  that  the  man  should  take  the  lead 
in  married  life.  He  spoke  of  America  as  a  matriarchy  in  which 
women  have  the  real  rule.  He  was  old-fashioned  in  his  gallantry 
toward  women  and  showed  in  his  conversation  a  deep  insight  into 
their  emotional  life.  Sometimes  I  heard  him  joke  about  them. 
In  a  variation  of  a  colloquial  sentence  Viennese  women  used  when 
they  were  shopping  he  said,  "A  wife  is  expensive,  but  you  have 
her  a  long  time."  Another  time  he  said  jokingly  that  a  woman 
who  feels  restless  consults  a  physician  or  goes  shopping. 

He  once  compared  the  analytic  process,  in  certain  masochistic 
cases  in  which  the  patient  has  unconsciously  subjected  himself 
to  a  severe  punishment  for  his  thought-crimes,  to  a  legal  pro- 
cedure in  which  the  analyst  takes  the  case  to  the  court  of  appeals, 
pleads  that  the  verdict  of  the  superego  was  too  severe,  and  recom- 
mends a  milder  judgment.  He  also  compared  the  process  of  anal- 
ysis with  the  task  of  the  re-education  of  the  individual  who 
vacillates  between  the  demands  of  his  drives  and  those  of  the 
society  incorporated  within  his  superego.  In  enlarging  upon  this 
conflict  in  one  of  his  lectures,  he  gave  vivid  instances  of  those 
opposite  tendencies  that  have  their  battleground  within  the  soul 
of  neurotic  patients.  Occasionally  in  informal  discussion  he  spoke 
like  a  conversationalist  rather  than  an  academic  teacher,  present- 
ing ingenious  comparisons  of  such  conflicts  with  situations  which 
seemingly  were  very  distant.  The  conversationalist  was  then  trans- 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  2? 

formed  into  a  raconteur.  The  metaphor  and  the  simile  were  re- 
placed by  a  story  in  which  both  understatement  and  wit  played 
a  part. 

I  recall  a  lecture  in  which  he  spoke  of  the  clash  between  the 
justified  demands  of  society  for  renunciation  of  certain  satisfac- 
tions and  the  power  of  biologically  determined  instinctual  drives. 
He  compared  that  conflict  with  a  story  about  the  town  of  Schilda. 
The  citizens  of  that  town,  in  old  German  folklore,  were  known  as 
rather  silly  in  their  pretense  of  deep  wisdom,  and  many  foolish 
actions  are  reported  of  them.  They  once  bought  a  horse  for 
work  on  the  municipal  plot.  After  some  time  the  mayor  and  the 
town  council  decided  that  the  horse  was  too  expensive  because  it 
ate  too  much  hay  and  oats,  and  they  cut  down  its  daily  ration. 
The  horse  continued  to  work,  and  the  citizens,  still  unsatisfied 
with  the  saving  reached,  determined  to  retrench  its  food  ration 
still  more.  The  horse  was  apparently  still  workable,  whereupon 
they  cut  the  feed  ration  even  more.  Then  they  set  to  wondering 
whether  the  horse  might  not  work  without  any  hay  or  oats.  The 
experiment  was  performed  and  the  horse  died  the  next  day.  Thus, 
remarked  Freud,  it  is  certainly  necessary  to  restrict  demands  of  our 
sexual  and  aggressive  drives  in  the  interest  of  society,  but  human 
nature  does  not  allow  this  renunciation  to  transgress  certain 
limits.  A  variable  measure  of  instinctual  gratification  is  necessary, 
if  man  is  to  remain  emotionally  healthy. 

Freud  considered  it  necessary  that  the  patient  to  whom  the 
first  analytical  interpretations  were  given  be  psychologically  pre- 
pared for  them.  He  felt  that  the  psychoanalyst  should  introduce 
his  interpretation  by  remarks  that  would  serve  to  give  the  patient 
an  elementary  insight  into  the  contrast  and  conflict  between  the 
organized  and  conscious  ego  and  the  repressed.  "It  would  be  as 
obviously  nonsensical  to  tell  an  unprepared  patient  that  he  once 
had  incestuous  desires  for  his  mother  as  to  tell  the  man  on  the 
street  that  he  sees  things  standing  on  their  heads." 

In  the  discussion  of  a  case  presentation  in  which  an  analyst  had 
told  a  patient  some  very  unpleasant  things  in  a  seemingly 
brutal  manner,  Freud  remarked  that  such  a  technique  ought  to 
be  called  aggressive  rather  than  active.  Enlarging  on  the  manner 
in  which  first  interpretations  in  analysis  should  be  communicated 


$8  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

to  the  patient,  he  told  us  the  following  story:  The  Shah  of  Persia 
once  had  an  anxious  dream  and  summoned  the  dream-interpreter, 
to  whom  he  told  the  content  of  his  dream.  The  magician  said, 
"Alas,  O  King,  all  your  relations  will  die  and  after  them  you  will 
die!"  The  Shah  got  angry  and  ordered  the  dream-interpreter  de- 
capitated. He  then  summoned  a  second  interpreter  and  told  him 
the  dream.  "Hail,  O  King,"  said  this  man,  "you  will  survive  all 
your  relatives!"  The  Shah  ordered  that  a  hundred  gold  coins  be 
given  to  the  second  dream-interpreter. 

Often  a  bit  of  practical  wisdom  or  common  sense  was  expressed 
by  Freud  by  comparisons.  Once  when  someone  wanted  to  give  up 
a  job  without  any  hope  of  getting  another  or  better  one,  Freud 
said,  "You  do  not  throw  out  dirty  water  unless  you  know  you 
can  get  some  clean/*  In  one  of  the  cases  discussed  at  the  meeting 
of  the  Vienna  Psychoanalytic  Society  the  patient  had  long  and 
detailed  conversations  with  a  friend  about  her  analysis.  Freud 
told  the  young  analyst  that  he  should  energetically  discourage 
such  discussions.  "Much  valuable  material  will  be  lost  to  the 
analytic  treatment  if  you  allow  the  patient  to  continue  that. 
When  you  want  a  river  to  have  a  powerful  waterfall,  you  do  not 
dig  channels  to  take  water  away  from  it." 

I  remember  Freud  speaking  of  an  American  physician  who 
came  to  Vienna  to  undergo  psychoanalytic  treatment,  but  con- 
sidered his  analysis  as  a  kind  of  byproduct  and  gave  priority 
to  studies  of  other  disciplines.  Freud  said  that,  for  the  time 
being,  analysis  should  have  priority  for  that  physician,  adding, 
"Analysis,  in  such  a  case,  is  like  the  God  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  does  not  allow  that  there  are  other  gods." 

About  a  young  physician  who  boasted  in  a  letter  that  he  had 
sacrificed  all  other  interests  to  the  study  of  psychoanalysis,  Freud 
said,  "That  is  not  a  merit:  to  choose  analysis  is  part  of  one's 
destiny." 

He  warned  us  not  to  discuss  the  positive  transfer  provided  it 
did  not  take  those  forms  which  interfered  with  the  progress  of 
the  therapeutic  procedure— that  is,  unless  it  showed  itself  as 
resistance.  "Don't  forget  that  those  positive  feelings  are  the  wind 
that  moves  our  mills." 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  2Q 

Once  during  the  first  World  War  the  ambiguous  role  the  Poles 
played  was  discussed.  Freud  was  amused  when  someone  said, 
"The  Poles  sell  their  country,  but  they  do  not  deliver  it."  Freud 
laughingly  commented,  "The  result  is  that  the  Poles  are  truly 
patriots!" 

I  remember  that  he  read  an  article  of  a  colleague  and  called  its 
style  "tasteless  as  matzos."  When  he  criticized  someone,  which  was 
rare,  he  was  always  direct.  I  remember  when  Hermann  von  Kay- 
serling,  the  writer  of  the  Diary  of  a  Philosopher  and  the  leader  of 
the  School  of  Wisdom  in  Darmstadt,  visited  him  and  began  to 
talk  about  psychoanalysis  in  a  rather  superficial  manner,  Freud 
said,  "You  do  not  understand  that,  Count." 

In  his  critical  remarks  about  books  and  articles  he  unerringly 
put  his  finger  on  the  weak  spot,  not  only  in  regard  to  their  con- 
tent, but  also  their  presentation.  Sensitive  to  every  shade  of 
stylistic  peculiarity,  he  reached  conclusions  from  the  manner  of 
writing  as  to  the  personality  of  the  writer,  even  to  certain  hidden 
qualities  as  well  as  shortcomings.  He  felt,  for  instance,  that  a 
certain  author  whose  excellent  intelligence  he  admired  spoke  or 
wrote  down  to  his  readers.  I  remember  he  occasionally  quoted 
a  witty  remark  of  Karl  Kraus,  the  well-known  satirical  Viennese 
writer,  adding  that  Kraus  was  a  highly  intellectual  person  who 
was  very  aggressive  and  malicious. 

I  know  he  had  a  low  opinion  of  the  American  mentality  of 
the  1920'$  and  said  it  was  very  superficial  and  satisfied  with  labels 
and  slogans.  He  characterized  it  once  as  having  the  character  of 
adolescence  and  showing  "an  unthinking  optimism  and  an  empty 
activity."  He  was  not  in  the  least  impressed  with  the  Freud  craze 
which  at  the  time  was  in  vogue  in  this  country,  and  always 
pointed  out  that  the  enthusiasm  of  American  intellectuals  for 
psychoanalysis  was  only  possible  because  they  did  not  really 
understand  the  new  science.  He  told  me  that,  with  a  few  excep- 
tions, psychoanalysis  in  this  country  had  not  made  any  remark- 
able scientific  contributions  to  depth-psychology. 

In  emphasized  contrast  to  the  attitude  of  the  American  Psy- 
choanalytic Association,  he  was,  until  his  death,  of  the  opinion 
that  psychoanalysis  is  not  a  medical  science  but  belongs  to  psy- 
chology. At  one  of  the  Wednesday  evenings  when  we,  a  selected 


g0  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

group  of  his  students,  met  at  his  home,  I  remarked  in  a  discussion 
that  the  future  of  psychoanalysis  would  be  in  the  study  of  history, 
anthropology  and  the  social  sciences,  and  that  the  analytic 
therapy  of  neurotic  and  psychotic  disturbances  would  be  obsolete 
in  the  year  2000.  To  the  astonishment  of  almost  all  present— some 
are  still  alive-Freud  entirely  agreed  with  me.  He  said,  "There  is 
no  doubt  that  the  main  task  of  therapy  of  the  neuroses  will  be 
dealt  with  by  means  which  new  discoveries  in  the  area  of  inner 
secretions  will  provide.  I  hear  the  steps  of  endocrinology  behind 
*is  and  it  will  catch  up  with  us  and  overtake  us.  But  even  then 
psychoanalysis  will  be  very  useful.  Endocrinology  will  then  be 
a  giant  who  is  blind  and  does  not  know  where  to  go,  and  psy- 
choanalysis will  be  the  dwarf  who  leads  him  to  the  right  places." 

While  he  showed  himself  always  warm  and  was  interested  in 
my  private  life,  he  was  reserved  and  reticent  about  himself.  Only 
after  his  seventieth  birthday  did  he  begin  to  speak  freely  about 
himself  and  his  private  life,  and  told  me  some  interesting 
memories.  My  impression  is  that  he  was  really  shy  and  overcame 
it  by  a  kind  of  emphasized  spontaneity. 

When  I  first  made  his  acquaintance  he  was  interested  to  hear 
that  I  was  working  on  a  book  on  Flaubert's  The  Temptation  o/ 
St.  Anthony.  He  knew  the  work  very  well  and  admired  its  writer. 
Shortly  after  my  book  was  published  in  1912— it  was  the  first 
psychoanalytic  doctor's  thesis  in  Europe— he  suggested,  during 
a  walk,  that  I  should  write  a  psychoanalytic  monograph  on  Emile 
Zola.  He  knew  an  astonishing  amount  about  Zola's  married  life 
and  about  his  two  illegitimate  children,  and  about  Zola's  com- 
pulsive way  of  working  which  produced  the  most  thorough  study 
of  the  theme  with  which  his  novels  dealt.  Freud  told  me  then 
about  some  very  interesting  features  of  Zola's  compulsions.  I 
have  always  regretted  that  I  made  no  notes  on  that  conversation. 
Only  much  later  did  I  realize  that  my  resistance  against  writing 
the  monograph  had  its  main  source  in  my  unconscious  reluctance 
to  accept  Freud's  suggestion,  an  infantile  hesitancy  to  receive  a 
gift  from  a  father-representative.  Strangely  enough,  it  was  Freud 
again  who  helped  me  much  later  to  arrive  at  this  insight.  He  once 
spoke  in  another  context  of  typical  characteristics  of  the  defiant 
attitude  of  an  adolescent  son  toward  his  father:  "That  uncon- 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  gl 

scious  reluctance  goes  so  far  that  the  son  does  not  want  to  owe 
anything  to  his  father,  not  even  his  life.  Do  you  remember  the 
typical  theme  in  fairy  tales  and  folklore  of  a  young  man  saving 
a  king  or  duke  from  highwaymen  who  want  to  kill  him?  You 
easily  recognize  in  such  veiled  shape  the  unconscious  defiance  of 
the  son  who  wishes  to  give  back  to  his  father  the  life  he  owes 
him." 

Whenever,  later  on— especially  after  my  arrival  in  America  in 
1938—1  became  discouraged,  I  would  bolster  myself  by  remember- 
ing that  Freud  often  and  freely  said  to  me  and  others  that  he 
had  high  expectations  in  regard  to  my  future  research  work. 
Looking  back  now,  when  the  end  of  work  is  in  sight,  I  find  my- 
self ashamed  at  how  little  I  could  fulfill  those  expectations.  Yet 
I  know  I  have  done  the  best  that  as  poor  a  man  as  Hamlet  was 
able  to.  Such  a  retrospective  glance  renews  the  awareness  of  what 
a  stroke  of  luck  it  was  that  I  met  Freud  when  I  was  in  my  early 
twenties,  and  that  I  could  work  with  him  so  long.  It  was  a  great 
time  because  it  was  a  time  lived  with  a  man  who  was  great. 


IV 


IN  THE  PREFACE  to  the  Hebrew  edition  of  Totem  and  Taboo, 
written  in  1930,  Freud  states  that  he  does  not  understand  the 
sacred  language,  that  he  is  as  alienated  from  the  religion  of  his 
forefathers  as  he  is  from  any  other  and  that  he  cannot  share 
nationalistic  ideals— yet  he  feels  that  his  personality  is  Jewish  and 
he  does  not  wish  it  to  be  different  Asked,  "What  is  still  Jewish 
in  you  since  you  have  renounced  all  those  features  common  with 
your  people?"  he  would  answer,  "Still  very  much,  perhaps  the 
main  thing."  He  added,  however,  that  while  he  could  not,  at 
the  time,  put  that  essential  character  into  clear  words,  he  thought 
that  it  certainly  would  become  accessible  to  scientific  insight 
later  on. 
The  great  psychologist  never  attempted  to  explore  those  vague, 


32  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

yet  definite  emotional  and  mental  traits  that  are  so  difficult  to 
grasp,  but  a  few  sentences,  spoken  in  answer  to  a  speech  at  his 
seventieth  birthday  celebration  at  the  B'nai  B'rith  in  Vienna, 
circumscribe  those  characteristics.  On  this  occasion,  too,  Freud 
confessed  to  being  an  infidel  Jew  and  rejected  a  feeling  of  na- 
tional superiority  as  disastrous  and  unjustifiable.  But  he  added, 
".  .  .  there  remains  enough  that  made  the  attraction  of  Judaism 
and  of  the  Jews  irresistible,  many  mighty  emotional  forces,  the 
more  powerful,  the  less  able  to  be  caught  in  words,  as  well  as 
the  clear  awareness  of  an  inner  identity,  the  secret  of  the  same 
inner  construction."  He  gratefully  acknowledged  that  he  owed 
to  his  Jewishness  the  two  qualities  that  became  indispensable  on 
his  difficult  road.  As  a  Jew  he  felt  free  from  many  prejudices 
which  restricted  other  people  in  the  use  of  their  intellect,  and 
as  a  Jew  he  was  prepared  to  go  into  opposition  and  to  renounce 
a  conformity  with  the  "compact  majority."  Posterity  has  recog- 
nized that  it  was  this  intellectual  freedom  from  convention  and 
this  independence  of  thought  that  enabled  him  to  write  those 
eleven  volumes  that  "shook  the  world."  It  was  that  readiness  to 
remain  in  splendid  isolation  and  to  stand  alone  against  an  army 
of  antagonists  which  made  it  possible  to  carry  his  research  for- 
ward, unperturbed  and  unafraid-a  Jewish  knight  in  the  shining 
armor  of  the  integrity  and  courage  of  his  deep-rooted  convictions. 
In  the  excellent  book  The  Life  and  Work  of  Sigmund  Freud 
by  Ernest  Jones,  the  significance  of  the  Jewish  element  in  Freud's 
personality  is  not  fully  considered.  Only  two  short  paragraphs  of 
the  volume  are  dedicated  to  that  essential  part  of  the  great  ex- 
plorer's background.  Jones,  who  belonged  for  forty  years  to  the 
small  circle  of  Freud's  co-workers,  is  not  only  a  scholar  and 
skillful  writer,  but  also  an  honest  man.  As  the  only  foreigner  of 
that  intimate  circle,  he  could  remain  more  objective  than  the 
others.  The  same  fact  prevented  him,  who  lived  outside  the  cul- 
ture pattern  in  which  Freud  was  born  and  bred,  from  properly 
understanding  the  Jewish  element  in  Freud's  personality.  A 
biography  is  not  an  inquiry  in  depth,  and  that  shortcoming 
dods  not  diminish  the  value  of  Jones's  work  which  emphasizes 
that  Freud  "felt  Jewish  to  the  core  and  it  evidently  meant  a  great 
deal  to  him."  "A  Gentile,"  says  Jones,  speaking  for  himself, 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  33 

"would  have  said  that  Freud  had  few  overt  Jewish  characteristics, 
a  fondness  for  relating  Jewish  jokes  and  anecdotes  being  the  most 
prominent  one." 

It  seems  that  the  great  man  had  inherited  his  sense  of  humor, 
his  skepticism  and  the  high  evaluation  of  Jewish  wit  from  his 
father,  the  wool  merchant  Jakob  Freud,  who  had  the  habit  of 
pointing  a  moral  by  quoting  a  Jewish  proverb  or  anecdote. 
Jakob  Freud  was  admired  by  his  son  who  became  a  raconteur  of 
those  Jewish  stories  long  before  he  became  interested  in  the 
psychoanalytic  exploration  of  wit  and  its  relation  to  the  uncon- 
scious. Already  in  1897  Freud  writes  to  his  friend,  the  Berlin 
physician  Wilhelm  Fliess,  that  he  has  begun  to  collect  "profound 
Jewish  stories."  It  is  not  without  significance  that  this  communi- 
cation follows  a  comparison  which  alludes  to  one  of  those 
anecdotes:  he  reminds  the  friend  that  they  share  a  wide  area 
of  research  ("you  the  biological  and  I  the  psychological1')  like 
the  two  schnorrers,  one  of  whom  gets  the  province  of  Posen. 

The  correspondence  with  Wilhelm  Fliess*  presents  an  excellent 
picture  of  Freud  as  a  younger  man  who  turned  his  interest,  at 
first  hesitatingly,  later  determinedly,  to  the  new  field  of  psycho- 
pathology.  In  those  intimate  letters  in  which  Freud  freely  speaks 
of  his  personal  and  professional  life  as  well  as  of  his  recent  re- 
search, Jewish  jokes  are  again  and  again  quoted  or  alluded  to. 
In  1897  he  expresses  the  hope  that  he  will  arrive  at  the  basic 
insights  into  the  psychology  of  the  neurosis,  if  his  constitution 
can  stand  it.  Here  is  an  allusion  to  the  well-known  anecdote  in 
which  a  destitute  Jew  sneaks  into  the  express  train  to  Karlsbad 
(the  Czechoslovakian  health  resort)  without  a  ticket,  is  caught, 
thrown  out  at  each  station  and  each  time  more  and  more  brutally 
treated.  At  one  of  his  stations  of  suffering  an  acquaintance  sees 
him  and  asks  where  he  is  journeying  to.  The  answer  is:  "To 
Karlsbad,  if  my  constitution  can  bear  it."  Allusions  to  the  same 
joke  also  occurred  tp  Freud  later  when  he  interpreted  one  of  his 
dreams. 

A  few  other  instances:  Freud  reports  in  a  letter  that  he  had 
been  mistaken  in  one  of  his  earlier  theoretical  assumptions  about 

*  Freud,  "Aus  den  Anfangen  der  Psychoanalyse/'  Brief  an  Wilhelm  Fliess 
(London:  Imago  Publishing  Co.,  1950). 


£4  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

the  etiology  of  hysteria  and  he  ought  really  be  dissatisfied  and  de- 
pressed. His  hopes  of  fame,  of  riches  and  independence,,  of 
security  for  his  family  and  himself  were  frustrated  since  that 
concept  about  hysteria  had  proved  erroneous:  "Now  I  have  to  be 
again  quiet  and  modest  and  have  to  worry  and  to  save.  There 
the  little  anecdote  from  my  collection  occurs  to  me:  'Rebecca, 
take  the  dress  off;  you  are  no  kalle  (bride)  any  more/  "  A  year 
later  he  sends  the  friend  a  part  of  his  self-analysis,  the  first  in 
the  history  of  science,  and  remarks  that  it  is  entirely  directed  by 
the  unconscious  in  accordance  with  the  principle  of  Itzig,  the 
inexperienced  horseman,  who  is  asked,  "Where  do  you  go?"  and 
answers,  "How  should  I  know?  Ask  the  horse!" 

Students  of  Freud's  style  in  which  the  personality  and  its  his- 
tory are  reflected  could  have  discovered  that  the  same  joke  still 
influenced  the  shaping  of  a  comparison  twenty-three  years  later. 
In  Freud's  book  The  Ego  and  the  Id,  published  in  1921,  the  rela- 
tion of  the  ego,  which  represents  reason  and  common  sense,  to  the 
id,  from  which  our  drives  emerge,  is  compared  with  that  of  the 
rider  to  the  horse  which  he  tries  to  bridle.  The  simile  is  ex- 
tended: "As  the  rider  who  does  not  want  to  be  separated  from  his 
horse  frequently  can't  help  leading  it  where  it  wants  to  go,  thus 
the  ego  usually  fulfills  the  will  of  the  id  as  if  it  were  its  own." 

While  Freud  was  writing  his  Interpretation  of  Dreams  he 
considered  it  impossible  to  disguise  his  own  dreams,  but  he  was 
unwilling  to  renounce  his  most  important  discovery  on  account 
of  such  discretion.  In  this  dilemma,  he  reported  to  Fliess,  he  be- 
haved like  the  rabbi  who  was  asked  by  a  couple  for  advice  about 
what  they  should  do.  They  have  a  rooster  and  a  hen,  wish  to  have 
roasted  chicken  for  the  holiday  dinner  and  cannot  make  up  their 
mind  which  of  the  two  animals  they  should  kill.  "If  we  kill  the 
rooster,  the  hen  will  feel  hurt,  and  if  we  kill  the  hen,  the  rooster 
will  be  grieved.  What  should  we  do?"  The  rabbi  decides:  "Kill  the 
rooster!"  "But  then  the  hen  will  be  grieved!"  "Yes,  that's  true, 
then  kill  the  hen."  "But,  rabbi,  then  the  feelings  of  the  rooster 
will  be  hurt!"  "Well,  let  him  feel  hurt." 

When  Freud  sent  the  first  sheets  of  the  finished  book  to  the 
printer  in  1899,  he  was  dissatisfied  with  his  own  work  and  re- 
membered the  joke  in  which  Uncle  Jonas  is  congratulated  by  his 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  35 

nephew,  who  has  heard  that  he  is  engaged  to  be  married*  "And 
what  is  your  bride  like,  Uncle?"  "That's  a  matter  of  taste.  J 
don't  fancy  her." 

The  monumental  book  on  the  interpretation  of  dreams  was 
published  in  1900.  Five  years  later  Freud's  Wit  and  Its  Relation  to 
the  Unconscious  appeared.  In  this  work,  whose  psychological 
profoundness  has  not  yet  been  fully  appreciated,  he  takes  much 
of  the  material  for  his  analytic  exploration  from  the  source  of 
Jewish  jokes.  We  find  here  stories  about  schadcken  and  schnorrers, 
rabbis  and  unlearned  people,  poor  and  rich  Jews;  cynical,, 
sophistical  and  skeptical  jokes.  It  is  obvious  to  any  reader  that 
the  writer  loves  those  Jewish  anecdotes,  familiar  to  him  since 
his  boyhood.  Here  are  examples  of  subtle  and  coarse,  pessimistic; 
and  hopeful  Jewish  wit,  of  genuine  Jewish  humor  and  of  wit 
whose  essence  is  generally  human  and  of  which  only  the  acces- 
sories are  Jewish. 

In  sharp  contrast  to  so  many  previous  attempts  at  evaluating 
and  interpreting  the  character  of  Jewish  humor,  Freud's  point 
•of  view  is  pervasively  psychological.  In  penetrating  the  facade  of 
those  precious  stories,  in  demonstrating  their  technics  and  m 
revealing  their  means  and  methods,  he  shows  their  emotional 
meaning.  In  their  psychoanalytic  interpretation  he  arrives  at 
the  recesses  of  the  heart  that  beats  in  them.  Cautiously  removing: 
layer  after  layer,  he  demonstrates  their  secret  tendencies,  their  so- 
cial and  individual  skepticism,  their  knowledge  of  the  quintes- 
sence of  life  and  the  profundity  of  their  views.  In  the  combination 
of  an  incomparable  psychological  perceptiveness  and  of  inde- 
pendence of  thinking,  this  explorer  looks  at  the  Jewish  wit  from 
an  elevated  point  of  view,  aware  of  its  national  and  religious  as 
well  as  of  its  social  premises,  yet  seeing  in  it  expressions  of  all 
humanity  and  humanness.  He  comments  on  the  self-irony  of  Jew- 
ish humor:  "I  do  not  know  whether  one  often  finds  a  peo- 
pie  that  makes  so  unreservedly  merry  over  its  own  shortcomings." 
He  contrasts  stories  invented  by  Jews  and  directed  against  Jewish 
social  and  religious  manners  and  mannerisms  with  jokes  made 
by  anti-Semites  making  fun  of  the  same  foibles  and  failures.  Those 
jokes,  made  by  Gentiles  who  ridicule  the  Jews,  "are  nearly  all 
brutal  buffooneries  in  which  the  wit  is  spoiled  by  the  fact  that  the 


g6  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Jew  appears  as  a  comic  figure  to  a  stranger."  The  Jewish  jokes 
which  originate  with  Jews  know  and  acknowledge  the  weaknesses 
of  their  people,  "but  they  know  their  merits  as  well  as  their  short- 
comings/' In  a  conversation,  Freud  agreed  with  me  that  the  self- 
ironical  and  sometimes  even  self-degrading  character  of  Jewish 
humor  was  psychologically  made  possible  only  under  the  premise 
of  an  unconscious  or  preconscious  awareness  of  the  high  value  and 
worth  of  one's  people,  of  a  concealed  national  pride.  Only  a 
person  who  stands  on  an  elevated  place  can  jump  down.  Only  a 
proud  man  can  stoop  to  ridiculing  himself. 


In  my  thirty  years  of  friendship  with  Freud  I  heard  him,  of 
course,  frequently  tell  a  Jewish  anecdote  or  quote  a  witticism, 
but  it  was  never  for  its  own  end,  never  for  mere  amusement.  In 
most  cases  the  comical  story  was  used  as  illustration  to  a  point  he 
had  made,  a  comparison  of  a  certain  situation  or  behavior  pattern 
or  as  an  instance  of  the  human  experiences  we  all  share.  It 
was  as  if  he  brought  the  joke  forward  as  an  example  of  how 
wisdom  is  expressed  in  wit  and— much  more  rarely— wit  in  wis- 
dom. Most  of  the  instances  I  remember  were  quoted  in  connection 
with  subjects  we  had  just  discussed  in  our  conversation  which 
concerned  private  matters  or  professional  problems  as  well  as 
scientific  questions.  Some  of  those  witty  stories  compared  actual 
situations  of  that  time  with  various  aspects  of  the  troubled  life 
of  the  Jews.  The  need  to  make  something  very  clear  let  him 
call  up  some  funny  Jewish  anecdote  from  the  treasures  of  his 
almost  photographically  faithful  memory.  On  rare  occasions 
such  illustrative  or  comparative  purpose  was  replaced  by  some 
whimsical  or  satirical  trend  in  which  he  made  fun  of  the  stupidity 
or  hypocrisy  of  some  antagonist. 

It  is  regrettable  that  the  psychological  inquiry  into  the  secret 
meaning  and  significance  of  Jewish  wit  as  revealed  in  Freud's 
classical  book  has  not  been  continued  in  psychoanalytic  litera- 
ture. Very  few  psychologists  have  recognized  the  ramifications  of 
Freud's  exploration  of  this  kind  of  humor.  While  he  was  still 
alive,  I  published  several  articles  on  Jewish  humor  in  which  I  re- 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS   WITH  FREUD  37 

sumed  his  research  and  tried  to  discover  new  characteristics  of 
Jewish  wit.  In  a  conversation  with  me,  Freud  acknowledged  that 
I  had  succeeded  in  pointing  out  two  features  he  had  not  empha- 
sized. "We  laugh  at  those  stories,  but  Jewish  wit  is  not  merry  in 
its  character.  It  is  a  kind  of  humor  that  leaves  sadness  in  its  wake. 
One  of  those  profound  proverbs  proclaims:  'Suffering  makes  one 
laugh  too/  Another  characteristic  feature  of  a  Jewish  joke  is  its 
emotional  intimacy,  a  special  atmosphere  in  which  it  is  born 
and  bred." 

Here  are  a  few  instances  which  show  occasions  on  which  Freud 
remembered  a  Jewish  story  and  the  special  manner  in  which  he 
used  it.  I  discussed  with  him  once  the  case  of  a  patient  whom  he 
had  referred  to  me  for  psychoanalytic  treatment.  The  young  man 
suffered  from  a  compulsion  neurosis,  especially  from  syphilo- 
phobia,  a  fear  of  being  infected  by  spirochete,  and  had  de- 
veloped a  complicated  system  of  measures  to  protect  him  from 
the  danger  of  venereal  infection  in  everyday  life.  He  refused, 
for  instance,  to  sit  down  on  a  chair  where  a  person  had  sat  who 
could  have  been  acquainted  with  another  whom  he  suspected 
of  having  syphilis.  The  patient  found  out  that  on  a  certain  oc- 
casion his  parents  had  taken  a  man  who  was  the  uncle  of  such 
a  suspected  person  to  the  theater  in  their  automobile.  The 
patient  refused  to  use  his  parents'  car  any  more.  Pointing  out  the 
possibility  of  infection  by  touch,  he  insisted  that  they  buy  him 
a  car  of  his  own.  In  discussing  the  secondary  gains  of  the  neurosis, 
the  different  advantages  the  patient  gains  from  his  illness  after  it 
is  established,  Freud  told  a  Jewish  anecdote:  A  man  in  an  insane 
asylum  rejects  the  food  there  and  insists  on  having  kosher  dishes. 
His  passionate  demand  is  fulfilled  and  he  is  served  food  prepared 
according  to  the  Jewish  law.  On  the  next  Saturday  the  patient 
is  seen  comfortably  smoking  a  cigar.  His  physician  indignantly 
points  out  to  him  that  a  religious  man  who  observes  the  dietary 
laws  should  not  smoke  on  Saturday.  The  patient  replies,  "Then 
what  am  I  meschugge  (nuts)  for?"  Since  Freud  told  me  that  story 
I  have  often  quoted  it  to  patients,  illustrating  that  they  get 
various  secondary  compensations  in  the  form  of  attention,  love 
and  even  financial  support  from  others  from  whom  they  expect 
help  as  a  result  of  their  neurosis. 


38  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  still  remember  the  occasion  on  which  Freud  told  a  story  about 
Moses,  because  it  was  the  first  time  he  mentioned  the  theme  of 
the  Egyptian  nationality  of  the  leader,  the  theme  he  many 
years  later  dealt  with  in  his  book  on  Moses  and  monotheism.  We 
discussed  the  typical  forms  of  the  myths  of  the  birth  of  the 
hero  which  Otto  Rank  described  and  analyzed  later  on  in  his 
well-known  book.  Freud  told  me  that  the  feature  which  recurs 
frequently  in  those  myths— namely,  that  the  hero  is  drawn  out 
from  a  lake  or  a  river— is  a  symbolical  expression  of  the  delivery 
process  of  the  infant.  He  interpreted  the  situation  as  an  archaic 
presentation  of  the  embryo's  position  in  the  mother's  womb, 
surrounded  by  amniotic  fluid,  and  pointed  to  the  stories  in 
which  the  stork  pulls  babies  out  of  the  water.  Returning  to  the 
origin  of  Moses,  he  quoted  the  following  story:  The  boy  Itzig  is 
asked  in  grammar  school,  "Who  was  Moses?"  and  answers, 
"Moses  was  the  son  of  an  Egyptian  princess."  "That's  not  true," 
says  the  teacher.  "Moses  was  the  son  of  a  Hebrew  mother.  The 
Egyptian  princess  found  the  baby  in  a  casket"  But  Itzig  answers, 
"Says  she!" 

It  was  during  the  Psychoanalytic  Congress  at  Munich  in  1913 
(my  God,  is  it  really  forty  years  ago?)  that  Freud  told  me 
another  Jewish  story,  this  time  stimulated  by  the  scientific 
conflict  with  C.  G.  Jung  which  came  into  the  open  at  the  sessions 
of  the  congress.  It  had  become  quite  clear  that  Jung  and  his 
school  were  in  full  regression  from  the  essential  findings  of 
psychoanalysis,  and  that  they  were  reinterpreting  and  misin- 
terpreting the  discoveries  of  Freud  which  they  had  acknowledged 
before,  in  the  sense  of  a  new  "higher"  concept.  They  wished  to  be 
recognized  as  psychoanalysts  although  they  had  replaced  the 
concept  of  the  libido,  of  the  energy  of  the  sexual  drives,  by  a 
vague,  general  idea  of  the  force  of  life,  had  put  a  general  conflict 
between  it  and  inertness  in  the  place  of  the  struggle  of  the  ego  and 
of  the  drives  which  psychoanalysis  made  responsible  for  the 
neurosis  and  so  on.  Freud  spoke  with  me  of  Jung's  disavowal 
of  the  importance  and  significance  of  sexuality  for  the  etiology 
of  the  neurosis.  He  had  mentioned  before  the  fact  of  Jung's  theo- 
logical history  to  which  he  attributed  a  decisive  role  in  the  new 
concept  denying  the  forces  of  sex.  It  was  perhaps  this  factor,  as  well 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  gg 

as  Jung's  previous  leanings  toward  anti-Semitic  views,  which 
brought  a  Jewish  story  to  Freud's  mind:  A  rabbi  and  a  parson 
decide  to  found  a  new  common  religion.  The  new  faith  is  to  be 
established  on  the  basis  that  the  two  priests  will  agree  on  certain 
compromises  and  concessions.  The  parson  begins  with  the  de- 
mand: "Instead  of  Saturday,  Sunday  has  to  be  observed."  The 
rabbi  agrees.  "In  place  of  Hebrew,  Latin  has  to  be  the  language 
of  the  service."  "Good,"  says  the  rabbi.  The  parson  enumerates 
other  concessions  concerning  rituals  and  religious  observances. 
The  rabbi  concedes  them  too.  At  the  end  it  is  his  turn,  and  the 
pastor  asks,  "And  what  are  your  conditions?"  "I  have  only  one," 
replies  the  rabbi.  "Jesus  Christus  has  to  be  radically  removed." 
The  meaning  is  clear:  all  those  changes  the  pastor  suggests  con- 
cern only  external  things,  are  not  essential  for  the  differences 
between  Judaism  and  Christianity.  But  if  Jesus  Christus  is  "radi- 
cally" out,  what  remains  then  but  Judaism?  Freud,  by  thus  com- 
paring the  attitude  of  the  rabbi  with  that  of  Jung,  wanted  to  con- 
vey that  Jung,  in  removing  the  decisive  role  of  sexuality  from  the 
concept  of  psychoanalysis,  brings  the  new  science  back  to  the 
views  of  old  psychiatry. 

Here  is  another  instance  of  a  discussion  of  scientific  problems 
at  which  the  memory  of  a  Jewish  joke  occurred  to  Freud  when 
he  tried  to  find  a  simile  for  a  certain  attitude.  The  joke  emerged 
as  an  afterthought  by  way  of  an  illustration  to  an  idea,  but  was, 
as  always,  poignant  and  pungent.  We  were  speaking  of  a  group 
of  neurotic  cases  in  whose  symptomatology  manifestations  of 
instinctual  drives  are  blended  with  expressions  of  unconscious 
guilt  feelings.  Freud  pointed  out  that  such  an  entente  cordiale 
between  the  demands  of  the  drives  and  the  powers  of  conscience 
can  often  be  discovered  in  the  psychology  of  masochistic  and 
obsessive  characters.  He  told  me  of  a  case  in  which  a  grossly  self- 
ish tendency,  which  was  conscious,  was  put  into  the  foreground 
disguising  an  intense  unconscious  need  for  atonement  and  pun- 
ishment. "Do  you  remember  the  anecdote  of  Jacob  at  the  syna- 
gogue on  Yom  Kippur?"  Freud  asked.  The  premise  of  that  story 
is  based  on  the  fact  that  seats  for  the  service  on  the  High  Holidays 
have  to  be  paid  for,  and  poor  Jews  often  cannot  afford  the  price. 
Jacob  pleads  with  the  sexton  at  the  door  of  the  synagogue  to  let 


40  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

him  enter  because  he  has  to  convey  an  important  business  mes- 
sage to  Mr.  Eisenstein  who  is  attending  the  service.  But  the  sexton 
is  adamant  in  his  refusal,  saying,  "I  know  you,  you  gonnif 
(scoundrel)!  You  only  want  to  get  in  to  daven  (to  say  your 
prayers)!" 

On  another  occasion  Freud  introduced  a  new  point  of  view 
into  the  interpretation  of  Jewish  humor,  a  point  of  view  which 
was  not  considered  in  his  book  on  wit.  I  told  him  a  comical  story 
I  had  heard  at  that  time  in  Vienna.  In  the  middle  of  the  night  the 
superintendent  of  the  house  of  the  Spanish  ambassador  in  Vienna 
is  awakened  by  the  repeated  ringing  of  the  bell  of  the  palace. 
He  finally  opens  the  door  and  finds  two  well-groomed,  dignified 
gentlemen  who  say  again  and  again  one  sentence:  "Wir  syn  zwa 
Spanische  Granden"  ("We  are  two.  Spanish  grandees").  The 
Viennese  is  astonished  to  hear  them  repeat  those  words  pro- 
nounced in  unmistakably  genuine  Yiddish,  but  understands, 
finally,  that  the  two  men  ask  him  urgently  to  waken  the  am- 
bassador, to  whom  they  bring  an  important  message  from  Spain. 
The  ambassador,  at  last  brought  to  the  scene,  greets  the  two  men 
with  great  respect:  they  are  really  two  Spanish  noblemen  of 
highest  rank  who  have  brought  a  diplomatic  message  from  the 
king.  The  Viennese  superintendent  hears  them  converse  with  the 
ambassador  in  pure  Castillian,  and  learns  that  the  two  men  who 
cannot  speak  German  had  run  into  a  Polish  Jew  on  the  express 
train  from  Madrid  to  Vienna.  They  made  him  understand  who 
they  were,  that  they  would  arrive  at  night  in  Vienna  and  asked 
him  what  they  should  say  in  order  to  get  their  message  to  the 
ambassador. 

Freud  not  only  liked  the  little  story,  but  thought  it  worthy  of 
an  analytic  interpretation  at  which  he  arrived  by  bringing  the  two 
Spanish  grandees  in  intimate  connection  with  the  Polish  Jew 
whom  they  encountered.  He  told  me  that  the  concealed  meaning 
of  the  anecdote  becomes  transparent  when  one  assumes  that  the 
two  Spanish  noblemen  could  have  been  Jewish.  That  means  that 
one  would  have  to  look  at  the  situation  of  the  story  from  the  point 
of  history.  There  was  a  long  phase  in  the  history  of  the  Spanish 
and  Portuguese  Jews  during  which  they  really  became  noblemen, 
served  the  kings  of  Spain  in  high  functions,  were  diplomats  and 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH   FREUD  4! 

statesmen  and  so  on.  The  Maranos,  baptized  Jews  and  descend- 
ants of  Jews,  played  a  very  important  role  at  the  Spanish  court. 
Seen  in  such  a  historical  light,  the  secret  meaning  of  the  story 
becomes  revealed:  there  is  a  subterranean  tie  between  the  two 
Spanish  noblemen  and  the  Polish  Jew,  a  tie  represented  by  tradi- 
tion and  origin,  the  same  which  connects  the  Ashkenazim  and  the 
Sephardim.  It  is  not  accidental  that  the  two  Spanish  grandees 
were  confused  with  Jews  by  the  Viennese  superintendent  who  is 
taken  aback  by  what  they  tell  him. 

In  his  analytic  investigations  Freud  often  follows  the  develop- 
ment of  Jewish  wit  back  from  mirth  to  misery,  from  the  fanciful 
to  the  fateful.  He  shows  us  the  unbroken  spirit,  the  pride  and 
dignity  of  his  people  because  also  from  the  ridiculous  to  the 
sublime  it  is  but  one  step. 


npHE  FOLLOWING  three  critical  essays  deal  with  Freud's  writing 
JL  in  the  1927-1930  period.  I  have  selected  those  on  which  Freud 
commented  in  letters  or  conversation.  These  essays  were  originally 
lectures  given  during  those  years  in  the  Vienna  and  Berlin 
Psychoanalytic  Associations. 

I  shall  not  attempt  a  precis  of  Freud's  essay,  The  Future  of  an 
Illusion,  but  rather  an  interpretation  of  the  main  themes.  I 
hardly  think  it  valuable  to  restate  Freud's  ideas  here.  I  shall 
more  or  less  play  the  accompaniment  to  his  melody. 

When  we  carefully  study  Freud's  essay,  we  shall  become  aware 
of  three  main  divisions.  The  first  concerns  itself  with  present 
cultural  conditions,  the  second  discusses  religion,  and  the  third 
offers  a  picture  of  a  future  culture.  We  feel  that  the  first  division 
was  originally  intended  to  be  the  outstanding  one;  that  Freud 
meant  to  develop  it  further.  One  passage  seems  to  confirm  this 
supposition. 

The  composition  of  the  whole,  proceeding  from  broad  prob- 


42  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

lems  of  civilization  to  a  single  cultural  question,  is  admirable. 
Artfully,  and  yet  with  utter  naturalness,  everything  inexorably 
centers  around  those  problems  which  are  most  dear  to  the 
author.  There  is  the  eloquent  overture,  expressing  the  wish  that 
we  may  get  some  inkling  of  the  remote  destiny  of  our  culture. 
Then  follows  a  passage  dealing  with  the  general  cultural  situ- 
ation, mainly  from  the  psychological  point  of  view;  the  considera- 
tion of  the  conditions  which  engender  culture;  the  description 
of  the  psychological  requirements  of  civilization— the  renuncia- 
tions, prohibitions,  lacks,  and  compensations.  Finally,  Freud  in- 
dicates what  is  the  most  significant  element  for  the  psychic  in- 
ventory of  a  culture:  its  religious  ideas.  If  we  prefer  to  imagine 
this  work  as  a  symphony,  this  introduction  represents  the  first 
movement.  Here  Freud  sets  forth  a  comprehensive  psychological 
picture  of  the  present  state  of  culture.  Sterling  clarity  and  wisdom 
inform  this  picture,  which  for  us  serves  the  purpose  of  a  cross 
section,  disclosing  all  the  strata  formations  of  a  culture.  Totem 
and  Taboo  gave  us  an  analytical  account  of  the  dark  origins  of 
our  institutions.  Here  the  institutions  themselves  are  character- 
ized. 

The  future  may  judge  this  introduction,  this  all-embracing, 
serene  portrayal  of  our  culture,  to  be  the  most  important  essay 
Freud  ever  wrote.  But  not  for  the  sake  of  its  discussion  of  re- 
ligious problems,  for  these  will  be  problems  no  longer.  Critics, 
fettered  as  always  to  the  present,  may  embroil  themselves  with 
Freud's  attitude  toward  religious  questions.  But  we  can  afford 
to  take  the  longer  view.  Unmoved  by  opposition  from  analysts 
and  non-analysts,  we  will  continue  to  insist  that  this  rich  and  pro- 
found introduction  rather  than  the  discussion  of  religion  is 
the  most  valuable  section  of  Freud's  book. 

Let  us  compare  this  book  with  the  one  preceding  it.  Wherein 
lies  the  special  value  of  this  study  about  lay  analysis?  What  part 
of  its  content  will  be  considered  its  most  significant  one  after 
twenty  or  fifty  years?  Perhaps  the  penetrating  discussion  of  the 
problem  and  the  elucidation  of  Freud's  point  of  view?  Not  at 
all.  Its  significance  will  lie  rather  in  this  fact,  that  the  essence  of 
analysis  is  here  represented  with  an  impressive  clarity  never  be- 


FROM   THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  43 

fore  reached.  The  whole  realm  has  been  looked  at  closely  by 
eyes  that  have  not  overlooked  anything. 

The  main  section  of  the  new  book  treats  first  the  singular 
nature  of  religious  ideas.  It  contains  nothing  with  which  we  are 
not  familiar  from  other  writings  of  Freud.  Even  the  role  of 
infantile  helplessness  in  the  genesis  of  religion  is  not  new,  for 
Freud  had  discussed  it  previously  in  "Leonardo  da  Vinci." 

What  follows  is  a  dialogue,  handled  with  the  same  conversa- 
tional grace  and  sharpness  that  we  have  come  to  know  from  per- 
sonal association  with  Freud.  An  opponent  is  introduced  who 
follows  the  author's  thought  processes  and  extends  or  contradicts 
them.  This  opponent  and  gainsayer  is  no  stranger  to  us;  he 
played  the  same  part  in  Freud's  earlier  essays.  He  was  not  always 
personified,  but  he  was  always  present.  In  all  his  works  Freud 
anticipated  objections,  replied  beforehand  to  arguments.  This 
alternate  examination  and  self-assertion  was  a  sign  of  his  strict 
self-criticism. 

Let  us  consider  the  opponent  for  a  moment.  As  always,  the 
interlocutor  is  a  cultured  intellectual  with  the  highest  moral 
sentiments,  accessible  to  reason,  and  not  intolerant  of  strong 
emotions.  Still,  our  impression  is  that  this  time  Freud  has  treated 
his  opponent  somewhat  cavalierly.  The  opponent  might  have 
raised  more  cogent  objections  and  questions.  Freud  might  have 
chosen  a  sounder  opponent— say,  from  among  the  real  opponents 
of  his  ideas.  I  could,  for  example,  conceive  as  a  really  competent 
opponent  one  of  those  subtle  Catholic  priests  with  whom  it  is 
a  delight  to  debate.  These  are  men  full  of  life's  wisdom  and 
gifted  with  a  remarkable  intellectual  sensitivity.  They  have  been 
pupils  of  the  stern  logic  that  derives  from  Thomas  Aquinas. 

At  one  point  in  Freud's  debate  there  is  no  longer  any  basic 
cleavage  between  the  two  opponents.  Suddenly  Freud  writes  that 
their  disagreement  is  not  irreconcilable;  it  will  vanish  with  time. 
He  could  never  have  forced  such  a  conclusion  in  a  dispute  with  a 
priest  trained  in  the  dogma.  Here  the  end  would  have  been  un- 
relenting disagreement.  But  perhaps  Freud  deliberately  wished 
to  present  a  cultured,  worldly  scholar  as  the  type  of  his  opponent. 
We  must  not  anticipate  his  intentions. 

But  even  accepting  this  type  of  opponent,  the  discussion  still 


44  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

should  have  taken  a  different  turn.  The  attitude  of  an  intel- 
lectual of  our  times  toward  the  religious  question  is  insincere, 
and  it  cannot  be  made  straightforward  through  discussion.  The 
cultured  class  of  mankind,  or  more  strictly,  the  intellectual  upper 
class,  evince  the  same  shamefacedness  and  evasiveness  toward 
their  religious  needs  that  they  do  toward  their  sexual  and  eco- 
nomic needs.  Indeed,  in  the  religious  realm  these  needs  are  often 
more  equivocal,  harder  to  name  for  what  they  are.  The  pious 
man  and  the  freethinker  are  frequently  not  so  far  apart  as  they 
seem.  They  have  their  insincerity  in  common.  The  religious  man 
believes  and  does  not  reflect  too  much  on  his  faith.  The  free- 
thinker does  not  reflect  too  much  on  his  lack  of  faith  because 
he  does  not  reflect  very  much  about  anything.  We  might  sum  up 
this  strange  attitude  toward  religion  by  saying  that  most  educated 
people  do  not  believe  in  God,  but  they  fear  him.  Although 
science  has  proclaimed  that  God  is  dead,  he  lives  on  underground. 
And  this  is  where  scientific  analysis  must  begin  its  work.  The 
corpse  must  be  exhumed  and  we  must  determine  whether  it  is 
really  dead.  There  is  little  doubt  that  official  disbelief  can  live 
very  comfortably  alongside  of  unofficial  belief. 

This  unconscious  insincerity  regarding  religion  would  naturally 
alter  the  course  of  the  conversation.  The  opponent  would  probably 
accede  to  most  of  Freud's  arguments  and  demonstrations,  de- 
clare that  he  was  himself  an  atheist,  and  yet  cling  unconsciously 
to  the  faith  he  had  denied.  It  would  be  especially  hard  to  reason 
with  him  just  because  he  apparently  shares  our  views.  Similarly, 
many  obsessional  neurotics  will  accept  fully  all  the  results  of 
analysis,  but  will  nevertheless  cling  to  their  illness. 

Freud  assures  us  that  he  himself  considers  his  book  quite  harm- 
less. He  warns,  however,  of  the  fierce  reactions  it  will  call  forth 
and  of  the  discrediting  effect  it  will  have  upon  psychoanalysis. 
Since  the  appearance  of  The  Future  of  an  Illusion  I  have  heard 
all  kinds  of  objections  to  it,  and  none  of  them  has  been 
from  the  religious  point  of  view.  I  am  prepared  to  refute  them 
all,  but  I  shall  spare  the  religious  objection,  for  these  contradict 
themselves.  The  first  assertion  is  that  religion  is  unimportant 
today  and  that  Freud  exaggerates  its  importance  for  the  human 
souL  I  do  not  believe  this.  I  think  the  importance  of  religion  in 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS   WITH   FREUD  45 

the  psyche  has  not  yet  been  sufficiently  appreciated  or  investigated 
by  psychoanalysis.  Freud  is  still  arguing  in  the  spirit  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  these  objectors  claim;  his  reasoning  continues 
the  direct  tradition  of  the  Enlightenment.  It  is  all  so  old-fash- 
ioned. Note  that  here,  for  once,  psychoanalysis  is  attacked  for 
lacking  originality.  0  quae  mutatio  rerum! 

Freud  has,  of  course,  emphatically  indicated  that  views  similar 
to  his  have  been  the  common  property  of  many  great  men. 
Nevertheless,  that  objection  is  all  at  sea.  What  a  difference  there 
is  between  Voltaire's  passionate  "£crasez  1'infame!"  the  trench- 
ant, rationalist  phrases  of  the  French  Encyclopedists,  and  the 
quiet,  objective  argumentation  of  Freud.  And  where,  in  the 
literature  of  the  Enlightenment,  do  we  find  a  study  of  the  psy- 
chologic source  of  religious  ideas?  Where  do  we  find  an  analytic 
explanation  of  them  and  an  appreciation  of  the  human  meaning 
behind  them? 

Like  the  former  objection,  also  the  second  is  voiced  by  people 
who  are  apparently  completely  in  agreement  with  Freud's  re- 
ligious views.  They  accept  Freud's  presentation,  but  immediately 
they  point  to  the  metaphysical  value  of  religion.  They  claim 
that  it  contains  transcendental  truths  in  symbolic  form;  that 
it  expresses  the  Absolute. 

This  argument  brings  back  through  the  window  what  has 
already  been  thrown  out  the  front  door;  for  what  here  appears 
as  a  transcendental  absolute  is  nothing  but  disguised,  emascu- 
lated, and  intellectualized  religion,  in  its  true  form  an  object  of 
shame.  Moreover,  it  is  easy  and  convenient  to  make  statements 
about  the  transcendental  because  they  need  no  proof  and  by  their 
very  nature  admit  of  none.  These  objectors  know  everything 
about  the  transcendental  that  has  ever  been  known;  that  is,  noth- 
ing at  all. 

The  last  objection  grants  the  logic  of  Freud's  reasoning  but 
challenges  his  right  to  extend  to  the  collective  psyche  conclusions 
that  have  been  derived  from  individual  analysis.  Now,  psycho- 
analysts have  often  discussed  this  methodological  question.  What 
precautions  are  necessary  in  translating  the  results  of  individual 
research  to  the  realm  of  folk  psychology?  What  limitations  must 
be  imposed  on  such  translation  and  what  heuristic  justification 


46  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

does  it  nevertheless  have?  We  certainly  do  not  wish  to  overlook 
methodology.  But  it  is  gradually  becoming  clear  that  up  to  the 
present  methodology  has  always  been  the  best  scientific  excuse  for 
doing  no  scientific  work  at  all.  Nowadays  it  is  possible  to  devote 
'oneself  to  restful  vacancy  of  mind  without  danger  of  reproach; 
for  it  is  easy  to  impress  the  philosophic  layman  with  the  declara- 
tion that  one  is  busy  with  considerations  of  methodology.  It  has 
become  a  pretext  against  all  unequivocal  statements.  Method- 
ology is  the  most  convenient  haven  for  intellectual  sterility. 

I  have  expounded  these  objections  because  they  represent  the 
position  toward  religious  problems  of  many  cultured  persons. 
What  is  common  to  all  of  them  is  the  sidetracking  of  the  main 
question.  Moreover,  we  see  that  these  objections  all  correspond 
to  typical  defense  reactions  that  we  meet  in  analysis.  The  first, 
which  holds  that  religion  is  unimportant,  is  the  exact  counter- 
part of  the  minimizing  defense  mechanism,  the  reduction  to 
triviality.  The  second,  which  insinuates  metaphysics  to  the  fore, 
corresponds  to  dual  conviction  in  obsessional  neurosis.  The  third 
objection,  which  emphasizes  the  methodologic  point  of  view, 
represents  the  forepleasure  stage  of  intellectual  activity.  This  is 
a  sort  of  Hamlet  compulsion  which  inhibits  all  real  scientific 
work  by  continuous  delay  of  action.  But  all  these  objections 
show  the  common  feature  of  the  first:  acceptance  of  Freud's 
reasoning.  None  of  those  who  raised  these  objections  took  issue 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  believer;  but  every  one  of  them  un- 
consciously was  a  believer. 

To  my  mind,  then,  the  enemy  acts,  not  so  much  by  frank 
resistance  to  Freud's  essay,  but  otherwise;  paradoxically,  by  that 
very  preliminary  intellectual  acceptance  which  is  his  facade,  a 
fortress  behind  which  resistance  can  develop.  A  concession  is 
made  so  that  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  draw  the  logical  con- 
clusions. This  implies  that  the  book  will  not  alter  the  mental 
indolence  and  inner  insincerity  which  dominate  our  society. 

Since  we  are  in  the  midst  of  considering  religious  problems, 
it  will  not  be  inappropriate  if  I  remind  you  of  the  miracle  of 
St.  Anthony's  fish  sermon.  It  is  recounted  in  the  Book  of  Saints, 
and  we  also  have  it  in  the  simple,  lovely  verse  of  our  great 
collection  of  German  folk  poetry,  Des  Knaben  Wunderhorn.  The 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  47 

saint  finds  the  church  empty  and  goes  to  the  fishes  to  preach  to 
them.  The  carp  come  swimming  up,  and  the  pike,  the  cod,  the 
crab.  The  tortoise, 

.  .  .  as  a  rule 

A  slow-enough  fool, 

Rose  from  the  depths  in  a  hurry 

To  hear  the  saint's  story. 

Each  and  every  word 

Delighted  the  cod. 

Fish  great  and  fish  wee, 

Of  high  and  low  degree, 

Turned  their  heads  to  the  east 

Like  reasoning  beasts. 

And  then  the  close,  so  powerfully  and  bitterly  expressed  in 
Mahler's  F  Major  chords: 

The  sermon  now  ends; 
Each  on  his  way  wends— 
The  pike  remain  thievish, 
The  eels  much  love  lavish, 
Upside-down  walks  the  crab, 
Carp  eats  all  he  can  grab— 
The  sermon  was  nice 
No  one  thinks  of  it  twice. 
Each  goes  on  as  he  begun 
And  my  story  is  done. 

There  is  another  point  we  must  raise.  Freud  emphasizes  that 
psychoanalysis  as  a  method  of  research  is  impartial  and  that  the 
defenders  of  religion  may  also  use  it  to  determine  the  affective 
significance  of  religion.  Certainly  we  will  all  agree  to  this.  But 
analysis  depends  upon  who  practices  it;  and  the  situation  is 
considerably  changed  when  we  are  attempting  to  analyze  the 
content  of  truth  in  religion.  When  a  priest  practices  analysis, 
he  does  not  cease  to  be  a  spiritual  shepherd,  and  gradually  the 
original  aims  are  displaced,  the  ideational  base  shifts  and  con- 
tradictory tasks  arise.  When  this  happens,  psychoanalysis  pays 


48  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

the  piper.  Undeniably,  many  priests  have  shown  a  broad  under- 
standing  of  analysis.  But  along  with  this  is  an  inflexible,  though 
cleverly  concealed  desire  to  put  it  to  work  in  the  service  of  the 
only  Holy  and  Apostolic  Church.  For  the  first  we  thank  them;  for 
the  second  we  say,  no  thank  you.  Everyone  who  has  followed  the 
literature  knows  that  the  Church  is  preparing  to  take  over 
psychoanalysis.  But  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  Church  is  one  of 
the  strongest  repressive  forces  in  our  society.  When  it  utilizes 
analysis,  it  places  it  in  the  service  of  repression.  In  our  practice 
we  have  often  noted  how  an  obsessional  neurotic  not  only  cleverly 
weaves  newly  acquired  knowledge  into  his  system,  but  often  uses 
it  to  enlarge  his  obsessional  patter.  This  is  precisely  what  happens 
to  analysis  in  the  service  of  religion. 

It  it  all  very  well  to  be  tolerant  toward  the  religious  view,  but 
we  must  guard  against  extending  our  tolerance  also  to  analytic 
aberrations.  One  of  our  Berlin  colleagues  recently  wrote  that 
analysis,  like  religion,  has  the  same  basic  belief  in  goodness;  both 
demonstrate  how  powerful  and  triumphant  the  good  is  in  us  all. 
Certainly  we  cannot  object  to  this,  providing  we  stipulate  that 
analysis  can  also  demonstrate  precisely  the  opposite.  One  might 
believe  in  a  world  order  in  which  the  good  is  unmercifully  pun- 
ished and  evil  is  its  own  reward.  If  our  distinguished  colleague 
clearly  sees  the  hand  of  God  guiding  human  destiny,  we  shall  not 
venture  to  question  him.  But  we  may  add  mildly  that  the  direc- 
tion in  which  that  digitus  paternae  dextrae  points  is  extremely 
dubious. 

At  another  point  in  Freud's  discussion  we  should  like  to 
expand  on  his  remarks.  He  points  out  that  religion  also  may 
give  license  to  sin  freely  once  more  after  repentance.  The  brood- 
ing Russians  have  concluded  from  this  that  it  is  necessary  to 
sin  in  order  to  partake  of  divine  grace.  But  this  is  the  attitude 
not  only  of  certain  Russian  types.  Long  ago,  in  the  beginnings  of 
Christianity,  there  were  many  gnostic  sects,  such  as  the  Cainites, 
the  Carpocratians  and  others,  whose  contempt  for  the  flesh  went 
so  far  that  they  determined  to  gratify  all  its  lusts  in  order  to 
destroy  it.  Many  a  girl  was  burned  on  a  medieval  stake  because 
she  had  been  accused  by  a  priest  of  valuing  her  hymen  too  highly, 
thereby  prizing  a  thing  which  was  of  no  value  with  respect  to 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH   FREUD  49 

her  eternal  salvation.  The  Holy  Mother  Church  often  emphasized 
that  asceticism  was  sinful.  Only  wanton  pride  inspired  one  to  free 
oneself  from  the  eternal  curse  of  the  flesh  which  God,  in  His 
inscrutable  counsel,  had  made  man's  fate  since  the  days  of  Adam. 
The  Church  here  enjoins  sinning.  Extra  ecclesiam  non  est  salus. 

Freud's  passages  on  the  future  of  religion  and  its  slow,  fateful 
dissolution  are  so  clear  and  impressive  that  we  need  only  draw 
the  reader's  attention  to  certain  portions.  There  are  sentences 
here  which  in  their  courageous  directness,  their  monumental 
weight,  and  diamond-hard  clarity,  are  reminiscent  of  the  open- 
ing of  the  Beethoven  C  Minor  Symphony.  Thus  destiny  knocks  at 
the  door  of  a  culture. 

We  turn  now  to  the  last  section  of  Freud's  book.  Here  he  con- 
siders what  the  future  will  be  like  after  religion  disappears  as  a 
significant  element  in  our  cultural  complex.  The  ideal  of  psy- 
chology, the  supremacy  of  the  intellect,  will  then  take  hold; 
education  for  reality  will  begin.  The  man  of  the  future  will  con- 
front with  resignation  the  limitations  of  his  own  nature  and  will 
renounce  all  illusions. 

Here,  together  with  the  opponent,  we  recognize  the  logic  and 
importance  of  Freud's  ideas;  but  our  skepticism  prevails.  We  feel 
inclined  to  counter  not  with  a  harsh  "no,"  but  with  the  gentle 
"]e  doute"  of  Renan.  While  we  cannot  but  agree  with  Freud 
that  religion  is  doomed,  that  it  has  run  its  course,  we  cannot 
help  doubting  the  suggestion  that  men  are  capable  of  living  with- 
out illusions.  Education  for  reality  is  certainly  a  consummation 
most  devoutly  to  be  wished;  but  the  most  striking  attribute  of 
reality  is  its  unpleasantness.  We  secretly  feel  that  reality  is  some- 
thing others  should  accept.  The  illusion  of  religion  will  vanish, 
but  another  will  take  its  place.  The  supremacy  of  the  intellect 
which  Freud  foresees  would  never  be  more  than  superficial;  basi- 
cally men  would  still  be  guided  by  their  instinctual  desires.  We 
do  not  deny  the  possibility  that  men  will  some  day  be  ruled  by 
science.  But  they  will  still  be  men,  which  is  to  say,  frail,  incon- 
stant, more  or  less  unreasonable  beings  who  are  the  slaves  of 
their  instincts  and  who  will  never  cease  to  strive  after  ephemeral 
pleasure.  And  men  will  continue  to  pray,  "Lord,  give  us  this  day 
our  daily  illusion." 


gO  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Experience  must  have  convinced  Freud  that  science  has  not 
made  the  scientists  any  better;  that  they  are  neither  more  patient 
nor  happier  nor  even  wiser.  Science  is  by  no  means  identifiable 
with  the  scientists.  Freud  himself  once  wrote  the  following  lines 
which  indicate  that  this  view  was  not  entirely  strange  to  him.  "If 
another  form  of  mass  education  replaces  religion,  as  socialism 
seems  at  present  to  be  doing,  the  same  intolerance  against  out- 
siders will  persist.  And  if  the  scientific  viewpoint  ever  gains  a 
similar  hold  over  the  masses,  the  result  will  be  no  different" 
The  rule  of  reason  was  instituted  once  before  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  "fa  ira"  and  in  its  honor  several  thousand  heads  fell 
under  the  guillotine.  The  supreme  intellect  will  at  best  be  es- 
tablished as  a  puppet  king  for  the  powerful  government  of  the 
instincts.  I  am  afraid  that  the  rule  of  reason  will  never  prevent 
anyone  from  being  utterly  unreasonable.  Freud  overestimates 
both  the  extent  and  the  strength  of  human  intelligence.  It  is, 
in  essentials,  hardly  different  from  the  animal's  intelligence;  and 
in  many  instances  even  this  comparison  seems  a  low  form  of 
flattery. 

Freud  points  out  that  the  supremacy  of  the  intellect  is  only 
possible  if  mankind  undergoes  a  profound  change.  He  emphasizes 
the  fact  that  the  human  psyche  has  certainly  undergone  a  de- 
velopment since  earliest  times  and  is  no  longer  what  it  was  at  the 
beginning  of  our  history.  He  counts  among  these  changes  the 
introjection  or  "internalization"  of  the  outward  compulsion,  the 
creation  of  the  superego.  No  one  denies  this  development,  but 
development  does  not  necessarily  mean  progress.  What  appears 
as  progress  subjectively  is  succeeded  by  retrogression,  by  reactions 
which  annul  all  that  has  been  attained  and  which  distort  its 
shape.  The  course  of  human  history  may  be  compared  with  a 
gigantic  pendulum  which  swings  back  and  forth  as  senselessly 
and  unpurposefully  as  the  life  of  the  individual.  The  skeptic 
•will  even  venture  to  question  whether  the  strengthening  of  the 
superego  is  indeed  such  a  valuable  achievement  of  civilization. 
Perhaps  this  very  internalization  of  outward  compulsion  has  given 
.birth  to  ego  impulses  which  either  gradually  smother  the  ego  or 
break  forth  in  a  destructive  explosion.  At  any  rate,  we  see  that 
in  neurosis  the  demands  of  the  superego  restrain  the  individual 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH   FREUD  51 

from- the  work  of  civilization  as  effectively  as  the  demands  of  the 
ego.  Indeed,  these  demands  not  infrequently  coincide.  The  main 
question  is  one  of  proportion.  The  oversevere  superego  is  just  as 
cruel  as  external  compulsion.  It  has  ruined  just  as  many  lives 
and  prompted  just  as  many  murders.  The  differences  are  not  as 
fundamental  as  appears  at  first  glance.  We  must  remember  that 
metamorphosis  of  the  instinctual  impulses  from  outer  to  inner 
compulsion  does  not  imply  any  decrease  in  intensity.  In  fact, 
the  process  of  repression  itself  strengthens  these  impulses.  Fur- 
ther,  in  an  organism  which  has  been  refined  and  differentiated  by 
cultural  evolution,  stimuli  of  lesser  intensity  bring  about  the 
same  effects  which  in  a  cruder,  more  resistant  organism  must 
result  from  extremely  powerful  stimuli.  God  has  provided  that 
the  elephant  can  bear  loads  which  would  break  the  back  of  a 
horse.  A  blow  which  to  a  primitive  man  would  have  been  like 
the  prick  of  a  needle  would  overwhelm  a  modern  civilized  man 
like  a  hammer  blow.  Perhaps  man  would  actually  be  better  off 
if  God  had  not  granted  him  the  right  of  reason. 

In  discussing  the  possibilities  of  cultural  evolution  Freud  points 
to  woman's  intellectual  limitations,  which  result,  perhaps,  from 
sexual  prohibitions.  But  the  peculiarity  of  feminine  mental  proc- 
esses does  not  imply  inferiority.  Analysis  tells  us,  of  course,  that 
sexual  censorship  exercises  a  significant  influence  upon  the 
thought  functions.  However,  that  is  not  conclusive  proof  that  it 
alone  is  responsible  for  the  special  character  of  feminine  intelli- 
gence. Perhaps  here,  too,  peculiarities  of  the  psychophysical  struc- 
ture, anatomical  differences  which  prevent  their  using  their 
intelligence  in  the  by  no  means  always  reasonable  manner  of 
men,  account  for  the  fact  that  women  do  not  think  as  men  do. 
Certainly,  they  have  their  feet  more  firmly  on  the  ground  and  are 
far  more  submissive  to  reality  than  men.  We  would  not  have  much 
trouble  finding  both  religious  men  and  unbelievers  who  agree  with 
the  opinion  of  St.  Jerome:  "Tota  mulier  in  utero" 

We  suspect,  however,  that  the  supremacy  of  the  intellect  must 
fall  because  of  the  fundamentally  unchangeable  nature  of  man 
and  the  power  resistance  this  will  offer  to  any  attempts  of  the 
intellect  at  aggrandizement.  Freud  has  shown  us  clearly  that  re- 
ligion makes  many  claims  which  it  cannot  prove.  Nevertheless,  in 


Ij2  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

all  justice  we  must  admit  that  there  are  exceptions  to  this.  Re- 
ligion tells  us,  "Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit."  And  this  assertion 
is  by  no  means  hollow.  Many  believers  splendidly  demonstrate 
the  truth  of  the  maxim.  We  need  only  summon  to  mind  the 
many  pious  men  and  saints  who  were  especially  beloved  of  God. 
But  life  itself  also  testifies  to  the  truth  of  this  precept.  I  shall  never 
forget  the  happy,  indeed  rapturous  expression  of  a  poor  idiot  at 
a  psychiatric  clinic,  and  the  reflection  of  it,  alas  so  faint,  upon  the 
face  of  the  physician  who  was  treating  him.  Nay,  I  do  not  believe 
that,  for  the  sake  of  intelligence,  men  will  renounce  stupidity, 
Like  "liberty,  equality  and  fraternity,"  unreason  is  a  sacred,  in- 
alienable human  right.  The  history  of  all  countries,  and  especially 
of  our  beloved  Austrian  fatherland,  proves  that  men  know  how 
to  defend  this  principle,  if  necessary  with  sword  in  hand. 

Freud  believes  that  the  voice  of  the  intellect,  faint  though  it 
may  be,  will  eventually  make  itself  heard.  And  he  believes  this 
will  be  a  great  event.  He  also  foresees  that  the  great  god  Logos 
will  not  be  all-powerful.  But  unlike  his  opponent  in  the  dialogue, 
he  does  not  feel  that  this  is  sufficient  reason  for  despairing  of  the 
future  of  mankind  and  renouncing  all  interest  in  the  world  and 
in  life.  Here  we  may  venture  to  interject  that  renunciation  does 
not  follow  from  a  less  optimistic  conception  of  the  future,  for 
our  interest  in  life  and  in  the  world  is  stirred  mainly  by  othsr 
than  intellectual  factors.  It  is  fed  by  powerful  instinctual  aspira- 
tions. Even  though  we  believe  that  after  us  comes  the  deluge,  we 
may  still  retain  intense  interest  in  this  life— perhaps  even  more  in- 
tense because  of  that  belief. 

We  feel  inclined  to  say  that  in  the  first  part  of  this  essay  Freud 
has  imparted  knowledge.  In  the  latter  part  he  has  made  a  confes- 
sion of  faith.  We  shall  not  withhold  our  great  admiration  for  this 
brilliantly  delineated  picture  of  the  future;  but  it  seems  to  us  less 
compelling  than  the  foregoing.  Moreover,  it  is  admittedly  more 
dependent  on  subjective  factors  than  the  rest.  It  is  not  outside  the 
bounds  of  possibility  that  this  picture  of  Freud's  will  become 
reality;  but  it  is  certainly  striking  that  his  view  of  the  future  in 
the  main  seems  to  conform  to  our  wishes,  Whereas  the  main  sec- 
tion of  Freud's  essay  shows  the  future  of  an  illusion,  we  may  say 


FROM   THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  53 

with  little  exaggeration  that  this  last  section  presents  the  illusion 
of  a  future. 

We  might  presume  to  sketch  another  picture  of  the  future, 
without  abandoning  analytic  principles.  Human  civilization  is 
essentially  constructed  like  an  obsessional  neurosis;  it  begins  with 
reaction  formations  against  the  suppressed  instinctual  currents. 
The  longer  a  civilization  lasts,  the  more  successful  are  these  re- 
strained impulses  in  gaining  the  upper  hand;  the  scales  tip 
steadily  in  their  favor.  We  can  study  this  process  in  the  decline  of 
Greco-Roman  civilization.  On  the  one  hand,  the  Logos  as  repre- 
sented by  Socrates  and  the  doctrine  of  Sophrosyne  in  Greece  and 
by  Marcus  Aurelius  and  by  the  Stoics  in  Rome,  was  literally  the 
highest  principle*  On  the  other  hand,  the  instinctual  forces  which 
had  been  so  long  dammed  up  began  to  overflow  the  walls  which 
reason  had  already  undermined— and  wrought  the  destruction  of 
this  civilization.  Other  peoples  of  unassailed  vitality,  less  spoiled 
by  civilization,  following  their  instincts  with  untroubled  confi- 
dence, not  yet  exhausted  by  the  struggle  with  the  forces  of  repres- 
sion, were  then  able  to  deal  this  civilization  the  death  blow.  Then 
the  cycle  begins  again,  for  all  that  is  here  brought  forth  anew 
"deserves  in  the  end  nonentity."  There  is  nothing  to  oppose  this 
assumption  that  our  civilization  faces  the  same  destiny;  that  the 
culture  of  our  little  peninsula  of  Asia  will  also  collapse  within  a 
measurable  space  of  time  and  that  more  vital  and  primitive 
peoples  will  bring  about  its  end.  It  is  one  possibility  among  many 
others,  and  no  more  unlikely  than  the  others.  It  is  well  to  remem- 
ber, of  course,  that  Freud  also  has  presented  his  picture  of  the 
future  not  as  a  prophecy  but  as  a  suggestion  worthy  of  considera- 
tion. He  emphatically  warns  us  against  taking  these  reflections  for 
more  than  just  that. 

The  future  is  closed  to  us;  we  labor  on  our  corner  of  civiliza- 
tion like  those  weavers  who  never  see  the  tapestry  they  are  weav- 
ing. We  do  our  work  because  we  have  no  choice  and— we  will  not 
deny  it— because  it  gratifies  us.  The  ultimate  wisdom  remains, 
"Cultivons  noire  jardin" 

Mankind,  in  the  course  of  its  historical  development,  has  suf- 
fered three  great  disillusionments  and  humiliations.  Let  us  com- 
pare the  positions  which  the  representatives  of  these  three  disil- 


54  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

lusionments  have  had  toward  religion.  Copernicus,  who  proved 
that  our  planet  had  small  claim  to  be  considered  the  center  of 
the  cosmos,  closes  his  book  with  an  impassioned  hymn  to  God, 
the  creator  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth.  Darwin,  who  forced 
man  to  surrender  his  title  of  the  "crown  of  creation,"  still  clung 
to  religious  belief  as  a  sort  of  reservation  against  his  theory  of 
evolution.  Freud  shows  religion  as  an  illusion  which  should  be 
eliminated  from  our  concept  of  culture. 

The  devout  and  cautious  Copernicus  did  not  dare  to  publish 
his  work.  But  during  those  same  years  a  liberty-loving  man, 
Florian  Geyer,  became  the  leader  of  a  movement  which  de- 
manded freedom  from  the  compulsion  of  the  Church  and  justice 
and  equality  for  all  men;  a  movement  which  abjured  all  the  con- 
solations of  heaven  and  stood  stoutly  for  the  principle  that  our 
kingdom  is  of  this  world.  His  plain,  straightforward,  uncompli- 
cated mind  had  not  yet  grasped  that  profound  necessity  which,  in 
the  words  of  Anatole  France,  decrees  that  "the  law  in  its  majestic 
equality  forbids  both  rich  and  poor  to  sleep  under  bridges  and 
to  steal  bread."  Because  of  his  outrageous  ideas  he  was  hunted  and 
cut  down  like  a  mad  dog  by  the  henchmen  of  the  throne  and 
Church.  Within  these  four  hundred  years  there  has  been  no  real 
change;  despite  all  appearances  we  still  live  in  an  era  of  intellec- 
tual coercion.  But  through  those  four  hundred  years  the  words  I 
have  seen  engraved  on  the  sword  of  Florian  Geyer  still  glow  with 
fire,  and  these  words  might  well  stand  as  motto  for  Freud's  essay, 
"Nulla crux,  nulla corona" 


The  foregoing  critical  discussion  was  first  delivered  at  one  of 
our  Wednesday  meetings  in  Freud's  home  in  December,  1927.  He 
was  in  complete  agreement  with  me  about  my  condemnation  of 
methodological  evasions  and  said,  "Those  critics  who  limit  their 
studies  to  methodological  investigations  remind  me  of  people 
who  are  always  polishing  their  glasses  instead  of  putting  them  on 
and  seeing  with  them." 

However,  Freud  rejected  my  pessimistic  outlook.  Although  he 
admitted  that  his  more  favorable  prophecy  did  not  apply  to  the 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  55 

immediate  future,  he  said  that  "in  the  long  run"  he  had  faith  in 
the  critical  and  intellectual  capabilities  of  man.  He  thought 
these  would  not  fail  to  fulfill  themselves.  In  the  discussion  he  also 
conceded  that  there  were  useful  illusions  which  advanced  civiliza- 
tion; he  granted  that  in  the  past  religion  had  been  valuable  as  a 
force  for  education  and  progress;  but  he  believed  that  now  it  had 
become  a  brake  upon  the  progress  of  civilization  and  must  be 
cast  aside.  After  the  meeting  he  said  smilingly  to  me,  "You  are 
not  at  all  the  skeptic  you  think  you  are.  I  would  call  you  a  posi- 
tivist,  because  you  are  so  thoroughly  convinced  that  man  will 
not  progress." 


VI 


Now  I  am  going  to  discuss  Freud's  interpretation  of  A  Re- 
ligious Experience  and  generalize  on  the  psychological  sig- 
nificance of  his  little  essay. 

It  must  be  emphasized  that  the  material  on  which  his  interpre- 
tation is  based  is  extremely  scanty.  It  consists  of  a  brief  epistolary 
communication*  The  facts  are  as  follows:  One  day  Freud,  in  the 
course  of  an  interview,  expressed  his  indifference  to  the  life  after 
death.  Shortly  afterward  an  American  physician  wrote  to  him  re- 
counting a  religious  experience  which  he  hoped  would  have  some 
telling  effect  upon  the  skeptic.  The  physician  told  of  how,  when 
he  was  yet  a  student,  he  had  been  profoundly  moved  at  the  sight 
of  the  corpse  of  an  old  woman  with  a  serene  lovely  face;  and 
how  this  event  had  determined  his  religious  views.  When  he  saw 
this  corpse  on  the  dissection  table  the  thought  had  suddenly 
flashed  through  him:  No,  there  is  no  God.  If  there  were  a  God  he 
would  never  have  allowed  such  a  sweet-faced,  dear  old  woman  to 
lie  dishonored  in  the  dissection  room.  This  was  not  the  first  time 
he  had  doubted  the  teachings  of  Christianity;  but  on  this  after- 
noon he  resolved  he  would  never  enter  a  church  again.  An  inner 
voice  had  admonished  him  to  think  well  before  he  denied  God, 


56  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

And  his  mind  had  replied  to  this  inner  voice:  If  I  can  be  shown 
with  certainty  that  Christian  doctrine  is  true  and  that  the  Bible 
is  the  Word  of  God,  I  will  accept  it. 

In  the  course  of  the  next  few  days  God  instructed  his  soul  that 
the  Bible  is  God's  Word,  that  all  the  teachings  about  Jesus  Christ 
are  true  and  that  Jesus  is  our  sole  hope.  "After  this  clear  revela- 
tion I  accepted  the  Bible  as  the  Word  of  God  and  Jesus  Christ 
as  my  Saviour.  Since  then  God  has  revealed  himself  to  me  by 
many  indisputable  signs/'  The  young  physician  then  expresses 
the  hope  that  God  will  reveal  the  truth  to  Freud's  soul  also. 

Freud,  in  attempting  to  interpret  the  story  on  the  basis  of  this 
scant  psychological  evidence,  takes  the  situation  in  the  dissection 
room  as  his  clue.  The  corpse  of  the  old  woman  reminded  the 
young  physician  of  his  dearly  loved  mother.  The  mother-longing 
of  the  Oedipus  complex  is  aroused,  and  is  accompanied  by  re- 
volt against  the  father.  The  unconscious  desire  for  the  destruction 
of  the  father  found  its  way  to  consciousness  in  the  form  of  doubt 
of  God's  existence.  This  is  possible  because  of  the  associative  and 
affective  connection  of  the  two  concepts:  God— father.  The 
mother-longing  could  be  translated  to  the  reason  as  justifiable 
rage  at  the  abuse  of  the  maternal  object,  especially  since  the 
child's  mind  believes  that  the  father  abuses  the  mother  in  sexual 
intercourse. 

This  new  impulse,  then,  is  no  more  than  another  guise  of  old 
emotions  which  have  been  transferred  to  the  religious  realm. 
And  this  impulse  suffers  the  same  fate  as  the  old  emotions.  It 
subsides  under  the  tremendous  pressure  of  inhibition.  The  psy- 
chic conflict  ends  in  complete  submission  to  the  will  of  the  Father- 
God.  The  young  physician  becomes  and  remains  a  believer. 

This  remarkable  interpretation  has  been  met  with  the  criticism 
that  the  paucity  of  material  disallows  such  far-reaching  conclu- 
sions concerning  the  emotional  processes  of  the  young  physician. 
I  think,  however,  that  in  spite  of  this  handicap  Freud  has  suc- 
cessfully and  lucidly  established  the  connection  between  the 
impression  at  the  sight  of  the  corpse  and  the  subsequent  reli- 
gious conversion.  We  must  admit  that  the  insufficiency  of  the 
material  obviated  an  investigation  into  the  details  of  the  psychic 
process.  For  psychological  analysis  it  would  certainly  have  been 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  57 

preferable  if  we  had  possessed  more  exact  and  exhaustive  informa- 
tion about  the  mysterious  conversion.  However,  it  may  be  in  the 
nature  of  things  that  the  conversion  remain  mysterious.  Dogma 
maintains  that  conversion  is  a  process  which  is  psychically  and 
psychologically  all  but  incomprehensible,  since,  for  the  most  part, 
it  is  a  manifestation  of  God's  Grace.  St.  Augustine  has  impres- 
sively described  how,  at  death,  Grace  inclines  the  soul  of  the  sinner 
toward  the  Faith  (if  this  be  his  destiny),  and  how  divine  virtue 
takes  possession  of  the  human  will  "indeclinabiliter  et  insurer- 
abiliteS'  so  that  it  is  transformed  into  a  new  will. 

The  physician's  letter  was  written  a  long  time  after  the  ex- 
perience; nevertheless,  in  this  case  the  analysis  was  unable  to  take 
into  account  either  the  later  changes  induced  by  memory  or  the 
psychic  stratification,  both  of  which  would  be  necessary  for  a 
thoroughgoing  analytic  investigation. 


Let  us  try  to  explore  some  of  the  lesser  elements  which  Freud's 
more  general  analysis  passed  by. 

Whence  comes  the  profound  impression  made  by  the  naked 
corpse  of  the  woman?  Freud's  answer  is  that  the  sight  of  the 
naked  old  woman  reawakened  the  mother  fixation.  The  memory 
of  the  mother,  therefore,  stirs  up  mingled  feelings  of  tenderness 
and  sensuality.  When  we  consider  that  the  corpse  is  lying  on  a 
dissection  table,  we  see  good  reason  for  diagnosing  that  there  is 
also  present  a  strong  sadistic  component  of  the  sexuality  of  the 
young  man.  This  sadistic  element,  transformed  into  intellectual 
aggressiveness,  later  proceeds  to  question  the  divinity.  When,  at 
the  sight  of  the  corpse,  there  flashed  through  his  mind  the  thought 
that  there  is  no  God,  not  only  was  the  mother-longing  completed  by 
the  revolt  against  the  father,  but  there  was  also  a  transference  of 
the  sadistic  impulse  back  to  the  original  object  of  childhood. 

In  other  words,  the  sight  of  the  dead  woman,  who  here  un- 
consciously appears  as  a  mother-surrogate,  did  more  than  revive 
longing  for  the  mother.  It  also  stirred  the  negative  Oedipus  com- 
plex and  permitted  the  counter-impulses,  intensified  by  reaction, 
to  press  to  the  surface  of  the  psyche.  Only  after  that  sadistic 


58  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

reaction  does  the  mother  once  more  appear  to  the  physician  as 
the  "sweet-faced,  dear  old  woman."  Not  until  then  is  the  old 
Oedipus  reaction  allowed  to  appear  in  its  original  intensity  and 
form:  as  revolt  against  the  father.  It  is  by  no  means  immaterial 
that  it  was  a  dead  woman,  a  naked  corpse  which  prompted  the 
old  emotions.  The  sight  of  the  corpse,  by  reawakening  the  un- 
conscious sadistic  impulses,  also  caused  the  revival  of  the  whole 
emotional  constellation  of  the  child.  As  soon  as  the  one  instinc- 
tual goal  had  been  attained  by  the  revolt  against  the  Father-God, 
this  regression  could  take  place. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  religious  conversion  of  the  physician 
proceeded  from  a  sight  experience.  The  analyst  is  well  acquainted 
with  the  intimate  connection  between  the  peeping  impulse  and 
desire  for  knowledge,  the  investigatory  impulse.  The  child  fre- 
quently experiences  the  frustration  of  the  earliest  forms  of  this 
impulse  when  he  is  punished  for  improper  desires  to  look  at 
what  he  is  not  supposed  to  see.  Thus  the  little  boy  is  scolded  for 
his  sexual  curiosity  about  the  body  of  his  mother  or  his  nurse. 
There  is  a  regression  to  this  early  experience  in  the  situation  at 
the  dissection  table.  Along  with  the  unconscious  memory  of  the 
mother,  the  old  rage  against  the  father  is  also  aroused.  The  father 
always  represented  interference  and  prohibition  to  the  child's 
sexuality. 

It  is  significant  that  in  the  processes  the  physician  describes, 
the  sexual  strivings  appear  to  focus  in  the  eye,  while  the  forbid- 
ding and  repressing  forces  take  the  ear  for  organ.  The  profound 
impression  the  sight  of  the  woman's  corpse  made  upon  the  young 
doctor  was  succeeded  by  doubts  which  manifested  themselves  in 
the  form  of  an  inner  dialogue.  A  warning  voice  speaks  within 
him  and  his  mind  replies  to  it.  It  is  not  hard  to  understand  what 
aspects  of  the  development  of  the  child  are  here  repeated.  The 
inner  voice  is  a  manifestation  of  the  superego,  of  the  father  of 
childhood  who  has  been  absorbed  into  the  ego.  It  is  he  who  warns 
against  the  release  of  the  impulses  and  the  defiance  to  God.  Here, 
then,  the  uprising  of  obscure  impulses  is  put  down  by  the  mem- 
ory of  the  father's  voice  and  of  the  voices  of  his  representatives 
whom  the  child  revered  and  dreaded:  the  teacher  and  the  priest 
There  is  a  curious  reaction  to  this  prohibition.  The  ego  ("my 


FROM   THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  59 

spirit")  responds:  If  I  can  be  shown  with  certainty  that  Chris- 
tian doctrine  is  true  and  that  the  Bible  is  the  Word  of  God,  I  will 
accept  it.  Such  demand  for  proof  is  an  old  story  for  theology. 
Again  and  again  characters  in  the  Bible  and  in  the  other  holy 
books  plead  for  some  proof  of  religious  truths  which  will  be 
accessible  to  their  senses.  They  want  signs  and  miracles,  and  signs 
and  miracles  are  always  vouchsafed  them. 

The  counterpart  of  this  religious  phenomenon  is  to  be  found 
in  obsessional  neurosis.  Often  enough,  in  the  treatment  of  obses- 
sional neurotics,  we  meet  with  those  characteristic  dependent 
clauses  which  are  presumed  to  establish  the  strange  connection 
between  such  an  omen  and  an  expected  or  dreaded  event.  Psy- 
chologically, there  is  no  great  difference  between  the  religious 
pattern  of  the  American  physician  and  the  obsessional  idea  that 
seizes  upon  a  neurotic  patient  as  he  walks  down  the  street:  "If  the 
streetcar  passes  that  lamppost  before  the  automobile  does,  my 
father's  operation  will  be  successful."  Cause  and  effect  notions  of 
this  kind  derive  their  affective  value  from  the  belief  in  the  om- 
nipotence of  thought  Such  ideas  are  always  arising  out  of  the 
inexhaustible  reservoir  of  the  unconscious.  Yet  in  this  case  we 
may  also  assume  that  preconscious  memories  of  the  tradition  of 
Christianity  were  responsible.  At  any  rate,  the  profound,  linger- 
ing influence  of  Christian  doctrine  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
three  times  in  close  succession  the  Bible  is  spoken  of  as  the  "Word 
of  God."  ("If  I  can  be  shown  with  certainty  that  ...  the  Bible 
is  the  Word  of  God";  "In  the  course  of  the  next  few  days  God 
instructed  my  soul  that  the  Bible  was  God's  Word  .  .  .";  "After 
this  clear  revelation  I  accepted  the  Bible  as  the  Word  of 
God  .  .  /')  This  inconspicuous,  though  for  the  analyst  pointed, 
repetition  serves  as  an  unconscious  confession.  It  leads  us  to 
believe  that  the  reactionary  tendencies  may  be  traced  back  to 
the  religious  doctrines  which  were  dinned  into  the  ears  of  the 
child. 

We  can  now  reconstruct  what  went  on  in  the  psyche  of  the 
physician  during  those  anguished  days  when  God  revealed  to 
him  that  the  Bible  was  His  Word.  By  reaction,  the  religious 
doctrines  of  childhood  have  been  lent  increased  effectiveness  in 
the  unconscious  memory.  This  effectiveness  is  based  originally 


60  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

on  familiar  phrases  heard  so  often  about  the  parental  household 
and  carrying  with  them  powerful  affective  overtones.  This  is 
particularly  interesting  in  this  connection  because  it  is  these  very 
religious  doctrines  which  contribute,  at  a  certain  age,  to  over- 
coming the  infantile  Oedipus  complex,  thus  paving  the  way  for 
the  child's  entrance  into  the  social  order.  Freud  remarks  that  the 
conflict  in  the  young  physician  seems  to  have  manifested  itself 
as  a  hallucinatory  psychosis.  We  might  add  that  this  auricular 
hallucination  of  the  young  doctor's  was  a  regression  to  religious 
phrases  with  an  aura  of  strong  emotion.  The  conversion  took 
place  through  unconscious,  affective  cathexis  of  childhood  impres- 
sions, especially  those  pertaining  to  childhood  doctrines  and 
symbolism. 

The  poet,  wishing  to  present  such  an  experience  in  dramatic 
form,  quite  justly  reproduces  in  objective  action  the  process  which 
appears  here  as  subjective.  Though  he  can  rely  for  symbols  only  on 
sense  impressions,  he  will  nevertheless  manage  to  convince  us 
that  his  character  has  been  experiencing  profoundly  affective 
childhood  impressions.  The  young  doctor's  mysterious  conver- 
sion, with  its  undercurrent  childhood  religious  impressions,  may 
remind  many  readers  of  the  Easter  Eve  scene  in  Goethe's  Faust. 
Here  the  sound  of  the  Easter  bells  in  the  church  and  the  singing 
of  the  Easter  choral,  "Christ  Is  Risen,"  makes  the  doubt-ridden 
and  despairing  Faust  remember  the  days  of  his  childhood: 

This  sound,  habitual  to  my  dearest  youth, 
Now  summons  me  again  into  this  life. 

It  is  these  childhood  impressions  that  make  the  sound  of  the 
bells  and  the  choral  song  powerful,  soothing,  heavenly  tones.  In 
both  situations  the  "holde  Nachricht,"  the  "sweet  message,"  is 
reinforced  by  the  overtones  of  the  childhood  feelings  it  once 
aroused. 

Though  the  release  of  the  impulses  has  been  accomplished  and 
the  unconscious  memories  reawakened,  our  young  physician  is 
once  more  seized  with  the  old  yearning.  The  religious  teachings, 
the  childhood  fables  which  had  gone  to  oblivion,  become  real 


FROM   THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  6l 

to  him  again  and  he  believes  as  fervently  as  he  once  had.  The 
mother-longing  is  here  isolated  from  the  longing  for  the  loving 
and  protecting  father. 

This,  then,  is  the  inevitable  result  of  the  conflict;  love  alone 
cannot  resolve  it.  Freud's  conception  of  the  emotional  process 
may  be  schematically  outlined  in  this  way:  Sight  of  the  naked 
body  of  the  dead  woman— (unconscious)  reawakening  of  the 
mother-longing;  revolt  (wish  for  the  death  of  the  father)-(con- 
scious)  doubt  of  the  existence  of  God;  revulsion  against  this  and 
conversion  by  reaction.  This  outline  requires  a  psychoanalytical 
supplement:  the  wish  for  the  father's  death  (in  the  displacement: 
doubt  of  God)  unconsciously  provokes  the  release  of  intense  ef- 
fects in  the  young  man,  which  essentially  are  nothing  less  than 
fear  for  his  own  life  (fear  of  castration).  These  effects  could  not 
reach  the  consciousness;  but  they  evidence  themselves  first  in  the 
emergence  and  later  in  the  triumph  of  the  admonishing  inner 
voice.  If  we  may  translate  unconscious  processes  into  the  lan- 
guage of  consciousness,  this  is,  roughly,  the  train  of  thought:  If 
I  revolt  against  the  father  and  kill  him  (the  Father-God),  I  shall 
be  punished  just  as  this  woman  was,  who  now  lies  on  the  dissec- 
tion table.  Our  analytic  experience  gives  us  ample  justification  for 
these  deductions  that  611  in  the  gaps  in  the  emotional  process. 
For  analysis  has  indicated  that  fear  is  a  reigning  factor  in  the 
psyche. 

Once  the  death  wish  has  emerged  (i.e.,  the  doubt  of  the  exist- 
ence of  God),  the  prevailing  attitude  is  now  no  longer  determined 
by  ambivalence,  but  also  by  the  alternation  of  defiance  and  uncon- 
scious anxiety.  This  vacillation  between  hatred  and  affection, 
defiance  and  anxiety,  lasts  for  days.  The  denouement  is  a  crisis 
in  which  the  hate  impulses,  intensified  by  fear,  attempt  to  force 
themselves  into  the  consciousness  in  all  their  primitive  might. 
And,  involved  as  they  are  with  the  Oedipus  complex,  they 
threaten  to  drag  this  complex  to  the  surface.  At  the  height  of  this 
crisis  the  aggressive  and  hostile  impulses  are  then  thrown  back 
upon  themselves  under  the  influence  of  the  unconscious  fear  of 
castration.  This  is  a  re-enactment  in  a  telescoped  form  of  whaf 
took  place  when  the  Oedipus  complex  was  first  suppressed.  Sub- 


62  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

mission  to  God  and  the  religious  tradition  are  therefore  condi- 
tioned by  the  re-emergence  of  the  fear  of  castration. 

The  overpowering  homosexual  tendency  of  the  young  physi- 
cian, in  its  highly  sublimated,  religious  form,  now  makes  him  a 
proselytizer;  he  strives  to  unite  his  brothers  ("brother  physician" 
in  the  letter  to  Freud),  to  unite  all  mankind  in  love  for  the  father. 
The  "saviour  tendency"  is  a  well-known  peculiarity  among  cer- 
tain educated  classes  of  the  American  people.  How  much  stronger 
must  this  tendency  become  when  the  individual  in  question  com- 
mands such  profound  and  mysteriously  won  knowledge  of  the  Ab- 
solute. But  it  cannot  be  completely  concealed  that  even  this  all- 
embracing  love  is  essentially  nothing  but  a  reaction  to  extreme 
rebellious  impulses.  Its  explosive  quality,  its  eagerness  to  convert, 
derives  from  those  repressed  aggressive  impulses.  Just  so  an  un- 
conscious desire  betrays  its  intensity  by  the  severity  of  the  inhibi- 
tion. The  very  violence  is  diverted  to  the  service  of  the  opposing 
factors.  We  can  now  understand  the  development  in  the  uncon- 
scious of  the  young  doctor's  conversion  as  a  regressive  process. 
Thereby  we  have  cleared  up  much  of  the  mystery.  Now  we  can 
also  propound  a  better  evaluation  of  the  emotional  situation 
which  prevailed  when  the  letter  was  written: 

The  wild  desires  no  longer  win  us, 
The  deeds  of  passion  cease  to  chain; 
The  love  of  Man  revives  within  us, 
The  love  of  God  revives  again. 

His  religious  faith,  which  has  been  gained  at  the  cost  of  so 
much  conflict  and  which  is  retained  despite  all  the  arguments  of 
reason,  is  therefore  the  counterpart  of  the  extreme  rebellious 
tendencies  from  which  it  was  wrested.  The  fathers  of  the  Church 
would  doubtless  describe  the  psychic  experiences  preceding  his 
eventual  enlightenment  as  one  of  those  salutary  ordeals  which  so 
frequently  precede  the  conversio. 

Once  more  there  wells  up  from  the  hidden  sources  of  the  psyche 
a  wave  of  rebellion  and  anger,  finally  to  be  engulfed  in  the  under- 
tow. The  young  man's  revolt  against  a  cruel  and  tyrannical  God 
yields  under  the  pressure  of  psychic  reaction.  "Die  Trdne  quillt, 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  63 

der  Himmel  hat  ihn  wieder."    ("The  tears  burst  forth,  and 
Heaven  has  regained  him.") 


So  much  for  the  psychological  analysis  of  this  case.  Wherein  lies 
the  more  general  scientific  significance  of  Freud's  essay,  the 
broader  implications  of  this  individual  case?  I  believe  that  these 
four  pages  of  Freud's  essay  analyzing  this  religious  experience 
are  a  great  advance  toward  a  deeper  general  understanding  of 
the  conversion  process.  Modern  religious  science  has  collected  a 
wealth  of  material  on  the  psychology  of  conversion.  These  works 
treat  of  some  of  the  points  we  must  consider  here.*  William 
James  finds  the  unconscious— which  he  conceives  in  the  old,  static 
fashion— of  considerable  significance  in  conversion.  More  recent 
literature  on  the  psychology  of  religion  deals  with  psychoanalytic 
findings  as  well.  Nevertheless,  the  fundamental  psychic  processes 
of  conversion  were  not  clarified.  However,  we  can  understand 
them  if  we,  disregarding  the  features  peculiar  to  the  case  Freud 
has  discussed,  reflect  upon  the  essential  result  of  his  analysis.  It  is 
well  to  proceed  from  cases  just  such  as  this,  which  are  charac- 
terized by  a  sudden,  mysterious  illumination.  When  we  arrive  at 
an  understanding  of  what  motivates  such  "conversione  fulminea" 
(so  de  Sanctis  terms  these  cases,  in  contrast  to  the  examples  of 
"conversione  progressiva")**  we  shall  also  approach  an  under- 
standing of  the  psychic  processes  in  slower,  more  gradual  con- 
versions. 

Analytic  psychology  now  presents  the  remarkable  conclusion 
that  the  most  important  prerequisite  for  conversion  is  the  uncon- 
scious emergence  of  powerful  hostile  and  aggressive  impulses  di- 
rected against  the  father;  that  these  undergo  displacement  and 
are  expressed  as  doubts  of  God.  The  essential  feature  of  the  con- 
version process  consists  in  the  emotional  reaction  against  this 
uprising  in  the  unconscious  of  hate  and  revolt.  The  affection 

*  Cf.  Joh.  Herzog,  Der  Beruf  der  Bekehrung,  1903;  W.  James,  The  Varieties 
of  Religious  Experience,  1903;  E.  D.  Starbuck,  The  Psychology  of  Religion, 
1910.  Further,  the  well-known  more  modern  works  of  de  Sanctis,  Girgensohn, 
Oesterreich,  etc 

**  Sancte  de  Sanctis,  La  Conversione  Religiosa  (Bologna,  1904),  p.  53. 


64  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

which  has  been  born  out  of  reaction  to  the  "bad"  impulses  will 
then  express  itself  in  utter  submission  to  the  love  object  and 
faith  in  the  doctrines,  commands,  and  prohibitions  it  represents. 
The  close  resemblance  between  the  effects  of  love  and  the  phe- 
nomena of  religious  conviction  will  undoubtedly  seem  strange  to 
conscious  psychology;  but  pastoral  theology  for  several  centuries 
has  accepted  it  as  a  matter  of  course.  The  turning  point  of  the 
psychic  process  is  the  appearance  of  the  unconscious  fear  (fear  of 
castration)  which  follows  in  the  wake  of  the  emerging  hate  im- 
pulses. 

Freud's  little  essay  has  great  significance  because  it  clarifies 
this  process.  Within  his  discussion  of  the  individual  case  there  lies 
the  solution  to  the  enigmatic  universal  case.  Conversion  arises  out 
of  an  eruption  of  the  impulses  which  provoke  unconscious  hate 
tendencies  toward  the  father.  This  in  turn  sets  in  motion  a  whole 
mechanism  of  reaction  through  fear  and  affection.  All  the  various 
metamorphoses  of  conversion— and  the  literature  on  the  subject 
shows  how  many  these  are— can  be  included  under  this  psycho- 
logical explanation.  Whether  the  psychic  process  is  instigated  by 
any  special  event,  as  here,  or  whether  it  results  from  prolonged 
conflicts,  the  ecstatic  state  of  the  ego  is  the  product  of  that  uncon- 
scious reaction. 

This  essay  of  Freud's  has  also  opened  broader  vistas  for  re- 
ligious science.  Conversion  is  so  closely  related  to  revelation  that 
the  two  expressions  are  frequently  used  interchangeably.  It  would 
be  more  accurate  to  say  that  the  core  of  many  cases  of  conversion 
is  a  kind  of  mysterious  revelation.  We  do  not  realize  the  scope  of 
Freud's  little  essay  until  we  extend  the  results  to  the  field  of  cul- 
tural history.  The  conclusions  of  this  analysis  prove  to  be  valid 
also  for  phenomena  of  the  collective  psyche.  Every  revelation 
arises  out  of  revolt  against  the  divinity,  and  evinces  that  powerful 
reaction  which  results  from  fear  and  affection.  The  tradition  of 
the  Revelation  on  Mt.  Sinai,  upon  which  Jewish  and  Christian 
religion  is  based,  tells  how  the  Israelite  tribes  revolted  against 
their  chief,  how  they  were  intimidated  and  ultimately  subjected. 
Here  we  have  a  personal,  intrapsychic  event  represented  as  an 
external,  historical  happening;  as  uprising  followed  by  threats 
and  punishments  which  compel  the  people  to  obey.  The  voice  of 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  65 

Jahveh  becomes  audible  and  pronounces  the  commandments, 
the  "Thou  shah"  and  'Thou  shalt  not."  Psychoanalysis  has 
shown  that  these  at  heart  are  nothing  but  the  suppression  of  un- 
conscious incestuous  and  insurgent  impulses.  What  appears  as 
"veritates  a  coelo  delapsae"  are  distinctly  of  earthly  origin  and 
earthly  motivation.  Freud's  theory  about  the  case  of  conversion  is 
equally  valid  for  the  Revelation  on  Sinai. 

For  this  reason  I  have  hopes  that  the  young  psychoanalysts  of 
religion,  whom  the  official  religious  psychologists  superciliously 
condemn,  will  come  to  even  more  revealing,  and  perhaps  conclu- 
sive, discoveries.  We  are  still  a  long  way  from  a  thorough  psy- 
chological understanding  of  the  arcane  ways  of  religion;  but  ana- 
lytic research  has  come  closer  to  piercing  the  mysteries  than  all 
previous  research. 


VII 


rriHE  essay  "Dostoyevsky  and  Patricide"  served  as  preface  to 
A  that  great  Dostoyevsky  edition  in  which  the  sources,  outlines, 
and  fragments  of  The  Brothers  Knramazov  are  compiled  and 
critically  evaluated.*  Unquestionably,  this  was  the  proper  place 
for  this  study  which  offers  such  original  and  important  insight 
into  the  life  and  creation  of  the  great  novelist. 

In  their  preliminary  remarks  the  editors  express  their  gratitude 
to  Freud  for  composing  "specially  for  the  occasion  this  deeply  pen- 
etrating analysis  of  Dostoyevsky  and  his  Brothers  Karamazov." 
Does  this  mean  that  the  essay  was  merely  an  occasional  piece?  In 
more  than  one  sense  it  was.  Certainly,  the  occasion  gave  Freud 
the  opportunity  to  put  old  reflections  into  an  appropriate  form. 
And  it  is  equally  certain  that  the  occasion  did  not  evoke  these  re- 
flections. But  while  we  welcome  the  stimulus  that  led  him  to  em- 
body his  thoughts  in  writing,  it  would  have  been  preferable  had 

*  F.  M.  Dostoyevsky,  Die  Urgestalt  der  Bruder  Karamasoff,  Editors:  Rene 
Fulop-Miller  und  Friedrich  Eckstein  (Mtinchen:  R.  Piper  &  Co.,  Verlag). 


66  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

they  not  been  composed  "specially  for  the  occasion."  For  in  that 
case,  there  is  little  doubt  that  Freud  would  have  added  some  very 
welcome  material  and  would  have  gone  far  beyond  the  bounds 
set  by  a  preface.  And  some  of  his  remarks  which  now  seem  some- 
what forced  interpolations  could  have  been  developed  within  a 
broader  framework. 

Freud  first  pays  tribute  to  the  richness  of  Dostoyevsky's  per- 
sonality. He  describes  him  as  a  poet,  neurotic,  moralist,  and  sin- 
ner. It  is  as  though  Freud  had  slipped  open  a  fan  to  reveal  the 
curious  lettering  and  interesting  pictures  on  the  folds.  Little 
space  is  devoted  to  Dostoyevsky  the  artist,  and  Freud  intimates 
that  psychoanalysis  must  lay  down  its  arms  before  the  problem 
of  the  writer.  But,  we  may  assume,  only  before  the  biological 
aspect  of  this  problem,  before  the  question  of  special  innate  gifts. 
For  psychoanalysis  has  a  great  deal  to  contribute  in  questions  of 
artistic  creation.  It  can  explain  much  about  unconscious  instinc- 
tual forces  and  mechanisms,  as  well  as  the  obscure  psychic  pre- 
dispositions which  govern  conception  and  form.  Indeed,  it  has 
already  done  a  great  deal  in  this  field.  We  have  found  that  the 
processes  of  artistic  creation  are  far  less  inscrutable  than  has  been 
thought,  although  they  are  still  mysterious  enough. 

Freud  feels  that  Dostoyevsky  is  most  vulnerable  as  moralist. 
When  we  consider  him  as  a  moral  man,  we  must  seriously  object 
to  his  ideal  that  only  one  who  has  experienced  the  lowest  depths 
of  sinfulness  can  attain  the  highest  morality.  He  who  alternately 
sins  and  then,  in  repentance,  makes  lofty  moral  demands  of  him- 
self, has  in  reality  greatly  simplified  matters.  For  what  is  morality 
but  renunciation?  Dostoyevsky's  own  life,  Freud  continues,  was 
torn  between  alternate  outbreak  of  the  impulses  and  repentance. 

Our  first  impression  of  this  judgment  is  that  it  is  stern  but  just. 
On  second  thought  it  seems  sterner  than  just.  Yet  why  does 
Freud's  discussion  of  the  concept  of  morality  strike  us  as  dubious 
and  inadequate?  It  is  because  his  negative  statement  seems  to  have 
more  truth  than  his  attempted  positive  formulation.  We  freely 
grant  that  his  is  not  the  highest  stage  of  morality  who  alternately 
sins  and  then  sincerely  repents.  But  while  once  upon  a  time  re- 
nunciation was  the  sole  criterion  of  morality,  it  is  now  but  one  of 
many.  If  it  were  the  sole  criterion,  then  the  upright  middle-class 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  67 

philistine,  to  whose  shabby  imagination  submission  is  natural, 
and  to  whose  blunt  senses  renunciation  is  easy,  would  be  morally 
far  greater  than  Dostoyevsky.  If  we  pursued  this  sentiment  we 
would  arrive  at  the  proverb:  A  good  conscience  is  the  best  rule 
of  health.  This  is  all  very  well,  but  it  merely  explains  why  there 
are  so  many  sluggards,  so  many  contented  and  satiated  men  who 
have  gained  "wretched  self-complacency,"  as  Nietzsche  put  it, 
out  of  renunciation.  Renunciation  in  itself  is,  after  all,  not  so 
important.  What  we  respect  is  renunciation  that  is  the  victory 
over  powerful  impulses.  We  cannot  overlook  the  intensity  of 
temptation  in  our  concept  of  that  compromise  we  customarily  call 
morality.  Where  there  is  no  sin  there  is  no  religion.  Religion 
would  not  last  for  a  day  if  the  heart  of  man  were  relieved  of  guilt 
(and  affiliated  ideas  like  taboo,  unclean,  and  their  like). 

Let  us  not  succumb  to  shallow  and  conventional  judgments; 
we  must  perceive  that  morality  resides  in  the  struggle  with  drives 
and  not  in  the  victory  over  them.  In  this  sense  the  criminal  who 
abandons  himself  to  his  vicious  instincts  can  in  many  cases  be 
considered  more  moral  than  the  solid  citizen  who  escapes  his  in- 
stincts by  renouncing  them.  Satan,  too,  was  an  angel  like  the 
others  and  he  remains  a  great  theologian  before  God— and  against 
God.  The  concept  of  renunciation  seems  obvious  only  in  the  most 
superficial  sense.  Its  full  meaning  unfolds  to  us  only  when  we 
understand  the  part  played  by  the  instinctual  goal.  For  psycho- 
logically, renunciation  is  another  method  of  gratification  of  the 
instincts,  a  method  which  sacrifices  crude  material  pleasure  for 
the  privilege  of  enjoying  that  pleasure  in  fantasy.  The  instincts 
are  again  victorious,  but  in  sublimated  form,  and  the  victory  can 
be  attained  at  small  cost.  The  differences  between  this  kind  of 
gratification  and  others  are  only  quantitative. 

Freud  believes  that  Dostoyevsky's  kind  of  compromise  with 
morality  is  a  typically  Russian  trait.  In  reality  it  is  a  universal  hu- 
man trait.  Only  in  the  extremes  between  one  emotional  state  and 
the  other  is  this  a  national  peculiarity,  that  is,  a  quality  depend- 
ent upon  the  history  and  destiny  of  a  people.  Such  a  struggle  be- 
tween the  demands  of  the  instincts  and  the  requirements  of  so- 
ciety will  take  a  certain  form  and  have  such  an  outcome  according 
to  the  period  and  the  culture  of  the  community.  In  the  case  of 


68  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Dostoyevsky,  these  two  factors  have  left  their  unmistakable  im- 
print on  his  compromise  with  morality  which  is  in  itself  a  com- 
promise. Throughout  his  life  the  great  artist  unconsciously  stood 
in  the  heavy  shadow  of  that  unfortunate  error  which  nineteen 
hundred  years  ago  separated  mankind  into  saints  and  sinners. 
The  dominance  of  this  view  in  his  psyche  explains  the  hyper- 
trophy of  his  conscience  and  the  radical  swings  between  sin  and 
repentance.  We  children  of  another  age,  which  appears  as  a  pro- 
gressed one  to  simpler  spirits,  are  no  longer  capable  of  fully 
understanding  the  psychology  of  the  Russian  people  of  this  pe- 
riod. No  one  who  has  not  grown  up  in  this  cultural  milieu  and 
has  not  early  undergone  the  profound  influence  of  Christianity 
can  project  himself  into  the  feelings  of  these  people.  Religious 
upbringing  added  a  new,  more  refined  form  of  gratification  of 
the  impulses  to  the  old  ways:  the  voluptuousness  of  giving  one- 
self up  for  lost,  of  knowing  that  one  was  damned.  It  is  very  hard 
for  us  to  comprehend  emotionally  the  orgies  of  passion  and  suffer- 
ing which  were  the  psychological  aftermath  of  this  attitude. 

It  was  such  factors  that  prescribed  the  fate  of  Dostoyevsky's  in- 
stincts. They  also  were  responsible  in  part  for  his  moral  views. 
Dostoyevsky  would  never,  for  example,  have  admitted  that  a 
man,  however  moral  he  be,  can  experience  inner  temptation  with- 
out that  experience  being  a  surrender  to  it.  He  would  take  an 
even  sterner  stand  than  Freud's,  declaring  that  the  very  appear- 
ance of  forbidden  impulses  is  in  itself  immoral.  He  would  insist 
upon  the  letter  of  the  Saviour's  parable:  he  who  merely  looks 
with  desire  upon  his  neighbor's  wife  is  an  adulterer.  This  urgent 
moral  imperative  leads  us  to  a  strange  fatalism,  for  sinning  in 
thought  is  inevitable.  Therefore,  the  sinful  act  does  not  matter.  In 
fact,  the  unconscious  guilt  feeling  requires  it.  Whoever  knows 
himself  damned  has  no  reason  to  shun  any  of  the  byways  on  the 
road  to  hell.  Nor  has  the  hangman  who  is  leading  a  murderer  to 
the  gallows  any  reason  to  expect  that  the  condemned  man  will 
be  docile  and  make  no  trouble.  Dostoyevsky's  life  shows  that  he 
harbored  such  temptations  and  fantasies  always  with  a  deep  feel- 
ing of  guilt,  and  with  spells  of  violent  abandon. 

To  Freud's  moral  ideal— the  complete  renunciation  as  soon  as 
the  temptation  appears— Dostoyevsky  would  rejoin  that  it  was 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  69 

certainly  the  purest  and  most  beautiful,  but  that  God  in  His  in- 
scrutable counsel  had  not  designed  this  way  for  mortal  man. 
Numerous  saints  of  the  Church  are  precedents,  he  would  say,  that 
above  all  he  who  attains  virtue  through  sin  and  repentance  is 
pleasing  to  God.  In  the  light  of  human  frailty,  Freud's  moral  pro- 
gram would  seem  superhuman  to  Dostoyevsky.  And  how  the 
pharisees  would  distort  and  make  a  mock  of  it,  extolling  their 
own  renunciation  to  God,  and  putting  by  all  suggestions  that  they 
have  anything  in  common  with  sinners. 

It  is  understandable  that,  with  such  psychic  predispositions, 
Dostoyevsky  resolved  this  inner  conflict  by  bowing  completely 
before  all  secular  and  ecclesiastical  authority.  We  may  regret  this, 
but  we  cannot  condemn  it.  Freud  points  out  that  Dostoyevsky 
failed  "to  become  a  teacher  and  liberator  of  mankind;  instead  he 
joined  forces  with  humanity's  jailers."  Freud  adds,  "The  cultural 
future  of  mankind  will  have  little  to  thank  him  for." 

Now  it  is  perfectly  true  that  Fyodor  Michailovitch  Dostoyevsky 
sought  the  shelter  of  the  old  jail  that  he  was  used  to  from  child- 
hood. In  keeping  with  his  time  and  his  milieu,  he  was  not  eager 
to  inspect  the  spick-and-span  new  ones.  Loving  the  old  illusion,  he 
did  not  care  to  exchange  it  for  a  modern  one  with  the  fine-sound- 
ing name  of  freedom.  He  saw  that  progress  was  marching  stoutly 
along  on  the  wrong  track,  and  he  chose  to  remain  outside  of  the 
procession.  He  shared  the  admirable  prejudice  about  a  more 
splendid  future  for  mankind;  but  he  felt  that  life  without  re- 
ligion would  be  as  empty  and  meaningless  as  is  reality.  He  pre- 
ferred to  cherish  the  old  illusion— and  we  cannot  take  him  to  task 
for  this. 

"The  cultural  future  of  mankind  will  have  little  to  thank  him 
for."  Very  true,  for  everything  points  to  this,  that  the  men  of  the 
future  will  look  upon  thinking  as  a  kind  of  infectious  disease 
which  prevents  the  possibility  of  being  happy.  (Perhaps  they 
will  discover  with  some  satisfaction  that  already  many  of  the 
scientists  of  our  time  have  acquired  immunity  to  this  serious 
malady.)  But  whatever  may  be  our  opinion  about  this  future,  it 
is  clear  that  gratitude  will  not  be  one  of  its  virtues.  We  know 
that  the  men  of  our  time  are  mediocre,  capricious,  petty,  mean, 
and  wretched.  We  know  that  they  were  thus  in  earlier  times;  and 


70  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

we  have  no  reason  to  think  that  in  the  future  they  will  be  gen- 
erous, resolute,  noble,  helpful,  and  good.  If  they  should  turn  out 
so,  they  would  have  to  thank  Dostoyevsky  from  the  bottom  of 
their  hearts.  Not,  however,  for  the  religious  and  political  goals 
he  sought.  (The  Russian  soul  will  not  be  the  redeemer  of  the 
human  race  any  more  than  the  German  soul.)  The  future  will 
have  very  little  use  for  his  Christian  or  national  program.  But 
then,  neither  do  the  ethics  of  Homer,  the  Bible  or  Shakespeare 
govern  our  lives  any  longer.  Today  Goethe's  political  views  seem 
provincial  and  antiquated  to  us.  The  close  of  his  Faust,  in  which 
the  Catholic  heaven  opens,  impresses  us  as  a  painful  discord  amid 
music  of  the  spheres.  Schiller's  nationalistic  and  social  ideas  have 
meaning  only  for  adolescents.  For  the  apostolic  life  of  the  older 
Tolstoi,  whom  we  revere  as  a  poet  and  psychologist,  we  have  only 
-pity  and  an  almost  superior  tolerance. 

The  political  and  religious  opinions  of  great  poets  are  simply 
not  important.  Reforming  mankind  is  not  their  task  on  earth, 
nor  do  they  hold  the  future  of  humanity  in  the  hollow  of  their 
hands.  Heavy  industry  and  munitions  works  are  much  more  in- 
fluential. Any  petty  boss  in  a  political  party  can  advocate  politi- 
cal and  social  programs.  The  ward  heeler's  smile  is  mightier  than 
the  pen.  Every  statesman  and  political  leader  of  today  who  helps 
the  insulted  and  injured  win  their  rights  has  a  juster  claim  to 
the  title  of  ethical  liberator  than  the  writer  whose  art  portrays 
their  wretched  fate  for  us. 

But  the  poet  can  show  us  human  beings  who  are  mirrors  of 
ourselves  and  to  whom  we  are  mirrors.  And  on  this  stage  of  the 
world  he  presents  the  drama  of  the  human  condition,  its  coldness 
and  darkness  and  effort,  the  rise  and  decline  of  our  fates.  He  ex- 
tracts some  meaning  from  the  misery  of  man  as  well  as  from  his 
absurd  aspirations  and  desires.  Who  can  do  this  but  one  blessed 
of  God— a  writer  like  Fyodor  Michailovitch  Dostoyevsky,  whose 
political  and  religious  ideas  seem  so  abstruse,  limited,  and  foolish 
to  us?  That  future  civilization  which  may  owe  nothing  to  Dos- 
toyevsky should  nevertheless  honor  him  for  his  creation  of  charac- 
ters whose  terrible  and  calm  genius  shakes  the  utmost  depths  of 
oiar  souls.  He  has  offered  the  men  of  the  future  insights  that  are 
almost  visionary.  He  has  offered  them  wonderful  and  strange 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  71 

emotions  which  surely  are  beyond  the  power  of  social  reformers 
or  apostles  to  give.  His  religious  and  political  beliefs  have  come 
to  nothing— his  God  has  been  dethroned  long  ago.  But  the  prayer 
that  was  breathed  by  his  creative  spirit  will  be  mightier  than  all 
the  prayers  he  addressed  to  the  God  of  the  Christians.  That 
prayer,  in  the  words  of  the  hymn  of  Hrabanus  Maurus,  goes: 

Veni,  creator  spiritus: 

.  .  .  Accende  lumen  sensibus. 

Freud's  critical  attitude  toward  Dostoyevsky,  for  whom,  cer- 
tainly, he  has  no  great  love,  becomes  gentler  and  more  objective 
as  soon  as  he  leaves  off  making  evaluations  and  steps  into  his  own 
field  of  depth-psychology.  Here  there  is  no  more  caution,  no  more 
feeble  argument,  and  he  masterfully  opens  the  hidden  way  to  the 
life  of  emotions.  All  philosophical  differences  cease  to  matter,  all 
divisions  of  period  and  culture  disappear,  and  a  man  stands  naked 
before  us,  shipwrecked  in  a  tempest,  but  stranded  on  Prospero's 
island,  where  his  most  secret  thoughts  are  recognized.  Where 
Freud  thinks  as  a  psychologist  and  not  as  a  moralist,  he  no 
longer  bothers  his  head  about  the  Commandments.  He  sees  the 
man  alone,  suffering  at  the  insufficiency  of  human  existence,  his 
genius  caught  in  the  snares  of  his  environment. 

It  was  merely  by  chance  that  a  great  writer  was  the  object  of 
this  analytic  study.  The  advantage  and  desirability  of  such  an  ob- 
ject is  that  the  man  reveals  himself  as  other  men  cannot.  Those 
revelations  are  often  oblique  and  obscure,  sudden  flashes  which 
illuminate  one  corner  of  his  being,  leaving  the  greater  part  in 
even  deeper  shadow. 

But  Freud's  analysis  of  Dostoyevsky's  unconscious  attachment 
to  his  father  fell  like  a  long  shadow  upon  his  impressionable  ego 
and  colored  forever  after  the  nature  and  effects  of  his  malady. 
The  father's  mysterious  influence  ruled  his  life  and  work.  It  was 
this  force  that  drove  him  into  the  abyss  and  exalted  him  to  the 
heights.  With  a  few  short  strokes  Freud  draws  a  picture  of  the 
history  of  a  man's  psyche,  of  the  determinants  of  his  illness  and  of 
the  meaning  of  his  symptoms.  Freud  has  thrown  more  light  upon 
Dostoyevsky's  being  than  has  any  literary  critic  or  biographer. 


72  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

The  crowning  point  in  this  analysis  is  the  explanation  of  the 
writer's  malady.  Freud  shows  how  a  powerful  instinctual  desire 
may  turn  about  and  attack  the  desirer  himself;  how  in  an  epileptic 
fit  the  "other  self  enters  the  ego  and  how  the  death  of  this  other 
is  well-nigh  an  experience  of  the  death  of  the  ego  itself. 

From  this  point  the  analysis  broadens  and  by  subtle  degrees 
Freud  approaches  the  major  problem,  the  essence  of  this  person- 
ality. He  provides  the  long-sought  explanation  of  the  daemonic 
elements  in  Dostoyevsky's  life  and  work.  He  shows  them  to  be  the 
play  of  hidden  emotional  forces  against  opposing  impulses.  The 
daemon  is  not  alien  to  the  ego,  but  merely  alienated.  Daemonic 
impulses  are  not  newcomers  in  the  psyche;  they  are  merely  the 
reappearance  of  old,  submerged  drives.  The  inner  relation  be- 
tween Dostoyevsky's  fate  and  that  of  his  characters  becomes 
clearer.  In  both  there  is  waged  the  same  struggle  between  ele- 
mental drives  and  the  powers  of  conscience,  a  perpetuation  of 
the  more  ancient  struggle  between  the  still  feeble  ego  and  the 
outer  world. 

Freud  has  wonderful  insight  into  how  such  conflicts  were  bound 
up  with  Dostoyevsky's  religious  and  nationalistic  views,  however 
apart  they  may  seem.  He  shows  us  how  they  figured  in  both  the 
personality  of  the  writer  and  of  his  characters,  for  these  latter 
are  personifications  of  the  potentialities  of  the  ego.  They  are  the 
developed  offshoots  of  the  ego.  When  Freud  links  up  Oedipus, 
Hamlet,  and  the  Brothers  Karamazov,  drawing  comparisons  be- 
tween them  as  various  facets  of  the  same  latent  content,  he  thereby 
contributes  profoundly  to  our  understanding  of  the  basic  drives 
which  impel  men's  lives,  whatever  the  times,  the  culture,  the 
race  or  the  person.  The  laws  have  been  obscure,  but  they  are 
becoming  ever  more  accessible. 

The  last  section  of  the  study  concerns  itself  with  an  extremely 
interesting  interpretation  of  Dostoyevsky's  passion  for  gambling. 
Freud's  surprising,  but  persuasive  theory  is  that  this  passion  is 
derived  from  the  masturbatory  compulsion  in  the  child.  The  un- 
successful efforts  to  overcome  the  habit  and  the  resultant  self- 
castigation  find  their  parallel  in  the  compulsion  to  gamble.  This 
observation  illuminates  a  complex  and  little-understood  aspect 
of  Dostoyevsky's  life. 


FROM  THIRTY  YEARS  WITH  FREUD  73 

We  may  notice  an  abrupt  transition  between  this  section  and  the 
main  theme.  Perhaps  our  impression  is  that  the  author  has  turned 
arbitrarily  to  this  new  subject  because  it  interests  him  and  not 
because  it  has  any  special  connection  with  the  whole.  And  yet 
there  is  a  very  definite  organic  connection.  What  inspires  the  ef- 
forts to  suppress  masturbation  is  nothing  else  but  fear  of  the 
father.  This  Freud  intimates  in  a  single  word  at  the  end  of  the 
section. 

Unfortunately,  Freud  breaks  off  his  analysis  at  this  point.  Had 
he  continued,  I  believe  he  would  have  pointed  out  how  the  gam- 
bling passion  later  assumes  a  form  whose  motivation  and  mecha- 
nisms are  akin  to  certain  obsession  symptoms.  Gambling,  which 
never  had  as  its  end  money  or  gain,  becomes  a  kind  of  question 
addressed  to  destiny.  It  is  a  form  of  oracle  which  the  modern 
psyche  readily  accepts,  although  this  latent  meaning  does  not 
become  conscious.  Now,  recalling  that  destiny  is  the  ultimate 
father-surrogate,  we  see  the  significance  in  the  unconscious  of  this 
questioning.  Originally  it  sought  to  discover  whether  or  not  ex- 
pectation of  evil  was  justified.  In  other  words,  would  the  threat- 
ened punishment  for  the  trespass  be  carried  out  or  would  the 
angered  father  forgive  the  son?  Good  or  bad  luck  stands  as  symbol 
of  the  answer.  Observing  the  rules  of  the  game  is  the  psychologi- 
cal equivalent  of  obedience  to  the  compulsive  neurotic  symptoms. 
Uncertainty  plays  the  same  role  in  gambling  as  it  does  in  the 
compulsion  complex.  Take,  for  example,  a  game  like  patience. 
Here  we  can  see  clearly  the  oracular  meaning,  which  is  obscured 
in  other  games  where  new  players  may  enter  late  and  where  the 
prime  purpose  seems  to  be  gain. 

We  have  certain  criticisms  to  make,  even  as  we  realize  that  this 
is  the  most  valuable  psychological  work  on  Dostoyevsky  we  pos- 
sess. Our  first  criticism  is  directed  to  the  section  just  discussed. 
In  this  section  Freud  adduces  the  example  of  a  story  by  Stefan 
Zweig.  Which  are  the  connecting  links?  The  following:  here  the 
gambling  compulsion  of  Dostoyevsky,  there  the  same  passion  in 
one  of  the  characters  of  Zweig's  story.  Stefan  Zweig  has  devoted 
himself  to  a  study  of  Dostoyevsky.  We  must  confess  that  these  are 
few  and  very  loose  connections.  They  serve  as  the  barest  possible 


74  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

reason  for  dragging  in  such  an  illustration,  but  there  is  certainly 
no  reason  for  the  lengthy  summary  of  the  Zweig  story.  It  seems 
strange  that  Freud,  usually  so  good  at  ordering  his  material 
economically,  should  devote  four  pages  out  of  a  twenty-six-page 
study  of  Dostoyevsky— nearly  one-sixth,  that  is— to  a  parenthetical 
illustration.  With  all  due  respect  to  Zweig's  literary  merit,  we 
cannot  help  feeling  that  this  is  an  error  in  proportion.  It  is  as 
though  a  medieval  artist  painting  the  Passion  of  Christ  should 
place  in  the  foreground  of  the  picture  the  bishop  of  his  native 
diocese. 

There  is  another  criticism,  perhaps  equally  minor.  In  his  intro- 
duction Freud  separates  Dostoyevsky's  personality  into  four  prin- 
cipal aspects:  the  poet,  the  neurotic,  the  moralist,  and  the  sinner. 
Should  he  not  have  given  recognition  to  another  aspect,  that  of 
the  great  psychologist?  (Perhaps  Freud  includes  the  psychologist 
with  the  writer,  yet  it  would  seem  worthy  of  special  mention,) 
Ours  is  a  time  when  every  mediocre  psychotherapeutic  practi- 
tioner thinks  the  soul  is  an  open  book  to  him— and  every  assistant 
at  a  neurologic  clinic  who  has  read  Freud  with  happy  carelessness 
and  thorough  misunderstanding  believes  he  knows  the  human 
mind  up  and  down.  In  such  a  time  as  this,  we  feel,  it  would  be 
fitting  that  one  of  the  greatest  psychologists  should  salute  the 
writer  who  was  one  of  his  great  precursors,  a  salutation  out  of  his 
own  solitude  to  the  other's  solitude. 

In  this  study  the  rapid,  compressed  style  of  Freud's  last  writings 
is  evident,  but  here,  in  harmony  with  the  subject,  it  is  fluid  and 
emotional  in  spite  of  its  density.  Many  of  his  phrases  are  stamped 
forever  in  my  memory  because  they  were  expressed  in  a  language 
which  was  a  rare  union  of  succinctness  and  comprehensiveness, 
£ brcef ulness  and  delicacy,  directness  and  richness  of  association. 

Our  ultimate  impression  remains  that  this  study  of  Freud's  has 
an  honored  place  in  the  scientific  literature  on  Dostoyevsky— and 
more.  For  this  penetration  into  the  deepest  levels  of  the  psyche, 
this  revelation  of  a  man's  unique,  hidden  qualities  and  of  the 
qualities  he  shares  with  all  men— such  vision  is  something  new  in 
applied  psychology,  something  which  did  not  exist  before  psy- 
choanalysis. 


75 

FROM  A  LETTER  OF  FREUD^S 


...  I  have  read  your  critical  review  o£  my  Dostoyevsky  study 
with  great  pleasure.  All  your  objections  are  worth  considering, 
and  certain  of  them,  I  admit,  have  hit  the  nail  on  the  head.  How- 
ever, there  are  some  points  I  can  advance  in  my  own  defense  that 
are,  you  understand,  not  quibblings  over  who  is  right  and  who 
wrong. 

I  think  you  have  applied  too  high  a  standard  to  this  trivial  essay. 
It  was  written  as  a  favor  for  someone  and  written  reluctantly.  I 
always  write  reluctantly  nowadays.  I  know  that  you  observed 
that  this  was  so.  Naturally,  I  am  not  saying  this  to  justify  hasty 
or  distorted  judgments,  but  merely  to  explain  the  careless  archi- 
tecture of  the  whole.  It  cannot  be  disputed  that  the  parenthetical 
Zweig  analysis  disturbs  the  balance.  If  we  look  deeper,  we  can 
probably  find  what  was  the  purpose  for  its  addition.  Had  I  been 
free  to  disregard  the  place  where  the  essay  was  to  appear,  I  would 
certainly  have  written:  "We  may  diagnose  that  in  the  history  of 
a  neurosis  characterized  by  so  severe  a  guilt  feeling,  the  struggle 
with  masturbation  plays  a  special  part.  This  diagnosis  is  com- 
pletely confirmed  by  Dostoyevsky's  pathologic  passion  for  gam- 
bling. For,  as  we  see  in  a  story  by  Zweig  .  .  ."  That  is,  the  attention 
devoted  to  Zweig's  story  is  not  dictated  by  the  relationship  of 
Zweig  to  Dostoyevsky,  but  of  masturbation  to  neurosis.  Still,  it 
did  take  an  awkward  turn, 

I  will  hold  to  my  belief  in  a  scientifically  objective  social 
standard  of  ethics,  and  therefore  I  would  not  .contest  in  the  least 
the  upright  philistine's  right  to  call  his  behavior  good  and  moral, 
even  though  he  has  attained  it  at  the  cost  of  little  self-conquest. 
At  the  same  time  I  will  grant  your  subjective,  psychological  view 
of  ethics.  Although  I  agree  with  your  opinions  on  the  world  and 
present-day  man,  I  cannot,  as  you  know,  share  your  pessimistic 
rejection  of  a  better  future. 

Certainly  I  subsumed  Dostoyevsky  the  psychologist  under  the 
poet.  I  might  also  have  charged  against  him  that  his  insight  was 
so  entirely  restricted  to  the  workings  of  the  abnormal  psyche. 
Consider  his  astounding  helplessness  before  the  phenomena  of 


76  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

love;  he  really  only  understands  either  crude,  instinctive  desire 
or  masochistic  submission  and  love  from  pity.  You  are  also  quite 
right  in  your  assumption  that  I  do  not  really  like  Dostoyevsky, 
despite  all  my  admiration  for  his  power  and  nobility.  That  comes 
from  the  fact  that  my  patience  with  pathological  natures  is  com- 
pletely exhausted  in  my  daily  work.  In  art  and  life  I  am  intoler- 
ant toward  them.  That  is  a  personal  trait,  not  binding  on  others. 
Where  do  you  intend  to  publish  your  essay?  I  think  very  highly 
of  it.  Scientific  research  alone  must  work  without  prejudices. 
With  all  other  thinking  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  choosing  a  point 
of  view,  and  naturally  there  are  many  possible  ones.  .  .  . 


Freud  gave  me  permission  in  1929  to  publish  this  fine  letter.  It 
serves  as  an  excellent  refutation  of  the  stupid  allegations  about 
Freud's  dogmatism  and  his  pessimistic  view  of  life. 

The  remark  on  Dostoyevsky's  limited  understanding  of  love 
gives  me  a  welcome  opening  for  quoting  another  of  Freud's  com- 
ments on  love.  "Les  Cahiers  Contemporains"  published  in  Paris  in 
1926  a  little  book  called  Au  deld  de  I' amour  which  contained  a 
questionnaire  on  the  essence  of  love  beyond  the  realm  of  sex. 
Freud  wrote: 

My  Dear  Sir: 

It  is  quite  impossible  for  me  to  fulfill  your  request.  Really, 
you  ask  too  much.  Up  to  the  present  I  have  not  yet  found  the 
courage  to  make  any  broad  statements  on  the  essence  of  love, 
and  I  think  that  our  knowledge  is  not  sufficient. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Freud 


PART  TWO 


The  Confessions  of  an  Analyst 


The  Confessions  of  an  Analyst 


WE  ARE  all  proud  of  certain  experiences  and  qualities,  and 
ashamed  of  others,  but  we  sometimes  meet  people  who 
seem  to  be  proud  of  things  we  would  not  boast  of  and  others  who 
are  ashamed  of  qualities  and  circumstances  over  which  there  is 
nothing  to  feel  disgraced.  Self-observation  and  comparison  of 
ourselves  with  these  persons  tell  us  that  the  same  experiences  or 
qualities  would  not  awaken  similar  feelings  in  us.  We  speak  of 
false  shame  and  false  pride  when  we  meet  with  such  inappropriate 
feelings. 

The  new  psychology  has  added  some  significant  features  to  the 
pictures  of  false  pride  and  false  shame.  Psychoanalytic  experience 
shows  that  men  or  women  do  not  always  know  what  they  are 
ashamed  or  proud  of.  Qualities  or  experiences  which  most  people 
are  proud  to  have  are  anxiously  hidden  by  some  as  if  they  were  dis- 
graceful. Other  qualities  are  conspicuously  exhibited,  although 
most  people  would  be  embarrassed  to  mention  them.  There  is 
more  in  such  concealment  or  demonstration  than  meets  the  eye 
of  the  average  observer.  The  opposite  feelings  of  pride  and  shame 
are  not  independent  of  each  other.  There  is  a  secret  tie  between 
them,  and  in  most  cases  we  discover  that  displaced  or  distorted 
shame  is  connected  with  false  pride.  A  careful  analysis  which 
penetrates  to  the  origin  of  these  puzzling  feelings  often  discovers 
that  they  owe  their  intensity  to  a  process  of  displacement  which 
shifts  the  emotional  accent  from  important  issues  to  apparently 
insignificant  details. 

Here  is  an  instance  from  personal  experience  of  false  shame.  For 
many  years  I  carefully  hid  a  fact  which  other  people  might  have 

79 


8O  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

mentioned  with  harmless  pride,  namely,  that  in  my  nineteenth 
year  I  had  read  every  line  Goethe  had  published.  I  went  through 
the  Weimar er,  or  Sophien,  edition,  55  volumes  of  poetic  works, 
13  volumes  of  scientific  papers,  the  diaries  in  15  volumes,  and  the 
letters  in  50  volumes.  I  also  read  the  many  collections  of  Goethe's 
conversations,  as  well  as  most  books  and  papers  on  Goethe  which 
the  Vienna  University  Library  then  had,  and  that  was  a  consider- 
able number  of  books.  It  is  not  important  that  I  read  all  these 
volumes,  but  why  did  I  never  mention  the  fact?  Why  did  I  keep 
it  secret  as  if  I  were  ashamed  of  it? 

There  were  many  opportunities  later  on,  for  instance  in  con- 
versations with  literary  friends  and  writers,  to  drop  a  remark 
about  my  Goethe  reading.  I  remember  such  an  occasion  which 
came  rather  late.  It  must  have  been  about  1926  or  1927,  more  than 
twenty  years  after  my  Goethe  obsession.  One  summer  afternoon, 
Franz  Werfel,  Alma  Maria,  the  widow  of  Gustav  Mahler  who 
had  become  WerfeFs  wife,  a  friend,  and  I  sat  in  the  library  of 
the  beautiful  cottage  which  the  composer  had  bought  in  Breiten- 
stein  on  the  Semmering  near  Vienna.  Mrs.  Werfel  pointed  to  the 
many  volumes  containing  Goethe's  letters  and  told  me  that  Mah- 
ler used  to  say,  "I  reserve  this  reading  for  the  years  of  my  old  age." 
During  the  ensuing  conversation  on  Goethe  I  felt  the  temptation 
to  reveal  that  in  my  nineteenth  year  I  had  read  all  of  Goethe  in 
print,  but  the  impulse  disappeared  immediately.  There  were  other 
such  occasions,  but  with  the  exception  of  my  own  analysis  I 
never  spoke  of  my  compulsive  reading  of  Goethe  when  I  was  a 
youth.  Why  was  I  ashamed  of  it? 

To  understand  my  secrecy,  I  must  revive  an  important  part  of 
my  young  years,  and  awaken  painful  memories  of  grief  and  re- 
pentance. I  do  not  agree  with  those  writers  who  assert  that  such 
resurrection  of  the  past  is  not  difficult.  To  change  the  tenses  is 
easy  only  on  paper,  but  not  in  emotional  experience.  To  recall 
feelings  and  impulses  one  is  ashamed  of,  to  admit  emotions  to 
others  which  one  has  not  even  admitted  to  oneself,  is  by  no  means 
an  easy  task.  Our  memories  are  conveniently  derelict  in  such 
matters  and  we  are  only  too  apt  to  forget  not  only  events,  but 
also  feelings  and  tendencies  we  did  not  like  in  ourselves.  The 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  8l 

dialogue  which  Nietzsche  once  imagined  should  be  varied  in 
this  sense:  "Thus  I  felt  and  thought/'  says  my  memory.  "This  I 
could  not  have  felt  and  thought/'  says  my  pride.  And  my  memory 
gives  in.  Such  compliance  of  our  memories  with  regard  to  un- 
pleasant recollections  is  unavoidable.  When  one  endeavors  with 
all  moral  courage  and  sincerity  to  reconstruct  what  has  been  sup- 
pressed and  repressed,  one  should  be  satisfied  with  incomplete  re* 
suits  and  not  expect  to  attain  the  impossible  and  complete  re- 
construction of  the  past. 

As  for  my  compulsive  Goethe  study,  more  than  forty  years  ago, 
my  memory  is  somewhat  bolstered  by  reference  to  a  concrete  event 
of  those  days.  The  emotional  experiences  out  of  which  my  strange 
labor  emerged  are  vividly  recalled  in  reading  a  paper  about  them 
I  wrote  a  few  years  later.  In  this  paper  I  tried  in  retrospect  to 
understand  my  odd  behavior  by  means  of  the  newly  learned 
method  of  self-analysis.  The  paper  lies  on  my  desk  now,  as  I 
write.  It  is  entitled,  "On  the  Effect  of  Unconscious  Death- Wishes" 
^Ueber  die  Wirkungen  unbewusster  Todeswunsche").  I  wrote 
it  in  1913,  seven  years  after  the  experiences  out  of  which  my 
Goethe  study  emerged.  This  article  was  published  anonymously 
in  1914  in  Volume  II  of  the  Internationale  Zeitschrift  fur  Aerzt- 
liche  Psychoanalyse  edited  by  Sigmund  Freud.  A  short  footnote 
contains  the  following  sentences:  "Most  of  the  following  analysis 
is  made  on  a  person  whose  mental  good  health  I  have  no  reason 
to  doubt:  on  myself .  It  would  be  petty,  if  we  analysts  would  re- 
frain from  the  analysis  of  our  own  fantasies  after  our  master  and 
some  of  his  students  have  published  interpretations  of  their  own 
dreams.  The  personal  sacrifice  appears  small  compared  with  the 
profit  which  could  accrue  to  research  out  of  such  reports.  It  is 
to  be  hoped  that  the  intellectual  interest  of  the  reader  in  these 
complex  problems  will  lead  him  to  forget  that  the  person  analyzed 
is  the  analyst  himself/' 

The  spirit  of  these  sentences  would  be  more  commendable  if 
the  author  had  signed  his  name  to  his  paper.  I  can  partly  excuse 
him,  since  in  his  analytic  report  some  persons  were  mentioned 
who  were  then  still  alive.  Reasons  of  discretion  made  it  necessary 
to  remain  anonymous,  but  I  suspect  that  discretion  appeared  to 


82  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

him  then  as  the  better  part  of  valor.  The  young  man  however  has 
become  an  old  man  in  the  meantime,  and  he  thinks  it  is  never  too 
late  for  moral  courage  and  for  overcoming  the  fright  we  feel  in 
facing  up  to  our  own  thoughts.  He  still  believes  in  what  he  wrote 
then,  more  than  forty  years  ago,  as  his  creed  for  psychological  ex- 
plorers. In  the  following  paragraphs  I  shall  follow  that  fragment- 
ary analysis  o£  1913  as  it  was  then  published,  supplementing  it 
only  as  it  concerns  my  Goethe  study,  which  is,  of  course,  not 
mentioned  in  the  paper.  Here  are  the  events  and  experiences 
which  preceded  it,  the  soil  from  which  this  strange  plant  grew. 

My  father  died  of  arteriosclerosis  on  June  16,  1906, 1  was  eight- 
een years  old.  This  blow  hit  me  a  few  days  before  the  final  exam- 
inations that  open  the  doors  of  the  university  to  the  students.  In 
those  days  this  final  examination  did  not  signify  merely  the  com- 
pletion of  high  school.  In  keeping  with  its  name  (Maturitat* 
sprufung)  it  marked  the  student's  arrival  at  maturity,  in  addition 
to  academic  achievement. 

(The  subject  in  which  I  had  been  least  successful  during  my 
high  school  years  had  been  mathematics*  When  I  returned  to 
school,  after  my  father's  funeral,  I  often  felt  the  glance  of  my 
mathematics  instructor  resting  on  me.  I  must  have  looked  rather 
miserable  because  the  old  man,  who  resembled  my  father  in  figure 
and  bearing,  looked  at  me  as  though  he  felt  sorry  for  me.  On  the 
day  before  the  examination,  he  stopped  me  on  the  stairs  of  the 
school,  said  a*  few  casual  words,  and  slipped  a  little  paper  into 
iny  hand.  On  it  were  the  questions  he  would  ask  me  the  next  day. 
He  said,  shortly,  "Adieu"  and  went  downstairs.  He  died  two  days 
after  the  examination,  of  the  same  disease  as  my  father.  This 
episode  was  also  woven  into  the  pattern  of  my  obsession-thoughts 
later  on.) 

The  death  of  my  father  threw  me  into  an  emotional  turmoil 
of  the  strangest  kind.  I  did  not  understand  then  what  had  hap- 
pened to  me  and  in  me.  I  was  unable  to  grasp  the  meaning  of  the 
emotions  and  thoughts  which  beset  me,  and  I  searched  in  vain 
for  a  solution,  groping  about  as  does  a  blind  man  for  the  exit 
from  a  room. 

The  emotional  conflict  in  me  had  its  point  of  departure  in  the 
rejection  of  a  thought  which  emerged  on  the  evening  of  the  day 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  8g 

my  father  died.  The  beloved  man  sat  breathing  heavily  and  groan- 
ing in  an  easy  chair.  Two  physicians  were  at  his  side  and  one  of 
them  ordered  me  to  go  to  the  pharmacy  to  get  camphor  for  an 
injection.  The  pharmacy  was  about  fifteen  minutes  distant,  with 
no  bus  or  tram  available.  I  was  well  aware  of  the  urgency  of  the 
order,  I  knew  the  injection  should  be  lifesaving.  I  ran  as  if  for 
my  own  life.  I  soon  had  to  stop  and  catch  my  breath,  and  then 
I  ran  on  again  through  the  streets.  Suddenly,  the  image  of  my 
father  as  already  dead  emerged  in  my  mind.  As  I  passed  from  run- 
ning to  quick  walking,  I  excused  myself  because  I  was  out  of  breath. 
But  then  it  occurred  to  me  how  much  depended  on  my  speed  and 
I  ran  the  more  quickly  to  make  up  for  the  lost  seconds.  I  reached 
the  pharmacy,  and  then  I  ran  back.  Near  collapse,  I  stormed  into 
our  apartment.  My  father  was  dead.  I  still  know  that  I  was  in  a 
terrible  panic  as  if  stunned  by  a  strong  electric  shock,  and  I 
threw  myself  before  the  body,  in  despair. 

The  next  days  were  filled  with  grief  and  mourning.  An  in- 
creasing longing  for  the  familiar  face,  for  his  voice  and  smile,  for 
his  kind  words,  tortured  me.  When  I  came  home  from  school,  I  ex- 
pected to  see  him  in  the  living  room  and  was  again  and  again  pain- 
fully reminded  that  he  was  not  there.  When  I  heard  a  funny  remark 
or  when  I  got  a  good  grade,  I  thought,  "I  shall  tell  Father,"  and 
only  after  some  minutes,  in  which  I  imagined  he  would  enjoy  it, 
did  I  become  aware  that  he  was  dead.  Then  there  emerged  that 
doubt  which  had  first  occurred  on  the  terrible  evening.  Could 
I  have  saved  Father's  life  if  I  had  run  more  quickly?  The  doubt 
soon  changed  into  self-reproaches  and  guilt  feeling.  I  asked  my- 
self often  in  those  days  whether  I  would  trade  my  own  life  for 
his.  I  answered  at  first  that  I  would,  of  course,  gladly  die,  if  he 
could  live  again.  But  this  was  internally  rejected  by  the  sophisti- 
cal argument  that  my  longing  for  him  would  not  be  appeased 
if  I  were  to  die. 

The  stake  was  then  diminished  in  my  thoughts  and  I  said  to 
myself  that  I  would  gladly  sacrifice  a  few  years  of  my  life  if  I 
could  have  prolonged  his.  Inner  sincerity  forbade  that  I  make 
myself  believe  that  I  was  ready  to  bring  about  this  sacrifice.  At 
the  end  of  such  trains  of  thoughts  and  fantasies  I  had  to  admit  to 


84  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

myself,  with  terror,  that  I  was  unwilling  to  sacrifice  a  single  year 
of  my  life  for  him. 

In  the  following  weeks  my  guilt  feeling  increased  when  I  caught 
myself  laughing  at  a  witty  remark  or  enjoying  a  stimulating  con- 
versation. I  thought  it  was  wrong  to  forget  even  for  a  moment 
that  my  father  had  died  so  recently.  The  worst  of  all  self-re- 
proaches came  soon  afterward.  To  my  consternation,  a  wave  of 
sexual  excitement  swept  over  me,  against  which  I  fought  with  all 
my  might  I  could  not  fall  asleep  because  the  power  of  the  sexual 
drive  tortured  me,  and  though  only  a  few  days  after  my  father's 
death,  I  searched  for  any  opportunity  to  have  sexual  intercourse. 
When  at  last  I  found  this  opportunity,  my  self-reproaches  became 
intolerable.  They  had  the  form:  Now,  when  all  my  thoughts  and 
feelings  should  be  directed  to  the  dear  departed,  I  am  indulging 
in  sexual  pleasure.  The  power  of  the  sexual  drive  was,  however, 
stronger  than  my  will;  each  sexual  act  was  followed  by  depression, 
self-reproach,  and  repentance.  I  remember  that  I  shuddered  then 
at  myself.  I  did  not  consciously  believe  in  immortality,  or  in  a 
life  in  the  beyond,  yet  I  could  not  rid  myself  of  the  thought  that 
my  dead  father  knew  all  about  me:  that  I  had  slowed  my  running 
in  the  hour  of  his  dying  and  that  I  felt  sexual  excitement  in  these 
weeks  of  mourning. 

I  often  had  a  kind  of  expectancy  of  impending  calamity  as  if 
my  father  would  punish  me  for  my  deeds.  All  this  is  too  sharply 
expressed,  too  definitely  stated.  It  really  had  the  character  of  fleet- 
ing thoughts,  of  vague  ideas  that  occurred  to  me  again  and  again. 
But  this  is  just  the  nature  of  incipient  obsessions;  it  is  in  this 
typical  form  that  obsessive  thoughts  first  transgress  the  threshold 
of  the  conscious.  Thus  I  feared  or  thought  it  possible  that  my 
father  would  let  me  become  ill  (and  eventually  die),  and  this 
obsession-idea  made  me  especially  afraid  of  venereal  diseases.  All 
these  thoughts  and  fears  were,  of  course,  contradicted  from  within 
and  rejected  by  reason;  but  what  could  reason  do  against  the 
emotional  powers  which  forced  me  to  think  and  act  as  I  did?  I 
first  realized  how  much  method  was  in  this  madness;  soon  after- 
ward, how  much  madness  was  in  this  method.  When  I  began  to 
study  psychoanalysis  a  few  years  later,  I  recognized  how  many  typ- 
ical traits  weare  in  my  attitude  and  that  they  had  almost  the  clinical 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN   ANALYST  85 

character  of  an  obsessional  neurosis.  Obsessions  and  counter- 
obsessions  fought  each  other  in  me,  and  I  was  for  many  weeks  a 
victim  of  those  strange  thoughts,  compulsions,  and  emotions. 

Out  of  this  situation  emerged  a  compulsive  way  of  working  as 
the  most  conspicuous  symptom.  It  was  accompanied  by  the  con- 
scious wish  to  accomplish  something  extraordinary  for  my  years. 
During  my  high-school  years  I  had  been  rather  easygoing  con- 
cerning my  studies.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  subjects  in  which 
I  was  at  the  top  I  had  been  lazy  and  careless.  My  father  had  often 
been  worried  about  me  when  I  had  bad  grades  in  mathematics, 
physics,  and  chemistry.  He  expressed  his  anxiety  that  I  would 
not  amount  to  much,  if  I  continued  to  take  life  so  lightly. 

The  thought  that  I  had  caused  him  grief  in  this  direction  had, 
of  course,  occurred  among  iny  self-reproaches,  but  the  decision 
to  give  myself  entirely  to  study  and  work  seemed  to  emerge  in- 
dependently from  my  remorse.  I  still  remember  that  it  suddenly 
occurred  to  me  that  I  wanted  to  become  famous— the  connection 
of  my  ambition  with  the  memory  of  my  father  emerged  through 
a  detour  later  on.  I  thought  that  I  wanted  to  give  honor  to  his 
name  in  making  my  own  name  well  known. 
i*  I  can  recapture  only  rarely,  and  for  a  fleeting  moment,  a  faint 
echo  of  the  emotions  I  felt  then.  (Some  years  ago,  a  playwright 
in  psychoanalysis  described  to  me  the  first  night  of  his  first  play. 
His  parents  had  been  poor  immigrants  and  had  lived  poverty- 
stricken  on  the  Lower  East  Side  of  New  York,  but  they  had  made 
every  sacrifice  to  give  their  children  a  good  education.  When  the 
cheering  first-nighters  called  the  playwright  to  the  stage,  his 
glance  fell  at  once  on  his  parents.  They  cried.  My  patient  said 
this  moment  was  the  greatest  triumph  of  his  life.  Other  successes 
followed,  but  nothing  approached  the  satisfaction  experienced 
in  those  few  moments  when  he  looked  at  the  two  old  people  while 
bowing  to  the  applauding  audience.  While  I  listened  to  him,  I 
had  a  vivid  feeling  of  envy,  and  on  this  detour  I  recaptured  the 
memory  of  an  old  emotion.)  During  the  last  illness  of  my  father 
I  had  studied  for  that  final  examination  with  all  my  energy.  I 
wanted  to  prove  to  him  that  I  was  capable  of  a  great  effort.  I 
wanted  to  show  him  that  I  could  achieve  something.  I  had  often 
studied  secretly  in  the  night  because  I  wished  to  surprise  him  with 


86  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

the  results  of  the  examination.  During  the  weeks  after  his  death 
I  had  the  bitter  feeling  that  I  had  been  too  late.  Destiny  had  not 
allowed  me  this  chance  to  convince  him  that  I  could  make  a  place 
for  myself  in  the  world  of  men. 

I  had  a  similar  emotion  when  Freud  died  in  1939.  In  the  politi- 
cal unrest  of  those  years  I  had  not  published  anything  of  value, 
and  Freud  had  written  in  a  letter  dated  January  4,  1935,  "I  hope 
that  you  will  give  us  still  very  valuable  accomplishments  of  the 
quality  of  your  first  studies/'  I  had  not  told  him  that  for  several 
years  I  had  been  working  on  an  extensive  book  investigating  the 
psychology  of  masochism.*  The  book  was  almost  finished  when 
the  news  came  that  Freud  had  died  in  London.  Again  I  had  the 
feeling  that  a  malicious  destiny  had,  just  a  short  time  before  its 
realization,  thwarted  my  hope  to  show—this  time  to  the  admired 
man  who  had  become  a  father-substitute— that  I  could  achieve 
something  of  value. 

After  the  death  of  my  father  I  found  myself  compelled  by  an 
invisible  power  to  study  and  work  with  all  my  energy.  I  could, 
of  course,  justify  this  sudden  zeal  by  the  fact  that  1  was  now  a 
student  at  the  university,  but  there  was  no  doubt  that  I  was  pro- 
pelled by  a  passionate  ambition  which  had  been  alien  to  me  until 
then.  I  must  confess,  somewhat  shamefacedly,  that  ambition  has 
remained  a  great  force  in  my  life  and  has  decreased  only  in  these 
last  years  which  bring  me  near  to  the  age  at  which  my  father  died. 

The  situation  in  which  I  found  myself  was  responsible  for  some 
of  my  new  zeaL  My  mother,  my  sister,  and  I  now  had  to  live  on 
the  small  income  which  the  pension  of  an  Austrian  government  offi- 
cial yields  to  the  family  after  his  death.  I  had  to  earn  enough  to 
support  myself  by  giving  lessons.  It  was  necessary  to  finish  my 
studies  as  soon  as  possible.  While  the  lessons  secured  bread  and 
butter,  the  work  in  psychology  satisfied  an  early  interest.  I  was 
soon  able  to  support  myself  and  become  known  as  a  successful 
student  in  scientific  psychology. 

If  this  new  ambition  was  somewhat  intelligible,  another  kind 
of  decision  appeared,  as  if  it  were  dictated  to  me  from  within.  It 
came  as  the  surprise  of  my  young  life.  I  do  not  remember  any 

*  Masochism  in  Modern  Man,  first  published  in  1941  (and.  ed.;  New  York: 
Farrar,  Straus  and  Co.,  1949). 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF   AN   ANALYST  87 

onger  when  and  under  what  circumstances  the  mysterious  iin- 
>ulse  emerged.  I  only  know  that  there  was  suddenly  the  inner 
;ommand  to  read  everything  that  Goethe  had  ever  written. 

The  thought  had  all  the  characteristic  features  of  an  obsession- 
dea.  It  came,  so  to  speak,  from  nowhere;  that  is  to  say,  it  emerged 
[rom  unknown  sources.  It  was  as  if  an  inner  voice  issued  a  com- 
oaand  without  revealing  a  motive.  There  were  also  no  emotions 
connected  with  the  thought,  so  it  seemed.  It  was  as  sober  as  the 
promulgation  of  a  law.  There  were,  later  on,  many  motivations 
and  rationalizations,  but  I  still  know  that  the  first  version  of  the 
obsession-idea  was  simply  the  "order"  to  read  all  the  collected 
writings  of  Goethe.  The  emergence  of  this  thought  would  have 
been  easier  to  explain  if  Goethe  had  then  been  my  favorite  poet. 
But  if  I  had  been  asked  whose  poetry  I  loved  most,  I  would  have 
answered  without  the  slightest  hesitation,  "Heinrich  Heine's."  I 
had  also  at  this  time  become  interested  in  the  works  of  Dostoyevsky, 
Nietzsche,  Hauptmann,  and  Schnitzler.  In  short,  I  was  more  inter- 
ested in  modern  literature,  which  we  students  discussed  with  great 
animation,  than  in  the  classics.  I  had,  of  course,  read  many  of  the 
poetic  works  of  Goethe  during  my  high-school  years,  and  I  loved 
and  admired  them  more  than  those  of  Schiller,  whom  the  Ger- 
man literary  critics  then  put  side  by  side  with  the  great  Olympian. 
Like  many  of  my  student  colleagues,  I  knew  the  first  part  of  Faust 
and  a  considerable  number  of  Goethe's  poems  by  heart— a  very 
modest  achievement  shared  with  so  many  people  growing  up  in 
the  German  culture. 

My  decision  was  certainly  not  born  out  of  the  desire  to  read  all 
that  a  poet  had  written.  It  must  have  contained  a  meaning  un- 
known to  me.  I  did  not  then  search  for  the  motivation  for  my 
thought;  I  submitted  to  it  without  the  slightest  protest.  I  remem- 
ber that  the  thought  appeared  to  me  at  first  as  a  kind  of  whim 
or  fancy,  as  an  interesting  project,  and  I  tried  to  regard  it  at 
first  as  we  do  our  good  intentions.  I  tried  to  diminish  the  severity 
or  strictness  of  the  order.  I  had  not  the  faintest  inkling  that  the 
idea  had  the  power  of  an  obsession-thought.  I  did  not  know  that 
the  idea  which  I  considered  as  a  casual  one  had  the  importance  of 
a  solemn  vow  and  had  to  be  followed  whatever  the  price  and  the 
sacrifice  its  realization  demanded.  It  corresponds  entirely  to  the 


88  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

character  of  an  obsession  when  I  describe  the  strange  idea  as  fanci- 
ful and  yet  as  important,  vague,  and  definite  at  the  same  time. 
The  thought  revealed  its  true  content  and  nature  to  me  much 
later.  What  appeared  at  first  as  a  whim  or  a  caprice  made  itself 
the  master  or  the  tyrant  whom  I  had  to  obey. 

Many  years  later  I  understood  what  Goethe  then  had  meant 
to  me  and  why  the  mysterious  order  had  been  issued.  Psycho- 
analysis had  shown  that  for  many  cultured  Germans  and  Austrians 
the  figure  of  Goethe  represents  not  only  the  "great  man/'  but 
also  the  elevated  father-figure  for  our  unconscious  thought.  Freud 
traced  the  idea  of  the  "great  man"  back  to  the  father-image.  He 
pointed  out  that  the  will  power,  the  greatness  of  accomplishment, 
and  the  decisiveness  of  thought,  and  above  all  the  self-sufficiency 
and  independence  of  the  great  man  are  features  of  the  father  for 
the  little  boy.  Also  the  divine  unconcern,  which  can  change  even 
into  inconsiderateness  belongs  to  these  traits.  You  must  admire  him, 
you  can  trust  him,  but  you  must  also  fear  him.  "Who  else  than  the 
father  of  our  childhood  should  be  the  great  man?"  (S.  Freud,  Der 
Mann  Moses  und  die  monotheistische  Religion,  1939,  p.  195.) 
Freud  names  Goethe  besides  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and  Beethoven 
as  "great  men/'*  It  was  thus  the  connection  with  the  father-figure 
which,  unrecognized,  had  propelled  and  compelled  me  to  read 
all  the  writings  of  Goethe. 

I  have  already  indicated  the  compulsive  character  of  my  reading 
of  Goethe  in  this  my  eighteenth  year.  The  most  significant  fea- 
tures of  the  compulsion  which  unmasked  themselves  later  on  were: 
the  exclusion  of  other  reading,  perfectionism,  accuracy.  Repeated 

*  It  was  strange  to  read  much  later  in  Freud's  autobiography  that  it  was 
Goethe  whose  influence  made  him  decide  to  study  medicine  at  the  very  age 
that  I  had  the  obsession-idea  to  read  Goethe's  collected  writings.  Freud  re- 
ports that  his  father  let  him  decide  for  himself  what  he  wanted  to  study.  "In 
those  young  years  I  felt  no  special  interest  in  the  position  or  the  activity  of  a 
physician— by  the  way,  not  later  on  either.  I  was  rather  propelled  by  a  kind  of 
desire  for  knowledge  which  concerned  human  situations  rather  than  objects 
of  nature,  and  which  had  not  yet  recognized  the  value  of  observations  for  its 
gratification.  The  theories  of  Darwin,  however,  attracted  me  intensely,  be- 
cause they  promised  extraordinary  progress  in  the  understanding  of  the 
world.  I  know  that  a  lecture  on  Goethe's  beautiful  paper  'On  Nature'  in  a 
popular  course,  shortly  before  the  final  examination,  brought  the  decision  to 
matriculate  in  the  school  of  medicine/*  ('Selbstdarstellung/'  Gesammelte 
Schriften,  XI,  120.) 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  89 

reading  was  often  demanded,  out  of  fear  that  I  might  have  omit- 
ted a  word  or  a  sentence. 

As  an  example  of  these  features  I  can  mention  that  I  con- 
scientiously reread  the  first  part  of  Faust  and  many  poems  which 
I  knew  by  heart.  I  began  then  to  recognize  that  the  order  or  the 
vow  had  to  be  followed  most  literally.  For  instance,  I  could  have 
read  a  considerable  part  of  Goethe's  works  at  home  where  we  had 
an  edition  of  his  poetic  works.  This  was  forbidden.  I  had  to  read 
the  Historical  Critical  Edition,  which  was  published  by  order  of 
the  Grand  Duchess  Sophie  of  Weimar  in  the  years  1887-1909  in 
133  volumes,  because  only  the  reading  of  this  complete  and 
authentic  edition  fulfilled  all  the  conditions  of  my  vow  or  my 
obsession-idea.  I  had  to  read  every  word,  even  the  most  insignifi- 
cant biographical  note,  all  variants,  and  the  smallest  additions. 
I  had  to  read  all  the  letters  and  all  ten  volumes  of  Goethe's  con- 
versations, collected  by  Woldemar  von  Biedermann  (1889-96). 
After  having  read  all  of  Goethe's  works,  I  had  to  expand  rny 
program.  It  was  always  possible  that  a  biographer  or  a  literary 
critic  had  quoted  a  remark  or  a  line  by  Goethe  not  to  be  found  in 
the  complete  edition.  I  therefore  read  all  that  I  could  find  written 
about  Goethe. 

This  reading  had  to  be  complete  in  the  most  literal  sense:  every- 
thing Goethe  had  written.  I  remember  that  a  fellow-student  once 
casually  remarked  that  a  certain  bookstore  in  Vienna  had  two 
lines  in  Goethe's  handwriting—the  address  on  an  envelope—in  its 
window.  I  hastily  said  goodbye  to  him  and  ran  through  the  streets 
to  the  bookstore,  anxious  to  see  the  two  lines  of  the  address,  and 
afraid  a  collector  might  have  bought  the  envelope  in  the  mean- 
time, 

I  thus  spent  every  free  hour  of  my  time,  as  much  as  lectures  and 
tutoring  permitted,  at  the  university  library.  I  was  the  first  to 
arrive  in  the  morning  and  the  last  to  leave  at  closing  time.  It 
seemed  that  the  inner  order  to  which  I  was  subjected  demanded 
that  I  give  all  my  free  time  to  this  reading.  Social  intercourse  was 
restricted  to  a  minimum,  even  the  time  for  meals  was  shortened 
so  that  I  could  hasten  back  to  the  library.  There  was  only  work 
and  no  play.  I  remember  that  my  attention  sometimes  lessened 
when  I  was  tired  or  when  my  eyes  began  to  pain.  I  had  to  read  the 


go  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

sentence  or  paragraph  twice  in  order  to  convince  myself  that  I 
had  really  read  it.  Of  course,  I  rationalized  my  compulsive  ac- 
tivity. I  tried  to  convince  myself  that  only  this  kind  of  reading 
deserved  the  name  of  thorough  study  and  that  it  was  a  test  of  my 
seriousness,  of  my  capability  to  go  to  the  end,  to  complete  a  task 
I  had  once  begun.  I  was  even  secretly  proud  of  the  singleness  of 
purpose  which  I  considered  a  prerequisite  for  every  achievement. 

I  forbade  myself  to  read  anything  but  Goethe,  although  I  had 
wished  so  much  to  read  the  modern  writers.  This  was  how  I 
reasoned  with  myself  in  order  to  justify  the  exclusion  of  other 
reading:  One  has  to  know  and  to  appreciate  the  achievement  of 
the  greatest  writer  (besides  Shakespeare)  because  only  then  can 
one  measure  and  appreciate  the  writers  of  our  time.  Only  com- 
paring them  with  Goethe  would  enable  me  to  think  of  their 
achievements  in  their  real  proportions.  But  I  could  not  justify  the 
necessity  to  read  every  line  of  Goethe,  every  bill  written  by  him 
to  a  laundress,  and  every  insignificant  note  to  his  servant.  Since 
I  kept  my  Goethe  reading  secret,  nothing  in  my  behavior  revealed 
the  strange  compulsion  which  possessed  me.  My  avoidance  of  so- 
cial intercourse  as  far  as  possible  could  be  easily  interpreted  as  an 
expression  of  my  mourning. 

'/  All  that  is  reported  here  is,  of  course,  an  emotional  situation 
which  is  recalled  only  in  its  main  features,  its  psychological  prem- 
ises and  its  thought-content.  It  is  very  difficult  for  me  to  feel 
even  any  clear  echo  of  the  emotions  which  governed  my  life  forty- 
six  years  ago.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  now  that  I  could  not  free 
myself  from  the  enslavement  of  my  compulsive  reading.  When- 
ever I  now  listen  to  the  description  of  the  strange  compulsions  of 
obsessive  patients  I  think  that  the  obsession  I  was  subjected  to 
when  I  was  eighteen  years  old  helps  me  to  understand  many  of 
these  puzzling  traits. 

There  are  two  sides—really  many  more  sides— to  every  story,  and 
to  this  one  as  well,  I  guessed  many  things  about  my  strange  com- 
pulsion before  my  own  analysis  (1913),  but  only  in  my  analysis 
did  I  recognize  the  true  meaning  of  my  Goethe  reading.  A  child- 
hood memory  emerging  in  an  analytical  session  helped  me  to  un- 
derstand another  meaning  which  had  remained  unconscious.  At  a 
certain  point  of  reliving  my  life  in  recollection,  I  remembered  a 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  Ql 

little  scene  of  my  early  boyhood  years  which  I  had  entirely  for- 
gotten. When  1  was  nine  years  old  I  kept  a  secret  diary  of  what 
was  happening  in  my  young  life.  I  wrote  about  my  parents,  my 
brothers  and  my  sister,  my  teacher  and  my  friends,  but  mostly 
about  a  little  girl  who  lived  in  our  apartment  house  and  with 
whom  I  was  "in  love/*  One  evening  I  had  fallen  asleep  on  the 
couch  in  our  living  room.  An  elderly  couple,  my  sister's  piano 
teacher  and  her  husband,  had  come  to  see  my  parents  and  had 
played  cards  with  my  father.  I  woke  up  but  pretended  to  be 
asleep  because  I  heard  the  lady  visitor  mention  my  name.  I 
caught  a  glimpse  of  my  father  holding  my  secret  diary  in  his  hand 
and  reading  a  few  paragraphs  to  the  couple.  The  lady  seemed  to 
like  my  childish  literary  effort  which  described  how  I  had  en- 
countered the  object  of  my  puppy-love  on  the  stairs  of  our  apart- 
ment house.  The  reactions  of  my  parents  were  significant.  My 
mother  guessed  who  "she"  was,  and  she  guessed  correctly!  "It  is 
Ella  of  the  O.  family  who  lives  in  the  apartment  below,"  she  said. 
But  my  father  said  to  his  friend,  "Well,  perhaps  he  will  become 
a  writer  or  a  poet."  I  was  disturbed  because  my  secret  had  been 
discovered,  but  I  pretended  to  sleep  on  and  I  must  have  really 
fallen  asleep  again,  because  when  my  mother  woke  me  the  guests 
were  gone. 

I  *What  my  father  had  said  sometimes  occurred  to  me  again  in  the 
following  days.  It  was  a  new  idea  and  I  am  sure  I  had  no  clear 
notion  what  a  writer  was.  The  closest  I  could  come  to  such  an 
idea  was  conveyed  by  the  life-size  bust  of  Goethe  which  stood  on 
a  bookcase.  It  is  significant  that  I  bought  a  similar  bust  of  Goethe 
in  Berlin  forty  years  later.  It  now  stands  on  my  bookcase.  I  knew 
the  name  of  the  man  and  I  had  heard  him  spoken  of  as  a  great 
poet  by  my  father.  I  am  almost  certain  that  he  was  the  only  poet 
of  whom  I  knew  when  I  was  nine  years  old.  I  must  have  connected 
the  idea  of  becoming  a  great  writer  with  his  image.  My  com- 
pulsive Goethe  reading  originated,  however,  also  in  the  uncon- 
scious tendency  to  know  all  about  the  great  man  of  whom  my 
father  had  spoken  with  much  respect.  His  pride  in  me  and  his 
high  aspirations  for  me  had  to  be  frustrated,  but  my  belated  obe- 
dience to  his  wishes  found  its  expression  in  my  compulsive  Goethe 
study.  If  I  could  not  become  a  great  writer  like  Goethe,  I  could  at 


g2  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

least  know  all  about  him  or-better  still-I  had  to  know  all  about 
him. 


The  famous  Austrian  literary  critic  Hermann  Bahr  defined 
Goethe  philology  as  a  profession  like  medicine  or  law.*  It  is 
difficult  to  convey  the  true  meaning  of  Goethe  philology  to  per- 
sons who  did  not  live  and  breathe  in  the  atmosphere  of  German 
literary  scholarship  before  World  War  I.  It  is  also  doubtful 
whether  so  strange  a  plant  as  Goethe  philology  is  to  be  found  in 
any  other  pattern  of  culture,  A  Goethe  philologist  is  a  man  who 
not  only  thinks  but  acts,  breathes,  and  lives  in  the  mental  atmos- 
phere of  Goethe.  His  entire  and  only  interest  in  the  world  is  the 
worshiped  poet,  to  such  an  extent  that  everything  he  does  and 
everything  that  has  happened  to  him  is  seen  through  Goethe's 
eyes.  His  own  life  and  that  of  others  is  understandable  only  in 
terms  of  Goethe's  sayings.  All  things  and  events  of  the  past  and 
the  present  are  tested  according  to  Goethe's  view.  Everything  con- 
cerning the  divine  figure  is  of  vital  importance  to  him.  The 
weather  of  the  day  on  which  a  certain  line  in  a  poem  was  written  or 
whether  Goethe  liked  Teltower  carrots  is  a  question  of  life  and 
death  to  him.  The  Tibetan  Buddhists  worship  their  Grand  Lama 
to  such  an  extent  that  even  his  excrement  is  held  as  sacred  and  is 
carefully  preserved.  In  a  similar  sense  everything  Goethe  did  and 
said,  were  it  the  merest  trifle,  is  looked  at  with  considerable  awe 
by  the  Goethe  philologist  who  collects  even  the  refuse  of  the  great 
man's  life  and  work. 

I  was  indeed  on  the  road  toward  becoming  a  Goethe  philologist 
when  I  was  eighteen  years  old.  The  psychological  difference  be- 
tween those  German  scholars  and  myself  was  only  that  I  did  not 
worship  their  hero  in  the  same  way,  though  I  too  was  possessed 
by  him,  as  people  in  medieval  times  were  considered  possessed  by 
the  devil  or  by  a  demon. 

*  Goethe  Bildf  Prettssische  Jahrbucher,  Vol.  185  (1921). 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  Qg 

When  I  was  eighteen,  I  had  yielded  to  my  obsession-idea  but 
even  when  I  was  in  bondage  to  my  Goethe  reading,  I  did  not 
surrender  without  inner  protest.  Not  all  the  pans  of  Goethe's 
huge  published  works  interested  me  in  the  same  degree.  His  life, 
perhaps  his  greatest  work  of  art,  had  many  phases  which  appeared 
unattractive  to  me.  The  statesman  Goethe  left  me  cold:  I  had  no 
interest  in  his  building  of  bridges  and  roads.  His  extensive  geo- 
logical and  meteorological  studies  as  well  as  his  optical  theories 
did  not  strike  any  chord  in  me.  The  physiognomical  fragments 
failed  to  arouse  my  admiration  and  the  anatomical  discovery  of 
the  inter-maxillary  bone  left  me  indifferent.  But  also  many  parts 
of  his  poetry  did  not  appeal  to  me.  There  were  many  verses  in  the 
second  part  of  Faust  which  I  did  not  understand.  There  were  even 
parts  of  Wilhelm  Meister,  of  Werther,  of  Truth  and  Fiction,  which 
had  no  emotional  effect  upon  me.  I  read  and  reread  them.  I 
could  even  admire  their  style,  the  choice  of  words,  the  construc- 
tion of  the  sentences,  the  sequences  and  consequences  of  their 
thoughts,  but  the  voice  which  spoke  there  did  not  speak  to  me. 
The  wisdom  and  the  profound  penetration  of  Goethe's  old  age 
was  only  intellectually  satisfying.  What  did  I,  a  greenhorn,  know 
about  life?  How  could  I  appreciate  that  there,  in  a  few  lines,  was 
the  result  of  the  emotional  experience  by  incomparable  percep- 
tion, the  fruit  of  the  mental  labor  of  a  long  life?  So  much  was 
beyond  me  and  I  was  easily  bored  with  issues  which  I  only  Mun- 
derstood"  without  emotionally  sharing  the  experience  with  the 
poet,  the  philosopher,  and  the  scientist.  When  I  read  the  same 
parts  and  passages  in  Goethe's  writings  many  years  later,  they 
conveyed  much  that  I  had  never  seen  in  them  before.  They  were 
entirely  new  to  me  as  if  I  had  never  read  them  before.  And  yet  I 
knew  I  had  read  every  word  of  it  when  I  was  eighteen  years  old. 

Between  Goethe  and  the  boy  there  was  not  only  the  difference 
in  intellectual  quality,  that  astronomical  distance  which  separates 
the  greatest  genius  from  a  mediocre  mind.  Not  only  the  difference 
of  age,  maturity,  background,  and  experience  prevented  my  pene- 
trating the  depth  of  Goethe's  thoughts.  There  was  something  in 
the  character  of  the  great  man  himself  about  which  I  felt  uneasy. 
I  often  had  an  almost  instinctive  resistance  to  his  way  of  thinking 
and  feeling.  Whenever  I  tried  to  understand  his  nature  he  often 


g4  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

appeared  to  me  as  superhuman,  sometimes  inhuman,  and  very 
rarely  human.  Strangely  enough,  I  loved  and  disliked  him  now 
more  than  I  had  before.  For  instance,  I  felt  the  passion  in  some 
poems  as  personal  and  as  my  own  as  if  I  had  written  them,  and 
then  there  were  passages  in  which  I  felt  the  detachment  of  a 
cold  touch.  There  was  an  impenetrable  wall  around  Goethe's  per- 
sonality, a  remoteness,  and  an  icy  atmosphere. 

Some  traits  of  his  character  were  merely  disliked  and  others 
were  condemned  with  the  uncompromising  decisiveness  of  an 
eighteen-year-old  boy.  There  was  his  submission  and  servility  to 
dukes  and  duchesses,  to  kings  and  empresses,  his  opportunism  in 
certain  situations,  his  coolness  toward  Kleist,  Heine,  and  other 
young  German  poets.  He  seemed  to  favor  mediocrity  in  poetry 
and  music.  Had  he  not  been  critical  of  Beethoven  and  Schubert 
whom  he  turned  away,  and  had  he  not  preferred  insignificant, 
anemic,  and  academic  composers?  His  rejection  of  the  people's 
democratic  demands,  his  aristocracy— or  should  I  say  upper- 
middle  class  "bourgeois"  outlook?— contrasted  with  his  storm 
and  stress  which  knew  neither  measure  nor  modesty. 

Those  were  not  the  only  contradictory  traits  which  disturbed 
me.  The  same  man  who  had  shaped  the  heartbreaking  scenes  of 
Faust^  who  had  given  incomparable  expression  to  the  misery  of 
Gretchen,  this  same  man,  as  a  councilor  of  state,  put  his  signature 
to  the  death  verdict  for  an  unwed  mother  who  had  killed  her 
baby.  Was  he  a  God  or  was  he  a  monster?  He  was  indeed  both; 
that  made  me  shudder.  Those  terrible  two  words  "I  too,"  with 
which  he  introduced  his  approval  of  capital  punishment,  shocked 
me.  There  were  other  disturbing  traits,  both  puzzling  and  terrify- 
ing, about  the  Olympian  figure.  There  was  passion  along  with 
cold  egotism,  an  abundant  imagination  beside  dry  sobriety.  There 
were  so  many  contradictory  and  contrasting  features  that  my 
vision  was  blurred. 

Behind  the  figure  of  Faust's  Gretchen  and  of  many  other  of  the 
feminine  characters  which  Goethe  created,  there  emerged  the 
image  of  Friederike,  seventeen  years  old,  in  all  her  loveliness  and 
serene  sweetness.  When  I. reread  Truth  and  Fiction,  the  romance 
of  young  Goethe  with  Friederike  seemed  the  high  light  in  the 
life  of  this  college  student.  During  my  reading  and  daydreaming 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN  ANALYST  95 

I  wondered  about  this  young  genius  and  I  doubted  again  that  he 
was  human.  If  he  loved  Friederike— and  his  love  for  her  seemed 
deeper  and  more  tender  than  for  all  other  women  before  and 
after-how  could  he  desert  her  so  coldly,  so  cruelly?  I  did  not  un- 
derstand it  and  I  did  not  understand  him.  I  remember  how  spell- 
bound I  was  when  I  read  those  pages  in  which  Goethe  calls  up  the 
memory  of  Sesenheim.  I  wished,  of  course,  in  the  depth  of  my 
youthful  feeling,  to  meet  and  love  a  girl  as  charming  as  Friederike. 
I  knew  I  would  not  act  as  Goethe  had  in  a  similar  situation. 

I  was  forty  years  old— twenty-one  years  after  my  compulsive 
working  through  the  Grossherzogin  Sophie  edition-when  I  read 
once  again  the  story  of  the  Sesenheim  romance  in  Truth  and 
Fiction.  1  saw  it  for  the  first  time  in  its  own  light,  illuminated 
from  within.  I  read  it  with  the  eyes,  the  awareness,  and  the  curi- 
osity of  a  psychologist.  For  many  years  I  had  been  a  psychoanalyst, 
but  it  had  never  occurred  to  me  that  Goethe  could  be  the  subject 
of  a  psychoanalytical  study,  that  the  new  method  could  be  applied 
to  the  life  and  the  work  of  the  great  poet.  In  my  student  years  such 
an  application  would  certainly  have  seemed  to  me  presumptuous, 
even  blasphemous.  It  was  as  if  to  think  of  "psychoanalyzing"  God. 

Such  an  avoidance  even  in  thought  was  the  more  conspicuous 
since  I  had  applied  the  analytical  method  in  the  psychological 
appreciation  of  the  works  of  other  writers.  I  had  written  two 
books  which  proved  that  crossing  the  bridge  between  the  imagina- 
tion of  creative  writing  and  analytical  research  brought  valid  and 
valuable  results.  My  doctoral  thesis,  Flaubert  and  His  Temptation 
of  Saint  Antony,  published  in  1912,  was  a  contribution  to  the  psy- 
chology of  artistic  creation.  My  admiration  for  the  great  gift  of 
psychological  observation  of  a  contemporary  Viennese  writer  was 
expressed  in  Arthur  Schnitzler  as  Psychologist  (1913).  Quite  a  few 
shorter  publications  during  the  next  ten  years  expressed  my  active 
interest  in  various  psychological  problems  of  writers  and  their 
works.  Yet  I  had  never  looked  at  Goethe's  life  and  work  from  an 
analytical  point  of  view.  It  was,  no  doubt,  a  residue  of  my  awe 
before  this  monumental  figure,  before  one  of  the  greatest  minds 
of  mankind. 

Freud  once  pointed  out  in  relation  to  Goethe  how  unjustified  it 
would  be  to  consider  analytical  research  into  the  life  story  of  a 


g6  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

great  man  as  an  intrusion.*  The  biographer  does  not  wish  to 
degrade  the  hero  but  to  bring  him  close  to  us.  It  is  unavoidable 
that  we  will  then  learn  of  occasions  in  which  the  great  man  be- 
haved no  better  than  do  ordinary  mortals.  His  distance  from  us 
will  then  be  diminished.  Nevertheless,  Freud  insists  that  the  en- 
deavor of  the  biographers  is  legitimate.  "The  great  man  is  only  a 
continuation  of  the  father  and  the  teacher  of  our  childhood,  and 
our  relation  to  these  important  persons  was  ambivalent,  our  ad- 
miration for  them  regularly  concealing  a  component  of  hostile 
rebellion.  This  is  psychological  fate.  It  cannot  be  changed  without 
violent  suppression  of  truth.  Our  ambivalent  feelings  must  be 
continued  in  our  relationship  to  the  great  man  whose  life  story 
we  seek  to  investigate/' 

In  the  same  address,  delivered  when  Freud  received  the  Goethe 
prize  (1930),  he  admits  that  we  analysts  have  not  done  so  well  in 
the  case  of  this  great  man.  That  has  its  special  reasons:  Goethe 
was  a  poet,  a  fine  confessor;  but  in  spite  of  his  abundant  autobio- 
graphical writings,  he  was  also  a  careful  concealer  of  his  real 
feelings.  "The  course  of  my  life  remained  mostly  a  secret  even  for 
my  friends,"  Goethe  wrote  in  his  Campagne  in  Frankreich  (No- 
vember, 1792).  This  sounds  paradoxical  in  a  poet  who  speaks  as 
freely  as  did  Goethe  about  his  emotional  experiences.  But  in 
speaking  his  mind  and  his  heart  he  could  conceal  perhaps  the 
most  important  things.  He  who  reveals  himself  in  some  facts 
makes  it  easy  for  himself  to  conceal  certain  other  personal  matters 
which  he  may  wish  to  keep  secret. 

Such  deeper  secrecy,  which  disguises  itself  under  the  mask  of 
free  expression  and  of  confession,  suggests  why  the  abundant  ma- 
terials of  Goethe's  life  history  still  do  not  lend  themselves  easily  to 
analytical  investigation.  They  are  difficult  to  penetrate  because 
the  analyst  must  pursue  the  smallest  unnoticed* clues  and  indica- 
tions, those  little  signs  of  which  a  person  is  not  aware  when  he 
speaks  about  himself.  Only  attention  and  observation  dealing 
with  the  inconspicuous,  the  most  careful  psychological  evaluation 
of  unconscious  circumstantial  evidence  can  find  here  valuable  in- 
formation. All  other  ways  are  blocked,  all  other  methods  of  psy- 

* "Speech  at  the  Frankfurt  Goethe-House"  Psychoanalytische  Bewegung, 
H,  Heft  5. 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  97 

chological  investigation  fail.  The  analyst  can  only  hope  that  what 
is  so  carefully  guarded  will  give  itself  away  unconsciously. 

There  was  another  important  reason  why  I  never  felt  tempted 
to  approach  the  life  story  of  Goethe  from  the  viewpoint  of  psy- 
choanalytic psychology.  He  himself  had  often  emphasized  that  he 
did  not  appreciate  psychological  analysis.  In  the  same  report  in 
which  he  said  his  life  remained  a  secret  even  to  his  best  friends, 
he  declared  that  he  generally  lived  unconsciously,  that  is,  with- 
out conscious  self-analysis  and  self-observation.  The  reader  should 
compare  Goethe's  attitude  with  the  opinion  of  old  Anatole 
France:  "Far  from  knowing  myself  I  always  took  trouble  to  ignore 
me.  I  consider  the  knowledge  of  oneself  a  source  of  worry,  unrest 
and  tortures.  I  came  as  little  as  possible  to  myself  ...  As  a  small 
boy  and  as  an  adult,  young  and  old  I  have  always  lived  as  far 
away  from  myself  as  possible  .  ,  .  Ignore  yourself:  this  is  the  first 
prescription  of  wisdom."* 

Goethe  spoke  to  Eckermann  in  April,  1829  about  the  claim  to 
know  oneself:  "This  is  a  strange  demand  which  until  now  nobody 
has  fulfilled  and  which  in  reality  no  one  can  realize.  Man  is  with 
all  his  senses  and  drives  directed  toward  the  outer  world  and  he 
has  much  trouble  recognizing  it  as  such  and  making  it  serve  his 
purposes  and  needs.  He  knows  about  himself  only  when  he  enjoys 
himself  or  suffers.  He  learns  thus  merely  through  pains  and 
pleasures  what  he  must  seek  and  what  to  avoid.  After  all,  man  is 
a  dark  being;  he  does  not  know  whence  he  comes  or  whither  he 
goes.  He  knows  little  of  the  world  and  less  of  himself.  I  do  not 
know  myself  and  God  forbid  I  should." 

To  Chancellor  Mueller  in  1824  he  spoke  in  the  same  vein:  "I 
declare  man  can  never  know  himself  as  an  object.  Others  know 
me  better  than  I  do  myself."  These  are  strong  words,  especially 
to  the  ears  and  minds  of  a  psychologist  who  expects  psychological 
insights  of  the  poet  into  himself.  In  his  "Sprueche  in  Prosa"** 
Goethe  asks:  "How  can  one  learn  to  know  oneself?  Never  by  self- 
observation,  but  by  activity." 

When  I  had  read  the  Friederike  story,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  I 
was  not  concerned  with  understanding  Goethe's  behavior.  I  iden- 

*  Michel  Corday,  Anatole  France  d'apres  ses  confidences  (Paris,  1927),  p.  58. 
**  Gesammelte  Werke,  LV,  224. 


98  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

tified  myself  with  another  young  man  who  loved  and  was  loved 
by  the  gentlest  and  loveliest  of  girls,  and  I  condemned  this  young 
man  who  deserted  his  sweetheart  so  casually.  I  called  him  a  con- 
scienceless egotist  and  disliked  him.  When,  having  passed  my 
fortieth  year,  I  reread  the  Friederike  romance,  I  understood  young 
Goethe  much  better.  My  approach  to  the  experience  was  differ- 
ent. It  was  no  longer  sympathy  or  antipathy  which  accompanied 
my  reading;  a  new  interest  competed  with  the  esthetic  pleasure: 
the  curiosity  of  the  psychologist. 

When  I  read  the  story  of  the  meeting  of  young  Goethe  with 
Friederike,  how  their  romance  started,  developed,  and  ended, 
vague  ideas  about  concealed  motives  of  Goethe's  attitude  dawned 
upon  me.  They  were  not  clear  insights  and  at  first  did  not  have 
the  character  of  psychological  notions  but  were  more  in  the 
nature  of  hunches.  They  were  not  definite  enough  to  be  formu- 
lated in  words.  They  were  preverbal,  in  that  transitional  phase 
from  presentiment  to  recognition,  fleeting  impressions,  embryos 
of  thoughts.  These  first  inklings  became  by  and  by  more  distinct, 
the  impressions  became  condensed  when  I  reread  certain  passages, 
compared  them  with  the  preceding  story,  and  filled  in  the  gaps 
with  what  I  knew  about  Goethe's  life  from  other  sources. 

These  psychological  hunches  were  at  first  without  tangible  sub- 
stance and  evidence.  Unstable,  they  were  difficult  to  grasp  and 
threatened  to  elude  me.  When  I  decided  to  follow  them,  the  task 
had  more  the  character  of  reconnaissance  than  of  recognition.  I 
slowly  became  sure  that  there  was  a  subterranean  connection  be- 
tween certain  actions.  Something  hidden  strove  to  communicate 
itself  in  those  pages  of  Truth  and  fiction,  but  shied  away  from 
them  at  the  same  time.  An  unconscious  process  revealed  itself  by 
small  signs,  but  another  factor  tried  to  conceal  the  clues.  I  was 
often  thrown  off  the  track  after  I  had  found  it,  but  I  pursued  it 
to  the  end,  to  discover  the  unconscious  facts  behind  the  facts 
which  Goethe's  story  reports.  What  had  been  a  hunch  originally, 
a  dim  preconception,  had  become  an  idea  which  could  be  exam- 
ined, tested,  and  verified  by  scientific  research.  I  published  the 
study  on  Goethe  and  Friederike,  which  is  the  result  of  this  psy- 
choanalytic investigation,  in  1929. 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF   AN  ANALYST  99 


"All  I  have  written  and  published  are  but  fragments  of  a  great 
confession."  This  sentence  from  Truth  and  Fiction  includes,  of 
course,  the  wonderful  presentation  of  the  idyl  of  Sesenheim  writ- 
ten when  Goethe  had  passed  his  sixty-second  year.  The  magical 
power  of  his  prose  revives  the  story  of  love  and  sorrow  of  the 
twenty-one-year-old  student,  Weyland,  a  friend  of  Goethe's,  wished 
to  introduce  him  to  the  family  of  Pastor  Brion  who  lived  in  Sesen- 
heim, a  friendly  little  village  not  far  from  Strassburg  where  Goethe 
studied.  Goethe  describes  the  old  gentleman  and  his  wife  and 
speaks  of  their  lively  oldest  daughter.  When  Friederike  appears, 
"in  truth,  a  star  arose  in  this  rustic  heaven/*  Her  lucid  blue  eyes 
and  blond  braids,  her  loveliness  and  grace,  the  serene  clarity  of 
her  talk  charmed  the  young  poet.  In  walks  and  at  festivals,  in 
solitude  and  company,  in  conversations  and  letters,  the  two  glided 
into  the  sweetest  of  enchantments.  Goethe  felt  "boundlessly 
happy"  and  the  leave-takings  became  more  and  more  a  painful 
prospect  when  he  had  to  return  to  Strassburg  from  his  many  visits 
in  Sesenheim.  His  letters  contain  some  of  the  masterpieces  of  Ger- 
man poetry.  It  is  as  if  his  love  for  Friederike  gave  to  his  language 
a  naturalness  and  plasticity  hitherto  unknown.  But  there  were 
already  premonitions  of  an  early  parting:  "My  passion  increased 
as  I  recognized  more  and  more  the  true  worth  of  this  splendid 
girl,  and  as  the  time  drew  near  when  I  was  to  lose,  perhaps  for- 
ever, so  much  that  was  dear  and  good/'  At  the  time  when  the 
happiness  of  the  two  young  people  seemed  flawless,  Friederike 
fell  ill.  Then  came  the  parting.  He  rode  again  as  so  often  from 
Strassburg  to  Sesenheim  to  see  Friederike  once  more-  "Those  were 
painful  days,  the  memory  of  which  has  not  remained  with  me. 
When,  seated  on  my  horse,  I  held  out  my  hand  to  her,  there  were 
tears  in  her  eyes,  and  I  felt  none  too  happy/'  It  was  not  until 
much  later  that  he  wrote  the  letter  of  farewell.  Friederike's  reply 


100  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

"broke  the  heart.  It  was  the  same  hand,  the  same  tone,  the  same 
feeling  which  had  been  fostered  for  me  and  by  me.  Now  for  the 
first  time,  I  felt  the  loss  which  she  was  suffering.  I  realized  that 
there  was  no  possibility,  nothing  I  could  do  to  soothe  her  grief. 
I  saw  her  as  though  she  were  present,  I  constantly  felt  the  lack, 
and  what  was  worse,  I  could  not  forgive  myself.  .  .  ."  He  felt 
guilty:  "I  had  wounded  this  purest  heart  to  the  quick,  and  the 
period  of  melancholy,  repentance,  combined  with  the  absence 
of  the  quickening  love  to  which  I  had  become  accustomed,  was 
agonizing,  nay,  insupportable/'  Goethe  began  in  the  following 
years,  when  his  feeling  of  guilt  mounted,  that  poetic  confession 
which  reached  its  peak  in  Faust,  where  Friederike  appears  trans- 
figured into  Gretchen. 

The  description  of  the  romance  with  Friederike  does  not  ex- 
plain what  it  was  that  caused  Goethe  to  part  from  the  beloved 
girl.  None  of  the  many  biographers  of  the  poet  could  detect  any 
plausible  motives  for  Goethe's  deserting  Friederike,  who  meant 
so  much  to  him.  Least  of  all  those  biographers  who  assumed  that 
the  young  poet  had  seduced  the  girl.  It  is  not  doubtful  any  more 
that  nothing  of  this  kind  happened.  Yes,  modern  biography  has 
made  it  clear  that  Goethe  suffered  from  emotional  impotence 
which  he  overcame  only  after  having  reached  his  fortieth  year. 
The  plays  in  which  Goethe  shaped  the  fate  of  the  seduced  and  de- 
serted girl,  most  touchingly  that  of  Gretchen  in  Faust,  present 
thus  an  emotional  potentiality  and  not  what  really  happened. 

My  psychoanalytic  analysis  of  the  young  poet's  motives  took 
its  point  of  departure  from  the  discovery  of  an  error  in  Goethe's 
autobiography.  He  introduces  the  description  of  the  Sesenheim 
idyl  by  describing  the  profound  impression  Goldsmith's  The  Vi- 
car of  Wake  field  had  made  upon  him*  In  the  figures  of  this  novel, 
which  his  mentor  and  friend  Herder  read  to  him,  Goethe  found 
the  fictional  characters  which  came  to  life  shortly  afterward  when 
he  visited  the  family  Brion  in  Sesenheim.  The  peaceful  life  of  the 
rural  clergyman  and  his  family,  the  destiny  of  his  lovable  daughter 
Sophie  who  is  seduced  by  the  ruthless  Burchell,  prepared  young 
Goethe  for  his  meeting  the  family  Brion.  But  we  know  that 
Goethe  did  not  know  Goldsmith's  novel  when  he  first  visited 
Sesenheim.  The  parallel  between  Goethe  and  that  seducer  Bur- 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN  ANALYST  101 

chell  is  more  than  conscious.  Goethe  emphasizes  it  and  seems  to 
indicate  that  it  was  why  he  felt  so  guilty  when  he  deserted  Frie- 
derike.  The  psychoanalytic  penetration  of  this  and  other  slips  and 
distortions  led  to  the  conclusion  that  there  must  be  another  un- 
conscious motivation  for  the  long-lasting  guilt  feelings  of  the  poet 
toward  Friederike.  A  sideline  leads  to  that  secret:  Goethe  had  a 
mysterious  fear  that  a  kiss  of  his  would  bring  calamity  and  death 
to  a  girl.  This  superstitious  fear  tormented  him  when  he  kissed 
Friederike.  His  vivid  imagination  showed  him  the  beloved  girl 
already  suffering  from  the  effect  of  that  curse.  Torn  between  his 
desire  for  her  and  the  fear  that  he  could  harm  her,  he  experienced 
pangs  of  panic  when  Friederike  became  ill  which  seemed  "to 
hasten  the  threatened  calamity/* 

Afraid  that  she  would  die,  he  fled. 

We  see  here  the  young  poet  as  the  victim  not  only  -of  super- 
stitions, but  also  of  severe  obsessional  thoughts  that  he  himself 
later  on  recognized  as  expressions  of  magical  beliefs:  "A  kind  of 
•conceit  supported  this  superstition;  my  lips— whether  consecrated 
•or  accursed— seemed  to  me  more  important  than  they  had  been 
hitherto.  .  .  /'  The  continued  analysis  of  Goethe's  biography 
brings  further  proof  that  his  guilt  feelings  toward  Friederike  can 
be  traced  back  to  unconscious  death  wishes  against  the  beloved 
girl.  When  he  left  her,  he  had  a  strange  experience.  Riding  home, 
lie  saw  himself  in  his  fantasy  riding  on  the  same  road,  in  a  suit 
he  had  never  worn.  This  "friendly  vision"  became  reality  when, 
•eight  years  later,  he  visited  Friederike  again.  Riding  away  from 
Friederike,  the  young  man  enjoyed  the  sight  of  the  Alsatian 
landscape  and  felt  relieved  as  if  he  had  escaped  a  curse  threaten- 
ing calamity  and  death.  I  compared  the  mood  described  in  that 
part  of  Goethe's  autobiography  with  that  of  the  fourth  movement 
of  the  Pastoral  Symphony  to  which  Beethoven  gave  the  title 
"Joyous  and  Grateful  Feelings  after  the  Storm/' 

Goethe  remained  the  man  in  Friederike's  life.  She  never  spoke 
of  him  and  remained  single.  She  died  in  1813,  when  she  was 
sixty-one.  Her  grave  at  Sesenheim  has  the  lines: 

A  ray  of  poet's  sun  fell  on  her 
So  rich,  it  gave  her  immortality. 


102  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 


When  I  reread  the  Goethe  study  sketched  here,  in  1938,  ten 
years  after  it  had  been  written,  I  was  already  in  the  United 
States  and  considering  the  translation  of  some  of  my  books.  I  felt 
annoyed  with  myself  while  reading  this  one.  My  self-criticism 
concerned  not  only  the  things  said  in  the  book  but  also  the  man- 
ner in  which  they  were  said.  It  concerned  the  structure  as  well 
as  several  special  parts  of  the  study.  I  was  impatient,  for  instance, 
with  my  frequent  use  of  the  editorial  "we"  in  the  scientific  man- 
ner of  German  scholars.  I  would  now  prefer  to  say  "I"— not  in 
order  to  assert  myself,  but  because  I  was  tired  of  a  modesty  which 
I  felt  was  almost  indecent.  There  was,  I  found,  a  shifting  from 
minor  to  major  and  back  again  in  the  book.  The  tempi  were  not 
kept.  I  found  many  other  things  to  criticize. 

Not  only  critical  voices  accompanied  my  reading;  others  of  a 
different  kind  became  audible,  sometimes  made  themselves  heard 
as  counterpoints  to  the  points  made  by  self-criticism.  I  had  sud- 
denly come  upon  my  own  trail.  I  was  surprised  to  come  upon 
circumstantial  evidence  whose  psychological  significance  could 
not  be  ignored.  The  clues  were  small  and  inconspicuous,  but 
they  could  not  be  belittled.  It  was  at  first  as  if  islands  of  an  un- 
known landscape,  long  flooded,  emerged  from  the  sea.  It  was 
my  past  life  returning  and  appearing  suddenly  in  a  new  light. 
Most  of  the  facts  that  I  remembered  had  not  been  forgotten,  but 
their  significance,  the  connection  between  them  and  their  psy- 
chological influence  upon  my  life,  had  not  been  recognized.  It 
was  one  of  those  "stillest  hours"  of  which  Nietzsche  speaks  when 
I  faced  facts  now,  certain  experiences  of  my  own,  reflected  in  the 
study  I  had  written.  I  had  not  known  ten  years  earlier  that  I  was 
speaking  of  myself  when  I  tried  to  penetrate  into  the  secret  emo- 
tional life  of  a  young  man  in  love,  dead  almost  two  hundred  years. 

Psychoanalysis  has  claimed  that  we  do  not  live,  but  that  we  are 
lived,  that  is,  that  the  greatest  part  of  what  we  experience  is  not 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  lOg 

of  our  conscious  doing,  but  is  "done"  by  unknown  powers  within 
ourselves.  Psychoanalysis  has  asserted  further  that  we  realize  only  to 
a  very  small  extent  what  we  experience,  or  what  is  happening  to 
us  and  in  us.  An  experience  is  like  an  iceberg,  its  greatest  part 
submerged,  unknown  to  us  while  we  live  it.  An  event  whose  full 
psychological  significance  and  bearing  we  were  able  to  recognize 
would  not  deserve  the  name  of  experience.  Its  power  would  ex- 
plode in  a  moment  and  it  would  be  without  deeper  and  lasting 
emotional  effects.  The  stronger  this  conscious  effect,  the  less  en- 
during is  the  experience.  What  is  strongest  felt  and  expressed  at 
the  moment  is  doomed  to  perish  soon.  What  is  sensational  is  for 
the  day.  What  is  lasting  needs  a  long  time  until  it  reaches  the 
deeper  levels  of  our  emotional  life.  It  takes  many  years  before  we 
recognize  what  our  own  experiences  mean  to  us  and  what  their 
psychological  nature  and  repercussions,  their  effects  and  after- 
effects, -really  are.  Nietzsche  uses  a  beautiful  metaphor:  "Deep 
wells  take  a  long  time  to  realize  what  has  fallen  into  their 
depth." 

Strangely  enough,  even  the  psychological  clues  that  emerged 
while  I  read  my  book  at  first  appeared  in  the  form  of  literary 
criticism.  They  occurred  to  me  as  I  wondered  about  certain 
strange  features  of  the  material.  There  is  a  passage  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  book  which  I  passed  by  in  my  first  reading,  but  which 
re-echoed  as  if  to  recall  something  to  mind.  It  occurs  in  a  de- 
scription of  the  scene  in  which  Friederike  appeared  and  young 
Goethe  looked  into  her  clear  blue  eyes.  The  features  of  Friederike, 
I  read  in  my  book,  "become  the  prototype  of  a  girl  that  calls  up 
in  every  man's  memory  the  charming  and  the  most  beloved  figures 
of  his  youth."  The  image  of  Friederike  as  Goethe  describes  it  in 
all  its  charming  details  was  at  once  transformed  into  a  familiar 
face:  serious  blue  eyes  looked  into  mine  and  the  name  Ella  was  in 
my  mind.  It  was  as  if  my  own  words  had  called  up  the  dear  figure, 
as  a  line  spoken  on  the  stage  gives  the  cue  for  the  appearance  of 
the  leading  lady.  Ella's  image  emerged  suddenly  out  of  nowhere 
and  I  saw  her  as  I  had  seen  her  again,  when  I  was  a  youth  of 
nineteen.  She  appeared  and  stood  alive  before  me,  yet  I  did  not 
think  of  her  when  I  wrote  the  sentence  about  Friederike  calling 
up  in  every  man's  memory  the  most  loved  figure  of  his  youth. 


104  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  did  not  think  of  any  particular  girl;  it  was  a  general  statement 
and  the  appropriate  thing  to  write  in  this  context.  Perhaps  I 
thought  of  her  without  being  conscious  of  her,  and  her  image  in 
the  background  of  my  mind  dictated  the  sentence.  Perhaps  the 
vision  as  I  had  met  her  first  was  only  a  re-vision.  I  wondered, 
dismissed  the  thought,  and  read  on.  And  then  I  stopped  again, 
astonished. 

There  is  a  chapter  entitled  "Joyous  and  Grateful  Feelings  after 
the  Storm/'  It  begins  with  the  words:  "About  the  same  time  that 
Goethe  was  sketching  the  plan  for  his  autobiography,  in  Heiligen- 
stadt,  near  Vienna,  Beethoven  was  daydreaming  the  abundance  of 
melodies  into  a  symphony  he  latef  called  Sinfonia  Pastorale."  I 
read  that  the  Sixth  Symphony  might  well  stand  as  a  counterpart 
of  Goethe's  description  of  the  landscape  and  atmosphere  of  Sesen- 
heim.  "This  is  a  hell  of  a  transition!"  I  thought.  The  connecting 
links  between  this  part  of  Goethe's  biography  and  Beethoven's 
symphony  certainly  are  few:  it  is  true  that  both  were  conceived 
at  about  the  same  time.  But  what  a  leap  from  the  parson's  house 
in  Alsace  to  the  hills  surrounding  Heiligenstadt,  from  the  Rhine 
to  the  Danube!  The  tunes  of  the  Pastoral,  as  the  musical 
counterpart  of  the  idyl  in  Sesenheim!  No  doubt  was  possible  any 
more.  It  was  no  accident.  Such  a  connection  in  thought  is  uncon- 
sciously determined  by  associations  of  a  very  personal  nature. 
"Involuntary"  memories  now  crowded  one  another;  image  after 
image  appeared  before  me  as  if  the  waves  brought  forth  precious 
long-buried  goods,  from  the  depths  of  the  sea  to  the  shore.  The 
excursion  to  Heiligenstadt;  Ella  and  I  walking  from  Klosterneu- 
burg  to  the  place  where  Beethoven  conceived  the  tunes  of  the 
brook  scene.  Our  first  kiss.  .  .  .  No,  it  was  no  accident,  I  decided, 
when  I  read  the  title  of  another  chapter,  "Freundliche  Vision."  I 
swear  I  did  not  think  when  I  wrote  the  chapter  title  that  this 
was  the  title  of  the  song  by  Richard  Strauss.  But  now  I  seemed  to 
hear  Ella's  warm  voice  singing: 

Nicht  im  Schlafe  hab*  ich  das  getraumt 

...  the  Strauss  song  .  .  .  and  I  remembered. 

And  now  I  turned  the  leaves  of  my  book  again  and  read  with 
new  eyes.  There  was  an  abundance  of  personal,  even  of  intimate 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  105 

things  in  it  that  I  had  had  no  inkling  of.  It  was  full  of  allusions 
to  little  events  and  sayings  from  the  years  of  my  courtship  and 
marriage.  There  was  an  overflow  of  references  to  later  experiences, 
even  to  Ella's  ill-health,  and  I  had  not  had  the  slightest  notion 
of  these  hints.  I  had  written  a  scientific  study  on  a  certain  phase 
of  Goethe's  life,  an  objective  psychological  essay  about  an  experi- 
ence in  the  youth  of  a  writer  who  lived  two  hundred  years  ago, 
and  I  had  not  known  that  I  had  written  about  my  own  experience, 
so  similar  to  his.  How  many  references  to  my  own  conflicts  had  in- 
visibly crept  into  the  objective  report! 

The  astonishing  thing  about  it  was  that  the  study  of  Goethe 
was  objective  and  subjective  at  the  same  time,  and  that  these 
personal  references  were  so  well  concealed  that  they  remained 
unknown  not  only  to  the  reader  but  even  to  myself.  And  some 
of  these  references,  especially  in  the  chapter  titles,  were  so  conspic- 
uous that  they  could  scarcely  be  disregarded!  It  was  as  if  those 
memories  were  put  into  the  window  and  I  had  passed  them  by 
unobserved.  There  were  not  only  the  Beethoven  symphony  and 
the  Strauss  song,  there  was  the  chapter  "Interlude."  But  Interlude 
is  the  title  of  a  play  by  Arthur  Schnitzler.  Ella  and  I  had  seen  a 
performance  of  it  at  the  Vienna  Burgtheater,  There  were  other 
telltale  titles  calling  up  happy  and  tragic  memories. 

My  attention  turned  slowly  to  psychological  problems.  What 
did  it  mean  that  I  had  become  so  interested  in  the  Friederike 
story  as  a  boy  of  nineteen,  that  I  had  lost  this  interest  shortly 
afterward,  and  had  regained  it  nineteen  years  later  to  such  an 
extent  that  I  wrote  a  study  on  the  romance?  Why  had  I  not  real- 
ized for  so  long  that  my  own  youthful  experience  had  crept  into 
the  investigation  of  Goethe's  period  at  Sesenheim?  It  was  difficult 
to  solve  these  two  problems  separately.  They  had  to  be  dealt  with 
together;  it  is  easier  to  crack  two  nuts  by  working  one  against  the 
other. 

I  also  learned  some  unknown  or  unrecognized  things  about  my- 
self and  about  the  most  important  aspects  of  my  youth.  I  must 
write  of  it  now  and  I  hope  to  do  so  with  the  greatest  objectivity 
of  which  I  am  capable.  It  is  well  known  that  such  objectivity  is 
highly  limited  by  the  nature  of  the  subject  and  by  one's  own 
nature.  Some  of  these  interferences  can  be  relaxed  when  the  frag- 


I06  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

ment  of  one's  life  that  Is  to  be  presented  is  remote  from  one's  ego, 
because  of  the  passage  of  time  and  emotional  developments  of 
a  decisive  character.  One's  own  experience  then  appears  as  if  it 
belonged  to  another  person,  as  if  it  belonged  to  another's  life. 
The  ego  has  changed  to  such  an  extent  that  it  encounters  its 
past  self  as  that  of  a  stranger.  The  example  of  Goethe  himself 
who  as  a  man  of  sixty  years  looked  back  at  his  romance  with 
Friederike  is  itself  one  of  the  best  examples  of  such  an  attitude. 
Yet  Goethe,  dictating  to  his  secretary,  sometimes  had  to  control 
his  tears. 

The  romantic  experience  I  had  at  nineteen  is  told  in  the  follow- 
ing chapters.  It  is  viewed  from  a  distance  of  forty-five  years  and 
is  presented  differently  than  if  written  after  five  or  ten  years.  It 
is  also  likely  that  it  is  in  its  final  shape  because  the  ego  loses  its 
plasticity  in  old  age.  The  picture  of  the  past  is  not  subject 
to  great  changes  any  more.  The  distance  from  my  youthful  ex- 
perience is  secured  by  other  factors.  The  Vienna  of  my  boyhood 
years  does  not  exist  any  more.  I  said  farewell  to  the  place  of  my 
birth,  twenty  years  ago.  The  home  town  was  turned  into  a  vision 
of  hell  when  its  citizens  celebrated  Hitler's  entry  into  Vienna. 
"Wien,  Wien,  nur  du  allein  sollst  die  Stadt  meiner  Traume  sein"? 
The  city  of  my  dreams  became  the  city  of  my  nightmares.  I  have 
been  living  in  the  United  States  for  many  years  now  and  consider 
America  my  own  and  my  children's  country.  My  first  love,  of 
whom  the  following  pages  tell,  has  rested  for  many  years  in  the 
Vienna  Central  Cemetery.  Almost  all  of  the  persons  I  shall  refer 
to  in  these  chapters  are  dead.  I  have  married  again.  The  external 
and  inner  circumstances  of  my  life  have  changed  since  the  time 
of  which  I  shall  write. 

I  have  become  a  stranger  to  the  young  man  who  had  these  experi- 
ences and  I  believe  I  can  tell  the  story  as  if  it  happened  to  an- 
other person.  There  is  so  little  in  common  between  the  nineteen- 
year-old  youth  in  Vienna  who  went  forth  into  life  and  the  old 
man  approaching  the  end  of  the  journey. 

The  experience  of  my  youth  has  re-emerged  again  and  again 
as  if.it  wanted  to  be  shaped  and  presented  in  the  light  of  the  in- 
sights I  had  gained.  It  was  not  only  lack  of  moral  courage  and 
the  discretion  which,  according  to  Freud,  "one  owes  also  to  one- 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  107 

self"  that  made  me  postpone  the  writing  of  this  psychological 
study.  It  was  also  the  doubt  that  I  would  be  capable  of  grasping 
any  unconscious  material,  which  is  so  elusive,  reluctant,  and  re- 
calcitrant against  presentation.  I  feel,  however,  that  I  cannot  af- 
ford to  procrastinate  any  longer.  An  external  date  helped  me  to 
action:  Goethe  started  his  autobiography  when  he  reached  his 
sixtieth  year.  (I  have  passed  sixty.)  Did  the  old  pattern  of  uncon- 
scious identification  still  persist? 

It  is  certainly  unnecessary  to  emphasize  the  decisive  difference 
between  the  presentation  of  the  romantic  experience  of  Goethe, 
one  of  the  greatest  achievements  of  autobiographical  writing,  and 
my  own.  One  of  the  greatest  writers  of  all  time  has  painted  an 
incomparable  picture  of  a  youthful  experience,  the  same  experi- 
ence which  gave  Faust  to  the  world,  and  which  became  the  sub- 
ject of  a  poetic  creation  and  magical  reconstruction  in  the  pages 
of  Truth  and  Fiction  dedicated  to  the  Sesenheim  time.  This 
sketch  will  be  a  small  contribution  to  psychological  research 
using  autobiographical  material.  The  following  chapters  make 
my  own  experience  the  object  of  psychological  investigation  and 
analysis.  The  difference  in  objectives  determines  not  only  the  di- 
vergence of  style  in  presentation,  but  also  the  material  to  be  pre- 
sented. In  Goethe's  creative  achievement  persons  and  events  are 
plastically  placed  before  the  eyes  of  the  reader.  The  hidden  emo- 
tions and  thought-processes  of  the  young  man  were  only  alluded 
to  or  presented  in  an  indirect  way,  yet  artistically  in  so  much 
more  powerful  a  manner  than  by  direct  discussion.  The  material 
events,  the  outside  of  an  experience,  have  but  a  very  small  place 
In  a  psychological  investigation.  The  emotional  processes  are  the 
real  subject  of  the  exploration.  Beauty  and  significance  are  the 
aim  of  the  poet;  understanding,  the  goal  of  the  psychologist.  What 
Goethe  achieved  in  his  magical  description  is  not  even  within 
the  reach  of  the  psychologist.  He  is  incapable  of  creating  the  at- 
mosphere of  fatefulness  in  his  description.  He  cannot  present  his 
own  experience  in  such  a  light  that  it  becomes  only  an  image  of 
a  general  human  situation.  He  has  to  be  content  with  so  much 
less  and  will  be  satisfied  when  he  succeeds  in  finding  and  demon- 
strating a  few  of  the  hidden  threads  running  through  the  texture 
of  unconscious  life. 


108  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

Looking  back  at  the  experience  of  my  youth,  I  could  speak  as 
the  great  poet  does: 

Ye  wavering  forms  draw  near  again  as  ever. 
When  ye  long  since  moved  past  my  clouded  eyes. 
To  hold  you  fast,  shall  I  this  time  endeavor. 
Still  does  my  heart  that  strange  illusion  prize? 
Ye  crowd  on  me?  Tis  well!  You  might  assever 
While  ye  from  mist  and  mark  around  me  rise  .  .  . 

As  to  the  poet,  so  memories  bring  back  to  me  many  familiar  faces 
and 

.  .  .  many  dear,  dear  shades  arise  with  you 

Like  some  old  tale  that  Time  but  half  erases 

First  Love  draws  near  to  me  and  Friendship  too  .  .  . 

And  with  those  memories  the  present  seems  to  withdraw  and 
the  past  becomes  alive  again: 

.  .  .  what  I  possess  as  if  it  were  far  from  seeing 
And  what  has  vanished,  now  comes  into  being. 


II 


WHEN  the  boy  and  the  girl  met,  they  were  both  children.  My 
family  then  lived  on  the  second  floor  of  a  modest  apartment 
house  in  Vienna.  We  were  of  the  lower  middle  class;  my  father 
was  an  employee  of  the  railroad  company,  and  the  family  often 
had  difficulties  making  ends  meet.  Below  us,  on  the  first  floor,  in 
a  larger  apartment  lived  the  family  of  the  journalist,  Mr.  (X  Mrs, 
O.  was,  it  seemed,  a  kind,  warmhearted,  and  simple-minded  woman. 
She  was  of  Jewish  descent.  Her  husband  was  a  social  climber 


THE  CONFESSIONS   OF   AN  ANALYST  1OQ 

who  was  an  anti-Semite.  We  could  not  decide  whether  this  was 
because  or  in  spite  of  his  wife's  Jewish  origin.  An  elderly  spinster 
aunt,  the  sister  of  Mrs.  O.,  a  tall,  slim,  severe-looking  woman  with 
a  sour  disposition,  lived  with  the  couple.  The  two  daughters, 
Mary  and  Ella,  attended  the  same  grammar  school  as  did  my  sis- 
ter Margaret.  Mary  was  two  years  older  than  Ella,  who  was  a 
classmate  of  my  sister's.  We  heard  that  the  two  girls  were  friendly, 
but  were  allowed  to  have  only  a  selected  few  girls  visit  them." 
They  were  not  allowed. to  play  on  the  street  and  could  walk  in  the 
park  only  if  accompanied  by  their  mother  or  their  aunt.  They 
had  to  keep  much  to  themselves,  as  did  the  whole  family.  Their 
father,  we  were  told,  was  a  disciplinarian  and  had  odd  ideas 
about  the  education  of  girls.  He  considered  it  necessary  that  the 
two  girls,  children  of  nine  and  seven,  always  be  escorted. 

This  father  was  much  younger  than  my  father,  but  was  in  con- 
trast very  dignified-looking.  Also,  in  contrast  to  my  father,  he 
wore  very  elegant  suits  and  behaved  much  as  a  man  about  town. 
We  children  often  saw  him  on  the  street  or  met  him  on  the  stair- 
way of  the  house.  We  wondered  about  the  monocle  he  frequently 
pressed  into  his  eye  and  through  which  he  looked  at  us  critically. 
All  in  all,  his  fashionable  suits,  his  top  hat,  his  cane  with  the 
golden  knob  which  he  would  whirl  around  gave  us  the  first  idea 
of  what  a  dandy  was.  My  father  and  Mr.  0.  leaving  the  house 
about  the  same  time  often  met  and  walked  a  few  blocks  together. 
They  chatted  in  a  friendly  manner.  I  heard  my  father  tell  my 
mother  that  in  his  opinion  Mr.  O.  was  a  snob  and  an  upstart. 
Mr.  O.  called  himself  chief  editor  of  the  Kurortezeitung  (a 
monthly  for  summer  and  health  resorts);  he  seemed  to  be  a  wealthy 
man.  He  often  spoke  of  his  trips  to  Germany,  France,  and 
Italy,  and  he  was  really  frequently  away  from  home,  sometimes 
for  months  on  end.  He  seemed  to  be  a  great  hunter  and  he 
showed  several  guns  to  my  father  who  was  not  much  interested 
but  too  polite  to  express  his  lack  of  enthusiasm.  (Much  later  I 
heard  my  father  quote  a  Jewish  proverb  whose  melancholic  wis- 
dom remained  in  my  memory:  "What  a  blessing  that  not  only 
the  hunted  but  also  the  hunters  get  tired/') 

Mr.  O.  often  spoke  of  his,  friends  to  whose  castles  or  hunting 
lodges  he  was  invited.  There  were  dukes  and  barons,  Graf  voa 


110  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Kinsky  and  Fuerst  Esterhazy  and  other  members  of  the  Austrian 
nobility.  We  children  were  deeply  impressed.  Mr.  O.  seemed  to 
be  on  most  intimate  terms  with  all  these  high  aristocrats.  This 
friendship  seemed  to  be  reduced  to  rather  superficial  acquaint- 
anceship later  on,  to  something  very  far  from  familiarity.  We 
realized,  also  much  later,  how  right  my  father  was  when  he 
thought  that  Mr.  O.  made  people  believe  what  he  wished. 
He  was  chief  editor  of  the  Kurortezeitung,  that  was  true  enough, 
but  he  did  not  reveal  that  he  was  not  only  the  only  editor  but 
also  the  only  person  who  owned,  edited,  wrote,  and  sold  this 
monthly  magazine.  The  journal  was  mostly  filled  with  articles 
secured  by  Chambers  of  Commerce  and  publicity  agents  for  ho- 
tels, vacation  spots,  and  health  resorts.  Its  larger  part  was  de- 
voted to  advertisements.  Mr.  O/s  far-distant  trips  had  as  their 
main  purpose  the  securing  of  these  advertisements  and  collecting 
the  fees.  I  did  not  like  the  man,  but  of  course,  I  had  the  respect 
of  a  boy  of  ten  toward  an  adult.  He  interested  me  only  as  the 
father  of  the  two  girls,  especially  Ella. 

We  often  heard  the  two  sisters  play  the  piano.  Mary,  who  was 
two  years  older  than  her  sister,  was  technically  superior;  but 
Ella's  playing  expressed  more  emotion.  Ella  also  played  the  violin 
and  sang  with  a  warm  and  gentle  voice  many  of  the  lieder  by 
Schubert  and  Schumann,  and  later  on,  songs  in  French  and  Eng- 
lish. 

Both  girls  were  tall  and  had  very  good  posture.  Both  were 
blond,  but  Mary's  hair  was  much  lighter  than  Ella's.  Mary  was, 
without  doubt,  the  prettier  of  the  two.  All  her  features  were  reg- 
ular and  her  face  was  of  a  classical  beauty.  Ella's  darker  hair 
and  her  eyes  of  a  deeper  Hue  were,  at  first  sight,  overshadowed 
by  her  sister's  doll-like  prettiness,  but  you  felt  more  strongly  and 
more  lastingly  attracted  when  you  looked  at  Ella.  Mary  was,  it 
seemed,  more  lively  and  cheerful;  her  eyes  sparkled  and  danced 
when  she  smiled.  Ella  was  serious. 

I  fell  in  love  with  Ella  when  I  was  eight  years  old,  but  it  was 
not  love  at  first  sight.  I  remember  that  I  had  seen  her  often 
enough  on  the  street  or  had  met  her  and  her  sister  on  the  stair- 
way without  paying  the  slightest  attention  to  her.  Like  other  boys 
at  this  age,  I  was  not  interested  in  little  girls  and  devoted  myself 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  111 

more  to  football  and  was  an  active  member  of  a  gang,  which  had 
frequent  feuds  and  fights  with  another  gang  in  the  alleys  of  a 
park  called  Augarten.  A  boy  of  eight  years  who  seems  to  be  in- 
terested in  girls  is  looked  upon  as  a  sissy  by  other  boys  in  Vienna 
as  in  New  York.  If  I  showed  any  pronounced  attitude  toward  the 
two  sisters  at  that  time,  it  was  cold  contempt,  the  disinterested 
behavior  of  the  superior  male  toward  little  girls. 

One  afternoon  something  strange  happened.  I  was  strolling 
home  from  school.  I  saw  Mrs.  O.  and  her  younger  daughter,  Ella, 
who  stood  before  the  house  talking  with  a  girl  friend.  The  two 
girls  said  goodbye  to  each  other.  At  this  moment  I  accidentally 
glanced  at  Ella's  face  and  I  looked  at  it  as  if  I  saw  it  for  the  first 
time.  Her  eyes  were  serious,  but  there  was  a  smile  around  her  lips 
that  was  of  a  loveliness  and  sweetness  I  had  never  before  seen  on 
a  face.  It  was  as  if  her  features  were  suddenly  illuminated  from 
within.  The  contrast  of  the  quiet  and  earnest  eyes  with  this  smile 
appeared  to  me  of  a  unique  beauty.  It  was  at  this  moment  that 
I  fell  in  love  with  her.  Much  later  I  understood  what  I  really 
wished  in  my  boyhood  daydreams.  I  wanted  her  to  smile  at  me 
in  the  same  way.  All  my  childish  and  clumsy  attempts  to  turn 
her  attention  to  me  had  this  goaL  It  was  as  if  I  silently  implored 
her:  Smile  at  me  the  way  you  did  then  at  your  friend! 

Nothing  in  my  behavior  changed  for  some  time.  I  played  hide- 
and-seek  with  myself  or  I  made  a  brave  attempt  to  conquer  my 
infatuation,  but  I  know  that  I  felt  my  heart  beat  faster  whenever 
I  saw  her.  It  must  have  been  a  considerable  time  later  when  I  had 
the  courage  to  greet  her  in  passing  her  on  the  stairs.  I  argued 
with  myself  whether  she  had  nodded  and  it  made  me  impatient 
to  meet  rier  again.  From  this  time  on  I  took  my  cap  off  to  her 
and  her  sister  as  if  it  were  merely  the  thing  to  do  and  not  a 
most  daring  deed  of  a  boy  of  eight. 

People  say  that  the  years  after  puberty,  the  late  teens  and 
early  twenties,  are  the  times  when  romance  blossoms.  I  believe 
that  the  romantic  infatuations  of  those  years  are  only  like  a 
second  or  even  a  third  edition  of  an  original  work.  The  real 
character  of  romance  is  much  clearer  in  childhood.  When  I  think 
of  those  silly  things  I  did  to  arouse  the  attention  of  my  beloved, 
the  foolishness  of  young  men's  passion  seems  almost  to  be  wise. 


112  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  knew,  for  instance,  approximately  the  time  when  the  two  girls 
went  with  their  mother  or  aunt  to  shop  or  to  take  a  walk.  It  could 
be  accidental  that  I  came  down  the  street  so  that  I  met  them 
and  took  my  cap  off  to  them.  But  having  passed  them,  I  turned 
into  a  side  street  and  ran  a  few  blocks  ahead  so  that  I  met  them 
once  again  and  could  greet  them  again.  I  thought  I  was  artful  in 
handling  the  situation;  it  dawned  upon  rne  only  later  that  run- 
ning into  the  same  person  twice  or  even  three  times  within  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  could  rouse  suspicion.  I  pretended,  of  course, 
that  I  strolled  through  the  streets,  but  my  casualness,  my  sur- 
prised glancing  up  when  1  saw  the  girls  again,  and  my  taking  off 
my  cap  with  a  friendly  smile— these  were  telltale  giveaways.  I 
am  sure  that  I  behaved  so  awkwardly  at  these  chance  encounters 
that  it  seemed  pitiful. 

Once— I  was  nine  years  old— I  did  a  terrible  thing.  One  winter 
afternoon  I  walked  home  from  school  as  usual  with  my  classmate 
and  friend  Otto.  Suddenly  and  without  the  slightest  provocation 
I  threw  him  to  the  ground.  We  rolled  in  the  snow,  in  a  fight  in 
which  I  was  victorious  on  account  of  my  surprise  attack.  The  next 
day,  my  father  got  a  very  indignant  letter  from  Otto's  father,  who 
demanded  payment  for  his  son's  torn  overcoat.  I  had  behaved  so 
crazily  because  I  had  seen  a  certain  little  girl  at  the  first-floor 
window  of  our  apartment  house. 

I  was  not  aware  then  that  my  desperate  attempts  to  arouse  Ella's 
interest  had  the  character  of  wooing.  If  I  had  known  Goethe  at 
the  time,  I  could  have  said  in  his  words,  "When  I  love  you,  what 
does  this  concern  you?"  But  my  actions  called  my  bluff.  They 
were  directed  to  the  aim  of  awakening  a  friendly  response,  espe- 
cially that  smile.  It  never  came.  It  is  strange  that  I  did  not  feel 
frustrated  and  disappointed  in  the  six  years  that  I  so  pursued  the 
shyly  beloved  girl.  Her  sister  Mary  smiled  in  a  friendly  enough 
way  at  me  and  nodded  vivaciously;  but  Ella's  greeting  was  hardly 
perceptible.  She  looked  at  me  and  looked  away  immediately.  Only 
once  her  eyes  met  mine  and  rested  there  for  a  few  seconds.  It  was 
a  glance  whose  significance  I  could  not  understand.  It  was  the 
first  ^nd  only  time  that  I  felt  she  looked  attentively  at  me,  I  was 
puzzled  by  this  look.  What  did  it  mean? 

The  same  evening  my  father  told  my  mother  at  the  dinner 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  llg 

table  that  Mr.  O.  had  bought  a  country  house  with  many  acres  of 
garden  and  vineyard  in  Klosterneuburg,  one  hour  from  Vienna, 
and  that  the  family  was  to  move  to  this  town  in  a  few  days.  He 
added  that  Mr.  O.  had  some  silly  idea  that  it  was  better  for  his 
daughters,  approaching  puberty,  to  live  in  the  country  where  they 
would  be  protected  from  the  many  dangers  which  threatened  girls 
growing  up  in  Vienna.  He  planned  to  take  them  from  public 
school  and  to  let  them  be  taught  at  home  by  private  teachers. 
Ella  was  then  ten  years  old. 

During  the  six  years  of  my  first  love  I  had  never  spoken  a  word 
to  its  object.  Mrs.  O.  asked  me  several  times  about  my  progress 
in  school  and  about  the  health  of  my  mother.  Once  I  even  made 
some  casual  remarks  to  Mary,  on  the  stairway,  but  I  was  tongue- 
tied  toward  Ella  who  stood  silently  beside  her  sister.  Only  much 
later  did  I  realize  how  rude  my  behavior  had  then  been. 

I  do  not  remember  that  the  news  that  Ella  and  her  family 
would  move  shortly  or  the  fact  that  I  would  not  see  her  any  more 
produced  any  strong  emotional  reaction  in  me.  The  following 
months  are  only  dimly  remembered,  but  I  know  that  I  made  a 
special  nuisance  of  myself  at  home  and  in  school  and  that  my 
father  often  reproached  me.  It  was  rather  a  gloomy  time,  and  I 
felt  unhappy  because  I  was  a  naughty  boy  and  was  often  scolded. 
(But  perhaps  I  was  naughty  because  I  felt  unhappy?) 

In  the  following  years  I  did  not  think  of  Ella  any  more.  Out  of 
sight,  out  of  mind.  I  followed  the  many  interests  of  a  boy  of  this 
age  and  later  I  had  the  usual  troubles  of  puberty  as  did  the  other 
boys.  I  flirted,  joked  with,  and  kissed  the  girl  friends  of  my  sister. 
At  home  Mr.  O.  and  his  family  were  not  mentioned  any  more. 
Ella's  image,  which  had  been  so  vivid  before  my  mind  for  some 
years,  had  evaporated.  There  are  things  one  must  forget.  * 


The  period  from  the  twelfth  to  the  nineteenth  year  sees  many 
and  decisive  changes  in  a  boy's  life.  It  is  the  phase  in  which  he 
makes  the  transition  from  childhood  to  manhood. 


114  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  have  already  attempted  to  describe  my  reaction  to  the  death 
of  my  father  shortly  after  I  had  reached  my  eighteenth  birthday, 
and  my  exclusive  and  compulsive  preoccupation  with  Goethe's 
life  and  works.  Whatever  were  the  unrecognized  thoughts  under- 
lying it,  my  Goethe  compulsion  lost  its  uncontested  power  over 
me  by  and  by  and  I  re-emerged  from  my  solitude. 

During  my  high  school  years  I  had  a  friend  named  David  E. 
He  was  a  year  older  than  I,  of  a  cheerful,  easygoing  temperament, 
popular  with  the  boys  as  well  as  with  the  girls.  He  had  become 
a  young  man  about  town  just  at  the  time  when  I  became  increas- 
ingly introverted;  he  was  a  realist  while  I  was  an  idealist  and  a 
daydreamer.  His  versatility  and  smartness  as  well  as  his  social 
poise  contrasted  with  my  shyness  and  slowness.  He  had  decided 
to  go  into  his  father's  furniture  business.  After  we  had  passed  our 
final  examination  we  met  but  rarely. 

Just  at  the  time  when  I  hesitatingly  recovered  the  path  to  so- 
ciability I  ran  into  him  on  the  street  and  we  took  a  walk  together. 
Strolling  along  the  avenue  of  trees  in  the  Prater,  we  talked  of  our 
past  school  experiences  and  our  plans  for  the  future.  He  suddenly 
stopped  and  said:  "Look,  the  other  day  two  very  pretty  girls  asked 
me  how  you  are  and  what  you  are  doing."  He  then  told  me  that 
he  had  met  Mary  and  Ella  O.  His  sister,  who  had  been  a  class- 
mate of  Mary's,  was  frequently  invited  to  the  country  house  of 
the  O/s.  He  then  described  to  me  the  strange  life  the  two  girls 
had  led.  It  seemed  to  him  that  their  father  was  a  fool  who  sub- 
jected his  wife,  his  sister-in-law,  and  his  daughters  to  his  idee  fixe. 
He  did  not  allow  them  to  speak  to  anyone  but  women.  No  man, 
old  or  young,  was  permitted  to  enter  the  house  except  the  mail- 
man, the  gardener,  and  the  grocer's  boy.  The  two  girls  were 
strictly  forbidden  to  speak  to  men.  They  could  take  a  walk  and 
occasionally  shop  in  Vienna,  but,  of  course,  only  if  accompanied 
by  their  mother  or  aunt,  who  had  given  a  solemn  promise  to 
keep  every  man  at  a  distance  from  them.  Calling  him  a  son-of-a- 
gun,  David  asserted  that  Mr.  O.  seemed  to  have  a  very  low  opin- 
ion of  women's  virtue,  that  he  wished  the  two  girls  to  become 
old  spinsters.  To  forbid  two  very  attractive  girls  of  nineteen  and 
seventeen  even  to  speak  to  young  men  was  unheard  of.  The  man 
was  a  dangerous  lunatic,  who  really  threatened  to  shoot  any  man 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  115 

who  entered  his  sacred  house.  He  should  be  put  into  the  Insane 
asylum  at  Gugging,  near  Klosterneuburg. 

David  then  reported  how  he  had  met  the  two  girls.  His  sister, 
who  was  sorry  for  Mary  and  Ella,  had  arranged  the  date.  The 
country  house  in  Klosterneuburg  was  in  a  side  street.  Near  the 
church  of  the  small  town  a  narrow  path  led  from  the  church  hill 
upward  along  the  large  vineyard  and  garden  of  the  O/s.  Near 
the  top  of  the  hill,  a  ten-minute  walk  and  invisible  from  the 
windows,  there  stood  a  garden-house  in  which  the  girls  spent 
many  summer  afternoons.  There  was  a  meadow,  surrounded  by 
fruit  trees.  Nearby,  a  small  door  in  the  fence  of  the  garden  was 
almost  hidden  by  the  boughs  of  trees  hanging  over  it.  The  girls 
had  opened  this  door  which  was  to  remain  locked  by  order  of 
Mr.  O.  David  had  visited  the  two  girls  and  his  own  sister  in  this 
part  of  the  garden  and  had  spent  an  afternoon  in  their  pleasant 
company  some  weeks  previously.  It  was  summer  and  it  was  good 
to  be  in  cool,  fresh  country  air  as  often  as  possible.  He  had  fre- 
quently spent  free  afternoons  in  the  beautiful  garden  in  Kloster- 
neuburg as  the  guest  of  the  two  girls.  God  forbid  that  Mr.  O. 
should  ever  learn  that  a  young  man  had  entered  his  garden  or 
had  had  a  conversation  with  his  daughters  1  With  the  discretion 
due  such  matters  at  the  time,  David  made  some  remarks  which 
gave  me  to  understand  that  he  was  falling  in  love  with  Mary. 

Returning  from  his  vivid  talk  about  the  situation  in  Kloster- 
neuburg to  his  initial  remark,  he  told  me  that  Ella  had  asked 
about  me.  The  image  of  a  little  girl  walking  straight  ahead  and 
looking  forward  emerged  and  passed.  I  was  suspicious  of  David 
who  had  liked  to  tease  me  in  past  years.  Had  his  sister  perhaps 
realized  that  I  had  been  infatuated  with  Ella  many  years  ago 
when  I  was  a  boy?  In  short,  I  did  not  believe  David  and  told  him 
to  go  climb  a  tree,  preferably  one  of  the  apple  trees  in  the  garden 
in  Klosterneuburg,  But  he  insisted  that  he  spoke  the  truth. 

About  a  week  later,  to  my  astonishment,  David  appeared  in 
the  university  library  where,  as  he  knew,  I  was  to  be  found  at 
certain  hours  still  reading  Goethe  or  about  Goethe.  He  called 
me  out  and  told  me  that  he  had  been  in  Klosterneuburg  again 
and  th^t  he  had  promised  the  two  girls  he  would  bring  me 
to  their  garden.  He  added  that  they  were  both  very  curious  about 


Il6  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

me  and  asked  me  whether  the  day  after  tomorrow,  a  Tuesday, 
was  convenient  for  me.  I  had  to  trust  him. 

We  took  the  train  from  the  Franz-Josef  Station  and  rode  to 
Klosterneuburg-Kierling  which  had  been  familiar  to  me  since 
my  childhood.  Arriving  at  the  town,  we  took  the  bus  which 
brought  us  to  the  church  of  the  village  Kierling.  David  led  me 
to  the  path  which  went  along  the  garden  of  the  O.'s  and  we 
climbed  up  the  hill  and  stood  before  the  little  door,  half  hidden 
by  bushes,  exactly  as  he  had  described  it.  And  then  we  were  in- 
side the  garden;  there  were  the  meadow,  the  big  trees,  the  sum- 
merhouse,  and  the  bench  some  steps  away  from  it.  And  there 
was  Mary,  who  greeted  me.  She  was  as  I  remembered  her,  only 
taller,  a  beautiful  woman;  there  were  the  classical  features  and 
the  light  blond  hair  and  the  easygoing,  cheerful  manner. 

We  sat  in  the  summerhouse  and  looked  down  on  the  church 
and  the  vineyards.  It  was  early  afternoon  and  all  was  quiet  in  the 
village.  There  was  a  spiral  path,  which  led  in  curved  lines  from 
O.'s  cottage  upward  to  our  spot. 

"Where  is  Ella?"  asked  David.  Mary  pointed  to  the  path  which 
was  roofed  and  covered  on  both  sides  by  vines.  "There  she  is," 
answered  Mary.  We  caught  sight  of  a  figure  in  a  blue  dress  which 
came  nearer,  and  Ella  suddenly  stood  before  me.  She  was  ap- 
parently a  bit  breathless  from  climbing  the  hill.  I  looked  into 
her  blue  eyes  which  were  deep  as  a  mountain  lake  and  then  I 
heard  her  warm  voice.  "How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Reik?" 

I  listened  to  this  voice  andjelt  as  if  the  bell  of  the  church  down 
there  in  the  village  had  begun  to  ring.  There  was  at  last  the  smile 
for  which  I  had  longed  many  years  ago,  that  same  contrast  of 
the  serious  expression  of  the  eyes  with  the  smile  around  the  lips 
which  had  fascinated  me  when  the  little  girl  had  said  goodbye  to 
her  friend. 

I  looked  at  her  as  if  she  were  an  apparition.  Here  was  the  girl 
I  had  known  and  yet  a  girl  who  was  unknown  to  me.  This  feeling 
of  the  blending  of  strangeness  and  familiarity  confused  and 
startled  me.  The  fusion  of  half-forgotten  memories  and  of  new 
impressions  caused  the  sensation  that  I  had  experienced  this 
situation  before.  Goethe  must  have  had  a  similar  feeling  when 
he  met  Frau  von  Stein: 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  117 

Speakl  Why  is  it  this  destiny  engages 
Us  in  bonds  that  cannot  broken  be? 
Surely  once  in  unremembered  ages 
Thou  wert  sister  or  wert  wife  to  me.* 

The  psychological  difference  was  that  I  had  really  known  this 
same  girl  when  she  was  seven  years  old  and  that  I  saw  her  again 
as  a  woman  with  all  the  charms  of  sweet  seventeen. 

Ella  wore  a  simple  dress  of  light  blue  material.  It  followed 
the  lines  of  the  body.  The  wide  skirt  reached  almost  to  the  shoes, 
according  to  the  fashion  of  the  time.  On  her  arm  hung  a  straw 
hat  with  a  wide  brim.  While  David  and  Mary  walked  away,  we 
sat  on  the  bench  and  talked  as  if  we  had  been  old  acquaintances. 
But  were  we  not  old  acquaintances  although  we  had  never  spoken 
to  each  other?  Ella  told  me  much  about  herself  and  her  sister, 
how  they  had  spent  the  years  during  which  we  had  not  seen  each 
other.  She  had  studied  music  and  foreign  languages,  and  was 
interested,  it  seemed,  in  literature.  Just  as  now  we  spoke  of  my 
family  and  of  hers.  She  told  me  that  her  father  was  frequently  on 
his  travels  and  that  he  always  brought  home  nice  gifts  for  both 
girls.  College  instructors  tutored  the  sisters  at  their  home.  She 
asked  about  my  studies  and  showed  interest  in  my  plans  for  the 
future.  We  exchanged  memories  of  our  childhood  and  of  the 
people  in  the  apartment  house  in  which  we  both  had  lived.  She 
told  me  that  she  had  discovered  Gerhart  Hauptmann,  whose  The 
Weavers  she  loved,  and  I  praised  another  writer  whose  plays  and 
novels  I  had  "discovered"  in  the  meantime  and  whose  name— 
Arthur  Schnitzler— she  had  never  heard.  She  was  so  natural  and 
spontaneous,  so  sweet  and  friendly  that  I  was  overwhelmed. 
Where  was  the  proud  and  haughy  girl  who  had  only  once  looked 
at  me  with  a  strange  glance  whose  meaning  puzzled  me? 

(Many  years  later  Ella  told  me  that  my  silly  behavior  as  a  boy 
had  made  an  impression  on  her  and  that  she  had  been  aware  that 
it  was  a  kind  of  silent  courtship.  She  had  wished  I  would  speak 
to  her,  but,  of  course,  she  could  not  speak  to  me  first.  Little  girls 

*  Translation  by  Ludwig  Lewisohn  (Goethe,  The  Story  of  a  Man,  New 
York:  Farrar,  Straus  and  Company,  1949). 


Il8  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

have  their  pride.  Her  indifference,  she  told  me,  had  been  pretense. 
She  had  often  heard  her  mother  and  her  aunt  say  a  woman  should 
never  show  a  man  that  she  cared  for  him,  because  he  would  lose 
respect  for  her.  I  understood  later  that  she  had  for  hours  day- 
dreamed about  me,  since  the  family  moved  to  Klosterneuburg, 
and  she  showed  me  a  snapshot  of  me  as  a  boy  of  ten  which  she 
had  secured  from  a  girl  friend.  Ella  had  looked  at  it  almost  daily 
during  these  six  years.  She  told  me  she  had  often  whispered 
"Theodor"  as  if  she  could  call  me,  and  when  David  appeared,  she 
hoped  that  her  daydream  would  come  true.  On  what  meager  diet 
can  the  illusion  we  call  love  live!  An  adolescent  girl  had  spent 
years  of  her  life  daydreaming  about  a  boy  she  had  never  spoken 
to  and  about  whom  she  knew  nothing  but  that  he  silently  cared 
for  her.  And  what  a  fool  I  had  been!  I  had  never  suspected  that 
I  could  be  the  object  of  her  affection.  Nothing  in  her  behavior, 
not  a  single  sign  had  shown  that  she  paid  attention  to  my  clumsy 
admiration.) 

It  seemed  she  knew  much  about  me  and  my  family  from  the 
girl  friends  who  had  visited  the  sisters  in  those  six  years  since 
they  had  moved  to  Klosterneuburg.  We  spoke  of  a  hundred  things 
and  persons  and  we  found  we  had  many  interests  in  common. 
David  had  to  leave  earlier  than  L  I  stayed  another  hour  chatting 
with  the  girls,  who  had  brought  sandwiches  of  ham  and  eggs 
from  the  house.  But  twilight  descended  upon  the  garden  and  I 
had  to  leave.  Before  saying  goodbye,  I  asked  Ella  to  sing  one  of 
the  lieder  which  I  had  heard  her  sing  in  my  boyhood.  She  nodded 
and  extended  her  hand  to  me  without  speaking.  Then  she  walked 
slowly  down  to  the  house  with  her  sister  along  the  vine-covered 
spiral  path,  and  I  followed  her  with  my  gaze  until  she  was  not 
visible  any  more.  I  left  the  garden  and  approached  the  house,  as 
near  as  I  could  without  being  seen.  And  then  I  heard  the  first 
bars  of  the  Schubert  song.  Ella  accompanied  herself  on  the  piano. 
Her  sweet  and  warm  voice  sang  the  well-known  words,  the  famil- 
iar tune  of  the  Schubert  lied  I  had  heard  her  sing  in  Vienna: 

Du  bist  die  Ruh 
Der  Friede  mild 
Die  Sehnsucht  du 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF   AN   ANALYST  11Q 

Und  wassie  stillt. 
You  are  sweet  peace  and  rest, 
You  are  the  haven  blest, 
You  are  that  bliss  of  yearning 
And  all  that  cools  its  burning. 

In  this  moment  these  simple  verses  conveyed  to  me  the  essence 
not  only  of  their  gentlest  creature  but  of  all  femininity— of  what 
is  best  in  all  women:  that  they  are  self-contained  and  that  they 
have  the  center  of  gravity  in  their  own  soul,  in  contrast  to  the 
restlessness  and  destructiveness  of  men. 

I  had  missed  the  bus  to  the  station  and  I  walked  the  two  miles 
apparently  on  the  hard  highway,  in  reality  on  clouds.  The  image 
of  Ella  accompanied  me.  I  saw  her  face  and  her  eyes  and  her 
smile  before  me.  In  my  imagination  I  followed  the  lines  of  her 
figure  down  the  wide  blue  skirt.  I  compared  this  image  to  a  blue- 
bell in  clumsy  verses  which  ran  through  my  mind.  But  again  and 
again  the  tune  of  the  Schubert  song  emerged  and  I  sang  half 
aloud,  "Du  bist  die  Ruh." 

People  who  met  the  young  man  on  the  road  and  saw  his  silly 
smile  or  heard  him  singing  must  have  thought  that  he  had 
escaped  from  the  asylum  at  Gugging  nearby.  But  I  did  not  care 
about  public  opinion  because  I  felt  that  I  had  discovered  the 
most  precious  secret  in  the  world.  I  was  sure  that  I  was  its  only 
possessor.  Nobody  could  have  convinced  me  to  the  contrary.  I 
was  nineteen.  No  use  to  talk  to  me. 

We  were  married  seven  years  later,  almost  to  the  day. 


During  those  seven  years  I  would  take  the  train  from  Vienna 
to  Klosterneuburg,  the  bus  from  the  station  to  the  village,  and 
I  would  walk  up  to  that  garden  gate  whenever  Mr.  O.  was  ab- 
sent. (Much  later  I  used  to  joke  with  my  wife  that  I  had  served 
seven  years  for  her  as  Jacob  had  for  Rachel,  in  the  Holy  Scrip- 
ture.) Sometimes  I  could  stay  with  Ella  only  half  an  hour  or  less; 


I2O  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

but  neither  snow  nor  hail,  neither  cold  nor  heat  could  keep  me 
away  from  Klosterneuburg.  During  those  seven  years  I  never  set 
foot  in  the  house  of  the  O.'s  and  never  spoke  a  word  with  my 
future  father-in-law.  Mary  and  Ella  both  implored  me  not  to  ap- 
proach him.  It  would  unavoidably  mean  the  end  of  my  visits, 
which  had  to  remain  a  secret.  After  some  months  it  became  neces- 
sary to  tell  Mrs.  O.  about  the  clandestine  visitor.  She  was  terrified 
and  so  scared  of  her  husband  that  she  cried.  She  could  be  per- 
suaded to  keep  the  secret  from  Mr.  O.  only  when  Ella  threatened 
to  leave  home  and  never  to  return.  The  aunt  was,  of  course,  not 
let  into  the  secret.  The  people  in  the  village  must  have  wondered 
about  the  young  man  who,  almost  daily,  in  every  weather,  went 
up  from  the  church  square  to  a  certain  garden  gate.  They  must 
also  have  seen  him  with  the  young  girl  through  the  gaps  of  the 
garden  fence;  but  they  did  not  give  us  away  to  Mr.  O.— as  though 
they  respected  our  secret  engagement. 

As  far  as  I  remember,  Ella  and  I  made  only  two  excursions  to- 
gether during  those  seven  years.  We  were  too  afraid  of  being  seen 
together  by  acquaintances  of  Mr.  O.,  on  the  train  or  on  the  bus. 
It  is  strange  but  true  that  Mr.  O.  did  not  know  about  the  clandes- 
tine visitor  in  his  garden  until  Ella  told  him  a  few  weeks  before 
she  came  of  age  and  left  her  home.  (In  Austria  at  this  time  peo- 
ple came  of  age  at  twenty-four  years.)  Mr.  O.  had  a  violent  temper 
and  was  a  bully  toward  wife  and  daughters,  who  were  afraid  of 
him.  He  would  have  perhaps  made  good  his  threat  to  shoot 
every  man  who  trod  upon  his  ground. 

Our  first  excursion  is  as  vivid  in  my  memory  as  if  it  had  hap- 
pened yesterday.  It  was  perhaps  six  weeks  after  my  first  visit  to 
Klosterneuburg  that  we  decided  to  make  an  excursion.  We 
wanted  to  walk  over  the  Kahlenberg,  the  well-known  mountain, 
to  Heiligenstadt,  and  return  by  a  different  road.  We  met  at  a 
certain  place  outside  the  village,  where  it  was  unlikely  that  we 
would  encounter  acquaintances  of  Mr.  O.  I  still  remember  how 
lovely  Ella  was  in  a  dirndl  dress,  walking  toward  me  early  that 
Sunday  morning.  The  September  sun  was  pleasant  and  we  took 
our  time.  We  walked  slowly  passing  cottages  and  vineyards,  chat- 
ting with  the  farm  folk  we  encountered,  often  stopping  to  look 
at  the  view.  We  soon  arrived  at  the  wood  and  we  began  the  ascent 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  121 

to  the  summit.  Near  the  peak,  we  chose  a  spot  among  the  pine 
trees,  where  we  could  rest  comfortably  and  look  down  into  the 
valley.  Before  us  was  the  Vienna  Wood,  the  vineyards  around 
Nussdorf  and  Heiligenstadt,  the  small  towns  on  the  Danube, 
which  looked  like  a  silver  ribbon,  and  there  the  city  in  which  we 
both  were  born.  Ella  had  modestly  pulled  her  wide  dirndl  skirt 
over  her  ankles  when  she  sat  down.  We  were  both  silent.  I 
smoked  a  cigarette  and,  as  if  under  a  spell,  I  looked  at  Ella's 
profile,  following  the  beautiful  curve  from  the  hair  to  the  throat. 
Her  face  was  in  repose,  of  the  loveliness  and  serenity  of  a  Botticelli 
madonna.  I  felt  as  if  I  had  met  the  Holy  Virgin  on  the  Kahlen- 
berg  on  a  Sunday  noon. 

She  seemed  so  remote,  so  out  of  reach,  so  far  above  me  at  this 
moment.  In  these  last  weeks  we  had  become  familiar  enough;  we 
had  talked  about  so  many  things,  but  we  had  not  spoken  about 
our  feelings  toward  each  other.  The  girl  had  been  friendly  and 
natural,  but  would  she  not  be  as  friendly  with  any  other  young 
man?  I  had  so  often  wished  to  kiss  her,  but  she  seemed  so  cool, 
so  self-sufficient  and  exquisite,  that  one  did  not  dare  touch  hen  I 
was  shy  and  I  was  afraid  she  would  be  offended  if  I  approached 
her.  All  around  us  was  quiet;  only  the  birds  hopped  from  one 
bough  to  another.  A  gentle  breeze  made  the  grass  and  the 
meadow  flowers  bend  with  a  rustling  noise.  It  was  as  if  nature 
held  its  breath  in  expectancy. 

For  a  long  time  Ella  looked  quietly  down  into  the  valley  with- 
out moving.  It  was  as  if  she  was  far  away  in  her  thoughts.  Slowly 
she  turned  her  face  to  me  and  looked  seriously  into  my  eyes.  At 
this  moment  I  did  not  hesitate  any  more.  What  propelled  me 
was  stronger  than  my  shyness.  I  took  her  into  my  arms  and  kissed 
her.  It  was  only  some  seconds,  but  it  seemed  to  me  a  small  eternity 
until  I  felt  that  she  lifted  her  face  to  me  and  that  her  lips  re- 
sponded to  my  kiss.  I  stammered  words  of  love  and  endearment 
and  did  not  want  to  let  her  go.  I  implored  her  to  say  something, 
to  answer  my  passionate  questions,  but  she  only  bent  her  head 
back  and  looked  into  my  eyes,  without  speaking.  And  then  came 
that  slow  smile,  while  the  eyes  remained  serious,  that  smile  known 
to  me  so  well  since  I  was  a  child,  and  she  said  in  a  low,  but  firm 
voice,  "I  have  waited  so  long  for  this/' 


122  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  was  flabbergasted.  I  had  never  thought  that  she  expected  to 
be  kissed  by  me.  (What  fools  young  men  are  in  all  these  things! 
A  young  Parisian  lady  once  taught  me  an  unforgettable  lesson: 
We  were  speaking  about  a  friend  of  mine,  who  had  no  secrets 
from  me.  She  took  it  for  granted  that  he  was  in  love  with  a  certain 
girl.  My  friend  had  often  talked  to  me  about  his  emotions  about 
different  women,  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  had  also  spoken  about 
that  girl,  but  I  had  not  received  the  impression  that  he  felt  espe- 
cially attracted  to  her.  I  am  sure  that  my  friend  himself  would 
have  denied  it  at  the  time.  I  therefore  expressed  my  definite  dis- 
belief when  the  Parisian  lady  remarked  that  my  friend  was  in 
love  with  the  girl.  My  charming  partner  in  conversation  looked 
at  me  with  a  smile  which  expressed  a  mixture  of  pity  and  amuse- 
ment, shrugged  her  shoulders,  and  said,  "Stupide  comme  un 
hommel"  A  few  weeks  later,  my  friend  had  discovered  to  his 
great  surprise  that  he  was  in  love  with  that  girl— a  fact  which 
had  remained  unknown  to  him,  but  not  to  the  girl  or  to  her 
friends.  Women  are  ahead  of  us  men  not  only  in  their  sensitive- 
ness about  such  feelings;  they  are  also  much  more  realistic  about 
them  than  men,  who  are  the  true  romantics.  Not  long  ago  an  old 
lady  said  to  me,  " While  a  young  man  thinks  over  how  to  tell  a 
girl  that  he  worships  her,  she  already  considers  how  to  furnish 
the  drawing  room.") 

After  the  kiss  my  shyness  had  evaporated  and  I  could  speak 
freely  about  us  and  our  future.  The  sun,  the  pine  trees,  the  song 
of  the  birds,  and  all  the  sweet  scents  of  summer  were  changed. 
The  world  was  flooded  with  glory.  Holding  hands,  we  walked 
down  the  Kahlenberg  and  I  felt  boundlessly  happy.  We  arrived 
at  Heiligenstadt  where  we  had  lunch  at  a  small  restaurant.  Later 
on,  we  passed  a  Heurigen,  one  of  those  inns  where  the  wine  of 
the  year  is  served.  Most  of  those  places  are  in  the  open;  people  sit 
around  small  tables  under  trees,  drinking  the  sweet  wine  which 
has  grown  on  the  surrounding  hills  and  listening  to  the  "Schram- 
inel  quartet,"  We  too  sat  down  and  heard  some  of  the  familiar 
tunes  played  by  the  three  violins  accompanied  by  an  accordion. 
When  we  walked  along,  we  moved  in  the  three-quarter  measure 
of  the  tune  following  us. 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  12g 

The  air  was  full  of  promise.  The  faces  of  men,  women,  and 
children  coming  our  way  seemed  to  be  carefree  and  smiling.  It 
was  as  if  they  all  shared  our  happiness.  We  followed  the  Sunday 
crowd  to  a  place  where  people  danced  to  the  playing  of  a  small 
orchestra.  It  was  a  typical  Austrian  peasant  dance,  with  its  peculiar 
kind  of  merrymaking,  not  at  all  refined,  but  rustic  and  earthy, 
accompanied  by  jokes,  laughter,  and  teasing.  Sometimes  a  couple 
did  more  stamping  than  dancing  and  quite  a  few  young  men 
flung  their  girls  into  the  air,  to  catch  them  again  in  their  arms. 
We  looked  on;  Ella  said,  "Isn't  it  exactly  like  a  hundred  years 
ago,  when  Beethoven  composed  the  Pastoral  here?  There  are  the 
peasants;  these  are  the  same  kind  of  dances  as  then/' 

I  had  not  thought  of  Beethoven.  This  was  indeed  Heifigen- 
stadt,  where  Beethoven  composed  his  Sixth  Symphony;  the  same 
place  where  he  wrote  his  famous  will,  that  somber,  heartbreaking 
document  of  a  suffering  genius.  "Let's  hope  that  there  will  be  no 
tempest  as  in  the  Sixth,"  I  said,  but  the  sky  was  cloudlessly  blue 
and  serene.  As  it  was  still  early,  we  decided  to  walk  on  and  we 
turned  toward  Grinzing.  At  a  certain  point  Ella  stood  still  and 
said,  "But  we  must  be  near  the  Schreiberbach  here."  I  had  never 
heard  of  this  brook. 

"What  is  so  remarkable  about  the  Schreiberbach?"  I  asked. 

"Don't  you  know?"  She  told  me  then  that  it  was  at  the  Schrei- 
berbach, between  Heiligenstadt  and  Grinzing,  where  Beethoven 
composed  the  brook  scene.  We  asked  one  of  the  peasants  we  met 
where  the  Schreiberbach  was.  On  the  way  there,  Ella  told  me 
that  Beethoven  had  heard  in  the  bubbling  murmur  of  that  brook 
the  lovely  tune  which  the  first  violins  play  in  the  Pastoral.  We 
found  the  brook.  Ella  told  me  (how  much  the  girl  knew  about 
the  great  composer's  life!)  that  later  Beethoven  had  made  an  ex- 
cursion to  this  very  point  with  his  loyal  friend  Schindler.  He  had 
pointed  out  this  spot,  and  had  added,  "The  birds  composed  with 
me/'  alluding  to  the  joke  of  the  bird  song  at  the  close  of  the 
movement.  We  returned  to  the  Heiligenstadt  station,  where  Ella 
took  the  train  home  and  I  another  one  to  Vienna. 

What  had  surprised  me  in  rereading  my  objective  study  of 
Goethe  was  the  sudden  transition  from  Truth  and  Fiction  to 
Beethoven's  Sixth  Symphony,  the  jump  from  Sesenheim  near 


124  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Strassburg  to  Heiligenstadt  near  Vienna.  What  were  the  con- 
necting links?  Goethe  wrote  his  autobiography  about  the  time 
when  Beethoven  made  his  sketches  for  the  Pastoral;  the  tunes  o£ 
this  symphony  could  well  describe  the  rural  idyl  at  Sesenheim. 
The  movement  after  the  storm  expressed  a  mood  similar  to 
Goethe's,  when  he  felt  that  he  had  escaped  the  doom  of  the  curse. 
"Grateful  Feelings  after  the  Storm/*  the  words  that  Beethoven 
had  written  in  his  score—the  words  which  I  had  chosen  as  the 
title  of  that  chapter-were  appropriate  to  the  picture  of  the  young 
poet  when  the  Alsatian  landscape  quieted  and  consoled  him, 
after  his  leave-taking  from  Friederike.  The  threads  between  the 
Sesenheim  story  and  the  Pastoral  were  so  slender  that  the  con- 
nection between  them  appeared  to  be  artificial.  But  the  title,  Bee- 
thoven's sentence,  had  emerged  spontaneously  and  my  thoughts 
had  really  led  from  Sesenheim  to  Heiligenstadt  when  I  wrote 
that  chapter.  Now  I  realized  that  my  own  memories  had  un- 
consciously influenced  my  train  of  thought.  The  memory  of  our 
excursion  to  Heiligenstadt  had  determined  the  title  of  the  chap 
ter  of  my  Goethe  study  "Joyous  and  Grateful  Feelings  after  the 
Storm."  This  same  memory  made  me  introduce  the  Sixth  Sym- 
phony into  a  psychological  investigation  of  young  Goethe's  mood, 
as  he  rode  away  from  Sesenheim.  It  cannot  be  accidental  that  the 
chapter  described  Goethe's  situation  after  he  left  Friederike, 
while  my  unconscious  thoughts  had  circled  around  the  time  when 
Ella  and  I  first  spoke  of  our  love  for  each  other.  If  we  accept  that 
our  train  of  thought  is  unconsciously  determined,  then  the  con- 
trast of  the  two  situations  must  have  its  secret  psychological  sig- 
nificance. In  that  chapter  the  end  of  Goethe's  romance  is 
sketched;  my  memory  of  the  excursion  to  Heiligenstadt  marks 
the  beginning  of  a  romance. 

But  before  we  try  to  penetrate  into  this  darker  area,  a  tie  be- 
tween the  two  situations  becomes  clear,  when  one  compares  them. 
Goethe  describes  in  the  third  part  of  Truth  and  Fiction  how  his 
journey  through  Alsace  mitigated  his  sorrow  and  that  he  again 
found  himself  looking  at  the  landscape.  The  sense  for  the  beauty 
of  nature  had  been  sadly  neglected  in  my  education.  My  early 
interests  were  almost  exclusively  directed  to  human  relations. 
Later,  time  and  occasion  to  correct  that  deficiency  were  lacking. 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  125 

I  had  been  scarely  aware  of  it  until  I  met  Ella.  The  excursion  to 
Heiligenstadt  is  one  of  my  earliest  memories  to  recall  that  what- 
ever little  sense  for  beauty  of  nature  I  possess  was  awakened  by 
her.  She  showed  me  the  pretty  or  remarkable  qualities  of  flowers 
and  trees  and  the  beauties  of  landscapes  and  views.  I  began  to 
see  shapes  and  colors  in  the  country  and  found  increasing  pleas- 
ure in  the  observation  of  woods,  rivers,  and  hills.  I  saw  with  her 
eyes.  But  was  not  my  teacher  the  loveliest  creation  of  living 
nature?  When  she  made  me  see  beauty  in  flowers  and  trees  in  the 
garden  of  Klosterneuburg,  in  the  view  from  the  Kahlenberg,  it 
was  as  if  the  landscape  surrounding  us  was  only  an  extension  of 
her  own  charm. 

In  contrast  to  Goethe,  who  received  his  best  and  most  signifi- 
cant impressions  through  the  eye,  I  was,  as  the  French  psycholo- 
gists would  say,  a  "type  auditif"  I  was  not  just  blind  as  a  bat, 
but  most  of  my  impressions  and  memories  were  of  an  auditory 
character. 

These  psychological  considerations  lead  me  to  comment  on  the 
differences  between  the  presentation  of  the  Sesenheim  romance 
and  my  report.  In  Goethe's  story  the  reader  sees  forms  and  colors 
of  persons  and  things.  It  is  as  if  what  happened  almost  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty  years  ago,  in  Strassburg  and  Sesenheim,  is  res- 
urrected, happens  again  before  the  reader's  eye.  It  does  not 
occur  to  me  to  compare  my  own  poor  presentation  with  Goethe's, 
in  regard  to  artistic  values.  But  it  is  noteworthy  that  most  of  the 
recollections  presented  here  are  connected  with  music.  The  tran- 
sition from  the  story  of  the  Sesenheim  idyl  to  Beethoven's  Sixth 
Symphony  is  only  one  of  the  significant  examples. 

In  reading  the  first  draft  of  these  memories,  I  myself  was  sur- 
prised at  how  many  of  them  are  connected  with  music,  with 
sounds  and  tunes.  It  is  as  if  musical  compositions  are  the  pearls 
on  which  these  recollections  are  engraved.  This  fact  can  be  easily 
understood.  The  Vienna  of  my  youth  was  the  most  musical  city 
of  the  world.  It  was  not  only  on  account  of  the  great  tradition 
that  the  most  prominent  composers  lived  here  and  left  their  im- 
print on  the  cultural  life  of  the  city.  A  concert  of  the  famous 
Vienna  Philharmonic  Orchestra,  a  first  performance  at  the  Opera 
(both  directed  by  Gustav  Mahler)  were  for  weeks  the  subject  of 


126  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

vivid  discussion  among  the  upper  and  middle  classes  of  people. 
"Let  me  go  where'er  I  will,  I  hear  a  sky-born  music  still"— Emer- 
son's words  could  have  described  the  atmosphere  of  Vienna  at 
that  time.  There  was  scarcely  a  house  out  of  which  you  did  not 
hear  song,  piano,  or  violin.  My  own  family,  as  well  as  the  O/s, 
were  very  interested  in  music.  My  mother  and  sister  played  the 
piano  rather  well  and  my  older  brother  was  an  amateur  violinist 
who  won  very  favorable  reviews  after  some  public  performances. 
I  had  been  the  only  one  in  the  family  who  did  not  play  a  musical 
instrument.  But  in  my  early  twenties  I  could  not  hear  enough 
music.  Indeed  my  recollections  of  those  years  appear  intimately 
connected  with  music;  especially  those  memories  which  concern 
my  romance  with  Ella,  who  was  an  excellent  musician.  When  I 
listened  to  her  playing  a  Mozart  concerto  on  the  piano  or  singing 
a  Schubert  lied,  I  felt  as  the  Duke  did  in  Shakespeare's  play:  "If 
music  be  the  food  of  love,  play  on." 


Most  of  the  clues  which  proved  that  my  own  memories  had 
sneaked  into  my  objective  study  on  Goethe  are  to  be  found  in  the 
titles  I  had  given  to  the  chapters.  I  had  not  searched  for  them;  they 
simply  occurred  to  me.  For  that  reason,  those  personal  experiences 
secretly  found  their  way  into  the  research.  This  very  fact  shows 
convincingly  that  we  cannot  keep  secret  thoughts  to  ourselves; 
they  ooze  out  from  us  without  our  knowledge. 

Later  I  understood  why  those  hidden  memory-traces  gave  them- 
selves away  in  the  chapter  titles.  The  psychical  mechanism  of 
isolation  was  operating  here.  It  is  a  defense  mechanism  which 
separates  two  spheres  originally  belonging  together  and  isolates 
an  idea  from  the  emotions  associated  with  it.  Two  areas  of 
thought  are  thus  prevented  from  having  contact  with  each  other. 
By  putting  an  interval  in  time  or  place  between  the  two  areas  of 
ideas,  they  remain  apart.  This  isolation  mechanism  is  operating 
in  our  daily  lives,  For  instance,  we  try  to  exclude  or  eliminate 
emotional  associations  when  we  want  to  think  objectively.  To 
keep  away  personal  thoughts  from  a  scientific  and  objective  task 


THE  CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  \Z>] 

is  necessary  in  the  interest  of  logic.  By  this  isolation  the  bridge 
between  one  sphere  and  the  other  is  drawn;  there  is  no  longer 
any  connection  between  them.  I  had  written  a  psychoanalytic 
study  on  Goethe  and  nothing— or  almost  nothing— in  its  text 
showed  that  it  had  any  connection  with  my  experiences.  But  I 
had  unconsciously  given  myself  away  in  those  telltale  titles,  which 
were  set  apart  and  had  a  place  of  their  own.  By  this  unconscious 
device  of  isolating,  I  had  avoided  recognizing  that  the  two  spheres 
of  thought,  the  Sesenheim  romance  and  my  own,  came  in  contact 
with  each  other.  I  had  maintained  the  thought-avoidance  so  care- 
fully that  I  myself  had  not  recognized  the  subterranean  connec- 
tion until  ten  years  later.  The  titles  and  the  content  of  the  chap- 
ters were  thus  separated,  and  their  distance  from  each  other 
helped  to  conceal  the  fact  that  there  was  a  secret  tie  between  the 
Goethe  story  and  my  own.  What  astonished  me  most  was  that 
these  titles,  which  were  so  revealing,  were  at  the  same  time  so 
appropriate  to  the  subject;  were  so  well  in  keeping  with  the  con- 
tent of  the  chapters.  They  fitted  so  well  that  not  the  slightest 
suspicion  could  be  aroused  that  they  had  another,  personal  mean- 
ing. In  choosing  them,  I  let  hidden  memories  slip  into  my  re- 
search. In  isolating  them,  in  setting  them  apart  as  titles,  I  had 
disconnected  their  emotional  significance  from  the  objective  in- 
vestigation. At  the  same  time,  the  wording  of  the  titles  had  made 
a  significant  contribution  to  the  study. 

Take,  for  instance,  "Freundliche  Vision"  the  title  I  gave  to 
the  chapter  describing  the  mysterious  apparition  Goethe  had  seen 
when  he  rode  away  from  Friederike,  the  vision  in  which  he  had 
seen  himself  in  a  very  elegant  costume,  riding  back  to  her.  Is  the 
title  not  well  suited  to  the  content  of  that  chapter?  I  knew,  of 
course,  when  I  wrote  it  that  the  "Freundliche  Vision"  is  a  song 
by  Richard  Strauss,  a  song  I  had  heard  several  times.  I  chose  it, 
or  rather  it  occurred  to  me,  because  the  words  "Friendly  Vision" 
gave  the  real,  emotional  content  of  the  story;  but  I  did  not  then 
think  of  how  closely  this  title  was  connected  with  a  personal  ex- 
perience. I  had  not  forgotten  this  experience,  but  it  had  never 
occurred  to  me  that  it  had  its  significance  in  this  place.  The  dis- 
connection thus  amounted  to  a  distortion,  because  it  interrupted 
the  electric  current  between  the  two  emotional  areas  and  made 


128  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

its  existence  unrecognizable  not  only  to  the  reader  but  also  to 
myself. 

The  Strauss  song  has  its  place  in  my  recollections  of  the  second 
excursion  Ella  and  I  made  together.  That  was  probably  during 
the  next  summer  (1908)  and  this  time  our  destination  was  nearer 
to  Klosterneuburg:  the  little  town  of  Nussdorf,  about  two  hours 
from  Ella's  house.  We  met  near  the  Klosterneuburg  station— it 
was  again  on  a  Sunday— and  we  again  walked  slowly  on  the  high- 
way. We  had  an  early  lunch  of  goulash  and  a  glass  of  the  famous 
Nussdorfer  wine  in  a  small  restaurant  on  the  roadside.  The 
friendly  innkeeper  chatted  with  us  in  broad  Viennese  dialect 
(which  we  both  spoke)  for  a  little  while  and  then  left  us  alone.  It 
was  a  small  room,  with  a  few  tables  nicely  covered  with  white 
linen,  ready  to  make  the  Sunday  customers  welcome.  From  the  wall 
the  picture  of  our  old  Kaiser  Franz  Josef  looked  benignly  down 
on  us.  Against  the  other  wall  stood  a  piano.  I  asked  Ella  to  play. 
She  sat  down  and  played  a  Mozart  minuet.  When  I  asked  her  to 
sing,  she  was  undecided  what  she  should  choose.  "Why  not  Schu- 
bert?" I  asked.  'The  'HeidenrosleinT'  She  nodded  and  sought 
on  the  keys  for  the  first  bars.  The  next  minute,  I  heard  her  gentle 
and  expressive  voice  sing  the  well-known  lied: 

Sah  ein  Knab3  ein  Roslein  stehn, 
Roslein  auf  der  Heiden.  .  .  . 

Saw  a  boy  a  rosebud  there 

Rosebud  in  the  heather 

Tipped  with  dew  and  passing  fair, 

Swift  he  ran  to  pluck  it  there 

In  the  golden  weather. 

Rosebud  pretty, 

Rosebud  red, 

Rosebud  in  the  heather. 

Said  the  boy  "I'll  pluck  thee  now, 
Rosebud  in  the  heather!" 
Said  the  rose  "I'll  stab  thee  now, 
For  my  thorn  is  sharp,  I  trow. 
Bear  it  will  I  never." 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  12$ 

Rosebud  pretty, 

Rosebud  red, 

Rosebud  in  the  heather! 

But  the  boy,  he  broke  in  scorn, 
Tho  she  stabb'd  him  with  her  thorn 
Yet  she  died  that  summer  morn 
In  the  golden  weather. 
Rosebud  pretty, 
Rosebud  red, 
Rosebud  in  the  heather. 

Ella's  warm  voice  died  away.  We  were  both  silent  a  moment, 
but  then  I  spoke  about  the  poem.  I  described  to  Ella  how  young 
Goethe  had  met  the  famous  theologian  and  writer,  Gottfried 
Herder,  in  Strassburg,  and  how  the  friendship  with  this  older 
and  matured  man  had  amounted  to  a  kind  of  mental  revolution 
in  the  young  genius.  Herder  had  stated  that  poetry  originates  in 
the, folk  song  and  reflects  the  emotions  and  thoughts  of  the 
people.  In  contrast  to  most  German  contemporary  critics,  he 
despised  the  making  of  verses  that  imitated  the  smooth,  gallant, 
and  elegant  French  poetry.  Poems,  he  said,  should  be  born  out 
of  the  true  and  deep  feeling  of  the  average  man.  Under  his  in- 
fluence, young  Goethe,  who  had  until  then  made  playful  and 
frivolous  verses  in  the  French  manner,  began  to  compose  those 
youthful  poems  which  expressed  his  deepest  emotions  and  ex- 
periences. Young  Goethe  began  to  collect  old  folk  songs,  while 
he  wandered  around  in  Alsace,  The  " Heidenroslein"  was,  no 
doubt,  a  poetic  transformation  of  an  old  folk  song  to  which 
Goethe  had  given  a  new  shape.  Herder  published  the  "Heiden- 
roslein"  in  1773  for  the  first  time  in  his  magazine  Von  deutscher 
Art  und  Kunst.  A  stream  of  beautiful  poems,  masterpieces  like 
"Welcome  and  Leave-taking,"  the  "May  Song/'  and  others 
emerged,  as  if  a  floodgate  had  been  opened.  It  was  not  only  the 
influence  of  Herder  that  freed  the  young  poet  from  the  imitation 
of  formalistic  and  conventional  French  poetry.  He  had  fallen  in 
love  with  Friederike,  who  was  then  seventeen  years  old. 

I  told  Ella  then  and  there  the  story  of  Sesenheim,  and  tried  to 
give  her  a  vivid  picture  of  that  romance,  of  its  blissful  beginning 


IgO  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

and  its  tragic  end.  I  pointed  out  to  her  that  Friederike  was  the 
primal  image  which  lived  in  so  many  of  Goethe's  girl-figures,  and 
which  made  him  shape  the  loveliest  of  them  all,  Gretchen,  in 
Faust.  As  far  as  I  can  remember,  that  was  the  only  time  I  talked 
about  Friederike  to  her.  And  did  I  talk!  I  must  have  given  her  a 
lecture  like  a  professor  of  German  literature.  My  compulsive 
Goethe  reading  had  been  done  not  so  long  ago.  Where  was  there 
a  boy  of  twenty  who  knew  more  about  Goethe  than  I?  No  doubt, 
I  wanted  to  impress  my  girl,  to  show  off  to  her.  I  talked  learnedly 
and,  I  am  afraid,  pedantically.  I  quoted  chapter  and  verse  and 
that  literally,  because  I  advised  her  which  section  of  Truth  and 
Fiction  she  should  read  and  I  recited  Goethe's  poems  of  the  Sesen- 
heim  time  which  I  knew,  of  course,  by  heart.  I  could  give  her  the 
data  when  the  young  poet  visited  his  sweetheart  and  when  he  left 
her. 

I,  spoke  about  Goethe's  experience  with  Friederike,  without 
much  psychological  understanding,  I  am  sure;  like  a  young  man 
who  tells  his  sweetheart  about  the  romance  of  another  young  man 
one  hundred  and  eighty  years  before.  I  was  a  student  of  psychol- 
ogy, it  is  true,  but  I  heard  the  name  Sigmund  Freud  for  the  first 
time  in  a  lecture  of  the  following  year. 

"And  what  happened  to  Friederike  afterward?"  asked  Ella. 

I  told  her  what  I  knew  about  it;  that  Friederike  became  a  gen- 
erally loved  aunt  and  died  as  an  old  spinster,  perhaps  without 
having  read  the  description  of  the  Sesenheim  romance  in  Goethe's 
autobiography.  I  also  recited  the  beautiful  lines  on  her  tomb- 
stone. Ella  listened  without  interrupting  me.  After  I  had  told  her 
about  Friederike's  destiny,  she  was  silent  and  looked  thought- 
fully ahead.  What  did  she  think?  It  was  as  if  she  was  far  away  in 
her  thoughts. 

What  she  said  then— could  it  possibly  have  any  connection  with 
the  story  of  Goethe  and  Friederike  I  had  just  told  her?  "Do  you 
know  any  songs  by  Richard  Strauss?"  "No,  but  I  do  not  like  the 
man/'  I  answered.  I  was  a  bit  annoyed  because  I  felt  that  she  was 
not  interested  in  my  Goethe  story  or  did  not  appreciate  it.  Why 
had  she  dropped  the  subject  so  suddenly  and  asked  about  some- 
thing which  was  so  remote  from  it? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  at  this  time  (1908)  I  had  not  yet  heard  any 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  1J1 

musical  composition  by  Richard  Strauss,  and  I  really  did  not 
like  him.  I  knew  and  loved  only  one  of  the  contemporary  com- 
posers, Gustav  Mahler.  A  few  months  earlier,  Mahler  had  yielded 
to  the  stupid  intrigues  of  his  enemies  and  had  left  Vienna,  to  go 
to  New  York.  Like  many  young  Viennese  who  realized  that  Mah- 
ler was  a  genius,  I  felt  it  as  a  cultural  loss  that  the  loved  and 
admired  man  had  left  our  city.  Richard  Strauss  appeared  to  me  as 
Mahler's  victorious  rival.  The  public  of  Vienna  and  of  Germany 
preferred  his  operas  and  songs  to  Mahler's  symphonies.  He  re- 
ceived all  the  appreciation  and  honor  which,  in  my  opinion, 
Mahler  deserved.  I  had  been  a  passionate  "Mahlerite"  and  I  had 
felt  antagonistic  to  Strauss,  because  I  had  the  impression  that  he 
was  pushing  forward  and  strove  for  cheap  laurels. 

Ella  then  told  me  that  her  father  had  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Strauss  in  Dresden,  and  that  the  two  men  had  become  friends. 
She  herself  liked  some  of  the  songs  by  Strauss,  for  instance, 
"Freundliche  Vision."  The  friendship  of  the  composer  with  Mr. 
O.  did  not  make  me  feel  milder  toward  him.  (The  company  he 
keeps!)  And  then  we  got  into  a  real  lover's  quarrel  and  said  a  lot 
of  silly  things.  I  called  Strauss  a  poseur  and  a  "phony,"  a  money- 
grasping  man  without  conviction  and  integrity,  and  Ella  repeated 
some  of  the  stupid  gossip  she  had  heard  about  Mahler;  that  he 
was  inhuman  and  tyrannical,  and  that  he  had  many  affairs  with 
the  singers  of  the  Vienna  Opera,  whose  director  he  had  been.  We 
argued  about  the  merits  and  demerits  of  the  works  of  both  com- 
posers and  their  places  in  the  music  of  our  time.  The  funny  thing 
was  that  Ella  had  never  heard  a  composition  by  Mahler  and  I 
never  one  by  Strauss.  We  suddenly  realized  how  childish  and  silly 
our  argument  was,  and  began  to  laugh.  We  kissed  and  made  up. 

Ella  then  did  the  only  thing  which  was  reasonable  in  the  situa- 
tion. She  went  over  to  the  piano  and  started  to  play.  I  still  re- 
member how  the  quietly  floating  tune  of  "Freundliche  Vision" 
sounded  and  that  she  sang  the  words: 

Not  in  slumber  did  the  dream  arise, 

But  in  day's  broad  light  I  saw  it  all  ... 

Our  conversation,  especially  the  argument  into  which  we 
glided,  often  came  back  to  me  in  later  years.  How  did  it  start? 


15j2  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

With  my  story  of  Goethe  and  Friederike.  Later  on,  during  the 
years  of  our  marriage,  we  sometimes  talked  about  Goethe.  We 
saw  Faust  and  Tasso  together,  and  I  read  some  poems  to  Ella; 
but,  as  far  as  I  remember,  Friederike  and  the  Sesenheim  time 
were  never  again  mentioned. 

Hearing  the  ic  Heidenroslein"  had  led  to  my  talking  about 
Goethe  and  Friederike,  but  why  had  I  suggested  this  particular 
song?  Schubert  composed  six  hundred  and  three  lieder— why  just 
this  one?  He  composed  seventy-two  Goethe  poems,  and  among 
them  are  pearls  like  the  "Erlkdnig,"  "Rastlose  Liebe/'  "Wan- 
derer's Nachtlied"  "Der  Fischer"  the  "Mignon"  and  the  "Suleika" 
songs.  Yes,  he  even  composed  a  poem  of  Goethe's  from  the  Sesen- 
heim period— "Willkommen  und  Abschied"  Why  then  did  I 
wish  to  hear  the  "Heidenroslein"?  I  do  not  believe  in  accidents 
in  a  choice  like  this.  Psychoanalysis  has  convinced  me  that  there 
are  undercurrent,  unconscious  thoughts  which  determine  why 
our  mind  goes  in  one  direction  and  not  in  the  other.  When 
Goethe  wrote  the  poem,  he  had  thought,  of  course,  of  Friederike. 
The  plucking  of  the  heath  rose  is  a  symbolic  expression  for  the 
deflowering  of  a  girl.  Was  not  my  unconscious  mind  directed  to 
the  same  aim?  Did  I  not  choose  the  "Heidenroslein"  because  my 
train  of  thought  ran  along  the  same  road?  And  then  I  had  talked 
about  the  Sesenheim  time,  about  the  romance  of  the  two  young 
people,  and  of  Goethe's  leave-taking  after  he  had  fallen  in  love 
with  the  girl. 

Without  having  an  inkling  of  a  notion  that  I  thought  this,  I 
must  have  unconsciously  hinted  at  such  a  possibility  in  my  case. 
I  myself  must  have  unconsciously  played  with  the  idea  of  flight. 
There  was,  I  am  now  sure,  a  subtle  threat  in  my  telling  Ella  the 
story  of  young  Goethe  and  Friederike.  It  wasr  as  if  I  conveyed  the 
possibility  that  I  could  leave  her  as  Goethe  left  his  sweetheart 
Nothing  was  further  from  my  conscious  mind  than  such  a  possi- 
bility, but  the  logical— and  more  than  this—the  psychological 
sequence  of  our  conversation  does  not  allow  any  other  interpreta- 
tion. It  was  as  if  I  had  expressed  in  a  hidden  and  subtle  manner: 
You  see,  Goethe  left  Friederike  because  she  did  not  yield  to  his 
desires,  because  she  did  not  give  herself  to  him.  The  fact  that  I 
wanted  to  hear  the  •'' ' Heidenroslein"  and  then  told  the  story  of 


THE  CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  1$$ 

Goethe's  romance-that  Ella  and  I  were  about  the  same  age  as 
that  other  young  couple  and  in  a  similar  situation— only  points 
to  the  psychological  truth  that  the  undercurrent  of  my  talk  con- 
tained this  secret  meaning, 

Ella  had  silently  listened  to  my  story,  but  I  felt  somehow  that 
her  very  silence  expressed  disapproval  and  condemnation  of  the 
subject  of  my  tale.  You  sense  such  unspoken  emotions  in  the  at- 
mosphere. It  was  not  only  disapproval  of  young  Goethe's  attitude 
but  also  of  my  own,  because  she  must  have  unconsciously  felt 
that  his  behavior  betrayed  a  psychical  potentiality  in  me.  (But  did 
I  not— consciously,  at  least— disapprove  of  Goethe  deserting  his 
sweetheart?)  She  had  then  asked  what  had  happened  to  Frie- 
derike  afterward,  and  I  had  told  her.  Did  she  not  unconsciously 
identify  herself  with  Friederike,  compare  herself  with  Goethe's 
girl?  She  must  have  thought  of  us  two,  of  our  future  and  of  what 
would  happen  to  herself.  It  was  a  moment  in  which  the  uncon- 
scious of  one  person  spoke  to  that  of  another,  without  words  and 
beyond  words.  While  she  sat  there  quietly,  her  hands  in  her  lap, 
looking  ahead  of  her,  she  must  have  thought:  What  has  destiny 
in  store  for  me?  Will  I  be  another  Friederike? 

And  then  she  had  asked  me  whether  I  knew  any  songs  by  Rich- 
ard Strauss,  and  I  had  felt  annoyed  as  if  she  had  paid  no  atten- 
tion to  what  I  had  told  her  in  words  and  without  words.  She  had 
turned  away  from  the  subject  and  from  me,  it  seemed  then.  But 
now  when  I  look  back  at  it,  her  thinking  of  the  "Friendly  Vision" 
did  not  mean  a  withdrawal  from  the  problem,  which  we  had  not 
discussed  but  which  we  both  secretly  had  in  our  mind.  It  was  the 
continuation  of  our  theme  in  another  direction.  She  had  pursued 
her  train  of  thought,  but  it  had  led  her  to  another  station.  She 
had  turned  away  from  the  picture  of  Goethe's  desertion  and 
Friederike's  loneliness  in  her  thoughts,  but  not  from  us  two.  She 
had  been  led  to  another,  happier  image,  to  the  "Welcome 
Vision": 

Nicht  im  Schlafe  hab  ich  es  geseh'n  .  .  . 

to  the  dreamlike  song,  which  calls  up  a  friendly  vision  indeed  of  a 
young  married  couple  walking  arm  in  arm  to  a  beautiful,  cool 


1J4  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

cottage,  in  the  summer.  If  I  had  been  able  then  to  look  below 
the  surface,  to  "listen  with  the  third  ear,"  I  would  have  recog- 
nized that  Ella,  instead  of  envisioning  a  possible  future  like 
Friederike's,  had  turned  to  this  other,  more  promising  vision  be- 
fore her  mind.  She  did  not  want  to  face  the  music,  or  rather  she 
wanted  to  face  another  one,  the  tune  called  up  by  the  Strauss 
song! 

Not  in  slumber  did  the  dream  arise  .  .  . 

But  I  did  not  know  that  when  I  was  twenty.  What  did  I  know 
then  about  the  thoughts  and  the  deep  feelings  of  a  young  girl? 
I  merely  had  the  impression  that  she  wished  to  drop  the  subject 
and  had  turned  to  a  song  by  Richard  Strauss,  whom  I  did  not 
like. 

When  I  try  now  to  reconstruct  what  perhaps  went  on  in  her 
mind,  sensing  rather  than  reasoning,  when  I  now  consider  what 
was  hidden  in  her  reaction,  as  in  a  concealed  answer  to  an  un- 
spoken question,  I  can  perhaps  guess  what  she  may  have  been 
thinking.  She  rejected  the  unconscious  suggestion  hinted  at  in 
my  speaking  of  the  "Heidenroslein"  and  Friederike,  the  sugges- 
tion of  intimate  relationship,  which  the  song  indicated.  Her 
thoughts  must  then  have  gone  to  her  father,  in  whose  eyes  a  love 
affair  would  have  appeared  as  criminal.  .  .  .  She  thought  that 
her  father  was  at  the  time  on  a  journey  and  in  Dresden.  ...  He 
had  sent  her  some  songs  by  Strauss,  whom  he  knew  personally, 
from  there.  .  .  .  "The  Welcome  Vision"  is  one  of  these  songs. 
.  .  .  The  image  which  this  song  calls  up  is  of  a  young  couple,  in 
their  beautiful  garden  and  their  quiet  house.  Her  thoughts, 
which  had  repelled  the  possibility  of  a  future  like  Friederike's, 
were  attracted  by  this  other  vision  of  future  happiness. 

I  was  young,  unfeeling  and  cruel.  I  did  not  guess  what  went  on 
behind  her  clear  forehead.  If  youth  but  knew  ...  I  had  un- 
consciously interpreted  her  silence  and  her  question  about  Strauss 
as  lack  of  interest  and  withdrawal  of  affection.  At  the  same  time, 
it  amounted  to  a  rejection  of  what  was  concealed  in  my  talk.  In 
reality  it  was  as  if  I  had  said,  "I  want  you  to  become  my  mistress 
or  I  shall  leave  you,"  and  she  had  said,  "No,  I  want  to  be  mar- 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  135 

ried/'  because  that  was  what  the  "Freundliche  Vision"  uncon- 
sciously meant. 

In  the  argument  about  Strauss  and  Mahler,  the  concealed  con- 
flict between  our  views  had  been  continued.  In  striking  at  Strauss, 
I  had  hiddenly  attacked  her  father,  had  called  him  "phony"  and 
"poseur."  She  had  called  Mahler  tyrannical  and  sensual  or  even 
lecherous;  she  must  have  meant  me,  without  knowing  it.  All  my 
anger  against  Mr.  O.  must  have  broken  forth  in  displaced  aggres- 
sion against  the  composer,  who  was  his  friend.  She  had  uncon- 
sciously defended  her  father,  when  she  protected  Strauss,  and  had 
rejected  my  views  which  were  so  contrary  to  her  father's.  I  had 
insisted  that  Mr.  O.,  as  well  as  Strauss,  had  to  be  brought  down 
a  peg;  she  had  said  that  Mahler  and  I  were  conceited  and  intol- 
erant. The  quarrel  about  those  two  was  only  on  the  surface.  In 
reality  it  concerned  a  much  more  important  contrast,  one  which 
was  more  personal  and  more  vital  and  had  to  do  with  the  core  of 
our  relationship.  It  was  a  clash  of  wills  behind  the  clash  of  opin- 
ions about  two  musicians.  Not  what  we  thought  of  them,  but 
what  we  thought  of  each  other  had  a  concealed  expression  in 
this  lover's  quarrel.  It  was  a  communication  between  our  uncon- 
scious thoughts. 

I  do  not  know  how  far  the  reconstruction  attempted  here  is 
correct.  If  it  did  not  hit  the  target,  it  at  least  struck  near  home. 
It  was  really  ridiculous,  I  thought  later  on,  our  first  quarrel.  We 
had  argued  about  Mahler  and  Strauss,  of  all  things!  But  we  had 
been  reconciled  and  we  had  kissed  each  other.  All's  well  that  ends 
well. 


But  it  did  not  end  so  well.  It  was  still  early  afternoon  when  we 
left  the  inn  at  Nussdorf.  We  walked  around  in  the  little  town  and 
finally  arrived  at  a  public  dance  hall.  Its  door  was  open  and  we 
could  see  many  couples  dancing  waltzes.  I  had  danced  at  student 
balls  during  the  last  winter,  but  I  had  never  danced  with  Ella.  I 
asked  her  to  go  in  to  the  hall  with  me,  but  she  hesitated  to  enter 
the  place,  which  was  respectable  enough.  Was  a  trace  of  ill-humor 


136  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

or  injured  feeling  left  in  her?  I  took  her  arm  and  led  her  into  the 
wide  hall. 

Just  when  we  entered,  the  orchestra  began  to  play  "Roses  From 
the  South,"  a  favorite  Strauss  waltz.  We  danced  well  together  and 
we  enjoyed  it.  When  the  waltz  came  to  an  end,  the  people 
clapped  their  hands  and  forced  the  orchestra  to  strike  up  the  next 
waltz  immediately. 

"Let's  skip  this  one,  darling,"  Ella  asked.  But  I  had  my  arm 
around  her  and  the  tune  carried  me  away.  Inconsiderately  I 
insisted  that  we  dance  at  least  this  last  waltz.  In  the  middle  of  it, 
I  felt  that  Ella's  hand,  which  lay  lightly  on  my  shoulder,  had 
glided  down.  Panic-stricken,  I  looked  at  her  face,  which  seemed 
suddenly  changed.  It  appeared  swollen,  the  lips  almost  blue.  She 
fought  to  get  her  breath. 

"I  can't.  I  can't  any  more,"  she  said.  It  took  an  effort  to  say  these 
words.  It  seemed  that  she  would  fall- to  the  ground  the  next  min- 
ute. I  carried  her  to  a  neighboring  room,  where  she  sank  down 
on  a  couch.  I  was  very  frightened,  watching  her  gasp  for  breath. 
The  beloved  eyes  were  closed,  and  she  seemed  unable  to  answer 
my  worried  questions.  I  wanted  to  call  a  physician,  but  she  did 
not  allow  me  to. 

"Give  me  only  a  few  minutes.  I'll  be  all  right/'  she  said.  Slowly 
she  recovered  her  breath  and  looked  as  she  had  before  the  dance. 
She  explained  that  she  had  sometimes  had  such  attacks.  They 
lasted  only  a  few  minutes  and  had  no  bad  aftereffects.  She 
seemed  all  right  now.  I  insisted  that  she  rest  half  an  hour,  and 
she  smilingly  complied.  We  sat  there  quietly  and  listened  to  the 
orchestra,  which  played  familiar  Viennese  tunes.  When  I  asked 
her  how  she  felt,  she  seemed  in  a  good  mood,  but  I  sensed  some 
sad  undertones  in  her  gaiety.  After  some  time,  she  wished  to  take 
the  train  home.  I  took  her  to  the  station  and  saw  her  off.  Com- 
fortably installed  in  her  compartment,  she  spoke  to  me  and  blew 
me  a  furtive  kiss,  when  the  train  began  to  move. 

I  had  planned  to  stay  much  longer  with  Ella.  There  was  time 
on  my  hands,  so  I  decided  to  walk  from  Nussdorf  to  Vienna. 
Marching  along,  I  thought  of  Ella  but  I  was  not  worried  any 
more  about  her.  Her  sudden  illness  was  perhaps  due  to  the  heat 
iirthe  dance  hall  or  to  the  glass  of  wine,  because  she  never  drank 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  137 

alcohol.  It  occurred  to  me  also  that  our  argument  had  upset  her 
and  perhaps  caused  her  attack.  I  felt  guilty.  Why  had  I  hurt 
the  beloved  girl?  I  reviewed  our  conversation,  which  still  pre- 
occupied my  thoughts.  There  was  something  in  our  argument 
which  I  could  not  fathom.  .  .  .  Why,  we  had  talked  about 
Goethe  and  Friederike— what  was  there  to  get  upset  about? 

I  had  decided  to  follow  the  course  of  the  river  on  my  march 
to  Vienna.  "On  the  beautiful  blue  Danube,"  I  murmured  me- 
chanically as  I  walked  along  and  looked  at  the  waves,  which 
rolled  along  and  looked  rather  grayish  in  the  light  of  the  ap- 
proaching evening.  And  then  suddenly  verses  of  Goethe's  "To 
the  Moon"  came  to  my  mind.  I  was  not  Goethe-possessed  or 
Goethe-crazy  any  more  at  the  time,  but  our  conversation  of  this 
afternoon  had,  of  course,  brought  my  thoughts  back  to  him  again. 
I  was  speaking  the  lines  half  aloud.  To  my  own  surprise,  they 
were  verses  of  a  lost  love,  of  looking  back  at  a  happy  time  of 
romance  which  had  tragically  ended.  Walking  along  the  Danube, 
I  was  reciting: 

Echoes  murmur  once  again 
Of  days  bright  and  dour, 
Hold  me  between  joy  and  pain 
In  my  lonely  hour. 

Flow,  beloved  river,  flow! 
Joy  from  me  has  gone, 
Old  embraces  perished  so, 
Troth  that  was  undone. 

Once  I  had  the  better  part, 

Things  that  precious  be, 

And  that  haunt  the  tortured  heart 

Unforgettably. 

River,  roll  the  dale  along 
Without  pause  or  ease, 
Answering  unto  my  song 
With  thy  melodies  .  .  .* 

*  Translated  by  Ludwig  Lewisohn,  Goethe,  1949. 


138  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

Why  was  I  depressed?  It  suddenly  occurred  to  me  that  Mrs.  O. 
had  told  me  a  few  months  ago  that  Ella  had  had  rheumatic 
fever  as  a  child,  and  that  she  had  to  be  careful  not  to  overexert 
herself.  Dr.  W.,  the  family  physician  in  Klosterneuburg,  had  as- 
sured Mrs.  O.  that  Ella's  heart  functioned  almost  normally,  as 
long  as  she  was  not  subjected  to  great  physical  demands.  I 
thought  that  Ella's  indisposition  was  perhaps  due  to  a  heart  ail- 
ment, but  had  not  Mrs.  O.  told  me  that  there  was  nothing  seri- 
ously wrong  with  Ella's  heart?  Had  Ella  not  recovered  within 
a  few  minutes?  Perhaps  she  had  to  be  cautious  and  remain  aware 
of  overexertion  and  excitement.  I  argued  with  myself  that  I  was 
unduly  worried  and  that  Ella  was  basically  healthy.  I  decided  to 
dismiss  these  unfounded  scruples  and  to  think  of  more  pleasant 
things,  for  instance,  of  Ella's  and  my  future  together.  I  called 
up  her  lovable  image.  It  was  as  if  I  had  invited  her  to  accompany 
me  on  my  lonely  walk. 

When  I  came  to  the  suburbs  of  Vienna,  evening  had  already 
descended  upon  the  city.  The  streets  were  full  of  the  Sunday 
crowd,  of  people  enjoying  themselves.  Young  couples  sat  at  tables, 
on  which  wind-protected  candles  stood  in  the  open  air,  and 
listened  to  and  sang  with  the  three  fiddlers  and  the  accordion 
player.  I  still  remember  that  I  heard  the  people  sing  one  of  the 
Viennese  hit  songs  of  those  days,  and  I  remember  the  tune  and 
the  words  in  Viennese  dialect: 

*s  wird  schone  Maderl'n  geb'n 
Und  mir  wer*n  nimmer  leb'n. 

There  will  be  beautiful  girls  galore 
And  we  shall  not  live  any  more. 

A  strange  characteristic  of  the  Viennese  folk  songs  of  that  time 
-special  features  of  their  words  and  their  tunes— differentiated 
them  from  the  songs  of  other  people.  Mostly  in  waltz-measure, 
they  were  simple  and  tuneful.  Their  artistic  value  might  be  small, 
but  they  represent  Vienna  and  the  Viennese  of  that  era  so  well 
that  hearing  them  after  many  years  still  awakens  nostalgia  for  the 
past.  What  characterizes  them  is  a  mixture  of  enjoyment  of  life 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  139 

and  sentimentality.  In  the  middle  of  a  vivid  expression  of  joie 
de  vivre,  even  of  an  ecstatic  feeling,  the  thought  of  death  emerges. 
But  the  feeling  of  the  fleetingness  of  life  does  not  lead  to  gloom, 
but  functions  as  a  stimulus  to  enjoy  life,  which  is  so  short.  It  is 
a  vivid  "memento  vivere"  (Goethe's  expression).  There  is  a  per- 
manent vacillation  between  the  two  moods  and  often  enough  a 
blending  of  them.  The  one  does  not  exclude,  but  includes  the 
other.  The  thought  that  death  is  near  leads  to  all  intensification 
or  reinforcement  of  the  pleasures  of  life,  to  a  kind  of  orgiastic  "I 
should  worry'*  feeling.  It  is  stranger  still  that  this  reminder  of 
death  results  sometimes  in  a  softening  of  anxiety  and  grief,  in  a 
kind  of  sorry  humor  or  glad  sadness. 

This  special  mixture  is  typically  Viennese  and  it  is  not  re- 
stricted to  the  folk  songs.  You  will  hear  it  in  the  Viennese  dances 
by  Beethoven,  in  the  middle  of  a  movement  of  Mozart's  or  Schu- 
bert's symphonies,  in  the  scherzi  and  adagios  of  Bruckner  and 
Mahler  and  the  waltzes  of  Johann  Strauss.  Once  an  acquaintance 
visited  Schubert,  whom  he  found  composing.  "Why  do  you  al- 
ways make  such  sad  music,  Mr.  Schubert?"  asked  the  visitor.  "Do 
you  know  any  merry  one?"  answered  the  composer.* 

Yet  unalloyed  sadness  is  not  to  the  taste  of  the  Viennese.  They 
needed  a  long  time  until  they  began  to  like  the  North  German 
Brahms,  because  he  appeared  to  them  stodgy,  heavy,  and  obtuse. 
I  remember  being  told  that  one  of  Brahms's  Viennese  friends, 
the  journalist  Julius  Bauer,  used  to  tease  him:  "When  Johannes 
is  in  a  specially  good  mood,  he  composes  a  song,  'The  grave  is 
my  greatest  joy/  "  That  character  of  the  Viennese  people  impreg- 
nated their  daily  lives  and  even  pervaded  politics.  When  near  the 
end  of  World  War  I  the  united  German  and  Austrian  armies 
had  suffered  decisive  defeats,  the  Viennese  satirist  Karl  Kraus 
once  characterized  the  different  moods  in  the  two  capitals  thus: 
'In  Berlin  the  situation  is  considered  serious  but  not  desperate; 
in  Vienna,  desperate  but  not  serious."  This  is  exactly  what  so 
many  Viennese  folk  songs  express.  Death  looks  over  the  shoulder 
of  people  on  their  most  beautiful  holiday,  but  the  nearness  of  the 
end  invigorates  their  enjoyment  of  life.  This  is  the  kind  of  folk 

*  Jessica  says:  "I  am  never  merry  when  I  hear  sweet  music."  Merchant  of 
Venice  (Act  V,  scene  i). 


140  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

song  that  was  sung  in  Vienna,  sad  and  glad  at  the  same  time.  It  is 
the  same  mood  which  found  the  words: 

There  will  be  beautiful  girls  galore 
And  we  shall  not  live  any  more. 

(The  same  mood  emerges  in  the  last  movement  of  Mahler's 
Sang  of  the  Earth.)  Walking  along  and  pursued  by  the  familiar 
melody,  I  suddenly  felt  very  depressed.  Life  appeared  empty,  no 
future  was  promising  and  the  end  was  near.  Was  it  only  this 
tune  and  these  words  which  cast  a  gloomy  spell  upon  me  when 
I  walked  home  through  the  streets  in  the  evening?  A  feeling  of 
the  evanescence  of  life  and  of  the  nearness  of  death  went  with 
me.  It  was  as  if  a  shadow  had  fallen  upon  my  young  life.  There 
was  no  escape  from  this  feeling  of  impending  calamity.  Tomor- 
row was  doomsday,  so  it  seemed. 

I  tried  to  reason  with  myself,  but  I  could  not  shake  off  my  de- 
pression. Now,  from  a  distance  of  more  than  forty  years,  I  can 
well  understand  or,  rather,  I  can  now  reconstruct  what  had 
caused  my  depression.  During  the  afternoon  an  unconscious 
death  wish  against  Ella  must  have  emerged,  was  energetically 
rejected,  and  had  been  turned  against  myself.  Perhaps  the  proc- 
ess would  be  better  described  this  way:  The  slight  annoyance  I 
had  felt  in  Nussdorf  had,  in  its  continuation  into  the  realm  of 
the  unconscious,  resulted  in  a  murderous  wish:  You  should  die! 
Such  impulses,  surprisingly  emerging  from  unconscious  depths 
against  persons  near  and  dear  to  us,  accompany  our  most  tender 
and  loving  attitude  toward  these  persons.  Only  people  who  do 
not  want  to  penetrate  into  those  dark  recesses  of  the  mind,  or 
who  play  hide-and-seek  with  themselves,  deny  the  existence  of 
these  subterranean  tendencies  or  disavow  their  emotional  signifi- 
cance. 

No  doubt,  I  was  myself  one  of  those  people  because  I  had  not 
the  slightest  idea  of  what  took  place  within  me.  I  was  only  aware 
of  a  sudden  feeling  of  gloom.  The  way  to  such  an  intense  emotion 
is  well  known  to  psychoanalysts.  The  death  wish  against  Ella 
had  been  repressed  as  it  threatened  to  become  conscious.  In  its 
place  emerged  the  emotional  reaction,  dictated  by  my  affection 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  141 

for  her  and  my  guilt  feeling— death  fear  for  myself.  My  own  death 
would  be  the  only  atonement  possible  for  the  evil  wish  that  had 
occurred  to  me.  My  melancholic  mood  and  that  astonishing  feel- 
ing that  death  is  close  by  had  nothing  to  do  with  any  danger 
threatening  from  without.  Instead  my  mood  reflected  the  danger 
from  within.  When  Ella  suddenly  felt  ill,  there  must  have  been 
a  moment  of  panic,  of  intense  superstitious  fear  that  what  I  had 
thought  could  become  a  reality:  that  Ella  would  really  die.  In 
the  thought  of  death  for  myself,  fear  of  retaliation  had  hit  back 
at  me.  The  folk  song  I  had  heard  had  been  the  last  link  in  a 
chain.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  song's  melancholic  reminder  (in 
three-quarter  measure)  that  there  will  be  beautiful  girls  and  we 
shall  be  dead  is  a  reversal  of  my  thoughts.  Had  I  not  wished  that 
Ella  should  die  and  I  live  on? 

It  is  conspicuous  that  psychoanalysts,  as  far  as  I  know,  have 
not  yet  recognized  that  mental  preoccupation  with  the  problem 
of  death  is  strongest  in  our  youth.  From  puberty  until  the  early 
forties,  rather  than  later,  these  thoughts  are  prominent.  It  seems 
that  fear  of  death  then  slowly  decreases  and,  if  the  thought  oc- 
curs, has  another  character:  fear  of  dying.  The  two  emotions  have 
to  be  differentiated.  The  first,  fear  of  death,  seems  almost  a  meta- 
physical anxiety.  It  is  really  a  problem  of  an  obsessional  kind, 
namely,  thought-preoccupation  with  the  question  of  what  death 
is  and  what  it  means.  It  is  akin  to  other  problems  on  which  ob- 
sessional thinking  is  often  concentrated,  like  that  of  immortality, 
of  existence  of  the  soul,  of  a  beyond  and  of  reincarnation.  It  is 
clear  that  this  fear  of  death  is  connected  with  the  thought  of  non- 
existence,  of  the  neant,  with  the  menace  of  annihilation  and  noth- 
ingness. It  is  the  same  kind  of  mental  preoccupation,  of  mysteri- 
ous fear,  doubts,  and  questions,  that  Hamlet  puts  into  his  famous 
monologue.  It  is  not  fear  of  dying  which  frightens  him,  but 
whether  to  be  or  not  to  be,  what  dreams  may  come  in  that  sleep 
of  death.  "The  dread  of  something  after  death"  puzzles  the  young 
prince. 

The  fear  of  dying  is  psychologically  very  different  from  this 
metaphysical  fear  of  death  and  of  the  end  of  individual  existence. 
It  has  nothing  to  do  with  such  problems  as  that  of  immortality  of 
the  soul,  reincarnation,  and  so  on,  and  is  of  a  realistic  character. 


1^2  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

Man  is  afraid  of  suffering  and  suffocating,  of  the  only  real  enemy 
he  has  on  earth.  In  maturity,  especially  in  old  age,  the  fear  of 
being  dead  is  evaporated  and  only  the  fear  of  dying  remains. 
Young  people  often  risk  their  lives  as  if  they  were  not  afraid  of 
dying,  although  the  thought  of  not  living  fills  them  with  terror. 
Old  people,  on  the  other  hand,  seem  not  to  be  worried  about  not 
existing;  yes,  they  sometimes  wish  not  to  be  any  more,  not  to 
carry  on  a  life  which  has  become  burdensome.  What  they  are 
afraid  of  is  the  last  struggle.  Is  it  not  paradoxical  that  youth,  the 
time  of  life  that  is  remotest  from  death,  is  so  haunted  by  the  one 
problem,  while  old  age,  in  spite  of  its  nearness  to  death,  is  almost 
free  from  it? 

My  answer  to  this  question  is  founded  on  my  psychoanalytic 
experience  of  more  than  forty  years.  It  is,  of  course,  not  accidental 
that  this  question  emerged  in  connection  with  the  analysis  of  my 
own  preoccupation  with  the  theme  of  death,  as  described  in  this 
chapter.  I  believe  that  the  prominence  of  thoughts  about  death, 
the  brooding  and  speculation  about  death,  is  an  unconscious  re- 
action to  secret  aggressive  and  murderous  thoughts  and  impulses. 
Such  anguish  occurs  to  young,  temperamental  people  when  their 
strong  wishes  and  desires  are  frustrated.  Aggressive  impulses  then 
emerge  against  parents  and  teachers,  in  short,  persons  of  author- 
ity. Under  the  influence  of  guilt  feeling,  those  unconscious  tend- 
encies often  revert  against  oneself  and  finally  take  the  form  of 
intense  preoccupation  with  the  abstract  problem  of  death,  which 
makes  its  highly  personal  origin  unrecognizable.  What  emerge 
now  are  speculations,  doubts,  and  meditations  about  death  as 
such;  only  rarely,  about  one's  own  death.  The  intensity  of  this 
preoccupation  with  the  death  problem  corresponds  to  the  inten- 
sity of  the  drives  of  lust  and  power,  sex  and  dominance  which 
insist  on  immediate  gratification.  When  the  impulses  and  tend- 
encies toward  sex  and  ego  satisfaction  become  less  urgent,  as  in 
old  age,  wfyen  their  force  becomes  less  imperative,  then  the  fear 
of  death  as  such,  of  death  as  punishment  and  atonement,  the  pre- 
occupation with  the  death  problem  decreases.  It  is  not  accidental 
that  Hamlet's  profound  meditations  on  death  emerge  when  he 
plans  to  kill  the  King,  and  that  in  connection  with  it  even 


THE  CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  143 

reflections  and  doubts  about  "the  undiscover'd  country  from 
whose  bourn  no  traveler  returns,"  are  generalized  thoughts  about 
his  own  death  as  atonement  and  punishment  for  murder  in 
thoughts. 

When  that  sudden  sadness  hit  me,  when  gloom  and  despair 
without  any  apparent  reason  engulfed  me,  I  was  twenty  years 
old.  My  desires  were  most  urgent  and  my  impatience  when  they 
were  not  satisfied  was  great,  my  love  as  strong  as  my  hate,  my 
rage  as  immediate  as  my  tenderness.  But  also  the  severity  of  the 
inner  demands  on  myself  and  my  moral  self-condemnation  were 
not  yet  mitigated.  I  had  become  prey  to  the  moral  reaction  that 
had  set  in  after  murderous  impulses  against  my  sweetheart  had 
threatened  to  reach  the  threshold  of  conscious  thinking. 

That  evening  I  slowly  walked  through  the  streets  of  the  sub- 
urbs of  Vienna.  Having  arrived  at  home,  I  ate  dinner  with 
mother  and  sister.  I  felt  sad  and  tired  from  my  long  walk  from 
Nussdorf  to  Vienna  so  I  went  to  bed  early.  How  I  could  sleep 
when  I  was  twenty!  Whatever  disappointment,  grief,  or  misery 
the  day  had  brought  me,  I  could  quickly  fall  asleep.  Looking 
back  now,  when  sorrows  about  the  present  and  anxiety  about 
the  future  often  keep  me  awake,  I  almost  envy  the  young  man 
who  could  so  easily  fall  asleep.  That  day  I  had  been  deeply  un- 
happy before  going  to  bed.  Some  dark  power  seemed  to  reach 
out  for  me  and  clutch  me;  life  had  seemed  hopeless  and  all  lost, 
but  I— what  a  blessing!— fell  into  a  long,  uninterrupted  sleep. 

The  "pursuit  of  happiness"  is  a  butterfly  hunt.  Butterflies  can 
be  caught,  but  they  cannot  be  kept  alive  at  home  for  a  long  time. 
Happiness  is  restricted  to  hours,  if  not  to  minutes.  The  feeling 
one  has  when  one  glides  into  a  deep  sleep  marks  one  of  those 
happiest  moments.  It  does  no  credit  to  life  when  the  upshot  of 
it  is  that  happiness  in  it  can  be  attained  only  in  forgetting  it.  In  the 
end,  love  and  friendship,  fame  and  achievement  lose  their  lure 
and  a  low  voice  in  us  speaks:  "Sleep,  what  more  do  you  want?"* 

*  The  five  stanzas  of  Goethe's  "Night  Song"  end  with  these  words. 


144  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 


Psychoanalysts  of  all  countries  agree  that  long  engagements  In 
which  young  couples  decide  not  to  have  sex  relations  and  isolate 
themselves  are  psychologically  unhealthy.  Kissing  and  embracing 
cause  sexual  excitement,  and  desires  are  roused  which  cannot  be 
gratified.  Such  frustrated  excitement  is  especially  harmful  when 
this  state  lasts  many  months.  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  young 
people  in  such  a  situation  should  either  avoid  being  alone  to- 
gether for  a  long  time,  or  they  should  break  through  and  have 
sexual  intercourse. 

Take  our  case.  Here  we  were  together  almost  daily,  fair 
weather  or  foul,  alone  and  unobserved.  In  winter,  we  were  en- 
closed in  the  summerhouse,  which  was  then  boarded  up,  planked 
in  like  a  chalet,  and  dark.  We  kissed  and  embraced  each  other, 
of  course,  but  there  was  nothing  of  what  is  technically  known  to- 
day as  "heavy  petting/'  Ella  did  not  want  this  and  I  respected 
her  wishes.  Her  upbringing  had  filled  her  with  strong  sexual 
inhibitions,  but  there  must  have  been  intense  fears  and  scruples 
in  myself,  also.  And  this  went  on  for  seven  years!  What  a  waste 
of  energy,  what  a  luxurious  and,  properly  seen,  silly  effort  and 
restraint!  How  much  better  would  it  have  been  for  both  of  us 
if  we  had  broken  through!  The  harm  caused  by  permanent, 
frustrated  desire  was  so  much  more  serious  than  the  doubtful 
service  to  a  conventional,  moralistic  code.  (But  you  cannot  be 
young  and  wise.)  We  both  became  nervous  and  fidgety.  I  had  the 
impression  that  the  situation  was  tougher  and  more  difficult  for 
me  than  for  Ella;  but  who  can  say  that  his  own  view  in  such 
things  is  right? 

In  those  years,  I  considered  sexuality  as  a  kind  of  enemy  rather 
than  as  a  powerful  and  strength-giving  source  of  enjoyment.  It 
was  not  a  friendly  power,  but  an  evil  demon  against  which  one 
had  to  fight.  It  was  the  "thorn  in  the  flesh."  I  was  uncomfortable 
and  I  wanted,  not  sexual  gratification,  but  to  be  free  from  this 
persistent  stimulation.  I  wanted  to  be  able  to  work,  to  study  and 
to  write,  to  think  of  worthwhile  things,  to  achieve  something.  I 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  145 

fought  this  battle  with  myself  for  almost  three  years.  I  worked 
and  studied  like  a  slave,  and  I  tried  to  divert  my  thought  from 
the  images  which  emerged  again  and  again,  but  I  could  not  get 
rid  of  them.  Nowadays  psychoanalysts  speak  much  about  the 
"sublimation"  of  this  drive,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  the  crude 
sexual  urge  can  be  "sublimated."  Sex  has  such  a  terrific  singleness 
of  purpose.  Finally,  I  gave  up  the  fight.  I  had  a  few  brief  intima- 
cies with  different  girls,  none  of  whom  had  more  than  a  fleeting 
and  purely  physical  appeal  to  me.  I  had,  of  course,  met  the  same 
difficulties  as  other  young  men  in  similar  situations.  There  was 
the  risk  of  making  a  girl  pregnant,  the  fear  that  she  could  become 
emotionally  involved  with  me,  and  the  fear  of  venereal  disease. 
When  I  met  a  decent  girl,  and  wanted  to  "make  love"  to  her  and 
nothing  else,  she  wanted  to  be  told  that  I  loved  her.  But  I  was 
not  able  to  pretend  that  I  felt  tenderness  while  I  felt  only  sexual 
desire.  My  aim  was  so  much  more  modest;  but  without  being 
loved  no  "nice"  girl  would  be  ready  to  go  to  bed  with  me. 

After  a  few  interludes,  some  of  which  were  successful  neverthe- 
less, I  met  Vilma.  She  was  a  woman  of  (she  said)  thirty-five  years, 
and  had  become  a  widow  two  years  before.  She  was  thus  twelve 
years  older  than  I  and  she  had  a  son  who  was  exactly  ten  years 
younger  than  myself.  (Psychoanalysts  will  not  fail  to  point  out 
here,  that  Vilma,  mother  of  a  boy  and  so  much  older  than  I,  was 
a  mother-representing  figure  and  that  she  was  the  object  of  an 
unconscious  incestuous  desire.  "Elementary,  my  dear  Watson"  or 
"my  dear  Dr.  E."  or  "my  dear  Dr.  K.,"  as  the  case  might  be!)  It 
is  significant  that  my  memory  has  not  retained  the  details  of  how 
and  where  we  met.  I  still  remember  that,  shortly  afterward,  I 
made  a  pass  at  her  and  was  rejected.  A  few  weeks  later,  on  a  visit 
to  her  apartment,  I  tried  my  luck  again  and  was  even  more  ener- 
getically rejected.  After  this,  I  sat  there  silently  when,  to  my  great 
astonishment,  Vilma  gently  took  the  cigarette  from  my  hand,  sat 
suddenly  on  my  lap,  threw  her  arms  around  me,  and  kissed  me 
on  the  mouth. 

(Do  we  ever  understand  women?  Vilma  told  me  later  that  when 
she  had  rejected  me,  I  had  looked  like  a  disappointed  and  sullen 
little  boy,  with  defiant  lips.  She  said  that  she  had  then  urgently 
wished  to  kiss  me  on  these  lips!  I  am  smiling,  because  it  just 


146  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

occurs  to  me  what  a  patient  of  mine,  a  young  newly  married 
man,  told  me  the  other  day.  He  and  his  wife  were  dressing  in  the 
morning  when  the  young  woman,  standing  before  the  mirror  and 
examining  her  appearance,  asked  him,  "Do  you  love  your  el- 
bow?" My  patient,  telling  me  about  it  in  his  analytic  session, 
shouted,  "Did  you  ever  hear  such  a  silly  thing?  Do  I  love  my 
elbow!  It  is  as  fantastic  as  if  you  were  asked  whether  they  have 
fancy  dress  balls  on  Sirius.  What  is  there  to  love  or  not  to  love 
about  an  elbow?  I  am  sure  that  such  a  thought  has  never  occurred 
to  a  man  since  the  beginning  of  creation.") 

That  evening  Vilina  gave  herself  to  me,  and  we  had  an  affair 
off  and  on  for  the  following  three  years.  Vilma  was  rather  tall  and 
slim,  had  light  blond  hair,  vivacious  eyes,  and  long,  slender 
hands.  She  was  the  "sweet  little  girl/*  as  Schnitzler  has  painted 
her,  fifteen  years  after  her  first  adventure.  I  was  not  her  first  lover 
after  she  had  married,  as  I  found  out,  nor  was  I  the  last.  She  was 
not  very  intelligent  but  sly  and  shrewd.  She  had  the  cajolery  of 
a  cat  and  similar  morals.  She  lived  in  a  tiny  apartment,  kept  very 
clean,  in  the  slum  section  of  Vienna;  had  a  small  pension  left  by 
her  husband  and  earned  a  little  money  as  a  dressmaker.  She  said 
she  did  not  want  to  marry  again  because  she  did  not  wish  to 
sacrifice  her  independence.  What  attracted  her  to  me  was,  I  be- 
lieve, that  I  was  young  and  intelligent  and  perhaps  that  I  was 
rather  shy  with  women— at  least  until  after  the  first  kiss. 

Vilma  made  no  demands  on  me.  She  was  always  ready  when  I 
wanted  her,  but  the  trouble  was,  and  she  sensed  it,  that  I  did  not 
want  her  but  just  a  woman.  On  many  evenings  I  left  her  after 
a  lustful  hour,  determined  not  to  come  back;  but  a  few  evenings 
later  I  found  myself  again  on  the  trolley  car  that  led  to  her  house. 
When  I  was  there,  all  intentions  to  restrain  my  desires  evaporated 
The  swishing  of  her  skirts,  the  silken  underwear,  and  the  smooth- 
ness of  her  flesh,  the  touch  of  her  breasts,  did  things  to  the  young 
man  for  which  he  was  sorry  half  an  hour  later.  I  rarely  stayed 
more  than  an  hour  with  her,  sometimes  less,  but  she  seemed  to  be 
content  with  this.  She  was  at  first  subtly,  and  later  on  less  subtly, 
exciting. 

When  we  were  together,  I  knew,  while  she  talked  about  a  hun- 
dred inconsequential  things,  that  she  thought  of  sexual  inter- 


THE  CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  147 

course  as  much  as  I.  She  had  her  own  way  to  lead  up  to  it,  either 
by  caressing  me  while  she  sat  on  my  lap,  or  by  showing  me  her 
own  increasing  excitement.  Much  more  experienced  than  I  was, 
she  made  me  believe  that  the  sexual  initiative  was  on  my  side. 
She  preferred  the  lecherous  aspects  o£  sex  and  tried  successfully 
to  awaken  the  taste  for  it  in  me.  I  remember  an  occasion  when  I 
once  rang  the  bell  to  her  apartment  and  she  told  me,  when  she 
opened  the  door,  that  her  mother,  who  had  come  to  see  her,  was 
in  the  next  room.  I  wanted  to  leave  immediately,  but  she  led  me 
to  the  dark  bathroom  and,  while  she  talked  to  her  mother 
through  the  door,  she  half  undressed  herself.  We  had  sexual  in- 
tercourse there,  she  sitting  on  the  table  and  I  standing.  This 
situation,  she  told  me  later,  was  the  most  exciting  for  her  during 
our  affair.  She  was  not  a  lady  and  just  this  was  then  sexually 
stimulating.  It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  only  one  situation  in 
which  a  woman  can  use  four-letter,  "dirty,"  and  very  vulgar 
words:  a  few  minutes  before  the  orgasm.  The  habits  and  manners 
are  different  in  the  new  generation.  Vilma  was  not  careful  with 
her  language  in  this  direction,  also  outside  the  one  situation.  I 
still  wonder  why  it  did  not  disturb  or  sober  me  more. 

She  was,  in  so  many  directions,  the  opposite  of  Ella;  very  sen- 
sual, where  Ella  was  chaste;  mature  and  motherly,  while  Ella 
was  girlish  in  every  fiber  of  her  nature.  Vilma  gave  herself  freely, 
while  you  always  felt  a  certain  restraint  in  Ella.  Vilma  was  down- 
to-earth  in  behavior  and  language,  while  Ella  was  refined  and 
ladylike. 

Here  was,  it  seemed  to  me  at  first,  a  convenient  way  out  of  an 
emergency  situation.  If  I  could  not  have  satisfaction  with  Ella,  to 
whom  my  real  desire  went,  I  could  get  it  from  Vilma.  Here  was 
an  easygoing  relationship,  without  obligation  on  her  or  my  side, 
and  with  the  mutual  understanding  that  a  deeper  emotional  in- 
volvement or  a  permanent  tie  was  excluded.  I  had  never  said  to 
Vilma  that  I  loved  her.  Once,  in  an  outburst  of  brutal  frankness, 
I  had  even  said  that  I  often  disliked  her,  and  that  my  need  for 
her  was  a  purely  sexual  one.  After  a  few  months,  I  told  her  about 
my  love  for  Ella  and  our  clandestine  engagement,  but  she  had 
already  sensed  something  of  this  kind  and  said,  "I  always  knew  I 
would  lose  you  in  a  short  time.  Let's  make  it  beautiful  as  long  as 


148  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

it  lasts."  She  accepted  the  state  of  things,  put  up  with  my  moods 
and  inconsiderateness,  and  never  complained.  And  inconsiderate 
and  sometimes  brutal  I  was,  especially  when  she  wanted  affection 
from  mel  I  had  none  to  give  her,  but  this  was  no  reason  to  be  un- 
kind. Or  was  it? 

Did  I  feel  guilty  because  I  could  not  be  tender,  and  take  it 
out  on  her?  I  often  wondered  about  why  I  had  to  succumb  at 
least  twice  a  week  to  this  dark,  imperative  urge,  which  immedi- 
ately evaporated  after  a  release  was  reached.  Why  did  this  body 
first  appear  to  me  as  the  goal  of  my  desires  and  a  few  minutes 
later  appear  to  be  without  charm,  just  a  body  like  others?  Then 
I  saw  sharply  the  creases  on  the  neck,  the  crow's-feet  around  the 
eyes,  the  blots  and  blemishes  on  the  skin.  (With  the  sensitiveness 
and  delicacy  of  feelings  most  women  have,  Vilma  never  showed 
herself  nude  after  sexual  intercourse.)  I  knew  that  I  would  not 
have  the  same  reaction  with  Ella,  and  strangely  enough  I  some- 
times felt  resentful  against  her,  as  if  she  were  responsible  far  my 
disillusionment  in  Vilma. 

The  Jews  in  East  Galicia  have  a  strange  proverb:  "If  you  eat 
'Khaser,9  let  it  be  fat."  Khaser  is  a  Hebrew  word  and  means 
"pork."  The  proverb  proclaims:  If  you  violate  the  sacred  law, 
choose  a  fine,  fat  piece  of  the  forbidden  meat  and  enjoy  it.  In 
other  words:  When  you  do  something  that  is  forbidden,  don't  be 
a  fool;  relish  it,  get  all  the  pleasure  out  of  it.  I  knew  this  bit  of 
practical  wisdom  since  my  childhood,  but  I  was  stupid  enough 
not  to  make  it  my  own. 

In  having  the  lecherous  affair  with  Vilma,  I  "sinned"  (thus  I 
felt  then)  but  under  protest  against  that  which  drove  me  to  it.  I 
did  what  was  forbidden,  but  I  withheld  my  consent  to  it.  I  sinned 
with  a  bad  conscience,  as  if  this  made  the  forbidden  deed  less 
serious  or  less  real.  But  I  made  it  only  more  senseless.  I  do  not 
see  that  such  an  attitude  is  especially  promoting  the  salvation  of 
the  soul  or  serving  the  morals.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  psychologi- 
cally harmful— to  commit  a  forbidden  deed  and  then  feel  too 
guilty  about  it,  because  this  intense  guilt  feeling  becomes  an  un- 
conscious incentive  for  committing  the  deed  again.  My  remorse 
about  my  unfaithfulness  to  Ella  had  not  the  effect  of  making  me 
faithful.  It  only  made  me  feel  unhappy.  I  agree  with  Nietzsche, 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  149 

who  once  stated  that  feeling  remorse  about  what  one  has  done 
is  as  futile  and  stupid  as  when  a  dog  bites  into  a  stone. 

My  reason  told  me  that  I  had  reached,  if  not  an  ideal,  at  least 
a  tolerable  solution  to  the  problem  which  so  many  young  men 
have  to  face.  It  presented  itself  as  a  clear,  clean-cut  division.  One 
woman  for  the  soul,  the  other  for  the  body.  (Maupassant's  Une 
Vie,  which  I  read  then,  shows  such  a  picture.)  But  things  are  not 
as  simple  as  they  often  appear  to  our  reason,  to  which  we  some- 
times attribute  a  totalitarian  power  in  our  psychical  household. 

I  know  that  I  have  to  interrupt  the  presentation  of  my  story 
at  this  point,  to  meet  the  moral  indignation  of  my  readers. 
"What,"  they  will  say,  "here  is  a  young  man  in  love  with  and  en- 
gaged to  a  lovely  and  sweet  young  girl,  who  deeply  cares  for  him, 
and  he  has  a  back-street  sexual  affair?  How  could  he  make  his 
romance  agree  with  such  a  lecherous  adventure?  Was  he  not 
ashamed  of  leading  a  double  life?  He  confesses  to  being  in  love 
with  this  girl,  while  he  indulges  in  sexual  intercourse  with  that 
other  woman!  Is  such  a  division  psychologically  possible  and, 
above  all,  is  it  excusable?"  Let  me  first  state  that  I  told  myself 
these  very  things  and  I  condemned  myself  then  with  more  severity 
than  my  readers  are  inclined  to.  As  a  matter  of  psychological 
fact,  I  am  now  looking  back  at  the  young  man  I  was  then  with 
more  leniency  and  I  am  judging  him  with  more  clemency  than 
I  did  then.  I  understand  him  better  now  than  he  understood  him- 
self then,  when  he  was  confused  in  a  tangle  of  emotions. 

I  can  partly  explain  to  myself  what  the  emotional  situation  was, 
between  Ella  and  Vilma,  with  the  help  of  an  analogy  which  was 
taken  from  the  field  of  physics  and  which  I  transferred  to  the 
area  of  psychology:  the  analogy  with  interference.  We  all  'know 
this  expression  from  the  disturbances  which  annoy  us,  when  our 
radio  reception  is  impaired  by  electrical  causes,  undesirable  sig- 
nals, etc.  Interference  is,  however,  a  phenomenon  not  only  re- 
stricted to  sounds.  It  is  also  in  general  the  mutual  influence  of  two 
waves  or  vibrations  which  produce  certain  characteristic  phenom- 
ena. When  two  trains  of  waves  meet  (for  instance,  on  the  surface 
of  the  water),  the  result  is  under  certain  conditions  an  increased 
intensity;  under  others,  a  neutralization  or  superposition  of  the 
waves.  The  action  of  one  wave  can,  for  instance,  be  neutralized  or 


150  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

weakened  by  that  of  the  other,  or  it  can  be  twice  what  it  would 
be  without  the  other.  Such  encounter  of  waves  in  all  media  (for 
instance,  in  the  air,  the  water,  the  ether)  results  in  different  fig- 
ures, which  are  known  as  interference  patterns.  Still  photography 
and  slow-motion  pictures  can  now  give  us  an  excellent  idea  of 
what  these  various  interference  patterns  look  like. 

The  physical  term  "interference  patterns"  seems  to  me  very 
appropriate  for  the  description  of  processes  in  which  two  different 
waves  of  emotion  meet.  I  would  like  to  borrow  the  name  from 
physics  and  introduce  it  into  the  field  of  psychoanalytic  psy- 
chology, because  it  fits  so  many  emotional  phenomena.  The  visual 
character  of  the  phenomenon  and  its  plastic  nature  recommend 
the  expression  for  presenting  the  various  and  changing  pictures 
in  emotional  conflicts.  The  waves  of  different  feelings  for  Ella 
and  Vilma  fought  each  other  and  formed  some  strange  interfer- 
ence patterns. 

It  often  happened  that  I  left  Vilma  and,  on  the  way  home, 
felt  an  intense  yearning  for  Ella;  such  a  strong  urge  to  hold  her 
in  my  arms,  as  if  the  union  with  her  would  purify  me  and  sweep 
away  all  sordidness  of  my  relations  with  Vilma.  But  it  happened, 
also,  that  when  I  was  with  Ella,  I  sometimes  felt  a  sudden  urge 
to  be  with  Vilma,  to  be  engulfed  by  her  desire,  to  enjoy  her 
surrender. 

I  tried  to  "isolate"  the  one  relationship  from  the  other,  to 
drown  the  thought  of  the  one  girl  when  I  was  with  the  other.  I 
did  not  succeed,  because  the  image  of  the  one  often  appeared 
when  I  wanted  to  concentrate— in  my  thoughts  and  emotions— on 
the  other.  I  did  not  call  it  up.  It  was  uncalled  for  in  more  than 
one  sense,  but  it  emerged  against  my  will. 

There  was  also  an  attempt  to  bridge  the  abyss  between  the  two 
women,  and  to  find  something  Ella-like  in  Vilma.*  I  tried  to  im- 
agine it  was  not  she,  but  the  beloved  girl  whom  I  held  in  my 
arms.  I  forced  my  fantasy  to  call  up  this  other  image,  to  give  the 
satisfaction  a  quality  beyond  the  physical  one,  and  to  make  it 
deeper  and  more  personal.  The  reality  was  too  strong  and  I 
failed.  But  the  other  effort,  to  find  something  Vilina-like  in  Ella, 

*  We  know  the  two  mechanisms  of  isolating  and  connecting  two  different 
emotional  and  intellectual  spheres  best  from  the  study  of  neurotic  symptoms. 


THE  CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  151 

was  unsuccessful,  because  I  could  not  bring  Ella  down  from  the 
pedestal  on  which  I  had  put  her,  I  had  to  admit  to  myself  that 
there  was  a  sharply  drawn  line  of  demarcation  not  only  between 
these  two  figures,  but  also  between  the  two  emotional  areas  of 
tenderness  and  sexuality.  A  last  desperate  attempt,  to  take  a 
cynical  view,  to  persuade  myself  that  there  was  not  much  differ- 
ence between  one  woman  and  the  other  in  the  sexual  situation 
(do  you  remember  "Cover  their  face  with  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
and  it  is  the  same"?)  was  short-lived  and  vain. 

Once  I  had  decided  not  to  see  Vilma  any  more.  I  did  not  see 
her  for  two  weeks.  She  wrote  me  pleading  letters  in  which  she 
said  that  she  did  not  understand  my  behavior,  and  asked  why  I 
did  not  come,  since  she  had  done  nothing  wrong.  Later,  she  must 
have  sensed  what  my  conflict  was,  because  she  once  wrote  that 
I  should  not  think  that  I  was  unfaithful  to  Ella  when  I  visited 
her,  and  that  I  should  not  torture  myself  with  superfluous 
scruples  but  enjoy  life,  and  that  the  affair  with  her  would  not 
interfere  with  my  love  for  Ella.  Stronger  than  her  emotional 
appeal  was  her  sex  appeal.  I  returned  to  her,  to  break  with  her, 
and  returned  again  until  I  went  to  Berlin  in  1913.  I  got  some 
friendly  lines  from  her  a  few  months  later,  congratulating  me  on 
my  wedding.  Then  I  never  heard  from  her  again. 

Before  her  twenty-fourth  birthday,  the  date  when  she  came 
of  age,  Ella  told  her  father  about  us,  listened  silently  to  his  raging 
and  storming,  packed  her  things,  and  followed  me  to  Berlin, 
where  we  married.  After  seven  years  of  being  together  almost 
daily,  she  was  a  virgin  and  I  was  a  damned  fool. 


Ill 


How  FAR  we  are  from  our  own  experiences!  How  remotely  we 
live  from  this  hidden  self,  which  is  the  core  of  ourselves, 
and  which  .thinks  and  feels  and  acts  in  a  manner  quite  different 


152  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

from  how  we  consciously  are  thinking,  feeling,  and  acting!  My 
romance  with  Ella  started  when  I  was  nineteen  years  old.  My 
book  on  Goethe  was  written  when  I  had  passed  forty.  Not  before 
I  had  passed  fifty,  more  than  thirty  years  later,  did  it  dawn  upon 
me  that  there  must  be  a  subterranean  connection  between 
Goethe's  romance  in  Sesenheim,  near  Strassburg,  and  mine  in 
Klostemeuburg,  near  Vienna. 

I  never  consciously  thought  of  it  during  the  experience  (al- 
though it  must  have  been  several  times  near  the  threshold  of 
conscious  thoughts,  for  instance,  when  I  spoke  of  Goethe  and 
Friederike  to  Ella,  in  Nussdorf,  and  when  she  sang  "Heiden- 
roslein").  I  did*not  think  of  it  while  I  wrote  the  study  on  Goethe. 
I  spoke,  of  course,  about  Goethe  and  especially  about  my  com- 
pulsive Goethe  reading,  in  my  analysis,  which  was  in  1913— seven 
years  after  I  met  Ella— but  I  had  not  the  slightest  inkling  of  an 
idea  that  there  might  be  a  secret  connection  between  Sesenheim 
and  Klosterneuburg.  When  I  discovered  those  clues  in  my  own 
book,  more  than  twenty-five  years  after  my  analysis,  the  first 
notion  emerged  that  my  own  experience  was  connected  with  that 
of  young  Goethe,  by  some  invisible  threads.  But  before  this,  I 
had  not  a  drop  of  insight  into  what  happened  then  to  me  and 
in  me. 

It  would  tickle  my  vanity,  as  a  psychoanalyst,  if  I  could  truth- 
fully say  that  I  early  became  conscious  of  this  side  of  my  experi- 
ence. Since  I  do  not  want  any  embellishment  or  any  "interior  dec- 
orating" of  the  soul,  I  must  shamefully  record  the  facts.  I  am 
quite  prepared  to  accept  the  criticisms  of  "colleagues/*  who  think 
I  was  lacking  in  analytical  cleverness.  I  can  now  take  their  barbs, 
blows,  and  broadsides  imperturbably.  (My  head  is  bloody,  but 
still  unbowed.)  I  am  full  of  admiration  for  a  speed  with  which 
one  rapidly  understands  one's  own  experiences  and  those  of 
others,  but  I  have  a  suspicion  that  what  can  be  so  swiftly  and 
easily  fathomed  must  be  shallow. 

When  at  last  it  dawned  upon  me  what  had  happened  more 
than  thirty  years  ago  in  Klosterneuburg,  it  was  as  if  a  curtain 
were  slowly  pulled  up.  Finding  those  clues  in  the  Goethe  study, 
and  remembering  the  events  and  the  emotions,  was  but  prepar- 
atory work.  The  real  questions  appeared  later  on.  What  did  it 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  153 

mean  that  those  unconscious  memories  emerged  while  I  was  in- 
vestigating an  early  love  experience  of  a  poet  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago?  And  why  had  I  become  interested  in  this 
subject  now?  Why  did  my  own  memories  reveal  themselves  in 
those  telltale  titles  of  an  objective,  scientific  study?  In  accordance 
with  psychoanalytic  principles,  this  could  not  have  been  acciden- 
tal. There  must  have  been  a  connection,  in  my  unconscious 
thoughts,  between  Goethe's  experience  and  my  own. 

The  next  answer,  of  course,  would  be  that  one  experience  was 
comparable  to  the  other.  But  this  answer  is  clearly  wrong.  Goethe 
fell  in  love,  was  haunted  by  many  superstitious  fears,  and  left 
his  sweetheart  after  a  few  months.  I  waited  seven  years,  and  I 
married  my  beloved  girl-not  to  mention  the  overflow  of  the 
dissimilarities,  which  are  so  apparent.  There  are  so  many  and 
such  clear  differences  that  they  put  some  possible  similarities  into 
the  shadow. 

Something  warns  me  that  I  am  in  danger  of  making  a  rash 
judgment,  as  if  my  view  is  too  hasty.  Let  us  first  look  at  our  ages. 
When  Goethe  first  met  Friederike,  he  was  just  twenty  years  old; 
she  was  nineteen.  When  I  met  Ella,  I  was  nineteen  and  she 
seventeen.  In  both  cases  it  is  the  age  of  romance.  Goethe  was  a 
student  of  law;  I  was  a  student  of  psychology. 

There  are  a  few  similarities  in  the  external  circumstances.  The 
friend,  Weyland,  who  knew  the  Brion  family,  asked  Goethe  to 
come  with  him  to  Sesenheim.  As  Goethe  reports  in  the  tenth 
book  of  Truth  and  Fiction,  the  girls  had  asked  Weyland  about 
Goethe.  (These  two  men  usually  had  their  meals  together  in 
Strassburg.)  Weyland  and  he  rode  together  from  Strassburg  to 
Sesenheim.  There  is  a  similar  situation:  when  David  invited  me  to 
Klosterneuburg  and  we  took  the  train  there  together.  There  is, 
furthermore,  the  contrast  between  city  and  country.  Goethe  was 
born  in  Frankfurt  and  had  stayed  in  Leipzig  and  Strassburg— all 
three  big  cities.  Scenery  and  life  in  the  village  of  Sesenheim  were 
quite  different.  I  was  born  and  lived  in  Vienna.  When  I  was  with 
Ella,  in  the  garden  of  Klosterneuburg,  life  had  another  atmos- 
phere and  another  rhythm.  A  few  miles  from  Vienna— as  Sesen- 
heim was  from  Strassburg— there  was  a  different  world,  nearer  to 


154  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

nature  and  yet  not  too  remote  from  the  cultural  life  of  the 
great  city. 

There  were  specific  similarities  in  the  local  features.  Goethe 
reports,  for  instance,  there  was  a  little  wood  on  a  hill  near  the 
garden  of  the  Brions'  and  "there  was  a  cleared  place  with  benches, 
from  each  of  which  one  had  a  pretty  view  of  the  landscape.  Here 
was  the  village  and  the  steeple  of  the  church,  here  Drusenheim 
and  behind  it  the  wooded  Rhine  islands.  .  .  ."  The  young  man 
sat  there  on  a  bench  called  "Friederikens  Ruh"  (Friederike's 
rest).  From  the  garden  of  the  O/s,  you  looked  down  into  the 
village.  There  was  the  steeple  of  the  church,  here  Klosterneuburg, 
and  behind  it  the  Vienna  Wood.  We  sat  down  on  a  bench  which, 
as  Mary  told  me,  was  called  "Ella's  bench"  and  was  reserved  for 
her,  because  she  liked  to  sit  there.  In  the  Brion  family  was  an 
older  sister,  whom  Goethe  calls  Olivia,  but  who  was  really  Maria 
Salomea.  Goethe  describes  her  as  well  formed,  vivacious,  and 
rather  violent  in  temper,  while  Friederike  was  quieter  than  her 
sister.  But  this  was  exactly  the  difference  between  the  tempera- 
ments of  Mary  and  Ella. 

There  were  other  similar,  small  circumstances.  When  Goethe 
first  visited  the  family  in  Sesenheim,  Friederike  had  not  yet  come 
home  and  everybody  awaited  her.  When  I  first  visited  Kloster- 
neuburg, David,  Mary,  and  I  sat  in  the  summerhouse  waiting 
for  Ella.  Goethe  describes  Friederike  as  he  saw  her  for  the  first 
time— the  long  blond  braids,  the  clear  blue  eyes,  the  national 
Alsatian  costume,  the  round  white  skirt,  the  bodice,  and  the  black 
taffeta  apron— "Thus  she  stood  on  the  frontier  between  a  peasant 
and  a  city  girl.  The  straw  hat  hung  on  her  ann,  and  thus  I  had 
the  pleasure  to  see  and  recognize  her  at  the  first  glance  in  all  her 
loveliness  and  gracefulness." 

But  Ella  also  was  blond,  with  large  blue  eyes,  and  Goethe's 
description  of  Friederike's  appearance  fits  Ella's  splendidly.  When 
I  saw  her  the  second  time,  she  wore  an  Austrian  dirndl  dress, 
and  later  on  she  preferred  those  rustic  dresses  when  in  Klosterneu- 
burg. Friederike  played  the  piano  and  sang  Alsatian  and  Swiss 
folk  songs—again  a  similarity  to  Ella.  These  are  only  a  few  of 
them,  and  their  comparison  is  restricted  to  the  first  meeting. 
Later  on,  others  became  apparent,  as  Friederike's  tubercular  dis- 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  155 

ease  and  Ella's  heart  ailment,  similarities  in  temperament  of  the 
two  girls  and  also  of  their  two  lovers.  It  is  perhaps  sufficient  to 
enumerate  only  those  similarities  which  must  have  unconsciously 
made  an  impression  upon  me,  when  I  first  saw  Ella.  I  emphasize 
again  that  I  had  never  consciously  thought  of  a  comparison  be- 
tween the  situations,  views,  or  persons,  at  this  time  or  later. 

I  recognized  the  real  character  of  the  subterranean  connection 
between  Goethe's  experience  and  my  own  when  I  remembered 
the  story  thirty  years  later,  especially  when  I  looked  back  on  the 
first  visit  to  Klosterneuburg.  I  remembered,  namely,  what  Goethe 
said  about  the  time  immediately  preceding  the  visit  to  Sesenheim. 
What  an  idiot  I  had  been  not  to  think  of  this  in  the  first  place, 
as  it  is  so  much  more  important  than  any  real  or  imagined  simi- 
larity! The  reading  of  The  Vicar  of  Wakejield  had  made  a  strong 
impression  upon  the  young  poet.  The  Vicar  and  his  wife,  their 
older  daughter,  Olive,  beautiful  and  rather  extroverted;  and  the 
younger,  Sophie,  lovable  and  rather  introverted,  the  parson's 
house  in  rural  surroundings,  and  the  vicissitudes  of  the  family- 
all  these  things  left  vivid  traces  in  his  mind.  Goethe  himself, 
looking  back  in  his  sixtieth  year,  wrote: 

"The  work  I  mentioned  had  left  a  great  impression,  of  which 
I  myself  was  not  aware.  I  felt  in  agreement  with  that  ironic  mental 
attitude  of  Goldsmith,  which  soars  above  things,  above  luck  and  un- 
happiness,  good  and  evil,  life  and  death,  and  thus  arrives  at  the 
possession  of  a  truly  poetic  world  ...  In  no  case  could  I  have 
expected  to  be  transported  very  soon  from  this  fiction  world  into 
a  similar,  real  one." 

What  Goethe  here  alludes  to  is,  of  course,  the  excursion  to 
Sesenheim.  When  he  saw  himself  with  the  pastor,  Brion,  and  his 
wife,  with  Olivia  and  Friederike,  he  became  more  and  more 
aware  of  the  resemblance  of  the  Alsatian  family  to  the  Vicar's. 
"My  astonishment,  about  seeing  myself  really  in  the  Wakefield 
family,  was  beyond  description."  It  seemed  that  here  were  doubles 
of  those  figures  in  the  Goldsmith  novel.  The  conversation  at 
table  seemed  even  to  enlarge  the  appearance  of  the  family  cirde 
and  of  its  environment.  "As  the  same  profession  and  the  same 
situation  everywhere,  wherever  they  appear,  produce  similar,  if 
not  the  same  effects,  several  issues  were  discussed,  several  things 


156  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

happened  similar  to  what  had  already  taken  place  in  the  Wake- 
field  family." 

But  this  impression  was  not  only  Goethe's.  His  friend,  Wey- 
land,  who  had  introduced  him  to  the  Brion  family,  had  realized 
it  before  Goethe.  When  the  two  young  men  were  alone  in  the 
guest  room,  Weyland  prided  himself  on  having  surprised  his 
friend  with  the  resemblance  of  this  family  to  the  Primroses. 
"Really,"  said  Weyland,  "the  story  is  quite  the  same.  This  family 
can  very  well  be  compared  with  that,  and  you  in  your  disguise 
can  take  over  the  role  of  Mr.  Burchell."  Weyland  alluded  to  the 
villain  in  Goldsmith's  novel,  the  young  man  who  seduces  the 
Vicar's  daughter. 

Young  Goethe  is  not  only  aware  of  all  these  similarities,  but 
also  of  the  unconscious  potentiality  in  himself  of  playing  a  role 
in  Friederike's  life  similar  to  Burchell's  in  Sophie's.  He  sensed 
in  himself  the  psychical  possibility  of  seducing  and  deserting 
Friederike.  He  gave  the  most  wonderful  plastic  presentation  of 
this  potential  destiny,  later  on,  in  the  tragedy  of  Faust  and 
Gretchen.  No  doubt  it  is  possible  that  Goethe  flirted  with  the 
idea  of  reliving  the  story  of  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  as  the  French 
writer  Brion  says,  "de  vivre  un  roman  de  Goldsmith"  For  the 
reader  of  Truth  and  Fiction  who  can  read  between  the  lines,  it 
is  clear  how  strong  this  temptation  must  have  been  in  the  fantasy 
of  the  young  poet. 

All  this  was,  of  course,  very  well  known  to  me.  It  had  even  oc- 
cupied my  thoughts  a  short  time  ago.  Yet  such  knowledge  was, 
so  to  speak,  on  another  level  from  my  own  experience,  was  sep- 
arated from  it  by  an  impenetrable  emotional  wall  of  isolation. 
Otherwise,  how  was  it  possible  that  for  more  than  three  decades, 
I  had  remained  unaware  of  it;  that  I  had  wanted  to  relive  a 
romance  of  Goethe's?  When  David  told  me  about  Ella  and  Mary, 
their  cottage  and  garden  in  Klosterneuburg,  and  we  went  to- 
gether to  the  village,  I  must  have  unconsciously  thought  of  Wey- 
land, Goethe,  and  Sesenheim.  So  many  things  there  reminded  me 
of  the  idyl  in  Alsace,  and  all  was  emotionally  prepared  for  the 
romance,  as  in  the  case  of  Goethe.  Without  having  the  faintest 
notion  of  it,  I  must  have  identified  myself  with  him,  as  he  de- 
scribed himself  at  this  visit  at  Sesenheim.  I  saw  everything  and 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  157 

everybody  with  his  eyes,  and  compared  Mary  with  Olivia,  Ella 
with  Friederike  herself. 

It  was  less  than  a  year  before  that  I  had  been  absorbed  in 
thoughts  of  Goethe's  Sesenhcim  tale,  and  my  compulsive  study 
of  his  works  and  life  had  reminded  me  again  and  again  of 
Friederike,  in  these  last  months.  I  had  reread  the  story  of  the 
young  poet  who  had  fallen  in  love  with  the  gentle  girl,  and  had 
been  greatly  moved  by  it.  I  was  then  near  Goethe's  age.  What 
young  man  would  not  have  wished  to  love  and  be  loved  as  he 
was  and  as  he  had  described  it?  And  then  all  seemed  to  fit,  as  if 
it  were  a  repetition  of  the  Sesenheim  story.  If  it  did  not  fit,  I 
unconsciously  adapted  it  to  Goethe's  tale.  I  must  have  uncon- 
sciously compared  his  disguise  as  a  poor  candidate  of  theology 
with  the  secrecy  of  my  visits  to  Mrs.  O/s  garden.  I  can  remember 
a  characteristic  feature,  which  shows  how  near  the  thought  of 
Goethe  was  to  the  threshold  of  the  conscious  surface  and  that  it 
was,  nevertheless,  prevented  by  strong  inner  powers  from  break- 
ing through  to  this  level.  I  still  remember  that  in  my  first  letter 
to  Ella  I  compared  life  in  Vienna  with  that  in  Klosterneuburg, 
and  I  wrote  that  the  great  city  appeared  to  me  so  empty.  Com- 
pare this  with  a  passage  from  the  letter  young  Goethe  wrote  to 
Friederike,  after  he  returned  from  Sesenheim  to  Strassburg.  "You 
would  not  believe  that  the  noise  of  the  city  would  grate  on  my 
ears  after  your  sweet  country  joys.  Certainly,  Ma'mselle,  Strass- 
burg never  seemed  so  empty  as  now."  (I  said,  of  course,  "Fraulein 
Ella/'  instead  of  "Ma'mselle"!)  It  is  clear  that  I  must  have  uncon- 
sciously thought  of  Goethe's  letter. 

There  was,  however,  a  decisive  difference  and  it  explains  from 
a  psychological  point  of  view  why  the  story  of  Sesenheim,  so  well 
known  to  me  in  all  its  features,  remained  so  long  isolated  from 
my  own  experience;  why  the  threads  did  not  become  transparent 
to  me.  I  was  in  love  with  Goethe,  but  my  admiration  for  him  was 
accompanied  by  strong  resistance.  I  was,  so  to  speak,  his  most 
recalcitrant  reverer.  And  among  the  things  I  minded  and  resented 
in  Goethe  then  was  his  behavior  toward  Friederike*  How  could 
he,  who  loved  her  so  dearly,  desert  her  so  cruelly?  With  my  wish 
to  find  a  girl  as  lovely  and  charming  as  Friederike  must  have 
emerged  a  decision  that  I  would  never  leave  such  a  precious 


THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

sweetheart.  I  would  marry  her  and  stay  with  her  until  "death  do 
us  part/'  It  became  clear  to  me  that  I  must  have  repressed  any 
thought  of  deserting  Ella.  This  very  thought  interrupted  the  con- 
nection between  his  story  and  my  romance  and  isolated  the  one 
from  the  other. 

I  recognized,  so  late  in  life,  what  had  taken  place  so  early  in 
It:  that  the  unconscious  wish  to  experience  something  like  Goethe 
in  Sesenheim  was  an  important  factor  in  the  genesis  of  my  love, 
and  that  a  subterranean  resistance  against  the  behavior  of  the 
young  genius  had  contributed  to  my  course  of  actions  and  my 
train  of  thoughts.  There  must  have  been  many  times  when  the 
temptation  to  desert  Ella  emerged  in  my  unconscious  thoughts. 
But  when  those  thoughts  threatened  to  become  conscious,  I 
drowned  them  immediately.  After  that  excursion  to  Nussdorf, 
there  were,  I  am  sure,  doubts  about  Ella's  heart  ailment,  fears 
about  the  influence  of  her  illness  on  our  future  common  life. 
But  I  was  one  and  twenty.  .  .  .  And  I  was  unconsciously  not  as 
sure  of  my  destination,  nor  as  aware  of  the  deeper  needs  of  my 
nature,  as  Goethe  was  of  his  at  the  same  age. 

Looking  back  at  this  phase  of  my  life,  I  am  astonished  at  how 
great  the  influence  of  literature,  especially  of  the  great  poets— as 
Goethe— was  then  on  the  lives  of  us  young  men.  They  not  only 
prepared  us  for  our  experiences;  they  helped  to  shape  them  and 
to  give  them  a  certain  development.  We  young  men  were  not  at 
all  aware  of  this  substructure  of  the  house  we  then  lived  in. 

I  wonder  whether  literature  will  have  a  similar  influence  on 
the  life  of  future  generations.  Fiction  and  poetry  seem  to  decrease 
in  their  social  function  and  certainly  in  their  pattern-giving  value 
for  romance,  which  is  as  great  an  achievement  of  imagination  as 
poetry.  Will  it  not  degenerate,  if  it  is  not  nourished  by  appropri- 
ate food?  But  one  need  not  be  worried  about  the  future  gen- 
*eratiom.  Even  if  poets  should  become  extinct  and  all  great  writ- 
ing were  to  disappear,  other  means  would  give  food  for  romantic 
*emodons,  and  would  help  to  promote  the  birth  of  love.  Future 
generations  will  perhaps  .  .  .  But  here  let  me  tell  about  my 
.grandchild  Loretta  when  she  was  three  years  old.  The  little  girl 
-was  left  alone  in  the  room  and  played  with  her  dolls,  while  the 
rradio  was  turned  on  and  a  crooner  sang.  Suddenly,  she  came 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  159 

running  into  the  kitchen  to  her  mother,  pointed  to  the  radio, 
and  said  quite  excitedly,  "He  says  he  loves  me  so!" 


When  I  now  look  back  at  the  years  of  my  own  romance  at  Kloster- 
neuburg,  which  is  here  compared  with  Goethe's  stay  in  Sesen- 
heim,  it  seems  there  were  an  abundance  of  obsessional  fears, 
doubts,  and  ideas  such  as  Goethe  felt.  But  the  picture  which  pre- 
sents itself  to  memory  is  neither  distinct  nor  fixed.  It  is  elusive 
and  kaleidoscopic.  While  I  know  that  I  had  then  many  obses- 
sional thoughts,  quite  similar  in  character  to  those  I  later  ana- 
lyzed in  Goethe,  none  of  them  becomes  clear  enough  to  be 
focused. 

In  this  emergency  of  a  psychologist  facing  wide  gaps  in  his 
recollections,  memory,  which  has  failed  me,  gets  an  unexpected 
welcome  support.  In  the  paper,  "On  the  Effects  of  Unconscious 
Death  Wishes,"  written  in  1913  and  anonymously  published  in 
1914, 1  tried  to  analyze  some  of  those  obsessional  fears  and  doubts, 
those  oracles  and  superstitious  beliefs.  This  article  speaks  of  cer- 
tain obsessional  thoughts,  which  occurred  to  the  writer  lately, 
and  reports  some  events  which  happened  only  the  other  day.  In 
other  words,  the  compulsive  and  obsessive  doubts  and  fears  were 
almost  present  ones;  were  looked  at  and  observed  when  they  were 
new  and  fresh  in  my  memory. 

Reading  this  paper,  I  am  meeting  an  unknown  young  man  of 
twenty-four  years.  Was  I  this,  really?  No  doubt,  here  is  the  un- 
known piece  of  a  half-forgotten  self,  in  cold  print;  its  identity 
with  myself  now  cannot  be  denied.  But  it  seems,  at  first,  as  if 
this  was  a  report  about  the  thoughts  of  a  stranger.  In  reality,  it 
is  only  an  I  from  which  I  became  estranged.  Yet,  I  remember  the 
young  man,  his  moods  and  his  crises,  very  well,  as  I  read  this  ana- 
lytic paper  in  which  he  tried  to  give  an  account  of  some  strange 
emotional  phenomena  of  his  own.  Not  only  the  authenticity  of 
the  self-observation  and  the  identity  of  the  observer  are  ascer- 
tained. It  is  also  clear  that  these  obsessional  thoughts  and  fears 


l6o  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

are  those  which  preoccupied  my  mind  at  the  time.  They  are  the 
special  obsessions  for  which  I  was  hunting  in  my  memory. 

Here  is  the  report  which  I  shall  translate,  omitting  many 
points.  "The  girl  whom  I  want  to  marry  became  seriously  ill  and 
I  visited  her  in  N.  I  had  planned  to  return  on  a  certain  train 
from  N.  to  Vienna.  I  departed,  almost  too  late,  on  my  way  to  the 
station,  which  is  about  half  an  hour  distant  from  the  cottage  of 
Dora's  parents."  (Out  of  reasons  of  discretion,  I  had  called  the 
village  N.  instead  of  Klosterneuburg,  and  had  given  Ella  the 
name  of  Dora,  in  this  paper.)  "During  my  march  to  the  station, 
my  thoughts  were,  as  is  understandable,  occupied  with  the  illness 
of  Dora,  which  made  me  very  worried.  Suddenly,  the  following 
thought  emerged:  //  /  do  not  walk  now  to  my  sister  in  K.,  Dora 
will  die.  This  thought  became,  by  and  by,  so  obsessive  that  I 
turned  around  when  I  was  near  the  station  N.,  in  order  to  walk 
over  to  K,  (three-quarters  of  an  hour  distant  from  N.)  where  my 
sister  spent  the  summer  weeks."  (My  sister,  Margaret,  spent  the 
summer  in  the  village  of  Klosterneuburg-Weidling.)  I  tried,  in 
vain,  to  argue  with  myself  and  to  convince  myself  that  the  thought 
was  absurd.  I  was,  nevertheless,  afraid  that  the  calamity  would 
happen,  if  I  did  not  follow  the  mysterious  warning.  In  trying  to 
find  out  what  deeper  motives  should  have  propelled  me  to  visit 
my  sister,  I  remembered  a  note  I  had  received  from  her  a  few 
days  before.  Having  arrived  at  home,  I  reread  it.  This  is  its 
content: 

Dear  Theodor: 

I  forgot  to  tell  you  that  we  have  to  light  Jahrzeit  on  June 
28th.  If  you  want  it,  I  shall  also  light  a  candle  for  you;  but  come 
then  on  -Friday,  so  that  you  are  present  at  the  lighting.  If  you 
do  not  come,  I  shall  assume  that  you  "light"  for  yourself.  Please 
go  to  the  synagogue,  also. 

Kisses, 

Margaret 

PJS.  Would  you  not  once  go  to  the  cemetery? 

Let  me  first  explain  here  that  Jahrzeit  is  the  name  of  a  religious 
ceremony  of  the  Jews,  who  light  wax  candles  on  the  anniversary 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  l6l 

of  the  death  of  their  nearest  relatives.  I  had  not  been  to  a  syna- 
gogue, and  had  not  performed  any  religious  ceremonies  for  many 
years  now.  I  considered  myself  an  infidel  Jew,  but  I  had  not  inter- 
fered with  the  religious  beliefs  of  my  sister  Margaret.  To  please 
her,  I  had  been  present  before  at  the  ceremony  of  lighting  the 
candles  at  the  anniversaries  of  the  deaths  of  our  parents.  Her 
letter  had  irked  me,  because  I  did  not  like  to  be  told  what  I 
should  do.  Especially  the  postscript  had  given  me  reason  to  feel 
cross-tempered.  My  sister  considered  regular  visits  to  the  graves 
of  our  parents  a  duty.  I  sometimes  had  had  arguments  with  her, 
in  which  I  insisted  on  the  view  that  true  piety  does  not  mean  to 
visit  the  graves  of  our  dear  dead,  but  to  live  in  a  way  which  gives 
honor  to  their  memory.  I  had  said  to  her,  "That  our  parents  did 
not  live  in  vain  is  shown  through  our  existence.  That  they  did 
not  die  in  vain  should  be  shown  by  our  way  of  living." 

I  had  been  determined  not  to  go  to  Margaret  on  this  day,  but 
my  decision  was  now  overthrown  by  my  obsessional  thought.  It 
showed  that  I  had  attributed  a  real  significance  to  the  lighting  of 
the  candles  on  the  anniversary  of  my  father's  death,  against  my 
conviction  that  the  ceremony  had  symbolic  meaning  only.  Fol- 
lowing this  train  of  thoughts,  we  arrive  at  a  first  correction  of 
the  text  of  my  obsession-thought.  In  the  shape  in  which  the  obses- 
sional impulse  first  emerged,  a  connecting  link  is  missing,  which 
contains  the  most  important  fact  and  which  can  now  be  recon- 
structed and  inserted  into  the  train  of  thoughts.  The  complete 
text  of  my  obsessive  thought  or  fear  is  thus:  //  I  do  not  go  to 
Weidling  and  if  I  do  not  honor  the  memory  of  my  father,  by 
"lighting"  Ella  will  die.  This  reconstruction  of  the  original  text 
appeared,  of  course,  in  the  published  paper.  Why  was  it  that  this 
intermediate  part— and,  with  it,  the  real  reason  of  my  visit  to  my 
sister— was  left  out? 

That  can  be  psychologically  explained  by  the  situation  in  which 
I  found  myself,  and  by  the  events  just  before  the  obsessional  fear 
emerged.  I  have  told  how  I  could  not  see  Ella  at  her  house,  even 
when  her  tyrannical  father  was  not  present.  There  was  the  aunt, 
who  was  the  executor  of  his  will  and  of  his  severe  prohibitions, 
and  even  his  wife,  who  had  only  reluctantly  allowed  us  to  meet 
in  the  garden.  I  could  not  see  the  beloved  girl,  who  was  now 


l62  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

seriously  ill.  Her  mother  came  into  the  garden  to  tell  me  news 
about  Ella's  illness.  My  exasperation  at  this  abnormal  situation 
and  my  fury  against  Mr.  O.  increased.  At  this  visit  in  Klosterneu- 
burg  (Mr.  O.  was  absent)  I  could  not  control  myself  any  longer. 
I  gave  sharp  expression  to  my  indignation  and  to  my  rage,  when 
I  spoke  to  Mrs.  O.  My  hostile  attitude  to  Mr.  O.  was  now  intensi- 
fied on  account  of  Ella's  illness,  because  I  made  him  responsible 
for  its  aggravation.  He  should  have  called  another  physician,  as 
the  first  symptoms  of  her  illness  appeared,  not  just  Dr.  W.,  the 
doctor  from  Klosterneuburg  (whom  I  consciously  appreciated),  but 
the  best  specialist  for  heart  diseases,  Professor  C.,  in  Vienna.  I 
accused  Mr.  O.  in  my  thoughts;  he  spent  plenty  of  money  for  his 
private  pleasures  on  his  journeys,  but  he  was  saving  when  the 
life  of  his  daughter  was  at  stake.  How  nonsensical  and  unjustified 
these  accusations  were  can  be  realized  from  the  fact  that  Mr.  O. 
was  on  a  trip  and  knew  nothing  of  Ella's  illness  at  this  time.  My 
excitement  was  increased  by  my  fear  that  he  was  expected  to 
return  in  the  next  few  days;  that  I  could  then  not  even  get  any 
news  about  Ella's  state  of  health,  and  that  I  would  be  tor- 
tured by  uncertainty  and  worries. 

I  told  Mrs.  O.  that  if  her  husband  were  not  half  crazy  I  could 
visit  Ella  in  his  presence  and  could  see  with  my  own  eyes  how 
she  was.  It  was  inexcusably  rude  and  I  had  offended  the  good 
woman.  In  this  same  conversation,  she  had  reproached  me  for 
trying  to  estrange  Ella  from  her  father.  She  had  added  that  such 
a  way  of  acting  was  sinful.  "Don't  you  know,"  she  had  said,  "that 
the  Bible  says;  'Thou  shalt  love  thy  father  and  thy  mother?" 
"The  Holy  Scripture  says  nothing  of  this  kind,"  I  had  replied, 
"because  love  cannot  be  ordered.  It  says  only,  'Honor  thy  father 
and  thy  mother.'  And  even  this  you  could  only  do  when  they 
deserve  it." 

All  these  thoughts  must  have  echoed  in  me,  on  my  way  back 
from  the  O/s  cottage  in  Klosterneuburg  to  the  station.  They  must 
have  been  the  soil  from  which  suddenly  my  obsessional  thoughts 
sprang.  From  Ella's  father,  Mr.  O.,  runs  a  subterranean  thread  to 
thoughts  of  my  own  father,  who  had  died  a  few  years  ago,  and  to 
the  commandment  to  honor  one's  father.  On  the  way,  my 
thoughts  must  have  met  with  the  remembrance  of  my  sister's 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  l6$ 

note,  admonishing  me  to  light  the  candles  at  the  anniversary  of 
Father's  death,  to  honor  his  memory  in  a  religious  sense.  And 
now,  from  the  emotional  underground  of  a  religious  belief  I  had 
thought  I  had  overcome  long  ago,  emerged  the  mysterious  order 
to  go  to  my  sister  and  to  light  the  candle  in  memory  of  Father. 
With  this  command  was  connected  the  menace  that  the  person 
dearest  to  me  would  die  if  I  did  not  fulfill  my  religious  duty,  or  i£ 
I  failed  to  honor  his  memory. 

The  student  of  human  emotions,  who  is  familiar  with  the  psy- 
choanalytic insights  into  unconscious  processes,  will  here  recog- 
nize that  two  inescapable  conclusions  are  to  be  drawn  from  my 
obsessional  thoughts.  The  first  concerns  the  unconscious  connec- 
tion in  my  thoughts  between  Mr.  O.  and  my  own  father. 

In  an  earlier  chapter,  I  pointed  out  that  Mr.  O.  appeared  to» 
me  in  every  way  as  the  opposite  of  my  father,  when  I  was  a  small 
boy.  He  was  elegant,  yes,  even  a  dandy;  my  father  was  neatly  but 
poorly  dressed  and  did  not  pay  much  attention  to  his  appearance. 
He  could,  of  course,  not  afford  to  be  elegant.  But  I  doubt  if  he- 
would  have  dressed  stylishly,  if  he  had  the  means  for  it.  He  was- 
poor  and  Mr,  O.  appeared,  at  least  to  us,  wealthy  and  lived  on  a 
high  standard,  compared  with  that  of  our  family.  My  father  was- 
an  agnostic  Jew,  who  scarcely  kept  any  religious  ritual,  but  had 
a  deep  feeling  of  emotionally  belonging  to  the  Jewish  people.. 
Mr.  O.  was,  at  least  in  his  creed,  a  Catholic  and  an  anti-Semite. 
He  appeared  to  us  children  as  cruel,  not  only  because  we  became 
aware  that  he  was  a  tyrant  in  his  own  family,  but  also  because  he 
went  hunting— that  he  killed  deer  and  hare.  When  accidentally 
the  door  to  his  apartment  was  opened  and  we  children  glanced 
into  the  hall,  we  saw  big  stuffed  heads  of  deer,  antelope,  and  bear 
on  the  wall,  besides  a  whole  collection  of  rifles  and  other  arms. 
The  impression  that  this  made  on  us  was  a  mixture  of  fear  and 
admiration,  a  kind  of  distasteful  respect.  My  father  was  gentle. 
Nothing  could  be  less  connected  with  his  figure,  in  our  thoughts 
or  emotions,  than  cruelty  or  the  idea  that  he  would  kill  animals 
for  pleasure. 

In  spite  of  these  and  many  other  features,  which  let  Mr.  O. 
appear  as  the  opposite  of  my  father,  there  was,  in  the  production 
of  my  obsessive  fear,  a  clearly  discernible  line  of  thoughts,  which 


164  .       THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

led  from  Mr.  O.  to  my  father.  In  that  conversation  with  Mrs.  O., 
did  not  the  theme  of  honoring  one's  father  appear?  Was  it  not 
continued  in  my  thoughts  until  it  emerged  in  the  form  of  a 
command,  to  light  the  candle  for  him?  Here,  toward  Mr.  O.,  I  was 
full  of  hatred.  I  declined  to  honor  a  father  who,  in  my  view,  did 
not  deserve  the  name.  There,  toward  my  father,  the  urge  to  honor 
his  memory  had  emerged,  not  only  as  a  duty,  but  as  an  order. 
Toward  the  one,  I  had  very  conscious  murderous  thoughts  and 
evil  wishes;  toward  the  other,  my  own  father,  I  had  affectionate  and 
respectful  feelings.  According  to  all  experiences  we  analysts  make 
in  our  practice,  we  are  led  to  a  conclusion.  I  must  have  split  the 
image  of  the  original  father-figure  unconsciously  into  two  parts, 
in  such  a  way  that  all  tender  feelings  were  turned  to  my  own 
father,  while  all  hostile  tendencies  were  directed  against  Mr.  O. 
But  both  of  these  contradictory  feelings  and  impulses  were  once, 
in  childhood,  directed  to  my  father  and  formed  the  main  emo- 
tional trends  of  an  attitude  which  psychoanalysis  calls  ambiv- 
alence. In  a  typical  manner,  that  what  was  once  united  in  a 
single  emotional  attitude,  toward  one  person  who  was  loved  and 
hated  at  the  same  time,  appeared  now  divided  and  was  allotted 
to  two  figures,  who  formed  a  contrast  in  my  thoughts.  The  same 
distortion,  by  division,  operates,  for  instance,  in  the  fairy  tale  of 
"Hansel  and  Gretel,"  in  which  the  good  mother  is  contrasted  with 
the  witch,  who  wants  to  kill  the  children.  It  is  the  same  mecha- 
nism of  splitting,  which  allows  the  great  writers  and  poets  to 
shape  figures  like  Antonio  and  Shylock,  Prospero  and  Caliban, 
King  Henry  and  Falstaff— contrasting  figures  to  whom  they  at- 
tribute emotions  that  contradict  each  other  in  the  poet  himself. 
When  Goethe  felt  that 

.  .  .  two  souls  contend 

In  me  and  both  souls  strive  for  masterdom, 

Which  from  the  other  shall  the  sceptre  rend 

he  personified  the  one  striving  in  the  figure  of  Faust,  the  other  in 
Mephisto,  the  one  in  Tasso,  the  other  in  Antonio.  To  my  knowl- 
edge, no  analyst  nor  any  Shakespeare  commentator  has  yet 
pointed  out  that  King  Henry  IV  and  Sir  John  present  the  two 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  165 

aspects  of  one  figure.  That  the  two  persons  are,  so  to  speak,  per- 
sonifications of  emotional  potentialities  of  each  other,  becomes 
psychologically  transparent,  in  reading  the  delightful  scene  (Part 
I,  scene  4),  in  which  Falstaff  playfully  acts  the  part  of  the  King 
and  speaks  about  Falstaff.  The  charm  of  the  scene  is  even  height- 
ened, when  later  on  the  prince  takes  over  the  role  of  his  father 
judging  himself  and  Sir  John:  a  forecast  of  his  own  future. 

The  evil  wishes  against  Mr.  O.  form  a  great  part  of  the  under- 
ground out  of  which  the  obsessive  thoughts  emerged.  When  you 
consider  its  text,  you  will  realize  that  there  is  a  conflict  implied 
between  the  duty  to  my  father  and  my  love  for  Ella.  This  conflict 
appears  in  the  obsessional  fear  already  as  an  emotional  measure 
of  protection.  I  have  to  light  the  memory-candle.  Otherwise,  Ella 
will  die.  Traced  back  to  the  original  form,  the  connection  be- 
tween the  two  parts  must  mean:  If  I  do  not  go  to  Weidling  to 
do  honor  to  my  father,  he  will  take  revenge  on  me  by  letting  my 
sweetheart  die.  Such  expectations  of  impending  calamity  are 
typical  emotions  of  obsessive  neurotics.  These  fears  emerge  as 
emotional  reactions  against  unconscious  aggressive  and  rebellious 
wishes.  I  shall  be  punished  for  them,  either  by  dying  myself  or 
by  the  death  of  persons  very  dear  to  me.  Otherwise  put,  I  am 
afraid,  because  I  have  unconsciously  wished  death  to  my  father, 
and  he  could  wreak  his  vengeance  for  it  by  letting  my  beloved 
girl  die.  This  must  be  the  real  origin  of  the  unconscious  obsessive 
thought.  In  the  later  form,  we  already  meet  with  a  measure  of 
protection  against  this  magical  threat.  I  must  do  him  (or  his  mem- 
ory) honor.  I  must  show  him  affection  and  respect.  Then  he  will 
be  reconciled  with  me  and  will  not  deprive  me  of  my  love.  The 
obsessional  thought  or  the  magical  threat  emerges  in  the  shape 
so  characteristic  of  this  way  of  morbid  thinking,  in  the  form  of 
an  if-sentence,  which  announces  a  certain  action  or  the  perform- 
ance of  a  certain  duty  and  threatens  calamity,  perdition,  or 
death,  if  the  order  or  prohibition  is  not  obeyed.  //  /  do  not  go  to 
Weidling  and  if  I  do  not  light  the  candle,  Ella  will  die.  The  re- 
ligious ceremony  has  thus  the  character  of  an  atonement,  of  a 
petition  of  pardon  for  my  unconscious  death  wishes  against  my 
father. 


l66  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

Is  it  not  astonishing  that  the  memory  of  my  father  is  connected, 
in  my  thoughts,  with  Ella's  illness,  although  my  father  could  not 
yet  know  anything  of  my  relationship  with  her?  The  unconscious 
supposition  is,  of  course,  the  superstitious  belief  that  my  dead 
father  knows  all  about  my  bad  wishes  against  him,  and  also  about 
my  desire  to  atone  for  them.  I  remind  the  reader  of  a  previous 
chapter  in  which  my  obsessive  fear  is  described,  that  my  dead 
father  would  punish  me  for  my  sexual  indulgence,  by  venereal 
disease  and  death. 

But  the  situation  out  of  which  the  original  obsessive  thought 
sprang  had  nothing  to  do  with  my  father,  but  with  Ella's  father, 
Mr.  O.  His  wife  had  reminded  me,  in  that  conversation,  of  the 
duty  to  honor  one's  father.  My  thoughts  had  really  taken  their 
point  of  departure  from  my  lack  of  respect,  my  dislike  for,  and 
my  death  wishes  against  Mr.  O.,  and  had  led  to  honor  to  be  given 
to  my  own  father,  only  later  on.  The  "day-remnant,"  the  actual 
intermediate  thought,  was  of  the  letter  from  my  sister,  admonish- 
ing me  to  light  the  candle  in  my  father's  memory.  We  have  thus  to 
reconstruct  a  primal  form  of  the  obsessional  fear,  which  remained 
entirely  unconscious  and  which  does  not  concern  my  father  but 
Ella's  father.  This  unconscious  text  of  the  fear  could  be  formu- 
lated thus:  //  /  do  not  honor  Mr.  O.,  Ella  will  die.  We  meet  here 
again  with  traces  of  a  secret  or  unconscious  identification  of  Mr. 
O.  and  my  father,  two  persons  who  are  not  only  sharply  different, 
in  my  conscious  thoughts  and  feelings,  but  appear  also  as  oppo- 
sites— the  one  hated,  the  other  loved.  We  were  thus  led  to  assume 
that  both  feelings  were  originally  present  toward  the  one  father- 
figure,  from  which  Mr.  O.  was  later  split  off  as  my  prospective 
father-in-law.  The  hostile  and  aggressive  feelings  against  my 
father  originated  in  the  prehistoric  years  of  my  childhood,  and 
were  later  on  displaced  to  this  father-substitute.* 

*  The  analysts  will  recognize  that  the  case  of  obsessional  thinking  presented 
here  confirms  the  analogy  which  Freud  has  shown  between  compulsive  actions 
and  religious  ceremonial  (Gesammelte  Schriften,  Vol.  X).  As  I  already  pointed 
out  in  that  paper  published  in  1914,  this  is  striking,  because  the  content  of 
the  obsessional  thought  is  just  a  religious  ceremony,  and  allows  tracing  back 
to  the  same  psychical  mechanisms  of  defense  or  protection.  Lighting  the 
candle  has  the  unconscious  meaning  of  a  sacrifice  to  my  father  and  should 
prevent  him  from  punishing  me  for  my  unconscious  death  wishes  against  him. 
It  is  significant  that  this  very  ceremony  confirms  the  result  of  my  wish:  Father 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  167 

Nobody  who  knows  the  complicated  nature  and  the  overde- 
termination  of  psychical  processes  will  be  astonished  at  the  fact 
that,  in  the  analysis  of  my  obsessional  thought,  other  emotions 
also  appeared  responsible  for  the  formation  of  its  text.  It  was 
already  mentioned  that  one  of  the  main  reasons  for  my  hatred  of 
Mr.  O.  was  his  violent  anti-Semitism,  which  had  taken  the  most 
absurd  forms  in  the  last  years.  (Remember,  that  was  the  time  a 
certain  young  man,  called  Hitler,  grew  up  in  Vienna.) 


I  myself  am  astonished  that  I  recognized  the  psychological 
meaning  of  my  obsessional  thinking  so  early,  as  a  young  man  of 
twenty-five  years,  before  I  had  been  in  analysis. 

The  anonymous  writer  of  that  self-analytical  report  gives  an- 
other instance  of  an  obsessional  idea  which  emerged  in  these  days 
of  worry  for  Ella.  Returning  home  one  evening,  I  had  the 
thought:  //  /  chat  with  Miss  Daisy  tonight,  Ella  will  die.  Daisy  is 
the  daughter  of  my  landlady,  who  had  the  friendly  habit  of  com- 
ing into  my  room  on  some  evenings  to  chat  with  me,  which  I, 
consciously  at  least,  considered  as  an  unwelcome  interruption  of 
my  work.  Immediately  after  the  obsessive  thought  occurred  to  me, 
I  had  the  impulse  to  lock  the  door  of  my  room:  in  a  literal  sense, 
a  measure  of  protection.  Self-analysis,  in  this  case,  did  not  take  its 
point  of  departure  from  this  thought,  but  from  the  preceding 
feeling  of  jealousy,  which  had  tortured  me.  This  impulse  was  not 
only  entirely  unjustified,  considering  Ella's  affection  for  me  and 
her  character,  which  I  now  knew  for  several  years.  It  was  the 
more  absurd,  since  I  knew  that  Ella  just  now  was  in  bed,  seriously 
ill,  being  taken  care  of  by  her  parents. 

Self-analysis  and  analysis  of  others  has  since  made  me  realize 
that  one  of  the  unconscious  roots  of  jealousy  is  the  inner  per- 
ception of  one's  own  erotic  temptation.  This  unconscious  aware- 

is  dead.  This  compulsive  action  is  psychologically  analogous  to  the  origin  of 
sacrifice  in  all  religion.  Freud  remarks  that  the  significance  of  the  sacrifice  is 
"that  it  gives  satisfaction  to  the  father,  for  the  insult  inflicted  on  him,  in  the 
very  action  which  continues  the  memory  of  the  terrible  deed"  (Totem 
and  Tabu). 


168  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 


ness  of  one's  own  sexual  attraction  is  then  projected  to  the  love 
object,  in  a  mechanism  of  rejection.  It  is  as  if  I  had  refused  to 
acknowledge  that  I  was  attracted  to  Daisy.  It  can  be  expressed  in 
a  formula:  No,  I  do  not  feel  attracted  to  another  girl,  but  she, 
Ella,  is  attracted  to  another  man. 

Analysis  of  the  obsessive  connection  I  had  made  in  my  thoughts 
between  my  conversations  with  Daisy  and  Ella's  condition  leads 
to  the  original  text  of  my  idea.  One  arrives  at  it,  when  one  fills 
in  the  gaps  which  made  the  unconscious  meaning  of  the  thought 
unrecognizable:  tf  I  chat  with  Daisy  tonight  and  feel  attracted  to 
her,  Ella  will  die.  That  means,  of  course,  that  I  had  unconsciously 
felt  attracted  to  Daisy,  who  consciously  did  not  appeal  to  me.  The 
fear,  the  meaning  of  which  is  distorted  by  ellipsis  and  omission 
of  intermediate  thoughts,  is:  If  7  become  unfaithful  with  Daisy, 
Ella  will  die.  The  unconscious  death  wish,  which  can  easily  be 
guessed  beneath  the  obsessional  thought,  is  directed  against  Ella, 
because  the  loyalty  I  owed  her  prevented  me  from  responding  to 
the  advances  that  Daisy  had  made  toward  me.  Unconsciously  I 
wanted  Ella  removed,  in  order  to  have  sex  relations  with  Daisy.  A 
memory,  emerging  then,  helped  me  to  reconstruct  the  missing 
links  in  the  text  of  my  obsessional  thoughts. 

Some  time  ago,  Ella  had  told  me  about  a  dream  of  hers  in 
which  she  caught  me  being  intimate  with  another  woman,  and 
cried  to  me,  "I  can't  stand  this.  I  am  going  to  drown  myself  in 
the  Danube."  My  thought  must  have  referred  to  the  memory  of 
this  dream.  Reconstructed,  its  text  means:  //  7  chat  tonight  with 
Daisy  and  feel  attracted  to  her  (so  that  I  would  like  to  become 
unfaithful  to  Ella)  Ella  will  be  so  grieved  about  it  that  she  will 
commit  suicide.  This  thought  occurred  to  me  in  a  form  distorted 
by  omissions,  so  that  it  appeared  as  absurd  or  senseless.  The  emo- 
tion connected  with  it  was,  of  course,  fear  that  Ella  could  die. 
The  impulse  to  lock  my  door  should  thus,  in  a  magical  sense, 
protect  the  life  of  the  beloved  girl.  In  reality,  the  measure  of  de- 
fense in  barring  the  entrance  has  a  secret  meaning:  To  protect 
myself  from  my  own  drives,  to  defend  myself  against  the  sexual 
temptation. 

This  is,  in  general,  the  sense  of  obsessional  measures  of  pro- 
tection. They  should  secure  the  patients  against  the  power  of 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN   ANALYST  169 

their  own  hostile  and  sexual  wishes,  which  were  felt  to  be  incom- 
patible with  the  demands  of  civilization  and  the  moral  claims 
of  the  individual,  and  are  therefore  rejected  from  within.  Fear 
of  retribution  and  punishment,  threatening  the  life  of  the  patient, 
or  of  persons  dear  to  him,  explains  the  intensity  of  the  reaction 
against  those  unconscious  impulses. 

The  anonymous  report  continues  here,  in  analyzing  another 
obsessional  idea,  which  had  its  roots  in  the  same  emotional  under- 
ground of  jealousy.  It  is  now  difficult  for  me  to  recall  this  strong 
emotion  of  those  days;  but  I  was  as  jealous  as  the  Moor  of  Venice. 
As  with  him,  even  the  thought  that  my  bride  had  deceived  her 
own  father  for  me  was  used  as  a  reason  for  suspecting  her,  and 
worked  upon  me  in  those  months  as  a  slow  but  sure  poison.  After 
Ella's  recovery,  we  paid  a  visit  to  my  sister,  who  spent  the  summer 
nearby.  We  met  there  a  few  girls  and  boys.  In  a  discussion  which 
developed  about  a  general  question  (I  do  not  remember  which 
one,  and  the  report  does  not  specify),  the  view  I  expressed  was 
at  variance  with  that  of  the  company.  My  main  antagonist  was 
a  young  man  who  was  very  popular  with  the  girls.  In  my  antip- 
athy toward  him  and  forced  by  his  good  arguments,  I  led  the 
expression  of  my  opinion  to  extreme  and  even  paradoxical  con- 
sequences, so  that  all  those  present  turned  against  me.  Ella,  also, 
rejected  my  attitude.  It  appeared  to  me  that  in  her  criticism  of 
my  opinion  there  was  a  certain  sharp  note  and  an  inclination  to- 
ward my  antagonist.  Upset,  I  dropped  the  subject  of  our  discus- 
sion, with  a  wisecrack  that  was  as  cheap  at  is  was  farfetched. 

When  evening  came,  I  accompanied  Ella  from  my  sister's  back 
to  Klosterneuburg.  On  the  way,  I  tried  to  show  her  which  (con- 
sciously unjustified)  conclusions  I  had  drawn  in  my  exaggerated 
jealousy.  The  shortest  way  back  from  Klosterneuburg,  where 
Ella  lived,  to  Weidling,  where  my  sister  spent  the  summer,  was 
a  road  over  a  hill,  called  "the  black  cross/1  because  a  marble 
monument  was  erected  there,  in  the  form  of  a  cross.  It  had  be- 
come dark  by  now.  I  felt  a  certain  uneasiness,  better  known  as 
fear,  in  walking  on  the  path  through  the  wood  to  the  "black 
cross"  because,  at  the  time,  there  was  some  talk  of  a  murder  hav- 
ing been  committed  there.  I  thought  that  I  would  choose  a  more 
frequented  detour  through  the  city  of  Klosterneuburg.  After  I 


170  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

had  said  goodbye  to  Ella,  I  walked  back  to  Klosterneuburg. 
When,  on  this  way,  I  approached  the  spot  where  the  ascent  to 
the  hill  departed,  a  kind  of  obsessive  command  suddenly  occurred 
to  me:  You  must  walk  the  path  across  the  "black  cross."  I  tried, 
in  vain,  to  defend  myself  and  to  resist  this  mysterious  order,  ap- 
pealing to  my  increasing  anxiety.  In  the  middle  of  the  road,  it 
became  clear  to  me  that  this  compulsive  action  presented  a  kind 
of  trial  or  test,  in  the  manner  of  medieval  ordeals,  in  which  God 
was  supposed  to  determine  the  guilt  or  innocence  of  an  accused 
person.  The  difference  between  ordeals  and  oracles  was,  in  many 
cases  (as  in  this  one)  often  not  very  clear.  The  text  of  this  obses- 
sional ordeal,  as  it  appeared  now,  was  namely:  //  Ella  remains 
faithful  to  me,  nothing  will  happen  to  me  on  this  way.  If  she  be- 
comes unfaithful,  I  shall  be  attacked  and  killed.  I  tried  to  over- 
come the  reluctance  against  this  second  part  of  the  alternative 
and  against  my  anxiety,  by  telling  myself  that  life  without  Ella's 
loyalty  would  be  worthless  to  me  anyhow. 

The  uncertain  and  displaceable  character  of  the  doubts  operat- 
ing in  such  thoughts  will  be  made  clear  by  the  fact  that  the  alter- 
native was  modified  by  me,  after  I  had  made  half  of  the  way.  As 
no  sign  of  an  attack  showed  up,  I  imagined  the  following  pos- 
sibility, to  determine  the  ordeal:  //  I  do  not  run  into  anyone  of 
whom  I  feel  afraid,  Ella  will  remain  faithfuL  In  the  opposite 
case,  she  will  become  unfaithful  Accident  decided  that,  near  the 
end  of  the  path,  I  should  run  into  a  man  with  whom  I  almost  col- 
lided in  the  darkness.  In  a  second,  the  alternative  changed  in  my 
mind:  //  he  now  gets  rude,  Ella  will  become  unfaithful.  If  he  does 
not  make  a  fuss,  Ella  will  remain  loyal.  The  man  politely  apolo- 
gized and  walked  on.  Strangely  enough,  the  collision  with  him  had 
the  result  of  removing  my  anxiety  for  the  rest  of  the  dark  road. 
Now  a  new  doubt  appeared.  Did  I  feel  afraid  when  I  ran  into 
him?  Was  the  man  suspicious  of  me?  Might  I  conceive  of  the 
collision  as  a  decision  of  the  ordeal?  It  seems  I  could  not  acqui- 
esce to  the  favorable  turn  given  by  destiny.  The  doubt  in  obses- 
sional states  is  really  the  emotional  area  of  infinite  possibilities. 

Self-analysis  later  on  led  me  back  to  the  discussion  scene,  which 
had  been  the  origin  of  my  present  doubts.  In  the  moment  when 
Ella  had  turned  against  me  and  had  approved  of  the  view  of  my 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  171 

antagonist,  I  had  felt  a  violent,  fleeting  impulse,  which  could 
have  been  translated  in  words  like:  I  hate  her  so  that  I  could 
strangle  her.  The  intensity  of  this  impulse  is,  of  course,  only 
explicable  because  I  had  conceived  of  Ella's  words  as  an  expres- 
sion of  her  inclination  to  become  unfaithful  to  me.  My  com- 
pulsive action,  or  rather  the  thought  (I  must  walk  the  path  over 
the  "black  cross")  presents  itself  as  a  self-punishment  for  my 
murderous  impulse.  Because  I  wanted  to  kill  Ella,  I  myself  should 
be  killed.  Tooth  for  tooth,  eye  for  eye,  the  oldest  unwritten  law 
of  retaliation— of  talion— operates  here  in  the  unconscious.  Also, 
in  the  substitution  of  my  obsessive  thought,  my  own  death  is 
connected  with  a  possible  infidelity  of  Ella,  as  the  death  wish 
against  her  first  emerged  when  I  thought  that  she  could  turn  her 
affection  to  somebody  else.  Many  of  such  obsessive  ordeals  or 
oracles  that  appear  in  the  thoughts  of  neurotic  patients  are  emo- 
tional reaction-formations  against  aggressive  wishes,  and  are  orig- 
inated in  tendencies  of  self-punishment. 

Not  all  unconscious  oracles  which  were  formed  in  my  mind  at 
the  time  were  of  such  a  somber  character.  That  old  article  of  mine 
mentions  one  which  brings  my  mother  back  to  my  thoughts.  In 
an  early  chapter  of  this  book,  I  reported  that  she  had  correctly 
guessed  the  object  of  my  puppy-love,  at  a  time  when  no  one 
could  know  of  my  secret  and  mute  courtship.  When,  almost  ten 
years  later,  I  saw  Ella  again  and  told  my  mother  about  it,  she 
seemed  to  be  inclined  to  look  upon  my  feelings  as  a  passing  in- 
fatuation of  a  nineteen-year-old  boy.  Later  on,  she  realized  that 
it  was  more  serious,  and  began  to  be  interested  in  Ella.  My  girl, 
accompanied  by  Mrs.  O.,  paid  a  visit  to  my  mother,  who  told  me 
that  she  liked  her  well.  It  appeared  to  me  full  of  significance  that 
she  kissed  Ella  cordially,  when  saying  goodbye. 

My  motfier  was  then  already  ill.  After  my  father's  death,  she 
had  lost  most  of  her  interests  in  life  and  did  not  leave  the  house. 
She  lived  only  for  her  memories  and  caring  for  Margaret  and 
myself.  We  saw  her  often  in  tears.  She  was  mostly  melancholic. 
When  she  became  ill  and  the  physician  tried  to  give  her  en- 
couragement, she  answered  him,  "I  am  not  afraid  of  death,  Doc- 
tor. I  am  tired  of  life  and  would  like  to  die."  A  few  days  before 


172  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

she  passed  away,  she  seemed  to  emerge  from  her  melancholic 
mood  and  was  inclined  to  speak  to  us. 

Just  before  she  fell  into  a  coma,  which  lasted  a  few  days,  I  had 
a  conversation  with  her  of  which  I  frequently  thought  later 
on,  as  if  it  had  been  pregnant  with  many  presentiments.  It  was 
a  heart-to-heart  talk,  although  much  of  it  was  spoken  haltingly 
on  both  our  parts.  We  spoke  of  my  brother  Otto,  who,  fifteen 
years  older  than  myself,  was  destined  to  lead  an  embittered  and 
joyless  bachelor's  life,  which  found  its  end  when  the  Nazis  killed 
him  in  Vienna.  My  mother  said  that  he  was  often  depressed,  and 
she  searched  for  reasons  for  his  "nervousness."  She  said,  "He  will 
never  make  up  his  mind  whether  to  marry  a  girl  or  not.  Maybe 
he  has  already  missed  the  bus."  I  asked,  "Do  you  think  I  should 
marry  early?"  and  she  answered,  "Yes,  and  you  have  already 
found  the  right  girl."  There  were  resemblances  in  the  appearance 
and  in  character  of  Ella  to  my  mother,  and  they  had  uncon- 
sciously determined  the  choice  of  my  love  object.  Now,  the  ap- 
proval of  my  mother  had  been  added  to  my  decision. 

On  the  forenoon  of  the  day  of  her  death— she  was  in  a  coma— I 
sat  near  her  bed  and  looked  at  her  face,  which  seemed  peaceful. 
The  bell  rang.  It  was  Ella,  with  her  mother.  This  visit  appeared 
to  me  as  a  hint  of  destiny.  My  mother  passed  gently  away,  and  to 
console  me  for  the  terrible  loss,  a  successor  was  here,  to  whom  I 
could  give  my  tenderness.  I  was  then  twenty-two  years  old. 

This  is,  it  seems,  the  appropriate  place  to  insert  the  letter  Freud 
wrote  me  at  the  time: 

Karlsbad,  August  5,  1914 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  cordially  congratulate  you  on  your  wedding  which  has  taken  place  in 
the  middle  of  the  turmoil  of  war.  I  certainly  expect  that  you  have  found 
the  right  companion  in  Miss  Ella.  I  hope  that  the  neurotic  phase  of  your 
life  that  has  lost  its  meaning  has  now  collapsed,  and  that  your  talent  will 
freely  work  for  the  sake  of  our  science  and  for  yourself.  You  know  that 
you  can  rely  on  me. 

Cordially  yours, 

Freud 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  173 


I  had  gone  to  Berlin  to  finish  my  analytic  training,  but  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  made  it  necessary  to  return  to  Vienna.  There 
our  son  Arthur  was  born,  in  1915,  and  in  the  same  year  I  was 
called  to  the  army.  I  wish  to  insert  here  another  of  Freud's  letters: 

Vienna,  May  25,  1915 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Returned  from  my  Whitsun  trip,  I  shall  not  postpone  any  longer 
cordial  congratulation  to  your  dear  wife  on  the  happy  occasion  of  the 
birth  of  your  son.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  ahead  of  us  lie  better  times  than 
those  in  which  we  are  aging. 

I  am  very  pleased  also  to  see  that  at  the  same  time  your  production  in 
other  fields  has  advanced  remarkably.  Your  scientific  achievements  also 
deserve  to  experience  better  times. 

I  ask  you  to  receive  the  enclosure  as  my  contribution  to  the  care  of 
the  dear  confined  one. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

I  had  luck  and  could  stay  almost  a  year  with  my  family  while  I 
attended  officer's  training  courses  in  Vienna.  All  this  time,  and 
later  also,  on  the  front  line  in  Montenegro  and  Italy,  I  continued 
my  analytic  research  and  wrote  articles  and  books. 

The  year  1916  saw  me  as  a  young  lieutenant  in  the  Austrian 
army  corps,  which  marched  into  Montenegro,  the  Balkan  state  on 
the  southern  frontier  of  Austria-Hungary.  Our  army  had  taken 
Cetinje,  the  capital  of  this  country  of  the  black  mountains,  and 
had  occupied  the  greatest  part  of  its  interior.  The  Austrians  are 
a  belligerent  people.  Their  history  is  full  of  wars.  There  are  only 
few  nations  in  Europe  which  can  boast  that  they  have  not  de- 
feated the  Austrian  army.  I  do  not  want  to  speak  of  war,  but  of 
a  personal  experience  in  wrartime. 

We  were  then  in  Kolasin,  a  small  town  in  the  southern  part  of 
Montenegro,  near  the  Albanian  frontier.  The  resistance  of  the 
freedom-loving  and  brave  mountain  tribes  had  been  broken  only 


174  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

superficially.  There  were  numerous  ambushes  and  attacks  upon 
small  bodies  of  our  troops,  and  behind  every  rock  could  be  the 
enemy  who  knew  how  to  shoot  and  to  hit.  A  severe  martial  law, 
threatening  the  death  penalty,  had  forbidden  the  natives  to 
possess  arms. 

I  once  had  to  be  present  when  an  old  man  and  his  son,  who 
had  been  held  as  hostages,  were  hanged  in  the  marketplace.  The 
old  man  walked  with  dignity  to  the  gallows,  and  said  a  few  words 
before  the  rope  was  put  around  his  neck.  I  understood  only  the 
first  word,  bredjen  (brothers),  but  I  was  told,  later  on,  that  he 
said  he  was  glad  to  die  for  the  freedom  of  his  people.  The  grim 
spectacle  made  a  strong  impression  on  me,  and  I  have  been  a  de- 
cided opponent  of  the  death  penalty  ever  since.  To  this  day,  I 
cannot  see  that  the  government,  any  government,  should  be  al- 
lowed to  commit  that  lawful  murder,  misnamed  capital  punish- 
ment. 

About  a  month  later,  I  was  ordered  to  function  as  defense  at- 
torney before  the  court  of  martial  law.  While  the  judge  advocate 
and  the  prosecuting  officers  were  lawyers  in  the  Austrian  army, 
the  task  of  the  defense  attorney  was,  at  the  time,  often  assigned  to 
officers  whose  civilian  profession  was  not  law.  The  defendant  was 
a  Montenegrin  boy  of  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  who  had  been 
caught  with  a  rifle  in  his  hands  by  our  soldiers.  He  had  killed  a 
man,  apparently  without  any  motive.  The  boy  belonged  to  an 
Albanian  tribe,  to  one  of  those  half-civilized,  black-haired  people 
who  have  preserved  primitive  organization  and  law.  In  those 
mountains,  the  law  of  the  clan  is  as  alive  today  as  in  old  times. 
In  the  frequent  feuds  between  the  clans,  the  revenge  for  murder 
is  murder  of  a  member  of  the  hostile  clan.  The  boy  I  had  to  plead 
for  had  been  an  avenger.  A  relative  of  his  had  been  shot,  and  he 
had  killed  a  man  of  the  clan  on  which  revenge  had  to  be  taken. 
I  spoke  with  the  boy  through  an  interpreter.  He  could  not  under- 
stand how  what  he  had  done  could  be  considered  a  crime.  He  had 
only  obeyed  the  law  of  his  tribe. 

As  his  defense  attorney,  I  tried  to  put  all  legal  arguments  at  my 
disposal  before  the  court.  They  were  poor.  I  then  attempted  to 
make  the  deed  of  my  client  psychologically  understandable.  I 
pleaded  before  the  officers  who  formed  the  court  that  the  morals 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  175 

of  these  half-civilized  mountaineers  were  different  from  ours,  and 
that  we  had  no  right  to  judge  others  according  to  our  ethical 
standard.  I  reminded  the  officers  of  the  Holy  Scripture.  When,  in 
ancient  Israel,  a  member  of  one  of  the  tribes  was  killed,  it  was 
not  said,  "The  blood  of  one  of  us  is  shed,"  but  "Our  blood  has 
been  shed/'  because  the  common  blood  is  the  most  important 
tie  between  the  members  of  a  clan. 

While  speaking,  I  felt  under  high  emotional  pressure.  It  was  as 
if  I  were  responsible  for  the  boy's  life,  as  if  his  fate  depended 
on  my  pleading.  I  was  never  a  good  orator,  but  if  I  was  ever 
eloquent,  it  was  on  this  occasion.  Dark  motives  identified  me  with 
this  boy  who  had  committed  murder  and  thought  himself  justi- 
fied in  killing  a  man.  No  doubt,  under  the  influence  of  these 
secret  emotions,  my  pleading  itself  became  emotional.  I  asked 
the  court  to  consider  that  the  reputation  of  our  army,  in  this 
hostile  country,  would  be  helped  if  we  did  not  obey  the  letter  of 
the  martial  law,  but  tempered  justice  with  mercy. 

At  this  point,  out  of  the  deep  well  of  forgetfulness,  suddenly 
some  verses  occurred  to  me,  verses  which  Goethe  had  once  written 
into  a  copy  of  his  drama  Iphigenia  in  Tauris.  I  finished  my  pas- 
sionate plea  for  the  boy's  life,  asking  my  comrades  that  their 
verdict  should  be  in  the  spirit  of  these  words  of  Goethe: 

Go  forth,  and  everywhere  proclaim 
Whatever  crime  man  does  commit, 
Man's  spirit  does  atone  for  it. 

The  officers  were  not  unaffected  by  my  plea.  The  judge  advo- 
cate came  over  to  me,  shook  my  hand,  and  said,  "You  have  spoken 
beautifully/'  but  he  added  in  a  low  voice,  "You  know  that  our 
hands  are  tied  by  orders/'  "Why  then  the  farce  of  this  court?"  I 
replied,  full  of  indignation. 

While  the  court  deliberated,  I  walked  around  and  smoked,  to 
steady  my  nerves.  Behind  the  lines  of  our  soldiers,  who  stood 
guard  with  fixed  bayonets,  the  place  was  crowded  with  people: 
men,  women,  and  children.  I  heard  the  buzzing  of  their  voices, 
and  I  was  aware  that  they  talked  about  me.  But  their  glances 
were  not  unfriendly.  While  I  looked  at  these  barren,  bleak  moun- 


176  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

tains  around  the  town,  I  thought  that  we  were  surrounded  by  a 
determined  enemy,  hidden  in  these  small  houses  and  behind 
those  rocks. 

I  asked  myself,  much  later,  why  I  had  been  so  stirred  up  when  I 
pleaded  for  the  boy,  why  I  had  trembled  and  been  aware  of  my 
inner  tension,  of  heart  beating,  and  of  short  breath.  It  became 
clear  to  me  that  my  unconscious  identification  with  the  boy  was 
founded  on  the  fact  that  I,  myself,  had  committed  a  thought- 
murder  when  I  was  about  his  age,  that  he  represented  an  emo- 
tional potentiality  of  myself.  He  had  done  what  I  had  only 
thought.  If  they  took  him  to  the  gallows,  I  could  say,  "There,  but 
for  the  grace  of  God,  goes  Theodor  Reik." 

I  wondered  why  at  the  end  of  my  speech  those  verses  of 
Goethe's  that  I  had  forgotten  suddenly  emerged.  They  were  cer- 
tainly out  of  place  in  the  sober,  rnatter-of-fact  atmosphere  of  a 
court  of  martial  law.  No  doubt,  I  had  pleaded  for  myself.  The 
verses  that  had  welled  up  in  me  were  remembered  from  the  time 
of  my  compulsive  Goethe  reading  after  my  father's  death  when  I 
was  the  same  age  as  this  boy.  And  Goethe's  drama  puts  the 
murderer,  Orestes,  on  the  stage  and  shows  how  his  terrible  deed 
is  atoned.  And  did  not  the  old  Goethe  say  there  was  no  crime  he 
thought  himself  incapable  of  committing? 

I  was  called  into  the  courtroom.  The  sentence  was  death  by 
hanging.  I  went  to  my  room  and  fell  asleep.  Later  something  pro- 
pelled me  to  see  the  boy  in  jail.  The  verdict  had  been  made 
known  to  him,  and  he  had  been  visited  by  the  Greek  Orthodox 
priest.  When  I  came  into  the  prison,  I  found  him  sitting  on  the 
bench,  his  head  sunk  to  his  breast.  I  called  him  by  name  and  put 
my  hand  gently  on  his  black-haired  head.  He  looked  up,  recog- 
nized me,  and  stammered  only,  "Gospodine  .  .  .  Gospodine!" 
("Oh,  sir!")  And  then  he  was  on  his  knees  before  me,  kissing  my 
hand.  They  hung  him  two  hours  later. 

Late  that  evening,  when  I  returned  from  dinner  at  the  mess 
hall,  an  old  man  in  Montenegrin  costume  passed  by  me.  He 
stumbled  just  when  he  was  near  me  and  I  helped  him  up.  He 
thanked  me  humbly,  but  in  doing  this  he  mentioned  my  name.  I 
had  never  seen  the  man.  It  was  strange  that  he  knew  me  by  name. 
At  home,  when  I  fumbled  for  matches  in  the  pocket  of  my  jacket, 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  177 

I  found  a  small  package  in  brown  paper,  tied  up  with  a  thread; 
in  it  were  twenty  flashing  gold  coins.  On  the  paper  were  a  few 
words,  written  in  Cyrillic  script,  which  I  could  not  read.  (An  in- 
terpreter told  me  later  on  that  the  note  said:  "God  bless  you.") 

What  should  I  do  with  the  coins?  They  were  perhaps  the  life  sav- 
ings of  those  poor  people.  I  was  sure  I  could  not  find  that  man. 
He  perhaps  lived  somewhere  in  the  mountains,  miles  away. 
Should  I  give  the  money  to  my  commander?  That  was  certainly 
not  the  intention  of  the  unknown  giver.  He  wanted  me  to  have  it. 
But  was  it  not  treason  to  accept  money  from  the  enemy?  I  decided 
to  keep  the  ducats.  When  I  was  on  leave  in  Vienna  much  later,  I 
sold  them  and  used  the  proceeds  to  complement  and  improve  the 
food  for  Ella  and  Arthur.  "If  this  be  treason,  make  the  most 
of  it." 

I  had,  however,  some  serious  conscientious  scruples  about  an- 
other experience,  which  happened  shortly  afterward  in  Kolasin, 
that  small  town  in  the  interior  of  the  Cerna  Gora  (Black 
Mountains).  .  .  . 

Napoleon  once  played  a  kind  of  parlor  game  with  a  group  of 
his  generals  and  diplomats.  Each  of  the  persons  present  was  to 
tell  a  story  of  some  mean  deeds  he  had  done.  When  Talleyrand's 
turn  came,  the  statesman  started  his  tale  with  the  words,  "I  have 
done  only  one  mean  thing  in  my  life  .  .  ."  "But  when  will  this 
end?"  ("Mais  quand  sera-t-il  finif")  asked  the  Emperor.  Unlike 
Talleyrand,  I  believe  I  have  done  quite  a  few  mean  things  or  at 
least  things  I  considered  mean.  The  following  tale  presents  one 
of  them. 

One  evening  a  young,  pretty  woman  approached  me  on  the 
streets  of  Kolasin.  She  wore  the  braided  and  embroidered  na- 
tional garment  of  the  Montenegrin  women,  but  she  seemed 
cleaner  and  more  carefully  dressed  than  the  girls  of  the  small 
town.  I  had  not  seen  her  before.  "Parlez-vous  fran^ais,  Monsieur 
le  Docteur?"  she  asked.  I  was,  of  course,  astonished  to  hear  a  na- 
tive of  these  wild  mountains  speak  French.  She  told  me  then 
that  she  had  been  at  college  in  Belgrade.  She  spoke  better  French 
than  I  and  was,  as  was  shown  in  our  conversation,  well  educated. 
She  was  married  to  an  officer  who  fought  in  the  Serbian  army 
against  our  troops.  She  had  heard  nothing  from  him  for  three 


178  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

years.  He  was,  she  said,  perhaps  dead  for  a  long  time.  She  asked 
me  whether  I  would  give  her  some  bread.  She  was  hungry.  The 
Montenegrins  were  at  this  time  half  starved,  and  our  army  did 
little  to  help  the  poor  people. 

From  then  on,  I  often  met  Ivanka  somewhere  outside  Kolasin 
—fraternizing  with  the  natives  was,  of  course,  forbidden— and 
brought  whatever  food  I  could  save  for  her.  I  tried  to  help  her  as 
well  as  I  could— "ga  va  sans  dire."  She  lived  with  her  in-laws  in 
one  of  those  miserable,  one-window  houses  on  a  hill  near  Kolasin. 
Frequently  now,  I  asked  my  orderly  to  saddle  my  horse  and  rode 
a  few  miles  to  a  certain  place  in  the  mountains,  not  too  far  from 
the  house  of  her  in-laws,  but  also  not  too  near  to  it.  I  brought  her 
bread  and  other  food  in  the  saddlebag. 

My  horse  was  tied  to  one  of  the  few  trees  and  Ivanka  and  I  sat 
on  a  rock  and  chatted.  She  told  me  about  her  home.  She  admitted 
frankly  that  last  year  she  had  been  the  mistress  of  an  Austrian 
major  who  spoke  Serbian.  What  should  she  have  done?  She  did 
not  want  to  starve.  Once,  she  called  herself  a  coorva,  which  is  the 
Serbian  word  for  whore.  She  seemed  not  only  grateful  for  my 
help,  but  became  obviously  fond  of  me.  We  kissed,  but  something 
prevented  me  from  going  further  until  one  evening  she  asked  me 
whether  I  did  not  feel  like  "faire  amour"  with  her.  .  .  .  She  was 
natural,  unashamed,  and  passionate.  We  then  met  regularly 
somewhere  high  in  those  mountains,  where  she  knew  every  little 
path.  "A  loaf  of  bread,  and  thou"— the  poet  had  not  meant  it 
this  way.  Ivanka  sometimes  sang  one  of  those  melancholy  Serbian 
love  songs.  But  her  presence  "beside  me,  singing  in  the  wilder- 
ness" did  not  perform  that  miracle  of  transformation,  that  "Wil- 
derness is  Paradise  Enow." 

I  did  not  feel  guilty  because  I  had  a  mistress.  I  was  twenty-eight 
years  old,  many  months  away  from  home  and  sex-starved.  But 
there  were  other  things  which  made  me  feel  very  uncomfortable 
and  awakened  discomfort.  She  was  the  wife  of  another  man,  and 
sometimes  I  felt  guilty  toward  the  unknown  husband.  He  was  an 
enemy,  but  I  did  not  hate  the  Serbians  and  Montenegrins.  I  was 
supposed  to  hate  them,  being  an  Austrian  officer,  but  hate  can  be 
as  little  commanded  as  love.  Often,  in  my  imagination,  I  put  my- 
self in  his  place  and  I  felt  then  a  kind  of  hostility  or  resentment 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  179 

toward  Ivanka.  (I  remembered  a  sentence  of  the  Viennese  writer 
Karl  Kraus  speaking  of  a  man  who  imagined  the  jealous  tortures 
of  the  husband  he  deceived  so  vividly  that  he  felt  he  wanted  to 
strangle  his  mistress.)  Even  the  neurotic  belief  in  magic  retaliation 
from  a  punishing  destiny  occurred  to  me.  Oftentimes,  I  thought  it 
possible  that  Ella,  in  Vienna,  would  become  unfaithful  to  me  with 
an  officer.  Once,  when  I  had  a  letter  from  her  in  which  she  wrote 
that  our  little  son  was  sick,  I  was  haunted  for  days  by  the  fear 
that  he  would  die  as  a  punishment  for  my  transgression.  I  really 
avoided  Ivanka  for  a  week,  using  some  pretext.  I  tried,  with  some 
success,  to  overcome  my  obsessional  and  superstitious  thoughts. 
Ivanka  remained  my  mistress  until  I  was  transferred  to  the 
Italian  front. 

More  than  my  adultery,  the  fact  that  I  had  used  the  emergency 
situation  of  a  woman  to  get  sexual  gratification  from  her  troubled 
me.  I  told  myself  that  I  was  not  her  first  lover  and  that  she  had 
offered  herself  to  me,  but  this  thought  was  cold  comfort.  If  I  had 
not  taken  her,  I  said  to  myself,  she  would  have  gone  to  another 
officer  who  would  have  made  use  of  the  opportunity.  My  God, 
why  are  the  others  not  so  conscientious!  .  .  .  " A  la  guerre  comme 
a  la  guerre  .  .  /'  It  bothered  me,  nevertheless.  It  had  been  a 
mean  thing  to  do.  But,  I  argued  with  myself,  I  saved  her  from 
starving.  I  could  have  saved  her  from  starving  without  sleeping 
with  her— this  was  the  counter-argument.  I  got  into  a  lot  of  ethi- 
cal reflections  and  speculations.  I  pondered  on  the  problem  of 
whether  a  person  is  entitled  to  use  another  human  being  this  way. 
I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  I  was  far  from  being  a  real  Don 
Juan. 

The  doubt  as  to  whether  my  behavior  then  had  been  mean 
sometimes  occurred  to  me  long  after  the  first  World  War.  I  still 
know  when  it  emerged  in  my  thoughts  the  last  time.  That  was 
perhaps  twelve  or  thirteen  years  later,  when  we  lived  in  Berlin. 
Someone  had  recommended  to  me  a  novel  by  the  Berlin  writer 
Georg  Hermann,  The  Night  of  Dr.  Herzfeld.  I  read  a  scene  in  a 
coffee  house  where  a  group  of  middle-aged  bachelors  and  married 
men— writers,  artists,  and  connoisseurs— regularly  meet  to  banter 
and  joke  and  discuss  the  state  of  the  world.  One  evening,  a 
woman  in  the  uniform  of  the  Salvation  Army  approaches  the 


l8o  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

table  of  this  group  and  holds  the  collection  box  out  to  them.  She 
asks,  "Please,  for  fallen  girls!"  One  of  the  middle-aged  men  says 
casually,  "I  am  giving  directly/' 

I  smiled,  of  course,  when  I  read  the  witty  remark,  but  then  I 
thought  of  my  first  sexual  intercourse.  This  was  with  a  prostitute, 
and  I  was  eighteen  years  old.  Suddenly,  the  thought  of  Ivanka 
occurred  to  me.  Yes,  that  had  been  mean  and  I  felt  ashamed  of 
myself.  (At  the  same  time,  the  memory  of  her  passionate  sur- 
render emerged  in  after-enjoyment.  How  strange  we  human  be- 
ings are!)  But  the  thought  bothered  me  not  more  than  a  few  sec- 
onds and  was  quickly  dismissed.  I  was  now  over  forty,  as  those 
men  in  Hermann's  novel,  and  I  had  become  hard-boiled  and  a 
cynic.  Or,  at  least,  I  thought  of  myself  as  a  cynic. 


Freud  told  me  I  could  bring  my  bride  to  the  psychoanalytic 
congress,  in  1914,  and  we  went  together  to  this  great  meeting, 
where3  analysts  from  all  countries  assembled.  When  I  introduced 
Ella  to  Freud,  and  she  spoke  a,  few  words  apologizing  for  her 
presence  at  this  learned  meeting  where  she  had  no  place,  the 
great  man  said  with  old  Viennese  gallantry,  "But  you  are  the 
pearl  on  this  congress."  She  blushed,  and  I  believe,  from  this 
moment  on,  she  loved  Freud,  about  whose  work  she  then  knew 
almost  nothing. 

She  did  not  love  Mrs.  Freud  so  much.  After  our  return  from 
Berlin  to  Vienna,  we  were  asked  to  tea  by  the  Frau  Professor,  as 
we  called  her.  It  was,  of  course,  quite  informal— as  you  would  ask 
a  young  newly  married  couple.  In  the  course  of  the  conversation, 
Mrs.  Freud,  who  was  a  magnificent  housewife,  said  to  Ella,  "You 
see,  I  always  use  those  cups  with  double  rims  for  every  day."  It 
was  good  practical  advice  for  a  young  Hausfrau,  but  my  wife 
minded  it,  since  it  seemed  to  her  that  Mrs.  Freud  had  lectured 
her  in  the  presence  of  her  husband.  A  few  minutes  later,  Ella 
must  have  said  something  about  having  been  nervous  the  other 
day,  because  Mrs.  Freud  said,  "Nervous?  I  couldn't  afford  to  be 
nervous.  Everything  in  the  household  has  to  run  smoothly.  Other- 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  l8l 

wise,  how  could  my  husband  do  his  work?"  It  was  known  in 
Vienna  that  for  many  years  Mrs.  Freud  had  renounced  the  pleas- 
ure of  attending  an  opera  performance,  because  she  wanted  to  be 
present  at  dinner,  which  Freud  liked  to  have  at  a  certain  time.  Ella 
did  not  relish  the  subtle  reproach  she  had  felt  in  the  words  of  the 
old  lady.  Yet,  she  had  much  respect  for  her.  There  is  at  least  one 
conclusive  proof  that  Mrs.  Freud's  remark  had  made  a  lasting 
impression  on  her.  Many  years  later,  I  heard  Ella  say  to  a  young 
bride  who  visited  us,  "You  see,  I  always  use  those  cups  with 
double  rims  for  every  day."  Where  had  I  heard  this  same  sen- 
tence? .  .  .  The  Frau  Professor  had  not  been  Ella's  cup  of  tea 
at  all,  and  yet  .  .  . 

Living  every  day  with  a  person  you  love  has  quite  a  different 
character  from  spending  a  few  hours  daily  with  her.  The  read- 
justment of  two  people  to  each  other,  one  of  the  essential  features 
of  wedded  life,  brings  divergencies  to  light  that  had  not  been 
recognized  before.  I  was  worried  about  the  future,  dissatisfied 
with  the  present,  and,  paradoxically  enough,  often  took  this  out 
on  my  young  wife,  who  looked  at  life  much  more  optimistically 
than  I.  The  fact  that  I  could  not  offer  her  more  than  an  existence, 
without  comfort  and  devoid  of  pleasures,  made  me  spoil  for  her 
even  the  few  and  small  amusements  she  could  have.  I  was  a  joy- 
killer.  She  was  not  only  ready,  but  also  happy,  to  share  this  very 
modest  form  of  life  with  me,  and  did  not  understand  why  I  was 
not  satisfied  with  it.  But  I  did  not  understand  it  myself. 

I  tried  unsuccessfully  to  awaken  in  her  an  interest  in  psycho- 
analysis. Something  in  her  personality  was  reluctant  to  see  people 
and  human  relations  in  such  an  objective  light.  I  understood, 
much  later,  that  a  certain  psychological  predisposition  and  in- 
clination are  necessary  to  consider  men  the  way  psychoanalysis 
does.  There  are  thousands  of  fine  and  profound  minds—many  o£ 
the  greatest,  as  Goethe's,  among  them— who  do  not  want  to  look 
at  individuals  and  groups  in  this  manner. 

Ella  was  happy  when  I  was  successful  in  my  work,  and  enjoyed 
each  sign  of  appreciation  my  early  books  received— but  it  was  her 
love  for  me,  not  interest  in  analysis,  that  made  her  feel  this  way. 
She  copied  neatly  and  conscientiously  almost  all  my  manu- 
scripts, but  the  subject  matter  did  not  appeal  to  her.  Insensitive  as 


l8*  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  was,  I  wanted  to  share  with  her  my  insights  in  this  direction.  I 
no  longer  think  that  husband  and  wife  should  necessarily  have 
all  interests  in  common,  but  I  had  not  grasped  this  simple  fact. 
Neither  had  I  realized  that  my  wish  to  share  everything  with  Ella 
was  one-sided.  It  was  as  if  a  man  demanded  from  another:  "Give 
me  your  watch  and  I'll  tell  you  what  time  it  is." 

This  common,  everyday  life  let  her  see  all  my  shortcomings 
and  faults,  and,  looking  back,  I  am  astonished  at  how  many  of 
them  she  silently  put  up  with.  The  few  weaknesses  and  failings  I 
discovered  in  her  did  not  diminish,  but  rather  increased  her 
charm.  They  were,  so  to  speak,  only  the  reverse  side  of  her  many 
excellencies.  Her  way  of  looking  at  people  and  things,  so  differ- 
ent from  mine,  every  small  trait  and  detail  of  behavior  spoke  of 
her  femininity.  Her  preference  for  human  interest  in  art  and  life, 
which  expressed  itself  in  harmless  gossip  with  her  girl  friends,  her 
strong  feeling  for  the  poor  and  suffering  people,  her  superstitions 
and  prejudices,  the  attention  she  paid  to  dresses  and  hats— there 
was  so  much  I  had  to  understand  about  women. 

I  learned,  by  the  great  interest  she  took  in  our  small  apartment, 
that  a  room  has  for  women  the  unconscious  significance  of  an 
extension  of  their  own  bodies.  Where  I  was  sentimental,  she  was 
practical;  and  often  where  she  felt  moved,  I  looked  at  things 
realistically.  Why  did  she  cry  when  we  left  the  apartment  in 
which  we  had  spent  the  first  months  of  our  married  life?  Did  we 
not  change  it  for  a  better  and  more  convenient  one?  I  could  be 
courteous  and  obliging  but,  to  speak  with  Goethe,  she  had  the 
"politeness  of  the  heart."  There  were  irreconcilable  differences. 
For  me,  a  police  officer  was  the  personification  of  the  law;  for  her, 
he  was  only  a  man  in  a  blue  uniform.  She  often  appeared  childish 
to  me,  and  then  again  as  if  she  were  born  older  and  wiser  than 
myself.  (I  read,  later  on,  what  the  wife  of  Tolstoy  wrote  about  her 
famous  husband,  at  the  time  when  he  wanted  to  reform  the 
world.  "Never  mind  what  the  child  will  try;  the  main  thing  is  he 
should  not  cry.")  When  I  was  defiant  and  rebellious,  and  paced 
the  room,  saying,  'Til  show  them  .  .  .  1"  I  sometimes  caught  her 
side  glance,  which  seemed  to  see  in  me  a  pigheaded,  uncom- 
promising, overgrown  boy,  challenging  others  or  meeting  the 
challenge  of  other  boys.  She  was  suddenly  transformed  into  a 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  l8$ 

consoling  and  comforting  mother.  A  few  minutes  later,  she  was 
a  little  girl  who  enjoyed  small  things  to  which  I  had  never  even 
given  a  thought.  She  could  argue  well,  but,  at  the  same  time,  she 
was  the  most  inconsistent  woman,  without  the  slightest  respect 
for  logic.  The  elementary  truth,  that  a  thing  could  not  be  itself 
and  at  the  same  time  its  opposite,  simply  did  not  exist  for  her. 

So  many  little  things  she  said  and  did  gave  me  surprising  in- 
sights into  a  delicacy  and  depth  of  feeling  which  we  men  do  not 
possess.  But  there  were,  also,  some  little  tricks  which  were  alien 
to  me,  an  indirectness  of  approach  to  a  subject,  a  subtle  way  of 
getting  around  me  and  reaching  an  aim  by  a  detour,  an  astonish- 
ing lack  of  fairness  when  personal  emotions  were  in  play,  a  kind 
of  irrationality  in  things  where  only  reason  should  have  a  voice, 
and  not  sympathy  and  antipathy.  Furthermore,  there  were  some 
days  in  each  month  when  mysterious  depressions  and  a  strange 
wish  to  make  order  in  drawers  and  chests  appeared.  A  young  man 
has  so  much  to  learn  about  women's  ways. 

There  is  a  current  misconception  among  young  and  unyoung 
men  that  to  know  women,  you  have  to  have  many  affairs.  They 
confuse  understanding  women  with  "knowing"  them  in  the  sense 
that  the  Old  Testament  gives  to  the  word,  namely,  to  have  sexual 
intercourse  with  women.  In  this  sense,  an  expert  on  women  is 
often  considered  as  a  man  who  has  seduced  many  women,  a  Don 
Juan.  But  this  is  as  if  a  waiter,  who  knows  exactly  what  tip  he 
can  expect  from  the  kind  of  customers  he  serves,  would  be  con- 
sidered an  expert  in  psychology!  He  knows  only  a  tiny  bit  of 
human  behavior,  and  even  this  only  as  far  as  it  is  useful  to  his 
immediate  aims!  It  is,  I  think,  sufficient  to  know  one  woman 
thoroughly,  in  all  aspects  of  her  being,  to  understand  women's 
character— the  essence  of  femininity,  its  evanescent  and  its  perma- 
nent features,  its  shallowness  and  its  unfathomable  depth. 

The  physicians  had  declared  that  the  condition  of  Ella's  heart 
made  it  advisable  that  she  should  not  have  a  child.  They  told  her 
that  it  was  not  certain  whether  she  would  survive  the  labor.  But 
she  said,  "I  want  the  child,  whatever  happens  to  me  afterward." 
When  a  year  after  our  wedding  our  son  Arthur  was  born,  I  was 
often  reminded  of  those  medieval  madonnas,  who  smilingly  look 
at  the  baby  on  their  breast.  She  was  the  kindest  and  gentlest 


184  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

mother,  but  she  was  strong,  too.  Patiently  she  could  listen  to  the 
crying  and  shouting  of  the  baby  in  the  night,  when  she  knew 
that  nothing  was  the  matter  with  him.  When  I  could  not  stand  it 
any  longer,  took  the  child  up  and  paced  the  room,  singing  to  him, 
she  smilingly  warned  me  that  I  was  going  to  spoil  him.  Eleven 
years  later,  Arthur  became  dangerously  ill  with  an  inflammation 
of  the  leg  bone  and  its  marrow  (osteomyelitis).  My  wife,  then  al- 
ready seriously  suffering  from  her  heart  disease,  stood  before  the 
operating  room.  When  the  surgeon  came  out,  I  tremblingly  asked 
him  whether  it  would  be  necessary  to  amputate  the  leg.  "That  is 
not  the  question,"  said  the  physician.  "We  don't  know  whether 
we  can  save  his  life."  Then  all  went  black  before  my  eyes— it  was 
the  first  fainting  spell  of  my  life.  It  was  Ella's  arm  that  caught  me 
as  I  fell. 

But  to  return  to  the  psychological  problems  of  the  first  year  of 
our  marriage  and  to  the  comparison  with  young  Goethe  in  my 
study,  written  so  many, years  later,  I  had  shown  that  the  poet 
must  have  suffered  from  psychic  impotence  which  he  did  not  over- 
come until  he  approached  his  forties.  His  enthusiastic  love  or 
infatuation  for  so  many  women,  Gretchen  in  Frankfurt,  Frie- 
derike  in  Sesenheim,  Lotte  in  Wetzlar,  his  engagement  with  Lilli, 
and  finally  the  long,  soulful,  and  morbid  relationship  with  Frau 
von  Stein— they  were  all  affairs  of  the  heart  only.  They  were  pas- 
sionate, but  they  were  also  pathetic.  None  of  them  resulted  in 
sexual  union;  each,  in  the  flight  of  the  lover.  He  used  his  passion 
in  the  production  of  beautiful  poems  and  plays.  He  had,  it  seems, 
never  made  a  serious  advance  toward  any  of  these  women.  "His 
wooing  was  aimless,"  as  Thomas  Mann  put  it.  Some  invisible 
power,  stronger  even  than  his  vivid  sensuality,  prevented  him 
from  making  sexual  objects  out  of  the  objects  of  his  passion.  Some 
mysterious  fears  forced  him  to  control  his  desire,  until  he  could 
not  stand  it  any  longer  and  took  to  flight. 

Nothing  of  this  kind  can  be  reported  in  my  case.  Yet,  there 
was  something  which  could  be  at  least  reminiscent  of  the  much 
more  serious  inhibitions  in  young  Goethe.  Was  not  my  restraint 
in  the  seven  years  of  clandestine  engagement  comparable  to  the 
inhibition  which  forbade  Goethe  to  approach  Friederike? 

When  Ella  and  I  married,  a  puzzling  phenomenon  appeared 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  185 

which  cast  a  shadow  upon  our  happiness  of  being  together.  We 
were  sexually  not  in  tune.  Our  physical  union,  so  long  and  so 
ardently  desired,  was  not  successful.  There  was  certainly  no 
psychical  impotence  as  in  Goethe's  case,  but  the  natural  develop- 
ment, from  sexual  tension  to  a  climax,  was  prematurely  inter- 
rupted by  an  untimely  emission,  which  released  it,  but  did  not 
relieve  it.  This  too  sudden  and  too  early  finale  left  my  young  wife 
high  and  dry,  and  left  me  unsatisfied.  What  had  been  so  spon- 
taneous and  natural  in  the  relation  with  Vilma  and  other  women, 
what  appeared  as  the  result  of  an  understanding  of  two  bodies, 
striving  to  become  one,  and  had  been  taken  for  granted,  could 
not  be  accomplished  here,  and  filled  me  with  the  shame  of  failure. 
Artificial  restraint  and  postponement  were  of  no  avail.  Nature 
cannot  be  deceived. 

This  premature  emission,  technically  known  as  ejaculatio 
praecox,  appeared  to  me  as  a  milder  or  different  kind  of  psychical 
impotence.  Why  had  such  an  embarrassing  and  discouraging  ex- 
perience never  happened  before?  I  had  to  admit  to  myself  that  it 
must  have  its  psychological  cause  in  the  very  relationship  with 
my  wife,  whom  I  dearly  loved.  Perhaps  an  old  sexual  inhibition 
had  been  reawakened.  Was  it  possible  that  the  menace  connected 
with  the  image  of  Mr.  O.'s  guns  and  revolvers  continued  to  work 
unconsciously  upon  me,  even  now  when  we  were  legitimately 
married?  There  was,  I  told  myself,  the  emotional  aftereffect  of  the 
unnatural  restraint  exercised  during  seven  years.  I  remembered 
an  anecdote  (was  it  not  from  De  I'amour,  by  Stendhal?)  about 
a  French  hussar  officer  who  had  passionately  wooed  a  woman  who 
did  not  surrender  to  him.  Unexpectedly,  she  yielded  and,  to  his 
shame,  the  officer  found  himself  impotent.  Was  there  also  in  me 
a  trace  of  unconscious  resentment  against  Ella,  because  of  the 
long  control?  I  could  not  discover  anything  of  such  feelings  in 
my  conscious  mind,  but  I  had  already  learned  from  Freud  that 
you  can  conclude  from  the  effects  of  an  action  or  attitude  (at 
least)  one  of  its  unconscious  motives.  And  was  not  this  effect  that 
my  wife  remained  unsatisfied?  All  these  questions  and  consider- 
ations were  elucidated  and  confirmed  during  my  psychoanalysis 
with  Dr.  Karl  Abraham,  who  in  a  relatively  short  time  succeeded 
in  removing  this  embarrassing  symptom. 


l86  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

The  thread  which  connects  this  fragment  of  my  own  story  with 
the  experiences  of  young  Goethe  becomes  conspicuously  thin  at 
this  point  But  it  is  not  broken,  because  my  imperfection  in  sex 
can  well  be  compared  with  Goethe's  psychical  impotence  toward 
those  women  he  worshiped.  The  phenomena  in  my  own  life  ap- 
peared simultaneously,  while  those  with  which  they  could  be 
compared  in  Goethe's  life  showed  themselves  in  succession,  fol- 
lowing each  other.  I  had  fallen  in  love  with  Ella,  as  Goethe  had 
with  Friederike,  and  I  had  taken  a  mistress  who  was  at  least 
twelve  years  older  than  myself  and  who  had  a  son.  Only  a  few 
years  after  the  romance  with  Friederike,  Goethe,  then  twenty-six 
years  old,  found  Frau  von  Stein,  who  was  then  thirty-three  and 
had  seven  children.  In  the  following  twelve  years,  Goethe  had 
been  in  bondage  to  this  mother-representative,  a  strange  and 
neurotic  woman,  who  allowed  him  only  spiritual  favors. 

When  he  then  secretly  fled  to  Italy,  he  felt  reborn.  He  became 
a  pagan,  earthly  in  his  sexual  life.  "Desire  followed  the  glance, 
enjoyment  followed  desire."  This  is  the  description  he  gives  of 
his  Italian  sex  life,  in  his  Roman  Elegies.  He  gets  rid  of  his  sensi- 
tive conscience,  confesses  to  a  free  sensuality;  yes,  boasts  about  it 
so  that  his  friends  call  him  "Priapus."  The  ladies  and  the  gentle- 
men of  the  court  at  Weimar  were  taken  aback.  This  whole  esthetic, 
refined,  and  restrained  society  was  shocked  and  shaken  when 
the  great  poet  took  a  pretty,  uneducated  flower  girl,  Christiane 
Vulpius,  into  his  house  and  made  her  his  bed  companion.  He  did 
not  give  a  damn  about  the  opinion  of  those  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
and  lived  in  voluptuous  sin  for  many  years,  with  a  woman  who 
did  not  understand  one  line  of  Faust,  What  had  taken  place  in 
Goethe's  life  successively  had  co-existed  in  my  youthful  years. 
The  differences  between  him  and  myself  were  as  great  as  those 
between  a  half-god  and  a  human  being.  But  on  this  darker  and 
lower  level,  where  also  this  immortal  genius  was  mortal,  where 
also  this  superman  was  human,  there  were,  1 1  understand  now, 
similarities  originating  in  unconscious  emotions  and  secret  in- 
hibitions. 

But  to  return  to  the  psychological  problem  of  impotence  or  its 
qualified,  moderated  form  of  premature  emission.  A  great  num- 
ber of  men  can  develop  their  full  sexual  potency  only  with 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  187 

women  they  do  not  respect,  yes,  those  upon  whom  they  look 
down.  They  fail  sexually  with  the  other  group  of  women,  for 
whom  they  feel  affection  or  tenderness  and  whom  they  consider 
in  the  category  of  mother-  or  sister-figure.  These  men  can  enjoy 
all  the  pleasures  and  the  deep  satisfaction  which  sexuality  gives 
with  women  they  despise.  They  can  reach  the  heights  of  devotion 
and  idealization  with  the  other  kind  of  women,  who  appear  to 
them  untouchable  and  sexually  unapproachable.  The  extreme 
figures  in  whom  these  two  contrasting  types  appear  to  human 
imagination  are  the  madonna  and  the  whore.  Between  these  types 
is  erected  an  insurmountable  wall.  The  one  is  desired  with  all 
burning  passion  of  the  flesh;  the  other,  worshiped  and  elevated 
with  all  the  faculty  of  fantasy. 

Ella  and  Vilma  represented  for  me,  at  this  time,  the  two  types. 
Had  I  not  often  enough  compared  Ella  to  the  madonna,  in  my 
thoughts?  Was  she  not  for  me  the  embodiment  of  the  noblest  and 
best  in  womanhood?  But  I  paid  a  high  price  for  this  idealization.  I 
could  not  reach  full  sexual  gratification  with  her.  On  the  other 
hand  was  the  personification  of  the  merely  sexually  alluring 
woman,  for  whom  I  had  neither  respect  nor  affection,  who  ap- 
peared to  me  "fast,"  a  woman  for  all  men.  She  could  give  me  full 
physical  satisfaction. 

Madonna  and  whore— these  were  the  two  types  which  a  student 
of  psychology  had  sharply  differentiated,  and  contrasted  only  a 
few  years  before,  in  the  confused  book  of  a  genius.  The  older 
students  of  psychology,  who  had  known  him  at  the  Vienna  Uni- 
versity, told  me  about  him.  The  tide  of  the  book  was  Sex  and 
Character,,  and  its  author,  Otto  Weininger,  had  shot  himself  in 
the  house  in  which  Beethoven  had  lived,  in  the  Schwarzspanier 
Strasse.  But  later  I  learned  from  Freud  how  typical  this  division 
of  love  and  sexual  behavior  is  for  so  many  men  in  our  culture 
who  cannot  love  where  they  sexually  desire,  and  who  do  not  func- 
tion well  sexually  where  they  respect  and  idealize  women,  I 
understood,  in  my  own  analysis,  how  deep  the  roots  of  this  divi- 
sion between  tenderness  and  sexuality  reach  into  the  area  of 
childhood  and  puberty  impressions.  Later  on,  when  I  treated 
neurotic  patients,  I  understood  why  many  men  need  a  kind  of 
degradation  in  their  fantasy  or  in  their  action  with  women  they 


l88  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

highly  appreciate  or  love.  They  have  to  degrade  them,  in  order 
to  bring  them  down  from  the  elevated  level  which  forbids  the 
intimate  physical  approach.  A  short  time  after  I  started  my 
analytical  practice,  two  patients  showed  neurotic  symptoms, 
which  led  to  the  conclusion  that  they  originated  in  this  typical 
attitude  of  men  in  their  sexual  life.  The  one  was  potent  with  his 
wife  only  if  he  called  her  dirty  names,  used  extremely  vulgar 
language  before  and  during  sexual  intercourse.  She  had  to  tell 
him  that  she  wanted  and  enjoyed  sex,  and  had  to  use  certain 
lecherous  terms.  The  other,  a  serious  case  of  obsession-neurosis, 
was  tortured  by  blasphemous  thoughts,  which  frequently  oc- 
curred in  church  or  during  prayer.  When  he  looked,  for  instance, 
at  pictures  of  the  Madonna  with  the  Christ  child,  he  was  com- 
pelled to  think  of  her  legs  lifted  and  straddled  in  sexual  inter- 
course, in  a  lascivious  movement.  When  he  wanted  to  pray  to 
Jesus,  he  often  had  to  think,  "Bastard!" 

How  near  this  kind  of  thought  is  to  the  threshold  of  conscious 
thinking  can  be  recognized  in  two  anecdotes,  which  Anatole 
France  tells  in  one  of  his  novels.  An  Italian  girl  sends  the  follow- 
ing prayer  to  the  Holy  Virgin:  "O  Thou  who  hast  conceived 
without  sinning,  give  me  the  grace  to  sin  without  conceiving!" 
Having  prayed  in  vain  for  rain  to  Jesus,  a  Sicilian  peasant  returns 
to  the  chapel  with  the  statue  of  the  Madonna  with  the  child,  and 
says,  "I  do  not  speak  to  you,  son-of-a-bitch,  but  to  your  holy 
mother!" 

In  these  clinical  cases,  as  in  the  anecdotes,  a  psychical  counter- 
mechanism  is  operating,  which  tries  to  annul  and  undo  the  re- 
sult of  that  isolation.  This  mechanism  of  connection  tries  to 
bridge  again  the  abyss  between  the  two  parts  that  had  once 
formed  indivisible  unity.  Is  it  true  that  never  the  twain  shall  meet? 

It  became  the  great  fashion  among  American  psychiatrists  and 
psychoanalysts  to  speak  of  "psycho-sexual  maturity"  as  the  most 
decisive  criterion  of  individual  development.  It  cannot  be  denied 
that  almost  all  the  greatest  men  whose  life  stories  we  know  never 
reached  "psycho-sexual  maturity."  To  cite  only  the  two  titans  of 
mankind  mentioned  in  this  chapter:  Goethe  had  never  possessed 
one  of  those  women  he  so  passionately  adored.  Between  Frau  von 
Stein  and  Christiane  Vulpius  was  an  unbridgeable  abyss.  The  one 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  189 

was  the  real  mate  of  his  soul  in  whom  he  fully  confided  and 
whom  he  never  touched.  He  shared  with  Christiane  his  bed  and 
not  much  else.  He  was,  as  someone  put  it,  "as  little  married  as 
possible."  Beethoven  could  not  approach  sexually  any  of  the 
beautiful  aristocratic  ladies  of  Vienna.  On  one  side  is  the  Im- 
mortal Beloved;  on  the  other,  the  slut,  from  whom  he  acquired 
syphilis.  In  Goethe  and  Beethoven,  as  in  all  great  men,  there  was 
this  deep  split,  this  discord  which  had  to  be  resolved  again  and 
again.  They  all  felt  as  Faust,  that 

.  .  .  two  souls  contend 

In  me,  and  both  souls  strive  for  masterdom. 

Which  from  the  other  shall  the  sceptre  rend! 

The  first  soul  is  a  lover,  clasping  close 

To  this  world  tentacles  of  corporeal  flame. 

The  other  seeks  to  rise  with  mighty  throes 

To  the  ancestral  meadows  whence  it  came. 


A  few  years  after  my  return  from  the  war,  my  wife  showed  the 
first  symptoms  indicating  a  deterioration  of  her  heart  ailment.  It 
had  been  aggravated  by  the  labor  of  Arthur's  birth  and  by  the 
household  work  without  help.  The  slowly  proceeding  inflam- 
mation of  the  inside  walls  of  the  heart  chambers  frequently  occurs 
to  a  heart  already  damaged  by  rheumatic  fever.  There  appeared 
that  zigzag  fever,  so  characteristic  of  the  growth  of  germs.*  For 
many  months  my  wife  was  in  a  sanatorium,  wavering  between 
life  and  death.  The  doctors  gave  very  little  hope  that  she  would 
pull  through.  All  means  were  applied  to  find  and  to  fight  the  un- 
known germs  and  to  strengthen  the  weakened  organism  against 
their  fatal  power.  Some  teeth  were  pulled,  and  her  tonsils  were  re- 
moved because  they  were  suspected  of  being  the  seat  of  the  in- 

*  The  name,  endocarditis  lenta,  used  at  this  time  for  the  slowly  progressing 
heart  inflammation,  is  now  obsolete  and  the  currently  preferred  diagnostic 
term  is  subacute  bacterial  endocarditis. 


igO  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

fection.  But  the  illness,  it  seemed,  could  not  be  stopped  and  took 
its  slowly  progressing  course. 

I  still  remember  how  Professor  Chvosteck,  perhaps  the  best 
specialist  for  internal  diseases  in  Vienna,  who  was  called  into 
consultation,  started  his  examination.  He  wanted  to  look  into 
Ella's  throat,  and  the  nurse  offered  him  an  electric  flashlight.  But 
he  waved  it  aside  contemptuously  and  said,  in  pronounced  Vien- 
nese dialect,  "Give  me  a  wax  taper!"*  (At  that  moment,  I  not 
only  remembered  that  I  had  heard  many  anecdotes  about  this 
queer  and  magnificent  physician,  but  also  something  which  filled 
me  with  foreboding.)  After  careful  examination,  the  famous 
doctor  said  to  Ella,  "I'll  tell  you,  madam,  you  will  recover  from 
this  illness,  but  it  will  take  an  awfully  long  time.  And  after  that, 
you  will  have  to  live  with  a  weak  heart  which  is  not  compensated. 
I  am  telling  you  the  truth.  Why  should  you  say  later  on  that 
Chvosteck  was  an  ass?"  This  ruthless  honesty  worked  more  favor- 
ably upon  my  wife  than  the  smooth  and  consoling  speeches  of 
other  physicians. 

She  told  me,  a  few  years  later,  that  at  a  certain  moment  she  had 
been  ready  to  give  up,  that  she  had  wanted  to  die.  But  her  tired 
eyes  followed  me,  pacing  the  room,  and  she  was  filled  with  pity 
because  I  looked  so  miserable  and  desperate.  She  decided  to 
gather  all  her  energy  to  fight  her  illness  and  to  live.  I  know  that 
such  a  belief  will  appear  non-rational  to  many  physicians,  but 
I  have  seen  many  instances  of  serious  infectious  diseases,  in  which 
a  strong  mind  showed  itself  victorious  in  its  struggle  with  the 
great  enemy. 

But,  pacing  the  sickroom,  I  did  not  think  of  myself,  but  of  our 
little  son  who  was  so  devoted  to  his  mother.  What  would  happen 
to  him,  if  she  should  die?  If  I  had  believed  in  God,  I  would  have 
prayed  that  He  let  her  live,  at  least  long  enough  so  that  Arthur 
could  fend  for  himself.  She  lived  longer.  She  saw  him  leave  our 
home  and  marry.  After  many  months,  the  fever  slowly  subsided, 
and  Ella  could  leave  the  sanatorium,  but  treatment  had,  of 
course,  to  be  continued  at  home. 

I  have  often  stated  that  a  neurosis  does  not  evaporate  after 

*  He  used  a  word  which  is  old-fashioned,  even  in  the  very  conservative 
Viennese  dialect,  namely,  wachsel,  meaning  a  long,  wax  candle. 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  IQl 

analysis  and  does  not  disappear  into  thin  air  without  any  traces. 
What  remain  are  scars,  as  after  an  operation,  and  they  make 
themselves  felt  when,  later  on,  serious  inner  conflicts  occur  and 
unfavorable  circumstances  threaten  a  person's  security.  When  my 
wife  was  so  dangerously  ill,  I  felt  those  scars;  the  old  wounds 
became  sensitive  in  stormy  weather.  During  Ella's  illness,  a  new 
train  of  obsession-thoughts  emerged,  which  I  had  to  fight.  I  was 
again  haunted  by  that  expectancy  of  impending  calamity.  But 
now  I  had,  of  course,  good  reason  to  be  afraid,  because  I  had 
been  told  how  dangerous  Ella's  disease  was. 

Oftener  and  oftener  thoughts  emerged  which  seemed  to  herald 
the  catastrophe  in  magical  connections.  There  were,  it  is  true, 
some  strange  accidental  circumstances  which  favored  the  recur- 
rence of  those  old,  consciously  disavowed  beliefs  in  magic.  Here 
are  a  few  of  them:  It  was  on  the  day  after  my  wife  and  I  had 
attended  together  a  performance  of  Mahler's  Song  of  the  Earth 
that  Ella  had  felt  her  first  fever  attack.  When  we  left  the  concert 
hall,  there  was  storm  and  rain,  and  my  wife  complained  that  she 
felt  shivery.  When  she  became  very  ill  the  next  day,  we  thought, 
at  first,  that  she  had  caught  a  cold.  But  it  soon  became  clear  how 
serious  her  condition  was.  When  Mahler  composed  this  sym- 
phony, he  was  already  ill  and  foresaw  that  he  would  soon  die.  He 
shuddered  at  the  thought  that  none  of  the  great  composers, 
Beethoven,  Schubert,  Bruckner,  had  written  a  tenth  symphony. 
Each  of  them  had  died  after  the  ninth.  Mahler,  who  was  super- 
stitious, tried,  so  to  speak,  to  play  a  trick  on  destiny  and  called 
his  ninth  symphony,  Song  of  the  Earth.  He  died  before  he  could 
finish  the  tenth  symphony. 

I  took  the  concert  as  a  bad  omen.  The  idea  that  some  magical 
connection  was  there  recurred  when  my  wife  was  brought  to  the 
Loew  Sanatorium,  the  same  clinic  and  the  same  ward  where 
Mahler  had  died  ten  years  before.  When  Ella's  physicians  then 
suggested  that  Professor  Chvosteck  should  be  called,  I  remem- 
bered that  Alma  Maria,  Mahler's  wife,  had  called  the  same  physi- 
cian to  Paris,  when  the  composer  returned  from  New  York  in 
1910.  Chvosteck  had  then  told  Mrs.  Mahler  that  her  husband  was 
lost.  But  as  if  there  were  not  enough  coincidences:  at  first,  Ella's 
disease  was  diagnosed  as  poisoning  of  the  organism  through  un- 


ig2  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

known  bacteria;  but  later  the  specific  agent  was  ascertained  as 
streptococcus  viridans.  It  was  the  same  as  that  which  caused  the 
heart  of  Mahler  to  fail.  There  were  four  incidental  things:  the 
attendance  at  Mahler's  last  symphony,  the  same  hospital  and 
ward,  the  same  consulting  physician,  and  the  same  disease— well, 
they  were  incidents  and  coincidents.  Some  of  them  could  easily 
be  explained  by  local  and  temporal  circumstances,  and  some  did 
not  need  any  kind  of  explanation.  But  it  was  difficult  to  shake 
off  the  notion  that  there  was  a  mysterious  connection.  The  coin- 
cidences were  unconsciously  interpreted  as  omens  that  my  wife's 
fate  was  sealed  as  Mahler's  had  been.  These  obsessional  thoughts, 
whirling  in  my  head,  were  taken  very  seriously,  when  the  danger 
was  greatest.  Sometimes,  they  were  considered  only  as  fancies  and 
playful  caprices— quite  in  accordance  with  the  character  of  most 
obsessional  ideas.  I  had  an  excellent  insight  into  the  psychology 
of  obsessional  thinking;  yes,  I  had  even  made  a  special  study  of 
it,  and  most  of  my  books,  until  then,  dealt  with  it.  But  it 
seemed  all  this  did  not  help  rne  much  when  destiny  knocked  on 
my  own  door.  Slowly,  I  mastered  the  power  of  those  magical 
thoughts.  Later  on,  another  much  more  serious  neurotic  phenom- 
enon, which  gave  me  a  lot  of  trouble,  took  their  place.  I  shall 
report  it  soon. 

As  by  a  miracle,  the  inflammation  seemed,  at  least  in  its  acute 
symptoms,  to  come  to  a  standstill.  In  the  following  years,  the 
basic  cardial  disease  took  its  slow  course  and  the  bacterial  growth 
finally  occluded  the  kidneys.  A  very  painful  attack  made  it  neces- 
sary to  remove  a  kidney  stone  and,  a  few  years  later,  the  kidney— 
again  my  wife  was  in  the  Loew  Sanatorium  for  months.  When  we 
returned  home,  we  decided  to  consult  different  physicians.  After 
the  operation,  three  specialists  in  their  field  held  a  consultation 
in  our  apartment.  I  was  called  in,  and  the  youngest  of  them 
said,  "She  is  doomed.  The  only  thing  that  can  be  done  is  to  pro- 
long her  life  by  sparing  her  in  every  direction." 

I  had  long  before  decided  to  put  all  my  energy  into  this  task, 
had  given  up  all  pleasures  or  distractions,  and  had  buried  my 
scientific  ambitions.  I  returned  to  an  old  pattern  of  living.  I  had 
again  condemned  myself  to  forced  labor.  My  "travaux  forces" 
were  this  time  not  of  the  kind  of  the  Goethe  compulsion.  They 


THE  CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  IQg 

concerned  my  analytic  practice.  I  worked  eleven  and  twelve  hours 
daily  with  patients,  in  order  to  earn  enough  to  pay  all  the  doc- 
tors, the  expensive  sanatoria,  cure  places  and  medicinal  baths, 
to  secure  all  possible  domestic  help  (Ella  was  forbidden  to  do 
any  work),  and,  finally,  to  give  my  wife  as  much  comfort  and 
pleasure  as  possible.  Besides  this,  I  had,  of  course,  to  support 
her  parents.  This  went  on  for  many  years.  The  words  "She  is 
doomed"  echoed  in  my  mind  and,  whenever  I  was  exhausted, 
the  reminder  of  the  end  I  thought  near  roused  me  to  new  efforts 
and  even  greater  self-sacrifice. 

Strangely  enough,  I  found  in  this  forced  labor,  in  this  exhaust- 
ing no-stop  work,  a  kind  of  painful  pleasure,  in  renunciation,  a 
grim  enjoyment,  and  in  ruthless  self-sacrifice  and  suffering,  a  con- 
cealed satisfaction.  It  wTas  much  later  that  I  recognized  that  such 
a  limitless  suppression  of  all  self-interest,  such  cruel  slave-driving 
of  oneself,  deserved  the  name  of  martyrdom  attitude,  and  that  it 
was  clearly  of  a  masochistic  character.  This  kind  of  masochism, 
which  Freud  called  moral,  on  account  of  its  essential  psychologi- 
cal character,  really  gets  gratification  out  of  suffering,  because  it 
anticipates  an  appropriate  reward  for  it.  It  is  as  if  the  person  who 
has  deprived  himself  of  so  much  and  has  undergone  so  much 
suffering  has  acquired  a  claim  to  a  fulfillment  of  his  wishes,  has 
earned  a  right  to  gratification  of  his  drives.  There  was  no  doubt 
that  my  own  masochistic  attitude  had,  also,  the  character  of  an 
atonement  and  self-punishment  for  all  my  unconscious  cruel  and 
evil  tendencies  toward  Ella,  in  the  past,  renewed  and  reactivated 
by  the  present  situation.  At  the  same  time,  my  ego  could  uncon- 
sciously get  a  great  advantage  from  such  self-sacrifice  and  forced 
labor  for  others.  It  not  only  helped  my  self-respect;  it  made  me 
unconsciously  feel  noble  and  kind,  yes,  even  better  than  others. 
The  more  I  worked  and  labored,  the  more  exhausted  I  felt,  the 
more  hidden  sweetness  was  in  it,  the  greater  and  surer  was  my 
claim  that  I  would,  in  the  near  future,  gather  the  fruits  of  my 
self-torture.  And  self-torture  it  was;  it  was  sadistic,  cruel  satisfac- 
tion, sadism  turned  upside  down,  turned  against  myself. 

When  I  now  look  back  at  these  ten  years  of  my  life,  I  have  to 
say  that  the  inner  court,  which  condemned  me  to  forced  labor 
and  to  solitary  confinement  (because  I  was  lonely),  was  extremely 


194  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

and  unjustly  severe  in  judging  my  thought-crimes.  The  punish- 
ment was  not  only  strict.  It  was  barbarian.  When  I  worked  like  a 
slave  and  denied  myself  everything,  like  an  early  Christian  monk, 
it  was  almost  an  orgy  of  masochism.  There  was,  furthermore,  the 
confusion  in  my  mind  about  being  kind,  noble,  and  suffering,  as 
if  they  were  identical.  And  how  much  concealed  conceit,  how 
much  secret  holier-than-thou  attitude  was  in  this  luxurious  suf- 
fering! What  business  had  I,  an  average  man,  to  act  like  Jesus 
Christ?  Why  had  I  to  be  unhappy  in  order  to  be  happy?  It  took 
a  long  time  until  I  understood  that  I  am  certainly  not  better, 
and  perhaps  not  even  much  worse  than  others. 

But  all  this  I  did  not  know  then.  I  discovered  it  at  first  not  in 
myself,  but  in  my  patients  during  analysis.  It  is  odd— or  perhaps 
it  is  not  odd—that  I  recognized  how  strong  the  masochistic  trend 
in  myself  had  been,  only  after  I  had  studied,  for  three  decades, 
the  phenomenon  of  moral  masochism  in  others;  and  had  written 
about  it  in  a  book  of  a  few  hundred  pages.* 

Slowly,  I  also  had  to  admit  to  myself  that  a  change  of  character 
had  taken  place  in  my  wife.  It  appeared  first  in  the  form  of  a  self- 
centered  egotism,  which  is  so  understandable  in  persons  who  are 
seriously  handicapped  by  a  chronic  disease.  But,  during  the  fol- 
lowing years,  it  took  an  unexpected  turn.  At  first,  it  seemed  as 
if  what  she  wanted  was  only  recovery.  She  went  to  Baden,  near 
Vienna,  and  later  to  Wildungen  and  Gastein,  to  take  the  mineral 
springs.  All  possible  treatments  and  cures  were  tried;  she  went 
from  one  medicinal  fountain  to  another,  to  test  their  curative 
effects.  It  was  as  if  she  trod  in  the  footsteps  of  her  father,  going 
to  the  same  resorts  and  health  places  where  he  got  orders  for 
advertisements  for  the  Kurortezeitung.  1  knew  it  was  in  vain, 
but  who  would  have  the  heart  to  tell  this  to  a  person  who  was 
so  dangerously  ill? 

But  there  was  also  an  increasingly  perceptible  change  in  tem- 
perament. As  if  she  wanted  to  make  up  for  the  years  we  had 
been  so  poor  and  for  the  war  years,  Ella  wished  now  to  live 
luxuriously— without  any  regard  for  how  much  I  could  earn.  We 
had  to  rent  a  big  cottage  in  the  suburbs  of  Vienna,  to  buy  new 

*  Masochism  in  Modern  Man,  1941  (and  ecL;  New  York:  Farrar,  Straus  and 
Co.,  1948). 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  195 

furniture.  Two  maids  had  to  be  hired.  When  Ella  felt  relatively 
well,  expensive  boxes  had  to  be  ordered  for  first-night  perform- 
ances for  herself,  Mrs.  0.,  and  Mary.  To  have  her  parents  near, 
I  had  to  finance  their  moving  from  Klosterneuburg  to  Vienna, 
and  to  pay  the  rent  for  the  new  apartment.  Nothing  appeared  to 
her  too  expensive  for  our  son  and  for  herself.  It  was  as  if  she 
had,  so  late  in  life,  adopted  the  habits  and  airs  of  her  father, 
as  if  only  now  an  earlier  unconscious  identification  with  him 
had  come  to  light.  I  had  guessed,  from  some  remarks  she  had 
made  years  before,  that  she  had  once  as  a  small  girl  loved  him 
very  much,  but  that  he  had  deeply  disappointed  her  on  a  certain 
occasion,  in  not  keeping  a  promise.  Since  that  time,  an  estrange- 
ment had  taken  place  between  Ella  and  her  father.  She  obeyed 
him  and  honored  him,  but  it  seemed  that  her  love  had  been  re- 
placed by  an  unconscious  identification,  which  had  only  now  be- 
come evident. 

As  we  know  from  analysis  of  numerous  patients,  such  latent 
identifications,  as  a  substitute  for  love,  are  quite  frequent,  at 
least  in  childhood  and  early  youth,  when  the  personality  is  still 
very  plastic.  We  often  observe  them  in  women  after  the  loss  of 
a  love  object.  The  lover  who  has  deserted  a  girl  has  vanished  as 
an  external  love  object;  the  loss  of  the  object  has  been  apparently 
overcome.  But  his  character  traits  have  been  unconsciously  in- 
corporated; the  woman  now  appears  to  be  changed.  The  old  love 
object  has  become  a  part  of  herself.  What  once  had  been  love 
has  been  replaced  by  identification  and  the  object  is  preserved 
within  the  personality,  which  is  transformed  by  this  absorption. 
The  observer  gets  the  impression  that  the  character  o£  the  woman 
has  undergone  a  change,  and  he  connects  it  correctly  with  the  un- 
happy love  affair.  He  fails  to  see  that  this  transformation  of  the 
ego  is  the  price  for  the  overcoming  of  the  failure.  The  object  is 
not  really  expelled.  It  becomes  part  and  parcel  of  the  person. 
Its  monument  is  erected  in  her  character.  Its  memory  is  immor- 
talized in  the  core  of  the  self. 

I  cannot  say  what  now  brought  this  old  identification  with 
her  father  to  the  foreground.  Perhaps  Ella's  disease  and  the  or- 
ganic changes  in  her  had  an  influence  upon  this  evolution.  It  is 
also  true  that  the  identification  was  not  total  and  did  not  mani- 


ig6  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

fest  itself  in  those  features  of  Mr.  O.  that  were  hateful  to  me, 
his  anti-Semitism,  his  narrow-mindedness,  and  his  tyrannical  and 
stupid  self-righteousness.  It  showed  itself  instead  in  an  urge  to 
act  the  great  lady,  to  live  beyond  our  means,  and  to  maintain 
standards  which  were  beyond  and  above  our  situation. 

There  was  decidedly  a  tendency  in  the  direction  of  luxury 
which  did  not  correspond  with  my  income  and  which  made  it 
necessary  for  me  to  work  with  the  utmost  exertion  I  was  capable 
of.  Together  with  this  trait  appeared  an  increasing  impatience 
and  irritability,  which  before  had  been  entirely  lacking  in  my 
wife's  character.  She  was  dissatisfied  with  herself  and  with  the 
people  around  her,  with  the  place  rented  for  the  summer,  with 
the  food  served,  with  her  bridge  partners,  as  well  as  with  her 
maids.  She  was  quickly  annoyed  and  lost  self-control  easily, 
raised  her  voice  and  criticized  everybody.  What  had  become  of 
the  gentle  girl  I  had  loved?  The  physicians  declared  that  such 
outbreaks  and  the  whole  character  of  impatience  and  irritability 
were  significant  and  often  met  with  in  patients  suffering  from 
serious  kidney  troubles.  Such  moods  of  excitability  alternated 
with  others,  in  which  Ella  was  almost  apathetic  and  had  no  in- 
terest in  her  environment. 

As  was  unavoidable,  we  had  our  tiffs  but  I  can  fairly  say  to  my 
credit  I  showed  an  almost  superhuman  patience  in  these  years, 
developed  an  affection  which  had  its  deep  source  in  pity,  and 
tried  to  fulfill  every  wish  of  my  wife.  I  yielded  to  every  one  of 
her  moods,  and  silently  bore  her  outbreaks  of  anger.  This  has 
nothing  to  do  with  any  innate  kindness  of  my  nature.  If  it  would 
not  sound  funny,  I  would  dare  to  say,  almost  the  contrary.  There 
was  the  persistent  thought  that  she  was  so  ill  and  had  perhaps 
not  long  to  live.  I  told  it  to  myself  ever  so  many  times,  whenever 
I  was  exhausted  from  overwork  and  thought  I  could  not  go  on: 
She  lives  on  borrowed  time.  I  could  not  deny  her  the  luxuries  she 
cared  for,  and  I  worked  on  and  on  to  secure  them.  I  could  not 
afford  to  argue  seriously  with  her,  because  I  had  to  think:  The 
next  week,  the  next  month  she  might  be  dead. 

Most  men,  after  years  of  wedded  life,  ask  themselves:  What 
happened  to  the  romance  we  had?  And  what  happened  to  us 
both?  Is  it  not  possible  to  recapture  these  glorious  days  and 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  igj 

months?  Are  they  gone  forever?  They  are.  Short  revivals  are  pos- 
sible, but  romantic  love  undergoes  a  change.  Understanding  and 
affection  will  take  the  place  of  that  fancy  and  fantasy  which  is 
the  essence  of  romance.  This  unavoidable  transformation  of  ro- 
mance also  took  place  in  our  wedded  life;  but  there  was  a  factor 
which  had  nothing  to  do  with  this  change.  Ella's  disease  affected 
the  situation. 

Pity  is  incompatible  with  romantic  love;  this  emotion,  however 
noble,  almost  excludes  the  others  connected  with  passion.*  Ro- 
mance means  to  idealize  the  object,  to  see  perfection  in  it,  to 
endow  it  with  excellencies  we  missed  in  ourselves.  Pity  sees  the 
object  miserable  or  poor.  In  romance,  one  feels  humble.  The 
person  we  pity  can  be  admired  and  loved,  but,  in  one  direction 
at  least,  one  is  in  a  better  position,  and  the  fact  that  the  object 
is  not  considered  a  supreme  being  any  more  almost  excludes 
romantic  feelings.  To  see  the  romantically  transfigured  woman 
in  pain  will  fill  us  with  deep  sympathy,  but  not  with  romance. 
To  give  her  the  bedpan  and  to  render  the  other  little  services 
of  the  sickroom,  the  sight  of  pus  and  blood— all  this  pre- 
vents romance  from  prospering.  Charity  can  easily  overcome  dis- 
gust, and  so  can  sexual  desire,  but  romantic  love  stops  before 
this  hindrance. 

My  deep  feelings  for  my  wife  were  not  diminished  in  those 
many  years  of  her  illness.  I  took  the  best  care  of  her  and  gave  her 
all  my  affection,  but  romantic  love  yielded  to  pity,  sometimes  to 
the  degree  that  I  became  a  fellow-sufferer.  And  yet,  it  was  some- 
times possible  for  me  to  see  her  in  all  her  charm  and  loveliness, 
as  before. 

When  my  sister  Margaret  and  I  were  children,  we  often  heard 
our  grandfather,  who  was  a  Talmudic  scholar  and  a  very  re- 
spected but  strange  man,  say,  "When  a  man  knows,  after  two 
years  of  married  life,  what  his  wife  really  looks  like,  he  has  never 
been  in  love  with  her/'  We  snickered  because  it  sounded  funny 
to  us.  A  man  should  not  know  what  his  own  wife  looks  like?  It 
is  true,  nevertheless.  He  knows,  of  course,  what  she  looks  like, 
but  the  image  he  had  once  painted  of  her  can  extinguish  the 
reality,  and  stands  gloriously  before  his  eyes,  while  the  material 

*  A  Psychologist  Looks  at  Love  (New  York:  Rinehart  &  Co.,  1943). 


108  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

+j 

object,  the  real  woman  he  looks  at,  is  different  This  psychical 
reality  created  by  his  own  fantasy  can  be  stronger  than  what  his 
eyes  see.  The  image  from  the  past,  which  he  carries  within  him- 
self, is  separated  from  the  reality  and  is  indestructible  and  im- 
perishable. 

Here  was  Ella,  ill  and  prematurely  gray,  with  hollow  cheeks 
and  bags  below  her  eyes,  the  forehead  full  of  wrinkles,  the  face 
aged  long  before  her  time;  I  saw  her  clearly  and  distinctly.  And 
yet,  there  was— how  often— the  other  image.  .  .  .  There  are  the 
$ights,  the  sounds,  and  the  smells  of  a  summer  forenoon  in  a 
garden.  And  a  lovely  girl  of  seventeen  comes  toward  me  on  the 
narrow  path  across  the  meadow.  Her  full  blue  skirt  touches  the 
flowers  on  both  sides,  as  in  a  gentle  caress.  She  walks  in  beauty. 
.  .  .  Now  she  has  seen  me,  and  there  emerges  this  heavenly  smile 
around  her  lips,  while  her  eyes  remain  serious.  And  I  hear  an 
unforgettable,  gentle  voice  say,  "How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Reik?"  The 
present  had  vanished  and  I  felt  as  Faust  toward  the  image  that 
memory  has  called  up: 

To  this  very  moment  I  would  like  to  cry, 
Oh,  linger  yet!  Thou  art  so  fair. 


What  happened  in  the  next  ten  years  must  be  presented  here 
in  a  very  condensed  form.  I  was  discharged  after  the  end  of  the 
war  in  1918.  The  years  after  my  return  to  Vienna  were  happy 
ones.  I  worked  successfully  in  my  analytic  practice,  continued 
my  scientific  research,  and  enjoyed  the  confidence  that  Freud 
showed  in  my  future  development.  We  lived  modestly  enough, 
but  we  were  able  to  save  some  money  for  a  rainy  day.  We  could 
not  know  then  that  the  rain  would  rain  every  day.  We  understood 
each  other  as  much  or  as  little  as  a  young  man  and  a  young 
woman  in  love  can  understand  each  other,  and  preferred  each 
other's  company  to  any  other.  We  were  now  also  sexually  in  tune. 


THE  CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  igg 

Then  came  the  outbreak  of  Ella's  illness  and  those  eight  years 
of  lingering  disease,  often  interrupted  by  long  phases  of  acute 
complaints.  I  described  before  that  I  went  into  a  kind  of  forced 
labor  which  was  now  directed  to  earn  enough  money  for  the 
treatment*  I  do  not  want  to  speak  of  those  masochistic  self-tor- 
tures, but  would  rather  describe  how  it  came  about  that  a  rep 
etition  of  old  emotional  experiences  occurred  after  some  years, 

I  do  not  believe  that  healthy  and  average  men  can  for  long 
periods  remain  chaste  in  the  flower  of  manhood.  It  is  well  known 
that  the  ideals  of  the  Y.M.C.A.,  clean  thought,  clean  speech,  clean 
action,  are  difficult  to  realize  in  those  best  years.  It  seems  that 
the  blessing  of  unperturbed  chastity  is  restricted  to  those  few 
whom  God  loves  especially:  to  the  saints  and  to  the  poor  in  mind. 
In  other  words:  to  ill  persons.  It  should  not  be  denied  that  many 
healthy  men  can  live  without  sexual  satisfaction  for  some  time, 
when  they  are  possessed  by  an  idea.  This  victory  of  mind  over  the 
needs  of  the  organism  cannot,  however,  be  lasting. 

In  these  years  of  my  wife's  illness  I  was  in  the  unfortunate  situ- 
ation of  making  extensive  self-observations  on  this  very  subject. 
There  I  was,  between  thirty  and  forty  years  old,  condemned  to 
sexual  abstinence  or  to  the  refuge  of  masturbation  if  I  wanted 
to  remain  "faithful"  to  my  wife,  who  was  so  ill.  When  the  theme 
of  masturbation  is  discussed  in  literature  it  is  mostly  in  connec- 
tion with  guilt  feelings,  especially  in  the  childhood  years.  I  do 
not  agree  with  my  New  York  colleagues  that  this  relationship  is 
as  direct  as  they  present  it,  nor  do  I  think  that  guilt  feelings  are 
the  only  negative  reaction  to  masturbation.  A  man  of,  say,  thirty- 
five  years  whom  external  or  inner  circumstances  compel  to  take 
his  refuge  in  masturbation  usually  does  not  feel  guilty  and  cer- 
tainly not  in  the  sense  of  a  boy  of  nine  or  ten  years.  It  ain't 
necessarily  so.  In  many  cases  this  form  of  sexual  gratification  can 
produce  other  different  negative  reactions,  for  instance,  shame. 
This  means  the  man  feels  it  degrading,  harmful  to  his  self-respect 
as  a  person  and  as  a  man  that  he,  as  an  adult,  has  to  regress  to  this 
infantile  procedure.  He  feels  it  incompatible  with  his  age  and  his 
maturity.  It  is  as  if  the  president  of  the  Guaranty  Trust  Company, 
instead  of  going  to  the  golf  course,  should  join  boys  of  five  and 
six  years  playing  marbles  at  the  street  corner. 


200  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

I  tried  at  first  to  live  in  sexual  abstinence  and  to  divert  my 
thought  to  my  work.  Being  submerged  in  my  forced  labor  I  had 
some  success.  But  then  those  imperative  urges  could  no  longer  be 
driven  off.  Whenever  they  seemed  to  be  kept  away  by  strong 
mental  effort  in  the  following  months,  they  returned  through  a 
side  entrance,  interfered  with  the  demands  of  the  day  and  the 
sleep  of  the  night.  Their  re-emergence  endangered  the  work  to 
which  I  had  given  myself. 

In  my  manhood  I  was  forced  to  revert  to  a  practice  of  my 
youth,  at  the  time  of  our  secret  engagement.  I  searched  for  casual 
relations  with  women  who  were  willing  to  have  "fun,"  to  release 
me  from  the  unrest  and  the  pressure,  and  to  help  me  to  work 
again  without  disturbance.  To  tell  the  truth,  I  did  not  want  to 
find  a  sweetheart,  because  I  loved  my  wife,  but  merely  a  sexual 
object,  a  physical  relationship,  if  possible,  without  emotional 
involvement.  I  was  not  haunted  any  more  by  scruples  whether 
one  had  the  right  to  use  a  decent  woman  in  this  way.  Reasons  of 
caution  as  well  as  of  taste  forbade  me  even  to  consider  promiscu- 
ous women.  But  what  decent  girl  would  be  content  with  this  kind 
of  relationship  which  was  the  only  one  I  could  offer?  I  had  de- 
cided not  to  pretend  to  be  in  love,  and  to  be  as  frank  as  possible 
about  my  intentions  and  my  emotions.  I  often  asked  myself: 
What  have  I  to  offer  to  attract  a  nice  young  woman?  I  had  not 
even  time  to  pursue  my  chances,  if  there  were  any,  because  I  had 
to  give  almost  the  whole  day  to  my  practice  and  I  wanted  to  be  in 
the  sanatorium  near  my  wife  in  my  spare  time. 
-  The  astonishing  thing  was  that  I  nevertheless  found  what  I 
searched  for— a  few  such  casual  relationships  lasting  some  months, 
relationships  which  were  as  little  time-  and  energy-consuming  as 
possible,  and  with  women  who  did  not  resent  my  troubled,  impa- 
tient, and  irksome  personality.  One  of  my  patients,  who  is  at  psy- 
choanalysis at  this  time  because  he  has  difficulties  in  work  and  in 
his  relations  with  women,  the  other  day  reported  a  casual  sexual 
experience.  "It  was  nothing  to  write  home  about,"  he  said,  and 
added  humorously,  "if  you  write  home  about  such  things  at  all." 
This  is  indeed  the  question  here:  whether  to  write  about  such 
things  at  all.  It  is,  at  the  moment,  the  great  fashion  in  American 
novels  to  give  a  detailed  report  of  the  sexual  doings  of  the  hero 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  2O1 

or  the  heroine.  The  main  part  of  many  contemporary  novels  is 
a  sequence  of  bedroom  and  barroom  scenes.  I  do  not  think  of  my- 
self as  prudish.  In  reading  them  I  feel  neither  morally  indignant 
nor  sexually  excited  but  bored.  If  the  description  is  only  a  vivid 
report  of  sexual  acts  without  any  insight  into  the  emotional 
processes,  without  any  individual  and  characteristic  features,  why 
put  it  into  a  book  which  is  not  supposed  to  be  pornographic?  If 
it  is  meant  to  arouse  sexual  excitement,  why  not  declare  it  as 
pornographic?  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  the  presentation  and 
discussion  of  sexual  problems  deserve  a  large  place  in  fiction  be- 
cause sex  has  such  an  important  part  in  the  lives  of  men  and 
women.  But  it  is  not  the  subject  matter  itself  which  gives  this 
presentation  its  value,  but  the  writer's  way  of  dealing  with  it. 

None  of  those  casual  relations  meant  more  to  me  than  they 
were  supposed  to  mean,  and  that  was  not  much.  I  often  thought 
that  the  game  was  not  worth  the  candle,  yet  I  thought  this  only 
after  the  game,  or  in  the  time  between  the  games,  never  during 
them.  Here  is  an  instance  of  how  an  affair  of  this  kind  started 
and  developed.  It  is  not  chosen  at  random,  and  its  analysis  will 
be  significant  for  my  emotional  situation.  In  the  pauses  between 
the  analytic  sessions  and  after  them  I  hurried  to  the  sanatorium 
and  stayed  in  Ella's  room  as  long  as  possible.  This  was  true,  of 
course,  also  after  the  kidney  operation,  which  was  followed  by  a 
longer  period  of  recovery.  I  could  not  smoke  in  the  sickroom,  but 
often  took  a  walk  in  the  hospital  corridors.  It  so  happened  that, 
turning  a  corner  on  one  of  these  walks,  I  collided  with  a  young, 
pretty  nurse  who  was  hurrying  to  an  operation.  I  said  t4Sorry, 
sister/'  and  that  was  that. 

It  was  not  strange  that  I  ran  into  this  same  nurse  several  times 
in  the  following  days,  because  she  served  in  a  neighboring  ward. 
There  were  no  more  collisions,  but  once  in  the  attempt  to  let 
each  other  pass  in  the  narrow  corridor  we  stepped  aside  in  the 
same  direction.  Instead  of  one  giving  way  to  the  other,  we  stood 
thus  in  each  other's  way.  We  both  smiled  and  corrected  the  faux 
pas,  but  we  stepped  again  simultaneously  to  the  same  side.  The 
same  thing  occurred  the  next  day.  I  said  a  few  words  about  my 
awkwardness  and  she  answered  humorously.  Next  day  I  ran  into 
her  again  and  we  exchanged  a  few  remarks.  A  week  later  the  old 


202  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

gauche  situation  repeated  itself,  and  I  asked  her  which  day  she 
was  off  duty.  This  was  the  beginning  of  this  song  and  what  fol- 
lowed these  first  bars  was  the  necessary  continuation  of  the  tune 
to  its  climax. 

The  interest  of  the  psychologist  will  be  turned  here  to  the  un- 
conscious significance  of  the  successful  wrong  step,  to  the  con- 
cealed motive  of  the  clumsy  cleverness.  The  seeming  awkwardness 
in  stepping  into  each  other's  way,  and  the  following  turning  to 
the  same  side,  this  finding  each  other  in  avoidance,  was  uncon- 
sciously stage-managed.  This  comedy  of  errors  had  concealed  de- 
signs. In  not  watching  one's  step,  one  unconsciously  watched 
one's  step.  We  wanted  to  get  away  from  each  other,  but  some- 
thing led  us  to  each  other.  The  wrong  step  was  unconsciously 
dictated  by  the  wish  to  let  the  other  one  not  pass,  to  stay  together. 
I  must  have  wished  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  Louise— the 
name  of  the  young  nurse— but  this  wish  was  then  unknown  to  me. 
Jt  expressed  itself  only  in  that  symptomatic  action,  in  my  clumsy 
movements  at  the  encounters.  The  effect  of  those  symptomatic 
actions  speaks  clearly  enough  for  the  character  of  the  hidden 
impulses. 

There  must  also  have  been  in  Louise  an  unconscious  tendency 
to  meet  me  halfway,  not  only  figuratively,  but  literally.  Only 
when  her  own  unconscious  wishes  corresponded  with  mine  did 
this  to-and-fro  make  sense.  She  told  me  later  on  that  she  had  ob- 
served me  several  times  before  our  encounter—she  knew  about  the 
disease  of  my  wife  and  she  felt  sorry  for  me,  I  learned  also  that 
she  had  broken  off  an  affair  with  a  man  a  few  months  before 
and  was  feeling  lonely. 

It  seems  to  me  that  psychoanalysts,  submerged  in  the  pathologi- 
cal problems  of  the  neurosis  and  psychosis,  scarcely  pay  attention 
to  those  little  accidents  and  those  inconspicuous  symptomatic  ac- 
tions which  are  so  revealing.  How  is  it  otherwise  possible  that 
their  discussion  does  not  appear  more  frequently  in  analytic 
literature?  To  prove  my  point,  I  am  adding  here  another  fre- 
quent accident  which,  to  my  knowledge,  has  never  been  men- 
tioned or  interpreted  in  analytic  books.  I  mean  the  accidental 
losing  of  one's  partner  in  a  crowded  place  or  street.  Here  is  a 
good  example  from  psychoanalytic  practice:  A  patient  walked 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  2Og 

with  a  young  woman  he  had  known  several  months  on  the  fre- 
quented Kaerntnerstrasse  in  Vienna,  in  lively  conversation.  The 
next  moment  he  found  himself  at  the  side  of  a  lady  whom  he  had 
never  seen  and  to  whom  he  talked  animatedly.  He  had  lost  his 
companion  in  the  crowd  and  had  continued  his  conversation  with 
the  stranger  as  if  she  had  been  his  partner.  The  patient  smilingly 
reported  this  little  incident  next  day  in  the  analytic  session  and 
denied  that  there  was  any  meaning  in  it.  His  following  thoughts 
nevertheless  gave  the  solution  of  the  little  psychological  riddle 
posed  by  losing  his  partner. 

He  and  Sophie,  his  companion,  had  just  been  discussing  Mabel, 
a  mutual  acquaintance.  Sophie  had  made  some  remarks  which 
the  patient  called  "catty"  about  Mabel's  superficiality  and  flirta- 
tiousness.  The  man  was  ungallant  enough  to  agree  with  his  com- 
panion. It  was  just  at  this  moment  that  the  couple  "accidentally" 
got  separated  in  the  crowd.  It  was,  it  seemed,  a  moment  of  perfect 
understanding.  Why  should  the  separation  occur  just  then? 
Should  we  assume  that  God  had  put  asunder  what  men  wanted 
to  join  together? 

The  circumstances  of  the  situation  are  revealing.  During  the 
last  months  Sophie  had  shown  my  patient  ill-concealed  signs 
of  her  inclination,  while  Mabel,  in  contrast  to  her  usual  flirta- 
tiousness,  had  treated  him  rather  coolly.  (Later  on  it  became  clear 
that  Mabel's  reluctant  attitude  was  a  clever  tactical  move  to 
attract  him.)  Mabel  was  younger  and  prettier  than  Sophie.  The 
patient  felt  more  attracted  to  her,  although  he  realized  that  she 
was  as  coquettish  and  as  shallow  as  Sophie  had  said. 

He  was  just  going  to  agree  wholeheartedly  with  Sophie  in  her 
criticism,  when  he  found  himself  removed  from  her  and  speaking 
to  a  stranger-  It  cannot  be  difficult  to  interpret  the  psychological 
meaning  of  the  losing  of  Sophie,  and  of  my  patient's  confusing 
her  with  another  woman.  Translated  into  the  language  of  con- 
scious thinking  the  hidden  emotion  could  be  expressed:  "I  want 
to  get  rid  of  you  and  I  would  prefer  to  walk  and  talk  with  Mabel." 
The  stranger  was  a  substitute  for  Mabel.  When  one  is  consistent 
in  one's  conviction  about  the  psychical  determination  of  such 
symptomatic  actions,  and  when  one  puts  the  unknown  woman  in 
the  place  of  Mabel  as  in  an  equation  solved,  one  arrives  at  the 


2O4  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

following  meaning:  The  patient  would  have  preferred  to  tell 
Mabel  herself  what  he  thought  of  her.  But  this  was  just  what 
the  man  had  uttered  a  few  days  ago  in  an  analytic  session— he  had 
been  annoyed  with  Mabel  and  had  decided  "to  give  her  a  piece 
of  my  mind/'  In  spite  of  such  a  critical  attitude  he  could  not  deny 
to  himself  that  his  thoughts  had  been  preoccupied  with  the  pretty 
girl,  and  that  sexual  fantasies  with  her  had  occurred  to  him.  Now 
the  attraction  he  felt  to  Mabel  had  found  an  expression  at  the 
moment  when  he  was  going  to  agree  with  Sophie's  derogatory 
remarks  about  her.  On  the  other  hand,  his  dislike  of  Sophie  had 
got  the  better  of  him.  The  accidental  loss  really  means:  lose  the 
person,  make  her  disappear.  In  some  cases  I  analyzed,  an  uncon- 
scious feeling  of  annoyance  or  irritation,  sometimes  only  of  bore- 
dom, found  its  expression  in  such  a  separation.  The  complication 
of  the  continued  conversation  with  a  stranger  whom  one  confuses 
with  one's  acquaintance  at  one's  side  allows  the  interpretation:  I 
am  fed  up  with  you;  I  would  like  to  change  my  company.  I  would 
prefer  to  speak  with  someone  else. 

Although  very  little  has  been  written  about  the  unconscious 
meaning  of  such  small  accidental  mistakes  lately,  their  psychologi- 
cal evaluation  appears  very  important  to  the  analyst.  As  my 
acquaintanceship  with  Louise  started  with  those  awkward  steps, 
indicating  an  unconscious  wish  to  meet  her,  so  the  end  of  our 
relationship,  a  few  months  later,  announced  itself  in  advance 
by  a  number  of  mistakes  which  made  us  annoyed  with  each  other. 
We  misheard  or  could  not  catch  each  other  on  the  telephone,  and 
we  misunderstood  the  place  or  the  time  of  a  date,  so  that  we 
waited  in  vain  for  each  other*  Small  real  incidents,  as  unexpected 
professional  detentions^  keep  a  date,  did  not  help  matters  and 
were  unconsciously  conceived  as  purposeful.  The  last  time  we  got 
into  an  argument  was  because  I  waited  for  Louise  in  one  cafe- 
teria, while  she  thought  we  were  to  meet  in  another  one  two 
blocks  away.  All  these  incidents  appeared  as  trifles,  but  out  of 
them  emerged  cause  for  friction,  a  feeling  of  irksome  impatience 
and  intolerance.  We  did  not  understand  each  other  any  more. 

What  I  had  experienced,  I  found  repeated  in  the  lives  of  my 
patients  in  different  forms  and  confirmed  in  its  psychological 
evaluation.  Soon  afterward,  I  treated  a  patient  who  reported  that 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  205 

she  had  wavered  between  two  men  for  a  considerable  time.  The 
one,  Hermann,  had  been  her  first  lover,  had  deserted  her  tempo- 
rarily, and  turned  to  another  girl  from  whom  he  repentantly  re- 
turned to  her.  He  asked  her  to  marry  him.  She  had  resented  his 
infidelity,  and  had  in  the  meantime  become  the  mistress  of  an- 
other man,  Jim,  who  had  wooed  her  before.  She  now  rejected 
Hermann,  and  promised  to  marry  Jim.  She  and  Jim  were  to  meet 
the  next  day  to  go  to  the  office  where  marriage  licenses  were 
issued.  The  place  of  their  date  was  a  subway  station  in 
London,  from  which  they  could  conveniently  reach  the  office.  My 
patient  waited  one  hour.  Jim  did  not  turn  up.  He  waited,  too,  at 
the  entrance  of  the  station,  while  Kate  stood  waiting  downstairs. 
It  was  due  to  this  "accidental"  misunderstanding,  or  rather  to 
its  emotional  repercussions,  that  in  the  end  Kate  did  not  marry 
Jim  but  Hermann. 

On  the  day  after  she  was  "stood  up,"  Kate  went  to  the  analyst 
who  -was  treating  her  at  the  time.  He  seemed  not  to  pay  much 
attention  to  her  complaints  about  her  "bad  luck/'  He  seemed  to 
think  that  there  was  much  ado  about  nothing.  He  considered  the 
fact  that  she  had  waited  downstairs,  while  her  fiance  had  waited 
upstairs,  as  just  an  accident,  as  "just  one  of  those  things,  you 
know."  He  was  therefore  astonished  when  a  few  days  later  she 
announced  that  she  had  broken  with  Jim.  I  am  of  the  opinion 
that  the  analyst  should  have  paid  more  attention  to  the  concealed 
meaning  of  that  misunderstanding.  He  should  have,  it  seems  to 
me,  thought  then  that  the  privilege  of  his  patient's  sex  also  in- 
cluded the  possibility  of  changing  her  unconscious  mind. 

Those  little  dissonances,  misunderstandings,  and  misconstruc- 
tions which  interfered  with  my  relationship  with  Louise  indi- 
cated an  unwillingness  in  each  of  us  to  continue  our  affair.  In 
each  of  us,  I  am  sure,  operated  powers  of  unconscious  conscience 
which  interfered  with  what  we  both  wanted.  As  far  as  I  was 
concerned,  I  became  aware  of  self-reproach,  because  the  affair 
with  Louise  had,  so  to  speak,  developed  under  the  eyes  of  Ella. 
Louise  was  not  in  the  same  ward,  but  she  knew  of  my  wife  and 
her  illness.  She  seemed  to  accept  the  situation,  but  it  must  have 
disturbed  her  somewhat.  She  almost  never  mentioned  Ella,  but 
she  must  have  been  in  her  thoughts  to  a  great  extent.  There  were 


206  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

stronger  scruples  in  myself,  although  I  tried  to  fight  them.  The 
proof  of  their  existence  and  emotional  effect  came  in  the  surpris- 
ing form  of  new  obsessional  thoughts  and  doubts. 

It  was  the  subterranean  work  of  these  obsessional  thoughts 
that  brought  our  affair  to  an  end.  It  was  not  the  material  fact 
of  my  infidelity,  nor  my  delicate  conscience  in  its  conscious  mani- 
festations that  interfered  with  it.  I  now  considered  sexual  satis- 
faction a  biological,  or  rather  psycho-hygienic  necessity.  The  con- 
flict within  me  was  displaced  to  the  fact  that  the  affair  was  with 
a  nurse  of  the  sanatorium  in  which  my  wife  was  seriously  ill.  I 
looked  at  this  first  not  as  at  a  thing  of  bad  morals,  but  of  bad  taste. 
I  showed  lack  of  tact  in  picking  up  Louise  who  was  nursing  in  the 
neighboring  ward.  But  had  I  really  picked  her  up;  was  it  choice 
and  not  rather  making  use  of  the  circumstances?  Where  had  I 
occasion  to  meet  a  girl  who  would  be  compliant  to  my  wishes 
when  I  spent  my  time  in  the  office  most  of  the  day,  and  went  out 
only  to  see  my  wife  in  the  sanatorium?  And  was  it  not,  after  all, 
to  be  reasonable,  a  satisfactory  arrangement  which  saved  time 
and  trouble?  I  tried  to  convince  myself  that  it  was  only  a  ques- 
tion of  expediency.  If  (I  argued  with  myself)  I  have  an  affair  at 
all,  why  should  I  not  have  one  with  one  of  the  nurses  in  the 
sanatorium,  why  rather  with  some  girl  outside?  Thus  spoke  the 
voice  of  reason. 

But  there  was  another  voice  and  it  presented  the  counterpoint: 
Delicacy  of  feeling  should  have  prevented  me  from  getting  into 
an  affair  in  this  place.  But  why?  My  reason  rebelled.  The  fact 
that  Louise  was  a  nurse  in  the  same  hospital  did  not  affect  Ella. 
It  did  nothing  to  change  the  fact  of  the  affair,  did  not  contribute 
a  sordid  or  shameful  note  to  it.  Yet  there  was  the  feeling  that  just 
this  fact  was  an  offense  against  Ella.  I  tried  in  vain  to  reason  with 
myself.  Louise  was  in  another  ward,  had  never  seen  my  wife,  had  no 
influence  upon  her  treatment,  and  my  wife  had  no  knowledge 
of  Louise's  existence.  But  my  feeling  was  more  stubborn  than 
my  intelligence. 

This  inner  argument  was  not  brought  to  a  decision  because 
one  of  the  contestants  had  the  last  word.  A  new  voice  became 
audible  and  drowned  the  others:  an  obsession- thought.  It  was  at 
first  vague  and  indefinite.  It  emerged  in  the  form  of  a  mental 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  207 

potentiality  and  was  devoid  of  all  emotion.  At  first,  I  played  with 
the  thought,  but  later  the  thought  played  with  me.  It  appeared 
originally  in  the  form:  If  I  sleep  with  Louise,  something  will 
happen  to  Ella;  she  will  get  worse,  or  she  will  have  a  relapse. 
That  was  just  at  the  time  when  the  recovery  of  my  wife  made 
progress  after  the  operation.  From  this  phase  of  the  obsession  to 
its  practical  consequence  was  only  a  small  step.  The  clear  formu- 
lation of  the  obsessive  thought  which  appeared,  the  decision  of 
the  inner  oracle,  amounted  to  a  forbidding:  You  must  not  sleep 
with  Louise  any  more.  I  rebelled  against  it  and  continued  to  see 
Louise.  But  my  anxiety  increased,  and  at  this  time  all  those  small  in- 
cidents and  misunderstandings  which  interfered  with  our  relation- 
ship multiplied.  Finally,  I  decided  to  break  up  the  affair.  Now  I 
was  convinced  that  the  game  was  not  worth  the  candle,  especially 
35  the  candle  did  not  give  as  much  light  and  comfort  any  more 
as  at  the  beginning.  I  could  not  hide  from  myself  that  there  was 
a  kind  of  glow  of  satisfaction  in  my  renunciation  as  the  subtle 
self-torture  connected  with  it.  More  important,  however,  was  the 
release  from  the  pressure  of  anxiety  which  I  had  carried  so  long. 
This  relief  is  mostly  felt  when  one  obeys  those  obsessive  com- 
mands and  inhibitions. 

It  was  easy  enough  to  judge  later  on  that  my  doubts  and  con- 
flicts were  of  the  nature  of  shadow-boxing,  but  those  shadows 
which  were  cast  by  myself  appeared  fateful.  I  knew,  of  course, 
that  my  affair  with  Louise  had  no  influence  upon  Ella's  state  of 
health,  but  such  clear  thinking  had  little  power  compared  with 
the  onslaught  upon  my  unconscious  convictions.  There  must  be 
a  germ  of  psychological  justification  even  in  the  magical  thought- 
connection  I  had  built.  Which  was  it? 

When  one  traces  back  the  obsessive  thought  to  its  origin  and 
inserts  the  missing  links,  the  hidden  meaning  becomes  clear.  As 
the  obsession-thought  first  emerged,  in  a  very  abbreviated  and 
distorted  form,  it  did  not  make  sense,  and  yet  there  is  a  good 
psychological  sense  in  it.  Here  is  the  reconstructed  complete  text: 
If  I  have  sexual  intercourse  with  Louise  (and  Ella  should  learn  of 
it),  my  wife  would  reproach  me  and  despise  me,  which  would  make 
me  very  angry.  In  my  fury  I  would  wish  her  to  die,  and  this  wish 
would  have  an  influence  upon  her  recovery— she  would  really 


2O8  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

have  a  relapse  and  die.  Deprived  of  the  connecting  links,  the 
thought  appeared  in  the  form:  If  1  have  intercourse  with  Louise, 
Ella  will  get  worse.  My  affection  for  my  wife  and  the  anxiety 
which  the  imagined  possibility  awakened  in  me  led  to  the  myste- 
rious forbidding  and  to  the  end  of  my  affair.  In  the  sense  of  my 
magical  thoughts  this  was  a  measure  which  protected  a  life  dear 
tome. 

The  consideration  that  it  was  mean  of  me  to  start  an  affair, 
in  the  sanatorium  in  which  Ella  was  ill  does  not  only  concern  an 
aggravating  circumstance.  It  was  not  just  the  nearness  itself  that 
bothered  me;  but  what  it  indicated  psychologically:  a  special  in- 
considerateness,  a  lack  of  finer  feeling,  an  absence  of  delicacy. 
The  nearness  appeared  as  an  allusion  to  the  fact  that  the  thought 
of  Ella's  serious  disease  did  not  disturb  me  more  in  my  sexual 
desire.  It  concerned  the  immediate  and  unconditional  character 
of  my  sensual  appetite.  There  was  a  special  indecency  in  picking  up 
a  nurse  in  the  same  sanatorium.  My  sexual  misbehavior  or  my  in- 
fidelity could,  it  seemed  to  me,  be  judged  more  mildly  by  myself 
if  I  had  taken  a  mistress  outside  the  sanatorium.  That  it  was 
possible  that  I  could  make  a  date  with  Louise,  after  I  came  out 
of  the  sickroom  of  my  wife  seemed  indelicate,  the  expression  of 
a  special  cynical  attitude  against  which  something  in  me  resisted, 
although  something  in  me  welcomed  it  too. 

But  besides  and  beyond  those  subtler  feelings,  there  was  a 
magical  belief,  a  hidden  obsession-thought.  It  already  indicated 
itself  in  the  fact  that  Louise  and  I  very  particularly  avoided  men- 
tion of  my  wife.  The  subject  seemed  to  be  taboo  and  had  to  be 
left  out  of  our  conversation  as  if  it  were  a  sore  spot.  We  could, 
of  course,  not  avoid  it  in  our  thoughts,  and  the  more  we  tried  to 
exclude  it  from  the  small  ground  common  to  us,  the  more  it 
recurred.  It  could  not  be  entirely  avoided  because  sometimes  I 
could  not  keep  a  date  when  Ella  felt  badly,  and  Louise  had  to 
be  informed  about  it.  The  obsession-thought  which  was  going  to 
emerge  and  was  caught  in  the  state  of  being  born  had  this  em- 
bryonic form:  I  was  afraid  that  Louise  would  have  hostile  feelings 
against  Ella  and  these  emotions  would  lead  to  a  deterioration  of 
my  wife's  health;  in  continuation  of  this  thought:  would  lead  to 
Ella's  death. 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN   ANALYST  20g 

It  is  psychologically  obvious  where  this  flicker  of  an  obsessive 
thought  originated  and  what  was  the  germ  from  which  it  grew. 
When  I  once  told  Louise  that  I  had  to  stay  with  Ella  and  so  could 
not  keep  a  date  that  evening,  I  saw  an  expression  of  disappoint- 
ment in  her  face.  Once  she  asked  me  whether  it  was  really  neces- 
sary to  stay  with  my  wife  and  whether  I  could  not  postpone  it 
to  another  evening.  From  here  it  is  not  a  far  cry  to  the  half- 
unconscious  assumption  that  she  had  jealous  and  hostile  feelings 
toward  Ella. 

Magical  fears  like  the  one  I  have  mentioned  (scruples  about 
Louise  being  a  nurse  in  the  same  sanatorium,  and  our  mutual 
silence  about  Ella)  are  generally  at  the  roots  of  feelings  of  social 
delicacy  or  decency.  These  very  obsessional  thoughts  are  the  ones 
which  prevent  us  from  acting  tactlessly.  Those  superstitions  and 
fears  are  perhaps  the  soil  from  which  many  social  feelings  grow. 
Here  they  develop  as  measures  of  protection  against  the  dangers 
which  threaten  from  our  hostile,  aggressive,  and  envious  tenden- 
cies. The  defenses  against  those  destructive  impulses  acquire, 
later  on,  a  solid  form  and  establish  themselves  as  guarantees  of 
the  society  against  many  powerful  selfish  drives. 

Some  other  relations  of  a  similar  kind  followed  that  with 
Louise.  In  spite  of  my  conscious  decision  to  consider  them  as  "so- 
what  affairs,"  I  always  took  them  too  seriously,  and  never  suc- 
ceeded in  dealing  with  them  in  a  lighthearted  way.  I  was  con- 
vinced, at  the  time,  that  those  few  extramarital  adventures,  those 
back-street  experiences  signified  that  I  was  not  true  to  my  wife, 
and  I  appeared  to  myself  as  a  low  kind  of  villain.  It  was  as  if  a 
provincial  came  to  New  York  and  sat  alone  with  a  highball  at 
the  Stork  Club,  watching  the  couples  dance  and  imagining  him- 
self to  be  thoroughly  depraved  and  taking  part  in  an  orgy.  Men 
would  rather  think  of  themselves  as  scoundrels  than  admit  that 
they  are  just  average  men.  Vanity  of  vanities!  To  think  of  oneself 
as  particularly  evil  is  also  an  expression  of  conceit.  We  are  neither 
patterns  of  virtue  nor  of  vice.  We  are  not  first-class  scoundrels 
either.  The  sober  truth  is:  Man  is  nothing  first-class. 


21O  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 


8 

Ella,  recovered  from  the  kidney  operation,  had  returned  from 
the  sanatorium.  She  had  to  avoid  every  physical  effort  on  account 
of  her  weak  heart,  but  she  could  now  sometimes  go  out  to  bridge 
parties  and  theater  performances. 

The  first  time  we  were  sexually  together  again  became  a  ter- 
rible experience:  to  see  my  wife  fighting  for  breath,  her  face 
bloated,  the  bluish  shine  around  her  lips  so  well  known  from 
observation  on  the  sickbed  in  the  last  years.  The  fear  that  her 
weak  heart,  this  poor  heart  always  threatened  by  the  uncompen- 
sated  deficiency,  would  suddenly  fail  shook  me  to  the  depths. 
Would  this  heart  be  up  to  the  extraordinary  effort?  This  fear 
made  sexual  gratification  impossible  because  it  did  not  leave  me; 
or,  if  suppressed,  recurred  at  the  critical  moment.  I  had  to  admit 
to  myself  that  the  temptation  to  approach  my  wife  sexually  was 
associated  with  the  vision  that  she  could  die  in  my  arms.  The 
most  attractive  image  of  a  beloved  woman  melting  away  in  the 
rapture  of  sexual  pleasure  was  thus  changed  into  the  image  of 
passing  away.  The  moment  supreme  appeared  at  the  last  moment. 
The  eyes,  which  showed  the  moist  gleam  and  change  of  expression, 
seemed  to  grow  suddenly  dim.  It  was  as  if  Ella  had  unconsciously 
sensed  my  concealed  fear,  because  she  seemed  in  a  subtle  way  to 
encourage  my  love-making,  but  I  am  sure  this  was  only  under  the 
impression  that  sexual  satisfaction  was  a  necessity  for  a  man. 

That  panic  which  Goethe  experienced  in  those  nightmares  in 
which  he  saw  Friederike  pale,  ill,  and  close  to  dying,  after  he 
kissed  her,  those  terrible  pictures  in  which  he  saw  her  as  the 
victim  of  a  mysterious  curse,  what  were  they  compared  with  my 
own  fears  and  images  which  were  not  created  by  imagination 
only?  The  dark  Angel  with  the  bare  sword  stood  invisible  at  the 
end  of  our  bed,  and  I  shudderingly  felt  His  nearness  and  presence. 

Here  was  a  situation  which,  although  so  different  from  Goethe's 
fear  of  kissing,  secured  the  mold  from  which  the  first  vague 
guessing  of  Goethe's  unconscious  processes  sprang.  I  was  not 
aware  of  the  emotional  connection  between  my  own  expression 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN   ANALYST  211 

and  Goethe's  when  I  wrote  that  study  on  the  Sesenheim  affair.  It 
is,  in  my  view,  also  not  essential  that  I  had  this  experience  in 
reality.  The  only  factor  which  matters  in  cases  of  this  kind  is  the 
psychical  reality. 

It  so  happened  that  there  was  in  my  life  a  real  situation  which 
could  lend  itself  to  a  psychological  comparison  with  Goethe's  be- 
cause its  emotional  repercussions  were  similar  to  his,  whose  actual 
experience  was  so  dissimilar  to  mine.  Love-making  appeared  in 
its  consequences  as  an  instrument  of  destruction.  As  Goethe  was 
afraid  of  the  tragic  consequences  of  his  kissing  Friederike,  thus 
was  I  terrified  by  the  image  that  sexual  intercourse  might  en- 
danger my  wife's  life.  In  Goethe's  obsessive  fear  magical  and  obses- 
sive motives  were  prominent,  although  some  considerations  of 
reality  concerning  Friederike's  tuberculosis  were  in  the  back- 
ground. In  my  own  anxiety  the  reality  justified  my  fears  much 
more,  but  they  were  superstitions  and  obsessive  thoughts  hidden 
behind  those  considerations. 

The  fears  which  were  brought  to  the  surface  by  my  wife's 
disease  were  hidden  in  the  unconscious  depths  a  long  time  be- 
fore they  emerged.  They  were  dormant  in  the  emotional  subsoil, 
waiting  for  the  day  when  they  could  pierce  the  crust  and  appear 
in  the  form  of  a  thought-connection  between  sexuality  and  death. 
Deeply  rooted  in  the  dark  emotional  underground  and  originated 
in  childhood  impressions,  these  thoughts  associated  sexual  union 
with  one's  own  or  the  partner's  death.  There  was  a  vague  and 
superstitious  expectancy  of  impending  calamity  following  inti- 
mate intercourse,  a  thought-bridge  between  sexual  gratification 
and  annihilation.  In  Goethe's  case  the  expression  "kiss  of  death" 
was  not  a  melodramatic  phrase,  but  marked  a  psychological  situ- 
ation of  a  very  definite  and  definable  character. 

I  wondered  for  a  long  time  why  this  hidden  thought-connection 
in  Goethe  was  not  discovered  previously,  and  recognized  by  the 
Goethe  philologists  and  literary  critics  who  left  not  a  single  line 
of  the  great  poet  undiscussed.  It  becomes  so  transparent  to  an 
attentive  reader  who  follows  Goethe's  poetic  production  with 
psychoanalytic  understanding.  Often  veiled,  but  sometimes  very 
clear,  this  sequence  of  thoughts,  which  reveals  itself  psychologi- 
cally as  a  consequence  in  thoughts,  appears  in  his  novels,  plays, 


212  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

and  poems.  I  am  restricting  myself  here  to  quoting  two  instances 
from  his  ballads  as  representative  of  an  abundance  of  material 
of  this  kind.  In  "The  God  and  the  Bajadere"  it  is  the  lover  whom 
the  girl  finds  dead  after  the  night's  sexual  pleasures,  and  she 
desires  to  share  death  with  him  as  she  did  sexual  union  a  few 
hours  before.  In  the  "Bride  of  Corinth"  the  dead  girl  warms  her- 
self in  the  embrace  of  the  youth  to  whom  she  was  once  promised 
and  who  will  die  soon  after  touching  her. 

Here  are  survivals  of  superstitions  or  obsessive  fears  of  sexual 
intercourse,  remnants  of  a  magical  fear  of  sexual  touch.  It  cannot 
be  incidental  that  in  those  two  famous  classical  ballads  the 
lovers  are  again  and  for  the  last  time  united  on  the  funeral  pile. 
It  cannot  be  accidental  that  in  both  poems  it  is  religion  whose 
prejudices  interfere  with  their  intimacy: 

Sacrifice  is  here 

Not  of  Lamb  nor  Steer 

But  of  human  woe  and  human  pain. 

But  why  refer  to  instances  from  poems,  novels,  and  plays?  The 
reader  who  follows  Goethe's  life  story  will  recognize  that  it  was 
this  very  obsessive  and  superstitious  fear  that  prevented  the 
temperamental  poet  from  approaching  a  woman  sexually  until 
he  almost  reached  middle  age.  For  the  psychologist  the  life 
Goethe  lived  is  stranger  than  the  fiction  he  wrote. 


Freud  was  the  great  teacher  of  inner  courage  and  sincerity  to 
all  of  us  young  psychoanalysts  in  Vienna.  He  taught  us  to  face 
the  truth  about  ourselves.  We  came  to  him  not  so  much  for  help 
and  advice,  but  for  insight  which  made  advice  superfluous.  He 
also  helped  me  in  the  emotional  emergency  situation  with  which 
this  part  of  my  story  is  concerned.  To  a  psychologist  who  takes 
an  objective  position  and  observes  from  without,  the  events  of 
the  subsequent  period  of  my  life  reveal  an  increasing  pressure,  a 
logic  of  their  own.  This  became  clear  to  me  many  years  later. 
At  the  time  I  lived  through  those  events,  their  deeper  logical  and 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF   AN   ANALYST  2ig 

psychological  significance  was  hidden  from  me.  I  still  consider  it 
strange  how  the  obvious  eluded  me  then,  and  that  I  did  not  catch 
a  glimpse  of  the  dark  emotions  in  myself.  Yet  I  had  good  psycho- 
logical insight  into  similar  experiences  of  my  patients  and  I 
could  well  explain  their  secret  meaning.  It  seemed  that  my  psy- 
choanalytic understanding  was  often  profound;  it  stopped  only 
in  my  own  case. 

The  Moving  Finger  writes,  and  having  writ,  stops.  I  am  now 
reflecting  on  the  extraordinary  value  of  the  experience  of  those 
days  I  owe  to  Freud.  I  became  suddenly  ill.  I  suffered  from  at- 
tacks of  dizziness,  vomiting,  and  diarrhoea.  The  onset  of  these 
attacks  was  unexpected.  I  remember  that  the  first  sensation  of 
this  kind  surprised  me  one  day  when  I  left  the  sanatorium  after 
visiting  my  wife.  I  suddenly  felt  so  giddy  and  unwell  that  I  had 
to  cling  to  the  wall  of  the  house  to  keep  myself  from  falling.  In 
the  following  weeks  and  months  these  attacks  repeated  them- 
selves, grew  worse  and  became  more  frequent.  They  occurred  in 
the  middle  af  the  street,  or  while  I  attended  a  theater  perform- 
ance, at  the  bridge  club  or  at  home,  while  I  was  analyzing,  when 
I  was  alone,  or  when  I  was  with  my  wife  and  son.  The  dizziness 
in  which  I  found  myself  became  so  severe  that  everything  seemed 
to  spin  around  me,  and  I  had  to  lie  down  immediately.  The 
character  of  the  attacks  seemed  to  indicate  a  serious  disease. 
Their  onset  was  accompanied  by  an  overwhelming  sensation  of 
the  end,  by  the  anxiety  that  annihilation  was  very  near,  as  in  the 
spasms  of  angina  pectoris.  The  breast  was  oppressed  as  in  those 
dangerous  attacks,  and  the  physicians  were  at  first  inclined  to  as- 
sume that  my  complaints  were  those  of  angina  pectoris.  Once  I 
had  to  be  brought  home  in  an  ambulance,  and  nothing  suc- 
ceeded in  giving  me  relief.  These  attacks  sometimes  lasted  only  a 
few  minutes,  sometimes  many  hours  during  which  I  was  con- 
vinced that  the  end  was  near. 

As  far  as  my  emotions  were  concerned,  I  died  a  thousand 
deaths  in  those  spasms,  because  I  experienced  the  most  vivid 
sensation  of  dying.  I  had  experienced  the  fear  of  death  often 
enough  under  artillery  fire  during  the  first  World  War,  but  I  had 
never  felt  anything  like  the  overwhelming  terror  during  those  at- 
tacks. The  physicans,  at  first,  thought  of  a  heart  disease,  then  o£ 


214  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

nicotine  poisoning.  I  gave  up  smoking,  and  followed  the  doctors' 
orders,  but  there  was  no  improvement  of  my  health.  Then,  some 
physicians  thought  that  the  attacks,  accompanied  by  sudden  loss 
of  equilibrium  and  violent  dizziness  together  with  vomiting,  in- 
dicated the  ear  disease  known  as  Meniere  ailment.  I  was  exam- 
ined many  times  and  treated  in  different  ways,  but  the  attacks 
continued  and  their  stormy  character  increased  rather  than  di- 
minished. I  was  given  calcium  injections,  but  they  did  not  help. 

My  complaints  had  continued  quite  a  few  months  before  I 
casually  mentioned  them  to  Freud.  He  said  he  did  not  believe 
that  they  indicated  angina  pectoris,  because  I  was  too  young  to 
have  this  disease.  I  asked  Freud  for  help.  I  was  now  convinced 
that  my  attacks  were  of  the  nature  of  conversion-phenomena. 

It  was  much  later  that  I  used  the  summer  vacation  to  go  to 
Freud,  who  then  lived  in  a  cottage  he  had  rented  in  the  suburbs 
of  Vienna.  There  I  saw  him  quite  a  few  times.  Then  already  an 
analyst  of  many  years*  experience,  I  found  myself  on  the  analyti- 
cal couch  as  a  patient  of  Freud.  It  was  an  extraordinary  situation, 
and  became  an  emotional  and  intellectual  experience  which  I 
shall  treasure  to  my  last  day.  But  I  do  not  want  to  talk  about  the 
general  character  of  these  analytic  sessions  with  Freud,  of  the 
indelible  impression  they  made  on  me,  and  the  lasting  mental 
value  they  acquired  in  my  life,  but  of  the  special  theme  of  those 
mysterious  attacks  which,  strangely  enough,  did  not  occur  while 
I  was  in  Vienna. 

I  told  Freud  all  that  had  happened  in  my  life  since  I  had  left 
my  native  city  and  gone  to  Berlin.  He  knew,  of  course,  of  the 
dangerous  disease  of  my  wife,  had  often  asked  me  about  her,  and 
had  always  shown  sympathy  and  friendly  feelings  toward  her. 
Once  before  I  had  mentioned  that  I  spent  almost  all  the  time  I 
could  spare  near  her  bed  in  the  sanatorium.  I  had  felt  his  side 
glance,  and  heard  him  say,  "Perhaps  this  is  not  so  good.  It  might 
be  better  to  stay  only  a  short  time,  perhaps  a  quarter  of  an  hour, 
then  go  somewhere  else,  and  return  after  some  time  to  stay  with 
her  again  only  a  short  time/'  I  was  astonished  and  could  not 
figure  out  what  he  meant. 

Now,  lying  on  the  couch,  I  followed  the  train  of  my  free 
thought-associations,  in  which,  of  course,  Ella's  disease  and  my 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  215 

relationship  with  her  played  an  important  part.  I  told  Freud 
about  my  fears  of  the  dangers  of  sexual  intercourse  with  Ella, 
about  the  terrifying  impression  of  the  breathing  difficulties  dur- 
ing it— all  this  had  occurred  some  years  earlier-and  I  described 
to  him  the  conflict  in  which  I  had  found  myself  later  on.  I  had 
made  the  acquaintance  of  a  girl  who,  many  years  younger  than 
myself,  attracted  me  in  many  ways,  not  only  sexually.  I  confessed 
that  the  thought  had  sometimes  occurred  to  me  to  get  a  divorce 
from  my  wife  and  marry  this  girl,  but  I  added  that  I  knew,  of 
course,  this  was  impossible:  you  cannot  divorce  a  wife  who  is 
dangerously  ill.  And  then,  I  knew  too  that  Ella  remained  dear 
and  near  to  me,  although  I  felt  the  increasing  attraction  of  this 
young  girl  who  seemed  to  care  for  me.  I  spoke  then  of  my  forced 
labor  in  those  last  years,  of  the  difficulties  of  earning  enough  to 
make  treatment  and  sanatoria  possible  for  Ella,  of  my  reluctance 
to  lead  a  life  which  I  considered  beyond  my  modest  standard  of 
living.  I  spoke  of  these  and  other  things  too,  but  from  time  to 
time  I  returned  to  the  description  of  those  attacks  of  dizziness 
accompanied  by  the  panic  of  the  end  which  had  interfered  with 
my  work.  I  confessed  that  I  was  in  mortal  fear  they  could  recur. 

I  spoke  of  them  also  in  the  last  analytic  session  before  my  re- 
turn to  Berlin.  Freud  had  said  almost  nothing  during  this  hour. 
He  had  silently  listened  to  my  reports,  my  complaints,  doubts, 
accusations,  and  remorse,  to  the  confused  tangle  of  my  emotions 
and  to  the  clash  of  thoughts  which  reflected  the  many  contradic- 
tions in  myself.  Near  the  end  of  this  last  session,  I  heard  for  the 
first  time  his  low,  but  firm  voice.  He  said  only  a  few  words.  It  was 
a  simple  question,  but  it  echoed  in  me  long  afterward.  The  ques- 
tion had  followed  my  repeated  description  of  those  spells  of  diz- 
ziness, and  came  to  me  as  a  complete  surprise.  The  first  moment 
I  heard  it,  I  entirely  failed  to  understand  what  bearing  its  con- 
tents had  on  my  report  or  the  train  of  my  associations.  I  failed 
to  grasp  its  connection  with  what  I  had  spoken  of  during  this 
hour.  I  waited  as  if  I  expected  an  explanation,  but  none  came. 
There  was  only  silence. 

But  something  else  happened:  there  was  for  one  second— and 
for  this  second  only—a  sudden  faint  dizziness,  just  enough  to  be 
felt,  nothing  comparable  to  the  sensation  in  the  attacks,  only  an 


2l6  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

allusion  to  the  sensation,  an  echo  of  a  familiar  tune.  It  vanished, 
and  I  then  understood  what  the  question  meant.  I  heard  myself 
say,  "Oh,  that  is  it?"  I  knew  I  had  arrived  at  the  unconscious 
meaning  of  these  spells. 

The  surprising  question  was:  "Do  you  remember  the  novel 
The  Murderer  by  Schnitzler?"  Did  I  remember  the  novel?  The 
question  was  not  only  surprising  because  I  did  not  understand 
its  connection  with  the  subject  I  had  talked  about  just  then,  but 
surprising  also  with  regard  to  its  content.  Freud  must  have  known, 
of  course,  that  I  remembered  the  novel.  Had  I  not  many  years 
before  written  a  book  under  the  title  Arthur  Schnitzler  as  Psy- 
chologist* in  which  all  the  works  of  this  Viennese  writer  were 
discussed  from  the  psychoanalytic  point  of  view?  Freud  knew 
my  book  which  had  been  dedicated  to  himself.  There  were  not 
many  people  in  Vienna  who  knew  the  writings  of  Schnitzler  as 
well  as  I.  Had  I  not  even  dug  out  in  some  long-forgotten  Viennese 
magazines  a  few  early  poems  and  novels  Schnitzler  had  published 
in  his  youth,  and  which  remained  unknown  to  the  general  public, 
and  had  I  not  written  a  paper  on  them?**  Of  course,  I  knew  The 
Murderer  well.  Yes,  I  had  once  spoken  about  it  with  its  author. 

The  outline  of  the  novel:  A  wealthy  young  man,  Alfred,  has 
a  long-standing  affair  with  a  girl,  Elise.  Alfred  slowly  becomes 
tired  of  his  gentle,  pretty  mistress.  He  meets  Adele,  the  beauti- 
ful daughter  of  a  manufacturer,  and  falls  in  love  with  her.  Adele 
responds  to  his  wooing,  and  Alfred  looks  forward  to  the  day  he 
may  marry  her.  He  has  not  enough  strength  of  character  to  tell 
Elise  about  his  new  love,  and  carries  his  aifair  further,  postpon- 
ing the  unavoidable  talk  with  Elise.  Once,  he  finds  the  girl 
rather  tired  and  hears— she  had  kept  it  a  secret— that  from  time  to 
time  she  suffers  spasms  of  the  heart.  The  next  day  Alfred  goes  to 
Adele's  father  to  ask  for  her  in  marriage.  The  manufacturer  is 
friendly,  but  insists  that  Alfred  should  spend  a  year  in  travel 
abroad  to  test  the  stability  of  his  feelings.  There  is  to  be  no  cor- 
respondence between  the  two  young  people  during  this  time.  If 
they  should  feel  the  same  way  about  each  other  after  this  year, 
the  father  will  have  no  objections  to  their  marriage. 

*  Minden,  1912.  (Not  translated  into  English.) 

**  In  the  magazine  Pan,  Berlin,  1912,  edited  by  Alfred  Kerr. 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST 

Alfred  immediately  starts  the  journey  with  Elise.  He  hopes  that 
during  this  year  of  waiting  his  relations  with  Elise  will  dissolve 
in  one  way  or  another.  They  spend  many  months  in  Switzerland 
and  England,  visit  Holland  and  Germany,  and,  when  fall  ap- 
proaches, go  to  Italy.  In  Palermo  Elise  suddenly  has  a  heart 
attack  but  recovers  quickly.  Alfred  worries  about  her,  but  when 
she  gratefully  kisses  his  hand,  he  feels  a  wave  of  hate  against  her 
which  astonishes  him.  At  the  same  time,  a  passionate  desire  for 
Adele  makes  him  impatient. 

Alfred  and  Elise  continue  their  journey.  The  girl  "did  not 
know  that  it  was  no  longer  she  herself  who  was  now  in  his  em- 
brace, in  the  silent  dark  nights  at  sea,  but  the  distant  bride  who 
was  called  up  in  all  fullness  of  living."  But  then  fantasy  fails 
Alfred  and  he  keeps  away  from  Elise,  giving  as  his  reason  for 
restraint  a  slight  recurring  symptom  of  her  heart  disease.  Once, 
when  he  finds  Elise  on  her  bed,  almost  faint  from  an  attack,  he 
feels  a  dark  hope  awaken  in  him.  On  the  way  back,  on  board 
ship,  Elise  has  several  attacks,  and  the  ship's  physician  admon- 
ishes Alfred,  in  appropriate  but  no  uncertain  terms,  to  spare  his 
beautiful  wife  in  every  direction. 

Alfred  is  inclined  to  obey  the  physician,  but  Elise  pulls  the 
resistant  lover  to  her  as  if  she  wishes  to  reconcile  him  by  her 
tenderness.  But  when  she  melts  in  his  arms,  he  feels  a  smile  come 
to  his  lips  out  of  the  deepest  ground  of  his  soul,  which  he  slowly 
recognizes  as  one  of  triumph.  He  has  to  admit  to  himself  that  the 
realization  of  the  secret  hope  would  not  only  mean  the  end  of  his 
conflict,  but  that  Elise  herself— if  the  end  is  unavoidable  and  she 
has  a  choice— would  wish  to  die  under  his  kisses.  Night  after 
night  he  observes  the  signs  of  her  blissful  melting  away  and  feels 
as  if  deceived  when,  grateful  to  him,  she  awakens  to  a  new  life. 
When  he  arrives  at  Naples,  Alfred  finds  no  letter  from  Adele 
whom  he  had  passionately  asked  to  write.  He  is  disappointed  and 
realizes  that  he  could  not  imagine  life  without  her  any  more.  He 
thinks  of  confessing  the  truth  to  Elise,  still  on  board  ship,  but  he 
is  afraid  of  the  fatal  consequences  of  such  an  open  confession. 
Preoccupied  with  such  desperate  thoughts,  Alfred  walks  on  the 
seashore,  "when  he  suddenly  felt  dizzy  and  near  fainting.  Over- 


2l8  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

whelmed  by  anxiety  he  sank  on  a  bench  and  sat  there  until  the 
spasm  was  dissolved  and  the  fog  before  his  eyes  evaporated." 

Schnitzler's  novel  goes  on  to  tell  that  after  this  Alfred  decides 
to  kill  Elise.  He  poisons  her  to  make  himself  free  for  Adele.  Elise 
dies  a  few  minutes  after  sexual  intercourse.  Alfred  returns  to 
Vienna,  finds  that  Adele  has  been  engaged  to  another  man,  and 
hears  from  her  own  lips  that  she  does  not  love  him  any  more.  The 
unorganic  end  of  the  novel  lets  Alfred  be  killed  in  a  duel.  He 
finds  atonement  in  his  last  moment  for  the  murder  of  the  girl 
whom  he  had  loved. 

Before  I  heard  myself  say,  "Oh,  that  is  it?"  I  had  remembered 
the  essential  content  of  Schnitzler's  novel  as  in  a  flash,  or  rather, 
I  had  a  series  of  quickly  passing  visual  images  which  presented 
certain  scenes  of  the  story  to  my  mind.  But  even  before  these 
images  occurred,  there  was  this  moment  of  dizziness  which  signi- 
fied not  only  the  confusion  in  which  I  found  myself,  but  the  be- 
ginning of  my  reorientation.  It  marked  the  point  where  the  first 
vague  understanding  of  myself  entered  in  the  form  of  a  tempta- 
tion to  reproduce  the  attack.  There  was,  for  the  length  of  a 
heartbeat,  the  possibility  of  experiencing  the  attack  instead  of 
experiencing  the  insight  into  its  origin  and  motivation.  This 
fleeting  sensation  of  dizziness  must  have  emerged  when  in  my 
thought-associations  I  saw  the  scene  in  which  Alfred,  in  the 
garden  in  Naples,  suddenly  is  overcome  by  dizziness,  a  sensation 
of  fainting  and  anxiety.  It  was  thus  a  moment  of  identification 
with  the  leading  character  of  Schnitzler's  novel,  of  an  identifica- 
tion founded  on  the  similarity  of  the  emotional  situation  and  of 
the  dynamics  of  the  psychical  processes. 

Freud's  mention  of  the  novel  corresponds  thus  to  a  psychologi- 
cal experiment  which  worked  in  an  indirect  way.  In  remembering 
the  outlines  of  the  novel,  I  found  an  unconscious  approach  to 
understanding  myself.  It  was  as  if  you  were  shown  the  photo- 
graph of  an  unknown  person  who  reminds  you  of  someone,  and 
then  you  realize  that  the  subject  of  the  photograph  resembles 
yourself.  He  is  not  you,  but  a  double  of  yours,  your  Doppelganger; 
not  yourself,  but  your  second  self.  This  second  self  is  the  whole  of 
one's  emotional  potentialities,  the  personification  of  the  possi- 
bilities dormant  in  us,  the  representation  of  the  life  we  did  not 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN   ANALYST  gig 

live  but  could  have  lived.  The  Schnitzler  story  gave  a  terrifying 
picture  of  a  possible  destiny  hidden  in  my  character.  The  double, 
the  Doppelganger,  is  the  deed  of  what  we  only  thought. 

Strangely  enough,  facing  the  reality  of  what  I  had  thought  did 
not  get  me  into  a  panic  but  quieted  me,  and  secured  this  distance 
I  had  not  had  before.  In  showing  me  what  could  have  happened, 
it  convinced  me  that  it  was  destined  to  remain  a  potentiality, 
could  never  have  happened  to  me.  It  could  never  have  changed 
from  thought  to  deed.  These  shadows  were  always  shadows,  could 
never  become  substance.  Just  seeing  them  in  a  mirror  brought 
the  clear  recognition  that  it  was  all  over,  that  my  fright  and  my 
anxiety  were  exaggerated.  It  was  as  if  the  sudden  light  which 
fell  upon  them  let  me  see  them  as  mere  products  of  my  imagina- 
tion, let  me  recognize  their  true  nature.  A  man  who  comes  into  a 
dark  room  at  night  can,  for  a  moment,  imagine  that  there  is  a 
burglar  or  killer  waiting  for  him  in  the  corner.  He  is  terrified  and 
fumbles  for  the  electric  switch;  as  the  room  is  lit,  he  sees  that 
what  he  took  for  the  figure  of  a  man  is  only  a  chest.  The  cruel  and 
aggressive  tendencies  and  impulses  which  are  repressed  in  all 
of  us  acquire  a  specially  dangerous  appearance  when  they  try  to 
pass  the  threshold  of  conscious  thinking  in  the  area  of  emotional 
and  mental  twilight,  where  thought  and  deed  seem  to  be  identi- 
cal. They  seem  to  threaten  to  become  reality,  so  that  a  new  strong 
effort  has  to  be  made  to  reject  them,  and  to  ban  them  into  the 
nether  world. 

This  is  what  had  happened  to  me:  when  I  once  left  the  sana- 
torium, I  must  have  thought  Ella  would  die,  or  I  would  find  her 
dead,  when  I  returned  the  next  time.  This  thought,  or  rather  this 
wish,  must  have  been  rejected  with  great  power  because  of  my 
conscience  and  the  affection  I  still  had  for  her.  But  the  repression 
of  the  death  wish  was  already  a  reaction  to  the  unconscious  satis- 
faction I  had  from  this  daydream,  which  must  have  threatened  to 
be  so  vivid  as  to  attain  reality— I  must  have  unconsciously  en- 
joyed the  image  of  my  wife  dying  or  dead.  The  dizziness  signi- 
fied the  transition  from  this  unconscious  abandon  to  a  secret  hope 
for  the  realization  of  the  dream.  It  marked  the  moment  of  awak- 
ening from  the  daydream  to  the  life  of  the  day.  I  became  dizzy 


22O  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

when  the  reality  around  me  made  me  aware  that  I  had  day- 
dreamed and  had  been  lost  to  this  world  of  reality. 

This  dizziness  showed  that  a  new  orientation  to  reality  became 
necessary.  Many  of  our  patients  have  a  moment  of  dizziness  at 
the  end  of  the  analytical  session  as  they  get  up  from  the  couch. 
The  change  of  position  is  not  important,  it  supports  only  the 
more  essential  emotional  change:  for  almost  one  full  hour  the 
patient  has  lived  in  the  world  of  psychical  reality,  where  there  was 
freedom  for  all  thoughts,  emotions,  and  impulses,  where  he  could 
give  himself  entirely  to  fantasy,  where  actions  were  carried  out 
only  in  imagination.  He  has  to  get  up  suddenly  and  has  to  face 
the  world  of  material  reality,  has  to  live  again  in  the  sphere  of 
hard  facts,  conventions,  rules  and  regulations.  This  transition 
expresses  itself  often  enough  in  the  passing  symptom  of  dizziness, 
in  the  sensation  of  giddiness,  which  disappears  after  a  few  seconds. 
The  reorientation  to  the  real  world  has  been  achieved. 

If  my  dizziness  thus  marked  the  rude  awakening  from  a  day- 
dream, what  did  this  terrible  attack  of  illness,  this  feeling  of 
dying,  mean?  The  symptom  that  I  condemned  myself  to  death 
for  my  murderous  thoughts,  for  the  imagined  possibility  of  kill- 
ing. If  I  experienced  all  the  horrors  of  annihilation,  it  could 
only  mean  that  I  unconsciously  felt  I  had  to  die  because  I  wanted 
my  wife  to  die.  Our  unconscious  life  follows  here  the  oldest  and 
most  primitive  law  of  talion:  the  same  unwritten  law  expressed 
in  the  sentence:  eye  for  eye,  tooth  for  tooth.  The  person  who 
murdered  should  be  killed.  The  man  who  commits  a  thought- 
murder  has  to  punish  himself  with  the  sensation  of  dying.  The 
character  of  the  punishment  corresponds  to  the  nature  of  the 
crime.  From  the  imagined  punishment  you  could  conclude  what 
was  the  deed  committed  in  thought. 

Whenever,  during  the  following  months,  I  had  my  unconscious 
fantasy,  or  whenever  the  repressed  wish  that  Ella  should  die 
threatened  to  become  conscious,  the  forceful  rejection  was  ex- 
pressed in  the  form  of  my  attacks:  in  this  attempt  of  reorientation 
and  in  the  following  feeling  of  terrifying  illness.  Each  murderous 
wish  was  followed  by  the  image  and  the  sensations  of  dying  iny- 
self.  I  did  not  know  what  hit  me.  I  only  knew  that,  out  of  a 
clear  blue  sky,  something  let  me  feel  that  my  end  had  come. 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN  ANALYST  221 

With  such  severity  I  punished  myself  for  my  thought-crime.  I 
never  thought  consciously  that  my  wife  should  die.  The  pos- 
sibility of  her  sudden  death  had  often  enough  occurred  to  me, 
but  always  accompanied  by  panic.  My  obsession-thoughts  show, 
of  course,  clearly  enough  that  those  murderous  wishes  must  have 
been  there.  My  anxiety  and  my  measures  of  protection  prove 
that  these  thoughts  were  working  in  me,  but  they  were  always 
with  a  negative  sign. 

Something  new  must  have  entered  the  stage  of  emotional  proc- 
esses, otherwise  those  repressed  thoughts  could  never  have  won 
power  to  approach  the  threshold  of  conscious  wishes,  yes,  of 
hopes.  It  is  easy  to  guess  what  this  was:  my  infatuation  with  that 
young  girl.  The  thought  must  have  emerged:  If  Ella  dies,  my 
conflict  will  end;  I  could  marry  the  young  girl.  From  here  to  the 
thought,  or  rather  the  wish,  that  my  wife  should  die  was  only  one 
step.  In  fantasy  this  step  was  taken.  It  expressed  itself,  so  to 
speak,  in  an  unconscious  action  of  will,  in  a  thought-murder. 
When  the  thought  threatened  to  become  conscious,  returning 
from  the  area  of  the  repressed,  all  counter-forces  of  morals  and 
of  the  old  affection  were  mobilized  to  prohibit  the  thought  from 
entering.  The  success  of  this  prohibition  was  achieved,  and  only 
the  punishment  I  had  inflicted  upon  myself  showed  that  a 
thought-crime  had  been  committed. 

The  sentence  of  the  Roman  lawgiver  "Nulla  poena  sine 
crimine"  ("No  punishment  without  a  crime")  is  valid  also  in  the 
sphere  of  unconscious  thoughts.  The  punishment  points  to  the 
criminal  deed  that  was  imagined.  The  thoughts,  first  playfully 
dealt  with,  I  had  disposed  of  in  my  obsession-thoughts  and  doubts. 
Now  they  threatened  to  come  across  the  footlight  of  conscious 
thinking,  pushed  there  by  my  desire  for  that  young  girl.  How 
dangerous  they  must  have  appeared  to  me  is  shown  by  the  serious 
symptoms  of  my  attacks.  All  powers  of  mental  defense  were 
called  up  to  fight  the  intruder.  I  thought  I  would  have  to  die, 
because  I  had  such  intense  and  vivid  murderous  wishes  against  Ella, 
or,  I  thought  I  would  prefer  to  die  myself  rather  than  see  her 
die  or  dead.  Both  these  interpretations  of  the  attacks  are,  of 
course,  possible:  one  does  not  exclude  the  other.  They  can  co- 
exist; yes,  the  special  nature  of  unconscious  processes  allows  even 


222  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

a  fusion  of  both  in  the  form:  the  other  person  dies  in  one's  own 
dying. 

Let  me  add  a  few  remarks  about  the  psychoanalytic  signifi- 
cance of  Freud's  words.  He  must  have  known  a  long  time  before 
this  last  session  what  was  the  unconscious  meaning  of  my  attacks. 
I  must  have  given  him  enough  unconscious  material  to  arrive  at 
a  psychological  conclusion  which  was  so  remote  from  myself. 
Why  did  he  wait  so  long  with  the  explanation,  and  why  did 
he  choose  the  special  form  of  tying  it  in  with  Schnitzler's  novel? 
I  think  I  can  guess  the  .reasons  for  his  analytic  tactics,  and  I 
have  learned  not  only  to  admire  them  but  to  follow  them  in  my 
own  practice. 

Only  the  unexperienced  psychoanalyst,  the  greenhorn  in  our 
craft  and  art,  will  yield  to  the  temptation  to  tell  the  patient  im- 
mediately what  he,  the  analyst,  has  guessed  and  understood  of 
the  unconscious  motives  and  origins  of  his  neurosis.  Analytic  ex- 
perience recommends  rather  to  wait  until  the  patient  is  psycho- 
logically prepared  for  the  interpretation  the  analyst  has  to  give 
him.  In  most  cases  it  means  waiting  until  the  patient  seems  to 
need  only  a  few  steps  to  arrive  at  this  explanation  himself. 

It  is  difficult  to  define  when  this  time  arrives.  Certain  uncon- 
scious signs,  perceived  by  the  analyst,  indicate  that  the  patient 
is  psychologically  prepared  or  ready  to  receive  and  absorb  the 
explanation.*  In  certain  cases  it  will  be  necessary— often  due  to 
external  reasons,  for  instance,  pressure  of  time,  but  more  often 
to  some  factors  in  the  emotional  situation  of  the  patient— to 
work  with  a  psychical  shock.  That  means  to  give  the  patient  a 
psychoanalytic  explanation  or  interpretation  at  an  earlier  mo- 
ment, when  the  analyst's  explanation  would  come  entirely  un- 
prepared so  that  it  is  bound  to  have  the  effects  of  a  shock.  Also 
in  these  cases  it  will  be  necessary  to  secure  at  least  a  certain 
amount  of  preparation,  or  to  bring  to  the  patient  the  material- 
which  will  come  as  a  surprise  and  will  stir  him  up— in  a  form 
that  will  soften  the  emotional  blow  and  soothe  the  discomfort. 

In  my  case  Freud  postponed  his  explanation  as  long  as  was 
possible  within  the  time  we  had  at  our  disposal.  Jf  he  had  told  me 

*  More  about  this  point  in  my  book  Listening  With  the  Third  Ear  (New 
York:  Farrar,  Straus  &  Co.,  1948). 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF   AN  ANALYST  22J 

immediately  after  he  understood  the  unconscious  meaning  of  my 
attacks,  "You  want  your  wife  dead  so  that  you  can  marry  this 
other  girl/7  I  would  not  only  have  been  shocked,  but  1  would 
not  have  believed  him.  My  repeated  description  of  my  actual 
conflict  secured,  analytically,  an  emotional  preparation  which 
made  me  more  susceptible. 

It  is  a  special  psychological  problem  why  words  which  are 
spoken  by  us  have  another  emotional  effect  upon  us  than  the 
same  words  only  thought  by  us,  but  it  is  an  undeniable  fact  that 
they  work  differently.  It  is  as  if  pronouncing  them,  saying  them, 
already  secures  a  certain  externalization,  removes  them  from  the 
sphere  of  secrecy.  The  words  you  say  face  you  and  allow  you  to 
win  an  emotional  distance  from  their  content.  My  report  of  the 
situation  made  the  approach  to  the  material  I  had  repressed 
easier  just  through  this  effect  of  objectivation,  of  the  coming 
into  the  open  of  something  which  had  been  caged  in  so  long. 

The  surprise  was  also  softened  by  the  indirect  form  Freud 
chose.  I  would  emphatically  deny  that  this  form  was  consciously 
well  considered  by  him,  "figured  out,"  determined  by  conscious 
reasoning.  It  was,  I  think,  his  unconscious  response  to  my  tale. 
While  he  listened  to  me  "with  the  third  ear,"  his  thoughts,  stim- 
ulated by  the  emotional  similarity  of  the  situations,  must  have 
led  him  to  the  comparison  with  Schnitzler's  novel.  But  why  did  it 
not  remind  me? 

The  unconscious  motives  of  the  leading  figure  in  that  novel 
and  my  own  were  of  a  similar  character.  The  sole  difference  was 
that  Alfred  committed  the  crime  which  I  only  thought  of.  Also, 
the  emotional  reaction  of  Alfred  and  myself  to  the  thought  when 
it  first  emerged  from  the  repressed  was  different  only  in  degree. 
While  he  was  overcome  by  dizziness  and  anxiety  feelings  only 
for  a  few  seconds,  my  attacks  often  lasted  several  hours.  The  sen- 
sations of  oneself  dying  are  lacking  in  Schnitzler's  presentation. 
In  my  case  these  reactions  were  of  great  violence  and  awakened 
greatest  anxiety.  It  seems  thus  that  Alfred  experienced  no  un- 
conscious guilt  feelings,  did  not  turn  the  murderous  wish  against 
himself,  and  this  lack  of  deep  reactions  makes  it  possible  for  him 
to  commit  in  reality  the  murder  which  remained  only  IB  the 
sphere  of  my  thoughts. 


224  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

The  similarity  of  the  two  characters  and  of  the  conflicts  was, 
nevertheless,  strong  enough  to  have  led  Freud's  thoughts  to  Schnitz- 
ler's  novel:  there  was  the  man  between  two  women,  the  heart 
disease  of  the  one,  signs  and  symptoms  observed  during  intercourse, 
the  "kiss  of  death."  Another  factor  helped  to  bring  about  this 
association:  Freud  had  read  my  book  on  Schnitzler,  and  he  knew 
that  I  had  often  talked  with  the  writer  whom  he  knew,  too.  It 
was  thus  not  an  analytic  tactical  maneuver  which  Freud  per- 
formed, but  a  crossing  of  a  thought-bridge  which  built  itself  in 
his  unconscious  reaction  and  was  perceived  as  appropriate  and 
helpful. 

The  reader  who  understands  haw  psychoanalysis  works  will  ap- 
preciate that  Freud's  technique  in  this  case  was  a  stroke  of  genius. 
One  will  appreciate  it  the  more,  considering  that  Freud  dealt  with 
the  problem  not  in  a  mechanical  manner,  prescribed  by  a  rigid  tech- 
nical conduct,  but  as  a  sovereign,  following  his  intuition.  After  he 
had  let  me  tell  my  story  for  some  hours,  and  thus  made  me  gain  a 
certain  emotional  distance  from  my  own  experience,  he  did  not 
give  me  a  direct  and  immediate  analytic  explanation,  but  he 
made  me  find  it  myself.  He  did  not  accompany  me  the  whole 
way  to  the  goal,  but  brought  me  to  a  certain  point  from  which  I 
could  follow  the  way.  There  was,  no  doubt,  a  good  deal  of  trust 
in  my  intelligence  and  moral  courage  in  this  procedure,  but  he 
was  right  in  not  trusting  them  too  much.  If  I  had  had  sufficient 
moral  courage,  I  would  have  faced  the  unpleasant  truth  in  myself, 
and  the  neurotic  escape  into  the  attacks  would  have  been  super- 
fluous. If  I  had  been  brave  before  the  dangers  of  my  own  thought, 
if  I  had  not  shied  away  from  them,  as  a  horse  does  before  his  own 
shadow,  I  would  have  arrived  at  the  analytic  insight  without  his 
help.  He  acted  thus  as  a  father  who  does  not  take  his  little  son 
to  the  door  of  the  school  but  to  the  corner  of  the  street  from 
where  the  boy  can  without  fear  continue  on  his  way  by  himself. 

The  question:  "Do  you  remember  the  novel  The  Murderer  by 
Schnitzler?"  is  also  surprising,  as  seen  from  the  point  of  view  of 
analytic  technique.  I  wonder  how  many  of  us  psychoanalysts,  now 
experienced,  would  dare  to  choose  such  an  entirely  unconven^ 
tional  approach— not  to  mention  the  ingenuity  and  the  psycho- 
logical wisdom  of  the  choice. 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  2^5 

The  reference  to  Schnitzler's  novel  seemed  not  only  to  work  as 
a  surprise,  but  put  a  new  unexpected  hindrance  in  the  way, 
created  a  stop  which  made  a  mental  effort  on  my  side  necessary, 
namely,  to  remember  the  content  of  the  novel.  The  question  thus 
seemed  on  first  sight  to  work  as  a  diversion.  Nearer  and  clearer 
seen,  the  deflection  was  in  this  case  the  best  manner  of  attacking 
the  problem;  the  detour,  the  shortest  way  to  the  goal  which  was 
difficult  to  reach  otherwise.  Taking  this  hurdle,  seemingly  put 
artificially  at  this  point,  meant  winning  the  race;  marked  at  the 
same  time  arriving  at  the  goal  which  had  been  concealed  but  be- 
came suddenly  visible.  When  the  surprise  was  overcome,  and  the 
contours  of  the  novel  were  remembered,  I  found  myself  on  famil- 
iar ground.  Remembering  the  plot  and  the  situations  of  the 
novel  served  thus  as  a  guidepost  to  self-understanding. 

The  indirect  interpretation  by  introducing  Schnitzler's  novel 
brought  me  nearer  to  the  solution,  but  in  doing  so  produced  the 
impression  that  I  had  found  the  secret  springs  of  my  behavior 
myself.  I  recognized  my  own  image  in  the  mirror  of  Schnitzler's 
novel,  but  I  realized  only  a  few  seconds  later  that  it  was  a  dis- 
torted picture,  an  image  of  oneself  comparable  to  those  you  see  in 
convex  and  concave  mirrors,  in  which,  you  see  yourself  with  gro- 
tesquely enlarged  hands  and  feet.  I  came  face  to  face  with  myself 
there,  but  almost  at  the  same  time  I  knew  that  here  was  not  my 
real  face,  but  one  I  imagined  or  feared  to  have.  This  was  not 
myself,  but  how  I  had  unconsciously  conceived  of  myself  as  a 
ruthless  murderer.  This  indirect  interpretation  allowed  identifi- 
cation with  Alfred.  I  saw  him  as  a  potentiality  of  myself,  but  also 
became  aware  of  the  distance  from  him,  understood  that  he  repre- 
sented only  the  dark  fringes  of  my  personality.  After  I  had  felt 
how  near  I  was  to  Alfred  in  my  imagination,  I  recognized  how  re- 
mote I  was  from  him  in  fact.  The  encounter  with  this  double  o£ 
mine  whom  Freud  had  called  up  for  me  had  two  phases,  follow- 
ing each  other  in  the  space  of  a  few  seconds.  The  first  implied  the 
recognition  that  he  only  did  what  /  wished  to  do.  The  second 
moved  the  emphasis  in  this  sentence:  He  did  what  I  only  wished 
to  do.  The  effect  of  the  first  phase  was  that  it  made  clear  the  psy- 
chological problem.  The  consequence  of  the  second  was  that  it 
cleared  it  up. 


226  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

After  having  said  goodbye  to  Freud  I  walked  out  into  the  sum- 
mer afternoon,  and  I  wandered  for  a  few  hours  in  the  half-rural 
streets  of  Vienna's  suburbs.  I  felt  strangely  quieted  and  encour- 
aged. I  had  not  only  gained  distance  from  my  own  experience,  but 
began  to  accept  myself.  It  was  an  uplifting  feeling  such  as  I  had  only 
experienced  before  after  some  achievement.  But  this  sensation 
of  strength  and  of  a  new  courage  was  not  the  result  of  any  achieve- 
ment, but  of  relief  from  the  pressure  of  unconscious  guilt  feeling. 
I  understood,  while  I  walked  through  the  familiar  streets  and 
over  the  hills  of  Doebling  and  Grinzing,  what  had  made  me  the 
victim  of  those  terrifying  attacks,  and  I  knew  that  they  would  not 
come  again.  They  never  did. 

Strangely  enough,  the  experience  which  gave  me  new  heart  let 
me  also  see  the  present  and  the  future  in  a  more  hopeful  light 
I  felt  the  strength  in  me  to  overcome  all  hindrances  on  my  way, 
was  not  any  more  oppressed  by  the  thought  that  I  would  not 
earn  enough  to  support  my  family  and  myself,  and  was  confident 
that  some  of  the  aims  of  my  ambitions  were  within  my  reach.  The 
future  did  not  look  as  gloomy  as  it  had  in  the  last  years.  I  felt 
strong  enough  to  challenge  my  destiny.  I  was,  after  this  session 
with  Freud,  in  a  mood  similar  to  Faust's  after  seeing  the  sign  of 
the  ghost  of  Earth: 

I  feel  the  courage,  forth  into  the  world  to  dare, 
The  woe  of  earth,  the  bliss  of  earth  to  bear, 
With  storms  to  battle,  brave  the  lightning's  glare 
And  in  the  shipwreck's  crash  not  to  despair. 

Also  experiences  which  are  helpful  and  raise  our  spirit,  situa- 
tions in  which  we  overcome  our  unhappiness,  are  not  immedi- 
ately perceived  and  understood  by  us  as  far  as  their  emotional 
significance  is  concerned.  They  too  can  have  the  character  of  an 
emotional  shock,  and  need  time  to  become  part  of  our  conscious 
possession.  The  emotional  meaning  of  this  final  session  with 
Freud  became  only  fully  understood  in  later  years.  Although  its 
effect  was  immediately  felt,  its  aftereffects  had  much  more  impact 
for  my  life  as  a  man  and  as  an  analyst.  When  Freud  asked  me 
whether  I  remembered  the  novel  by  Schnitzler,  I  had  been  in  a 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST  22J 

momentary  haze.  I  came  out  of  it  when  it  was  remembered, -and 
the  words  "Oh,  that  is  it?"  marked  the  beginning  of  my  under- 
standing. But  only  the  beginning;  it  was  as  if  a  hole  had  been 
torn  in  a  dense  fog.  When  I  later  took  that  long  walk  in  the  sub- 
urbs of  Vienna,  this  opening  was  enlarged.  The  fog  receded  and 
the  view  became  clear;  but  this  view  showed  only  the  recent  past 
and  had  no  great  depth  dimensions. 

What  the  truth  I  had  learned,  and  had  learned  to  face,  meant  to 
me  became  clear  to  me  only  later  when  it  unfolded  itself  in  all  its 
aspects  and  depths.  This  truth  had  more  than  one  simple  reso- 
nance. Freud  had  said  at  the  end  of  that  session,  rather  astonished, 
"I  would  have  thought  you  stronger,"  This  sentence  often  re- 
sounded in  me.  Freud  did  not  consider  my  hidden  and  forbidden 
impulses  and  the  punishment  to  which  I  had  subjected  myself 
from  the  point  of  view  of  morals.  He  did  not  evaluate  my  be- 
havior according  to  the  categories  of  bad  and  good,  wicked  or 
noble,  but  thought  of  it  as  weak  and  strong— whether  the  ego 
was  weak  or  strong.  If  I  had  been  strong  enough,  I  would  have 
faced  the  terrible  thought  squarely  and  would  not  have  needed 
to  punish  myself  when  it  recurred.  I  would  have  considered  its 
emergence  as  human  and  natural  under  the  circumstances.  I 
would  not  have  condemned  myself  to  the  death  penalty,  the  pun- 
ishment for  a  murderer. 

To  stand  one's  ground  in  the  face  of  such  wicked,  cruel,  hostile, 
mean  thoughts,  which  everybody  has  and  of  which  everybody  be- 
comes sometimes  aware,  to  look  at  them  with  open  eyes  and  to  reject 
them  consciously  without  becoming  panicky,  this  is  what  Freud 
meant  by  strength  of  the  ego.  The  basic  conception  of  the  strength 
or  weakness  of  the  ego  became  one  of  the  valuable  acquisitions  of 
this  session.  I  knew  it  before,  but  it  remained  just  theoretical  knowl- 
edge, was  not  experienced  in  my  own  life.  I  felt  its  significance 
when  I  walked  around  on  that  summer  day  in  Doebling  and 
Grinzing,  when  my  breast  was  at  last  free  from  pressure,  when  I 
could  breathe  again  and  look  forward  to  a  future  which  was  preg- 
nant with  possibilities  of  grief  and  joys.  I  knew  from  books  and 
courses  what  the  strength  and  weakness  of  the  ego  was,  knew 
that  this  ego-part  of  us  has  to  fight  a  two-front  battle  against  the 
intense  urges  of  the  instincts  and  against  exaggerated  demands 


228  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

of  the  superego,  that  severe  and  punishing  power  of  conscience.  I 
had  often  enough  seen  patients  being  punched  alternatively  or 
simultaneously  from  both  sides  until  their  ego  was  hanging  help- 
lessly on  the  ropes.  But  all  this  had  remained  pale  and  dry,  gray 
theory,  until  I  found  in  my  own  experience  what  it  meant  to  be 
strong  or  weak. 

I  understood  it  even  better  when  I  met  similar  situations  and 
reactions  with  my  patients,  when  I  observed  how  they  took  to 
flight  before  some  thought-temptations  and  produced  neurotic 
symptoms  on  account  of  the  same  weakness  of  the  ego  which  often 
contrasted  strongly  with  their  intellectual  gifts,  and  initiative.  I 
saw  men  and  women,  who  had  achieved  remarkable  things  in 
their  lives,  break  down  before  a  terrifying  thought,  before  a  tempta- 
tion which  had  emerged  in  them.  They  ran  in  wild  panic  into 
neurotic  symptoms,  inhibitions,  and  anxieties  which  made  them 
emotional  invalids.  I  even  saw  some  patients  give  themselves  into 
helpless  bondage  out  of  guilt  feelings  toward  a  wife  or  a  friend 
whom  they  hated.  I  saw  men  who  carried  invisible  chains  on 
their  arms,  tying  them  to  unworthy  mates  because  they  felt  an 
intense  guilt  feeling  toward  them.  If  Hamlet  had  been  born  or 
brought  up  in  New  York,  he  would,  perhaps,  have  said,  "Thus 
conscience  doth  make  suckers  of  us  all."  I  often  saw,  later  on, 
persons  of  great  energy  and  capability  behave  as  if  they  were  un- 
consciously paralyzed  by  such  terror  of  their  own  thoughts,  and 
I  realized  why  what  they  had  planned  lost  "the  name  of  action." 

I  had  thus  plenty  of  opportunity  to  examine  experiences  simi- 
lar to  my  own  with  regard  to  their  origin  and  motivation,  to 
compare  the  emotional  dynamics  in  the  cases  of  my  patients  with 
the  ones  in  my  case,  which  had  been  understood  long  ago.  But 
in  spite  of  all  I  knew,  I  believe,  I  could  look  at  this  knowing  as 
being  my  own  only  for  a  few  years.  I  then  treated  a  psychiatrist 
who,  among  many  other  problems,  suffered  great  anxiety  before 
entering  the  clinic  in  which  he  was  an  assistant.  We  soon  dis- 
covered that  the  main  reason  for  his  anxiety  was  the  unconscious 
thought  that  he  might  learn  that  the  professor,  whose  position  he 
coveted,  had  died  during  the  night.  I  was  astonished  that  this 
clever  man  had  not  seen  the  danger  from  which  he  had  escaped 
into  his  anxieties.  At  the  end  of  my  analytic  interpretation  I 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN   ANALYST  22Q 

expressed  my  astonishment  with  the  words  "I  had  thought  you 
stronger/*  Only  afterward  did  I  remember  when  and  from  whom 
I  had  heard  the  same  sentence. 


In  the  years  when  we  lived  in  Berlin  and  The  Hague  we  used 
to  spend  the  summer  vacations  in  the  Austrian  mountains.  The 
beautiful  village  of  Alt-Aussee  near  Salzburg  was  the  place  where 
we  spent  the  summer  after  my  visit  to  Freud.  My  wife  felt  rela- 
tively better  at  the  time.  She  could  even  take  little  walks  if  she 
was  cautious  and  avoided  every  exertion.  Her  mood  oscillated 
between  depression  and  those  characteristic  flutters  of  great  Ir- 
ritability. She  was  full  of  discontent  and  felt  dissatisfied  with 
everything,  with  people,  the  cottage  we  had  rented,  and  even 
with  the  charming  landscape.  Impatient,  she  sometimes  picked 
quarrels  with  me  and  others  about  trifles,  and  sometimes  turned 
away  from  me  and  others  apathetically. 

There  had  been  no  sexual  relations  between  us  for  a  long  time. 
I  did  all  I  could  to  make  life  comfortable  for  her.  I  spared  neither 
trouble  nor  expense  to  secure  all  comfort.  She  was,  nevertheless, 
dissatisfied,  and  she  often  put  my  patience  to  a  hard  test.  She 
could  not  resign  herself  to  two  things  which  deeply  disappointed 
her.  Our  son  Arthur  had  fallen  in  love  with  a  Dutch  girl  and  had 
told  us  of  his  plan  to  marry  her.  He  had  joined  us  here  in  Alt- 
Aussee  with  Judith,  his  bride,  to  say  farewell  to  us,  because  he 
wanted  to  emigrate  with  his  wife  to  Palestine. 

Ella,  whose  whole  love  had  been  concentrated  on  our  son, 
could  not  stand  the  thought  that  he  could  leave  her  for  another 
woman,  and  could  go  from  us  to  a  country  so  far  away.  She  saw 
herself  deserted  by  me  and  him,  and  the  certainty  that  her  only 
child  would  leave  her  cast  a  shadow  on  her  life,  which  had  been 
so  gloomy  for  so  many  years  on  account  of  her  disease. 

The  second  fact  to  which  my  wife  could  not  resign  herself  was 
my  relationship  with  the  girl,  which  I  have  mentioned  before 
and  which  had  been  continued  now  for  quite  some  time.  Sexual 
intercourse  with  Ella  was  made  impossible  on  account  of  her 


230  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

heart  ailment  which  had  been  aggravated  in  the  last  years.  I  had, 
of  course,  taken  every  possible  precaution  to  conceal  from  her 
that  I  had  searched  for  sexual  satisfaction  outside  our  home,  but 
secrets  of  this  kind  have  a  tendency  to  reveal  themselves  and 
"accidents/*  whose  psychological  character  are  not  always  inci- 
dental, give  them  away.  The  discovery  of  my  extramarital  rela- 
tions filled  Ella  with  indignation  and  she  felt  deeply  hurt.  She 
could  not  understand  why  a  man  in  the  best  years  should  not  be 
able  to  live  a  chaste  life,  why  he  had  to  go  to  women  to  get  re- 
lief from  sexual  pressure.  The  puritanical  education  of  her  child- 
hood and  young  girlhood  had  left  deep  traces  in  her  character. 

With  great  distaste  my  wife  finally  accepted  the  fact  that  I  had 
to  see  other  women  occasionally  to  get  sexual  relief.  But  when 
she  discovered  that  this  girl  meant  more  to  me  than  just  a  sexual 
object,  Ella  could  not  stand  it.  She  felt  humiliated.  She  was  well 
aware  of  the  saying  among  Viennese  women:  "One  girl  is  more 
dangerous  than  many  girls."  Yet  I  never  neglected  my  wife,  never 
thought  I  would  desert  her  for  another  woman,  yes,  in  a  kind  of 
attempt  to  offer  her  every  comfort  for  so  much  she  had  to  miss- 
on  account  of  her  disease,  I  worked  the  harder  for  her  the  more 
sorry  J  felt  for  her.  Through  many  years  I  went  to  operetta  per- 
formances that  bored  me  stiff,  I  spent  many  hours  with  the  mem- 
bers of  her  family  with  whom  I  had  nothing  in  common,  just 
to  please  her.  I  sat  beside  Ella  many  hours  looking  on  at  her 
bridge-playing,  often  until  late  in  the  night,  fighting  desperately 
against  sleep  and  extreme  fatigue  after  eleven  hours  of  analytic 
work.  Looking  back  at  that  time  in  which  I  never  hesitated  to 
make  every  sacrifice,  I  tell  myself  now  that  my  pity  for  her  was 
exaggerated  and  that  I  was  then  not,  as  I  had  flattered  myself,  a 
good  fellow  but  a  stupid  fellow.  There  is  no  doubt  that  my  un- 
conscious guilt  feeling  toward  her  made  me  do  things  I  would 
never  have  done  otherwise,  and  made  me  carry  burdens  which 
were  almost  too  heavy  for  an  average  man  to  bear. 

But  to  return  to  our  summer  in  Alt-Aussee:  Ella  had  discov- 
ered that  the  girl  of  whom  I  have  spoken  lived  near  that  village 
and  that  I  had  seen  her  at  her  place.  My  wife  discussed  this  with 
me  and  reproached  me  severely  for  my  unfaithfulness.  She  got 
more  and  more  excited  the  less  I  had  to  say,  and  what  was  there 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN   ANALYST  231 

to  be  said  without  mentioning  her  disease?  At  the  end  she  was 
carried  away  by  her  fury  and  shouted,  "You  are  a  scoundrel."  It 
was  like  a  blow  on  the  head.  I  left  the  room  silently  and  walked 
into  the  garden  that  surrounded  the  cottage. 

There  had  been  tiffs  and  disharmonies  between  us  before— as 
in  every  marriage  of  many  years—most  of  them  in  the  first  years 
because  of  my  impatience  and  intolerance,  many  in  the  later 
years  because  of  her  irritability  originated  mostly  by  her  illness. 
There  had  never  been  any  name-calling,  never  a  scene  like  this 
one.  I  felt  as  in  a  daze.  I  still  remember  it  was  a  beautiful  sum- 
mer afternoon  and  everything  was  flowering.  The  air  was  so  quiet 
and  the  landscape  presented  its  most  beautiful  view.  The  Dach- 
stein,  a  high  mountain  wall  on  the  right,  seemed  to  look  down 
on  me  majestically.  On  the  left  the  forest  sent  the  subtle  smell  of 
pine  trees  over  the  meadows.  I  walked  round  and  round  along  the 
garden  paths  which  encircled  a  large  flower  bed.  The  scenery  was 
so  harmonious.  God  or  the  artist  we  imagine  by  this  name  must 
have  created  it  when  he  was  in  a  Mozartian  mood,  in  the  same 
divine  humor  which  so  often  filled  the  music  of  that  human 
genius  born  in  the  city  of  Salzburg,  not  far  away. 

I  walked  around  the  big  flower  bed  and  there  was,  it  seemed  to 
me,  not  a  single  thought  in  my  head.  I  did  not  feel  depressed. 
There  was  apparently  a  heavy  load  on  my  breast  because  I  could 
not  breathe  freely.  It  seemed  nothing  mattered  any  more.  I  was 
far  away  from  myself,  walking  there,  and  in  a  kind  of  deperson- 
aUzation,  in  one  of  these  states  of  mind  in  which  one  is  a  stranger 
to  oneself.  I  do  not  know  any  more  how  long  I  walked  around 
the  small  garden  paths  automatically  and  unthinking,  in  the 
quietness  of  that  summer  afternoon.  Suddenly  I  heard  myself  say, 
"I  am  not  a  scoundrel/'  and  again  and  again  many  times,  "I  am 
not  a  scoundrel/' 

Something  seemed  to  loosen  itself  within  me.  That  pressure  on 
my  breast  seemed  to  become  lighter.  And  then  I  looked  up  because 
my  cheeks  were  wet.  Was  there  one  of  those  fine  thin-string  rains 
(Schnuerlregen)  which  so  often  occur  in  the  middle  of  a  beauti- 
ful sunny  day  in  the  Salzburg  region?  No,  I  had  cried  and  had 
not  known  it  I  returned  to  the  apartment  and  spoke  to  Ella  in 
a  quiet  and  very  friendly  way.  I  did  not  feel  reproachful  and  I 


2J2  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

understood,  or  sensed,  that  what  she  had  said  was  not  meant  seri- 
ously, was  shouted  on  the  spur  of  the  very  angry  moment.  Our 
conversation  was  friendly  and  it  did  not  concern  the  subject  of 
our  discussion  a  short  time  before,  but  the  prospect  of  Arthur's 
marriage  and  departure.  We  both  now  felt  that  we  belonged  to- 
gether. There  was,  however,  a  new  tone  in  my  voice.  It  was  gentle 
enough,  but  it  was  also  firm,  and  it  did  not  sound  guilty  any 
more  as  it  had  sounded  a  few  hours  ago. 

What  had  happened?  While  I  walked  around  in  the  garden  I 
had  experienced  indescribable  emotions,  but  their  character  and 
the  development  they  took  can  well  be  guessed  in  retrospect.  I 
had  been  unexpectedly  hit  and  had  suffered  an  emotional  shocL 
I  had  felt  guilty  for  a  long  time  and  now  had  an  open  and  clear 
accusation  and  condemnation  coming  from  the  very  person  to- 
ward whom  I  had  felt  guilty.  For  a  few  minutes  I  must  have  felt 
cast  out,  utterly  reprehensible,  lower  than  the  worm  in  the  dust 
I  am  sure  when  I  first  walked  on  those  circular  paths,  I  felt 
crushed. 

I  saw  myself  with  Ella's  eyes— as  a  scoundrel.  Just  when  I  felt 
lost,  I  had  suddenly  found  myself.  Something  in  me  protested  in 
passionate  upsurge  against  submitting  to  the  verdict  that  I  was  a 
heel  or  a  rascal.  This  something  had  to  do  neither  with  thoughts  of 
self-justification  nor  with  reasoning  or  measuring.  It  had  nothing 
to  do  with  weighing  my  good  qualities  against  my  bad  ones.  The 
protest  came  from  the  depth  of  my  character.  I  knew  I  had  often 
been  inconsiderate,  impulsive,  and  violent,  often  perhaps  im- 
patient, proud,  weak,  and  pulled  by  many  drives  hither  and 
thither.  I  had  not  been  a  scoundrel. 

I  had  yielded  at  first  to  the  emotional  temptation  to  surrender 
to  the  condemnation  which  I  had  heard,  but  then  from  some, 
deeper  source  emerged  the  counter-reaction  and  with  it  strength. 
Freud's  words  had  echoed  in  me  and  enabled  me  to  stand  the  sud- 
den assault.  They  gave  me  strength  not  to  yield  to  the  terrifying 
wave  of  self-hate  and  guilt  feeling  which  towered  over  me.  The 
attack  had  had  the  effect  of  a  powerful  blow,  but  I  had  regained 
my  equilibrium  and  I  had  recuperated,  thanks  to  some  hidden 
resources. 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  233 

I  rarely  thought  of  this  summer  afternoon  in  later  years.  Some 
incident  brought  the  memory  back  to  me  only  a  few  weeks  ago. 
A  patient  told  me  that  his  little  son  Peter,  three  years  old,  had 
made  a  clumsy  gesture  at  the  dinner  table  and  spilled  his  orange 
juice  over  the  whole  tablecloth.  His  mother,  a  kind  but  nervous 
woman,  had  scolded  the  boy  and  had  put  him  to  bed.  Half  an 
hour  later— the  young  parents  sat  in  the  living  room  reading— 
they  heard  a  loud  voice  from  the  bedroom  of  the  child:  "Peter 
not  a  bad  boy!  Peter  not  a  bad  boy!"  and  again,  in  passionate 
protest  and  between  sobs:  "Peter  not  a  bad  boy!" 


After  Arthur  had  left  us  to  go  to  Palestine  with  his  young  wife, 
Ella  felt  very  lonely,  and  every  attempt  to  distract  her  failed.  She 
could  not  get  accustomed  to  life  in  Holland,  where  we  thought 
ourselves  safe  from  Hitler.  Ella's  longing  for  our  son  became 
stronger  and  finally  unbearable;  in  spite  of  her  weak  heart,  she 
decided  to  undertake  the  long  journey  to  Jerusalem.  She  arrived 
safely  and  Arthur  and  Judith  did  everything  in  their  power  to 
make  her  sojourn  there  comfortable.  Although  under  the  care- 
ful  supervision  and  treatment  of  excellent  physicians,  her  heart 
ailment  got  worse.  Oscillating  between  depression,  apathy,  and 
great  irritability,  and  living  with  the  newlywed  couple,  she  did 
not  find  the  peace  of  mind  she  had  searched  for.  Her  letters  to 
me  were  always  affectionate.  There  was  never  a  trace  of  bitterness 
or  complaint  in  them. 

After  several  months  in  Jerusalem,  she  decided  to  go  to  Vienna 
to  see  her  parents.  She  undertook  the  journey  from  Haifa,  crossed 
the  Mediterranean  to  Italy,  and  took  the  train  to  Vienna.  She 
must  have  felt  that  the  end  was  near,  and  she  wanted  to  be  with  her 
parents  in  her  last  hour.  On  the  train  she  became  very  ill.  When 
she  arrived  at  her  parents'  home  in  Vienna,  the  physician,  called 
in  all  haste,  saw  that  her  life  could  last  only  a  few  minutes.  She 
spoke  a  few  sentences  to  her  mother  and  father  and  breathed 
her  last  Again  her  strong  mind  had  proved  its  power  over  matter; 
she  lived  long  enough  to  die  at  home. 


THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

Ella  was  buried  in  the  family  plot.  At  the  time  of  her  funeral 
I  was  in  Holland  and  I  have  never  seen  her  tomb.  When  the 
news  of  her  death  reached  me  in  The  Hague,  it  did  not  awaken 
very  intense  emotions.  Too  often,  and  for  so  many  years,  had  I 
anticipated  her  end  with  feelings  of  anxiety  and  panic.  Too  often 
had  I  forced  my  reluctant  imagination  to  face  the  terrible  event 
which  cast  its  long  shadow  on  my  life.  This  anticipation  in 
thought  had  taken  place  so  often  that  I  only  later  understood 
its  magical  significance.  It  was  an  unconscious  measure  of  emo- 
tional self-protection,  which  would  prepare  and  harden  me 
against  the  blow  of  destiny,  but  would  soften  it  too.  The  basis 
of  it  was  a  magical  or  superstitious  belief  that  I  could  perhaps 
avert  the  catastrophe  when  I  imagined  it  and  what  it  would  mean 
to  myself  and  my  small  son. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  was  the  expectancy  that  the  blow 
would  not  hit  me  so  terribly  if  I  anticipated  it.  You  could  call  this 
particular  piece  of  thinking,  which  anticipates  in  thoughts  the 
worst,  magical  discount.  I  have  an  obsessional  patient  who  bets 
against  himself  in  thought.  He  tries  to  convince  himself  that  the 
opposite  of  what  he  really  wishes  will  happen,  so  that  his  disap- 
pointment, if  his  wishes  should  not  be  fulfilled,  will  not  be  too 
severe  and  depressing.  He  can  also  console  himself  then  that  he 
foresaw  the  unfavorable  outcome  and  obtain  a  confirmation  of 
his  belief  in  the  power  of  his  thoughts  in  this  case  of  his  fears. 

All  that  is  so  long  past,  and  what  came  afterward  is  separated 
from  it  by  a  sharp  stroke;  the  breakdown  of  Europe  and  the  second 
World  War,  and  with  it  the  collapse  of  the  civilization  in  which 
I  grew  up. 

While  writing  the  preceding  pages,  I  often  wondered  why  I  felt 
so  guilty  about  mere  thoughts  and  wishes,  and  why  I  did  not  feel 
guiltier  when  I  was  inconsiderate,  malicious,  rude,  or  even  cruel 
in  fact,  as  I  had  no  doubt  often  been  toward  my  ill  wife.  I  was, 
it  is  true,  a  slave-driver  of  myself,  I  had  subjected  myself  to  forced 
labor  to  secure  all  that  was  necessary  or  only  comfortable  for  her. 
But  I  was  not  really  gracious  and  generous  because  I  wanted  the 
sacrifices  I  made  to  be  appreciated  and  praised,  and  I  often 
spoiled  all  my  service  by  bad  humor  and  reproachfulness,  I  often 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF  AN   ANALYST  2g5 

acted  like  a  good  cow  that  gives  plenty  of  milk  but  afterward, 
lashing  out,  overthrows  the  milk  tub. 

All  the  obsessional  thoughts  and  anxieties  I  had  felt  had  evap- 
orated, and  I  did  not  feel  guilty  any  more  of  my  thought-crimes, 
my  evil  wishes  and  impulses.  There  was,  however,  a  remnant  of 
magical  thinking  in  the  form  of  a  special  half-formed  belief  when 
I  thought  of  my  wife's  death  later  on.  1  often  thought  that  she 
died,  so  to  speak,  as  a  vicarious  sacrifice  for  myself.  The  fleeting 
idea  was  that  I  should  have  really  died,  and  that  she  died  in  my 
place,  that  destiny  had  taken  her  life  in  place  of  mine  which  was 
forfeited.  The  emotion  accompanying  this  magical  or  supersti- 
tious thought  was  a  mixture  of  guilt  feeling  toward  Ella  and  affec- 
tion for  her.  Guilt  feeling  because  she  died,  so  to  speak,  for  my 
sin  for  which  I  should  have  died,  affection  because  I  felt  that  she 
would  have  gladly  given  her  life  to  save  mine.  Once  it  occurred 
to  me  that  the  origin  of  this  magical  belief  was  in  a  religious 
ritual  which  I  had  seen  as  a  child.  Religious  Jews  sacrifice  a 
chicken  on  the  day  of  atonement  (Yom  Kippur)  as  a  vicarious 
victim  for  their  own  sins,  for  which  their  own  life  is  forfeited.  My 
grandfather,  who  lived  some  years  with  us,  took  a  chicken  by  its 
legs  on  this  highest  holiday,  and  waved  it  several  times  around 
my  head,  when  I  was  a  boy,  saying  a  prayer  or  a  formula.  This 
formula  says  that  the  chicken  was,  so  to  speak,  to  take  over  my 
sins,  and  would  be  slaughtered  as  atonement  for  them  in  my 
place.  My  superstitious  belief  must  have  been  a  remnant  of  this 
childhood  memory.  I  do  not  know  where  I  originally  found  the 
impudence  to  think  that  my  life  was  more  precious  than  my 
wife's,  and  why  hers  should  be  taken  instead  of  mine,  but  at 
the  end  of  this  train  of  thought  I  always  felt  a  wave  of  affection 
and  gratitude  for  her,  and  a  feeling  of  unworthiness,  as  if  I  did 
not  deserve  so  great  a  sacrifice. 

I  felt  sincerely  sorry  because  I  was  often  inconsiderate  and 
cruel  toward  Ella.  But  also  these  feelings  were  of  a  fleeting  nature. 
It  sometimes  seems  as  if  I  could  not  feel  any  more  those  intense 
emotions,  as  if  it  were  very  difficult  and  sometimes  impossible  to 
remember  their  intensity,  yes,  even  their  existence.  Has  old  age, 
and  the  emotional  change  associated  with  it  brought  this  about? 
Have  I  already  become  so  much  cooler?  It  is  as  if  the  intensity  of 


2g6  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

emotions  which  youth  once  had  has  already  yielded  to  clarity, 
circumspection,  and  cool-headedness.  All  I  experienced  during 
those  years  appears  as  if  seen  from  a  great  distance,  and  the  fig- 
ures appear  sharp  but  small,  as  if  looked  at  through  the  other 
side  of  opera  glasses. 

Yet  I  know,  and  I  know  it  to  the  core  of  my  being,  what 
Freud  and  Ella,  what  the  master  and  friend,  and  what  the  wife 
meant  to  me  in  those  years  I  was  growing  and  maturing.  They 
were  not  just  persons  who  had  become  very  important  for  my 
development;  they  meant  more  to  me.  Meeting  Freud  and  Ella 
in  those  years  was  a  stroke  of  luck.  They  became  primal  images. 
Ella  was  not  just  a  single  girl  to  me,  but  the  model  of  a  girl,  girl- 
hood  that  had  become  personified.  Freud  was  not  only  a  great 
man  to  me,  but  the  model  of  a  man.  It  was  as  if  in  his  personality 
were  combined  all  the  qualities,  I  thought,  a  man  should  possess: 
integrity  and  moral  courage  with  strength  and  ingenuity.  What 
Ella  and  Freud  were  to  me  in  those  young  years  left  deep  traces 
in  my  character  which  remained  indelible.  I  was  not  blind  to  their 
human  weaknesses  and  shortcomings,  but  thinking  of  them,  leads 
always  to  the  feeling:  Their  memory  shall  be  blessed. 

Having  arrived  at  the  end  of  this  "fragment  of  a  great  con- 
fession," I  become  aware  that  it  covers  a  very  small  segment  of  a 
man's  life,  and  even  this  little  piece  is  unsatisfactorily  presented 
Childhood  and  boyhood  were  scarcely  mentioned.  The  descrip- 
tion was  confined  to  a  certain  phase  of  life,  and  of  one  aspect  of 
this  period;  my  life  in  relation  to  my  sweetheart  and  my  wife. 
Other  relationships  with  colleagues,  friends,  and  relatives  were 
hardly  touched  upon;  various  activities  and  interests  not  even 
mentioned.  Also  the  relationship  with  Ella  was  psychologically 
not  as  completely  and  as  precisely  pictured  as  would  be  necessary 
for  the  purpose  of  scientific  research.  What  is  presented  here  is 
thus  a  fragment  of  a  fragment  of  a  great  confession. 

Why,  I  ask  myself,  is  it  that  such  confessions  when  spoken  by 
an  unknown  person  almost  always  awaken  our  interest,  and  why 
do  we  demand  certain  qualities,  which  we  do  not  require  in 
life,  when  they  appear  in  a  book?  It  seems  that  our  human  inter- 
est in  the  person  to  whose  confessions  we  listen  remains  alive 
because  we  do  not  only  hear  his  words,  but  also  what  is  said  and 


THE   CONFESSIONS  OF   AN   ANALYST  2g7 

left  unsaid  between  and  beyond  the  words.  We  do  not  only  listen, 
we  also  look  at  the  person,  observe  him,  become  aware  of  peculiari- 
ties of  his  gestures,  of  his  posture,  of  the  movements  of  his  body, 
and  of  his  facial  expressions.  All  these  features  tell  a  story  be- 
sides and  beyond  the  story  he  tells  in  words.  We  miss  them  in  a  book 
except  when  the  writer  has  a  very  personal  or  expressive  style.  Con- 
fessions for  confessions'  sake  bore  us  easily  when  we  read  them. 
When  they  are  nothing  else  but  confessions  they  do  not  speak  to  us. 
They  must  have  other  added  traits  which  interest  us.  The  great 
confessions  of  world  literature  fascinate  us  just  by  these  addi- 
tional features  which,  strictly  speaking,  are  not  inherent  to  con- 
fession as  such:  the  Confessions  of  Augustine  by  the  religious 
conflict  in  the  writer  and  his  zeal,  the  Confessions  of  Rousseau 
by  their  merciless  self-observation,  Goethe's  Truth  and  Fiction  by 
the  incomparable  plastic  quality  of  the  artistic  presentation.  The 
writer  of  this  fragment  has  nothing  to  offer  which  could  be  lik- 
ened to  such  excellencies.  He  can  only  hope  that  the  interest  of 
the  reader  is  attracted  to  the  psychological  problems  which  are 
contained  in  these  self-analytic  pages.  If  this  interest  is  lacking, 
nothing  else  recommends  them  to  the  reader. 

Many  psychoanalysts  will  find  fault  with  the  form  of  presenta- 
tion of  this  fragment  because  many  emotional  processes  and  trains 
of  thought  are  not  properly  labeled.  They  will  complain  that  the 
appropriate  scientific  terms  are  not  applied,  that,  for  instance,  in 
the  description  of  my  relationship  with  Ella  the  psychoanalytic 
expression  ambivalence  is  not  to  be  found. 

I  was,  of  course,  ambivalent  toward  Ella,  in  this  typical  emo- 
tional tension  between  love  and  hate.  But  does  this  explain  the 
specific  nature  of  my  obsessional  thoughts  and  fears,  does  it  make 
me  understand  why  I  felt  such  a  sense  of  terrible  responsibility 
for  her  and  why  I  was  filled  with  choking  anxiety  when  she  felt 
worse?  We  are  not  only  tied  to  a  person  by  love  or  by  hate,  or  by 
a  combination  of  both  feelings.  It  would  be  much  more  to  the 
psychological  point  to  stress  that  I  was  then  tied  to  Ella  by  un- 
conscious guilt  feeling.  But  I  was  not  trying  to  explain  what  is 
obvious.  Putting  labels  on  psychological  phenomena  does  not 
appear  very  important  to  me.  The  question  is  not  whether  the 
labels  we  put  on  things  are  correct  or  not,  but  whether  they  are 


2g8  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

essential  and  significant  for  the  individual  case.  It  is  due  to  such 
psychoanalytic  labels  that  people  in  most  case  histories  do  not 
appear  as  living  persons,  but  as  pasteboard  figures.  The  psycho- 
logical impact  of  emotions  and  thoughts  gets  lost  in  the  waste- 
land of  such  schematic,  verbalized  classifications,  and  what  was 
real  life,  vibrant  with  feeling,  is  banned  into  the  shadow  exist- 
ence of  technical  terms,  of  "Psychoanalese."  I  am  told  that  a  six- 
year-old  girl  who  was  taken  to  the  Museum  of  Natural  History 
with  her  school  was  asked  where  she  had  been.  She  answered, 
"In  a  dead  zoo."  When  we  read  descriptions  of  neurotic  and 
psychotic  people  in  many  psychoanalytic  books,  we  too  could 
say  we  had  been  in  a  dead  zoo  whose  specimens  were  neatly 
labeled  but  poorly  prepared  by  their  taxidermists. 

I  shall  try  to  demonstrate  how  narrow  and  inappropriate,  how 
poor  and  pitiful  the  effect  of  psychoanalytic  terms  can  be,  com- 
pared with  emotional  experience.  Here  is  an  instance  'from  my 
present  analytic  practice.  A  patient,  Anne,  a  pretty  girl  of  sixteen 
years,  told  me  that  she  spent  some  time  of  the  past  summer  to- 
gether with  her  father  and  his  present  wife,  Margaret,  in  the 
country,  near  the  Hudson  River.  Anne  had  a  pleasant  time  there, 
and  often  sailed  and  swam  with  Margaret,  whom  she  liked.  She 
once  suggested  to  Margaret,  who  is  much  older  than  she,  that  they 
should  swim  together  in  the  nude.  Margaret  first  hesitated,  and 
then  rejected  the  suggestion;  Anne  did  not  know  why.  Let  me  add 
to  the  report  a  few  facts  which  are  not  unimportant  for  its  psycho- 
logical understanding.  Anne's  father  had  had  a  love  affair  with 
Margaret  while  he  was  still  married  to  Anne's  mother.  He  finally 
won  a  divorce  and  married  his  mistress.  Anne  had  first  taken 
her  mother's  side,  and  had  turned  against  Margaret,  but  during 
the  last  months  she  had  made  friends  with  her,  and  had  spent 
much  time  with  her,  especially  in  the  summer  vacations. 

What  unconscious  meaning  or  motivation,  if  any,  would  the 
average  psychoanalyst  attribute  to  Anne's  suggestion  to  swim 
together  in  the  nude?  And  what  to  Margaret's  refusal?  Is  there 
anything  psychologically  significant  in  this  little  incident  at  all? 
I  asked  several  psychoanalysts;  they  all  answered  it  was  immedi- 
ately obvious  to  them  what  Anne's  suggestion  meant.  It  was,  they 
stated,  the  expression  of  her  voyeurism  and  of  her  homosexual 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   ANALYST 

tendencies.  At  the  same  time,  they  added,  the  plan  to  swim  in 
the  nude  was  a  manifestation  of  Anne's  exhibitionism.  In  other 
words:  Anne  wanted  to  get  sexual  gratification  from  looking  at 
Margaret's  nude  body  and  from  showing  her  own  body  to  Mar- 
garet. The  homosexual  component  expressed  itself  in  the  wish 
to  be  in  the  nude  with  the  older  woman. 

Does  this  psychoanalytic  interpretation  explain  the  hidden 
motives  of  Anne's  behavior?  Does  it  allow  us  to  catch  a  glimpse  of 
the  dark  stirrings  within  the  young  girl?  It  seems  to  me  that  these 
analysts  looking  at  that  phenomenon  have  a  poor  sense  of  color, 
they  see  only  the  most  conspicuous  differences.  Are  they  not  sup- 
posed to  see  and  to  observe  the  finest  shades  and  nuances?  Should 
they  not  be  able  to  recognize  the  infrared  as  well  as  the  ultra- 
violet in  the  prism  at  their  disposal?  Is  the  aspect  of  hidden  hu- 
man agents  in  the  case  here  presented  really  caught  in  the  words 
voyeurism,  exhibitionism,  and  homosexuality?  Should  not  psy- 
choanalysts be  able  to  hear  more  than  commonplace  sounds  when 
they  listen  with  the  third  ear  to  the  voice  which  tells  that  story? 
But  so  many  of  them  have  ears  and  do  not  hear,  and  have  eyes 
and  do  not  see. 

Here  is  another  psychological  aspect,  one  of  many:  When  Anne 
asked  Margaret  to  swim  in  the  nude,  an  important  unconscious 
motive  was  the  curiosity  of  the  younger  girl  to  see  the  body  of 
the  woman  with  whom  her  father  slept,  a  curiosity  of  a  hostile 
kind.  The  gratification  of  this  wish  to  see  was  not  of  a  crude 
sexual  nature,  and  not  akin  to  that  of  a  peeping  Tom.  It  was 
an  aggressive  tendency.  This  has  not  much  to  do  with  voyeur 
impulses  which  are  searching  for  sexual  excitement  at  the  sight 
of  another  naked  body.  Seeing  this  body  meant  here  to  observe  that 
it  was  so  much  fatter,  flabbier  than  Anne's  own  youthful  slimness. 
If  there  was  exhibitionism  in  her  suggestion,  it  was  not  of  the 
kind  analysts  usually  associate  with  this  term:  Margaret  should 
not  see  Anne's  body  to  get  sexual  pleasure  out  of  the  sight,  but 
so  that  Margaret  should  be  made  envious  or  jealous  by  the  more 
beautiful  body  of  the  young  girl.  Analysts  speaking  of  exhibition- 
ism mean  that  the  display  of  another  naked  body  should  sexually 
arouse  the  onlooker.  They  do  not  mean  that  it  should  make  his 
blood  vessels  explode.  These  undercurrents  were  not  perceived* 


240  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

the  hidden  was  not  sensed,  the  intangible  not  recognized,  when 
the  essential  character  of  the  incident  is  determined  as  homo- 
sexuality, exhibitionism,  and  voyeurism. 

Margaret's  reaction  to  Anne's  suggestion  should  itself  give  a 
hint  of  its  concealed  character.  Margaret's  refusal  was  not  the  re- 
jection of  an  improper  homosexual  proposition.  It  was  not  the 
expression  of  her  chastity.  It  was  dictated  by  an  intuitive  under- 
standing of  the  hidden  hostile  character  of  the  offer.  It  was  as  if 
delicacy  of  feeling  made  her  reject  it,  as  if  she  had  answered:  I  do 
not  want  to  give  you  the  satisfaction  of  looking  contemptuously 
or  condescendingly  on  my  figure.  It  was  as  if  she  sensed  in  the 
suggestion  the  concealed  indelicacy  of  a  curiosity  eager  to  see 
the  naked  body  of  a  rival.  She  did  not  react  to  it  as  if  it  were  ob- 
scene or  lascivious,  but  as  if  it  were  offensive  to  taste  and  tact, 
which  it  was.  Examples  like  this  one  do  not  prove  much;  how- 
ever, they  show  enough  to  lead  us  back  to  some  general  psycho- 
logical problem,  especially  to  the  question  of  how  we  guess  what 
goes  on  in  the  unconscious  of  another  person,  and  how  we  can 
recognize  what  unconsciously  goes  on  in  ourselves. 

It  seems  that  it  is  easier  for  all  of  us  to  understand  the  emo- 
tions and  thoughts  of  another  than  our  own.  There  is  no  doubt 
that,  paradoxical  as  it  might  sound,  the  interest  in  the  psycho- 
logical processes  of  other  persons  is  older  than  that  in  our  own 
experiences,  that  we  are  originally  more  curious  about  what  goes 
on  in  other  human  beings.  We  live  distantly  from  our  own 
experiences. 

Take  the  instance  presented  here.  One  day,  as  a  psychologist, 
I  became  interested  in  Goethe's  love  experience  with  an  Alsatian 
pastor's  daughter,  I  had  known  the  tale  in  Truth  and  Fiction 
since  my  late  teens;  I  had  then  wondered  why  Goethe  acted  the 
way  he  had  and  was  ready  to  condemn  him  as  a  faithless  and 
heartless  egotist.  I  began  to  see  the  unconscious  motives  which 
propelled  him  when  I  read  his  tale  more  than  twenty  years  later. 
I  recognized  now  in  the  flashlight  of  psychoanalysis  certain  clues, 
a  number  of  seemingly  unrelated  things  which,  joined  together, 
give  psychological  circumstantial  evidence.  When  I  wrote  the 
story  on  Goethe  I  had  not  the  slightest  notion  that  I  attempted 
to  master  emotionally  an  experience  of  my  own  which  had  cer- 


THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN  ANALYST  241 

;ain  points  of  contact  with  his.  My  attention  was  concentrated  on 
:he  unconscious  motives  of  a  young  poet  who,  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago,  had  fallen  in  love  with  a  charming  girl,  had  been 
pursued  by  mysterious  obsessional  thoughts  and  fears,  and  had 
deserted  his  sweetheart.  Ten  years  after  I  had  written  it,  while 
reading  my  own  book,  certain  features,  especially  those  chapter 
titles,  brought  me  to  the  realization  that  I  had  written  my  own 
story,  and  I  began  to  understand  why  I  had  done  it  and  what  it 
meant.  How  many  years  I  needed  to  recognize  what  had  uncon- 
sciously taken  place  in  myself!  How  long  a  time  it  took  until  I 
came  to  my  own  track!  It  seems  that  the  core  of  our  own  experi- 
ences is  as  distant  from  our  own  psychological  understanding 
as  the  light  of  some  planets  which  needs  many  thousand  years  to 
reach  us.  Some  of  these  stars  were  extinguished  long  ago  but  we 
still  observe  their  light.  It  is  such  a  "pathos  of  distance"  which 
separates  us  from  the  unconscious  meaning  of  our  experiences. 

And  how  long  a  detour  we  often  need  to  come  to  ourselves! 
We  have  to  become  strangers  to  ourselves,  and  have  to  see  our- 
selves as  if  with  the  eyes  of  other  persons  in  order  to  see  correctly, 
Goethe  is  right:  nobody  learns  much  about  himself  by  direct  self- 
observation.  You  have  to  get  at  a  certain  emotional  distance  from 
yourself  if  you  want  to  see  even  the  contours  of  yourself. 

There  is  a  strange  paradox  in  the  character  of  guessing  and 
understanding  unconscious  processes.  When  we  want  to  under- 
stand ourselves  we  have  to  observe  others  and  compare  them  with 
us.  When  we  want  to  understand  others,  we  have  to  turn  our  look 
inward,  have  to  take  the  clues  from  our  own  psychology.  Is  it  not 
as  if  we  were  strangers  at  our  own  home,  and  as  if  we  had  to 
go  out  and  return  to  feel  really  at  home? 

It  is  late.  I  feel  weary  and  would  like  to  put  down  the  pen. 
Station  WQXR  signed  off  for  the  night  long  ago.  The  last  sounds 
heard  in  this  room  were  of  Mozart's  music.  Yes,  Mozart.  .  .  .  My 
thoughts  begin  to  wander.  .  .  .  Sakburg,  where  he  was  born 
and  grew  up.  ,  .  .  Alt-Aussee  from  where  we  went  to  the  Salz- 
burg festivals.  .  .  .  We  heard  there  in  Schloss  Leopoldskron 
Eine  Kleine  Nachtmusik.  ...  It  was  magnificent.  .  .  .  The 
musicians  were  in  the  costumes  of  Mozart's  time.  It  was  in  the 
wide  yard  of  the  castle,  and  torches  on  its  wall  illuminated  the 


242  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

night  .  .  .  And  next  day  we  listened  to  Mahler's  Fourth  Sym- 
phony in  the  Salzburg  Festspielhaus.  .  .  .  The  last  movement  is 
akin  to  Mozart's  music.  ...  I  remember  that  Mahler  in  his  last 
hour,  already  unconscious,  suddenly  said,  "Mozart  darling" 
('MozartU"),  as  if  he  heard  his  music.  ...  I  think  again  of  Alt- 
Aussee  and  now  the  image  of  Beer-Hofmann  appears  before  me. 
.  .  .  and  I  see  myself  walking  at  his  side  from  his  cottage  along 
a  brook  near  a  forest.  ...  I  had  then  visited  the  beloved  poet 
in  his  cottage  and  we  sat  in  his  studio  on  the  first  floor,  smoking, 
talking,  and  looking  at  the  view  of  Alt-Aussee  which  is  so  Mo- 
zartian— Oh,  yes,  I  understand  now  what  was  the  thought  con- 
nection between  Beer-Hofmann  and  Mozart.  I  must  have  been 
thinking  of  the  beautiful  "Gedenkrede  auf  Wolfgang  Amadeus 
Mozart/'  a  few  pages  of  wonderful  prose  which  Beer-Hofmann 
wrote  and  which  are  as  profound  as  they  are  beautiful. 

I  first  heard  the  name  Beer-Hofmann  when  I  was  eighteen,  and 
shortly  after  my  father's  death  I  had  read  his  "Graf  von  Charolais." 
I  was  deeply  moved.  Here  was  a  poet,  a  real  poet,  of  incompa- 
rable power  of  expression  and  riches  of  the  heart.  My  first  book,  a 
small  pamphlet,  was  on  the  work  of  Beer-Hofmann.  I  was  twenty- 
three  when  I  wrote  it  and  full  of  pride  when  I  showed  the  first 
copy  to  Ella.  On  the  first  page  stood  the  words  "Cum  ira  et 
studio"  because  I  was  then  full  of  indignation  about  the  Vienna 
critics  who  did  not  give  full  appreciation  to  Beer-Hofmann,  and 
very  keen  to  show  how  wonderful  the  "Graf  von  Charolais,"  and 
"Schlaftied  fur  Miriam"  were.  That  was  1911,  the  year  Mahler 
died  in  the  Loew  Sanatorium  in  Vienna.  And  I  remember  how 
I,  a  few  years  before,  once  shyly  followed  Mahler  on  his  way 
from  the  Opera,  where  he  had  conducted,  to  the  Ringstrasse. 
...  I  had  a  crush  on  him  like  a  schoolgirl's  infatuation  with  a 
movie  star.  But  I  was  really  in  the  last  year  of  high  school  then. 
,  .  .  How  I  admired  him,  the  man  and  the  music  he  made, 
although  I  knew  so  little  of  him.  .  .  .  Three  years  later  I  stood 
in  the  Berggasse  and  talked  with  Freud,  told  him  about  my  plans 
and  looked  fascinated  into  his  eyes.  ...  He  had  inherited  the 
worship  I  had  for  Mahler  and  he  meant  so  much  more  to  me. 

They  are  dead  now,  all  the  men  who  had  meant  so  much  to 
my  youth  in  Vienna.  The  pictures  of  Freud,  Schnitzler,  Mahler, 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF   AN   ANALYST  243 

and  Beer-Hofmann  on  the  walls  of  my  room  do  not  greet  me 
any  more.  .  .  .  Why  do  I  suddenly  feel  so  lonely? 

My  glance  falls  upon  the  framed  page  which  Beer-Hofmann 
had  given  me.  It  now  hangs  at  the  right  side  of  my  desk.  This 
handwritten  poem  has  inserted  on  it  in  calligraphic  lines:  "To 
Theodor  Reik  in  memory  of  past  days,  most  cordially  Beer-Hof- 
mann, Vienna  4.1.1935."  I  remember  that  I  called  on  him;  we 
talked  about  Schnitzler  and  Wassermann  who  were  both  his 
friends.  He  gave  me  that  handwritten  page  when  I  left  him. 

I  tried  to  translate  it  into  English— difficult  to  communicate 
the  music  of  the  German  lines  and  to  translate  those  first  stanzas. 
Perhaps: 

All  the  paths  we  tread  are  leading 

To  the  one,  the  lonely  way. 

Never-weary  hours  are  weeding 

All  that  grew  once  sad  and  gay. 

All  misfortune  and  all  pleasure 
Pale  as  in  reflection  shone. 
What  we  suffer,  what  we  treasure 
Fades—leaves  us  with  us  alone. 

Was  I  not  in  dancer's  round, 
And  what  struck,  struck  not  ine  only? 
Is  no  hand  stretched  out?  No  sound? 
Silence  looms.  The  road  gets  lonely  .  .  . 

Everything  around  me  and  within  me  is  quiet.  No  strong  urges, 
no  intense  emotions.  .  .  .  But  there  is  that  unpleasant  sensation 
of  pressure  and  tightness,  the  heavy  breathing  and  a  slight  gid- 
diness. .  .  .  No  sorrows  about  a  sweetheart  any  more,  but  worry 
about  the  muscle  of  the  heart  ...  I  should  have  a  new  electro- 
cardiogram .  .  .  Dr.  Vogl  said  the  other  day  I  should  stop  smok- 
ing. .  .  .  While  I  put  my  cigarette  out,  I  suddenly  recall  a  sen- 
tence sage,  old  Freud  once  said:  "As  soon  as  the  soul  attains  peace, 
the  body  begins  to  give  trouble." 


PART    THREE 


The  Gift  for  Psychological 
Observation 


The  Gift  For  Psychological  Observation 


How  does  a  man  become  interested  in  psychology?  Psychol- 
ogists—that is,  psydh^log^ts^^liu,  in  our  sense,  jyre  CUQQU&. 
about  emououad^ltTOem^are  be-rn,~nbt  made.  Psychological 
interest  and  the  gift  for  psychological  observation  are  as  in- 
born as  a  musical  sense  or  a  mathematical  talent.  Where  it  is 
not  present,  nothing— not  even  courses,  lectures,  and  seminars- 
will  produce  it.  The  comparison  with  musicianship  is  justified  in 
more  than  one  sense.  Musicians,  like  psychologists,  are  born;  but, 
in  order  tqJasjcqpa^^  trained  and  they 

mustwwkjong^ndJiatd.  Talent  aloneisnoFenougET^utwOTE 
and^ndustry  alone,  without  talent,  are  nothing.  Lack  of  psy- 
chological endowment  becomes  especially  conspicuous  when  a 
psychoanalyst  is  ready  to  turn  to  creative  work,  to  present  new 
psychological  findings  in  a  book  or  paper.  Nowadays  we  read 
many  books  and  articles  in  psychoanalytic  periodicals  that  are 
cleverly  written  and  present  interesting  material  of  a  medical, 
sociological,  psychosomatic,  or  physiological  nature.  I  do  not 
doubt  their  value,  but  there  is  not  the  slightest  trace  of  psy- 
chology in  them, 

Rossini  went  to  hear  the  opera  The  Huguenots  for  the  first 
time.  "What  do  you  think  of  this  music,  maestro?"  he  was  asked. 
"Music— I  did  not  hear  any  music,"  the  composer  answered. 
Similarly,  the  reader  of  certain  psychoanalytic  books  and  maga- 
zines may  have  read  anc}  learned  many  things,  but  no  psychology. 
That  music  is  essential  to  an  opera  might  be  a  prejudice,  but 
one  we  would  like  to  keep. 

The  German  scholar,  O.  Klemm,  has  stated  that  psychology 
has  a  long  past  but  a  short  history.  Psychology  is,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  one  of  the  youngest  sciences.  The  naive  man,  living  under 
the  command  of  his  instinctual  needs,  is  not  concerned  with 
psychological  matters.  He  turns  his  interest  to  the  external  world 

247 


248  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

and  the  knowledge  he  acquires  is  directed  toward  mastering  the 
world  outside  himself,  and  making  it  serve  his  wishes.  He  tries 
to  conquer  a  piece  of  material  reality  and  does  not  covet  any 
other  kind  of  mastery.  The  kingdom  of  the  psychologist  is  not 
of  this  world,  not  material  reality.  When  conflicts  arose  in  the 
mind  of  primitive  man,  when  his  wishes  remained  unfulfilled,  he 
tried  to  master  them  by  projecting  their  power  into  the  external 
world,  into  lightning  and  thunder,  rain  and  fire.  He  used  magic 
and  spells.  He  became  a  sorcerer,  and  finally,  renouncing  his 
omnipotence  in  favor  of  his  gods,  he  became  a  religious  person, 
a  worshiper  of  deities.  He  cast  his  passions,  needs,  conflicts,  and 
frustrations  into  the  realm  of  the  powers  of  nature,  as  we  cast 
a  picture  on  a  screen.  He  looked  at  these  pictures  and  was  un- 
aware that  they  only  mirrored  processes  within  himself.  For  many 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  years,  the  unconscious  projection  of 
his  own  psychical  processes  into  the  outside  world  remained  the 
natural  way  of  dealing  with  them,  of  understanding  them.  What 
forced  man  finally  to  discover  them  in  himself?  The  sincere  an- 
swer is  that  we  do  not  know. 

**  But  something  must  have  happened  to  bring  this  change  about. 
Paul  Moebius,  the  German  psychologist,  says:  "It  is,  so  to  speak, 
natural  to  direct  one's  look  to  the  external  world;  it  is  unnatural 
to  turn  it  inwards.  We  can  compare  ourselves  with  a  man  who 
looks  from  a  dark  room  through  a  small  window  at  a  world  in 
sunshine;  outside  everything  is  easily  discernible.  When  he  turns 
around,  he  has  difficulty  finding  himself  at  home  in  his  dark 
room/'*  The  comparison  helps.  Only  when  there  is  no  longer 
anything  to  be  seen  there,  or  when  something  happens  in  the 
room  itself  which  forces  him  to  turn  around,  will  this  man's  at- 
tention be  turned  away  from  the  world  in  sunshine. 

Psychology  does  not  begin  as  self-observation.  It  ends  there. 
Yes,  self-observation,  as  possibility  and  fact,  sets  a  psychological 
problem  of  its  own.  Every  scientific  research  demands  an  object 
and  a  subject— an  object  to  be  studied  and  a  subject  that  tries  to 
recognize  its  nature.  The  objects  of  the  other  sciences  are  facts 
and  connections  between  facts  in  the  outside  world.  The  subject 

*  Paul  Moebius,  Die  Hoffnungslosigkeit  aller  Psychologie  (1907),  p.  12. 


THE   GIFT   FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  249 

is  the  observer,  the  research  worker.  In  introspective  psychology, 
the  object  is  the  investigator's  own  psychical  processes;  the  sub- 
ject is  himself.  Here,  then,  is  an  identity  of  object  and  subject 
that  is  puzzling.  This  fact  is  so  extraordinary  that  the  best  way 
for  psychologists  to  deal  with  it  was  to  take  it  for  granted,  with- 
out wasting  any  thought  on  it.  If  Aristotle's  assertion  that  re- 
search starts  with  wonder  is  true,  then  it  must  be  admitted  that 
most  psychologists  did  not  bother  with  this  superfluous  emotion. 

Think  of  the  famous  inscription  on  the  temple  of  Apollo  at 
Delphi:  "Know  thyself."  The  statement  was  apparently  simple 
enough.  There  was  no  mystery  about  one's  self.  What  the  son 
of  Zeus  meant  seemed  to  be  as  clear  as  a  textbook  on  psychology: 
Turn  your  attention  to  your  own  personality  and  know  yourself. 

Today,  however,  we  seriously  doubt  whether  such  was  the  real 
meaning  of  the  admonition  of  the  Delphic  god.  Oracles  were  full 
of  obscure  and  double  meanings.  Behind  those  two  words, 
"Know  thyself,"  hides  another  idea.  They  impose  the  most  diffi- 
cult task  imaginable— a  task  which  something  in  human  nature 
resists.  To  fulfill  it  a  man  must  fight  against  heavy  odds.  The 
Delphic  words  do  not  mark  the  point  of  departure  but  rather  the 
end  of  psychological  research.  If  to  know  oneself  were  so  easy, 
it  need  not  have  been  put  as  a  demand. 

William  James  has  described  the  puzzling  phenomenon  of  self- 
observation  in  the  words,  "The  /  observes  the  Me."  It  is  obvious 
that  the  pre-condition  for  such  a  phenomenon— observation,  of 
one's  own  mental  and  emotional  processes—must  be  a  split 
within  the  ego.  This  split  makes  psychology  possible.  In  fact, 
this  split  makes  psychology  necessary.  If  the  ego  were  undivided, 
it  could  not  observe  itself.  It  would  have  no  need  to  observe  itself. 

Self-observation  is  the  result  of  a  late  phase  of  psychology. 
Nietzsche  remarked,  "The  Thou  is  older  than  the  //'  Every  child 
is  selfish,  but  it  is  at  first  not  interested  in  itself.  There  is  not  even 
a  clear-cut  self.  Primitive  observation  is  directed  to  the  person 
or  the  persons  in  the  environment.  There  is  no  direct  path  from 
observation  of  others  to  self-observation.  The  Thou  remains  for 
a  long  time  the  only  object.  The  /  is  but  newly  an  object  of 
observation— so  young  that  many  psychologists  had  *  not  dis- 
covered it  as  an  object  worthy  of  their  attention  until  recently. 


250  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Your  own  psychical  processes  are  inappropriate  material  for 
statistics,  curves,  graphs,  tables,  tests,  and  schedules. 
ft  Where  is  the  transition  from  observation  of  others,  as  we  see 
it  in  children,  to  self-observation?  There  must  be  an  intermediary 
phase  which  has  been  neglected.  Here  it  is:  The  child  realizes  at 
a  certain  age  that  it  is  an  object  of  observation  on  the  part  of 
its  parents  or  nurses.  Stated  otherwise,  the  /  can  observe  the  Me 
because  They— She  or  He— once  observed  the  Me.  The  attention 
the  persons  of  his  environment  paid  to  the  child  will  be  con- 
tinued by  the  attention  that  the  child  pays  to  itself.  Self-observa- 
tion thus  originates  in  the  awareness  of  being  observed.  The 
intermediary  stage  between  the  observation  of  others  and  self- 
observation  is  thus  the  realization  that  one  is  observed  by  others. 

Where  the  personality  is  split,  as  in  certain  psychotic  diseases, 
self-observation  is  again  transformed  into  hallucinations  of  being 
permanently  observed  by  others.  In  another  form  the  phenom- 
enon of  depersonalization,  in  which  the  person  complains  that 
he  does  not  feel  but  only  observes  himself,  reinforces  this  point. 
A  man  gives  a  speech  and  suddenly  becomes  aware  of  peculiari- 
ties in  his  voice,  of  certain  gestures  that  he  makes,  of  some 
personal  ways  of  expressing  himself.  This  awareness  is  not  in- 
dependent of  the  fact  that  he  sees  or  senses  the  impression  his 
speaking  or  the  content  of  his  speech  makes  upon  his  audience. 
We  have  a  good  expression  for  this  kind  of  recognition.  The 
speaker  becomes  self-conscious.  One  does  not  become  self-con- 
scious only  in  the  presence  of  others,  although  that  is  usually 
the  case.  The  occurrence  of  this  reaction  when  one  is  alone  is 
much  more  rare,  and  of  a  secondary  character. 

I  repeat,  self-observation  is  not  a  primary  phemonenon.  It  must 
be  traced  back  to  being  observed.  One  part  of  the  self  observes 
another  part.  I  assume  that  differences  in  the  kind  and  intensity 
of  this  observation  may  be  significant  for  the  future  psychological 
interests  of  the  individual. 

A  little  girl  I  know  asked  her  mother,  "Why  do  you  always 
smile  when  a  lady  in  Central  Park  smiles  at  me?"  The  child 
had  observed  that  her  mother  smiled  at  another  woman  who 
looked  with  pleasure  at  the  pretty  little  girl.  Such  a  case  shows 


THE  GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  251 

not  so  much  self-observation  as  observation  of  others  who  react 
to  one's  self. 

By  primitive  observation  the  child  learns  early  in  life  to  in- 
terpret the  reactions  of  his  parents  or  nurses  as  expressions  of 
approval  or  disapproval,  of  pleasure  or  annoyance.  Being  observed 
and  later  on  observing  oneself  will  never  lose  its  connection 
with  this  feeling  of  criticism.  Psychology  teaches  us  again  and 
again  that  self-observation  leads  to  self-criticism,  and  we  have 
all  had  opportunity  to  re-examine  this  experience.  Add  that  self- 
observation  is  from  its  inception  a  result  of  self-criticism.  This 
self-criticism  continues  the  critical  attitude  of  mother,  father, 
or  nurse.  They  are  incorporated  into  the  self—become  introjected. 
Introjection,  or  absorption  of  another  person  into  oneself,  is  an 
indispensable  pre-condition  for  the  possibility  of  self-observation. 
Without  it  a  child  cannot  transform  the  feeling  of  being  observed 
into  self-observation.  The  process  describes  a  circle:  attention 
directed  to  external  world  and  others;  awareness  of  being  ob- 
served, often  criticized;  incorporation  of  the  observing  or  critical 
persons  into  oneself;  self-observation. 

We  know  that  many  psychologists  have  wondered— some  did 
not  even  wonder— about  the  possibility  that  the  /  can  observe  the 
Me.  We  see  now  who  this  observant  and  observing  /  is.  It  is  the 
object  taken  into  oneself,  the  mother,  the  nurse  who  observed  the 
child.  The  split,  which  enables  one  to  observe  oneself,  comes  about 
through  the  introjection  of  the  supervising  person  into  oneself.  We 
make  one  part  of  the  self  the  supervisor  of  the  other  part.  The  ob- 
servant I  is  a  survival  of  the  observing  mother  or  father.  We  are  re- 
minded at  this  point  of  the  genesis  of  religious  belief  in  the 
omniscience  of  God,  the  belief  that  God  sees  everything.  A  little 
girl  was  very  indignant  when  she  heard  this  and  said,  "But  that 
is  very  indecent  of  God." 

Freud  once  remarked  that  the  introspective  perception  of  one's 
own  instinctual  impulses  finally  results  in  inhibition  of  these 
tendencies.  We  would  like  to  add  that  such  self-observation  of 
one's  tendencies  is  already  the  result  of  a  previous  inhibition.  If 
there  were  no  memory-traces  that  persons  in  the  child's  environ- 
ment reacted  with  disapproval  or  annoyance,  with  withdrawal  of 
affection,  to  certain  instinctual  expressions,  no  self-observation 


252  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

would  develop.  Let  us  return  to  our  speaker.  When  he  becomes 
self-conscious,  and  if  this  feeling  reaches  a  certain  intensity,  he 
becomes  embarrassed.  He  begins  to  stammer,  to  hesitate,  to 
make  slips  of  the  tongue,  to  grow  uncertain.  That  would  be  the 
result  of  the  impression  he  gets  that  his  speech  is  not  being  re- 
ceived with  approval,  but  is  being  met  with  negative  criticism.  To 
become  self-conscious  means  to  become  conscious  of  the  negative 
attitude  of  others,  to  realize  or  to  anticipate  that  the  others  are 
critical  of  one. 

Psychology  makes  the  presence  of  two  persons  necessary— even 
if  it  is  introspection  done  by  a  researcher  in  a  lonely  study.  There 
is  always  a  second  person  there  who  observes  the  Me.  We  know 
this  person  was  originally  the  father  (or  mother)  who  now  con- 
tinues his  existence  within  us.  The  seer  of  oneself  has  an  over- 
seer; he  who  has  received  a  vision  of  himself  has  taken  on  a 
supervisor. 

Psychoanalysis  has  given  a  name  to  this  invisible  superintend- 
ent of  the  self;  it  calls  him  the  superego.  We  thought  we  were 
masters  in  our  own  household  until  Freud  discovered  this  in- 
specting and  introspective  factor,  the  superego— the  image  of  the 
father  incorporated,  taken  into  the  self  as  a  part  of  it.  The 
superego  is  also  the  second  person  present  in  self-observation. 

I  want  to  avoid  the  impression  common  among  many  analysts 
that  the  superego  is  a  factor  that  only  criticizes,  punishes,  forbids. 
If  this  part  of  ourselves,  this  concealed  roomer  in  our  psychical 
household,  is  a  survival  of  the  father  and  mother  of  our  early 
childhood,  he  cannot  have  only  these  functions.  We  learn  in 
psychoanalytic  practice  that  the  superego  can  have  pity  on  the 
individual,  and  we  call  this  experience  self-pity.  It  is  really  noth- 
ing but  the  unconscious  idea:  If  mother  or  father  could  see  me 
in  this  misery,  she  or  he  would  feel  sorry  for  me. 

The  superego  can  smile,  console,  and  seem  to  say,  "Take  it 
easy;  it  isn't  half  as  bad  as  you  think  it  is."  We  call  it  humor. 
We  even  know  situations  in  which  the  superego  forgives  the 
person  who  is  aware  of  his  misdeeds  or  sinfulness,  and  we  call 
this  self-forgiveness.  Religion  calls  it  grace  that  descends  upon  the 
worshiper.  In  many  cases  where  we  use  words  with  "self"  (like 
"self-confidence"),  "self  refers  to  the  part  of  the  person  which  is 


THE   GIFT   FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL   OBSERVATION  253 

the  representative  of  the  father  within  him.  Without  knowing 
it,  we  mean  the  superego. 

The  ego  is  primarily  an  organ  of  perception  directed  toward 
the  outside  world.  It  is  unable  to  observe  the  self.  The  superego 
is  the  first  representative  of  the  inner  world.  It  is  the  silent  guide 
in  the  subterranean  realm  of  our  psychical  life.  Psychology  started 
with  the  supervision  of  emotional  processes  by  this  superintend- 
ent, this  proxy-parent  within  us.  It  was  this  factor  which  exam- 
ined what  took  place  in  our  thought  and  emotional  life.  Its 
attention  and  vigilance  were  directed  to  those  tendencies  *and  im- 
pulses that  were  socially  disapproved.  It  would  criticize,  con- 
demn, suppress,  and  finally  repress  them.  The  first  discoveries  in 
the  field  of  psychology  were  made  in  the  service  of  those  suppress- 
ing powers.  The  origin  of  psychology  can  be  easily  recognized  in 
our  psychological  descriptions  and  judgments.  Language  has  im- 
mortalized this  origin.  How  do  we  characterize  or  describe  a 
person?  We  say,  for  instance,  that  he  is  stubborn  or  avaricious  or 
pedantic  or  kind  or  friendly.  Does  not  the  voice  of  the  superego 
sound  in  such  psychological  descriptions?  We  want  to  observe 
and  describe  without  preconceived  ideas,  but  our  miserably  poor 
language  forces  us  to  put  an  undertone  of  approval  or  disap- 
proval into  scientific  statements.  Psychology  was  for  a  long  time 
in  bondage  to  moralistic  and  religious  conceptions,  and  the 
superego  is  a  witness  to  this  servitude  to  ideas  foreign  to  the 
spirit  of  research.  The  superego  knows  more  about  what  takes 
place  in  the  human  mind  than  the  other  parts  of  the  ego,  exactly 
as  worldly-wise,  clever  priests  often  know  more  about  people 
than  people  know  about  themselves. 

Psychology,  I  asserted,  was  at  first  put  into  the  service  of  those 
powers  that  supervise  the  thoughts  and  emotions  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  of  the  community  in  order  to  keep  away  forbidden 
impulses  and  ideas.  The  psychologist  was  once  a  censor  of  the 
human  soul;  sometimes  a  stupid  one,  sometimes  a  wise  one; 
sometimes  tolerant  and  sometimes  severe.  The  best  way  to  deal 
with  especially  rebellious  and  ferocious  elements  is  to  ban 
them,  to  eliminate  them.  Thus  psychology  became  a  servant  in 
the  service  of  the  repressing  powers.  It  ignored,  disavowed,  and 
disowned  certain  tendencies  within  the  ego.  When  their  exist- 


2g4  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

ence  could  no  longer  be  denied,  psychology  gave  them  other 
names,  distorted  their  nature  by  classifying  and  describing  them. 
Even  when  psychology  apparently  freed  itself  from  the  super- 
vision of  the  suppressing  power,  its  attitude  of  liberty  was  an 
official  one  only.  Proud  of  its  independence,  it  continued  to  hold 
on  to  preconceived  ideas.  It  was—and  to  a  great  extent  it  still  is 
—a  situation  that  calls  to  mind  the  cartoon  in  which  two  men  get 
into  a  furious  argument  with  one  shouting  at  the  other,  "You 
shut  up!  Don't  you  know  that  you  are  living  in  a  free  country?" 
That  was  the  nature  of  psychology  for  many  hundreds,  perhaps 
for  a  couple  of  thousand  years. 

Then  there  slowly  came  a  change.  It  was  heralded  not  by  psy- 
chologists, or  at  least  not  by  professional  psychologists.  It  took  its 
point  of  departure  from  the  discovery  of  the  hidden,  disavowed, 
disowned,  and  forbidden  tendencies.  They  had  appeared  before 
only  in  the  plays  of  Shakespeare,  and  other  poets,  in  novels,  and 
in  poems.  Their  voices  began  to  be  heard  in  the  writings  of 
Montaigne,  of  La  Rochefoucauld,  of  Chamfort,  and  other,  espe- 
cially French,  searchers  after  truth.  Free  or  freed  spirits,  they 
labored  to  unmask  the  hidden,  to  disenchant  a  world  in  bondage 
to  self-deception  and  magic.  Another  part  of  the  ego,  the  same  that 
lent  its  power  to  the  suppressed  tendencies,  helped  now  to  re- 
move the  chains.  The  great  turn  in  modern  psychology  began. 
Heralded  by  the  French  moralists,  it  was  brought  to  its  most 
significant  expression  by  Friedrich  Nietzsche  (here  considered 
only  as  one  of  the  great  psychologists)  and  reached  its  peak  in 
Sigmund  Freud. 

Psychology  started  its  research  in  the  service  of  the  censorship 
of  the  emotional  life.  The  observing  and  controlling  station 
within  the  ego  called  conscience  (or  social  fear)  examined  the 
ideas  and  tendencies  that  should  not  trespass  upon  the  land  of 
conscious  thoughts.  Psychology  in  this  phase  of  its  development 
furnished  a  kind  of  alibi  for  these  forbidden  impulses.  The  ad- 
monition "Know  thyself"  was  very  necessary  because  psychology 
was  then  the  best  method  by  which  to  deceive  oneself  about 
oneself.  Later,  very  late  indeed,  psychology  realized  that  its  task 
was  the  removal  of  repressing  powers,  the  lifting  of  the  ban  of 
repression,  the  search  for  the  forbidden  forces.  This  was  at  first 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  255 

an  underground  movement.  With  Nietzsche  and  louder  still  with 
Freud,  the  voice  of  the  suppressed  instincts  and  disavowed  im- 
pulses sounded  from  hidden  recesses.  The  underground  move- 
ment of  psychology  came  at  last  into  the  open  and  made  Itself 
known. 

The  organ  of  psychological  observation,  and  therefore  of  psy- 
chological research  and  discovery,  is  to  be  found  within  oneself. 
It  is  for  this  organ  that  I  want  to  search  in  these  pages,  an  organ 
which  observes,  recognizes,  and  discovers  what  happens  in  us. 
This  organ  is  not  yet  found.  It  is  unknown;  more  than  that— 
it  is  unconscious. 


It  takes  two  to  practice  psychology,  even  psychological  self- 
observation.  When  you  want  to  recognize  and  understand  what 
takes  place  in  the  minds  of  others,  you  have  first  to  look  into 
yourself.  Such  a  searching  is  only  possible  when  a  division 
of  yourself  has  preceded  the  observation.  The  premise  for  psycho- 
logical interest  is  thus  a  disturbance  within  the  person.  Without 
it  no  possibility  of  psychological  recognition  exists.  Moreover  the 
emotional  disturbance  has  to  be  overcome  to  a  certain  degree, 
the  conflict  almost  resolved— otherwise  psychological  Interest 
would  not  arise.  When  a  man  Is  very  angry,  he  will  not  be  in- 
clined, nor  will  he  be  able,  to  observe  his  own  psychical  processes. 
We  would  thus  presuppose  that  Freud,  who  was  a  genius  at 
psychological  observation,  must  have  been  subjected  to  emo- 
tional conflicts  of  such  a  nature  that  they  made  psychological 
interest  not  only  possible,  but  also  necessary. 

We  put  aside  here  the  problem  of  his  special  gifts  and  ask: 
What  enabled  Freud  psychologically  to  make  his  great  discover- 
ies, to  solve  the  riddle  of  the  dream,  to  penetrate  into  the  recesses 
of  human  motivation;  what  forced  him  to  descend  into  the 
netherworld  of  the  neuroses  while  so  many  others  remained  on 
the  surface?  He  himself  often  enough  described  how  he  came  to 
the  new  science:  "Psychoanalysis  was  born  of  medical  necessity. 
It  originated  in  the  need  for  helping  the  victims  of  nervous 


THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

ease  to  whom  rest,  hydropathy,  or  electrical  treatment  could 
bring  no  relief."  These  are  his  words.*  In  order  to  help  these 
patients  he  had  to  understand  their  hitherto  unfathomed  symp- 
toms. This  is  the  route  by  which  Freud  arrived  at  psychoanalysis, 
But  how  did  psychoanalysis  come  to  Freud? 

This  question  remains  unanswered.  Up  to  the  present  it  has 
not  even  been  asked.  What  were  the  personal  motives  which  im- 
pelled him?  What  was  the  conflict-situation  that  made  this  psy- 
chological interest  so  strong,  so  governing,  so  consuming? 

The  explanation  Freud  himself  gives  is,  so  to  speak,  only  the 
official  one.  Is  there  another  one  besides?  One  need  not  preclude 
the  other;  they  can  co-exist  like  two  rooms,  in  one  of  which  a 
luster  sheds  its  light  while  the  other  is  illuminated  only  by  a 
small  candle  that  leaves  the  corners  dark. 

Here  we  are  interested  only  in  this  dark  room.  I  once  com- 
pared Freud  with  Rembrandt.  There  is  no  artist  comparable  to 
Rembrandt  for  exactitude  of  observation,  but  light  came  to  him 
only  as  a  contrast  to  the  darkness  in  which  great  portions  of  his 
pictures  are  kept.  Freud  was  a  confessor,  an  autobiographer  of 
admirable  moral  courage  and  frankness,  but  at  the  same  time  he 
kept  certain  personal  secrets  to  himself.  He  was  a  self-revealer  and 
a  self-concealer.  In  a  certain  passage  he  writes  of  the  "discretion 
which  one  owes  also  to  oneself." 

This  discretion  was  rarely  breached.  It  was  as  if  he  felt  he  had 
to  keep  personal  things  to  himself,  even  from  those  of  us  who 
were  his  most  loyal  students.  In  his  old  age  he  sometimes  spoke 
to  one  or  another  of  us  almost  casually  of  a  fragment  of  his  own 
life  he  had  never  mentioned  before,  as  if  he  had  suddenly  tired 
of  his  secrecy.  In  his  "Interpretation  of  Dreams,"  in  the  Psycho- 
pathology  of  Everyday  Life  and  other  writings,  he  had  presented 
startling  discoveries  that  he  had  made  about  himself,  magnificent 
instances  of  self-analysis,  forever  belonging  to  the  most  precious 
self-revelations  of  great  minds.  All  that  psychoanalysts  through- 
out the  world  have  since  written  pales  into  insignificance  beside 
those  pages,  distinguished  by  unheard-of  sincerity,  by  an  un- 
equaled  moral  courage,  and  by  a  cool,  pitiless  observation  that  is 

*  In  the  Preface  to  my  book,  Ritual  (New  York:  Farrar,  Straus  &  Co.,  1946), 
P- 7* 


THE   GIFT   FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL   OBSERVATION  257 

always  self-searching  and  never  self-seeking.  There  were,  however, 
limitations  that  he  imposed  on  himself— not  because  he  shied 
away  from  certain  things,  but  because  he  knew  this  hypocritical 
world  and  realized  it  would  misunderstand  or  fail  to  understand 
his  fearlessness  before  the  shadows  that  fall  on  everybody.  "The 
very  best  that  thou  dost  know  thou  dar'st  not  to  the  striplings 
show,"  we  often  heard  him  quote  from  Goethe's  Faust. 

There  were  self-revealing  reports  about  suppressed  and  re- 
pressed emotions,  conflicts,  doubts,  fears  unearthed  by  the  an- 
alyst—by Freud  himself— in  many  a  book  he  published  and  in 
many  a  conversation  with  us,  his  students.  There  was  always, 
however,  a  remarkable  restraint  and  discretion  about  himself— 
a  distance  from  himself,  so  to  speak.  In  a  conversation  with  me 
he  once  emphasized  the  difference  between  "privata"  and  "priva- 
tissima,"  between  private  things  you  talk  about  when  there  is  a 
scientific  need  for  it,  and  things  so  private  that  you  do  not  talk 
about  them  even  when  it  would  be  valuable  to  discuss  them. 

Is  there  no  way  that  leads  to  this  secret  room  now,  after  his 
death?  Our  wish  to  find  it  is  not  dictated  by  idle  curiosity  of  a 
personal  nature;  no  spying  into  Freud's  secrets  is  intended.  We 
want  to  discover  what  led  him  to  the  psychology  of  the  neuroses. 
It  is  thus  psychological  interest  of  an  important  kind  that  makes 
us  ask.  He  himself  would  not  mind  it;  he  often  admitted  that  he 
felt  indifferent  to  personal  things  after  his  death.  He  did  not  be- 
lieve in  survival  and  immortality,  and  thought  with  Heine  that 
the  resurrection  would  be  a  long  time  in  coming. 

What  follows  is,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  the  first  attempt  to  discover 
what  determined  the  intensive  personal  interest  of  Freud  in  the 
psychology  of  neuroses.  The  approach  to  the  secret  room  is 
difficult,  particularly  because  of  his  discretion.  Where  is  it 
located? 

Most  psychoanalysts  have  not  observed  that  psychoanalysis 
has,  so  to  speak,  two  branches.  One  is  the  research  into  the  symp- 
tomatology and  etiology  of  the  neuroses,  of  hysteria,  phobia, 
compulsion  neuroses,  and  so  forth.  The  other  is  the  psychology 
of  dreams;  of  the  little  mistakes  of  everyday  life  such  as  forget- 
ting, slips  of  the  tongue,  and  so  forth;  of  wit  and  of  superstitions 
-including  all  that  Freud  called  metapsychology. 


258  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

The  first  branch  led  to  the  contributions  to  the  theory  of  sex, 
to  the  concept  of  impulses,  especially  of  the  libido.  It  goes  in  the 
direction  of  biology  or  tries  to  build  a  bridge  between  psychology 
and  biology.  It  is  clear  that  these  theories  are  the  results  of  ex- 
periences and  observations  of  others.  Here  are  the  most  precious 
discoveries  used  for  the  understanding  of  neurotic  and  psychotic 
diseases. 

The  other  branch  concerns  purely  psychological  phenomena, 
emotional  processes— no  connection  with  biology  is  sought— inner 
experiences  of  the  individual,  best  observed  by  himself.  Dreams, 
wit,  slips  of  the  tongue,  old  superstitions  conflicting  with  our  free, 
conscious  thinking—all  these  and  many  other  phenomena  are 
analyzed  by  Freud  mostly  from  instances  taken  from  his  own  life. 

These  two  branches,  it  is  true,  are  not  always  clearly  separated. 
They  sometimes  appear  intertwined,  and  deep  down  their  two 
roots  must  invisibly  meet;  but  one  is  bent  more  in  the  direction 
of  the  pathological,  and  the  other  more  in  the  direction  of  gen- 
eral psychology7.  Nevertheless,  they  are  two  clearly  distinguishable 
branches.  The  future  of  psychoanalysis— perhaps  the  future  of 
psychology— will  depend  upon  the  choice  of  the  research  worker 
as  to  which  branch  he  considers  the  more  important  one,  which 
of  the  two  will  bear  better  and  richer  fruits  for  future  generations, 

Freud  told  us  many  times— and  he  repeated  it  in  his  writings— 
that  he  had  no  great  liking  for  the  profession  of  physician.  The 
therapeutic  ambition,  the  need  to  help  sick  people,  was  not 
strongly  developed  in  him,  and  for  a  long  time  he  could  not 
make  up  his  mind  whether  to  study  medicine  or  follow  his  other 
interests.  He  heard  a  lecture  on  an  essay  of  Goethe's  entitled 
"Nature,"  and  this  experience  decided  his  choice.  Was  ever  a 
profession  wooed  in  this  humor?  In  Freud's  case  it  was  not  only 
wooed  but  won.  He  considered  it,  he  said,  a  personal  triumph 
that  he  returned  on  this  "detour"  (the  study  of  medicine  a  de- 
tour!) to  his  first  and  primary  wish— to  discover  something  new 
in  the  field  of  psychology.  He  considered  himself  first  and  last  a 
psychologist,  not  a  physician,  and  here  is  the  line  of  demarcation 
which  separates  many  psychoanalysts  from  the  founder  of  their 
science,  to  whom  they  pay  lip  service  and  little  else. 

Their  concept  of  psychoanalysis  is  basically  different  from  his. 


THE   GIFT  FOR   PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  259 

They  consider  it  a  branch  of  medicine  and  their  memory  makes 
them  conveniently  suppress  Freud's  explicit  sentences.  He  em- 
phasized that  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  psychoanalysis  is  not 
a  "special  branch  of  medicine.  I  cannot  understand  how  one  can 
resist  recognizing  that  psychoanalysis  is  part  of  psychology;  not 
medical  psychology  in  the  old  meaning  and  not  psychology  of  the 
pathological  process,  but  pure  psychology;  certainly  not  the 
whole  of  psychology  but  its  underground,  perhaps  its  foundation. 
One  should  not  be  deceived  by  the  possibility  of  its  application 
to  medical  purposes.  Electricity  and  X-ray  are  also  applied  to 
medicine,  but  the  science  of  both  remains  physics.  Neither  can 
historical  arguments  change  the  fact  that  psychoanalysis  belongs 
to  psychology.  .  .  ,  The  argument  has  been  brought  forward  that 
psychoanalysis  was  discovered  by  a  physician  in  his  efforts  to 
help  patients.  But  this  is  immaterial  in  its  evaluation."*  These 
remarks  are  followed  by  the  confession  that  he  realizes  after 
forty-one  years  of  medical  practice  that  he  has  not  really  been  a 
physician  and  that  he  became  a  physician  professionally  only  by 
a  deviation  from  his  original  intentions.  He  had,  he  says,  passed 
all  his  medical  examinations  without  having  felt  any  interest  in 
medicine;  external  necessity  forced  him  to  renounce  a  theoretical 
career.  He  arrived  at  neuropathology  and  finally  "on  account  of 
new  motives"  at  the  study  of  the  neuroses. 

Here  is  a  purposeful  rejection  of  the  view  that  psychoanalysis 
is  a  medical  science.  It  is,  of  course,  possible  that  the  majority  of 
physicians  in  America  know  more  and  know  better  than  the 
founder  and  the  greatest  representative  of  the  new  science  what 
it  is— but  it  is  rather  unlikely.** 

There  is  a  very  clear  warning  to  physicians  not  to  consider 
Freud  as  one  of  themselves  in  his  "Please  count  me  out."  There 
was  more  than  the  Atlantic  between  psychoanalysis  in  New 
York  and  psychoanalysis  in  Vienna.  There  was  an  ocean  of  dif- 
ference in  the  conception  of  it. 

What  interests  us  at  this  moment  is  the  question:  What  per- 

*  Freud,  Gesammelte  Sckriften,  XI,  587. 

**  In  one  of  his  last  letters  to  me  dated  London,  July  3,  1938;  Freud  sharply 
criticized  this  concept  of  our  New  York  colleagues  "for  whom  analysis  is  noth- 
ing else  but  one  of  the  maidservants  of  psychiatry." 


260  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

sonal  stimulus  led  Freud  to  the  research  into  the  psychology  of 
neuroses?  What  were  the  "new  motives"  he  mentions  that  made 
him  turn  his  attention  in  this  new  direction?  It  is  clear  that  his 
older  interest  was  to  discover  something  new.  He  says  in  the 
years  of  his  youth  the  wish  to  understand  something  of  the  mys- 
teries of  the  world  and  to  contribute  something  to  their  solution 
had  become  especially  strong.  He  had  never  played  "doctor"  as 
a  child,  and  his  curiosity  turned  in  other  directions. 

What  follows  now  is  my  attempt  to  build  the  bridge  of  mo- 
tives between  what  we  think  were  Freud's  earlier  interests  and 
his  later  intellectual  preoccupation  with  the  problems  of  the 
neuroses.  The  bridge  is  narrow  enough,  but,  it  seems  to  me, 
capable  of  bearing  the  burden.  As  I  have  said,  Freud  did  not 
often  speak  about  himself  and  his  intimate  life.  My  impression 
is  that  he  became  more  confidential  after  his  seventieth  birthday; 
at  least  he  then  told  me  some  things  about  himself  which  I 
could  never  have  guessed.  One  memory  is  the  most  important 
I  accidentally  met  him  one  evening  in  the  Kaertnerstrasse  in 
Vienna  and  accompanied  him  home.  We  talked  mostly  about 
analytic  cases  during  the  walk.  When  we  crossed  a  street  that  had 
heavy  traffic,  Freud  hesitated  as  if  he  did  not  want  to  cross.  I 
attributed  the  hesitancy  to  the  caution  of  the  old  man,  but  to 
my  astonishment  he  took  my  arm  and  said,  "You  see,  there  is  a 
survival  of  my  old  agoraphobia,  which  troubled  me  much  in 
younger  years."  We  crossed  the  sti^eet  and  picked  up  our  conver- 
sation after  this  remark,  which  has  been  casually  made.*  His 
confession  of  a  lingering  fear  of  crossing  open  places,  his  men- 
tion of  this  remnant  of  an  earlier  neurosis,  made,  of  course,  a 
strong  impression  upon  me.  It  took  me  by  surprise,  and  his 
casual  way  of  telling  it  to  me  intensified,  rather  than  weakened, 
my  astonishment.  If  such  a  thing  had  been  possible,  the  free 
admission  that  his  neurosis  had  left  this  scar  on  his  emotional 
life  would  have  added  to  my  admiration  of  his  great  personality. 

The  other  day  Siegfried  Bernfeld  published  a  paper,  "An  Un- 
known Autobiographical  Fragment  by  Freud,"**  in  which  he 

*  The  scene  must  have  taken  place  before  1928  because  I  remember  that  I 
saw  Freud  in  later  years  only  at  his  home. 

**  The  American  Imago  (August,  1946),  IV,  No.  i. 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  %6l 

showed  that  an  article  of  Freud's  on  screen-memories  contains  a 
piece  of  self-analysis,  in  this  case  disguised  in  the  form  of  a  re- 
port about  a  patient.  This  analysis  concerns  a  man  of  thirty- 
eight  years  "who  had  maintained  an  interest  in  psychological 
problems  in  spite  of  his  entirely  different  profession."  Freud  as- 
serts that  he  "had  been  able  to  relieve  him  of  a  slight  phobia 
through  psychoanalysis."  Bernfeld  proves  by  means  of  a  careful 
examination  of  details  that  this  unknown  patient  is  Freud  him- 
self disguised.  Freud  used  the  same  method  of  speaking  of  him- 
self as  of  another  person  when  he  wanted  to  disguise  his  identity 
in  another  paper  later  on.*  Bernfeld,  when  he  published  his 
paper,  did  not  know  of  Freud's  remark  made  in  that  conversation 
with  me. 

What  interests  us  here  is  not  the  biographical  significance  of 
Freud's  phobia  itself,  but  the  fact  that  it  reveals  the  hidden  miss- 
ing link  between  his  primarily  psychological  interests  and  his 
later  occupation  with  the  neuroses.  Here  is  the  personal  motive 
that  made  necessary  for  him  the  understanding  of  neurotic  dis- 
turbances. In  addition  to  the  wish  to  help  nervous  patients, 
there  was  the  demand:  Physician,  heal  yourself.  In  this  case  the 
postulate  took  the  form:  Physician,  understand  your  own  symp- 
toms and  your  own  disease.  But  such  an  understanding  was  im- 
possible without  self-analysis,  which  could  not  remain  restricted 
to  the  symptoms  only.  From  here  on  we  can  apply  the  explana- 
tion given  by  Freud  of  his  own  case  as  a  general  one.  He  de- 
scribed how  psychoanalysis  led  away  from  the  study  of  the 
nervous  conditions  "in  a  degree  surprising  to  the  physician/* 
how  it  had  to  concern  itself  with  emotions  and  passions,  how  it 
learned  to  recognize  the  significance  of  memories  and  the  strength 
of  unconscious  wishes.**  "For  a  time  it  appeared  to  be  the  fate 
of  psychoanalysis  to  be  incorporated  in  the  field  of  psychology 
without  being  able  to  indicate  in  what  way  the  mind  of  the  sick 
patient  differed  from  that  of  the  normal  person."  In  the  course 
of  the  development  of  psychoanalysis,  Freud  declares,  it  came 
upon  the  problem  of  the  dream,  which  is  "an  abnormal  mental 

*  Freud,  "Der  Moses  des  Michelangelo,"  Gesammelte  Schriften  (1914),  X, 
414. 

**  In  Freud's  preface  to  my  Ritual,  p.  7  ff. 


262  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

product  created  by  normal  people."  In  solving  the  enigma  of  the 
dream,  "it  found  in  unconscious  mentality  the  common  ground 
in  which  the  highest  as  well  as  the  lowest  mental  impulses  are 
rooted,  and  from  which  arise  the  most  normal  mental  activities 
as  well  as  the  strange  mechanisms  of  a  diseased  mind.  The  picture 
of  the  mental  mechanisms  of  the  individual  now  becomes  clearer 

and  more  complete " 

Freud  himself  clearly  realized  the  connection  between  the  in- 
terest necessitated  in  the  first  instance  by  his  own  neurosis  and 
that  arising  from  his  concern  with  general  pathology  and  psychol- 
ogy. The  dream— and  certainly  also  wit  and  the  little  mistakes 
belonging  to  the  psychopathology  of  everyday  life—secured  the 
bridge  from  one  shore  to  the  other.  The  analysis  of  these  phe- 
nomena presented  the  clue  to  the  secret  room  of  his  own  mental 
life.  In  helping  himself  he  brought  understanding,  help,  and  re- 
covery to  thousands  of  others.  When  he  learned  to  recognize  the 
meaning,  hidden  to  himself  before,  of  what  took  place  behind 
the  fa$ade  of  his  own  conscious  thinking,  the  meaning  of  un- 
conscious processes  of  all  people  dawned  upon  him.  He  could  not 
have  discovered  the  most  valuable  secrets  of  the  human  mind  had 
he  not  found  them  in  himself  first. 

Everybody  who  has  read  Freud's  most  important  works  knows 
that  these  insights  were  reached  by  analysis  of  his  own  dreams, 
his  own  slips  of  the  tongue,  and  so  forth.  They  were  arrived  at  by 
self-observation  and  self-recognition,  directed  by  an  extraordinar- 
ily fine  ear  for  his  inner  voices.  When,  later  on,  observation  of 
others  and  research  into  other  minds  were  added,  comparison 
with  his  own  emotional  processes  helped  him  to  understand 
others.  Criticism  of  premature  analogies,  of  conclusions  too 
quickly  reached,  corrected  such  comparisons  and  led  to  deeper 
insights,  made  recognition  richer  and  extended  it  beyond  the 
frontiers  of  Freud's  ego;  but  the  first  and  most  important  source 
of  psychological  understanding  remained  this  self-observing  fac- 
tor in  the  psychoanalysis  of  himself. 

Here  are  the  results  to  which  these  introductory  remarks  in- 
evitably lead,  results  that  separate  me  from  the  majority  of 
psychoanalysts  in  this  country:  psychoanalysis  is  psychology.  Its 
application  in  the  service  of  the  therapy  of  neuroses  and  psy- 


THE   GIFT   FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL   OBSERVATION  263 

choses  means  making  use  of  a  method  that  is  purely  psychological 
in  origin  and  nature.  The  most  important  and  the  most  valuable 
insights  of  psychoanalysis  are  found  by  self-analysis.  Wherever 
and  whenever  psychoanalysis  makes  really  important  scientific 
progress,  it  will  be  accomplished  by  an  experience  in  which  self- 
analysis  plays  the  greatest  role.  No  deep  insight  into  human 
minds  is  possible  without  unconscious  comparison  with  our  own 
experiences.  The  decisive  factor  in  understanding  the  meaning 
and  the  motives  of  human  emotions  and  thoughts  is  something  in 
the  person  of  the  observer,  of  the  psychologist  himself. 

The  following  pages  will,  I  hope,  show  to  what  important  sci- 
entific consequences  our  first  conclusions  will  lead.  Before  that 
I  must,  however,  point  out  what  will  forever  separate  Freud's 
way  from  that  of  other  psychoanalysts,  setting  aside  now  the 
differences  between  a  great  man  and  mediocre  minds.  His  dis- 
coveries were  made  by  himself.  They  were  therefore  not  only  a 
personal  experience  of  unique  value  but  also  a  triumph  compa- 
rable to  that  of  the  greatest  inventors  we  know.  They  were  the 
triumph  of  a  mind  in  search  of  itself,  which,  in  reaching  its  aims, 
discovered  the  laws  governing  the  emotional  processes  of  all 
minds.  We  learn  these  discoveries  with  the  help  of  books  and 
lectures;  we  make  them  again,  rediscover  them,  when  we  are  in 
the  process  of  analysis— that  is,  when  we  are  analyzed  or  when 
we  analyze  others.  Our  psychoanalytic  institutes  seem  to  be  un- 
aware of  the  fact  that  being  analyzed  cannot  compete  in  experi- 
ence value  with  unearthing  these  insights  oneself.  The  one  ex- 
perience cannot  be  likened  to  the  other.  It  remains  for  us  a  poor 
substitute,  a  second  or  third  best.  It  is  ridiculous  to  consider 
one's  own  psychoanalysis  as  equivalent  to  the  original  experience. 
One's  own  psychoanalysis— however  important,  indeed  indis- 
pensable, for  the  understanding  of  oneself  and  others— is,  of 
course,  not  comparable  to  the  process  by  which  Freud  arrived  at 
his  results  by  a  heroic  mental  deed,  by  a  victory  over  his  own 
inner  reluctances  and  resistances.  When  we  are  analyzed  by  others, 
it  is  an  entirely  different  process,  induced  from  outside  even 
when  we  ask  for  it  ourselves.  It  lacks  the  intimacy  and  the  depth 
of  experience  felt  in  discovering  one's  secrets  oneself.  Nothing 
said  to  us,  nothing  we  can  learn  from  others,  reaches  so  deep  as 


264  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

that  which  we  find  in  ourselves.  The  most  a  psychoanalyst  can 
do  for  the  patient  and  for  the  student  is  to  act  the  mental  mid- 
wife or  obstetrician.  Everybody  has  to  bring  his  own  child  into 
the  world.  The  psychoanalyst  can  help  only  in  the  delivery;  he 
can  mitigate  the  labor  pains.  He  cannot  influence  the  organic 
process  of  birth— either  in  himself  or  in  others. 

Many  psychoanalysts  who  train  psychiatrists  think  that  the 
analysis  of  the  students  is  sufficient.  They  are  so  sadly  mistaken 
that  it  is  not  even  funny.  As  if  being  analyzed  were  enough  of  an 
emotional  and  mental  experience  to  become  a  psychoanalyst! 
As  if  this  other,  more  penetrating  experience— to  arrive  oneself  at 
psychological  insight  into  oneself— were  superfluous!  Or  do  they 
really  think  that  study,  attending  courses  and  seminars,  can  be  a 
substitute  for  self-acquired  knowledge?  It  is  as  if  listening  to  a 
poem  were  psychologically  equivalent  to  writing  the  same  poem. 
If  being  analyzed  is  not  continued  and  supplemented  by  a  man's 
own  creative  experience  in  finding  himself,  without  the  guidance 
and  supervision  of  a  psychoanalyst,  it  remains  an  isolated  ex- 
perience, which  has  no  deep  roots  in  himself  and  bears  no  rich 
fruit.  Of  the  psychoanalyst,  too,  it  may  be  said:  By  their  fruits  ye 
shall  know  them.  ; 

I  said  before  that  I  do  not  share  the  belief  of  many  psycho- 
analysts that  the  most  valuable  things  in  psychoanalysis  can  be 
learned.  They  can  only  be  experienced.  I  am  certainly  far  from 
underestimating  the  requirement  that  everybody  who  studies 
psychoanalysis  be  analyzed.  This  demand  appears  to  me  as  im- 
perative as  it  does  to  them,  my  stepbrothers  in  Apollo.  But  I  do 
not  agree  with  them  that  one's  personal  experience  of  psycho- 
analysis is  finished  with  this  process.  I  would  almost  say  it  begins 
with  it.  If  there  is  any  possibility  of  coming  even  close  to  the 
neighborhood  of  Freud's  original  experience,  it  can  only  be  by 
a  self-analysis  that  follows  the  process  of  being  analyzed,  con- 
tinues and  completes  it. 

Let  me  explain  what  I  mean  with  the  help  of  a  comparison.  A 
young  man  decides  to  become  an  actor.  Reading  the  classical 
authors  he  becomes  convinced  he  will  one  day  act  Hamlet, 
Othello,  Faust.  He  has  to  learn  to  act;  he  goes  to  the  best  dra- 
matic academy  and  is  trained  by  the  best  teachers.  He  is  taught 


THE  GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  265 

how  to  pronounce  words,  to  achieve  the  right  intonation,  to 
time  sentences,  to  speak  verses,  and  to  give  them  their  actor's 
due.  He  learns  how  to  move  on  the  stage.  Now  when  he  speaks 
Hamlet's  great  monologue,  when  as  Faust  he  discusses  ethical  and 
religious  subjects  with  Mephistopheles,  he  knows  how  to  apply 
what  he  has  learned,  how  to  give  emphasis  and  theatrical  effect 
to  his  acting.  For  all  that,  he  may  remain  a  bad  or  mediocre 
actor  who  fails  to  strike  a  chord  in  us,  the  people  sitting  in  the 
theater.  What  must  be  added,  i£  he  wants  to  reach  us  emotionally, 
to  make  us  believe  him? 

It  seems  to  me  that  two  more  steps,  one  negative  and  one  posi- 
tive, must  be  taken.  The  actor  should,  when  he  walks  out  upon 
the  stage,  forget  what  he  has  studied  at  the  academy.  He  must 
brush  it  aside  as  if  it  had  never  been  there.  If  he  cannot  neglect 
it  now,  in  the  moment  of  real  performance— if  it  has  not  gone 
deep  enough  so  that  he  can  afford  to  neglect  it— then  his  training 
wasn't  good  enough.  If  he  has  to  consciously  think  and  remember 
how  he  should  speak,  move,  make  gestures,  he  had  better  give 
up  his  career. 

What  he  has  been  taught  has  by  now  readied  tissues  so  deep— 
and  I  mean  this  literally:  his  nerve  tissues  in  both  brain  and 
body— that  he  can  afford  to  act  as  if  he  had  never  seen  the  inside 
of  a  dramatic  academy. 

The  man  in  the  audience  takes  the  technical  routine  for 
granted  and  looks  for  something  more:  that  the  actor  recover 
the  essential  part  of  the  emotion  that  made  him  want  to  be  an 
actor  in  the  first  place.  On  stage,  in  other  words,  he  becomes 
Hamlet  or  Faust,  feels  what  they  feel.  He  must  be  transformed 
into  Hamlet  or  Faust  when  he  acts  them.  There  is  only  one  way 
for  such  a  thing  to  happen.  He  has  to  feel  again  and  anew  what 
he  felt  and  experienced  when  he  met  Hamlet  and  Faust  the  first 
time— in  a  book  or  at  the  theater  as  the  case  may  be.  Otherwise 
he  will  never  touch  us;  he  will  leave  his  audience  cold. 

Psychoanalysts  are  like  actors  applying  what  they  have  learned 
in  the  academy.  I  know  psychoanalysts  who— to  continue  my 
comparison— have  not  learned  enough  at  school.  And  I  know  a 
second  group  technically  perfect  but  with  no  style  of  their  own. 
They  are  unable  to  recapture  the  zeal  of  their  first  experiences. 


266  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Finally,  I  know  the  rare  psychoanalysts— the  masters— who  have 
studied  their  field  thoroughly  and  behave  in  the  manner  of 
sovereigns,  rulers  of  the  stage  whom  nobody  can  think  of  as 
previous  students  of  an  academy. 

This  analogy  is  as  valid  for  analytic  self-recognition  as  for  the 
analysis  of  others.  No  good  psychoanalyst  has  to  think  back 
consciously  to  what  he  learned  from  his  own  analysis.  Nobody 
can  be  a  good  analyst  for  whom  analysis— of  himself  or  others- 
has  lost  the  value  of  a  personal  experience,  of  a  search  and 
research. 

Apply  this  test  to  the  field  of  psychoanalytic  writing,  and  what 
do  you  get?  There  are  papers  published  in  psychoanalytic  maga- 
zines nowadays  that  are  as  far  from  personal  experience  as  Sirius 
is  from  our  planet.  Sterility  in  psychoanalytic  research,  its  dis- 
tance from  men's  lives,  has  gone  so  far  that  some  of  the  papers 
look  like  mathematical  operations— purely  formalized  thinking 
in  its  most  abstract  form.  Reading  such  papers,  I  sometimes 
wonder  if  many  analysts  haven't  taken  a  common  and  solemn 
vow  to  stay  awake  while  reading  them.  It  would  take  a  wilder 
fantasy  than  any  Shakespeare  dreamed  to  imagine  that  the  in- 
vestigator got  his  results  by  way  of  experience.  Science  practiced 
this  way  remains  science  for  science'  sake;  it  can  have  no  practical 
outcome.  Nothing  that  does  not  originate  in  an  experience  can 
become  an  experience  for  others. 

The  element  of  personal  experience  can,  of  course,  remain 
hidden.  It  may  not  appear,  but  it  will  be  felt  in  the  quality  of 
the  psychoanalyst's  work,  whether  in  practice  or  in  his  research. 
I  therefore  repeat:  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them. 


The  overvaluation  of  intelligence  among  cultured  people  in 
our  country  has  reached  a  frightening  degree.  Not  only  our 
public  schools  and  our  colleges  and  universities  but  also  our  re- 
search institutes  give  the  impression  that  the  intelligence  test  is 


THE   GIFT   FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  267 

the  only  criterion  of  man's  mental  endowment.  It  is  as  if  intelli- 
gence, nowadays  called  "smartness,"  were  the  one  and  only 
decisive  factor  in  measuring  or  in  evaluating  a  person's  qualities. 
It  is  as  if  other  gifts  were  not  even  to  be  considered;  as  if  imagi- 
nation, moral  courage,  creative  faculties  were  of  no  importance. 
I  am  convinced  that  Beethoven  had  a  lower  I.Q.  than  a  bank 
director,  but  I  am  willing  to  exchange  all  bank  directors  for  the 
one  Beethoven.  One  is  inclined  to  believe  that  Mozart's  I.Q.  was 
not  equal  to  that  of  many  college  graduates.  It  was,  I  am  sure, 
even  lower  than  that  of  most  psychoanalysts. 

This  general,  silly  overvaluation  of  mere  Intelligence  has  led 
to  a  misconception  about  the  origin  of  psychoanalysis  or  about 
Freud's  way  of  discovering  it.  The  first  is  that  this  new  research 
method  was  discovered  by  hard  and  penetrating  thinking,  by  a 
great  intellectual  effort.  Freud  in  his  incomparable  sincerity 
denied  it  energetically.  He  emphasized  again  and  again  that  he 
was  led  to  his  most  important  discoveries  by  a  prejudice,  a  pre- 
conceived opinion.  He  used  the  German  "Vorurteil"  which 
really  means  "pre-notion"  or  "pre-judgment"  What  he  really 
meant  can  be  better  expressed  by  the  English  word  "hunch." 
What  is  a  hunch?  It  seems  to  me  that  it  is  an  impression  reached 
by  intuition,  a  kind  of  foreknowledge—sensing  something  rather 
than  knowing  it  or  judging  it  by  means  of  reason.  The  birth  of 
psychoanalysis  out  of  a  hunch— that  is  perhaps  not  a  comfortable 
idea  for  us  scientific  minds,  for  us  psychoanalysts.  But  the  birth- 
place of  an  idea  is  not  the  decisive  factor.  Jesus  was  born  in  a 
stable  and  his  idea  conquered  the  world. 

As  a  matter  of  psychological  fact,  many  of  the  greatest  dis- 
coveries and  inventions  originated  as  hunches,  as  every  textbook 
on  the  history  of  science  reveals.  Freud  stated  again  and  again 
that  he  gained  his  best  insights  by  trusting  to  hunches.  He  did 
not  agree  with  the  accepted  opinion  of  the  scholars  that  the 
dream  is  only  a  physiological  process,  but  with  the  average  man 
and  woman  on  the  street  that  it  has  a  secret  meaning  and  can  be 
interpreted.  He  had  another  hunch:  he  did  not  accept  the  official 
view  of  the  physicians  who  explained  hysteria  as  a  physically  de- 
termined disease,  but  thought  of  it  as  resulting  from  emotional 


268  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

conflicts*  He  felt  that  the  generally  valid  theory  of  psychiatry  did 
not  explain  the  genesis  and  the  nature  of  the  neuroses,  but  he 
preferred  rather  the  concept  of  the  uncultured  masses  who  con- 
sidered neurosis  as  an  emotional  disturbance.  He  generally  pre- 
ferred concepts  in  the  field  of  psychology  that  nobody  took  seri- 
ously. He  was  not  afraid  to  remain  in  the  minority,  and  his  strong 
will  as  well  as  his  moral  courage  enabled  him  not  to  give  a 
tinker's  damn  about  what  the  majority  of  his  professional  col- 
leagues thought  of  him  and  his  new  views.  For  us  psychoanalysts 
it  is  hopeless,  of  course,  to  try  to  emulate  Freud's  genius  and  men- 
tal endowments.  We  should,  however,  at  least  wish  to  emulate 
him  with  regard  to  his  fearlessness,  his  moral  courage,  his  readi- 
ness to  suffer  for  his  convictions  and  to  remain  lonely.  Alas,  I  see 
very  few  signs  of  such  a  wish  among  psychoanalysts  today. 

The  technique  of  psychoanalysis  as  we  know  it  at  present  was 
born  as  a  hunch  about  the  essential  nature  of  the  dream  and  the 
neuroses.  The  simple  and  leading  thought,  which  seems  to  be  so 
near  now  and  was  so  far  from  the  minds  of  Freud's  contem- 
poraries, is  that  men  reveal  themselves— all  their  emotional  secrets 
—when  they  talk  freely  about  themselves;  not  just  when  they  talk 
about  their  secret^  but  about  everything  concerning  themselves. 
They  give  away  what  bothers  them,  disturbs  and  torments  them, 
all  that  occupies  their  thoughts  and  arouses  their  emotions— even 
when  they  would  be  most  unwilling  to  talk  directly  about  these 
things. 

Freud  has  said  that  mortals  are  not  made  to  keep  a  secret  and 
that  self-betrayal  oozes  from  all  their  pores.  The  ego  has  built 
mighty  defenses  against  the  forbidden  impulses  that  drive  and 
push  to  gain  some  measure  of  expression.  They  are  pressed  into 
oblivion,  into  the  dark  abyss  of  rejected  and  condemned  emo- 
tions and  thoughts.  They  are  disavowed,  banned,  and  outlawed, 
and  live  in  the  netherworld,  never  to  be  mentioned.  In  panic 
fear  of  their  power,  man  has  rolled  obstacles  as  strong  as  the  Rock 
of  Gibraltar  before  the  door  to  prevent  their  return.  They  betray 
themselves,  nevertheless,  and  give  notice  of  their  subterranean 
existence  and  activity  in  little,  unsuspected  signs,  words,  and 
gestures.  They  give  themselves  away  in  spite  of  shame  and  fear. 
The  old  Negro  spiritual  knows  it: 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  269 

....  I  went  to  de  rock 

To  hide  my  face, 

De  rock  cried  out,  "No  faidin*  place, 

Dere's  no  hidin'  place  down  dere." 

Here  are  the  roots  of  that  basic  rule  of  psychoanalytic  tech- 
nique, the  only  rule  which  the  student  or  patient  need  promise 
to  follow.  At  first  hearing  it  sounds  simple  enough.  Yes,  one  can- 
not easily  imagine  that  there  could  be  anything  simpler  than  to 
say  just  what  occurs  to  you.  But  how  difficult  it  is!  How  much 
training,  what  a  long  will-training  will  be  necessary,  not  to  reach, 
but  merely  to  approach  this  aim! 

The  basic  rule  is  known  by  the  name  of  free  association. 
Modern  writers  like  to  speak  of  the  "stream  of  consciousness." 
The  comparison  is  not  without  merit,  but  it  has  its  demerits  too. 
The  stream  sometimes  changes  into  a  sea  that  threatens  to  drown 
the  person.  Sometimes  it  degenerates  and  declines  into  a  trickle 
and  it  often  seems  to  run  dry.  It  is,  it  seems,  a  peculiar  kind  of 
stream. 

What  course  this  stream  takes  was,  of  course,  recognized  by 
psychology  and  formulated  in  the  shape  of  laws  of  thought-asso- 
ciation long  ago.  We  are  following  certain  laws  when  we  think  of 
an  apple,  a  garden,  blossomtime,  or  of  an  apple  and  apple  strudel 
in  succession;  when  we  look  at  a  portrait  and  think  of  the  person 
who  posed  for  it;  when  we  smell  something  and  think  of  a  cer- 
tain dish.  We  are  as  obedient  to  these  laws  of  association  as  when 
we  think  of  cold-hot  or  low-high.  Freud  had  a  hunch  that  this 
stream  had  undercurrents  to  be  investigated  that  determined  its 
course  to  an  even  greater  extent  perhaps  than  the  factors  then 
known  to  psychology.  These  undercurrents  are  the  unconscious 
impulses  and  interests,  the  repressed  emotions  of  men.  Free  asso- 
ciations are  only  free  on  the  surface.  They  are  dictated  by  a 
power  behind  the  throne  of  reason. 

Freud  followed  his  hunch.  He  asked  his  patients  to  say  what- 
ever occurred  to  them  without  any  exception  and  without  using 
the  censorship  to  which  we  submit  our  thoughts  otherwise.  In 
general  we  try  to  follow  a  certain  direction  in  speaking.  We  teed 
to  speak  logically  and  to  the  point  (the  effort  frequently  fails,  as 


270  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

the  speeches  of  our  senators  show).  The  patient  in  psychoanalysis 
should  say  what  occurs  to  him  without  such  order  and  restriction. 
He  should  jump  about  in  his  thoughts. 

We  might  contrast  the  different  types  of  mental  activity  thus: 
Thinking  is  like  marching  on  the  beaten  path  of  custom  to  a  cer- 
tain aim;  saying  what  comes  into  one's  mind  is  like  walking 
about  without  any  destination.  But  are  not  the  two  ways  of  men- 
tal activity  mutually  exclusive?  Certainly  not;  there  is  room 
enough  for  both  in  our  psychical  life.  They  take  place  in  different 
layers.  It  is  possible  that  on  the  fourth  floor  of  a  building  a 
pianist  is  practicing  a  Clementi  sonata,  while  another  artist  in  a 
room  in  the  basement  is  playing  a  Beethoven  sonata.  They  do  not 
disturb  each  other  as  long  as  they  do  not  hear  each  other. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  two  ways  of  thinking  have  separate  realms, 
with  a  border  between  them  that  neither  may  cross  without  creat- 
ing disturbances  of  one  kind  or  another.  A  corporation  lawyer 
would  reach  no  satisfactory  result  were  he  to  follow  every  fancy 
in  thinking  about  a  difficult  legal  problem.  A  poet,  on  the  other 
hand,  would  write  a  very  poor  poem  if  he  were  to  examine  each 
metaphor  in  his  love  poem  to  see  whether  it  met  the  tests  of  strict 
logic.  One  way  of  thinking  is  not  appropriate  in  the  first  case, 
the  other  would  have  no  place  in  the  second.  The  lawyer  will  do 
his  work  best  when  he  thinks  and  concludes  logically  and  uses  all 
the  reason  at  his  disposal.  The  poet  cannot  write  his  verses  after 
long  reflection  and  mature  consideration.  If  he  should  meditate 
and  ponder  about  the  expression  of  his  feelings,  they  would  lose 
all  spontaneity.  The  French  poet,  Paul  Vatery,  said  that  thinking 
or  reflecting  means  to  lose  the  thread,  "perdre  le  fil"  The  lawyer 
thinks  he  has  lost  the  thread  if  he  follows  a  capricious  idea,  a 
whim,  while  working  on  his  brief.  One  man's  meat  is  another 
man's  poison. 

Is  it  not  easy  simply  to  tell  what  occurs  to  you?  Should  it  not 
be  very  easy  to  speak  without  order  and  logical  connection,  to 
say  everything  that  flashes  through  your  mind  without  rhyme  or 
reason?  No,  it  is  rather  difficult;  it  is  more  like  a  steeplechase  than 
a  flat  course.  Every  minute  a  new  obstacle  blocks  your  way.  You 
will  be  surprised  by  the  kinds  of  thoughts  that  occur  to  you.  You 
will  not  only  be  surprised;  you  will  be  ashamed  and  sometimes 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  271 

even  afraid  of  them.  More  than  the  conventions  of  society  has  to 
be  thrown  overboard  when  you  want  to  say  everything  that  occurs 
to  you.  Fear  and  shame,  which  is  perhaps  a  special  kind  of  fear 
itself,  have  to  be  discarded  before  you  can  succeed.  Thoughts  and 
impulses  concerning  sexual  and  toilet  activities  and  needs  are  not 
easy  to  utter.  Mean,  aggressive,  and  hostile  tendencies— especially 
against  persons  near  and  dear  to  us— are  difficult  to  admit. 

It  would,  however,  be  erroneous  to  assume  that  those  tenden- 
cies are  the  only  ones  that  are  hard  to  confess.  An  analyst  often 
makes  the  surprising  discovery  that  a  man  is  more  ready  to  talk 
about  a  perversion  than  about  a  tender  feeling  he  has  had.  In  one 
of  Zola's  novels  a  defendant  is  willing  to  speak  in  a  matter-of-fact 
way  about  a  lust  murder  he  has  committed,  but  is  hindered  by 
shame  from  admitting  that  he  once  kissed  the  stocking  of  a 
woman.  Often  a  petty  or  trivial  thought  is  much  harder  to  tell 
than  a  mean  deed.  The  psychoanalyst  finds  men  are  often  more 
ashamed  to  speak  about  ideas  they  consider  stupid  or  supersti- 
tious than  about  impulses  that  they  condemn  as  criminal  or  anti- 
social. 

But  why  enumerate  and  evaluate  all  the  hindrances  and  ob- 
stacles in  the  road,  when  a  simple  experiment  can  convince  the 
reader  how  difficult  the  task  is?  The  experiment,  it  is  true,  is  not 
equivalent  to  the  real  psychoanalytic  situation;  but  it  has  some 
of  its  elements  and  it  has  the  advantage  that  it  can  be  made  here 
and  now.  The  reader  is  invited  to  take  paper  and  pencil  and  to 
write  down  whatever  occurs  to  him  during  the  next  half  hour. 
He  should  eliminate  all  censorship  of  his  thoughts  while  he 
writes,  take  no  consideration  of  logic,  esthetics,  or  morals,  and 
concentrate  only  on  jotting  down  what  occurs  to  him,  lost  to  the 
social  world  that  at  other  times  dictates  his  train  of  thought.  If 
he  is  sincere  with  himself  and  overcomes  all  tendencies  seeking 
to  prevent  him  from  writing  down  all  his  thoughts,  whether  they 
are  clever  or  silly,  conventional  or  indecent,  important  or  trivial, 
without  bothering  about  their  order,  aim,  and  connections,  with- 
out selection  or  censorship-just  as  if  they  had  been  dictated  to 
him  by  another  person— he  has  done  a  good  job.  He  should  then 
put  the  written  sheets  into  a  drawer  and  leave  the  room.  When  he 
takes  them  out  the  next  day  and  carefully  reads  them,  he  will 


272  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

meet  a  person  there  who  reminds  him  of  himself  in  many  ways 
but  is  in  other  ways  an  unknown  man.  Was  it  he  who  thought  all 
that?  Here  is  a  new  7  to  whom  he  gets  introduced. 

Today  the  experiment  can  be  considerably  improved,  thanks 
to  an  instrument  that  modern  invention  has  provided.  This  in- 
strument is  called  the  dictaphone.  When  one  speaks  all  that  one 
thinks  into  a  dictaphone  for  an  hour  under  the  conditions  just 
mentioned  and  disconnects  the  instrument,  one  has  the  possibility 
of  listening  in  comfort  to  one's  thoughts  the  next  day,  as  one 
might  listen  to  a  third  person.  The  advantages  compared  with 
writing  are  clear.  The  road  from  thought  to  speech  is  shorter 
than  from  thinking  to  writing.  It  is  really  a  return  to  the  original, 
because  what  we  think  is  only  what  we  say  within  ourselves  with- 
out pronouncing  the  words.  Everybody  has  observed  that  many 
people  make  mouth  movements  as  if  they  would  speak  when  they 
read  and  even  when  they  write.  The  spoken  words  have  an  emo- 
tional quality  different  from  the  words  that  have  only  been 
thought.  The  Catholic  church  does  not  recognize  a  confession 
which  is  only  thought  or  written  down.  The  confession  must  be 
vocalis,  spoken;  is  must  be  articulated,  vocalized.  A  comparison 
between  written  and  thought  words  shows  that  the  effect  of  artic- 
ulate speech  is  different  not  only  upon  the  hearer  but  also  upon 
the  speaker  himself.  I  know  a  girl  who  said,  "I  never  know  what 
I  think  until  I  hear  myself  saying  it."  The  advantage  of  the  dicta- 
phone is  that  one  can  "hear  oneself  think."  Such  experiments 
can,  of  course,  never  replace  the  psychoanalytic  situation,  but 
they  can  convince  the  skeptic  that  he  has  thoughts  and  impulses 
that  are  unknown  to  him.  There  are  hidden  roomers  that  live 
in  his  mental  house  without  being  registered. 

There  are  certain  other  conditions  necessary;  certain  require- 
ments have  to  be  fulfilled  before  such  experiments  can  even  ap- 
proach an  elementary  self-analysis,  but  one  thing  is  clear:  a 
person  has  to  become  at  least  capable  of  making  such  an  experi- 
ment before  he  can  hope  to  "analyze  himself/' 

Anybody  who  tries  the  experiment  will  soon  realize  that  one 
quality  is  more  important  than  any  other  in  psychoanalysis: 
moral  courage.  This  quality  and  this  alone  enabled  Freud,  as  he 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  273 

once  emphatically  stated,*  to  make  his  most  valuable  discoveries. 
Many  psychoanalysts  think  that  their  intellectual  endowments 
qualify  them  especially  for  their  profession.  The  truth  is  that 
every  psychoanalyst  with  a  long  experience  has  had  patients  who 
were  intellectually  his  superiors  by  far;  and  every  psychoanalyst 
will  be  ready  to  admit  that  to  himself.  I  have  had  the  good  luck 
to  treat  and  to  help  men  who  were  famous  as  writers  and  scien- 
tists, and  I  have  often  had  the  opportunity  to  admire  their  genius. 
Two  factors  render  the  analyst  in  the  situation  in  the  consulting 
room  an  authority.  The  first— his  knowledge  and  experience  in 
psychology— could  be  acquired  easily  by  every  one  of  his  gifted 
patients.  The  other  factor  is  the  moral  courage  that  enables  the 
psychoanalyst  to  face  in  others  as  well  as  in  himself  unpleasant 
and  repressed  thoughts  and  tendencies,  which  the  patient  in  his 
present  situation  avoids.  To  help  the  patient  stand  his  ground 
before  these  impulses  and  ideas  is  the  most  important  part  of  the 
analyst's  task.  The  analyst  plays  the  role  of  the  midwife  in  help- 
ing to  bring  those  unborn  thoughts  and  impulses  to  the  daylight 
of  conscious  processes  and  to  convince  the  patient  that  they  have 
a  right  to  exist  and  to  be  considered. 

The  psychoanalyst  himself  is  subject  to  the  same  dangers  as 
his  patient:  to  disavow  and  repress  thoughts  and  impulses  he  does 
not  want  to  realize  in  himself,  to  play  hide-and-seek  with  himself. 
Every  analyst  should  put  himself  to  the  test  periodically  to  deter- 
mine how  sincere  he  can  be  with  himself.  Such  self-analysis  will 
teach  him  a  lesson  he  will  remember  whenever  he  is  inclined  to 
become  impatient  with  the  patient's  resistance  against  recognizing 
some  unpleasant  truths.  Such  self-managed  experiments  will  re- 
mind him  that  he  has  much  to  learn  and  recognize  about  himself 
long— in  many  cases  even  a  few  decades— after  he  was  analyzed  by 
another.  Only  superficial  and  shallow  thinking  can  make  an 
analyst  believe  that  he  knows  himself  thoroughly  and  that  he  does 
not  need  any  added  analysis  to  become  acquainted  with  himself. 
He  will  experience  some  surprises  whenever  he  faces  himself. 
Meeting  oneself  is  rarely  a  pleasant  experience  even  for  the  psy- 
choanalyst. 

*  Freud,  "Josef  Popper-Lynkeus  und  die  Theorie  des  Traumes,"  Gesam- 
melte  Schriften,  XI,  297. 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

Every  experience  of  this  kind  will  bring  him  new  insights  and 
added  psychological  knowledge  brought  up  from  the  deep  wells 
of  his  emotional  life.  At  this  point  I  hear  a  voice  saying,  "It  is 
easy  enough  to  give  advice  that  one  is  unwilling  to  take  oneself." 

I  accept  the  challenge  and  interrupt  my  writing  to  subject  my- 
self to  the  experiments. 

What  are  my  thoughts  at  this  moment?  I  see  the  pussy  willows 
on  my  bookcase  ...  a  prehistoric  vase  .  .  .  spring,  youth,  old 
age  ...  regrets  ...  the  books  ...  the  Encyclopedia  of  Ethics 
and  Religion  ...  the  book  I  did  not  finish.  ...  My  eyes  wan- 
der to  the  door.  ...  A  photograph  of  Arthur  Schnitzler  on  the 
wall  ...  my  son  Arthur  ...  his  future  .  .  .  the  lamp  on  the 
table.  .  .  .  What  a  patient  had  said  about  the  lamp  once  when 
it  was  without  a  shade  ...  the  table  ...  it  was  not  there  a  few 
years  ago  ...  my  wife  bought  it  ...  I  did  not  want  to  spend 
the  money  at  first  .  .  .  she  bought  it  nevertheless.  .  .  . 

These  are  my  thoughts  as  I  should  tell  them  to  a  person  in  the 
room  to  whom  I  have  to  report  them  the  moment  they  occur.  It  is 
clear  that  most  of  them  are  determined  by  the  objects  I  see;  the 
connections  between  them  seem  to  be  made  only  by  the  sight  of 
the  objects  and  by  thoughts  of  the  persons  they  remind  me  of. 
Some,  as  for  instance  the  two  sequences,  Encyclopedia  of  Ethics 
and  Religion— the  book  I  did  not  finish  and  pussy  willows— spring 
—old  age— regrets,  do  not  follow  the  same  laws  of  association,  it 
would  seem. 

But  are  they  really  my  thoughts?  Aren't  they  rather  abbrevia- 
tions, clues  to  my  thoughts,  not  the  thoughts  themselves?  As  such, 
they  give  nothing  but  the  most  superficial  information  about 
what  I  was  thinking.  If  I  want  to  tell  what  I  really  thought,  I 
shall  have  to  fill  the  gaps  between  these  clues,  put  flesh  on  this 
skeleton.  Here  is  what  I  really  thought  (and  not  all,  not  by  a 
long  shot,  but  enough  to  make  me  realize  what  occupies  me  at 
this  moment). 

I  see  the  pussy  willows  on  my  bookcase  .  .  .  they  are  in  a  pre- 
historic vase  that  I  brought  with  me  when  I  came  from  Austria 
.  .  .  the  flowers  remind  me  of  my  youth  in  Vienna  ...  I  am  get- 
ting old  ...  I  regret  that  I  have  not  enjoyed  my  youth  more 
...  I  remember  a  joke  I  heard  from  Dr.  S.  when  I  last  saw  him: 


THE   GIFT  FOR   PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  275 

"When  one  is  six  years  old,  one  thinks  the  penis  is  there  for 
urinating;  when  one  is  sixty,  one  knows  it."  .  .  .  unpleasant 
thoughts  about  impotence,  which  threatens  with  old  age  ...  re- 
turn of  the  regrets  that  I  have  not  enjoyed  my  younger  years  sex- 
ually ...  a  French  proverb:  "Si  jeunesse  savait  si  vieillesse  pou- 
vait"  ("If  youth  but  knew,  if  old  age  but  could")  ...  I  try  to 
console  myself  ...  I  worked,  I  achieved  something  ...  I 
wrote  many  books  .  .  .  how  many?  Twenty?  Thirty?  .  .  .  the 
Encyclopedia  of  Ethics  and  Religion  reminds  me  of  the  second 
volume  of  my  Psychological  Problems  of  Religion  which  is  not 
finished  .  .  .  without  saying  it  1  promised  Freud  to  continue  the 
studies  .  .  .  the  door  ,  .  .  leaving  .  .  .  dying  .  .  .  the  photo- 
graph of  Arthur  Schnitzler  ...  I  remember  him  and  I  see  him 
as  I  took  a  walk  with  him  in  Vienna  on  the  Sommerhaidenweg 
...  we  lived  in  the  same  street  and  my  son  was  named  after  Mm 
...  I  once  wished  that  Arthur  would  become  a  writer  like  Arthur 
Schnitzler,  whom  I  loved.  .  .  .  Schnitzler  was  once  a  physician 
but  he  left  his  practice  because  he  preferred  writing  ...  I  hoped 
my  son  would  study  medicine;  that  was  in  Holland,  but  he  had 
to  break  off  his  studies  and  preferred  to  become  a  bookseller  .  .  . 
perhaps  he  would  not  have  finished  his  studies  even  if  the  Nazis 
had  not  come  ...  a  slight  disappointment,  because  I  wanted 
him  to  have  a  brilliant  career  .  .  .  will  he  succeed  in  his  pro- 
fession? .  .  .  the  son  of  Arthur  Schnitzler  occurs  to  me  ...  his 
name  is  Heinrich.  .  .  .  Like  my  son  he  is  now  in  this  country.  I 
have  not  heard  anything  about  him  for  a  long  time.  Perhaps  he  is 
in  Hollywood.  His  father  may  have  wished  another  career  for  his 
son,  too.  I  am  sure  he  did  not  like  Hollywood.  I  remember  his 
blue  eyes,  his  gray  beard  ...  the  story  I  heard  in  Vienna  when 
Heinrich,  Arthur  Schnitzler's  son,  was  in  the  first  grade  of  public 
school.  The  teacher  had  asked  the  boys  whether  they  knew  who 
Goethe  was.  No  one  knew,  but  little  Heinrich  said,  "I  am  not 
certain  but  I  believe  he  is  a  colleague  of  my  father."  .  .  .  Clever 
saying  of  my  son  Arthur  when  he  was  a  child.  Once  after  listening 
to  a  concerto  by  Mozart,  he  asked  his  mother,  "Is  he  not  called 
Mozart  because  his  music  is  so  zart?"  (German  for  "gentle,  fine, 
delicate")  .  .  .  affection  for  Arthur  ...  his  passionate  interest 
in  music.  ...  It  used  to  worry  me,  he  seemed  100  interested. 


276  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

Grillparzer  (the  great  Austrian  poet)  said  about  his  sweetheart, 
"She  gets  drunk  on  music  as  another  on  wine."  ...  I  once  hoped 
Arthur  would  become  a  composer  ...  he  showed  a  great  musical 
gift  but  like  myself  was  too  lazy  to  study  an  instrument  ...  I 
remember  that  as  a  small  boy  he  sang  tunes  from  the  symphonies 
of  Mahler  ...  he  loves  this  composer  as  I  do  ...  the  lamp  on 
the  table  ...  it  is  a  big  lamp  with  curves  .  .  .  once  the  shade 
was  broken  and  the  bulb  was  visible  ...  a  lady  who  was  a  pa- 
tient of  mine  at  the  time  said,  "The  lamp  looks  so  nude."  .  ,  . 
the  table  on  which  the  lamp  stands  was  not  there  ...  my  wife 
suggested  that  we  buy  a  table  for  this  place  near  the  wall  ...  I 
thought  it  unnecessary  and  did  not  want  to  spend  the  money  .  . . 
we  have  so  little  money  .  .  .  my  wife  did  not  argue,  but  a  few 
weeks  later  the  table  was  there  and  the  lamp  stood  on  it  ...  she 
got  around  me  ...  am  I  henpecked  or  indulgent?  .  .  . 

Here  are  my  thoughts,  and  not  all  the  thoughts  at  that.  Many 
I  have  skipped  because,  as  Freud  once  said,  one  owes  discretion 
even  to  oneself.  There  are  other  associations  that  do  not  appeal 
here  because  I  owe  discretion  to  my  wife,  my  son,  and  other  per- 
sons who  would  otherwise  be  mentioned  in  this  report.  It  also 
does  not  put  my  train  of  thought  to  good  account  because  it  con- 
siders  only  what  takes  place  in  the  center  of  my  mental  activity. 
It  does  not  take  the  marginal  thoughts  into  account  and  does 
not  consider  the  fringes  of  my  thoughts.  I  would  have  to  write 
many  more  pages  if  I  wanted  to  report  them  too.  When  I  thought 
of  Arthur,  for  instance,  a  memory  flashed  through  my  mind.  In  a 
moment  the  image  of  his  mother,  whom  he  resembles,  occurred 
to  me.  I  remembered  a  conversation  we  had  when  he  was  a  small 
boy.  I  had  even  then  expressed  my  ambitious  hopes  for  his  future, 
but  my  wife  said  she  wished  only  for  his  happiness.  Here  my 
thoughts  turned  in  the  direction  of  the  contrast  of  fame  and 
achievement  with  happiness.  Arthur  Schnitzler  was  not  happy  al- 
though he  was  very  famous  at  the  time  my  son  was  born  and 
named  after  him. 

Such  thoughts  really  belong  to  the  essential  psychical  process 
and  should  not  be  excluded  from  this  report,  especially  since  they 
touch  a  problem  that  has  occupied  me  in  the  last  few  years  (see 
the  regrets  about  my  youth  which  is  gone). 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  277 

How  does  the  name  Mahler  occur  in  this  train  of  thought?  Ap- 
parently only  on  account  of  the  fact  that  my  son,  when  only  a  small 
boy,  was  able  to  remember  many  tunes  from  Mahler's  symphonies. 
Between  the  reported  associations  there  were  at  least  two  other  con- 
nections that  I  have  neglected  to  give  here;  one  superficial  and 
the  other  reaching  into  deeper  layers.  First  the  other  photograph, 
beside  the  one  of  Arthur  Schnitzler,  that  hangs  on  the  wall  is 
that  of  Gustav  Mahler.  This  association  seems  to  correspond  with 
the  laws  of  association  which  W.  Wundt  and  other  psychologists 
follow.  Not  so  the  second  association:  both  men  lived  many  years 
in  the  Vienna  of  my  youth  without  having  met,  until  Schnitzler 
expressed  what  a  deep  impression  Mahler's  Sixth  Symphony  had 
made  upon  him.  My  son  Arthur  and  I  attended  a  performance  of 
this  symphony  together  in  Vienna. 

Here  we  meet  the  factor  of  over-determination  of  associations. 
This  means  that  many  threads  connect  one  thought  with  the 
preceding  and  the  following  ones.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  descrip- 
tion can  give  a  full  account  of  this  over-determination  because 
it  is  not  possible  to  describe  the  simultaneous  interplay  of 
thoughts  moving  on  different  levels.  One  must  change  simultane- 
ousness  into  succession,  and  the  dimensions  of  surface  and  depth 
in  the  psychical  process  can  only  be  hinted  at. 

It  is  also  difficult  to  give  an  adequate  impression  of  the  rich 
life  on  the  margins  and  fringes  of  the  thoughts.  I  shall  give  only 
one  instance:  at  a  certain  point  in  my  thoughts  the  name  Goethe 
appeared  (little  Heinrich  Schnitzler  said  in  public  school  that  he 
thought  Goethe  was  a  colleague  of  his  father).  But  this  was  not 
the  first  time  a  memory  of  Goethe  occurred  in  my  train  of 
thought.  It  was  there  before,  although  only  on  the  fringes  of  the 
process:  When  I  thought  of  my  son's  not  continuing  his  studies, 
I  thought  also  that  his  engagement  to  a  Dutch  girl  and  his  early 
marriage  had  a  share  in  his  decision;  and  mysteriously  a  half- 
forgotten  line  from  Goethe's  Hermann  and  Dorothea  occurred. 
There  the  mother  of  the  son  wishes  that  he  would  marry  "so  that 
the  night  will  become  a  beautiful  part  of  thy  life."  Here,  con- 
nected with  Goethe  is  an  allusion  to  the  sexual  motive  of 
marriage.  The  other  obvious  thread  to  Goethe  is  the  name  of 
Sdinitzler's  son.  Heinrich  is  the  name  of  Faust,  the  hero  of 


278  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

Goethe's  tragedy,  whose  verses  accompanied  my  own  youth.  From 
this  point  thoughts  branched  off  to  my  psychoanalytic  study  of 
Goethe,  to  my  ambitions  and  hope  that  Farrar,  Straus  will  pub- 
lish the  book  in  an  English  translation  in  1949,  when  the  nations 
of  the  world  celebrate  the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  Goethe's 
birth  .  .  .  doubts  whether  I  will  live  so  long  .  .  .  my  heart  ail- 
ment .  .  .  Schnitzler  died  of  a  heart  disease. 

There  are  further  precursors  and  lingering  notes  in  the  train  of 
thought  that  are  not  considered  in  my  report  above.  On  the  walk 
on  the  Sommerhaidenweg  in  Vienna,  Schnitzler  and  I  had  talked 
about  marriage.  He  had  married  a  girl  who  was  much  younger 
than  himself.  Here  thoughts  went  forth  to  my  second  wife,  whom 
I  married  after  my  first  wife,  Arthur's  mother,  died.  But  this  same 
road,  the  Sommerhaidenweg,  plays  a  part  in  Schnitzler's  Der  Weg 
ins  Freie  ("The  Way  into  the  Open")  a  novel  which  discusses 
the  Jewish  problem.  It  was  partly  the  influence  of  the  Nazi 
danger  that  made  my  son  decide  to  leave  Europe— here  is  the 
Jewish  problem  again. 

There  are  further  thoughts— connections  that  I  have  not  given 
their  psychological  due  because  the  explanation  would  take  too 
long,  psychologically  important  and  informative  as  they  are.  I 
can  give  only  two  instances.  I  remembered  Arthur's  bright  remark 
about  Mozart;  then  followed  my  thought  that  my  son  is  too 
interested  in  music;  and  then  Grillparzer's  words  about  the  pas- 
sionate love  of  his  girl  friend  Kathi  for  music.  The  associative 
threads  seem  clear  enough;  the  links  are  all  there.  But  to  appre- 
ciate the  inner  operations  of  the  mind,  one  should  follow  the 
connections  between  the  names  Mozart  and  Grillparzer.  Grill- 
parzer  appears  here,  in  his  characterization  of  Kathi  Froehlich's 
enthusiasm,  almost  as  an  opponent  of  music,  as  I  myself  am  op- 
posed to  my  son's  overfondness  for  this  art.  But  Grillparzer  was 
himself  a  music  lover.  He  played  the  piano  excellently,  worshiped 
the  great  classical  masters,  often  talked  with  Beethoven,  for  whom 
he  prepared  a  libretto  for  an  opera.  He  wrote  the  speech  that  was 
spoken  at  Beethoven's  grave,  over  which  he  wept  with  many 
another  Viennese. 

It  must  be  psychologically  determined  that  Grillparzer  appears 
here  as  a  contrast  to  Mozart,  whom  he  adored.  The  justified  criti- 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION 

cism  of  Kathi  Froehlich's  musical  enthusiasm  is  not  sufficient  to 
make  a  bridge  between  Mozart  and  Grillparzer.  The  bridge  was 
prepared  in  my  thoughts  long  before  this  particular  train  of 
thought.  It  was  not  built  on  the  spur  of  the  moment;  it  has  been 
there  since  my  youth.  Like  all  boys  who  attended  college  in 
Vienna,  I  read  most  of  Grillparzer's  plays  and  knew  much  about 
his  life.  To  tell  the  truth,  I  never  liked  the  man,  although  we 
were  educated  to  see  in  him  the  great  poet  of  our  Austria.  As  an 
expression  of  this  concealed  dislike,  I  discovered  in  my  college 
years  an  inclination  to  forget  the  year  of  his  birth,  and  I  once 
got  a  bad  mark  in  an  examination  on  account  of  it  But  an  ac- 
cident helped  me  keep  this  date  (1791)  in  memory  with  such 
certainty  that  I  know  it  even  now,  many  years  later.  My  dislike 
for  Grillparzer  was  not  greater  than  my  love  for  another  Austrian, 
Mozart,  who  died  in  the  year  Grillparzer  was  born.  By  a  simple 
mnemonic  device  that  coupled  the  disliked  date,  which  one  is 
inclined  to  forget,  with  another  that  reminded  me  of  a  loved 
personality,  I  succeeded  in  retaining  1791  as  Grillparzer's  birth 
year. 

My  second  instance  of  a  marginal  association  was  a  visual 
image.  Remembering  Schnitzler,  I  recalled  suddenly  a  caricature 
of  him  that  appeared  in  a  Vienna  newspaper  on  the  occasion  of 
his  sixtieth  birthday.  The  cartoon,  teasing  rather  than  malicious, 
shows  the  writer  comfortably  smoking  his  cigar.  The  rings  that 
the  smoke  makes  seem  to  transform  themselves  into  seductive 
faces  and  bodies  of  beautiful  women.  The  writer  of  Hands 
Around  looks  thoughtfully  at  these  rings  as  if  absorbed  in  en- 
joyable memories.  The  caption  expresses  his  thoughts:  "Oh,  my, 
those  were  times  1" 

Clearly  the  memory  of  the  cartoon,  which  I  saw  only  once  al- 
most twenty-five  years  before  (Schnitzler  was  sixty  years  old  in 
1922),  did  not  occur  merely  because  my  glance  had  fallen  on  his 
photograph.  If  the  reader  will  again  follow  my  previous  thoughts, 
he  will  meet  ideas  about  my  own  age,  then  regrets  about  my 
youth  and  some  unpleasant  thoughts  about  the  threat  of  sexual 
impotency.  Here  are  the  highly  personal  associative  threads.  In 
the  memory  of  the  caricature  with  its  delicate  reminder  of  fading 
youth  and  sexual  power,  there  is  an  echo  that  resounds  and  re- 


280  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

echoes  subterraneous  thoughts  about  myself,  which  have  built 
a  bridge  of  associations  to  the  writer  because  I  am  now  myself 
near  the  age  he  was  when  we  were  friends. 

I  have  given  here  the  main  thoughts  that  crossed  my  mind  in 
those  few  minutes  of  the  experiment,  which  was  made  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment.  It  was,  of  course,  impossible  to  give  the  reader 
even  a  vague  idea  of  the  emotions  that,  distinct  or  vague,  diluted 
or  concentrated,  accompanied  this  train  of  thought.  Words  like 
"regret  over  my  youth,  which  is  gone,"  "memory  of  my  wife,  who 
died,"  or  "tenderness  for  Arthur  when  he  was  a  small  boy"  are 
hints  at  those  emotions  rather  than  expressions  of  their  nature. 

If  I  had  these  thoughts  during  an  analytic  session,  my  psycho- 
analyst would  certainly  get  an  impression  of  what  these  emotions 
.accompanying  my  thoughts  were.  Intonation,  changes  of  my  voice, 
the  rise  and  fall  of  the  sentences,  as  well  as  pauses  and  other  signs 
would  betray  not  only  what  I  think  but  also  what  I  feel.  If  he 
were  a  psychoanalyst  worthy  of  the  name,  he  would  guess  or  sense 
what  emotions  came  alive  when  I  remembered  Schnitzler  or  when 
I  felt  sorry  that  I  did  not  finish  the  book  that  I  wanted  to  write 
because  I  had  promised  Freud  I  would.  The  most  personal  factor 
of  these  emotions,  the  intimacy  of  the  inner  experience  is,  it  is 
true,  not  sayable,  but  its  reflex  will  communicate  itself  like  a 
song  without  words  and  express  emotions  that  the  listener  in 
his  turn  will  sense. 

Besides  and  beyond  such  impressions,  this  succession  of  thoughts, 
ostensibly  so  unconnected  and  meaningless,  would  give  any  ana- 
lyst an  excellent  idea  of  what  occupies  me  at  this  time.  Following 
my  train  of  association,  he  could  not  fail  to  know  that  I  have 
some  thoughts  about  getting  old,  worries  about  sexual  potency, 
and  that  I  try  to  console  myself  for  my  lost  youth  with  satisfaction 
of  another  kind.  He  would  realize  that  I  must  have  been  a  very 
ambitious  person  in  my  younger  days  and  that  I  tried  to  displace 
this  ambition  onto  my  son  and  was  as  disappointed  with  him  as 
with  myself,  and  so  forth.  All  these  and  many  other  thoughts  and 
feelings  emerged  from  dark  recesses  to  the  surface  of  my  associa- 
tions, like  moles  crawling  out  of  their  hills  between  the  lights. 
In  such  experiments  hearing  is  believing. 

When  we  express  what  occurs  to  us,  we  do  not  always  know 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  281 

what  we  are  saying.  But  when  we  read  or  listen  to  our  words  later 
on,  they  are,  oddly  enough,  not  odd  any  more.  We  did  not  know 
what  we  were  saying,  but  even  so  we  did  better  than  many  people 
who  do  not  know  what  they  are  thinking  about. 

I  believe  that  exercises  in  thought-association  in  self-analysis 
have  a  value  beyond  their  immediate,  practical  use  for  under- 
standing what  is  one's  own  psychological  situation  at  a  given  time. 
They  renew  and  deepen  the  experience  of  the  analytic  process, 
make  it  a  living  experience  again,  one  which  is  part  of  one's 
life.  There  is  always  a  danger  that  the  psychoanalyst,  who  every 
day  sees  nine  or  ten  patients,  will  consider  his  work  a  "profes- 
sion," that  he  will  see  himself  as  an  "expert"  on  the  heights  and 
depths  of  psychical  life,  and  that  psychoanalysis  may  become  for 
him  a  standard  operation  procedure.  He  is  not  forever  "analyzed" 
after  he  has  once  been  analyzed. 

The  psychoanalyst  as  well  as  his  patient  must  renew  the  impres- 
sion that  it  is  impossible  to  speak  absolute  nonsense  when  one 
sincerely  expresses  what  has  crossed  his  mind.  What  emerges  from 
unconscious  depths  has  an  order,  a  continuity,  and  a  reason  of  its 
own.  The  analyst  has  plenty  of  opportunity  to  observe  how  little 
sense  it  makes  when  some  people  say  what  they  consciously  think. 


On  the  street  or  in  parks  you  sometimes  notice  people  talking 
to  themselves.  These  persons,  who  seem  to  be  carrying  on  such 
stimulating  one-sided  conversations,  are  not  necessarily  drunk  or 
insane.  I  once  asked  an  acquaintance  who  had  this  habit  about 
his  motives.  He  answered  jokingly  that  he  occasionally  liked  to 
hear  what  an  intelligent  person  had  to  say,  and  to  feel  that  he 
was  talking  to  an  intelligent  listener.  Such  a  high  self-evaluation 
may  be  correct  in  some  cases  and  wrong  in  others.  More  impor- 
tant is  the  fact  that  in  dialogues  with  oneself  one  is  more  sincere 
than  in  conversation  with  others.  The  speaker  is  less  inhibited 
and  less  conventional  and  will  say  what  he  really  thinks,  while 
his  audience  is  more  tolerant  and  more  willing  to  listen,  not  only 


282  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

to  reason,  but  to  unreason.  Certainly  many  matters  that  are  never 
or  rarely  mentioned  in  talking  to  others  are  freely  discussed  in 
conversations  with  oneself. 

Self-analysis  is  comparable  to  a  conversation  with  oneself  with 
the  difference  that  its  character  is  not  just  chattering,  but  dis- 
covering in  oneself  something  which  has  hitherto  been  unknown. 
Self-analysis  for  its  own  sake  is  usually  as  barren  as  I' art  pour  1'art 
Occasion  for  self-analysis  arises  only  when  we  are  surprised  by  our 
thoughts,  when  we  find  in  ourselves  feelings  that  seem  strange, 
or  when  we  are  amazed  over  actions  and  inhibitions  we  did  not 
suspect  in  ourselves.  Such  opportunities  occur  much  more  fre- 
quently than  one  might  think. 

More  than  a  hundred  years  ago  a  Viennese  satirist  wrote:  "I 
believe  the  worst  of  everybody,  including  myself,  and  I  have 
rarely  been  mistaken."  The  remark  is  certainly  justified  but  neces- 
sarily one-sided.  Self-analysis  reveals  that  there  are  not  only  un- 
suspected vices  and  horrid  impulses  hidden  within  ourselves  but 
also  friendly  and  even  generous  feelings  never  dreamed  of  or  only 
dreamed  of.  This  kind  of  deep-sea  diving  brings  to  the  surface  not 
only  strange  monsters  but  also  unlooked-for  treasures.  Many  sur- 
prises beyond  good  and  evil  await  the  diver  there  on  the  bottom, 
if  he  glides  down  at  the  right  moment. 

The  following  paragraphs  present  no  more  than  a  fragmentary 
analysis  of  mood,  a  frame  of  mind  of  my  own,  which  I  did  not 
understand  until  some  months  after  it  had  passed. 

Like  many  of  my  colleagues  I  had  left  the  decaying  Vienna  of 
the  postwar  years  to  live  in  Berlin,  where  the  new  Psychoanalytic 
Institute  was  showing  a  promising  development.  I  had  built  up  a 
satisfactory  psychoanalytic  practice  in  Berlin  when,  one  day,  I 
received  from  Vienna  a  request  for  an  appointment.  The  man 
who  wrote  was  unknown  to  me  but  said  that  he  had  a  special 
recommendation  from  Freud.  At  the  appointed  hour  the  man  ap- 
peared for  a  consultation.  He  was  a  middle-aged  and  very  wealthy 
American  with  a  well-known  name.  He  described  his  nervous 
symptoms,  giving  me  a  good  picture  of  his  psychological  situation. 
For  many  years  he  had  been  suffering  from  a  severe  obsessional 
neurosis  that  necessitated  his  protecting  himself  against  innumer- 
able imaginary  and  magical  dangers  by  means  of  many  compli- 


THE   GIFT   FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  28j 

cated  safety  measures.  Both  because  of  his  nervous  troubles  and  foi 
family  reasons,  it  was  not  possible  for  him  to  come  to  Berlin  for  psy 
choanalytic  treatment.  Freud  had  suggested  his  coming  to  me  be 
cause  I  had  treated  many  similar  cases  In  the  past.  The  patiem 
made  me  the  following  proposition.  If  I  would  return  to  Vienna 
to  treat  him  and  be  at  his  disposal  for  just  one  hour  daily,  he 
would  not  only  be  responsible  for  my  living  expenses  but  pay  me 
a  fee  much  larger  than  the  total  earnings  from  my  Berlin  psy 
choanalytic  practice.  After  a  brief  consideration  I  accepted  hi 
offer.  Having  brought  some  of  my  analytic  treatments  to  an  enc 
and  transferred  other  cases  to  colleagues,  I  returned  to  Vienns 
in  November,  1932.  In  spite  of  the  many  social  and  cultural  ad 
vantages  Berlin  possessed  at  that  time,  I  had  not  been  overfonc 
of  the  capital  of  the  German  Reich.  When  I  arrived  at  the  VIenns 
station,  I  felt  like  a  son  coming  home  to  his  mother.  All  during 
the  journey  I  had  been  happily  anticipating  the  prospect  of  the 
life  ahead  of  me.  I  would  be  free  from  all  financial  considerations 
and  would  be  able  to  devote  most  of  my  time  to  scientific  re 
search.  I  would  be  able  to  see  my  family  and  friends  as  often  ai 
I  wished.  This  wonderful  opportunity  would  permit  me  to  see 
Freud  and  to  attend  the  weekly  meetings  of  the  Vienna  Psycho 
analytic  Association,  whose  secretary  I  had  been  in  past  years 
Altogether  it  seemed  like  a  fairy  tale  come  true. 

The  ensuing  months  brought  the  realization  of  these  day 
dreams.  Released  from  the  necessity  of  spending  ten  hours  a  da] 
In  psychoanalytic  practice,  I  worked  on  the  two  books  I  tiac 
planned,  saw  much  of  my  family  and  friends,  visited  with  Freud 
and  regularly  attended  the  meetings  of  the  Vienna  Psychoanalytic 
Association.  I  enjoyed  the  first  days  of  my  return  to  the  utmost 
It  made  me  happy  just  to  walk  In  the  morning  through  the 
familiar  streets  of  my  native  city  on  my  way  to  the  university 
library, 

The  apartment  my  patient  had  taken  for  me  was,  like  his  own 
In  the  Hotel  Bristol,  which,  In  splendor  and  dignity,  was  compa 
rable  to  New  York's  Waldorf-Astoria.  I  still  remember  how  : 
could  scarcely  believe  my  good  luck  when  I  awoke  the  first  mom 
ing  and  looked  about  me  at  the  magnificently  appointed  roomi 
which  were  now  my  new  home.  Humming  a  Strauss  waltz,  I  wen; 


284  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

down  to  breakfast  at  my  usual  hour.  Of  course  there  was  no  one  in 
the  dining  room  to  serve  me— it  was  not  yet  seven.  As  I  passed  the 
night  clerk  at  his  desk,  he  looked  up  at  me  with  a  startled  expres- 
sion as  if  I  were  some  ghostly  apparition  in  the  middle  of  the 
night.  It  dawned  on  me  that  guests  in  such  a  place  as  this  would 
scarcely  be  expected  to  appear  for  breakfast  much  before  eleven 
o'clock.  I  took  breakfast  and  lunch  in  more  modest  establishments. 
At  the  door  of  the  Bristol  dining  room  that  evening,  I  was  met 
by  a  headwaiter  who  looked  like  a  duke  at  the  very  least  and  who 
accompanied  me  ceremoniously  to  my  table.  The  waiters  at  once 
appeared  to  hear  my  wishes.  I  looked  about  me  and  realized  with 
some  embarrassment  that  I  was  the  only  person  in  the  great  shin- 
Ing  room  not  dressed  in  evening  clothes. 

For  some  days  I  continued  to  dine  at  the  Bristol.  I  was  now 
appropriately  attired  but  I  dislike  having  to  shave  again  every 
evening  and  changing  into  my  dinner  jacket.  Besides,  the  lordly 
headwaiter,  his  three  attentive  assistants,  and  the  elaborate  ritual 
of  the  meal  made  me  uncomfortable.  The  luxury  of  the  place 
somehow  oppressed  my  spirits.  Every  morning  I  left  the  hotel 
early  to  get  breakfast  at  a  little  coffeehouse  in  a  near-by  side  street. 
I  slunk  past  the  eight  clerk  and  was  annoyed  with  myself  for  be- 
ing embarrassed  when  he  noticed  me.  It  was  really  absurd.  Why 
did  I  feel  almost  guilty  about  going  to  breakfast  at  seven  o'clock 
in  the  morning?  I  must  confess  that  I  even  began  positively  to  dis- 
like the  headwaiter  and  his  three  helpers  when  I  thought  of  how 
they  walked  to  my  table  with  a  stateliness  that  suggested  a  proces- 
sion of  high  dignitaries.  I  gave  up  the  Bristol  dining  room  and 
enjoyed  my  dinners  in  less  sumptuous  surroundings,  ruefully  ad- 
mitting to  myself  that  1  simply  could  not  feel  at  home  in  my 
magnificent  domicile.  Gradually  it  became  clear  to  me  that  I 
actually  preferred  less  grand  and  formal  living  arrangements.  A 
feeling  of  not  belonging  walked  with  me  through  the  gleaming 
corridors  of  the  Bristol 

Another  factor  worked  unfavorably  upon  my  spirits.  My  pa- 
tient, for  whom  I  had  reserved  a  fixed  hour  daily,  did  not  show 
tip.  True,  he  had  prepared  me  for  this  during  our  talk  in  Berlin 
lie  had  said  that  perhaps  he  might  sometimes  be  unable  to 
at  the  appointed  hour.  As  it  turned  out,  I  saw  Mm  in  the 


THE   GIFT  FOR   PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  285 

next  three  months  only  a  few  times.  Then  he  came  just  once  for 
one  hour.  After  that  I  did  not  see  him  or  hear  from  him  again. 
When  we  had  made  our  arrangements  in  Berlin,  he  had  asked  me 
not  to  write  and  not  to  call  him  on  the  telephone  because  that 
would  arouse  his  fears  relating  to  certain  magic  ideas.  He  ex- 
pected me  to  stay  put  until  he  needed  me.  Since  I  had  agreed  to 
this,  I  was  bound  by  my  promise  now.  As  the  weeks  went  on  I 
learned  that  it  was  disturbing  to  me  to  be  paid  so  much  money 
without  working  for  it,  without  really  earning  it. 

I  urged  myself  to  be  patient  and  told  myself  that  I  was  by  no 
means  lazy.  Did  I  not  work  hard  every  day?  Had  I  not  written 
one  book  and  done  preliminary  work  on  another?  Did  I  not  study 
all  the  new  literature  in  psychology  and  psychiatry?  Evidently  I 
considered  these  activities  pleasure  rather  than  work.  Often  I 
caught  myself  ashamed  at  the  thought  that  I,  in  the  prime  of  life, 
was  not  earning  my  living.  This  was  paradoxical  enough  since  I  was 
"earning"  more  than  I  ever  had  before.  This  too  easy  life  without 
duties  and  obligations  was  uncomfortable.  I  even  began  to  feel  a  re- 
sentment against  my  patient  whom,  in  all  reason,  I  should  have  con- 
sidered my  benefactor.  How  often  in  the  past,  tired  from  my  ten 
hours  of  analytic  work,  had  I  daydreamed  of  an  easeful  life,  free 
from  financial  burdens,  which  would  permit  me  to  devote  myself  to 
the  realization  of  my  research  plans?  And  now  when  kind  destiny 
had  made  me  a  gift  of  just  this  situation,  I  could  not  enjoy  it. 

I  tried  in  vain  to  shake  off  the  strangely  unhappy  mood  that 
had  taken  possession  of  me  and  grew  worse  as  time  went  on. 
Again  and  again  I  asked  myself  what  kind  of  odd  discontent  it 
might  be  that,  precisely  when  I  had  every  reason  to  be  satisfied 
with  my  lot,  prevented  me  from  enjoying  it.  Measured  by  my  own 
modest  standards,  I  was  now  almost  wealthy.  I  was  getting  a  great 
deal  of  money  without  working  for  it.  (A  few  years  later,  of 
course,  Hitler  took  ail  my  savings.)  My  life  had  every  possible 
amenity  and  I  was  home  in  Vienna  where  I  wanted  to  be— what 
the  hell  was  the  matter  with  me?  The  explanations  I  found  were 
such  obvious  pretexts  and  pretensions  that  I  could  not  consider 
them  valid.  A  cloud  darkened  the  most  beautiful  holiday.  It  was 
mysterious  that  I  was  so  often  restless  or  sad  without  reasonable 
reasons.  To  be  sure  my  dark  mood  left  me  for  hours  at  a  time; 


THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

but  only  to  return  at  an  unforeseen  moment.  I  recall  that  it  over- 
took me  once  after  I  had  walked  home  from  a  delightful  conver- 
sation with  Freud,  and  again  while  I  crossed  the  street  coming 
home  to  the  Bristol  from  the  opera  house,  where  I  had  enjoyed 
Der  Rosenkamlier*  It  was  with  me  again  as  I  returned  from  hear- 
ing Mahler's  Fourth  Symphony.  I  was  still  under  the  spell  of  the 
last  movement,  which  is  full  of  gaiety  and  childlike  happiness. 
Walking  in  the  winter  night,  I  sang  it  over  and  over  under  my 
breath,  when  suddenly  I  felt  depressed.  I  had  known  moods  of 
this  sort  before,  but  none  so  persistent  as  this-  My  unrest  and  dis- 
satisfaction increased,  although  I  put  up  a  good  fight  against 
them. 

Finally  I  could  bear  it  no  longer.  I  wrote  to  my  patient  ex- 
pressing my  thanks  and  my  regrets  that  it  had  not  been  possible 
for  me  to  be  of  greater  use  to  him.  Without  giving  reasons— for  I 
had  none—I  asked  him  to  excuse  me  and  then  packed  my  trunks. 
The  next  morning  as  the  taxi  took  me  through  the  streets  of 
Vienna  on  my  way  to  the  station,  I  felt  wonderfully  lighthearted, 
as  If  I  had  thrown  off  a  heavy  burden.  The  air  of  the  radiant 
spring  morning  was  delicious,  and  I  looked  with  friendliness  into 
the  bees  of  the  people  in  the  streets.  My  farewell  to  Vienna  was 
not  sad  but  full  of  tenderness.  It  was  like  taking  leave  of  a  sweet* 
heart  whom  one  will  never  forget. 

Many  weeks  later  I  began  to  understand  what  had  happened 
to  me  betweea  arrival  and  departure.  I  became  aware  that  I  had 
been  discontented,  not  in  spite  of  my  good  fortune,  but  because 
of  IL  Much  later  still  I  recalled  just  when  the  first  shadow  had 
fallen  across  my  days  in  Vienna.  One  afternoon  I  had  by  accident 
—but  was  it  accident?— passed  the  house  in  which  I  was  born  and 
had  spent  my  childhood  years.  My  father,  who  was  in  the  Civil 
Servke,  had  often  been  worried  about  money  and  had  had  diffi- 
culties In  making  ends  meet  on  the  meager  salary  of  an  Austrian 
-official.  As  I  walked  along,  childhood  memories  crept  up  from 
corners  and  I  saw  again  the  worried  faces  of  my 
parents.  A  sudden  sadness  had  come  over  me  by  the  time  I 
leached  the  Bristol.  From  then  on  the  mood  only  left  me  for 
triel  boras  at  a  time.  Its  full  psychological  significance  only  be- 
t  dear  to  me  much  later* 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  287 

It  was  as  if  I  could  not  permit  myself  to  enjoy  my  rich  sur- 
roundings, my  too  comfortable  life,  or  the  money  come  by  so 
easily  but  not  felt  as  deserved  for  work  done.  The  childhood 
memories  had  brought  back  to  me  the  poverty  in  which  my  parents 
had  spent  their  lives,  the  sacrifices  they  had  made  to  give  us  chil- 
dren educational  advantages.  Here  in  the  same  city,  only  a  half 
hour's  walk  from  my  childhood  home,  I  had  lived  in  luxury.  A 
slight  discontent  had  already  appeared  at  the  Hotel  Bristol  prior 
to  this  incident,  but  I  had  explained  it  to  myself  as  being  due  to 
the  fact  that  I  was  unaccustomed  to  so  much  elegance.  My  mood 
had  continued  and  had  become  worse,  the  longer  my  carefree 
life  continued. 

It  was  not  possible,  finally,  to  avoid  the  psychological  conclu- 
sion that  my  depression  had  originated  in  an  unconscious  guilt 
feeling  arising  from  the  fact  that  I  was  living  in  abundance  and 
that  my  parents  had  lived  in  so  much  poorer  circumstances.  They 
had  deprived  themselves  of  all  the  pleasant  things  and  had  lived 
in  sadly  pinched  circumstances  in  order  to  give  their  children 
advantages.  It  seemed  that  I  might  allow  myself  a  certain  modest 
comfort,  but  that  a  mysterious  factor  within,  called  conscience, 
forbade  my  enjoying  extraordinary  luxury  or  much  money,  unless 
it  had  been  earned  by  hard  work,  and  opulence  that  was  un- 
deserved. It  was  as  if  I  had  not  the  right  to  live  sumptuously 
where  my  parents  had  suffered  so  many  hardships.  My  attempt 
to  adjust  to  a  comfortable,  luxurious  life  had  failed. 

Later  on  I  admitted  to  myself  that  I  had  been  a  damned  fool 
but  also  that  I  could  not  then  have  acted  otherwise.  When  I  told 
Freud  the  story  some  months  later,  he  laughed  at  me  cordially 
(I  loved  it  although  the  joke  was  on  me),  and,  if  memory  does 
not  fail  me,  it  was  on  this  occasion  that  he  expressed  the  wish  that 
I  might  "acquire  a  sclerotic  conscience."  I  hope  that  since  then  I 
have  secured  this  "hardening  of  the  conscience."  Alas,  I  was  never 
given  the  opportunity  to  find  out  whether,  after  this  one  ex- 
perience, I  might  behave  differently  in  a  similar  situation,  I  am 
afraid  that  destiny  does  not  have  another  chance  in  store  for  me— 
it  will  have  to  hurry  to  reach  me— but  I  rather  think  that  I  would 
take  to  some  comfort  and  luxury  much  more  kindly  today. 

Recently  a  playwright,  a  former  patient  of  mine,  wrote  me  a 


288  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

letter  in  which  he  told  me  how  much  he  was  enjoying  a  fabu- 
lously luxurious  life  in  Hollywood.  Engaged  to  write  scripts  for 
one  of  the  big  movie  companies,  he  has  been  drawing  an  enor- 
mous salary  for  many  months,  without  as  yet  having  written  one 
line  for  his  employers.  The  young  man  relishes  the  high  life  and 
Ms  leisure  in  Hollywood  without  unnecessary  scruples  and  super- 
fluous moral  considerations.  He  already  has  the  "sclerotic  con- 
science" I  lacked. 

Later  during  a  brief  visit  to  Vienna,  I  saw  the  Hotel  Bristol 
again.  Something  prompted  me  to  enter  the  lobby  of  the  hotel, 
the  scene  of  my  triumph  and  my  defeat,  I  just  looked  about  for  a 
moment,  glanced  at  the  guests  lounging  in  their  deep  chairs,  and 
left*  Out  again  on  the  Ringstrasse,  I  heard  myself  thinking  (the 
expression  will  be  explained  immediately),  "Those  people  have 
just  too  much  money,"*  The  sentence  was  banal;  obviously  only 
very  rich  people  could  stay  at  the  Bristol.  Why  had  I  thought 
that?  It  had  been  thought,  or  rather  almost  said,  with  a  certain  in- 
tonation and  in  a  Viennese  dialect  that,  though  familiar  to  me, 
1  myself  seldom  use.  It  had  been  thought  or  said  as  if  not  I  had 
been  the  speaker,  but  some  other  person,  a  long  way  back.  It  was 
like  the  delayed  echo  of  something  heard  long  ago.  I  do  not  re- 
call having  heard  my  father  say  this  sentence,  but  the  pronuncia- 
tion and  the  intonation  were  his,  not  mine.  The  note  of  disap- 
proval in  the  words  that  came  to  mind  so  surprisingly  must  have 
been  the  determining  factor  in  the  genesis  and  development  of  my 
discontent  while  I  stayed  at  the  splendid  hotel.  It  was  as  if  I  my- 
self had  been  one  of  those  people  who  "have  just  too  much 
money,"  one  of  those  people  of  whom  my  father  had  spoken  so 
disapprovingly. 

It  scans  that  the  severity  of  our  unconscious  conscience  lessens 
as  we  grow  older  or  after  we  have  paid  for  our  thought-crimes  by 
differing.  The  above  presentation  would  be  incomplete  without 
tracing  the  genesis  of  my  strange  mood  back  in  still  another 
direction.  It  would  perliaps  be  more  flattering  to  one's  ego  if  one 
could  assume  that  an  unconscious  reaction  of  conscience  emerged, 
but  it  would  be  neither  honest  nor  correct. 

*  The  sentence  In  its  original  tern:  "Die  Leaf  hafr'n  halt  zuwel  Geld." 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  289 

Intellectual  integrity  demands  the  confesion  that  such  a  strong 
moral  reaction  could  not  have  taken  place  without  having  teen 
preceded  by  a  feeling  that  was  unconsciously  considered  as  guilt. 
What  happened  may  be  easily  reconstructed.  I  must  have  been 
too  proud  of  my  good  luck  at  first.  There  must  have  been  some 
feelings  of  haughty  presumption  in  me,  as  if  it  were  because  of 
my  superior  achievements  that  I  could  now  live  in  the  finest  hotel 
in  town.  Painful  though  it  may  be,  it  must  be  acknowledged  that 
there  must  have  been  at  first  some  mood  of  triumph  or  conceit, 
that  I  prided  myself  on  having  become  so  much  more  successful 
than  my  poor  father  and  brothers.  The  depression  which  followed 
was,  of  course,  of  a  moral  kind,  as  if  such  pride  and  presumption 
were  a  crime  in  thought.  All  the  characteristic  traits  of  my  en- 
suing sadness  show  the  opposite  of  the  unconscious  tendencies. 

Curiously  enough,  a  few  moments  after  leaving  the  hotel  an- 
other memory  occurred  to  me,  a  children's  poem  that  I  am  al- 
most sure  I  had  not  thought  of  since  I  was  a  boy.  The  verses  came 
back  to  me  as  suddenly  as  if  they  had  popped  up  from  a  trap 
door  on  a  stage.  This  folk  poem  that  the  public-school  children 
of  Vienna  used  to  recite  is  called  "The  Little  Tree  That  Wished 
to  Have  Different  Leaves."  It  tells  the  story  of  a  small  fir  tree 
that  stands  among  trees  of  other  kinds  in  the  forest  and  is 
ashamed  because  it  has  only  prickly  needles.  It  wishes  to  have 
leaves  like  the  other  trees.  It  receives  such  leaves,  but  a  goat  comes 
along  and  eats  them  up.  The  little  tree  then  wishes  for  leaves 
of  glass,  but  a  storm  destroys  them.  The  tree  now  wishes  for  it- 
self leaves  of  gold;  a  peddler  sees  them,  picks  them,  and  carries 
them  off  in  his  bag.  The  disillusioned  little  tree  now  only  wants 
its  old  needles  back.  It  was  immediately  clear  why  the  forgotten 
poem  had  emerged  from  its  long  oblivion.  I  was  making  fun  of 
myself  and  my  insatiable  wishes.  Certainly  it  is  significant  that 
the  two  isolated  memories,  the  sentence  heard  from  my  father, 
and  the  poem  learned  in  grammar  school,  both  occurred  to  me 
within  a  few  minutes.  I  must  have  originally  heard  both  when 
I  was  about  seven  or  eight  years  old.  They  belong,  so  to  speak, 
to  the  same  geological  stratum  of  my  past.  They  not  only  served 
as  an  indirect  confirmation  of  the  psychological  analysis  here 
sketched  but  also  convinced  me  that  the  moral  teachings  and  codes 


2§0  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

o£  my  childhood  were  deeply  rooted  and  continued  to  live  a  sub- 
terranean life  within  my  personality  in  the  years  of  late  manhood. 
Self-analysis  o£  this  kind  originated  in  the  need  to  obtain  in- 
sight into  my  own  moods,  thoughts,  and  impulses  as  they  ap- 
peared in  everyday  life.  It  brought  some  surprising  revelations 
concerning  my  personal  peculiarities  and  information  about  my 
character  and  emotional  development.  I  learned  to  understand 
why  an  enemy  or  a  group  of  enemies  are  among  my  emotional 
needs,  why  I  cannot  imagine  myself  as  a  member  of  a  political 
party,  why  my  ambition  goes  in  one  direction  and  not  in  another. 
1  learned,  too,  why  I  always  wish  I  had  written  a  book  or  a  paper 
when  I  admire  it.  which  proves  that  my  admiration  is  usually 
accompanied  by  envy.  (Strangely  enough,  I  can  read  whole  vol- 
umes of  the  Psychoanalytic  Quarterly  without  the  slightest  trace 
of  such  envious  feelings.)  Self-analysis  has  given  me  these  insights 
and  a  hundred  more,  many  of  them  painful  and  unflattering,  a 
few  that  are  pleasant,  all  uninteresting  to  others  but  of  consider- 
able interest  to  me  as  a  psychologist  and  as  a  person. 


II 


IT  B  not  difficult  to  show  how  a  psychologist  arrives  at  in- 
sights from  careful  self-observation.  But  how  can  I  give  my 
readers  a  concrete  idea  of  the  processes  that  enable  us  to  conjec- 
ture and  comprehend  the  inner  processes  in  others?  They  are  by 
no  means  so  simple  as  they  appear  to  the  layman,  and  it  is  the 
more  difficult  to  describe  them  because  they  are,  in  part,  inca- 
of  expression  in  words.  I  propose  to  begin  by  dividing  the 
process  of  conjecture  and  comprehension  into  three  sections,  al- 
though I  know  how  artificial  this  division  is,  and  how  misplaced 
It  appear  in  face  of  the  living  current  of  the  psychical  act 

The  first  section  of  the  way,  thus  artificially  divided,  leads  from 
tic  conscious  or  potentially  conscious  perception  of  the  subject 


THE  GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  2£l 

matter  to  the  point  where  It  dives  down  into  the  unconscious 
mind  of  the  psychologist.  The  second  would  then  represent  the 
unconscious  assimilation  of  the  observed  material.  The  third 
stretches  from  the  re-ernergence  into  consciousness  of  the  data  so 
assimilated  to  the  point  of  their  description  or  formulation.  Of 
the  middle  of  these  sections  we  can  say  nothing  except  that  we 
have  no  direct  access  to  it  and  that  it  interests  us  most  of  all.  The 
other  two  sections  are  more  accessible.  True,  we  cannot  fix  the 
moment  in  which  a  perception  dives  down  below  our  conscious- 
ness, No  more  can  we  state  precisely  the  time  of  its  re-emergence. 
For  the  rest,  it  is  not  only  in  respect  of  time  that  we  are  liable  to, 
error  in  this  matter, 

The  actual  process  is  only  partially  accessible  to  introspective 
observation.  The  act  of  slipping  down  into  the  unconscious  re- 
gion,  the  assimilation  there,  and  the  re-emergence  into  conscious'- 
ness,  may  best  be  compared  with  the  passage  through  a  tun- 
nel For  each  of  the  two  sections  there  is  a  different  degree  of 
light  Whether  we  can  depict  them  depends  upon  the  brightness, 
of  that  light. 

The  first  section  begins  in  the  clear  daylight  of  consciousness, 
Let  us  call  to  mind  the  analytic  situation  that  presents  itself  to 
its  daily.  The  subject  speaks  or  is  silent,  and  accompanies  Ms 
speech  or  silence  with  "speaking"  gestures.  We  see  the  play  erf 
his  features,  the  variety  of  his  movements.  All  this  communicates 
to  us  the  vital  expression  of  what  he  is  feeling  and  thinking.  It 
supplies  the  psychical  data,  which  the  analyst  then  assimilates  un- 
consciously during  the  period  that  we  have  called  the  second 
section. 

But  is  this  really  the  whole  of  the  psychical  data  that  he  has  at 
his  disposal  and  uses?  If  we  recall  the  course  of  an  analytic  ses- 
sion, do  we  not  feel  that  something  is  missing  in  this  account,  some- 
thing important,  nay,  decisive?  Our  feeling  is  right  In  truth,  we 
are  incapable  of  dissecting  into  all  its  components  parts  the  process 
by  which  we  recognize  psychological  fact.  The  data  presentee!  to 
the  analyst  must  be  more  extensive  and  differentiated  than  ap- 
pears to  him  during  or  after  the  treatment.  His  field  of  observa- 
tion must  be  wider,  Jt  appears  that  I  have  committed  errors  evea 
in  my  description  of  jlie  data  at  his  disposal  What  the  analyst 


gg§  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Is  able  to  perceive  and  comprehend  consciously  is  probably  only  a 
selection  that  he  makes  retrospectively,  after  the  event.  What  his 
conscious  memory  supplies  him  with  is  only  a  small  portion  of 
what  he  actually  uses.  In  other  words,  the  analyst  knows  only  a 
part  of  the  data  on  which  his  judgment  is  based,  that  such  and 
such  processes  are  going  on  in  the  unconscious  mind  of  the  per- 
son he  is  observing.  Our  apprehension  of  the  other  personality  is 
not  restricted  to  our  conscious  perceptions. 

The  individual  inner  life  of  a  person  cannot  be  read  in  the  fea- 
tures that  psychology  has  hitherto  grasped  and  been  able  to  grasp. 
Of  course  I  know  that  there  is  little  that  is  new  in  what  I  am 
now  saying.  It  is  the  unconscious  mind  of  the  subject  that  is  of 
decisive  importance,  and  the  analyst  meets  that  with  his  owTn  un- 
conscious mind  as  the  instrument  of  perception.  That  is  easy  to 
say,  but  difficult  to  realize.  Psychologists  can  hardly  conceive  the 
notion  of  unconscious  perception.  For  psychoanalysis  the  notion 
presents  no  difficulty,  but  to  understand  the  peculiar  nature  of 
unconscious  perception  and  observation  is  not  so  easy. 

For  the  moment  we  will  turn  from  the  theoretical  considera- 
tion of  the  problem,  and  proceed  with  the  help  of  any  casual 
example  from  daily  practice.  One  is  as  good  as  another.  A  patient 
told  me  how  on  the  previous  day  he  had  had  a  violent  quarrel 
with  his  girl  (he  had  been  having  a  sexual  affair  with  her  for  a 
considerable  time).  At  first  the  conversation  turned  upon  the 
girl's  health;  she  had  been  feeling  weak  and  poorly  of  late.  She 
had  remarked  that  she  was  afraid  of  tuberculosis;  she  weighed  too 
little  and  must  put  on  flesh.  The  young  man,  my  patient,  did 
not  think  that  necessary.  He  opposed  it  on  aesthetic  grounds. 
How  did  the  analyst  suddenly  perceive  that  the  quarrel  centered 
unconsciously  upon  the  question  of  a  child?  Nothing  in  the 
young  man's  account  pointed  that  way.  Looking  back,  I  discern 
my  sudden  idea  must  have  carried  me  back  at  one  bound  to 
my  patient  had  told  me  about  a  year  and  a  half 
About  two  years  previously  the  girl  had  become  pregnant 
at  his  urgent  entreaty,  had  procured  an  abortion.  She  had 
offered  no  great  resistance  to  the  suggestion  of  abortion,  and  had 
the  operation,  which  proved  difficult  owing  to  special 
with  real  heroism.  Subsequently  she  had  seldom 


THE   GIFT  FOR   PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  ggg 

mentioned  the  incident,  and  that  only  In  passing.  And  my  patient 
had  seldom  thought  of  the  subject  for  a  year  and  a  half. 

Now  was  it  the  words  "putting  on  flesh"  in  his  story  that 
roused  the  memory?  How  else  could  the  latent  meaning  of  the 
lovers'  quarrel  have  revealed  itself  to  me?  I  could  not  tell,  even 
though  I  were  to  repeat  the  story  with  the  accuracy  of  a  gramo- 
phone. It  must  have  declared  itself  somehow  or  other,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  girl's  fears,  according  to  the  patient's  account, 
sounded  entirely  reasonable  and  justifiable.  In  spite  of  her  per- 
fectly well-founded  plea,  he  must  have  detected  some  note  of 
secret  reproach  in  her  words— a  tone  must  have  conveyed  to  him 
that  the  girl  had  never  got  over  her  loss.  What  psychoanalysis 
cells  on  the  subject  Is  that  my  own  unconscious  mind  had  acted  as 
an  instrument  of  perception  and  seized  upon  the  secret  mean- 
ing of  the  quarrel,  a  meaning  hidden,  moreover,  from  both  prin- 
cipals. It  is  good  to  know  that,  but  is  it  enough?  My  unconscious 
mind  is  able  to  conjecture  a  hidden  meaning  only  through  given 
signs.  It  requires  tokens  in  order  to  detect  something.  Now,  I 
have  deliberately  chosen  a  primitive  example.  This  is  a  case  of 
cryptomnesia,  people  will  say.  A  memory  no  longer  present  in  my 
consciousness  was  responsible  for  my  recognition  of  the  latent 
meaning.  The  unconscious  remembrance  of  that  long-past  inci- 
dent, emerging  suddenly  during  the  story,  set  me  on  the  track. 

Let  us  take  an  example  that  is  only  a  little  more  complex  and 
has  to  do  with  a  like  conflict,  but  in  which  no  such  memory  of 
heuristic  value  can  be  traced.  A  young  girl  under  psychoanalysis 
evinced  an  extraordinary  fear  of  marriage.  She  repulsed  any  man 
who  made  approaches  to  her,  and  shrank  from  any  chance  of 
marriage  or  sexual  intercourse.  The  reason  she  always  gave  for  her 
attitude  was  her  exceptional  terror  of  the  dangers  of  childbirth. 
She  was  convinced  that  she  would  not  survive  the  pain,  and 
would  die.  At  the  mere  thought  of  childbirth,  she  was  overcome 
by  violent  terror.  She  brought  up  the  fact  that  many  millions  of 
women  survive  childbirth  without  injury  and  mentioned  the  pos- 
sibility of  preventive  measures,  but  she  nullified  both  factors  by 
stressing  the  uncertainty  precisely  in  her  own  case. 

Now,  she  had  spoken  of  this  fear  of  hers  several  times  without 
my  understanding  more  of  the  nature  or  mental  origin  of  her 


$94  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

emotion  than  any  other  observant  auditor.  How  was  it  that  on  a 
new  occasion  I  suddenly  recognized  that,  apart  from  all  other 
mental  determinants,  a  profound  fear  must  be  at  work,  over- 
shadowing all  other  feelings,  that  she  was  incapable  of  bearing  a 
child  and  that  any  man  must  be  unhappy  with  her?  Of  course  I 
did  not  give  expression  to  this  idea  about  the  suppressed  nature 
of  her  fear,  but  waited  till  the  astonishing  surmise  had  been 
confirmed  again  and  again.  I  cannot  detect  in  myself  any  memory 
of  a  previous  communication,  emerging  suddenly  from  the  un- 
conscious and  helping  me  to  find  the  connection.  Nothing  in  the 
girl's  statements,  so  far  as  I  could  remember  then  or  have  been 
able  to  recall  since,  pointed  to  her  being  dominated  by  an  un- 
conscious fear  lest  she  be  unable  to  bear  a  child.  This  fear  I  was 
subsequently  able  to  trace  to  apprehensions  based  upon  long-con- 
tinued masturbation.  I  had  listened  attentively  to  her  lamenta- 
tions and  her  story  without  dreaming  of  any  such  thing,  when 
suddenly  this  idea  entered  my  mind,  giving  me  my  first  and  most  im- 
portant means  of  approach  to  an  understanding  of  the  case.  Here, 
then,  there  was  no  memory,  or—to  put  it  more  cautiously— none 
traceable.  Nevertheless,  there  must  have  been  something  in  the 
patient's  words,  or  something  to  be  read  between  the  lines,  that 
pointed  in  that  direction,  something  in  her  utterances,  verbal  or 
mimetic  or  otherwise,  that  suggested  the  connection. 

Here  we  are  faced  with  a  whole  series  of  questions.  The  idea 
must  have  arisen  from  something.  Why  did  it  arise  just  at  this 
juncture,  since  we  had  talked  of  her  fear  previously,  since,  in- 
deed, she  had  often  told  me  about  it?  What  went  on  within  my 
mind,  on  what  mental  processes  was  the  idea  based,  and  what 
preceded  it?  But  is  it  not  erroneous  and  unjust  to  lay  special 
stress  on  this  side  of  the  problem?  Is  it  not  better  to  assume  that 
my  idea  must  have  been  based  upon  some  factor  not  hitherto 
grasped,  that  is  to  say,  that  it  must  ultimately  be  traced  back  to 
sense  perception?  In  that  case,  unnamed  impressions  be- 
come the  means  of  communicating  psychological  knowledge. 
That  brings  us  back  to  our  starting  point,  to  the  nature  of  the 
data  at  our  disposal.  It  appears  to  me  that  it  is  here  that  we 
begin,  if  we  want  to  discover  the  foundation  of  the  psychical 
comprehension  of  unconscious  processes.  If  Kant  begins  with 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  2Q$ 

the  statement  that  cognition  arises  from  experience,  that  true 
dictum  must  be  supplemented  by  the  statement  that  experience 
has  its  origin  in  our  sense  perceptions,  that  nothing  can  be  in  our 
intellect  which  was  not  there  before  in  our  senses.  (Nihil  est  in 
intellectu  quod  non  prius  fuerit  in  sensibus.)  This  statement  is 
also  true  for  a  psychologist  who  seeks  to  grasp  the  unconscious 
processes  in  others. 

Psychical  data  are  not  uniform.  We  have,  of  course,  in  the  first 
place  the  considerable  portion  that  we  seize  upon  through  con- 
scious hearing,  sight,  touch,  and  smell.  A  further  portion  is  what 
we  observe  unconsciously.  It  is  permissible  to  declare  that  this 
second  portion  is  more  extensive  than  the  first,  and  that  far 
greater  importance  must  be  ascribed  to  it  in  the  matter  of  psycho- 
logical comprehension  than  to  what  we  consciously  hear,  see,  etc. 
Of  course,  we  seize  upon  this,  also,  by  means  of  the  senses  that  we 
know,  but,  to  speak  descriptively,  it  is  preconscious  or  uncon- 
scious. We  perceive  peculiarities  in  the  features  and  bearing  and 
movements  of  others  that  help  to  make  the  impression  we  re- 
ceive without  our  observing  or  attending  to  them.  We  remember 
details  of  another  person's  dress  and  peculiarities  in  his  gestures, 
without  recalling  them;  a  number  of  minor  points,  an  olfactory 
nuance;  a  sense  of  touch  while  shaking  hands,  too  slight  to  be 
observed;  warmth,  clamminess,  roughness  or  smoothness  in  the 
skin;  the  manner  in  which  he  glances  up  or  looks— of  all  this  we 
are  not  consciously  aware,  and  yet  it  influences  our  opinion.  The 
minutest  movements  accompany  every  process  of  thought;  mus- 
cular twitchings  in  face  or  hands  and  movements  of  the  eyes 
speak  to  us  as  well  as  words.  No  small  power  of  communication  is 
contained  in  a  glance,  a  person's  bearing,  a  bodily  movement,  a 
special  way  of  breathing.  Signals  of  subterranean  motions  and 
impulses  are  being  sent  silently  to  the  region  of  everyday  speech, 
gesture,  and  movement 

A  series  of  neurodynamic  stimuli  come  to  us  from  other  people 
and  play  a  part  in  producing  our  impressions,  though  we  are  not 
conscious  of  noticing  them.  There  are  certain  expressive  move- 
ments that  we  understand,  without  our  conscious  perception 
really  being  at  work  in  that  understanding.  We  need  only  think 
of  the  wide  field  of  language.  Everybody  has,  in  addition  to  the 


2§6  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

characteristics  we  know,  certain  vocal  modulations  that  do  not 
strike  us;  the  particular  pitch  and  timbre  of  his  voice,  his  partic- 
ular speech  rhythm,  which  we  do  not  consciously  observe.  There 
are  variations  of  tone,  pauses,  and  shifted  accentuation,  so  slight 
that  they  never  reach  the  limits  of  conscious  observation,  indi- 
vidual nuances  of  pronunciation  that  we  do  not  notice,  but  note. 
These  little  traits,  which  have  no  place  in  the  field  of  conscious 
observation,  nevertheless  betray  a  great  deal  to  us  about  a  person. 
A  voice  that  we  hear,  though  we  do  not  see  the  speaker,  may 
sometimes  tell  us  more  about  him  than  if  we  were  observing  him. 
It  is  not  the  words  spoken  by  the  voice  that  are  of  importance, 
but  what  it  tells  us  of  the  speaker.  Its  tone  comes  to  be  more  im- 
portant than  what  it  says.  "Speak,  in  order  that  I  may  see  you," 
said  Socrates. 

Language— and  here  I  do  not  mean  only  the  language  of  words 
but  also  the  inarticulate  sounds,  the  language  of  the  eyes  and 
gestures—was  originally  an  instinctive  utterance.  It  was  not  until 
a  later  stage  that  language  developed  from  an  undifferentiated 
whole  to  a  means  of  communication.  But  throughout  this  and 
other  changes  it  has  remained  true  to  its  original  function,  which 
finds  expression  in  the  inflection  of  the  voice,  in  the  intonation, 
and  in  other  characteristics.  It  is  probable  that  the  language  of 
words  was  a  late  formation,  taking  the  place  of  gesture  language, 
and  it  is  not  irrational  to  suppose,  as  that  somewhat  self-willed 
linguist,  Sir  Richard  Paget,  maintains,  that  the  movements  of 
the  tongue  originally  imitated  our  various  actions.  Even  where 
language  only  serves  the  purpose  of  practical  communication, 
we  hear  the  accompanying  sounds  expressive  of  emotion,  though 
we  may  not  be  aware  of  them. 

There  are,  besides,  nuances  of  smell  and  peculiarities  of  touch 
that  escape  our  conscious  observation  and  yet  enter  into  the  sum 
total  of  our  impressions.  They  accompany  the  coarser  or  stronger 
•eoascloiis  sense  perceptions  as  overtones  accompany  a  melody. 
In  a  state  of  hyperesthesia  we  may  even  consciously  observe  these 
¥ariations  of  tone,  glance,  or  gesture,  the  minutest  facial  move- 
moils,  and  muscular  twitchings;  but  that  is  exceptional.  In  a 
general  way  It  is  only  the  grossest  of  these  accompanying  move- 
ments, tones*  and  smelk,  that  reach,  our  consciousness,  and  are 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  S§7 

consciously  used  as  psychological  data.  The  others  appear  as  part 
of  the  total  impression.  They  do  not  emerge  separately  in  our 
perception.  There  can  be  nothing  wrong  in  likening  these  un- 
conscious perceptions  with  the  minute  sense  stimuli  that  psy- 
chology teaches  us  need  only  be  added  together  or  multiplied  in 
order  to  become  accessible  to  conscious  perception.  Each  of  these 
minute  stimuli,  then,  must  have  contributed  something  to  the 
sensation.  We  know  that  technical  science  has  devised  apparatus 
to  bring  within  our  grasp  these  natural  processes,  which  we 
should  otherwise  be  unable  to  perceive.  And  here  I  call  attention 
to  the  important  fact  of  repression,  which  greatly  restricts  our 
capacity  for  perceiving  tiny  signals  of  this  kind. 

Perhaps  we  shall  do  well  to  draw  a  distinction  between  this 
part  of  our  psychical  data  and  another,  even  though  the  distinc- 
tion may  prove  at  a  later  stage  to  be  purely  descriptive.  It  is 
true  that  the  facts  with  which  we  have  just  been  dealing  are  un- 
conscious, but  they  do  undoubtedly  fall  within  the  group  of 
sense  perceptions  of  which  we  have  knowledge.  I  should  like  to 
draw  a  distinction  between  these  data  and  certain  other  data, 
also  unconscious,  helping  like  the  former  to  shape  our  impres- 
sions, but  such  that  their  precise  nature  can  only  be  surmised. 
That  is  to  say,  we  receive  impressions  through  our  senses  that 
are  in  themselves  beyond  the  reach  of  our  consciousness.  The 
assumption  that  these  sense  perceptions  have  no  place  in  human 
consciousness,  or  have  lost  their  place  in  it,  is  supported  by  certain 
facts  and  rendered  exceedingly  probable  by  others.  I  mean 
especially  the  fact  of  sense  communications,  having  their  origin 
in  the  animal  past  of  the  human  race  and  now  lost  to  our  con- 
sciousness. The  sense  of  direction  in  bees,  the  capacity  of  birds 
of  passage  to  find  their  way,  the  sense  of  light  in  insects*  skin,  the 
instinctive  realization  of  approaching  danger  in  various  animals, 
all  bear  witness  to  sense  functions  with  which  we  have  almost  no 
human  conceptions  to  compare.  Of  other  sense  functions  that  re- 
semble those  of  the  animals,  it  may  be  said  that  our  perceptions 
are  much  vaguer,  weaker,  and  less  certain.  It  is  easy  to  detect  in 
them  the  rudiments  of  originally  keen  and  well-developed  senses. 
We  need  only  compare  the  large  part  played  by  the  sense  of 
smell  among  dogs  with  its  small  significance  in  our  own  lives. 


208  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

Freed  has  established  the  probability  that  the  importance  of 
the  sense  of  smell  has  been  greatly  diminished  in  man  through 
the  development  of  his  upright  gait.  The  fact  that  the  sense  of 
smell  tells  dogs  of  things  no  longer  accessible  to  us  may  serve  as 
an  example  of  the  diminished  importance  of  a  number  of  sense 
functions  in  the  life  of  the  human  race.  Certain  senses  are  re- 
duced to  rudimentary  remnants  because  they  have  been  less  and 
less  used.  Do  we  not  say,  "I  smell  a  rat"  when  we  are  suspicious 
of  evil  and  concealed  motives  behind  X's  behavior?  Is  it  acciden- 
tal that  we  can  use  such  a  figure  of  speech  as  if  we  were  still 
olfactory  creatures?  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  there  are  more  of 
these  rudimentary  senses,  tracing  their  origin  to  the  evolution  of 
prehistoric  man,  which,  though  not,  indeed,  totally  lost,  have  lost 
their  significance. 

In  addition  there  are  other  senses  of  which  we  have  completely 
lost  consciousness  and  which  yet  retain  their  efficacy,  that  is  to 
say,  are  able  to  communicate  unconscious  impressions  to  us.  A 
comparison  with  the  sense  perceptions  of  animals— for  instance, 
the  way  certain  insects  can  receive  and  communicate  perceptions 
—points  to  the  supposition  that  like  senses  may  survive  uncon- 
sciously in  ourselves.  I  have  in  mind  such  a  thing  as  the  means  of 
communication  among  ants,  described  by  K.  Frisch,  and  the  signals 
ants  give  with  their  antennae,  which  the  research  of  Forel,  Wis- 
mann,  and  others  has  explained.  Assuredly,  there  is  a  significant 
language  in  the  animal  kingdom  and  means  of  communication 
not  ours,  or  no  longer  ours.  The  biologist  Degener,  in  his  study 
of  simple  animal  societies,  has  assumed  a  kind  of  telepathic  com- 
munication. A  minute  stimulus  given  by  a  particular  species  of 
caterpillar  to  a  single  individual  within  a  large  group  caused  a 
simultaneous  palpitation  throughout  the  whole  group.  Degener 
speaks  of  a  hyperindividual  group  soul  in  these  animal  societies. 
Freud,  too,  has  pointed  to  the  possibility  of  such  direct  psychical 
communication.  With  reference  to  the  common  will  in  the  large 
insect  communities,  he  thinks  that  this  original,  archaic  means  of 
communication  has  been  replaced  in  the  course  of  racial  evolu- 
by  the  superior  method  of  communication  by  signs.  But  the 
older  method  may  survive,  he  thinks,  in  the  background  and  hu- 
man beings  revert  to  it  under  certain  conditions. 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  2§g 

It  will  be  observed  that,  in  assuming  a  direct  psychical  com- 
munication through  these  archaic,  rudimentary  surviving  senses, 
we  approach  the  complex  of  problems  known  as  telepathy.  I  be- 
lieve that  in  the  special  case  of  communication  between  two  un- 
conscious minds  called  by  that  name,  these  neglected  senses, 
favored  by  the  weakened  action  of  the  others,  do  really  come  into 
action.  Such  telepathic  communication  is  not  supersensory.  It 
makes  actual  those  senses  that  have  become  alien  to  our  con- 
sciousness. By  using  as  signals  the  expression  of  stimuli  that  do 
not  cross  the  threshold  of  our  consciousness,  and  calling  them  in 
to  supplement  or  correct  our  normal  sense  perceptions,  it  gives 
rise  to  special  psychical  apprehensions.  The  conversation  between 
the  unconscious  of  the  one  and  the  other  mind  does  not  proceed 
in  a  vacuum.  It  is  served  by  certain  means  of  communication 
comparable  with  those  which  we  have  assumed  in  the  lower 
animal  societies.  They  are  not  so  much  supersensory  as  subsensu- 
ous  phenomena,  that  is,  information  conveyed  by  means  of  an- 
cient, ordinarily  discarded  senses.  The  return  to  these  unknown 
senses,  which  must  formerly  have  played  a  far  greater  part  in  the 
activities  of  living  organisms,  may  sometimes  give  rise  to  the  im- 
pression that  telepathy  involves  no  sense  perception  at  all. 

We  have  here,  not  mysterious  powers  of  divination,  but  rather 
an  interruption  of  the  customary  working  of  our  psychical 
machinery  to  make  way  for  older  methods,  not  otherwise 
applied.  Thus  the  unconscious  perception  passes  the  bounds 
of  communication  received  through  our  known  sense  organs.  We 
have  ears,  and  hear  not  with  them  alone;  we  have  eyes,  and  see 
not  with  them  alone.  Possibly  these  unknown  semes  work  faster 
than  those  we  know,  can  communicate  their  perceptions  to  the 
unconscious  faster  than  the  senses  developed  later,  and  so  seem 
to  act  through  the  air.  And  it  is  further  worth  observing  that  this 
action  upon  secret  feelers  of  which  we  are  unconscious  belongs 
mainly  to  the  realm  of  instinct,  so  that  we  may  speak  rather  of 
instinct-reading  than  of  thought-reading.  The  suspension  of  cus- 
tomary functions  thus  renders  our  less  keen  senses  hyperesdietic 
—by  way  of  comparison  we  may  recall  the  greater  intensity  and 
subtlety  of  the  sense  of  touch  in  people  who  have  lost  their  sight 
—and  long-forgotten  senses  recover  the  power  of  fuBcdoning.  The 


gOO  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

enhanced  effectiveness  is,  therefore,  caused  by  the  neglect  of  the 
mind's  ordinary  methods  of  working. 

We  have  long  been  aware  that  the  acknowledgment  of  telep- 
athy as  a  psychical  phenomenon  does  not  imply  that  higher 
powers  are  substituted  for  the  dynamics  of  mental  action.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  assume  supernatural  happenings  because  some 
small  fragments  of  what  goes  on  in  the  world  are  still  unex- 
plained. We  need  not  give  ourselves  up  to  magic  because  the 
cause  and  effect  of  some  process  is  unknown  to  us.  We  must  con- 
fess that  our  knowledge  is  not  adequate  to  explain  the  phenom- 
enon. It  does  not  become  more  explicable  if  we  refer  it  back  to 
some  greater  unknown  factor.  When  we  want  to  drink  a  glass 
of  milk,  we  have  no  need  to  buy  a  cow.  The  psychological  valua- 
tion of  the  efficacy  of  unknown  or  little  known  senses  has  brought 
us  here  to  the  limits  of  our  subject. 

While  we  have  thus  been  reminded  of  the  prehistoric  past  of 
sense  perceptions,  we  may  now  cast  a  hasty  glance  in  the  opposite 
direction.  The  advance  of  civilization  has  caused  certain  senses 
to  perish,  and  others  to  become  more  specialized  and  differenti- 
ated. In  general  we  may  say  that  the  development  of  civilization 
has  reduced  the  importance  of  sense  perceptions,  has  challenged 
the  exclusive  dominion  they  originally  held  over  the  life  of  the 
individual.  The  aim  is  to  manage  with  a  minimum  of  sense  per- 
ception and  to  leave  the  subsequent  process  of  cognition  to  the 
Intellect.  With  the  advance  of  civilization  sense  perceptions  are 
more  and  more  markedly  degraded  to  despised  acts  preparatory 
£0  the  intellectual  mastery  of  phenomena.  We  may  cite  as  a  sig^i 
of  this  weakening  our  mistrust  of  the  data  with  which  they  supply 
as.  The  development  of  civilization  brings  a  weakening  and  stunt- 
ing of  'sense  impressions  that  may  be  compared  with  the  loss  of 
keenness  in  our  sense  impressions  in  old  age,  deafness  and  far- 
sightedness* which,  however,  are  due  to  biological  causes. 

Tliere  are  reasons  to  support  the  hypothesis  that  refers  this 

sigaificance  of  the  senses-  to  the  advance  of  the  age- 

proem  of  repression.  The  concepts  "sense"  and  "sensuality*' 

aye  not  merely  loosely  associated  in  speech,  but  there  is  an  inner 

connection  that  gives  us  an  insight  into  certain  psychical  proc- 

The  pleasure  of  the  senses  really  is  a  pleasure  arising  from 


THE   GIFT  FOR   PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  §OI 

the  tension  and  relaxation  of  the  sense  organs.  Sense  perception, 
the  significance  of  which  is  more  and  more  restricted  with  ad- 
vancing civilization  by  the  Intellectual  processes,  particularly 
memory,  is  closely  associated  with  the  satisfaction  of  organic  and 
elementary  instincts.  As  memory  develops,  it  comes  to  represent 
a  substitute  for  the  fading  strength  of  sense  perceptions.  It  might 
be  argued  that  the  loss  of  intensity  and  significance  in  the  senses 
Is  a  mark  of  diminishing  vitality  In  the  human  race  since  it  is 
associated  with  a  weakening  of  sexual  Instinct. 

Perhaps  the  retort  might  be  made  that  it  Is  precisely  civilization 
that  has  greatly  increased  the  keenness  of  our  sense  perceptions 
through  the  instruments  it  has  created.  It  enables  us  to  see  things 
through  the  microscope  and  telescope  that  were  not  formerly 
visible;  enables  us,  by  means  of  appropriate  Instruments,  to  hear 
sounds  formerly  Inaudible;  and  communicates  sensations  of  touch 
and  vibration  otherwise  beyond  the  reach  of  our  consciousness. 
That  is  true,  but  it  Is  not  In  contradiction  with  the  previous 
statement.  In  part,  these  instruments  serve  to  correct  the  very 
evil  caused  by  civilization— for  instance,  eyeglasses— for  the  rest, 
their  efficacy  has  certainly  nothing  to  do  with  processes  that  are 
of  vital  interest  to  the  human  organism.  Undoubtedly,  they  are 
of  great  Importance,  but  It  cannot  be  denied  that  they  are  artifi- 
cial expedients,  offering  a  poor  substitute  for  the  direct  data  com- 
municated by  organic  sense  perception.  Perhaps  we  may  venture 
to  regard  memory  itself,  which  with  advancing  civilization  chal- 
lenges the  importance  of  sense  perception,  as  a  disposition  to  feel 
the  strength  and  Immediacy  of  sense  perceptions  over  again. 

Let  us  return  from  this  digression  to  our  main  argument.  We 
have  sought  the  special  significance  of  sense  perception  in  psychol- 
ogy in  a  different  direction  from  that  pointed  out  by  modern  sense 
physiology  and  psychology.  We  have  grasped  how  varied  and  differ- 
entiated psychical  data  are  when  we  set  about  to  investigate  them 
from  the  point  of  view  of  sense  perception,  but  also  how  hard  to 
differentiate.  Besides  the  main  path,  they  can  use  a  number  of 
side  paths,  subterranean  passages,  secret  ways.  In  addition  to  oar 
conscious  sense  perceptions,  we  receive  communications  through 
other  organs  of  perception  which  we  cannot  consciously  call  our 
own,  although  they  are  within  us.  We  can  treat  these  signals 


3O2  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

like  any  others.  We  can  attend  to  them  or  neglect  them,  listen 
to  them  or  miss  them,  see  them  or  overlook  them.  There  is  a  very 
natural  temptation  not  to  attend  to  them  or  observe  them.  (A 
frequent  part  of  our  capacity  for  unconscious  and  pre-conscious 
perception  is  the  observation  that  something  is  lacking,  the  sub- 
terranean awareness  that  something  is  not  there.)  It  is  certainly 
right  and  useful  to  sharpen  our  powers  of  conscious  observation 
of  things  perceived,  but  we  should  not  overlook  the  value  of  un- 
conscious perception.  We  must  not  reject  what  makes  itself  felt 
by  other  means,  even  if  it  fails  to  make  itself  felt  in  consciousness 
at  once. 

A  psychoanalyst  must  aim  at  bringing  into  the  field  of  con- 
sciO'iisness  those  impressions  which  would  otherwise  remain  un- 
conscious. Undoubtedly  individual  differences  will  excercise  an 
influence  upon  his  efforts.  The  practice  and  sensitiveness  of  the 
individual  will  vary;  the  readiness  to  trust  to  tiny  stimuli  and  the 
capacity  to  register  these  tiny  impressions  are  not  possessed  by 
everybody  to  an  equal  extent.  And  so  we  should  pay  attention 
to  the  first,  hardly  noticeable  impressions  that  we  receive  of  a 
person,  however  much  they  may  soon  be  drowned  by  other,  more 
insistent  impressions.  Without  doubt,  first  impressions  are  of 
importance.  First  impressions  may  not  be  right,  but  they  often 
contain  true  apprehensions  in  a  distorted  form. 

These  signals  do  not  convey  clear  information.  They  are  no- 
wise comparable  with  modern  signposts,  upon  which  destination 
distance  are  precisely  indicated,  but  rather  with  old  mile- 
stones whose  lettering  is  weather-beaten  and  half  legible.  Many 
of  the  gaps  and  errors  in  our  psychological  comprehension  must 
be  attributed  to  our  inattention  to  these  unconscious  signals. 
They  may  be  blurred  and  their  import  difficult  to  determine, 
they  nevertheless  supplement  conscious  perception.  In  certain 
they  alone  enable  us  to  discern  its  significance  or  correct 
the  significance  we  mistakenly  ascribe  to  it.  It  is  true  that  psycho- 
logical Investigation  meets  here  with  much  that  is  imponderable 
difficult  to  grasp.  Research  must  not  ignore  these  factors,  The 
that  we  owe  to  the  psychology  of  the  unconscious  is  the  re- 
sult of  prolonged  observation,  without  premises.  But  it  would  be 
a  mistake  to  assume  that  this  observation  is  purely  conscious.  Not 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION 

until  we  have  learned  to  appreciate  the  significance  of  uncon- 
scious observation,  reacting  to  the  faintest  impressions  with  the 
sensitiveness  of  a  sheet  of  tin  foil,  shall  we  recognize  the  difficulty 
of  the  task  of  transforming  imponderabilia  into  ponderabilia. 

In  fact,  our  psychological  impressions  are  the  result  of  the  joint 
assimilation  of  conscious  and  unconscious  perceptions.  And  here 
the  conscious  perceptions  act,  in  a  sense,  like  the  last  fragments 
of  day,  to  which  something  different  is  attached,  behind  which 
something  different  lies  concealed,  something  deeper  than  day- 
time thoughts.  If  we  thrust  aside  the  doubtful  communications 
from  the  unconscious,  as  being  unreliable,  indefinite,  and  con- 
trary to  our  conscious  judgments  and  prejudices,  we  shall,  it  Is 
true,  seldom  be  deceived,  but  then  we  shall  seldom  attain  surpris- 
ing knowledge.  Indeed  a  special  kind  of  keen  scent  is  no  less 
essential  than  acumen  for  a  psychologist  who  wants  to  grasp 
the  unconscious  processes. 

If  we  survey  our  psychological  data  once  more  in  all  their  vari- 
ety and  over  the  whole  field,  from  the  strongest  expression  of  emo- 
tion to  the  imponderabilia,  we  become  aware  that  we  are  treating 
them  as  if  they  served  no  other  purpose  but  to  tell  us  something 
about  the  inner  life  of  another  person.  That  is  certainly  not  ex- 
clusively the  case,  and  yet  it  is  the  case.  I  mean  to  say  that  they 
aim,  among  other  things,  at  communicating  to  us  something 
about  the  hidden  processes  in  the  other  mind.  We  understand 
this  primary  endeavor;  it  does  serve  the  purpose  of  communica- 
tion, of  psychical  disburdenment.  It  has,  therefore,  a  sound  func- 
tion in  the  economy  of  the  inner  life.  We  are  reminded  of  Freud's 
view  that  mortals  are  not  so  made  as  to  retain  a  secret.  "Self- 
betrayal  oozes  from  all  our  pores/'  I  believe,  moreover,  that  these 
words  indicate  the  organ  that  was  the  sole  medium  of  self-betrayal 
in  the  early  stages  of  evolution.  Originally  most  likely  it  really 
was  first  and  foremost  man's  bodily  surface,  the  skin,  that  showed 
what  was  going  on  within.  It  was  the  earliest  organ  to  reflect 
mental  processes.  Blushing  and  turning  pale  still  betray  our  feel- 
ings, and  perspiration  still  breaks  out  when  we  are  afraid.  All 
self-betrayal  makes  its  way  through  the  pores  of  the  skin.  That 
statement  clamors  for  a  sequel.  What  sequel  may  easily  be  guessed 
when  we  reflect  that  we  react  to  the  unconscious  with  all  our 


304  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

organs,  with  our  various  instruments  of  reception  and  compre- 
hension. The  self-betrayal  of  another  is  sucked  in  through  all 

our  pores. 


The  last  chapter  spoke  of  communications  for  which  conscious 
perceptions  have  only  the  function  that  relays  have  in  telegraphy. 
It  would,  of  course,  be  nonsense  to  assert  that  this  language  of 
the  unconscious  is  understood  only  by  psychoanalysts.  (Sometimes 
it  would  seem  that  it  is  least  understood  by  analysts.)  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  these  interchanges  of  impulses  goes  on  between  all  human 
beings,  and  analysis  only  evaluates  them  as  psychological  indi- 
cations. Psychoanalysis  is  in  this  sense  not  so  much  a  heart-to- 
heart  talk  as  a  drive-to-drive  talk,  an  inaudible  but  highly  ex- 
pressive dialogue.  The  psychoanalyst  has  to  learn  how  one  mind 
speaks  to  another  beyond  words  and  in  silence.  He  must  learn  to 
listen  "with  the  third  ear/**  It  is  not  true  that  you  have  to  shout 
to  make  yourself  understood.  When  you  wish  to  be  heard,  you 
whisper. 

What  can  an  analyst  teach  his  younger  colleagues  in  this  direc- 
tion? Very  little.  He  can  speak  of  his  own  experiences.  He  can 
report  instances,  which  have  the  value  of  illustrations  only.  And 
lie  can—above  all  else— encourage  the  younger  generation  of  ana- 
lysts to  unlearn  all  routine.  We  speak  of  routine  only  in  the 
gathering  of  unconscious  material  through  observation,  not  of  the 
use  which  the  analytic  technique  makes  of  it.  We  have  to  insist 
that  in  the  area  of  observation  he  keep  fancy-free  and  follow  his 
instincts.  The  "instincts,"  which  indicate,  point  out,  hint  at  and 
allude,  warn  and  convey,  are  sometimes  more  intelligent  than  our 
conscious  "intelligence."  We  know  so  many  things  that  "aren't 
so"  but,  we  must  admit,  we  guess  many  things  that  seem  to  be 
Impossible  but  "are  so."  Young  analysts  should  be  encouraged  to 
rely  on  a  series  of  most  delicate  communications  when  they  col- 
lect their  impressions;  to  extend  their  feelers,  to  seize  the  secret 
messages  that  go  from  one  unconscious  to  another. 

*  This  phrase  is  borrowed  from  Nietzsetie,  Beyond  Good  mid  Evil,  Part 

p.  246. 


THE   GIFT  FOR   PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  305 

To  trust  these  messages,  to  be  ready  to  participate  in  all  flights 
and  flings  of  one's  Imagination,  not  to  be  afraid  of  one's  own 
sensitivities,  is  necessary  not  only  In  the  beginnings  of  analysis;  It 
remains  necessary  and  Important  throughout.  The  task  of  the 
analyst  Is  to  observe  and  to  record  In  his  memory  thousands  of 
little  signs  and  to  remain  aware  of  their  delicate  effects  upon  him. 
At  the  present  stage  of  our  science  it  Is  not  so  necessary,  it  seems 
to  me,  to  caution  the  student  against  overvaluation  of  the  little 
signs  or  to  warn  him  not  to  take  them  as  evidence.  These  uncon- 
scious feelers  are  not  there  to  master  a  problem,  but  to  search  for 
it.  They  are  not  there  to  grasp,  but  to  touch.  We  need  not  fear 
that  this  approach  will  lead  to  hasty  judgments.  The  greater 
danger  (and  the  one  favored  by  our  present  way  of  training  stu- 
dents) is  that  these  seemingly  Insignificant  signs  will  be  missed, 
neglected,  brushed  aside.  The  student  Is  often  taught  to  observe 
sharply  and  accurately  what  is  presented  to  his  conscious  per- 
ception, but  conscious  perception  is  much  too  restricted  and  nar- 
row. The  student  often  analyzes  the  material  without  considering 
that  It  is  so  much  richer,  subtler,  finer  than  what  can  be  caught 
In  the  net  of  conscious  observation.  The  small  fish  that  escapes 
through  the  mesh  is  often  the  most  precious. 

Receiving,  recording,  and  decoding  these  "asides/'  which  are 
whispered  between  sentences  and  without  sentences,  Is,  In  reality, 
not  teachable.  It  is,  however,  to  a  certain  degree  demonstrable. 
It  can  be  demonstrated  that  the  analyst,  like  his  patient,  knows 
things  without  knowing  that  he  knows  them.  The  voice  that 
speaks  in  him  speaks  low,  but  he  who  listens  with  a  third  ear 
hears  also  what  is  expressed  almost  noiselessly,  what  is  said  pianis- 
simo. There  are  instances  in  which  things  a  person  has  said  in 
psychoanalysis  are  consciously  not  even  heard  by  the  analyst,  but 
none  the  less  understood  or  interpreted.  There  are  others  about 
which  one  can  say:  in  one  ear,  out  the  other,  and  In  the 
third.  The  psychoanalyst  who  must  look  at  all  things  immedi- 
ately, scrutinize  them,  and  subject  them  to  logical  examination 
has  often  lost  the  psychological  moment  for  seizing  the  Meeting, 
elusive  material.  Here—and  only  here— you  must  leap  before  you 
look;  otherwise  you  will  be  looking  at  a  void  where  a  second  be- 
fore a  valuable  impression  flew  past. 


306  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

In  psychoanalysis  we  leam  to  collect  this  material,  which  is  not 
conscious  but  which  has  to  become  conscious  if  we  want  to  use 
It  in  our  search  and  research.  That  the  psychoanalyst  immediately 
recognizes  the  importance  and  significance  of  the  data  brought  to 
his  attention  is  a  stale  superstition.  He  can  be  content  with  him- 
self when  he  is  able  to  receive  and  record  them  immediately.  He 
can  be  content  if  he  becomes  aware  of  them.  I  know  from  conver- 
sations with  many  psychoanalysts  that  they  approach  this  uncon- 
scious material  with  the  tools  of  reason,  clinical  observation,  med- 
itation, and  reiection.  They  approach  it,  but  that  does  not  mean 
that  they  even  come  close  to  it.  The  attempt  to  confine  uncon- 
scious processes  to  a  formula  like  chemical  or  mathematical  proc- 
esses remains  a  waste  of  intellectual  energy.  One  doubts  if  there  is 
any  use  in  discussing  the  difference  between  the  two  types  of 
processes  with  such  superior  minds.  The  Austrian  poet,  Grill- 
parzer,  and  the  German  playwright,  Hebbel,  lived  at  the  same 
time  (about  one  hundred  years  ago)  in  Vienna,  without  meeting 
each  other.  Grillparzer  was  reluctant  to  speak  with  Hebbel,  who 
was  inclined  to  reflection  and  brooded  over  many  metaphysical 
problems.  Grillparzer  admitted  he  was  too  shy  to  converse  with 
the  prominent,  meditative  playwright.  "You  know,"  he  said,  "Mr, 
Hebbel  knows  exactly  what  God  thinks  and  what  He  looks  like, 
and  I  just  don't  know." 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  best  way  to  guess  something  about  the 
significance  of  "insignificant"  data,  the  way  to  catch  the  fleeting 
Impressions,  is  not  to  meditate,  but  to  be  intensely  aware  of  than. 
They  reveal  their  secrets  like  doors  that  open  themselves,  but 
cannot  be  forced.  One  can  with  conviction  say:  You  will  under- 
stand them  after  you  have  ceased  to  reflect  about  them. 

No  doubt,  the  third  ear  of  which  we  often  speak  will  appear 
to  many  not  only  as  an  anatomical,  but  also  as.  a  psychological, 
abnormality— even  to  psychologists.  But  do  we  not  speak:  of  hear- 
ing with  the  "inner  ear"?  What  Nietzsche  meant  is  not  identical 
this  igure  of  speech,  but  it  is  akin  to  it.  The  third  ear  to 
which  the  great  psychologist  referred  is  the  same  that  Freud 
when  fee  said  the  capacity  of  the  unconscious  for  fine  hear- 
ing was  one  of  the  requisites  for  the  psychoanalyst. 

One  of  the  peculiarities  of  this  third  ear  is  that  it  works  two 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  307 

ways.  It  can  catch  what  other  people  do  not  say  but  only  feel  and 
think;  and  it  can  also  be  turned  Inward.  It  can  hear  voices  from 
within  the  self  that  are  otherwise  not  audible  because  they  are 
drowned  out  by  the  noise  of  our  conscious  thought-processes.  The 
student  of  psychoanalysis  Is  advised  to  listen  to  those  inner  voices 
with  more  attention  than  to  what  "reason'1  tells  about  the  uncon- 
scious; to  be  very  aware  of  what  is  said  inside  himself,  ecouter  aux 
voix  interieures,  and  to  shut  his  ear  to  the  noises  of  adult  wisdom, 
well-considered  opinion,  conscious  judgment.  The  night  reveals  to 
the  wanderer  things  that  are  hidden  by  day. 

In  other  words,  the  psychoanalyst  who  hopes  to  recognize  the 
secret  meaning  of  this  almost  imperceptible,  Imponderable  lan- 
guage has  to  sharpen  his  sensitiveness  to  It,  to  increase  his  read- 
iness to  receive  it.  When  he  wants  to  decode  it,  he  can  do  so  only 
by  listening  sharply  inside  himself,  by  becoming  aware  of  the 
subtle  impressions  it  makes  upon  him  and  the  fleeting  thoughts 
and  emotions  it  arouses  in  him.  It  is  most  important  that  he  ob- 
serve with  great  attention  what  this  language  means  to  him,  what 
its  psychological  effects  upon  him  are.  From  these  he  can  arrive 
at  its  unconscious  motives  and  meanings,  and  this  conclusion 
again  will  not  be  a  conscious  thought-process  or  a  logical  oper- 
ation, but  an  unconscious— I  might  almost  say,  Instinctive—re- 
action that  takes  place  within  him.  The  meaning  is  conveyed  to 
htm  by  a  message  that  might  surprise  him  much  like  a  physical 
sensation  for  which  he  Is  unprepared  and  which  presents  Itself 
suddenly  from  within  his  organism.  Again,  the  only  way  of  pene- 
trating into  the  secret  of  this  language  is  by  looking  into  oneself, 
understanding  one's  own  reactions  to  it. 

The  reader  is  asked  to  think  this  over.  A  little  known  and  con- 
cealed organ  in  the  analyst  receives  and  transmits  the  secret 
messages  of  others  before  he  consciously  understands  them  him- 
self. And  yet  the  literature  of  psychoanalysis  neglects  It.  There 
is  one  word  that  may  make  claim  to  being  a  rarity  In  psycho- 
analytic literature  (with  the  exception  of  Freud):  the  word  "L" 
With  what  fear  and  avoidance  does  the  analyst  write  about  his 
own  method  of  coming  to  conclusions,  about  his  own  thoughts 
and  Impressions!  The  devil  himself  could  not  frighten  many  an- 
alysts more  than  tfoe  use  of  the  word  "I"  does  in  repotting  cases. 


S}08  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

It  is  this  fear  of  the  little  pronoun  of  the  first  person  singular, 
nominative  case,  that  accounts  for  the  fact  that  reports  of  self- 
analysis  are  such  a  rarity  in  our  literature.  The  worship  of  the 
bitch-goddess  objectivity,  of  pseudo  precision,  of  facts  and  figures, 
explains  why  this  is  the  only  book  that  deals  with  this  subject 
matter,  or  which  insists  that  the  subject  matters.  In  our  science 
only  the  psychical  reality  has  validity.  It  is  remarkable  that  the 
unconscious  station  which  does  almost  all  the  work  is  left  out 
of  analytic  discussions.  Imagine  discussing  the  science  of  sound, 
acoustics,  without  mentioning  the  ear,  or  optics  without  speaking 
of  the  eye. 

Nothing  can,  of  course,  be  said  about  the  nature  of  those  un- 
conscious impressions  we  receive  as  long  as  they  remain  uncon- 
scious. Here  are  a  few  representative  instances  of  some  that  be- 
came conscious.  They  concern  the  manner,  not  the  manners,  of 
persons  who  were  in  the  process  of  psychoanalysis,  little  peculiari- 
ties, scarcely  noticed  movements,  intonations,  and  glances  that 
might  otherwise  have  escaped  conscious  observation  because  they 
were  inconspicuous  parts  of  the  person's  behavior.  People  gen- 
erally tend  to  brush  aside  observations  of  this  sort  as  immaterial 
and  inconsequential,  little  things  not  worthy  of  our  attention. 

In  the  hall  that  leads  from  my  office  to  the  apartment  door  is 
a  big  mirror  beside  a  clothes  tree.  Why  did  I  not  observe  that  a 
young,  pretty  woman  patient  of  mine  never  looked  into  the 
mirror  when  she  put  on  her  coat?  I  must  have  seen  it  before,  but 
it  came  -to  my  attention  only  after  the  fifth  psychoanalytic  session. 
I  was  aware  that  she  spoke  without  any  emotions  about  her  mar- 
riage or  her  family,  and  I  became  suspicious  that  her  remoteness 
and  coolness  were  expressions  of  a  schizophrenic  disease.  Walk- 
ing behind  her  to  the  door,  I  observed  that  she  did  not  even 
glance  at  herself  in  the  mirror,  but  I  did  not  recall  perceiving  this 
trait  before.  I  must  have  perceived  it  before  without  noticing  it 
asd,  when  I  paid  attention  to  it  now,  I  did  so  because  I  saw  it 
as  an  additional  symptom.  I  had  seen  the  patient  walk  to  the 
door  in  front  of  me  five  times,  and  I  knew  now  that,  unlike  other 
women,  sfee  never  looked  into  the  mirror.  Now  I  also  became 
aware  of  how  carelessly  she  treated  her  -hat,  that  she  threw  it  OB 
ntther  than  put.  it  ,oa*  It  gained  sigHfficance  now— why  not  before? 


THE  GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  309 

Why  did  I  recall  only  then  what  I  had  often  said  before,  namely, 
that  men  who  treat  their  hats  with  great  care  are  usually  not 
very  masculine  and  women  who  do  not  pay  attention  to  their 
hats  are,  in  general,  not  very  feminine? 

I  am  choosing  this  instance  as  representative  of  many  others  In 
which  we  become  aware  of  a  slight  divergence  because  we  raiss 
a  certain  detail  of  behavior.  Experience  In  psychoanalysis  teaches 
us  that  we  are  inclined  to  overlook  the  absence  of  a  usual  bit  of 
behavior,  although  It  is  often  a  valuable  clue  and  can  become  a 
part  of  the  psychological  circumstantial  evidence  we  need.  That 
something  is  not  present  where  we  expect  It,  or  that  something 
is  not  in  Its  usual  place  or  order,  Is  less  conspicuous  than  the  pres- 
ence of  something  unusual.  Only  when  the  trait  appears  Im- 
portant or  when  It  Is  missed  immediately  will  It  become  conspicu- 
ous by  Its  absence.  Otherwise,  wre  generally  ignore  what  is  not 
there.  Sometimes,  just  the  observation  of  the  absence  of  such  little 
features  leads  to  understanding.  The  other  day  I  read  a  mystery 
story  in  which  a  murder  Is  committed  during  a  theater  perform- 
ance. The  audience -is  searched  and  the  fact  that  one  man  has  no 
tie  yields  a  precious  clue. 

In  contrast  to  the  case  mentioned  above,  I  observed  very  soon 
after  the  beginning  of  an  analysis  that  a  patient,  a  middle-aged 
man,  spent  a  long  time  before  the  mirror  in  the  hall,  smoothing 
his  hair  before  he  put  on  his  hat,  and  so  forth.  This  trait  came 
to  mind  when  the  patient  reported  that  almost  every  night 
through  the  window  of  his  darkened  bathroom  he  spied  on 
women  undressing  and  that  the  sight  often  made  him  masturbate. 
My  peeping  patient  was  also  potentially  an  exhibitionist.  Later 
on  It  became  obvious  that  he  identified  himself  in  his  uncon- 
scious fantasies  with  the  women  he  watched. 

Perceptions  of  such  a  vague  character,  impressions  that  almost 
elude  us,  support:  us  in  reaching  certain  stations  on  our  road  to 
Insight.  We  appreciate  their  value  when  we  have  learned  to  con- 
trol our  impatience  and  when  we  do  not  expect  Immediate,  but 
rather  intermediary,  results  from  these  trifles  of  observations.  The 
smell  of  a  perfume,  'a  gesture  of  a  hand,,  a  peculiarity  of  breath- 
Ing,  as  well  as  articulate  confessions  and  long  reports,  give  away 
secrets*  Sometimes  an  observation  erf  this. kind  scarcely  deserves 


THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

the  name  of  observation  but  proves  Important  none  the  less. 
Sometimes  a  transient  Impression  remains  unnoted  until  it  occurs 
often.  Only  its  repetition  makes  us  realize  its  presence.  Pecu- 
liarities of  voice,  of  glancing,  often  reveal  something  that  was 
hidden  behind  the  words  and  the  sentences  we  hear.  They  convey 
a  meaning  we  would  never  have  guessed,  if  we  had  not  absorbed 
the  little  asides  on  the  fringes  of  the  stage  that  accompany  the 
main  action.  Men  speak  to  us  and  we  speak  to  them  not  only 
with  words  but  also  with  the  little  signs  and  expressions  we  un- 
consciously send  and  receive.  Observation  of  these  signs  begins 
with  our  isolating  them  from  the  total  pattern  of  the  behavior. 
When  we  succeed  in  doing  this,  we  can  make  the  Impression 
clearer  and  stronger  by  repetition.  Their  psychological  evaluation 
and  Interpretation  occur  sometimes  to  the  psychoanalyst  Immedi- 
ately, sometimes  later  on  as  we  follow  the  trail.  In  the  process  of 
"catching"  these  elusive  signs  we  must  trust  to  our  senses  and  not 
follow  the  voice  of  "reason"  which  will  try  to  brush  them  aside. 
The  psychologist  who  approaches  this  valuable  field  as  sober  as 
a  judge  will  not  capture  many  data  because  he  will  also  be  as 
unimaginative  as  a  judge.  Only  he  who  is  fancy-free  and  opens 
all  his  senses  to  these  Impressions  will  be  sensitive  to  the  wealth 
he  will  encounter. 

The  trail  uncovered  by  first  impressions  sometimes  leads  to 
Insights  that  could  otherwise  be  obtained  only  after  a  long  time 
and  by  dint  of  hard  psychological  dicing.  A  young  graduate  stu- 
dent at  Harvard  started  his  analysis  in  a  very  low  voice.  His  man- 
ner of  speech  appeared  "deliberate  and  considered,  I  asked  him 
to  speak  louder.  He  made  an  effort  to  do  so,  but  after  two  minutes 
dropped  back  to  a  low  tone  that  became  almost  inaudible.  At 
first  I  had  the  impression  that  he  was  shy  or  timid  and  that  it 
was  difficult  for  him  to  speak  of  the  serious  conflicts  that  had  dis- 
turbed his  childhood.  This  impression  could  not  explain  his 
manner  of  speaking  because  his  voice  was  not  only  low  but  also 
exceptionally  deep,  and  it  was  as  If  he  chose  his  words  very  de- 
liberately. Whatever  his  reasons,  whether  shyness,  disturbance,  or 
emotions  that  had  to  be  controlled,  you  cannot  analyze  someone 
without  hearing  what  he  has  to  say. 

After  trying  my  best  to  catch  what  he  mumbled,  1  decided  to 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  Jll 

interrupt  what  seemed  to  be  a  monologue  that  excluded  an  au- 
dience. My  first  impression  had  given  way  to  another.  His  man- 
ner of  speaking  was  much  more  significant  for  his  personality 
than  what  he  had  to  say  to  me  in  this  first  session.  Neglecting 
everything  else,  I  entered  into  a  discussion  of  his  low-voiced  and 
controlled  way  of  speaking  and  insisted  that  he  tell  me  all  that 
he  knew  about  it,  at  the  same  time  asking  him  again  to  make 
himself  heard-  We  soon  arrived  at  the  insight  that  his  low  voice 
and  dignified  manner  were  a  late  acquisition  that  had  developed 
as  an  expression  of  his  opposition  to  the  shrieking,  high,  excited 
voices  of  his  parents,  especially  of  his  mother.  There  was  a  story 
in  that,  a  story  we  meet  frequently  in  American-born  children  of 
East  European  immigrants.  In  this  case  it  was  further  complicated 
by  the  neurotic  conflicts  of  the  young  man.  His  parents  had  re- 
tained the  behavior  and  manners  of  the  old  country  when  they 
came  to  the  United  States.  They  spoke  loudly  and  with  vivid 
gestures.  They  were  highly  temperamental  and  made  no  effort 
to  control  the  expression  of  their  emotions.  Entirely  American- 
ized, the  boy  began  to  feel  ashamed  of  his  parents  and  developed 
this  characteristic  manner  of  low  speaking  and  overcontrolled 
dignity  as  a  counter-action  to  the  temptation  to  speak  and  act 
like  the  members  of  his  family.  He  acquired,  so  to  speak,  a  sec- 
ond personality  superimposed  on  his  originally  passionate  and 
excitable  nature.  Early  conflicts,  especially  with  his  mother,  inten- 
sified and  deepened  this  reaction-formation  whose  external  signs 
were  his  way  of  speaking  and  similar  traits.  Analyzing  these  fea- 
tures, we  soon  arrived  at  the  core  of  his  neurotic  conflicts. 

In  this  case  a  practical  necessity  of  the  analytic  situation  forced 
the  analyst  to  turn  Ms  attention  to  a  special  trait  of  personal  be- 
havior, which,  if  it  had  been  less  dearly  developed,  might  have 
remained  unobserved.  The  first  analytic  session  thus  started  with 
the  discussion  of  this  special  characteristic,  an  exception  that 
proved  justified  as  well  as  useful. 

The  analyst  can  achieve  some  psychological  insight  into  a  pa- 
tient even  before  the  beginning  of  treatment  if  he  will  only  trust 
his  impressions  as  soon  as  he  becomes  aware  of  them.  A  young 
woman  made  an  appointment  to  consult  about  the  possibility,  of 
continuing  her  psychoanalysis  with  me.  She  told  me  sfae  had 


gI2  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

broken  off  her  analysis  with  Dr.  A.  some  months  ago.  I  listened  to 
the  story  of  the  coniict  that  was  making  it  impossible  for  her  to 
return  to  her  first  psychoanalyst.  She  rapidly  sketched  the  diffi- 
culties in  her  marriage,  her  social  relations,  and  her  pofessional 
life.  There  was  nothing,  it  seemed  to  me,  unusual  in  what  she 
told  me;  nothing  an  analyst  does  not  meet  with  in  many  patients. 
She  seemed  to  be  intelligent  enough,  sincere,  and  friendly.  Why 
did  I  feel  a  slight  annoyance  with  the  patient  after  she  left?  There 
was  nothing  in  our  conversation  that  could  explain  such  a  feel- 
ing. As  my  attention  turned  to  other  patients,  I  brushed  aside  the 
vague  impression. 

When  the  patient  telephoned  two  days  later,  I  did  not  recog- 
nize her  name  and  did  not  remember  that  she  had  promised  to 
call  me.  Now  I  was  forced  to  follow  the  rule:  Analyst,  analyze 
yourself! 

1  remembered  feeling  slightly  annoyed,  but  I  had  not  become 
aware  of  any  reason  for  this  feeling.  It  was  certain  that  I  had  not 
disliked  the  patient,  and  certainly  she  had  not  done  or  said  any- 
thing during  the  consultation  that  could  have  annoyed  me.  Well, 
there  was  the  conflict  with  Dr.  A.  I  had  the  impression  that  the 
analyst  had  lost  patience  with  his  patient  at  the  end— perhaps 
after  she  had  provoked  him  many  times— and  that  she  could  not 
take  what  he  had  told  her  about  herself.  She  had  definitely  re- 
jected my  suggestion  that  she  return  to  Dr.  A.  and  try  to  continue 
the  analysis  with  him.  But  that  could  not  possibly  have  annoyed 
me.  She  was  entitled  to  decide  that  herself,  and  I  scarcely  knew 
Dr.  A. 

What  was  it  then  that  made  me  displeased  with  her?  Now  it 
slowly  came  back  to  me.  There  were  two  things  she  had  said  the 
unconscious  significance  of  which  I  had  not  realized  but  had 
nevertheless  sensed.  At  the  end  of  our  conversation  she  had  asked 
me  if  1  would  continue  her  analysis.  Before  I  had  time  to  answer 
she  had  wondered  whether  I  would  advise  her  to  go  to  Dr.  N., 
another  psychoanalyst,  whom  she  did  not  know.  The  question 
asfced  rather  casually,  but  it  had  left  some  trace  in  me  of 
which  1  now  became  aware.  It  seemed  strange.  The  young  lady 
'Consulted  me  about  tier  neurotic  troubles,  had  asked  me 
whether  I  would  bring  her  analysis  to  its  end,  and  then  whether 


THE  GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  315 

she  had  not  better  go  to  Dr.  N.  instead.  I  had  advised  her,  of 
course,  to  go  to  Dr.  N.  Now  over  the  telephone  she  said  that  Dr. 
N.  had  no  time  for  her  and  that  she  wanted  to  continue  her 
analysis  with  me.  Her  question  concerning  Dr.  N.  during  the  con- 
sultation appeared  at  first  quite  natural  and  not  In  the  least  con- 
spicuous, a  question  just  like  any  other.  Looking  back  at  It,  how- 
ever, It  took  on  another  character.  I  remembered  that  she  had 
looked  at  me  with  a  leer,  and  I  understood  now,  much  later,  what 
her  sidelong  glance  and  her  question  meant.  It  was  a  provocation 
of  a  teasing  or  malicious  kind. 

I  want  to  make  this  element  clear.  Compare  this  situation  with 
similar  ones.  What  would  we  think  of  a  patient  who  asks  to  be 
treated  by  one  physician  and  then  during  the  consultation  asks 
whether  he  ought  not  to  go  to  another  physician?  It  did  not  make 
sense,  and  yet  I  had  to  assume  that  there  was  some  concealed  sense 
in  it.  When  you  go  to  a  shoemaker  to  have  your  shoes  repaired, 
you  do  not  ask  him  whether  you  should  take  the  same  shoes  to  an- 
other shoemaker.  You  do  not  ask  a  girl  to  dance  and  then  wonder 
aloud  whether  you  should  not  rather  dance  with  another  girl. 

When  I  suggested  that  she  go  to  Dr.  N.,  I  must  have  been  re- 
acting unconsciously  to  the  unconscious  meaning  of  her  question. 
I  was  not  surprised  or  annoyed,  as  might  be  expected.  On  the 
contrary,  1  reacted  as  if  her  question  were  the  most  normal  thing. 
Only  later  did  I  realize  that  It  was  extraordinary.  I  reacted  not 
only  to  the  question  but  also  to  the  look  with  which  she  asked  it,  as 
if  to  say:  "If  you  doubt  whether  to  come  to  me  or  to  Dr.  N., 
please  go  to  Dr.  N.  I  do  not  want  you  as  a  patient."  I  reacted  as 
if  I  had  understood  the  meaning  of  the  glance  while  I  did  not 
even  notice  it  consciously.  I  had  been  aware  of  a  slight  annoyance 
after  her  visit,  but  not  of  what  had  annoyed  me.  My  unconscious 
reaction  then  (in  my  answer)  and  later  (not  remembering  her 
name  and  our  agreement)  showed  that  I  had  somewhere,  hidden 
even  from  myself,  understood  well  enough  that  her  question  was 
really  a  provocation. 

After  that  I  remembered  that  the  sidelong  glance  had  appeared 
again  at  the  end  of  the  consultation.  The  patient  had  casually 
mentioned  reading  a  rather  unfavorable  review  of  one  of  my 
books  in  the  Psychoanalytic  Quarterly.  As  far  as  my  coiascious 


314  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

thoughts  went  the  review  did  not  affect  me.  But  that  is  not  the 
point  here.  Why  did  she  mention  it?  Where  was  the  need  to  say 
it?  It  seems  that  I  felt  annoyed,  not  at  being  reminded  of  the 
criticism,  but  by  her  intention  in  reminding  me  of  it,  which  I 
sensed.  Well  bred  and  well  educated,  she  would  certainly  not  say 
to  a  stranger  she  had  just  met  at  a  dinner  or  cocktail  party,  "Oh, 
I  read  an  unfavorable  review  of  your  last  book  just  two  days 
ago."  Why  did  she  do  it  just  before  leaving  my  room  and  why 
this  sidelong,  expectant  glance?  Considering  her  otherwise  excel- 
lent manners,  there  must  have  been  an  unconscious  hostile  or 
aggressive  tendency  in  her  remark. 

What  was  gained  by  my  insight,  what  was  the  advantage  in 
catching  these  imponderable  expressions  that  had  appeared  in- 
cognito? There  was  more  than  one  advantage— besides  the  satis- 
faction of  the  psychological  interest.  That  side  glance  was  reveal- 
ing. It  not  only  observed;  it  was  observed;  and  for  a  fleeting  mo- 
meet  I  caught  the  real  face  behind  the  mask.  The  situation  was 
like  that  of  a  masquerade  at  which  a  person  has  the  advantage  of 
seeing  a  lady  who  believes  herself  unobserved,  without  her  mask. 
Later,  when  he  meets  her  again  in  disguise,  he  will  know  her 
identity.  This  early  insight  proved  very  useful  later  on.  It  was  a 
promising  beginning  and  it  helped  me  in  the  difficult  situations 
that  merged  in  the  later  phases  of  analysis.  It  was  much  easier  to 
understand  the  masochistic  provocation  to  which  the  patient 
resorted  again  and  again.  And  it  was  easier  to  convince  her  finally 
that  some  unconscious  tendency  in  her  forced  her  to  make  herself 
disliked.  I  had,  of  course,  overcome  my  initial  annoyance  quickly 
after  I  understood  its  reasons  and,  forewarned  and  forearmed  by 
my  early  insight,  I  could  tolerate  the  provocations  much  better 
than  my  colleague,  who  had  yielded  to  the  temptation  to  become 
angry  with  her- 

The  discussion  of  this  case  and  the  many  others  that  follow 
to  present  a  good  opportunity  to  inject  a  few  remarks  about 
the  psychoanalyst  himself.  What  kind  of  psychoanalyst,  some 
readers  will  ask,  can  feel  annoyed  or  impatient?  Is  this  the  much- 
praised  calm  and  the  correct  scientiSc  attitude  of  the  therapist? 
Is  this  the  pure  mirror  that  reflects  the  image  of  the  patient  who 
to  psychoanalysis  with  his  troubles,  symptoms,  and  com- 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  315 

plaints?  Is  this  the  proper  conch-side  manner?  The  question  is 
easily  answered.  The^jDsychoanalyst  Js  .a  buman.,.l^iiig,.ife»JJiy 
There  is  nothing  jji^^^ 


In  fact,  he  has  to  be  human.  How  el^couldjiejjixcte 

human^beings?  if  he  were  like  a  block  of  wood  or  a  marble  statue, 
lie  "could  never  hope  to  grasp  the  strange  passions  and  thoughts 
he  will  meet  with  in  his  patients.  If  he  were  cold  and  unfeeling,  a 
"stuffed  shirt,"  as  some  plays  portray  him,  he  would  be  an  ana- 
lytic robot  or  a  pompous,  dignified  ass  who  could  not  gain  entry 
to  the  secrets  of  the  human  soul  It  seems  to  me  that  the  demand 
that  the  analyst  should  be  sensitive  and  human  does  not  contra- 
dict the  expectation  that  he  should  maintain  an  objective  view 
of  his  cases  and  perform  his  difficult  task  with  as  much  thera- 
peutic and  scientific  skill  as  is  given  him.  Objectivity  and  in- 
humanness  are  two  things  that  are  frequently  confused,  even  by 
many  psychoanalysts.  The  sensitiveness  and  the  subjectivity  of  the 
analyst  concern  his  impressionability  to  the  slightest  stimuli,  to 
the  minute,  almost  imperceptible  indices  of  unconscious  proc- 
esses. It  is  desirable  that  he  be  as  susceptible,  as  responsive  and 
alive,  to  those  signs  as  a  mimosa  is  to  the  touch.  He  should,  of 
course,  possess  the  same  sensitiveness  to,  and  the  same  faculty  for 
fine  hearing  of,  the  voices  within  himself.  His  objectivity,  his  cool 
and  calm  judgment,  his  power  of  logical  and  psychological  pene- 
tration as  well  as  his  emotional  control,  should  be  reserved  for 
the  analytic  treatment.  He  will  not  feel  the  temptation  to  express 
his  own  emotions  when  his  psychological  interest  outweighs 
his  temperament.  He  will  be  able  to  check  and  control  impulses 
that  he  has  in  common  with  his  patients  when  he  remembers  that 
his  task  is  to  understand  and  to  help  them.  It  is  ridiculous  to 
demand  that  an  analyst,  to  whom  nothing  human  should  be 
alien,  should  not  be  human  himself.  Goethe  has  expressed  it 
beautifully:  If  the  eye  were  not  something  sunlike  itself,  it  could 
never  see  the  sun, 

The  instances  reported  above  contrast  with  others—  alas,  so 
many  others—  in  which  I  remained  unaware  of  those  trifles,  of 
those  little  revealing  signs,  or  in  which  I  observed  them  much 
later,  sometimes  even  too  late.  It  does  not  matter  how  much  or 
how  little  too  late.  It  makes  no  difference  whether  you  missed 


Jl6  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

your  plane  by  only  a  few  minutes  or  by  a  few  hours.  In  every  one 
of  those  cases  my  lack  of  sensitiveness  was  punished  by  additional 
work,  an  increased  intellectual  and  emotional  effort  that  would 
have  been  unnecessary  if  J  had  been  more  impressionable  or  ob- 
servant. In  almost  all  of  them  there  was  also  a  hindrance  in  my- 
self that  blocked  me  or  dulled  the  sharpness  of  my  observation. 
Here  is  such  a  case,  one  of  many: 

A  young  man  had  come  for  psychoanalysis  because  he  wanted 
10  rid  himself  of  many  nervous  symptoms  and  some  serious  diffi- 
culties he  was  encountering  in  his  private  and  professional  life.  I 
succeeded  in  a  relatively  short  time  in  freeing  him  of  his  most 
oppressive  symptoms,  but  the  other  difficulties  remained.  They 
seemed  to  be  stationary  and  did  not  improve.  I  often  told  myself 
that  something  in  me  hindered  my  deeper  penetration  into  that 
secret.  But  I  could  not  find  the  road  that  led  to  it.  The  young 
man  had  obliging,  open  manners  and  showed  brilliant  intelli- 
gence, wit,  and  humor.  What  a  pity  that  all  these  gifts  remained 
sterile  and  displayed  themselves  only  when  he  talked!  His  intel- 
lectual endowment  and  his  emotional  alertness  made  everything 
he  said  interesting  whether  he  talked  about  his  own  symptoms, 
about  his  complicated  relations  with  relatives  and  friends,  his 
past  emotions  and  experiences,  or  of  the  present,  of  a  sexual  ad- 
venture, or  money  matters.  He  knew  how  to  tell  a  tale  about 
himself  or  others.  He  was  stimulating  as  well  as  stimulated.  Noth- 
ing changed,  however,  in  his  inner  situation  after  he  had  lost  his 
most  serious  symptoms. 

One  day  he  told  me  that  his  sweetheart,  who  had  listened  to 
Ms  stories  for  a  long  time,  had  smilingly  asked,  "But,  John,  why 
do  you  make  such  an  effort?  I  am  not  a  girl  whom  you  met  yester- 
day." My  eyes  were  suddenly  opened  wide  by  this  remark  of  a 
third  person.  I  had  really  overlooked  the  fact  that  the  young  man 
tad  not  talked  to  me,  but  had  entertained  me  in  the  last  weeks. 
The  girl  was  right,  so  absolutely  right.  He  dazzled  people.  He 
bribed  them  with  Ms  reports,  which  were  always  very  alive  and 
vivid,  vibrant  and  interesting.  In  speaking  of  himself,  however, 
he  did  not  give  of  himself.  He  spent  himself,  but  he  did  not  sur- 
render. He  igured  in  his  reports  like  the  storyteller  in  a  modern 
novel  narrated  in  the  fizst  person-a  story  by  Somerset  Maugham. 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  317 

In  talking  about  himself,  ostensibly  quite  freely,  he  was  hiding 
himself.  Listening  to  him  with  sharper  ears,  I  now  received  a  new 
impression  of  his  inadequacy  feelings,  which  made  it  necessary  for 
him  to  conquer  all  people  anew  whenever  he  met  them,  to  use  his 
endowments  to  win  them  over  and  thus  overcome  his  deep  sense 
of  insecurity.  I  had  let  myself  be  bribed  like  so  many  others  by 
these  great,  ever-recurrent  efforts.  Then  along  came  a  young  girl 
whose  psychological  knowledge  did  not  surpass  that  of  other 
students  of  Vassar  or  Smith  and  gave  me  a  lesson  I  would  not 
forget.  She  hit  the  target  easily  and  casually,  reminding  the 
young  man  that  he  need  not  exert  himself.  She  had  said,  "I  am 
not  a  girl  whom  you  met  yesterday/'  and  with  these  nine  words 
she  had  shown  the  path  for  which  I  had  searched  in  vain.  I  took 
my  hat  off  to  this  unknown  Vassar  girl  and  felt  thoroughly 
ashamed  of  myself.  Who  had  taught  her  the  fine  art  of  psycho- 
logical observation  and  discernment?  You  do  not  learn  such 
things  in  the  psychology  department  at  Smith  or  Vassar.  I  was 
ready  to  believe  that  the  girl  was  smart  enough,  but  it  was  not 
her  intelligence  that  had  spoken  like  that.  It  was  her  heart  that 
had  told  her. 

Experiences  of  this  kind  (I  could  tell  many  more)  make  us  psy- 
choanalysts modest  about  our  psychological  endowment— or 
should  make  us  more  modest.  There  was  I,  who  thought  myself  a 
trained  observer,?  and  I  did  not  recognize  what  was  so  obvious. 
"What  is  a  trained  observer?"  I  asked  rnyseli  He  is  a  man  who 
is  trained  to  pay  attention  to  certain  things  and  to  neglect  others. 
He  is  a  man  who  overpays  attention  to  features  he  expects  to  see 
and  remains  in  debt  to  others  that  escape  his  notice. 


Nobody  can  get  a  good  hold  on  the  essential  discoveries  of  psy- 
choanalysis without  a  certain  measure  of  suffering.  The  truth 
lives  among  us  unspoken,  and  someone  should  come  out  with  it, 
whatever  effect  it  will  have  on  our  student  analysts.  It  sounds 
simple  enough,  and  yet  it  is  calculated  to  stir  up  debate—even 


318  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

among  analysts.  In  every  society  there  are  some  things  that  are 
taken  as  a  matter  of  course.  Yet  we  need  only  utter  them  in  order 
to  make  them  the  subject  of  serious  differences  of  opinion. 

I  chose  the  word  "suffering"  intentionally,  I  might  very  well 
have  said  "pain"  instead.  But  my  object  was  to  denote  the  most 
vital  and  significant  element  of  that  pain,  the  very  element  that 
Is  associated  with  the  acquisition  of  the  most  important  analytic 
experience,  and  for  that  I  know  of  no  other  name  than  suffering. 
It  may  be  prudent  not  to  call  things  by  their  frequently  alarming 
names;  but  it  is  not  equally  truthful. 

What?  Can  the  knowledge  of  objectively  valid  truths,  of  defi- 
nite laws  demonstrable  by  everyone  and  to  everyone,  of  typical 
conditions,  be  dependent  upon  the  observer  or  learner  suffering 
under  them?  It  will  be  said— and  often  has  been  said— that  a  con- 
dition of  so  subjective  a  nature  is  unheard  of  in  scientific  investi- 
gation. People  will  say  it  recalls  the  way  religious  doctrines  of 
salvation  are  learned,  that  it  is  calculated  to  endanger  verification 
of  the  objective  facts,  that  no  such  condition  has  ever  been  at- 
tached to  the  acquisition  of  psychological  knowledge,  and  so  on. 
Unable  to  meet  such  a  shower  of  arguments  and  unschooled  in 
dialectics,  I  shall  not  attempt  to  put  together  what  can  be  said  in 
reply  to  these  objections.  I  will  only  remind  the  reader  that  the 
conditions  upon  which  we  can  acquire  certain  knowledge  do  not 
depend  upon  the  teacher's  will,  but  first  and  foremost  upon  the 
nature  of  the  knowledge  to  be  acquired. 

It  is  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  knowledge  that  justifies  my 
statement,  and  not  only  of  the  knowledge  but  also  of  the  experi- 
ence that  must  be  acquired.  The  most  important  analytic  knowl- 
edge cannot  be  acquired  in  its  full  significance  without  the  removal 
of  repressions.  And  here  we  strike  upon  a  central  conception. 
The  motive  and  purpose  of  the  repression  was  nothing  but  the 
avoidance  of  pain.  The  removal  of  the  repression  must  cause 
pain— taken  here  in  its  broadest  significance.  But  the  removal  of 
the  repression,  the  conquest  of  the  resistance  against  certain  ideas 
and  emotions  becoming  conscious,  is  the  inescapable  condition  of 
acquiring  tfie  mast  important  analytic  knowledge.  Assuredly  it  is 
not  only  the  individual's  sensibilities,  his  pride  and  his  vanity, 
chat  are  touched  by  analysis,  but  other  things  besides.  Our  dear- 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  519 

est  Illusions  are  brought  Into  question;  dear  because  their  main- 
tenance has  been  bought  with  particularly  great  sacrifices.  The 
views  and  convictions  that  we  love  most  fervently  analysis  under- 
mines; it  weans  us  from  our  old  habits  of  thought.  This  new 
knowledge  confronts  us  with  dangers  that  we  seemed  to  have 
mastered  long  ago,  raises  thoughts  that  we  had  not  dared  to 
think,  stirs  feelings  from  which  we  had  anxiously  guarded  our- 
selves. Analysis  means  an  invasion  of  the  realm  of  Intellectual  and 
emotional  taboo,  and  so  rouses  all  the  defensive  reactions  that 
protect  that  realm.  Every  inch  of  the  ground  Is  obstinately  de- 
fended, the  more  ardently  the  more  trouble  its  conquest  once 
cost  us.  But  where  analysis  penetrates  to  the  deepest  and  most 
sensitive  plane  of  our  personality,  it  can  only  force  an  entrance 
with  pain. 

There  Is  nothing  misleading  In  saying  that  the  man  who  really 
wants  to  understand  analysis  must  experience  It  and  its  effects  on 
his  own  person;  but  It  is  a  vague  assertion  that  paraphrases  the 
position  rather  than  describes  it.  It  Is  correct  to  say  that  the 
analyst's  most  significant  knowledge  must  be  experienced  by  him- 
self. But  It  Is  even  more  correct  and  approaches  nearer  to  what  is 
essential  to  declare  openly  that  these  psychological  experiences 
are  of  such  a  nature  that  they  must  be  suffered. 

What  we  have  to  do  is  to  throw  light  on  the  problem  in  Its  ob- 
scurest corners;  perhaps  the  subjective  capacity  to  suffer  or, 
better,  the  capacity  to  accept  and  assimilate  painful  knowledge, 
Is  one  of  the  most  important  prognostic  marks  of  analytic  study. 
It  seems  to  me  that  we  have  no  right  to  withhold  from  learners 
the  fact  that  the  deepest  knowledge  is  not  to  be  had  if  they  shrink 
from  purchasing  it  with  personal  suffering.  And  this  capacity  is 
assuredly  not  one  that  can  be  learned.  Suffering,  too,  is  a  gift;  it  Is 
a  grace.  Let  me  make  my  meaning  dear.  Among  my  patients  at 
the  moment  is  a  talented  playwright.  His  craftsmanship,  Ms  dra- 
matic sense,  his  stylistic  endowment  are  beyond  dispute;  he  is 
smart,  witty,  observes  sharply,  and  knows  the  world.  What  makes 
him  fail?  Goethe  gives  the  answer:  he  says  the  pott  Is  a  person  to 
whom  God  gave  the  gift  to  say  what  he  has  suffered,  what  we  all 
have  suffered.  My  young  playwright  would  have  the  ability  to 
say  what  he  feels.  The  trouble  is  that  he  does  not  feel  suffering. 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

He  always  chooses  the  easy  way  out  of  conflicts;  he  will  not  stand 
his  ground  In  the  face  of  unavoidable  grief,  sorrow,  despair.  We 
analysts  often  cannot  spare  our  patients  pain.  In  order  to  make 
an  omelette,  you  have  to  break  eggs. 

But  how  can  an  analyst  understand  others  If  he  has  not  suffered 
himself?  We  return  here  again  to  the  statement  that  qualities 
of  character  are  more  Important  than  intellectual  ones  for  the 
making  of  an  analyst. 

Now  does  not  a  good  deal  of  psychological  knowledge  get 
through  to  the  patient  painlessly?  Certainly,  I  was  speaking  here 
of  the  most  significant  part  of  analysis,  the  most  Important  both 
in  theory  and  practice,  which  starts  from  the  problem  of  repres- 
sion and  remains  dependent  upon  It.  But  a  deeper  comprehen- 
sion of  these  questions  presupposes  a  clarification  of  the  analyst's 
owe  conflicts,  an  Insight  Into  the  weakest  and  most  endangered 
parts  of  his  own  ego,  the  rousing  and  stirring  of  everything  that 
slept  deepest  In  him— if  It  slept.  That  knowledge  can  only  be 
purchased  at  the  price  of  staking  his  own  person,  of  conscious 
suffering.  Before  sitting  down  on  the  chair  behind  the  couch,  the 
analyst  should  have  stood  up  to  life. 

In  this  sense  the  reading  of  analytic  literature  and  attendance 
at  lectures  on  analysis  only  mean  preparation  for  the  acquisition 
of  analytic  comprehension.  They  certainly  do  not  give  the  pene- 
tration that  alone  deserves  the  name  of  comprehension;  they  re- 
main on  the  surface  of  intellectual  comprehension,  and  show 
little  power  of  resistance.  But  why  do  I  lay  stress  upon  just  the 
suffering?  Doesn't  anyone  who  wants  to  understand  the  depths 
of  human  experience  also  have  to  feel  pleasure,  joy,  happiness? 
Certainly;  but  a  person  who  has  once  experienced  deep  suffering 
need  not  be  anxious  about  his  power  to  comprehend  other  emo- 
tions- That  Intellectual  freedom,  that  profounder  psychological 
insight,  that  clear  vision  that  come  from  the  conquest  of  suffering, 
on  be  attained  by  no  other  means, 

To  spare  ourselves  pain  sometimes  involves  sparing  ourselves 
fKycboIogical  Insight  The  unconscious  knowledge  that  I  have  so 
often  spoken  of  springs  not  least  from  the  reservoir  of  our  own 
suffering,  through  which  we  learn  to  understand  that  of  others. 
Not  unhappiness,  not  'Calamity,  not  mnlheur  or  unfortunate  ex- 


THE   GIFT   FOR   PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  J2I 

periences  produce  It.  It  is  true  that  misfortune  teaches  us  pru- 
dence. But  suffering,  consciously  experienced  and  mastered, 
teaches  us  wisdom. 

Before  1  conclude  this  contribution  to  the  discussion,  I  will 
return  once  more  to  the  theme  of  Inner  truthfulness,  which  ap- 
pears to  me  as  one  of  the  essential  psychological  conditions  for 
the  Investigation  of  the  unconscious.  It  is  a  quality  that  will  not 
only  prove  of  value  in  the  conquest  of  unexplored  regions  of  the 
mind;  it  is  also  needed  in  order  to  stand  out  against  a  pseudo 
rationality  that  declares  It  superfluous  to  range  the  distant  realm 
of  the  unconscious  when  the  good  territory  of  the  conscious  lies 
so  near  at  hand.  In  our  analytic  work  we  soon  feel  the  temptation 
of  yielding  to  that  admonition,  for  the  forces  of  our  own  con- 
scious habits  of  thought  will  Influence  us  to  reject  at  once  an  idea 
about  the  psychological  data  that  seems  absurd  or  scurrilous.  And 
we  must  consider  that  the  data,  emerging  rapidly,  often  vanish 
and  are  lost  just  when  they  are  received.  But  if  we  recall  one  of 
these  ideas  later,  it  often  seems  not  only  senseless  and  In  bad 
taste,  but  without  tangible  connection,  farfetched.  Although  the 
idea  as  such  has  not  then  been  drawn  back  Into  the  unconscious, 
its  matrix  in  the  conditions  of  the  psychical  situation  has. 

The  voices  of  those  around  him,  to  whom  he  tells  the  strange 
Idea  or  Impression,  will  then  sound  to  the  analyst  like  an  echo  of 
what  resists  the  surprising  perception  within  himself,  and  will 
sometimes  drown  other  voices.  Everyday  considerations  will 
mount  up,  Ironical  reflections  will  block  the  way,  sophisms  will 
appear  to  check  the  action  of  reason,  and  the  jugglery  of  con- 
sciousness will  prevent  penetration  into  the  region  of  repression. 
In  the  external  world  ancient  wisdom  will  unite  with  modern 
cocksureness  to  lure  the  analyst  away  from  the  blurred  trail  And 
it  needs  moral  courage  to  hold  aloof  from  obvious  "explanations/* 
For  if  the  budding  analyst,  deaf  to  the  seductions  of  exalted  rea- 
son, cleaves  obstinately  to  the  track  once  found,  like  a  hound  set 
on  the  trail  that  is  not  to  be  turned  from  it  by  strangers  calling 
him,  he  will  get  no  encouragement  from  society,  even  if  the  trail 
brings  him  nearer  to  what  he  is  seeking.  He  will  feel  the  desola- 
tion, chill,  and  gloom  of  the  man  who  dedicates  himself  to  Intel- 
lectual solitude  and  is  soon  alone.  The  comfort  remains  to  Mm 


J22  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

of  the  knowledge  expressed  in  the  proverb:  "Se  tu  sarai  solo,  tu 
mrai  tutto  tuo."  And  this  is  the  blessing  of  such  loneliness:  he 
who  is  always  listening  to  the  voices  of  others  remains  Ignorant  of 
his  own.  He  who  Is  always  going  to  others  will  never  come  to 
himself. 

Rejection  by  our  neighbors  and  the  absence  of  outward  success, 
joined  to  our  own  doubts,  is  harder  to  bear  than  we  like  to  ad- 
mit. But  if  we  have  the  hope  of  illuminating  obscure  mental 
relations,  these  reactions  of  society  may  make  us  lose  our  temper, 
but  they  cannot  make  us  lose  courage.  That  danger  is  nearer 
wfaen  the  way  we  are  seeking  seems  to  lose  Itself  In  the  darkness 
ahead  or  in  the  far  distance,  while  other  people  seem  to  have 
reached  the  same  goal  long  ago  along  the  broad  highway. 

The  line  of  least  resistance  in  psychological  cognition  does  not 
simply  mark  off  the  general  opinion  from  the  analytic  point  of 
view.  We  shall  find  it  in  our  own  camp,  nay,  in  each  one  of  us. 
We,  like  other  people,  are  exposed  to  the  temptation  to  try  to 
comprehend  obscure  psychological  relations  rapidly  and  accord- 
ing to  formula.  Indeed,  there  is  one  factor  that  occasionally  brings 
the  temptation  nearer:  analytic  theories  are  no  less  susceptible 
to  hasty  and  false  application  than  other  scientific  assumptions. 
We  must  warn  young  people  not  to  make  short  work  of  the  in- 
tellectual processes  that  precede  the  spoken  word,  and  train  them 
to  postpone  judgment  and  put  up  with  doubt.  Knowledge  too 
hastily  acquired  assuredly  does  not  imply  power,  but  a  presump- 
tuous pretense  of  power. 

I  take  it  as  a  good  omen  of  the  scientific  quality  of  an  analytic 
worker  who  has  only  been  practicing  for  a  few  years,  if  the  ex- 
planation of  unconscious  processes  does  not  come  easily  to  him 
when  he  finds  himself  confronted  with  the  confusing  wealth  of 
psychological  data.  Thus  a  young  psychoanalyst  lamented  to  me 
not  long  ago  that  he  had  failed  to  comprehend  a  relation  in,  or 
to  grasp  the  peculiar  psychological  character  of,  a  case  he  was 
observing.  I  advised  him  to  wait  and  not  yield  to  impatience.  If 
a  tiling  is  very  easily  comprehended*  it  may  be  that  there  is  not 
much  to  comprehend  In  It  He  said  hesitantly  that  from  his  school 
days  right  on  into  the  years  when  he  discussed  problems  of  his 
science  with  academic  friends,  he  had  envied  people  who  rapidly 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  323 

and  easily  discerned  intricate  relations  and  could  solve  a  problem 
with  ease.  His  case  may  permit  of  a  few  remarks  on  something 
beyond  the  special  circumstances. 

Very  many  of  us  know  these  moods  well.  At  congresses  or  meet- 
ings of  analytic  societies  when  somebody  has  boasted  how  easily 
he  had  found  the  solution  of  a  psychological  problem,  how  deep 
he  had  penetrated  into  the  structure  of  a  case  of  neurosis,  and 
how  soon  he  had  discerned  all  its  psychical  conditions,  I  have 
felt  nothing  of  calm  assurance,  but  sometimes  a  strong  sense  of 
my  own  inadequacy.  While  I  had  not  yet  really  grasped  where 
the  problem  lay,  the  other  man  had  solved  it  long  ago.  I  looked 
enviously  upon  a  facility,  a  rapidity  of  comprehension  that  I 
could  not  hope  to  attain.  My  intellectual  Inferiority  seemed  to  be 
confirmed  by  the  harsh—and  still  more  by  the  mild— verdict  that 
contrasted  my  own  dullness  and  slowness  of  grasp,  my  "long-dis- 
tance transmission/"  with  the  other  person's  ease  and  rapidity  of 
comprehension.  I  thought  then  that  the  intellectual  rating  of  an  in- 
dividual was  essentially  determined  by  these  qualities.  Scientific 
psychology  had  worked  out,  in  Its  tests,  methods  of  making  these 
conditions  appear  the  only  Important  and  unchangeable  ones. 

And  then  as  my  youth  slipped  away  and  I  subjected  this  much- 
lauded  ease  of  comprehension  to  closer  examination,  my  respect 
for  it  was  considerably  diminished.  Was  It,  perhaps,  experience 
that  taught  me  to  be  suspicious?  I  do  not  think  so;  experience  as 
such  teaches  us  hardly  anything,  unless  we  want  to  learn  from  it. 
But  that  requires  a  coincidence  of  certain  psychological  condi- 
tions. The  truth  is  that  I  learned  to  mistrust  all  that  is  intellectu- 
ally glib  and  slick,  smooth  and  smart.  I  often  recognized  It  as  a 
mark  of  shining  and  worthless  superficiality,  a  "phony/*  to  use 
the  slang  expression.  I  began  also  to  mistrust  the  rapid  power  of 
"understanding"  and  I  remembered  what  they  used  to  say  In 
Vienna  about  an  Austrian  statesman:  his  grasp  of  things  and  per- 
sons was  always  quick,  but  always  false.  I  acquired  the  ability  to 
resist  the  great  defensive  power  of  other  people's  experience,  for 
the  experience  of  others  often  enough  prevents  us  from  gaining 
any  of  our  own.  On  occasion  it  Is  the  downright  protector  of  tra- 
dition and  the  purveyor  of  false  assumptions  handed  down  to  us. 

I  do  not  speak  here  of  those  cases  in  which  such  comprehension 


324  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

amounts  to  the  acceptance  of  the  opinions  of  predecessors  or 
authorities  that  have  come  superficially  to  our  knowledge.  Such 
cases  are,  indeed,  of  the  utmost  importance  to  the  rising  academic 
generation.  I  am  discussing  the  comprehension  that  comes  after 
we  have  examined  the  facts  and  found  a  reasonable  and  sufficient 
explanation.  The  temptation  that  is  perhaps  the  most  difficult 
to  recognize  as  such,  and  to  which  we  therefore  so  readily  yield, 
is  that  of  accepting  an  explanation  because  it  is  plausible,  ra- 
tional, and  comprehensible.  This  easy  comprehension  is  often 
the  sign  of  intellectual  haste,  let  us  say,  the  expression  of  an  intel- 
lectual avidity  that  is  content  with  the  first  intelligence  that  offers, 
instead  of  thinking  the  best  obtainable  just  good  enough. 

In  analytic  psychology  we  have  daily  illustrations  of  how  liable 
we  are  to  this  temptation.  There  is,  for  instance,  a  wholly  logical 
connection  between  two  elements  in  the  manifest  content  of  a 
dream;  but  it  Is  only  a  shadow  bridge  across  a  hidden  gulf.  We 
hear  a  very  reasonable  inference,  a  logically  unassailable  reason 
for  certain  personal  peculiarities,  and  yet  it  forms  only  a  well- 
camouflaged  super-structure  in  the  system  of  a  serious  compulsion 
neurosis.  All  that  and  much  more  besides  is  only  external,  a  log- 
ical facade,  intellectual  mimicry,  and  camouflage,  set  up  in  order 
to  lure  research  away  from  more  important  things  and  keep  it 
away  from  its  real  objects.  Anyone  who  interprets  a  slip  of  the 
tongue  as  the  absent-minded  substitution  of  one  letter  for  another 
or  the  dropping  of  a  sound  need  not  go  on  with  research.  Any- 
one who  regards  the  compulsion  of  a  nervous  patient  to  wash 
simply  as-  an  expression  of  intensified  cleanliness  has  allowed  him- 
self to  be  led  astray  by  the  logical  tricks  of  a  compulsion  neu- 
rotic. If  we  once  abandon  ourselves  to  deceptive  logic  and  yield 
to  the  obscure  urge  to  comprehend  rapidly,  then  we  cannot  stop. 
We  are  soon  convinced;  it  must  be  so,  and  nowise  else.  With 
less  and  less  intellectual  resistance,  we  shall  then  comprehend 
everything  OB  the  basis  of  false  assumptions—strictly  logically. 
Everything  proceeds  swimmingly;  single  contradictions  and  omis- 
sions are  passed  over,  rifts  unconsciously  bridged.  Any  detail 
does  not  fit  is  pushed  and  pulled  into  place,  and  conflicting 
are  guilelessly  forced  into  a  new  artificial  system.  The 
advice  that  we  must  give  to  young  psychological  investigators 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  325 

must  be:  Resist  the  temptation  of  understanding  too  quickly, 
("Principiis  intelligendi  obsta") 

We  hear  the  boast  made  on  behalf  of  psychoanalysis  that,  be- 
hind the  mental  phenomena  that  have  hitherto  been  regarded  as 
absurd  and  senseless,  it  has  discovered  a  secret  meaning,  a  hidden 
significance,  and  brought  it  to  light.  Confronted  with  this  mighty 
achievement,  which  has  opened  the  road  to  the  comprehension 
of  the  unconscious  mind,  I  fear  that  we  have  too  little  appreciated 
the  other  achievement  that  preceded  it,  without  which,  indeed,  It 
would  not  have  been  possible.  Psychoanalysis  has  resisted  the 
acceptance  of  mental  associations  simply  because  they  were  rea- 
sonable, or,  Indeed,  because  they  were  "the  only  reasonable  ex- 
planation/' It  has  refused  to  recognize  a  chain  of  cause  and  effect 
In  the  Inner  life  as  the  only  one  solely  because  It  seemed  plausible 
and  there  was  no  other  in  sight.  The  theory  of  physical  stimuli 
seemed  capable  of  explaining  the  phenomena  of  dreams;  puberty 
was  thoroughly  accepted  as  the  beginning  of  sexuality.  In  these 
matters  nature  herself  offered  the  obvious  explanation.  Several 
physiological  phenomena  clearly  Indicated  the  etiology  of  hys- 
teria, of  phobias,  and  compulsion  neuroses— everything  was 
plain,  there  were  no  further  problems  to  be  solved.  To  hold  these 
reasonable  and  sufficient  explanations  inadequate,  to  renounce 
easy  and  convenient  comprehension  of  psychical  facts— that  could 
hardly  be  called  eccentricity— it  was  obviously  either  want  of 
sense  or  else  scientific  conceit,  hubris. 

It  must  be  stated  more  than  once— it  must  be  said  three  times- 
that  not  to  understand  psychological  relations  represents  an  ad- 
vance over  superficial  comprehension.  Whereas  such  comprehen- 
sion amounts  to  arriving  in  a  blind  alley,  all  sorts  of  possibilities 
remain  open  to  one  who  does  not  understand.  To  be  puzzled 
where  everything  is  clear  to  others,  where  they  merely  ask:  "What 
is  there  to  understand?"— to  see  a  riddle  there  still— need  not  be  a 
mark  of  stupidity;  it  may  be  the  mark  of  a  free  mind.  Obstinately 
not  to  understand  where  other  people  find  no  difficulties  and 
obscurities  may  be  the  initial  stage  of  new  knowledge.  In  this 
sense  the  much-lauded  rapid  apprehension,  including  that  by 
means  of  psychoanalytic  theories,  may  be  sterile  since  it  touches 
only  the  most  superficial  levels.  Regarded  thus,  a  mediobre*' in- 


§26  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

telilgence,  an  intellectual  mobility,  and  capacity  to  be  on  the 
spot,  which  places,  classifies,  and  establishes  every  phenomenon 
as  quickly  as  possible,  may  have  less  cultural  value  than  apparent 
intellectual  failure  or  the  temporary  miss,  which  is  sometimes 
the  forerunner  of  deeper  comprehension. 

In  the  inner  world,  too,  there  are  situations  in  which  the 
cosmos,  the  ordered,  articulated  universe,  seems,  so  to  speak,  to 
be  turned  back  to  chaos,  yet  from  which  a  new  creation  emerges. 
We  think,  perhaps,  that  we  fully  understand  such  and  such  a 
psychical  event,  and  then  it  suddenly  becomes  incomprehensible. 
We  had  worked  our  way  to  the  opinion  in  question  and  made  it 
our  own.  And  then  all  of  a  sudden  it  is  lost,  without  our  know- 
ing how.  We  had  tested  and  examined  everything  and  decided 
that  it  was  aU  right;  and  then  everything  became  uncertain 
again.  In  the  midst  of  light  we  saw  obscurity.  Problems  solved 
long  ago  become  problematical  again. 

Questions  answered  long  ago  show  that  there  was  something 
questionable  in  the  answer.  Surely  everybody  has  had  the  experi- 
ence of  a  carpet  pattern  seeming  to  change  under  his  very  eyes. 
Gradually  or  suddenly  we  see  it  seem  to  lose  the  familiar  form; 
the  lines,  combined  so  significantly  and  pleasantly  in  figures  or 
arabesques,  suddenly  part,  tangle,  and  try  to  follow  their  own 
strange  ways,  darker  than  those  of  the  Lord,  As  long  as  we  have 
known  the  carpet,  we  have  seen  that  arrangement  of  lines  in  it, 
one  figure.  Our  eye  is  used  to  tracing  the  threads  that  make  the 
memorable  form.  We  never  expected  to  see  anything  else.  And 
then  one  day  the  accustomed  order  of  the  lines  is  dissolved,  the 
old  pattern  is  blurred  and  hazy.  The  lines  refuse  to  combine  in 
the  old  way.  They  arrange  themselves  in  new,  hitherto  concealed 
figures,  in  new,  hitherto  unnoticed  groupings.  A  like  surprise,  in 
ceasing  to  recognize  something  to  be  transformed  later  into  the 
of  new  knowledge,  may  be  the  lot  of  many  investigators. 
What  has  long  been  classified,  arranged,  judged,  and  clearly 
known  may  suddenly  become  incomprehensible  to  an  individual 
pioneer.  That  means  that  the  conception  hitherto  current,  accord- 
ing to  which  everything  was  dear,  no  longer  seems  to  him  worthy 
o£  the  name  of  comprehension.  The  investigator  in  question 
thai  say,  "I  am  beginning  no  longer  to  comprehend/* 


THE   GIFT  FOR  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATION  $27 

It  would  seem  that  one  of  the  most  important  conditions  of 
this  non-comprehension  is  an  uncommon  measure  of  intellectual 
courage.  I  do  not  mean  here  the  courage  to  confess  we  have  not 
understood  something  that  is  as  clear  as  daylight  to  everybody 
else.  That  kind  of  courage  would  denote  something  more  ex- 
ternal, something  of  a  secondary  character.  What  I  mean  is  rather 
the  courage  in  the  world  of  thought  that  is  able  to  draw  back 
from  what  is  universally  comprehensible  and  reasonable,  and  not 
to  join  the  march  into  the  region  of  the  plausible.  It  takes  cour- 
age to  mistrust  the  temptation  to  understand  everything  and  not 
to  be  content  with  a  perception  because  it  is  evident.  It  takes 
courage  to  resist  the  wave  of  general  comprehension  (in  the  sense 
of  superficiality  or  common  sense).  It  requires  inner  truthfulness 
to  stand  out  against  our  own  intellectual  impatience,  our  desire 
to  master  intellectually  and  to  take  associations  by  storm.  This, 
too,  is  a  form  of  belief  in  the  omnipotence  of  thought,  and  it 
requires  courage  to  reject  it— not  to  take  the  path  of  least  intel- 
lectual resistance,  of  speedy  and  effortless  comprehension. 

Assuredly  it  is  not  true,  as  a  group  of  scientific  nihilists  tell  us, 
that  man  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  truth.  On  the  contrary,  I 
believe  that  mankind  has  a  great  thirst  for  truth.  The  greatest 
hindrance  to  the  advance  of  knowledge  is  rather  of  a  different 
nature;  it  is  that  people  think  they  have  long  been  in  possession 
of  the  truth,  the  whole  truth.  The  realms  in  which  the  human 
spirit  will  make  new  and  surprising  discoveries  are  by  no  means 
only  those  hitherto  unexplored,  but  also  those  of  which  we  have 
very  accurate  and  reliable  maps.  It  is  the  problems  already 
"solved"  that  present  the  most  numerous  and  difficult  problems 
to  the  inquirer.  If  we  want  to  attain  new  knowledge,  we  must  look 
around  among  the  old,  familiar  questions,  just  as  Diogenes 
sought  men  in  the  crowded  market  place  of  Athens.  But  we  need 
a  measure  of  intellectual  courage  to  raise  and  solve  these  prob- 
lems. It  is  this  courage  that  will,  sooner  or  later,  overcome  the 
resistance  of  the  dull  world. 


PART   FOUR 


Psychoanalytic  Experiences  in 
Life,  Literature,  and  Music 


Psychoanalytic  Experiences  in  Life., 
Literature,  and  Music 


AFTER  more  than  forty  years  of  theoretical  and  practical  oc- 
cupation with  psychoanalysis  I  still  consider  those  insights 
most  valuable  that  come  as  a  surprise  to  me.  An  insight  into 
human  beings  that  is  only  figured  out,  a  psychological  under- 
standing that  is  obtained  only  by  reason,  can  have  but  intellectual 
fruits.  Here  are  some  inner  experiences  leading  to  a  few  new 
concepts  and  insights  into  unconscious  emotions.  Observations 
and  impressions  obtained  in  everyday  life  and  in  analytic  sessions 
often  echo  the  inner  experiences  shaped  by  a  great  writer.  Those 
echoes  are  memories  of  character  or  situations  read  in  a  book  or 
seen  on  the  stage.  Yet  such  fleeting  and  half-forgotten  impressions 
are  often  the  hidden  sources  from  which  the  "intuitions'*  of  the 
psychoanalyst  flow.  His  unconscious  knowledge  and  understand- 
ing—what else  is  "intuition?"— are  acquired  not  only  from  the 
experiences  of  life,  but  also  from  their  reflections  in  literature 
that  mirrors  life.  We  do  not  often  relate  the  psychological  in- 
sights of  great  writers  to  our  analytic  work  in  our  daily  wrestling 
with  the  demons  of  the  consultation  room.  But  these  insights 
pervade  the  atmosphere  nevertheless.  The  invisible  can  some- 
times be  strongly  present.  Under  favorable  internal  circum- 
stances we  are  sometimes  able  to  grasp  these  insights  and  to  put 
their  content  and  character  into  words.  I  should  like  to  present 
an  example  of  such  an  exceptional  experience,  of  the  re-emer- 
gence of  impressions  otherwise  subterranean,  to  show  what  an 
important  part  they  play  in  our  work.  It  is  a  strange  experience 
to  meet  in  everyday  life  the  very  counterpart  of  characters  or 
situations  which  once  were  conceived  in  the  imagination  of  a 
perceptive  writer. 

Here  is  a  dream  of  my  patient,  Tom,  who  is  thirty-one  years 


332  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

old:  "Bill  and  I  sit  together  and  he  tells  me  that  his  father  died 
a  few  days  before.  He  laughs  while  he  tells  me  this  and  I  am 
surprised.'9 

Bill  is  an  acquaintance  of  Tom's  who  often  spends  the  evening 
with  him.  The  two  young  men  had  dined  together  the  night  be- 
fore Tom's  dream  occurred,  and  at  this  time  Bill  had,  in  reality, 
spoken  warmly  of  his  "old  man/'  whose  character  he  praised  and 
whom  he  described  as  being  still  vigorous  and  hard-working. 
Tom  got  the  impression  that  Bill  and  his  father  are  on  excellent 
terms.  In  his  analytic  session  the  following  day,  Tom  reported 
first  this  conversation  and  then  his  dream.  We  do  not  hesitate  to 
guess  that  the  conversation  with  Bill  functioned  as  a  day  remnant 
for  the  dream,  and  that  thoughts  or  emotions  awakened  during 
the  evening  were  its  source. 

There  were  no  associations  helpful  in  penetrating  the  secret 
meaning  of  the  dream.  Its  interpretation,  at  least  in  its  essential 
content,  emerged  in  a  sudden  flash,  facilitated  by  my  knowledge 
of  the  dreamer's  life  story,  and  by  the  insight  gained  into  his  char- 
acter during  several  months  of  psychoanalysis.  When  Bill  had 
talked  so  affectionately  of  his  father,  there  must  have  been  in 
Tom  some  feeling  of  envy  and  some  longing  for  his  own  father, 
who  had  died  twenty-one  years  before.  Tom  felt  an  impulse  to 
speak  of  this  father  whom  he  had  lost  when  he  was  ten  years  old. 
The  dream  originated  in  the  thought:  "If  Bill  should  ask  me 
about  my  father,  I  would  say  .  .  /'  The  reversal  of  roles  in  the 
dream  appears  more  plausible  when  we  understand  that  Tom 
would,  in  actual  life,  speak  very  much  as  Bill  did  in  his  dream. 
Toip  likes  to  hide  his  strong  emotions  behind  a  casual  and  some- 
what cynical  front.  He  makes  fun  of  himself  and  others,  and  in 
many  analytic  sessions  spoke  in  a  flippant  and  sarcastic  manner 
of  things  that  were, painful  to  him. 

The  concealed  meaning  of  the  dream  becomes  clear  when  one 
reverses  the  roles  and  transforms  a  thought  possibility  into  a 
real  situation:  "If  I  now  talked  about  my  father,  I  would  say 
that  he  had  died  a  few  days  ago  and  then  I  would  laugh  and  Bill 
would  be  surprised."  Such  behavior  would  be  quite  in  character 
for  Tom,  as  he  had  frequently  demonstrated  in  the  past  few 
months.  Besides  Ms  need  to  hide  his  .emotions  and  to  make  fun 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  333 

of  himself,  his  temptation  to  startle  and  impress  people,  to  act  a 
part,  is  very  powerful. 

Tom  did  not  react  to  my  tentative  interpretation  of  his  dream, 
He  neither  confirmed  nor  denied  it.  He  remained  silent  for  a 
moment,  and  then  spoke  of  a  slip  of  the  tongue  he  had  experi- 
enced a  few  days  before.  Jt  was  as  if  he  wanted  to  turn  to  another 
subject  and  avoid  discussion  of  the  dream.  But  the  character  of 
the  mistake  he  now  related  confirmed,  in  art  indirect  manner, 
my  interpretation  of  the  dream.  "I  made  a  funny  slip  of  the 
tongue  the  other  day.  Paul  [another  acquaintance]  and  I  were 
in  a  bar  and  we  were  pretty  high  He  asked  me  about  my  father, 
and  I  said,  'I  died  when  I  was  ten  years  old/  "  In  saying,  "I  died/* 
instead  of,  "He  died,"  Tom  gave  his  genuine  feelings  away.  The 
loss  of  his  father  marked  the  turning  point  of  his  boyhood.  It 
was  as  if  he  had  died  himself  when  his  father  was  killed  in  a 
car  accident. 

We  have  learned  that  there  is  a  secret  communication  between 
the  unconscious  minds  of  two  persons  engaged  in  a  conversation 
such  as  this.  When  Tom  spoke  of  his  slip  of  the  tongue,  he  con- 
tinued the  theme  of  the  death  of  his  father,  and  what  he  said 
amounted  to  an  unconscious  confirmation  of  my  dream  interpre- 
tation. However,  his  thoughts  had  a  further  unconscious  mean- 
ing. The  story  of  his  slip  was,  so  to  speak,  his  own  contribution 
to  the  interpretation  of  his  dream.  This  contribution  was  not 
consciously  intended  and  was  not  perceived  by  him  as  such. 

My  attention  was  turned  to  an  important  feature  of  the  dream 
that  had  been  neglected  In  my  interpretation:  his  father  had  died 
a  few  days  before  instead  of  twenty-one  years  ago.  This  detail 
of  the  manifest  dream  content  had  not  been  considered  in  my 
interpretation,  which  therefore  left  out  one  of  the  most  essential 
meanings  of  the  dream.  In  his  slip  of  the  tongue  ("I  died  when 
I  was  ten  years  old**),  he  had  made  a  mistake  concerning  the 
personal  pronoun.  But  does  this  slip  not  say,  "I  still  feel  the 
terrible  loss  today  as  I  did  when  I  was  a  boy  of  ten  years  .  .  /'? 

The  dream  element  that  his  father  "died  a  few  days  ago"  must 
have  a  similar  concealed  meaning.  We  sometimes  say,  "I  remem- 
ber as  if  it  had  happened  yesterday,"  when  we  speai  of  an  event 
that  occurred  a  long  time  ago  but  has  made  a  lasting  and  vivid  izn- 


THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

pression  upon  us.  Such  a  meaning  is  not  manifest  In  the  wordiag 
of  the  dream  feature,  but  it  can  easily  be  guessed. 

The  following  paragraphs  not  only  reveal  this  missing  inter- 
pretation but  go  beyond  this  to  demonstrate  again  that  a  most 
important  part  of  analytic  understanding  emerges  from  uncon- 
scious processes  of  the  psychoanalyst. 

The  fact  that  the  patient  told  me  about  his  slip  of  the  tongue 
had  turned  my  attention  to  the  one  still  neglected  element  of  the 
dream.  But  if  this  was  the  effect  of  his  report,  was  it  not  also  its 
unconscious  purpose?  When  his  reaction  to  my  original  interpre- 
tation was  neither  to  agree  nor  disagree,  but,  instead,  to  tell  me  of 
his  slip  of  the  tongue,  there  must  have  been  an  unconscious  con- 
nection in  his  mind  between  the  dream  and  his  mistake,  The  very 
succession  proves  that  there  were  threads  running  from  the  first 
to  the  second  subject.  The  content  of  his  slip  points  in  the  direc- 
tion of  that  concealed  connection.  It  says,  in  effect,  "I  was  only 
ten  years  old,  but  it  is  as  if  it  happened  yesterday  and  as  if  I  had 
died  myself," 

Shifting  now  from  the  patient's  thought  processes  to  my  own,  I 
shall  try  to  describe  as  precisely  as  possible  on  which  interesting 
detour  the  understanding  of  that  neglected  dream  element  was 
reached.  It  was  as  if  the  report  about  the  slip  of  the  tongue  had 
acted  as  an  unconscious  stimulus  and  was  used  for  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  still  unconsidered  detail.  The  hint  was  unconsciously 
grasped  by  me  as  if  it  contained  a  further  due  until  then  missing. 

At  this  point  the  name  "Hamlet"  emerged  suddenly  into  my 
thoughts.  Tom's  slip  of  the  tongue  had  become  connected  in  my 
mind  both  with  the  dream  element  ("my  father  died  a  few  days 
ago")  and  with  some  memory-trace  of  Shakespeare's  play— as  if 
the  dream  wording  awakened  a  familiar  echo.  I  became  aware 
that  the  purposeful  absurdity  of  "a  few  days  ago"  reminded  me 
of  some  similar,  grimly  distorted  and  bitter  lines  spoken  by  the 
Danish  prince. 

Suddenly  the  scene  of  the  play  within  the  play  came  vividly  be- 
fore my  mind's  eye:  the  King,  the  Queen  and  the  Lords  in  the 
royal  castle  at  Elsinore;  the  wide  hall  illuminated  by  torches; 
Ophelia  sits  beside  the  Queen,  and  Hamlet  asks  the  girl  whether 
lie  may  lie  with  Ms  head  upon  her  lap.  I  did  not  then  remember 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  335 

the  exact  words,  but  felt  there  must  follow  some  sentences  that 
Hamlet's  father  had  died  the  other  day.  No,  not  a  few  days  ago 
as  in  Tom's  dream;  a  few  hours  ago  .  .  . 

.Alter  Tom  had  left,  I  looked  the  scene  up  (Act  III,  scene  2). 
Here  Is  the  passage: 

Ophelia:  You  are  merry,  my  lord. 

Hamlet:  Who,  I? 

Ophelia:  Aye,  my  lord. 

Hamlet:  O  God,  your  only  jig-maker.  What  should  a  man 

do  but  be  merry—for  look  you,  how  cheerfully  my  mother 

looks  and  my  father  died  within's  two  hours! 

Ophelia:  Nay,  'tis  twice  two  months,  my  lord. 

Hamlet:  So  long?  Nay,  then,  let  the  devil  wear  black  for 

Til  have  a  suit  of  sables.  O  Heavens!  Died  two  months 

ago  and  not  forgotten  yet?  Then  there's  hope  a  great 

man's  memory  may  outlive  his  life  half  a  year,  but,  by'r 

Lady,  he  must  build  churches  then  .  .  . 

The  bitter  mockery  expressed  in  Hamlet's  joking  Is  not  unlike 
that  in  Tom's  dream.  This  parallel  awakened  my  preconscious 
memory  of  the  play.  The  dream  and  the  scene  from  Hamlet 
were  linked  in  my  thoughts  not  only  by  the  similarity  of  the  emo- 
tions but  by  the  resemblance  of  their  expression— as  in  the  pre- 
tended shortening  of  time  passed  since  the  father's  death.  This 
echo  made  me  understand  how  much  method  and  madness  were 
in  Tom's  dream,  as  In  the  behavior  of  Hamlet. 

For  a  moment  the  shadow  of  the  Bard  had  passed  through  the 
consultation  room  of  an  analyst  and  had  helped  him  to  penetrate 
the  concealed  emotions  of  a  disturbed  mind. 


"If  Hamlet's  father  hadn't  been  murdered—"  When  that  odd 
thought  occurred  to  me— it  was  in  the  middle  of  aa<  analytic 
session  three  years  ago— I  brushed  it  aside,  of  course.  First  because 

it  was  utterly  silly,  second  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  patient, 


336  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

and  third  one  Is  a  rational  human  being  who  should  not  think 
such  foolish  stuff.  Thoughts  must  not  run  around  wildly  as  dogs 
do  in  the  traffic  of  the  city  but  should  be  kept  on  a  leash.  What 
would  the  world  come  to  if  there  were  no  rules  and  regulations 
concerning  trains  of  thought?  Chaos  would  come  again  as  at  the 
dawn  of  creation  before  God  said,  "Let  there  be  light!" 

The  first  time  the  idea  emerged,  it  had  the  innocence  and 
naivete  of  all  silly  thoughts.  It  just  crawled  into  my  brain  like  an 
insect  into  one's  sleeve.  One  becomes  aware  of  an  unpleasant  sen- 
sation that  something  is  creeping  on  one's  arm  before  discovering 
it  is  an  ant.  I  was  at  first  astonished,  then  I  became  indignant 
at  the  intruder,  and  finally  I  felt  ashamed  of  myself.  What  would 
people,  for  instance  my  colleagues,  say  if  they  knew  what  kind 
of  ideas  occurred  to  mel  "The  thought-company  he  keeps!**  they'd 
say.  I  ordered  that  interloper  to  shut  up.  But  it  didn't  and  I 
slowly  yielded  to  it.  Why  shouldn't  a  man  have  silly  ideas  occa- 
sionally? Is  there  no  such  thing  as  intellectual  recreation,  as  a 
playground  for  thoughts?  I  am  a  law-abiding,  tax-paying  citizen, 
a  psychoanalyst,  which  means  I  have  a  more  or  less  honest  pro- 
fession. I  am  as  entitled  to  have  foolish  ideas  as  the  next  man. 
This  is  a  free  country.  Remember  (I  said  to  myself,  said  I)  the 
many  stupid,  even  moronic  thoughts  expressed  at  the  sessions 
of  Congress,  at  the  conventions  of  the  Republican  party,  at  the 
meetings  of  psychiatric  associations!  No  one  there  is  ashamed 
of  having  stupid  thoughts.  They  all  get  a  hearing,  they  are  even 
advertised  and  publicized.  People  are  proud  of  them,  all  kinds  of 
people,  congressmen,  lawyers,  doctors.  They  fill  the  official  publi- 
cations of  the  government,  the  law  journals,  the  scientific  books, 
die  newspapers  and  magazines  of  the  nation. 

Then— of  all  things—the  basic  rale  of  psychoanalysis  occurred 
to  me.  Don't  we  ask  our  patients  to  say  all  that  comes  to  mind, 
however  stupid,  silly,  insignificant  or  immaterial  it  may  appear 
to  them?  And  don't  we  believe  that  just  those  thoughts  to  which 
the  patient  refuses  entrance  bring  most  valuable  material  to  light? 
We  assume  that  these  intruders  from  the  dark  underground  are 
the  offspring  of  ideas,  intimately  connected  with  the  vital  prob- 
lems of  the  patient.  A  "silly"  obsessional  idea,  interpreted  and 
analyzed,  leads  into  the  core  of  neurotic  difficulties.  A  thought 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  337 

gone  astray  makes  sense  when  we  can  reconstruct  Its  origin  and 
evolution.  Following  those  silly  thoughts  might  lead  us  to  a  new 
insights,  might  even  result  In  an  original  concept.  "Give  me  your 
tired,  your  poor,  your  huddled  masses  yearning  to  breathe  free!" 
These  displaced,  suppressed  thoughts  should  enter. 

Why  should  we  analysts  not  follow  the  same  rule  when  silly 
thoughts  occur  to  us?  What  intolerably  pompous  and  conceited 
fools  would  we  be,  if  we  believed  that  our  thought  processes  are 
different  from  those  of  our  patients,  who  are  often  superior  to 
us  in  intelligence,  imagination  and  in  many  other  qualities! 

That  half-formulated  idea  occurred  to  me  again  during  an 
analytic  session  a  few  days  later.  It  then  came  to  mind  in  the  mid- 
dle of  Rank-Olivier 's  production  of  Hamlet.  It  came  quite  im- 
pudently into  the  open  during  the  movie  and  behaved  as  if  it 
were  a  reasonable  and  respectable  thought,  not  self-conscious  at 
all  among  some  quite  sensible  ideas  about  Hamlet.  It  was  here 
at  least  appropriate  to  the  occasion.  However  queer,  at  least  it 
was  not  a  displaced  idea  any  more,  not  a  refugee  thought.  It  was 
still  intellectual  flotsam  and  jetsam. 

The  odd  thought  appeared  here  in  the  middle  of  critical  voices 
that  drowned  my  admiration  for  the  Hamlet  picture.  Am  I  al- 
lowed to  report  those  negative  impressions  and  put  aside  the 
many  things  I  enjoyed?  The  first  impression  that  astonished  me 
was  the  sight  of  the  castle  of  Elsinore.  It  deserves  to  be  included 
in  the  list  of  miracle  buildings  of  the  world  beside  the  Pyramids, 
the  Indian  temples,  and  the  Empire  State  Building.  One  can 
boldly  assert  that  so  many  stairs  do  not  exist  anywhere  else.  They 
are  perhaps  meant  to  be  symbolic,  but  no  other  single  building 
can  boast  of  so  many  stairs.  There  must  have  been  master-build- 
ers in  Denmark  at  the  time,  architects  who  worked  00  the  dif- 
ficult problem:  Is  there  no  other  place  in  the  castle  where  stairs 
could  be  installed? 

I  was,  of  course,  impressed  by  Olivier's  acting,  by  the  scope  of 
the  emotional  expressions  of  his  face,  his  voice  and  Ms  gestures. 
The  trouble  with  his  performance  was  that  this  Hamlet  had  read 
Freud's  and  Ernest  Jones's  explanation  of  his  coniict  and  person- 
ality. Had  read  it?  More  than  this,  had  accepted  and  absorbed 
it—not  wisely  but  too  well.  I  consider  the  analytic  interpretation 


338  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

of  Hamlet  as  correct^  but  I  do  not  believe  an  actor  should  act 
the  part  according  to  this  or  any  Interpretation. 

Take  the  scene  between  mother  and  son  in  the  third  act.  Ham- 
let, who  fiercely  denounces  and  accuses  the  Queen,  passionately 
embraces  her.  He  is  her  lover,  not  her  son;  or  better,  her  son- 
lover.*  "Come,  come,  and  sit  you  down  here.  You  shall  not 
budge,"  sounds,  accompanied  by  those  gestures,  as  if  it  were  an 
invitation  to  a  petting  party.  The  Prince  again  clasps  his  mother 
in  Ms  arms.  Less  would  be  more.  He  says  to  the  woman,  "would 
you  were  not  my  mother!"  In  this  performance  she  isn't,  or  only 
in  a  biological  sense.  But  for  the  incestuous  barrier  which 
threatens  to  disappear  before  our  eyes,  she  is  his  sweetheart.  Does 
not  the  Prince  admonish  the  actors  they  should  not  "tell  all"? 
Olivier's  Hamlet  does.  He  leaves  no  doubt  in  his  audience's  mind 
that  he  has  studied  Freud. 

The  adverse  impression  was  strengthened  by  the  fact  that 
Olivier's  Hamlet  appears  to  be  too  old,  compared  with  Ms 
mother,  acted  by  Eileen  Herlie.  Not  by  the  stretch  of  a  Shake- 
spearean fantasy  can  you  imagine  this  very  pretty  young  woman 
to  be  mother  of  this  son.  Hot  even  when  you  concede  that  make- 
up can  rejuvenate  the  appearance  of  middle-aged  ladies.  We,  too, 
have  heard  of  your  painting.  "God  hath  given  you  one  face  and 
you  make  yourselves  another"— but  the  actress  did  not  succeed 
in  making  her  own  that  other  face  of  a  middle-aged  woman. 

How  old  Is  Hamlet?  I  asked  myself.  Well,  Yorick's  skull  has 
lain  in  the  earth  three  and  twenty  years  and  "he  has  borne  me 
on  his  back  a  thousand  times"  and  has  been  kissed  by  the  boy 
"I  know  not  how  oft."  The  child  was  old  enough  not  only  to 
understand  but  also  to  appreciate  Yorick's  jokes.  The  Prince  is  at 
least  twenty-seven  years  old,  if  he  is  not  thirty  or  more.  How  old 
is  the  Queen,  his  mother?  At  least  in  her  late  forties.  In  this  per- 
formance the  ages  of  mother  and  son  appear  almost  reversed.  While 
1  looked  at  the  couple  in  the  Queen's  chamber,  a  song  occurred 
to  me—is  it  not  by  George  M.  Cohan?~and  parodistically  ac- 
companied the  scene:  "An  old  guy  like  me  and  a  young  girl 
like  you." 

*  As  early  as  1922  the  "Freudian  implications"  (reviewer's  expression)  of  the 
do$et  scene  were  rendered  obvious  la  Jotra  Barrymore's  performance. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES  339 

A  few  moments  later— exactly  when  the  ghost  appears—that 
foolish  idea  re-emerged,  this  time  in  the  form  of  an  incomplete 
conditional  sentence.  The  silly  thought  was  not  vague  or  dis- 
guised any  more.  It  appeared  among  serious  reflections  on  Ham- 
let's conflict,  like  the  fool  at  the  Court  in  one  of  Shakespeare's 
plays.  Here  is  the  text  of  the  odd  idea,  the  line  the  fool  in  my 
thoughts  speaks:  If  Hamlet's  father  hadn't  been  murdered,  but 
had  died  a  natural  death,  and  if  the  Queen  hadn't  remarried— 

Here  the  thought  broke  off  in  mid-air  as  the  sentence  of  a 
drunkard  or  of  a  fool.  That  same  evening  I  tried  to  follow  the 
idea  wherever  it  would  lead  me.  Don't  the  fools  in  Shakespeare's 
plays  often  say  wise  things,  putting  them  in  an  odd  way?  1  did 
not  get  very  far  in  the  pursuit  of  that  elusive  thought.  It  was  late 
in  the  night  and  I  was  very  tired.  I  repeated  the  absurd  sentence 
in  my  thoughts  and  tried  to  find  a  continuation.  Mysteriously  the 
phrase  began  now  with  the  added  word  "Even/*  It  now  ran: 
"Even  if  Hamlet's  father  hadn't,"  and  so  on.  What  followed  were 
a  few  words,  a  kind  of  fragmentary  continuation  in  the  form  of 
a  question  or  a  doubt  like  "wouldn't  Hamlet  .  .  .  ?"  What  he 
wouldn't  or  would,  1  did  not  find  out  because  I  fell  asleep.  The 
last  words  I  thought  before  I  dozed  off  were  a  greeting  to  Ms 
figure:  "Good  night,  sweet  Prince!" 

When  I  awoke,  the  funny  thought  had  vanished  as  had  the 
King's  ghost  when  "the  morning  cock  crew  loud."  The  "demands 
of  the  day"  had  driven  it  underground.  I  did  not  think  of  it  again 
until  late  that  afternoon  during  the  analytic  session  with  Tom, 
the  same  patient  in  whose  analysis  the  thought  had  first  occurred 
to  me.  Tom  spoke  of  his  childhood  and  of  a  letter  he  had  received 
from  his  mother.  When  now  that  odd  thought  came  to  mind 
again,  I  understood  that,  however  silly,  it  had  its  roots  in  a  sane 
mental  soil.  I  still  didn't  know  what  Hanilet  wouldn't  or  would 
have  felt  or  done,  if  ...  but  I  had  an  inkling  of  what  had  made 
me  think  of  such  an  unimaginable  possibility,  that  would  remove 
all  the  premises  of  Shakespeare's  plot. 

Tom  is  the  patient  whose  dream  I  interpreted  in  the  preceding 
paragraphs.  A  similarity  of  Tom's  emotional  attitude  with  that  of 
the  Prince,  manifested  in  the  wording  of  the  dream,  must  have 
awakened  the  memory  of  some  bitter  lines  Hamlet  speaks  while  he 


340  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

listens  to  the  players  acting  in  the  play  within  the  play.  I  had  not 
consciously  thought  then  of  another  concealed  factor  facilitating 
the  thought-connection  between  the  Prince  and  Tom.  It  was  the 
idea  of  murder.  As  1  reported  before,  Tom's  father  had  died  in 
a  car  accident  when  the  boy  was  ten  years  old.  The  accident  oc- 
curred on  a  business  trip  when  the  chauffeur  drove  the  car  into 
a  ditch,  Tom's  father  was  immediately  killed,  the  driver  suffered 
only  a  few  light  wounds  and  bruises.  So  far  there  are  no  similari- 
ties between  the  older  Hamlet's  death  and  the  fate  of  Tom's 
father,  but  some  can  be  found  in  the  boy's  thoughts  afterward. 
When  the  tragic  news  was  brought  to  the  house,  Tom,  who 
loved  his  father,  began  to  suspect  foul  play.  There  was  not  the 
slightest  reason  for  such  suspicions  in  the  external  facts,  but 
many  in  Tom's  mind.  His  father  had  been  a  very  successful 
banker  who  had  acquired  a  fortune  in  a  relatively  short  time. 
Many  people  in  his  home  town  and  in  the  country  had  envied 
him,  and  he  had  made  several  enemies.  When  the  accident  oc- 
curred, the  boy,  who  had  learned  much  from  conversations  he 
had  listened  to  and  who  suspected  more,  must  have  thought  that 
one  or  the  other  of  those  enemies  might  have  had  a  hand  in  the 
accident— for  instance,  a  competitor  with  whom  the  father  had  a 
quarrel  not  long  before.  The  investigation  of  the  accident  brought 
no  reason  for  such  suspicions,  but  Tom  nourished  them  because 
he  felt  hostile  toward  some  relatives  and  business  competitors 
of  his  father.  The  boy  did  not  utter  any  of  those  doubts,  which 
slowly  lost  their  power  over  him,  but  they  reappeared  during  his 
analysis  when  he  returned  in  his  memories  to  the  years  of  his 
childhood  and  to  the  death  of  his  father.  There  were  again  the 
serious  suspicions  that  his  father  could  have  been  murdered  and 
did  not  die  in  an  accident  for  which  no  one  was  responsible. 

Here  is  the  emotional  similarity:  Tom's  father  was  not  mur- 
dered, but  the  boy  suspected  that  he  was.  He  must  have  been  in 
the  same  mood  as  the  Prince  who  suspected  foul  play  before  he 
had  any  evidence  from  the  lips  of  the  ghost.  "O  my  prophetic 
soul!"  cries  Hamlet, 

It  clawned  upon  me  during  this  analytic  session  that  the  puz- 
zling sentence  mustJhave  had  its  origin  in  a  preconscious  compari- 
son of  Haink&  amLTom's  attitude  to  the  father's  death.  In  the 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  3|1 

one  case  the  father  was  really  murdered,  in  the  other  the  son 
thought  that  there  had  been  murder.  In  Hamlet's  case  material 
reality,  in  Tom's  only  psychological  reality.  Tom's  suspicions 
were  well  "in  character"  with  his  personality.  He  often  projected 
his  own  unconscious  impulses  onto  other  people  and  suspected 
them  in  a  paranolc  mechanism  of  hostile  and  aggressive  intentions 
he  himself  unconsciously  felt. 

There  was  another  factor  that  facilitated  the  comparison  be- 
tween Hamlet's  and  Tom's  stories.  Many  suitors  had  wished  to* 
marry  Tom's  mother  who  was  still  young,  pretty,  and  rich,  but 
she  remained  unmarried.  Soon  after  his  father's  death  Tom  felt 
increasingly  hostile  toward  his  mother,  who  adored  him,  and  his. 
resentment  against  her  continued  to  work  in  him  until  his  anal- 
ysis slowly  mitigated  it.  During  his  analysis  he  did  not  tire  of 
attacking  her  behavior,  and  for  a  long  time  it  seemed  as  if  an 
inner  reconciliation  with  his  mother  would  not  be  possible.  There 
was  no  doubt  that  his  hostility  against  her  was  later  on  displaced, 
and  generalized  to  all  women.  He  was  homosexual. 

The  material  here  reported  shows  which  elements  made  the 
thought-bridge  between  Hainlet  and  Tom  possible,  and  which 
threads  ran  in  my  unconscious  associations  from  the  life  story  of 
my  patient  to  the  destiny  of  the  Prince.  Tom's  father  was  not, 
murdered,  but  could  have  been  killed.  His  mother  did  not  marry 
again,  but  the  boy  thought  she  would  soon.  Here  were  potential 
destinies  living  a  shadow  life  beside  the  realities.  My  thoughts. 
went  beyond  them  in  that  formulation:  Even  if  Hamlet's  father 
had  died  a  natural  death,  and  so  on.  Here  is  the  other  end  of 
the  possibilities  founded  on  the  analogy  Hamlet's  father— Tom's. 
father. 

The  if-sentence  had,  however,  not  been  finished.  The  idea  did 
not  deserve  that  name  because  it  was  broken  off  before  it  reached 
the  shape  and  dignity  of  a  complete  thought.  It  had  been  nipped 
in  the  bud  by  the  white  frost  of  reason  that  forbids  the  growth 
of  fanciful  productions  of  the  mind. 

That  missing  condition  of  the  sentence  was  found:  when  I  tried 
to  analyze  the  emotional  reactions  of  another  patient  whose 
father  died  during  his  son's  analysis.  The  old  man  had  been  very 
sick  in  the  hospital  for  some  weeks,  and  the  family  knew  the  end. 


342  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

was  near.  It  came  when  the  son  was  alone  with  the  heavily 
breathing  father,  whose  wife  was  at  the  time  in  the  corridor  of 
the  hospital.  When  she  was  called,  she  cried  and  sobbed,  and  my 
patient  felt  that  her  mourning  was  exaggerated  and  hypocriti- 
cal. This  impression  repeated  itself  at  the  funeral  and  in  the  fol- 
lowing weeks,  especially  when  relatives  and  other  visitors  came 
to  the  house.  The  son  felt  a  wave  of  hostility  against  his  mother 
whom  he  accused  in  his  thoughts  of  not  having  treated  the  old 
man  well  and  of  not  having  taken  enough  care  of  him.  In  all 
external  aspects,  he  behaved  toward  her  as  an  affectionate  and 
attentive  son  would  in  the  time  of  mourning  and  tried  to  console 
and  support  her,  but  he  had  to  make  an  effort  to  conceal  his  in- 
creasing hostility.  He  was  haunted  by  the  memory  of  the  scene  of 
his  father's  death  and  suffered  for  some  months  from  insomnia, 
restlessness,  and  stomach  symptoms. 

I  shall  add  only  a  few  representative  instances  from  many  years 
of  analytic  practice  of  similar  attitudes  of  sons  toward  their 
mother  after  their  father's  death.  In  another  case  the  father  had 
died  when  the  son  was  eighteen  years  old.  His  mother  fell  into 
pathological  mourning  which  was  akin  to  melancholia  and  which 
lasted  a  few  years.  She  did  not  leave  the  house,  neglected  her 
household  duties,  and  showed  no  interest  in  her  children.  The 
son's  resentment  against  the  mother  increased  to  such  an  extent 
that  he  had  violent  outbreaks  of  anger  against  the  poor  woman 
whom  he  accused  of  selfishness  and  self-indulgence.  He  felt  that 
she  had  no  right  to  neglect  everything  and  was  jealous  of  the 
intensity  of  her  mourning  for  his  father.  At  the  same  time  he 
often  longed  for  the  deceased  and  repented  many  occasions  when 
lie  had  caused  grief  and  worry  to  him. 

Another  case  provides  us  with  an  interesting  variation:  the 
father  did  not  die,  but  left  the  family.  The  son  was  six  years-  old, 
when  his  parents  divorced.  He  saw  his  father  only  rarely  in  the 
following  years.  On  these  occasions  the  boy  felt  an  overwhelming 
pity  for  his  father  who  was  shabbily  dressed  and  gave  the  impres- 
sion of  a  begjar,  while  the  mother  lived  very  comfortably.  The 
boy*s  critical  and  hostile  attitude  against  her  increased  when  she 
went  out  with  different  men  in  the  years  following  the  divorce. 
Most  of  these  men  were  friendly  to  the  boy,  showed  interest  in 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

his  play,  his  attempts  to  build  a  radio,  and  so  on,  but  he  very 
rarely  returned  their  cordial  feelings.  On  various  occasions  when 
the  mother  talked  to  one  of  her  suitors  on  the  telephone,  the  son 
was  told  not  to  speak  because  Mother  did  not  want  the  man  to 
know  that  she  had  a  child.  The  boy  resented  this  bitterly*  He 
had  already  stammered  before  the  divorce,  but  he  traced  his 
speech  defect  to  those  times  when  he  was  cautioned  not  to  betray 
his  existence  when  Mother  spoke  with  a  man  on  the  telephone. 
His  stammering  was  especially  bad  when  he  was  asked  by  other 
boys  where  his  father  was.  He  felt  ashamed  that  his  parents  were 
divorced.  The  estrangement  with  his  mother  continued  until  the 
middle  of  his  twenties.  His  relationship  with  her  improved  only 
in  analysis.  The  case  is  interesting  because  here  the  father  did  not 
die,  but  left  the  home,  and  yet  after  a  short  time  the  same  reac- 
tions can  be  observed  as  in  the  other  cases  in  which  the  son  lost 
his  father  through  death. 

The  complete  sentence  then  is:  Even  if  Hamlet's  father  hadn't 
been  murdered,  but  had  died  a  natural  death,  and  if  the  Queen 
hadn't  remarried,  wouldn't  Hamlet  have  felt  hostility  against  hi$ 
mother?  This  sentence  is  neither  grammatical  nor  elegant,  but 
English  grammar  will  never  be  one  of  my  strong  points  (English 
is  not  my  mother  tongue  and  I  am  often  wrestling  with  the  genius 
of  this  language  as  Jacob  with  the  angel  of  the  Lord  without 
being  blessed).  The  sentence  is,  at  least,  intelligible.  It  expresses 
a  valid,  if  not  a  valuable,  possibility.  It  asserts  that  the  Prince 
would  perhaps  have  felt  resentment  against  his  mother  even  if 
the  premises  of  the  situation  were  much  nearer  to  everyday  ex- 
perience. 

It  was  not  accidental  that  the  odd  thought  first  emerged  during 
the  analytic  session  with  Tom.  The  comparison  of  the  emotional 
situation  of  his  childhood  with  Hamlet's  destiny  built  a  slight 
and  rocking  bridge  in  my  thoughts.  What  had  happened  at  the 
castle  of  Elsinore  remained  in  the  area  of  thought  possibilities  at 
the  cottage  in  Knoxville,  Tom's  home.  From  here  is  only  one 
small  step  to  the  idea:  What  if  the  events  in  Denmark  were  also 
only  a  grandiose  production  of  Hamlet's  imagination,  like  the 
apparition  of  the  King?  The  thought  following  this  tentati¥e  as- 
sumption then  led  back  to  the  psychological  problem  that  had 


344  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

occupied  me  in  Tom's  case:  that  of  resentment  against  his  mother 
after  his  father's  death. 

Considering  this  underlying  problem  which  must  have  lingered 
in  my  mind  some  time  during  Tom's  analysis  (and  before  it),  the 
question  emerging  from  the  unconscious  loses  much  of  its  fan- 
tastic and  fanciful  character.  It  amounts  then  to  a  kind  of  psy- 
chological reflection  which  brings  the  Shakespeare  plot  near  to 
the  emotional  reality  of  everyday  life. 

I  do  not  apologize  for  the  quality  of  my  idea,  because  thoughts 
need  no  apology.  You  are  as  responsible  for  their  intellectual 
quality  as  for  the  timbre  of  your  voice.  I  am,  of  course,  aware 
that  my  thought  went  astray  here  and  oscillated  for  a  moment 
between  reality  and  fantasy.  I  am  also  ready  to  admit  that  the 
question  in  my  mind  had  the  characteristics  of  a  flirtation  with 
an  idea.  The  mental  situation  has  a  resemblance  to  that  in  which 
the  farmer-father  asks  a  boy  whether  he  has  honest  or  dishonest 
intentions  toward  his  daughter  and  the  boy  says,  "Have  I  got  a 
choice?"  But  then  it  seemed  that  I  had  no  choice,  the  flirtation 
was  replaced  by  a  serious  interest. 

Looking  back  at  the  emergence  of  that  question,  I  can  add  a 
few  facts  which  facilitated  the  comparison.  The  boy  Tom  com- 
pared his  mother's  suitors  very  unfavorably  with  his  dead  father 
whom  he  idealized.  In  the  scene  in  the  Queen's  chamber  Hamlet 
speaks  in  glowing  words  of  his  father  and  puts  a  caricature  of 
Claudius  before  his  mother's  eyes:  "O  king  of  shreds  and 
patches/'  Tom  resented  it  that  his  mother  saw  men  visitors  so 
soon  after  his  father's  death  and  contrasted  in  his  thoughts  the 
violent  outbursts  of  her  grief  with  her  occasional  cheerfulness 
shortly  afterward.  Hamlet's: 

A  little  month  or  ere  those  shoes  were  old, 
With  which  she  followed  my  poor  father's  body 

Like  Niobe,  all  tears— 

In  his  analysis  Tom  remembered  that  he  once  looked  with  mis- 
givings at  his  mother  who  sat  on  a  chair  talking  with  a  lawyer 
visiting  her.  She  had  her  legs  crossed  and  her  skirt  was  raised  so 
that  the  man  must  have  seen  her  knee.  In  this  little  antagonistic 
observation  Is  a  trace  of  the  same  emotions  that  led  to  the  violent 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  345 

outbursts  of  Hamlet  against  Gertrude's  sensuality.  In  the  case  of 
the  other  patient  whose  mother  went  out  with  men  soon  after  her 
divorce,  the  son  bitterly  resented  her  infidelity  to  his  father.  Tom 
who  was  of  a  rather  gentle  nature  (Gertrude  calls  her  son  "sweet 
Hamlet")  had  in  his  late  teens  and  early  twenties  bitter  scenes 
with  his  mother  who  led  a  blameless  life.  He  transferred  his  criti- 
cal attitude  from  Mother  to  other  women,  as  Hamlet  does  to 
Ophelia,  but  in  contrast  to  the  Prince  he  confessed  that  man  de- 
lighted him. 

It  was,  of  course,  far  from  my  thoughts,  however  whimsical 
they  must  have  appeared  to  the  reader,  to  compare  Tom  who 
was  an  average  neurotic  young  man  to  the  personality  of  the 
Danish  Prince.  Hamlet  is,  as  far  as  I  know,  the  only  character  in 
any  play  whose  genius  is  immediately  recognizable  to  everyone  in 
the  audience.  Any  man  or  woman  who  has  listened  to  him  will 
agree  with  Ophelia's  opinion  of  what  a  noble  mind  is  here 
overthrown.  Imagine  a  playwright  who  wanted  to  make  Bee- 
thoven or  Rembrandt  or  Einstein  the  leading  character  in  a 
tragedy.  He  would  have  to  make  the  audience  listen  to  a  sym- 
phony, or  look  at  the  "Nightwatch,"  or  follow  the  logic  of  the 
theory  of  relativity  in  order  to  show  the  genius  of  the  character. 
Hamlet  works  upon  us  by  his  personality  only.  But  we  do  not 
deal  here  with  the  witty  and  wily,  passionate  and  melancholic 
personality  of  the  Prince,  but  with  certain  typical  emotional  re- 
actions of  a  man  after  his  father's  death. 

I  shall  sketch  the  emotional  situation  that  became  analytically 
transparent  in  the  case  of  Tom  and  other  patients,  so  unlike  that 
of  Hamlet  in  many  directions  and  so  resembling  Ms  in  others. 
Besides  thie  mourning  for  the  beloved  or  admired  father  In  all 
these  persons  antagonistic  and  sometimes  even  aggressive  tenden- 
cies against  the  mother  emerged,  whether  they  were  unconscious 
or,  as  in  the  cases  here  reported,  readied  the  state  of  conscious 
awareness.  The  usual  attitude  of  the  son  in  this  situation  is,  of 
course,  that  of  increased  consideration  and  affection  for  Ms 
mother.  He  will  try  to  console  her,  to  give  her  as  much  moral 
support  as  possible,  and  to  replace  the  head  of  the  family  as  far 
as  responsibilities  are  concerned.  In  a  certain  type  of  man  intense 
mourning  for  the  father  will  be  coupled  with  an  emotional  with- 


346  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

drawal  from  the  mother,  even  with  a  certain  antagonism  and 
antipathy  against  her.  If  this  psychologic  observation  is  correct, 
we  can  for  a  moment  really  put  aside  such  dramatic  and  unusual 
events  as  murder  of  the  father  and  hasty  marriage  of  the  mother 
with  his  killer.  Traces  of  the  emotional  reaction  here  reported 
must  be  observable  also  in  cases  in  which  the  father  died  a 
natural  death  and  the  mother  did  not  remarry— just  the  situation 
emerging  in  my  surprising  question. 

But  what  would  be  the  psychologic  motives  of  such  a  puzzling 
reaction?  How  could  it  be  brought  in  accordance  with  what  we 
know  from  other  analytic  experiences  about  the  emotions  of  the 
son  after  the  father's  death? 

A  careful  observation  of  the  symptomatic  manifestations  of 
that  reaction,  to  which  the  discovery  of  a  gap  and  its  filling  has 
to  be  added,  leads  to  the  analytic  explanation  of  the  puzzling 
phenomenon.  To  put  the  development  of  the  process  in  simple 
terms:  Father's  death  has  realized  one  half  of  the  unconscious 
wishes  the  child  once  had.  It  has  removed  the  superior  rival  for 
Mother's  love.  By  the  death  itself,  those  repressed  infantile 
wishes  become  for  a  moment  actualized  again.  They  threaten  to 
emerge  from  the  submersion  into  which  they  had  once  been 
banned.  Here  is  the  occasion  to  take  the  place  of  Father,  not  only 
as  head  of  the  family,  but  also  as  the  lover  of  Mother.  Old  wishes, 
long  caved  in,  push  to  the  light  of  the  day. 

According  to  all  psychologic  laws  known  to  us,  there  must  be  a 
moment  of  unconscious  triumph.  We  have  to  assume  that 
Father's  death  brings  about  the  emergence  of  victorious  or  trium- 
phant feelings  of  promise  and  fulfillment,  of  freedom  and  of  the 
lifting  of  an  unconscious  barrier.  This  upsurge  can  last  only  a 
second  and  is  in  most  cases  unconscious.  Here  is  trie  gap  that 
analytic  reconstruction  has  to  fill,  because,  even  in  the  cases  in 
which  those  emotions  touch  the  threshold  of  conscious  percep- 
tion, they  are  immediately  and  most  energetically  repressed  and 
will  be  forgotten  and  disavowed  later  on. 

What  follows  and  becomes  recognizable  to  our  observation  is 
the  expression  of  an  intense  reaction-formation  to  these  fleeting 
unconscious  emotions.  This  reaction  is  the  stronger,  the  more 
urgently  the  rejected  tendencies  demand  entrance  into  the  realm 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  347 

of  conscious  impulses.  By  the  power  of  this  reaction  the  grief 
about  the  loss  will  be  most  vividly  felt,  the  igure  of  the  father 
will  be  elevated  and  even  glorified,  and  the  longing  for  him  in- 
tensified. The  other  side  of  that  reaction-formation  concerns  the 
mother.  She  who  could  now  become  the  object  of  old  desires,  will 
in  the  reactive  reversal  awaken  antagonism  and  resentment  as  if 
the  son  unconsciously  protects  himself  from  the  temptation  of  a 
break-through.  In  this  defense  the  re-emerging  positive  trends 
change  their  sign  into  the  negative.  The  ttnconstiously  renewed 
attraction  is  turned  into  antipathy  and  criticism. 

It  is  easy  to  guess  that  the  factor  responsible  for  this  emotional 
reversal  is  the  unconscious  guilt  feeling  of  the  son.  It  is  as  if  those 
old  disavowed  wishes  had  brought  about  the  death  of  the  father, 
as  if  he  had  died  a  victim  of  omnipotent  thoughts  the  boy  had 
once  experienced.  It  is  as  if  something  has  now  become  reality 
which  one  could  once  only  dare  to  think— and  often  not  even  dare 
to  think.  The  violent  reaction  to  this  reality  brings  about  not 
only  renunciation  of  the  old  love  object  but  also  the  reversal  of 
unconscious  desires  into  hostility.  It  is  as  if  she  were  responsible 
for  Father's  death— which  she  is,  as  far  as  the  unconscious 
thoughts  of  the  son  are  concerned,  because  the  attraction  to  her 
was  the  main  psychological  reason  for  the  emergence  of  the  in- 
fantile wish  to  remove  the  successful  rival 

The  hostility  against  Mother  increases  the  more  it  becomes 
necessary  to  defend  oneself  against  the  unconscious  temptation 
to  take  Father's  place  with  her.  In  Tom's  case,  the  reaction  went 
so  far  that  he  was  frightened  by  murderous  thoughts  against  his 
mother.  But  also  Gertrude  becomes  afraid  of  "gentle  Hamlet" 
when  he  violently  accuses,  and  threatens  her.  Unconsciously  aware 
of  the  intensity  of  his  wrath,  she  thinks  for  a  moment  he  really 
wants  to  kill  her. 

What  wilt  thou  do?  Thou  wilt  not  murder  me? 
Help,  help,  ho! 

As  the  last  consequence  of  this  psychologic  insight,  one  arrives 
at  the  assumption  that  in  certain  cases  the  unconscious  tempta- 
tion becomes  very  strong,  and  the  Inner  tension  between  tri- 
umphant, desirous  impulses  and  unconscious  guilt  feelings  in  the 


THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

son  becomes  intolerable.  In  these  cases  the  reaction,  here 
sketched,  Is  not  sufficiently  effective  and  the  ego  wards  off  the 
forbidden  tendencies  with  the  help  of  another  more  primitive, 
dynamic  mechanism.  It  tries  to  project  them  into  the  external 
world,  to  persons  outside,  and  thus  finds  a  certain  emotional 
relaxation,  a  relief  from  the  unbearable  tension.  The  psychologic 
formula  for  such  an  unconscious  process  could  perhaps  best  be 
put  this  way:  not  /  wanted  to  murder  Father,  but  he  (another 
man,  thought  of  as  Father's  rival)— not  /  desire  Mother  (but  an- 
other man).  Arrived  at  this  point,  the  distance  of  the  emotional 
situation  of  any  son  to  the  one  Shakespeare  envisions  in  the  trag- 
edy of  Hamlet  can  be  measured.  This  distance  does  not  appear 
as  great  any  more.  My  original  question  was  senseless  only  in  the 
most  rationalistic,  which  means,  here,  in  the  most  superficial 
"sense." 

Still  another  mechanism  of  disavowal  and  defense  can  be  ob- 
served in  the  case  of  Hamlet  and  of  Tom.  It  can  be  brought  into 
the  psychological  formula:  I  did  not  want  to  murder  rny  father- 
on  the  contrary,  I  want  to  revenge  his  death  and— I  do  not  desire 
my  mother— on  the  contrary,  I  dislike  her  and  I  attack  her.  The 
extension  of  this  reactive  feeling  leads  the  Prince  to  scorn  for  all 
women  and  to  the  fierce  onslaught  on  them  in  the  scene  with 
Ophelia. 

At  this  point  my  thoughts  join  the  analytic  interpretations  of 
Freud,  Jones,  Rank,  and  others.  In  the  last  years  many  contribu- 
tions in  which  analytic  insights  were  used  to  deepen  the  under- 
standing of  Shakespeare's  play  were  added  to  earlier  ones.  The 
literature  on  the  Hamlet  problem  has  been  enriched  and  en- 
larged to  such  an  extent  that  no  single  person  can  with  certainty 
assert  that  he  has  read  all  about  the  subject.  As  far  as  my  knowl- 
edge goes,  no  book  or  article  has  dealt  with  the  aspect  of  the 
problem  here  presented,  and  with  its  universal  psychological 
scope. 

From  the  beginning  emphasis  was  put  on  the  question  of  Ham- 
let's relationship  with  his  mother,  but  even  this  is  not  the  point 
of  departure  for  my  train  of  thoughts.  It  emerged  at  the  Hamlet 
problem  in  a  whimsical  and  questionable  form.  It  landed  there 
only  by  accident,  if  we  allow  accident  to  play  a  role  in  the  field 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  349 

of  intellectual  problems.  The  train  of  thought  was  originally 
stimulated  by  psychological  reiection  on  the  case  of  Tom,  and 
did  not  deal  with  the  plot  and  conflict  of  the  Danish  Prince. 
When  it  touched  this  problem,  so  to  speak,  in  an  excursion  on 
the  spur  of  a  fanciful  moment,  it  still  did  not  follow  in  the  tracks 
of  so  many  literary  critics  or  psychoanalytic  scholars.  On  the 
contrary,  it  removed  all  essential  premises  of  the  actual  situation 
in  Shakespeare's  play  as  a  thought-possibility  ("Even  if  Hamlet's 
father  hadn't  been  murdered"  and  so  on). 

The  figure  of  Hamlet  had  thus  come  to  mind  in  a  roundabout 
way,  as  a  thought  aside.  It  was,  so  to  speak,  a  tentative  fantasy, 
an  exciting  experiment  in  thought  in  order  to  test  a  possibility 
that  had  remained  unconscious.  The  comparison  of  Tom's  ex- 
perience with  Hamlet's  tended  to  an  area  beyond  both  cases,  into 
the  field  of  general  psychological  insights. 

It  is  not  without  significance  that  the  line  my  capricious  thought 
followed  was  not  from  literature  to  life,  but  the  other  way  around, 
from  living  experience  to  a  work  of  art.  I  must  have  unconsciously 
wrestled  with  the  psychological  problem  of  whether  there  is  not 
something  typical  or  even  general  in  the  emotional  turn  against 
Mother  after  Father's  death.  Otherwise  put:  I  was  unconsciously 
searching  for  the  solution  of  a  psychological  problem  which  had 
not  yet  been  discovered  and  which  eluded  me.  Hamlet's  destiny 
olered  itself  to  my  thoughts  as  the  extreme  manifestation  of 
this  problem.  Tentatively  following  the  psychological  conse- 
quences of  his  case,  I  brought  it  in  my  thoughts  to  the  level  at 
which  all  human  inner  experience  is  the  same. 

If  this  discussion  can  be  considered  at  all  as  an  original,  ana- 
lytic contribution  to  the  Hamlet  problem,  it  may  deserve  that 
title  only  as  a  by-product  of  the  curiosity  of  a  psychologist  who 
sometimes  goes  astray  in  his  thoughts  when  he  explores  the  yet 
undiscovered  recesses  of  the  human  mind. 


As  I  consider,  in  retrospect,  the  various  ways  aed  byways^  the 

many  detours  and  turns  through  which  my  thoughts  wandered 


350  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

to  their  destination  on  that  particular  evening,  it  seems  to  me 
that  we  all  of  us  marvel  too  little  at  our  own  mental  processes. 
We  are  not  astonished  enough  at  the  wide  circle  of  our  own 
thoughts.  We  speak  most  casually  of  unconscious  emotions  and 
impulses  and  are  not  ready  to  admit  that  the  area  of  the  repressed 
is  a  state  within  a  state,  an  underground  in  which  movement 
and  power  can  be  felt  and  in  which  continual  life  and  produc- 
tivity can  be  observed.  Without  such  an  astonishment,  psycho- 
analysis is  reduced  to  a  science  without  human  interest,  with 
technology  as  its  medical  application. 

As  I  look  back  at  the  meanderings  of  my  thoughts,  I  am  in- 
dined  to  agree  with  the  sentiment  expressed  by  a  patient  the 
other  day.  This  clever  man,  who  had  gained  insight  into  his  own 
bizarre  obsessional  ideas,  said,  "The  mind  is  an  insult  to  the  in- 
telligence." Yet,  in  my  own  case,  there  were  no  such  obsessional 
thoughts  or  any  other  extraordinary  mental  phenomena.  Nothing 
of  this  kind;  no  conspicuous  pathological  speculations  or  ideas. 
Just  an  everyday  train  of  thought  and  a  fairly  average  slice  of 
human  experience. 

It  is*  of  course,  necessary  to  sketch  the  external  situation  from 
which  my  train  of  thought  emerged.  Tired  after  a  long  day  of 
psychoanalytic  sessions,  I  relaxed  on  the  couch  after  dinner.  My 
daughter,  Theodora,  whom  we  call  "Thody,"  came  into  the 
room  and  said,  "Good  night,  Daddy."  "Where  are  you  going?" 
I  asked.  "I  have  a  date."  "Don't  come  home  too  late.  Good  night." 
I  knew  better  than  to  ask  her  with  whom  she  had  a  date. 
It  seems  she  does  not  like  such  questions.  Well,  she  is  seventeen 
years  old.  ...  In  my  time  children  were  not  so  independent 
What  does  it  matter  with  which  boy  she  has  a  date?  She  is  no 
longer  a  child.  .  .  .  She  will  be  in  college  very  soon.  .  .  . 

I  turn  my  attention  in  another  direction  ...  to  the  analytic 
sessions  of  today.  My  patient  Bill  comes  to  my  mind. 

Bill  is  a  young  man  from  a  southern  state.  He  came  to  analysis 
because  he  had  tried  in  vain  to  overcome  his  inclination  to  ex- 
cessive drinking,  and  because  of  his  inability  to  make  any  sus- 
tained effort.  He  is  homosexual,  snobbish,  and  in  other  respects 
a  typical  playboy.  His  amiability  and  a  concealed  shyness  seem 
10  enable  Mm  to  win  friends. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  35! 

While  I  thought  of  this  patient,  I  saw,  so  to  speak,  in  a  mental 
image,  his  face  which  shows  little  expression.  ,  .  .  His  voice  has 
no  rise  and  fall  when  he  speaks  well-considered  sentences.  .  .  . 
He  is  rather  rigid  and  shows  that  remoteness  and  flatness  of  emo- 
tions characteristic  of  schizoid  personalities.  ...  He  has  not 
done  a  stroke  of  honest  work  for  years,  and,  It  seems,  he  lives  on 
a  strict  diet  of  dry  martinis.  .  .  .  His  therapeutic  chance  is  not 
too  good,  but  I  shall,  of  course,  do  my  best. 

In  his  analytic  session  this  afternoon  he  had  spoken  of  Paris 
where  he  spent  some  months  a  few  years  ago.  He  had  spoken 
of  his  wish  to  get  the  leading  role  in  a  play  soon  to  be  performed 
on  Broadway,  and  of  his  friends,  one  of  whom  Is  an  actor.  1  no 
longer  remember  how  he  came  from  there  to  the  subject  of  race 
discrimination,  but  I  believe  he  mentioned  that  another  of  his 
homosexual  friends  was  a  Jew.  He  had  then  said  that,  In  contrast 
to  most  citizens  of  that  southern  state  in  which  he  was  bora  and 
bred,  he  did  not  feel  any  race  discrimination.  But  a  few  minutes 
later  he  had  spoken  contemptuously  of  "niggers"  and  Jews.  He 
had  said  that  an  art  dealer  whom  he  knew  had  tried  to  take 
him  in  the  day  before.  The  man  had  tried  to  sell  him  an  antique 
piece  of  furniture  for  which  he  asked  a  preposterous  price.  The 
patient,  expressing  his  indignation  and  his  dissatisfaction  with 
his  acquaintance,  had  added,  "Once  a  Jew,  always  a  Jew." 

The  recollection  of  these  remarks  became  the  point  of  depar- 
ture for  my  free  associations  which  on  a  strange  detour  led  me 
to  a  new  Interpretation  of  a  Shakespearean  play,  and  In  a  surpris- 
ing digression  back  to  a  personal  problem.  While  I  rested  on  the 
couch,  smoking  cigarettes,  I  followed  this  train  of  thought  with, 
so  to  speak,  impersonal  Interest.  1  swam  comfortably  with  the 
"stream  of  consciousness"  until  a  certain  point  was  readied  at 
which  my  thoughts  became  objects  of  self-observation.  To  con- 
tinue the  comparison,  it  was  as  If  the  swimmer  had  become 
aware  of  the  kind  of  waves  and  of  the  direction  In  which  they 
were  carrying  him.  After  this  point  was  reached,  I  came  across 
some  odd  associations  whose  sequence  and  meaning  I  did  not 
understand.  I  decided  to  follow  them,"  to  investigate  them,  to  find 
out  what  they  meant  and  why  they  emerged  from  unknown 
depths.  I  had  become  aware  of  undercurrents  In  the  stream. 


$552  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  then  got  up  from  the  couch,  took  a  pencil  and  paper  from 
the  desk,  and  jotted  the  train  of  thoughts  down  together  with 
what  occurred  to  me  while  I  wrote.  I  regret  I  did  not  look  at 
the  clock  nor  did  I  pay  attention  to  the  time  that  this  process 
took,  but  my  impression  was  that  not  more  than  a  few  minutes 
had  elapsed  since  my  daughter  had  left  the  room.  In  a  psycho- 
logical experiment,  precise  data  concerning  time  and  other  ex- 
ternal factors  are,  of  course,  indispensable  in  the  interest  of 
scientific  precision.  However,  my  self-observation  and  self-anal- 
ysis was  not  in  the  nature  of  an  experiment.  It  had  rather  the 
character  of  an  inner  experience. 

While  I  remembered  what  Bill  had  said  that  afternoon  and 
while  I  thought  of  his  emotional  disturbance,  I  was  wide  awake. 
The  following  associations  emerged  when  I  felt  increasingly  sleepy, 
without,  however,  yielding  to  the  temptation  to  fall  asleep.  The 
fact  that  these  associations  occurred  while  I  was  only  half  awake 
may  have  had  a  bearing  upon  their  character  and  the  rapidity 
of  their  succession.  I  became  aware  that  one  thought  or  word 
quickly  followed  the  other,  as  if  they  crowded  the  threshold  of 
consciousness.  There  was,  so  to  speak,  a  traffic  jam  at  the  door. 

The  words  that  emerged  and  astonished  me,  because  I  did  not 
understand  what  they  meant  and  why  they  occurred  to  me,  were: 
Jones  .  .  .  Jericho  .  .  .  Jephthah  .  .  .  Jessica  .  .  .  Jehovah 
.  .  .  Jems. 

Janes  ...  I  do  not  know  anyone  by  this  name.  .  .  .  Oh  yes, 
of  course,  Ernest  Jones.  ...  I  have  known  him  for  more  than 
thirty  years.  I  remember  him  when  he  was  in  Vienna.  Did  I 
not  also  meet  him  in  Holland?  I  had  talked  to  him  at  several 
psychoanalytic  congresses,  and,  of  course,  we  had  been  invited 
to  lunch  at  his  home  when  we  were  in  London  ...  I  have  not 
heard  from  him  for  twelve  years.  ...  I  read  his  essay  on  Hamlet 
a  short  time  ago.  ...  I  looked  something  up  In  his  paper 
oa  a  religious  problem.  .  .  .  I  do  not  remember  what  it  was.  .  .  . 
He  was  already  at  the  time  of  our  visit  in  England  (was  this  1929 
or  1928?)  the  most  prominent  psychoanalyst  in  the  English-speak- 
ing countries.  ...  I  teased-  him.  I  said  he  was  the  King  of  the 
Eagish  analysts.  .  .  .  Emperor  Jones.  ...  Of  course,  the  play 
by  O'Neill.  .  ,  .  What  a  strange  connection!  I  started  from 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES 

Ernest  Jones  and  arrived  at  Emperor  Jones.  .  .  .  Are  there  any 
trends  besides  the  name?  Perhaps  primitive  religions  with  which 
Jones  deals  in  his  Collected  Papers?  ...  I  now  remember  the 
play*  I  recall  the  scene  in  which  the  Negro  becomes  terriied  in 
the  forest  and  how  he  finally  succumbs  to  the  demoniac  power 
of  the  old  tribal  gods  in  which  he  did  not  believe  and  which  he 
had  repudiated.  The  thread  leading  from  the  analyst  to  Emperor 
Jones  was  the  thought  of  Negroes.  .  .  .  But  my  patient  Bill  had 
spoken  of  Negroes  and  Jews. 

When  I  turned  my  attention  away  from  him,  the  subterranean 
continuation  of  his  remarks  must  have  led  to  Emperor  Jones, 
Even  the  detour  over  Ernest  Jones  must  have  been  significant. 
But  how?  Perhaps  the  study  on  Hamlet,  a  play  such  as 
Janes,  and  then  I  had  called  Jones  the  King  or  the  Emperor  of 
the  English  analysts.  ...  I  liked  Ernest  Jones,  but  this  compari- 
son itself  shows  some  latent  hostility  .  .  .  why?  Jealousy  of  the 
older  and  superior  man?  The  green-eyed  monster?  „  .  .  That  Is 
from  Othello  .  .  .  The  Moor  of  Venice.  .  .  .  Again  the  Negroes. 

1  am  turning  to  the  following  associations.  They  are,  of  course, 
all  names—names  from  the  Bible.  I  must  have  thought  first  of 
Negroes,  then  of  Jews  as  the  patient  associated  them  together  in 
his  remark.  But  each  of  those  names  must  have  its  unconscious 
determination  and  must  have  meant  something  definite  in  my 
thoughts.  .  .  .  Even  their  sequence  must  have  a  meaning  and 
some  psychological  significance.  ...  I  must  find  why  each,  of 
them  occurred  to  me.  ...  Is  there  something  they  have  In  com- 
mon besides  their  being  biblical  names?  .  .  .  The  initial  sound* 
the  first  syllable.  .  .  .  Are  they  only  "sound  associations,"  that 
means  thoughts  determined  by  Klang,  as  the  German  would  say, 
joined  together  by  the  same  sound  at  the  beginning  of  the  words? 
This  first  syllable  ...  I  remember  that  the  common  first  syllable 
Je  is  perhaps  the  abbreviated  Hebrew  word  for  God.  Je  means 
His  ineffable  name,  otherwise  known  as  Jahweh  or  Jehovah.  .  .  . 
Does  not  Jesus  mean  "God  helps"  or  "Salvation  by  God"?  .  .  . 
Bet  1  am  suspicious  of  myself,  for  this  first  syllable  could  not 
have  the  same  significance  in  Jericho  and  Jessica.  .  .  .  And  is  it 
true  that  Je  is  always  the  abbreviated  name  of  the  'God  o£  the 
Israelites?  I  become  aware  how  much  I  do  not  know  about 


354  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

things.  .  .  .  Over  there  is  the  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  on  my 
bookcase.  I  could  look  up  Jehovah  and  Jericho,  but  I  am  too 
lazy  to  get  up  from  the  couch.  Even  If  I  did  find  what  that  syl- 
lable and  each  name  means,  of  what  importance  would  that  be 
for  the  psychological  significance  of  my  thoughts?  The  objective 
meaning  of  the  names  Is  of  no  Interest,  only  the  meaning  I  con- 
nect with  those  words  is  now  of  consequence.  Jericho  .  ,  .  that 
is,  of  course,  the  biblical  city.  .  .  .  Was  I  in  Jericho  when  I 
visited  Palestine  In  1937? . . .  That  is  nonsense.  .  .  .The  ancient 
city  of  Jericho  does  not  exist  any  more. 

Suddenly  I  remember  a  movie  I  had  seen  a  few  years  ago  in 
which  a  man  has  the  nickname  of  Jericho.  .  .  .  The  story  of  the 
French  film  Les  Enfants  du  Paradis  comes  vaguely  back  to  mind. 
The  play  takes  place  in  Paris  about  a  hundred  years  ago.  Its 
milieu  is  that  of  the  demimonde,  theater  people,  actors,  audience, 
and  hangers-on.  The  leading  character  is  a  young  man  whose 
misfortunes  are  presented  from  the  time  he  acts  as  a  down  to 
the  period  when  he  becomes  the  celebrated  tragedian  of  the 
Parisian  stage.  It  is  a  play  of  passion  and  destiny  with  a  tragic 
ending.  There  is  a  girl  whom  he  met  in  his  boyhood  and  with 
whom  he  fell  in  love.  When  he  meets  her  later  in  life,  she  always 
eludes  him.  It  is  as  if  a  malicious  destiny  or  that  incognito  travel- 
ing fate,  called  accident,  blocks  his  way  whenever  he  approaches 
her.  Like  Romeo,  he  is  a  fool  of  fortune. 

Now  the  face  of  the  actor  who  has  the  part  of  the  leading 
character  appears  in  my  memory.  A  thin,  strangely  masklike  face, 
unexpressive  and  unemotional,  but  with  large  luminous  eyes. 
The  contrast  of  this  lack  of  facial  expression  with  his  emotional 
experiences  lends  the  personality  of  the  actor  a  puzzling  kind  of 
interest.  .  .  .  What  was  his  name?  ...  I  now  remember:  Jean- 
Louis  Barrault.  It  is  not  incidental  that  the  movie  shows  him 
fast  in  a  pantomime  in  which  only  automaton-like  movements 
and  gestures  indicate  his  feelings,  while  his  face  does  not  change 
at  all.  The  actor's  body  has  the  utmost  elasticity,  while  his  per- 
sonality seems  rigid,  almost  frozen.  There  is  a  dullness  erf  effect, 
even  In  his  love  of  the  beautiful  girl.  No  free  flow  of  emotions. 
A  withdrawal  from  reality  and  something  like  a  paralysis  of  will 
which  explains  better  than  external  factors  why  his  love  object 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  355 

always  eludes  him  or  prefers  other  men,  although  she  is  attracted 
to  him.  When  I  saw  the  film,  I  got  the  impression  that  here  was 
a  schizoid  tvpe  or  even  a  schizophrenic. 

At  this  point  I  recognized  that  there  were  concealed  connec- 
tions between  the  first  subject  of  my  thoughts  and  their  present 
theme.  Did  I  not  think  that  Bill,  my  patient,  was  perhaps  schiz- 
oid? He  spoke  of  Paris  and  of  plays  he  had  seen  there.  Les  En- 
fants  du  Paradis  takes  place  in  Paris.  Bill  wants  the  leading  part 
in  a  play.  His  face  must  have  reminded  me  of  Jean-Louis 
Barrault's. 

Jericho  is  the  name  of  an  episodic  figure  in  Les  En f ants  du 
Paradis.  He  is  an  old  Jew,  doing  shady  business  among  theater 
people,  a  thief  or  receiver  of  stolen  goods.  I  see  his  crooked  nose, 
his  unkempt  hair,  and  his  pointed  gray  beard.  This  old  fence  is 
an  acquaintance  of  the  actor  during  his  early  Bohemian  times. 
He,  surprisingly,  appears  whenever  there  is  a  decisive  turn  in  the 
destiny  of  the  leading  character.  He  seems  to  know  beforehand 
what  will  happen,  seems  to  anticipate  the  future.  Yes,  he  appears 
to  be  omniscient.  He  warns  the  hero,  yet  he  sometimes  seems  to 
bring  about  the  bad  fate  of  this  actor.  Is  he  perhaps  omnipotent 
too?  This  fence,  who  cheats,  whose  business  shuns  the  light,  has 
neither  wife  nor  child,  but  he  likes  children.  He  has  another  nick- 
name: "couche  seul"—he  sleeps  alone. 

I  do  not  know  how  and  why  I  thought  that  this  old  Jewish 
criminal  presents  the  disguised  God  of  the  Jews,  Jehovah,  in  a 
degraded  form  as  he  would  be  seen  through  anti-Semitic  eyes.  Is 
it  possible  that  the  script-writer  unconsciously  shaped  in  the 
episodic  figure  the  reduced  Jewish  god,  a  malicious  demon— a  god 
who  is  vengeful  and  deceiving,  associated  with  crooks  and  thieves? 

The  anti-Semitic  remark  of  my  patient  comes  back  to  mind. 
Negroes  and  Jews.  ...  In  the  film  there  is  also  a  Negro.  .  .  . 
Oh  yes,  the  actor  plays  the  pan  of  a  Negro.  ...  Of  course,  he  is 
presented  as  Othello,  the  Moor  of  Venice.  .  *  .  There  is  a  scene 
in  which  the  actor  comes  into  conflict  with  a  high  aristocrat,  the 
same  man  who  is  his  more  fortunate  rival  in  the  love  for  the  girl. 
*  .  .  This  snobbish  character  speaks  of  Shakespeare  as  an  inferior, 
barbarian  playwright  who  cannot  hold  a  candle  to  Comeille 
and  Racine.  There  again  appear  the  threads  between  mj  patient's 


356  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

remark   and    the   film.  .  .  .  The   Negroes   and   the  Jews.  . 
Jericho  and  Othello. 

But  how  does  Jephthah  come  into  my  train  of  thoughts?  .  . 
For  the  life  of  me,  I  do  not  know  how  the  figure  of  this  judge 
from  the  Old  Testament  wandered  into  my  associations.  .  . 
How  did  just  he  drift  into  them?  A  penny  for  my  thoughts?  But 
even  this  seems  overpaid,  because  nothing  occurs  to  me  ... 
Jephthah.  .  .  .  Jephthah  and  his  daughter.  .  .  .  Did  not  Jeph- 
thah make  a  vow  when  he  went  out  to  fight  the  enemies  of  the 
Israelites  that  he  would  sacrifice  the  first  person  he  encountered 
after  his  victorious  return  from  the  battle?  And  did  he  not  meet 
his  daughter,  whom  he  then  had  to  sacrifice  to  the  cruel  god  of 
the  Hebrews? 

I  am  trying  to  reconstruct  what  I  had  thought  before  that.  .  .  . 
The  Negroes  and  the  Jews.  .  .  .  The  aristocrat  who  speaks  de- 
rogatoriiy  of  Shakespeare  and  Othello.  ...  Is  Jephthah  or  his 
daughter  perhaps  mentioned  In  Othello?  .  .  .  For  a  moment  I 
thought  It  must  be  there,  but,  no,  it  can't  be.  ...  There  is  some 
memory  stirring  within  me  that  Jephthah's  daughter  is  men- 
tioned In  one  of  Shakespeare's  tragedies.  .  .  .  No,  not  in  Othello. 
.  .  .  Perhaps  In  The  Merchant  of  Venice?  .  .  . 

1  overcome  my  laziness,  I  get  up  from  the  couch  and  get  the 
concordance  of  Shakespeare's  work  in  order  to  look  it  up.  .  . 
There  it  is.  ...  Neither  In  Othello  nor  in  The  Merchant  of 
Venice.  .  .  .  (The  Moor  of  Venice  and  the  Merchant  of  Venice- 
Is  this  the  common  element  between  the  plays?  Oh  no,  It  must  be 
again  the  race  discrimination.  Negroes  and  Jews,  Othello  and 
Sfaylock.)  The  passage  is  In  Hamlet,  says  the  concordance,  Act 
II,  scene  2.  ...  Ah,  herel  Hamlet  runs  Into  Poionius  and  says: 

**Oh  Jephthah,  judge  of  Israel,  what  a  treasure  hadst  thou!" 

The  old  courtier  asks: 

**What  a  treasure  had  he,  my  lord?"  and  the  Prince  answers: 

"One  fair  daughter,  and  no  more, 
The  which  he  loved  passing  well." 

Polonius*  who  Is  convinced  that  Hamlet's  love  for  Ophelia  has 

driven  Mm  crazy,  thoughtfully  remarks,  "Still  on  my  daughter 
,  .  /*  And  Hamlet  asks,  "Am  I  not  i'  the  right,  old  Jephthah?" 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  357 

thus  identifying  the  pompous  old  courtier  with  the  biblical  Judge. 

Jephthah— Jephthah's  daughter  .  .  ,  Jessica,  .  .  .  Jessica  is  the 
daughter  of  the  Jew  ShylocL  Here  then  is  the  connecting  link 
•with  Jephthah's  daughter  .  .  .  Jephthah  loved  his  child  and  had 
to  kill  her.  Shylock  loves  his  daughter  and  yet  he  curses  her  when 
she  elopes  with  a  good-for-nothing  fellow.  .  .  .  More  than  this— 
he  wishes  to  see  her  dead  at  his  feet  when  he  learns  that  she 
squanders  the  money  for  which  he  has  toiled  and  slaved  so  long. 

I  remember  having  read  in  the  book  of  some  Shakespeare  com- 
mentator or  critic  that  this  trait  adds  to  the  repulsive  picture  of 
Shylock's  character.  How  could  a  father  wish  to  see  his  daughter 
dead  merely  because  she  throws  money  away?  Yet,  these  good 
people  do  not  understand  that  it  is  the  Oriental  temper,  which 
still  lives  in  the  Jews  of  late  times,  which  bursts  forth  in  Shylock's 
rage.  .  .  .  Such  wishes,  as  well  as  Jephthah's  vow,  are  expressions 
of  that  excitable  temper  that  flares  suddenly  up  and  is  often 
•enough  followed  by  intense  remorse  and  severe  self-punishment. 
There  are  hateful  outbreaks  against  objects  very  much  loved, 
loved  not  wisely  but  too  well.  .  .  .  Yes,  those  ancient  Jews  were 
afraid  of  themselves  and  of  the  intensity  of  their  passions.  They 
had  to  protect  themselves  in  their  love  objects.  .  .  .  They  were 
so  afraid  that  they  had  a  solemn  religious  formula  in  which  they 
asked  God  to  consider  oaths  spoken  in  moments  of  rage  as  in- 
valid. They  anticipated  such  outbreaks  in  themselves,  and  asked 
God  not  to  oblige  them  to  keep  those  vows  and  to  forgive  them. 
That  formula  or  prayer  is  called  Kol  Nidre  and  is  recited  on  the 
High  Holiday,  Yom  Kippur  or  the  Day  of  Atonement.  In  it  all 
such  oaths  and  vows  taken  in  the  year  just  beginning  are  declared 
invalid.  I  published  a  paper  on  this  subject  in  my  book  the 
Ritual 

How  did  I  become  interested  in  the  Kol  Nidre?  I  am  an  infidel 
Jew.  ...  Do  I  have  the  same  inclination  to  swear  away  the  life 
of  dear  persons  when  I  am  very  angry?  Have  I  some  of  that  hot 
temper;  do  I  know  such  sudden  flareups  and  outbreaks  as  Shy- 
lock's?  I  suddenly  feel  the  urgent  wish  to  read  those  scenes  in  The 
Merchant  of  Venice  where  Shylock  curses  his  daughter  and  wishes 
to  see  her  dead  at  his  feet 

I  had.  tried  first  to  search  below  the  surface  for  the  meaning  of 


358  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

those  associations  and  names.  I  did  not  get  very  far,  because  as 
sewn  as  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  significance  of  the  names  of 
Jericho,  Jephthah,  and  Jessica,  my  interest  became  deflected  and 
turned  in  a  new  direction.  Investigating  those  first  associations 
took  only  a  few  minutes,  and  now  it  was  late  at  night.  I  wanted 
to  look  up  some  passages  in  The  Merchant  of  Venice.  I  did  that, 
but  then  read  the  whole  play  again  and  spent  a  few  hours  in 
thinking  about  it,  daydreaming  and  pondering  about  it,  following 
ideas  that  took  me  far  off.  While  I  read  the  familiar  scenes  of 
Shakespeare's  play,  I  went  astray  in  my  thoughts,  pursuing  fleet- 
ing images  and  impressions.  Embryos  of  ideas,  snatches  of  new- 
thoughts  emerged.  They  were  brushed  aside,  but  they  recurred 
and  would  not  let  themselves  be  rejected.  These  new  thoughts  all 
concerned  the  contrast  and  conflict  of  Shylock  and  Antonio. 
There  was  something  in  the  opposition  of  these  two  antagonists 
which  I  sensed  but  could  not  grasp. 

This  mysterious  something  transgressed  the  narrow  limitations 
of  the  plot  about  a  loan  and  about  a  legal  argument  and  counter- 
argument. Something  there  is  unsaid  but  conveyed.  Some  con- 
cealed meaning  is  allluded  to,  but  eludes  the  search  of  logical  and 
conscious  thinking.  Shylock  and  Antonio  are,  of  course,  not  only 
this  money-lending  Jew  and  that  Venetian  Merchant,  in  spite  of  all 
individual  traits  and  typical  features.  They  are  even  more  than 
types,  more  than  the  kind  and  noble  Gentile  and  the  malicious 
son  of  the  old  tribe.  That  intangible  and  elusive  element  seems 
to  overlap  into  an  area  beyond  the  individual  and  the  typical.  It 
shatters  the  frame  of  the  two  characters  and  reaches  to  the  sky.  10 
reading  the  play,  Antonio  and  Shylock  grew  in  my  thoughts  to 
gigantic  figures  standing  against  each  other  silently.  I  did  not 
know  what  this  transformation  meant  and  I  first  tried  to  solve 
the  problem  by  means  of  conscious  analytic  interpretation.  It  was 
as  if  a  fisherman  casts  out  a  net  into  the  deep  sea.  He  brings  some- 
thing up  from  the  depth,  but  it  is  certainly  not  what  he  wanted 
and  hoped  to  get.  What  he  tried  to  bring  up  to  the  surface 
slipped  through  the  meshes  of  his  net. 

i  am  certainly,  not  the  first  analyst  who  interpreted  Shy  loci's 
tenmsy  namely,  the  condition  that  he  can  cut  a  pound  of  flesh 
"in  what  part  of  your  body  pleaseth  me"  as  a  substitute  expres- 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  359 

slon  of  castration.  When  later  on  in  the  play  it  is  decided  the 
cut  should  be  made  from  the  breast,  analytic  interpretation  will 
easily  understand  the  mechanism  of  distortion  that  operates  here 
and  displaces  the  performance  from  a  part  of  the  body  below 
to  above.  Only  one  step  is  needed  to  reach  the  concept  that  to  the 
Gentile  of  medieval  times  the  Jew  unconsciously  typified  the 
castrator  because  he  circumcised  male  children.  Circumcision  is, 
as  psychoanalytic  experiences  teach  us,  conceived  as  a  milder 
form  of  castration.  The  Jew  thus  appeared  to  the  Gentiles  as  a 
dangerous  figure  with  whom  the  threat  of  castration  originated. 
Consciously,  to  Shakespeare  and  his  contemporaries  (as  to  many 
of  our  own  time),  the  Jew  appears  as  a  money-taking  and  -grasp- 
ing figure  who  takes  financial  advantage  of  the  Gentiles.  Uncon- 
sciously, he  is  the  man  who  threatens  to  damage  them  by  cutting 
off  the  penis.  Because  his  tribe  performs  the  archaic  operation  of 
circumcision,  the  Jew  represents  an  unconscious  danger  to  the 
masculinity  of  the  Gentiles.  The  unconscious  factor  has  to  be 
added  to  the  strange  features  of  his  different  religious  rituals,  to 
the  unfamiliar  dietary  customs  and  the  divergent  habits  of  the 
foreign  minority.  If  Shylock  insists  upon  cutting  out  a  pound  of 
flesh  from  Antonio's  breast,  it  is  as  if  he  demanded  that  the  Gen- 
tile be  made  a  Jew  if  he  cannot  pay  back  the  three  thousand 
ducats  at  the  fixed  time.  Otherwise  put:  Antonio  should  submit 
to  the  religious  ritual  of  circumcision. 

The  application  of  the  analytic  method  is  really  not  needed  to 
arrive  at  this  conclusion.  It  could  be  easily  reached  on  another 
route.  At  the  end  of  the  "comedy"  Antonio  demands  that  Shylock 
should  "presently  become  a  Christian."  If  this  is  the  justified 
amends  the  Jew  has  to  make  for  his  earlier  condition,  it  would 
be  according  to  poetic  justice  that  the  Jew  be  forced  to  become 
a  Christian  after  he  had  insisted  that  his  opponent  should  be- 
come a  Jew.  Such  a  retaliation  corresponds  to  the  oldest  law  of 
the  world,  to  the  ius  talionis  that  demands  tooth  for  tooth,  eye 
for  eye. 

That  bit  of  insight  into  the  concealed  meaning  of  Sfaylock's 
demand  remained  an  isolated  and  trifling  scrap  of  analytic  inter- 
pretation until  it  was  blended  with  other  impressions.  The  first 
impression  concerned  the  character  of  Shylock.  I  remember  that 


360  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  once  talked  with  Freud  about  what  constitutes  that  quality  we 
call  character.  He  said  that  in  his  opinion  character  is  signified 
.  by  the  predominance  of  one  or  a  few  drives  over  others.  While 
all  the  drives  are,  of  course,  present  and  operating,  one  of  them  is 
distinguished  and  superior  in  intensity.  We  say,  then,  that  this 
person  has  character,  a  quality  we  do  not  attribute  to  others  in 
whom  all  drives  seem  equally  developed.  While  I  read  the  play, 
Shylock's  thirst  for  revenge  impressed  me  more  than  any  other 
feature  of  the  man.  At  the  same  time  half-forgotten  lines  from  the 
Holy  Scriptures  began  to  sound  in  my  mind,  fragmentary  sen- 
tences, snatches  of  lines.  .  .  .  "The  Lord  will  take  vengeance  on 
His  adversaries"  .  .  .  "They  shall  see  My  vengeance  .  .  ."  "I 
will  not  spare  them  on  the  day  of  vengeance,"  and  others.  Yes, 
the  God  of  the  Old  Testament  is  a  vindictive  God.  He  has  per- 
haps not  only  the  virtues,  but  also  the  vices  of  the  worshipers  in 
whose  image  He  is  made. 

At  a  certain  moment  I  was,  it  seemed,  carried  away  by  a  fancy 
or  an  impression  that  had  gained  power  over  me.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  the  figure  of  the  God  of  the  Old  Testament,  Jahweh  Him- 
self, looms  gigantically  behind  "the  Jew  that  Shakespeare  drew." 
The  mythological  figure  of  the  old  God  reduced  to  the  size  of  a 
human  creature,  diminished  and  dressed  up  as  a  Jewish  money- 
lender? Jahweh,  the  Lord,  who  came  to  earth  on  the  Rialto?  But 
the  impression  quickly  evaporated.  It  was  as  if  I  had,  for  a  mo- 
ment, seen  an  apparition  in  the  delusive  light  of  that  evening.  It 
reappeared,  however,  later  on. 

I  then  became  more  interested  in  another  impression  that  sur- 
prised me  because  it  had  not  been  there  when  I  had  previously 
read  and  seen  the  play:  the  lack  of  characterization  of  Antonio. 
If  there  is  a  leading  character  in  any  Shakespeare  play  who  is  less 
of  a  personality,  is  less  colorful  and  less  equipped  with  distin- 
guishing individual  traits,  I  would  like  to  know  of  it.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  Antonio  is  the  leading  character.  His  is  the  title  role 
of  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  although  his  opponent  steals  the 
show. 

What  do  we  know  of  Antonio?  Only  that  he  is  kind,  loves  his 
friends*  is  generous  to  the  extent  of  self-sacrifice  and  that  he  is 
sad.  ...  He  is  kindliness  itself,  personified.  ...  He  loves  his. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  JJ&I 

friends,  he  wants  to  give  his  life  for  his  friends.  ...  He  is  eager 
to  make  the  supreme  self-sacrifice.  Greater  love  hath  BO  man, 
...  He  not  only  suffers,  he  is  suffering,  grief,  sorrow  themselves. 

He  is  sad.  Why?  Nobody  knows,  least  of  all  himself.  Is  this  a 
shortcoming  on  the  part  of  the  greatest  playwright  of  the  world 
or  is  there  something  hidden  here,  unknown  even  to  the  Bard? 

The  play  opens  with  Antonio's  entrance  and  these  are  his  first 
lines: 

In  sooth,  I  know  not  why  I  am  so  sad: 
It  wearies  me;  you  say  it  wearies  you; 
But  how  I  caught  it,  found  it,  came  by  it, 
What  stuff  'tis  made  of,  whereof  it  is  born, 
I  am  to  learn; 

And  such  a  want-wit  sadness  makes  of  me, 
That  I  have  much  ado  to  know  myself. 

His  friends  try  in  vain  to  explain  his  sadness,  but  he  denies 
that  he  thinks  of  his  merchandise  at  sea  and  answers  with  a  sad 
"Fie,  Fie**  when  Salarino  suspects  that  he  could  be  in  love.  He  is, 
to  all  appearances,  sad  without  reason.  I  now  remember  that  I 
have  read  in  the  book  of  a  Shakespeare  commentator  that  An- 
tonio has  "the  spleen."  It  seems  to  me  that  this  concept  is  too 
British.  .  .  .  While  I  still  ponder  over  Antonio's  mysterious 
sadness,  a  line  runs  through  my  mind.  "He  was  despised  and  re- 
jected of  men,  a  man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief."  And 
then:  "He  hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our  sorrows."  .  .  . 
But  those  are  passages  from  the  Holy  Scripture!  .  .  .  How  do 
they  now  emerge?  It  occurs  to  me  where  and  when  I  heard  them 
last.  A  friend  let  me  have  the  records  of  Handel's  Messiah  a  few 
days  ago. 

In  Act  IV,  Antonio  says: 

I  am  a  tainted  wether  of  the  flock, 
Meetest  for  death. 

Actually,  he  does  not  awaken  interest  and  sympathy  by  the 
person  he  is,  but  by  what  happens  to  him;  not  by  his  personality, 
but  by  his  destiny.  He  is,  he  says,  a  tainted  wether  of  the  fleck, 
destined  to  die.  He  is,  rather,  a  lamb.  .  .  .  From  somewhere  the 


362  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

phrase  "Agnus  Dei  qui  tollit  peccata  mundi"  comes  to  mind.  Is 
this  not  from  the  Vulgate,  the  translation  of  the  New  Testament? 
Immediately  a  passage  from  the  Messiah  emerges,  the  passage  of 
"the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away  the  sins  of  the  world." 

Antonio's  sadness  ...  the  man  of  sorrow  .  .  .  the  Lamb  of 
God  .  .  .  destined  to  die.  ...  He  was  wounded  for  our  trans- 
gressions. ...  He  was  bruised  for  our  Iniquities.  .  .  .  The  scene 
before  the  court  at  Venice.  .  .  .  The  readiness  to  die  for  others. 
.  .  .  Did  He  not  state,  "Greater  love  has  no  man  than  this  that  a 
man  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friend"?  .  .  .  No,  I  am  not  the 
victim  of  a  delusion.  Behind  the  figure  of  Antonio  is  the  greater 
one  of  Jesus  Christ.  Again  the  motif  "He  was  despised  and  re- 
jected" emerges  as  If  the  tune  wants  to  confirm  my  thought,  as  if 
the  line  from  the  Messiah  announced  that  my  concept  is  correct. 

Again  there  Is  the  image  of  Antonio  and  Shylock  standing  op- 
posite each  other,  the  one  all  charity  and  the  other  no  charity 
at  all.  ...  I  know  now  clearly  what  was  in  the  background  of 
my  mind  while  I  read  the  play,  what  were  the  vague  Impressions 
that  crowded  upon  me  until  they  became  condensed  into  one 
leading  thought.  I  am  turning  the  leaves  of  the  volume,  and  my 
glance  chances  upon  the  lines  of  Shylock  in  Act  I,  where  he 
speaks  directly  to  the  noble  Venetian  merchant: 

Signior  Antonio,  many  a  time  and  oft 

In  the  Rialto  you  have  rated  me 

About  my  money  and  my  usances. 

Still  I  have  borne  it  with  a  patient  shrug, 

For  sufferance  Is  the  badge  of  our  tribe. 

You  call  me  misbeliever,  cut-throat  dog, 

ABC!  spat  upon  my  Jewish  gaberdine, 

And  all  for  use  of  that  which  is  mine  own  .  .  . 

Here  is  one  of  the  few  occasions  in  which  Antonio  shows  tem- 
perament and  hate  In  contrast  to  his  otherwise  gentle  and  weak 
attitude.  .  .  .  Not  a  trace  of  charity  and  loving-kindness  here. 
Not  very  Christian,  as  a  matter  of  fact.  This  seems  to  contradict 
my  concept  that  behind  the  'Gentile  merchant  the  figure  of  his 
God  is  concealed. 

But  then  it  occurs  to  me  that  this  feature  does  not  contradict 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

my  thesis.  It  rather  confirms  it.  Did  He  not  go  up  to  Jerusalem 
when  Passover  was  at  hand  and  abuse  and  whip  the  money- 
changers and  drive  them  all  out  of  the  temple?  Did  He  not  pour 
out  their  money  and  overthrow  their  tables?  Behind  the  treat- 
ment Shylock  gets  from  Antonio  the  features  of  the  primal  pat- 
tern of  the  Holy  Scripture  become  apparent. 

I  do  not  doubt  any  more  that  behind  Antonio  and  Shylock  are 
hidden  the  great  figures  of  their  gods.  Here  are  two  small  people 
in  Venice,  but  the  shadows  they  cast  are  gigantic  and  their  con- 
flict shakes  the  world.  There  is  the  vengeful  and  zealous  God  of 
the  Old  Testament  and  the  milder  Son-God  of  the  Gospels  who 
rebelled  against  His  father,  suffered  death  for  His  revolt,  and 
became  God  Himself,  afterwards.  The  two  Gods  are  presented  and 
represented  in  this  play  by  two  of  their  typical  worshipers  of  the 
playwright's  time. 

Shakespeare  wanted  to  present  a  Jewish  figure  as  he  and  his 
contemporaries  saw  it,  but  the  character  grew  beyond  human 
measure  into  the  realm  of  the  mythical,  as  if  the  God  of  the  Jews 
stood  behind  the  stage.  Shakespeare  wanted  to  shape  the  destiny 
of  a  Gentile  merchant  who  almost  became  the  victim  of  a  venge- 
ful, evil  Jew,  but  the  unconscious  imagination  of  this  writer 
shattered  the  thin  frame  of  his  plot.  The  myth-forming  fantasy  of 
this  man  William  Shakespeare,  his  imagination  complete,  m 
Taine  says,  reached  so  much  farther  than  his  conscious  mind.  It 
reached  beyond  the  thoughts  and  designs  known  to  him,  into  the 
region  where  the  great  myths  and  religious  legends  of  the  people 
are  bom  and  bred.  He  wanted  only  to  write  a  comedy  with  a  plot 
about  the  curious  case  of  a  Jew  who  was  outjewed.  Unconscious 
memory-traces  made  him  shape  the  conflict  of  the  two  Gods,  the 
holy  story  as  he  had  absorbed  it  as  a  boy.  Invisible  threads  con- 
nect The  Merchant  of  Venice  with  the  medieval  passion  plays. 

He  took  the  two  plots  from  many  sources,  the  story  of  the  three 
caskets  and  the  tale  of  the  merchant  who  got  a  rough  deal  from 
a  malicious  Jew,  and  alloyed  them  into  a  play.  Thus  William  saw 
the  Jews  as  the  Toms,  Dicks,  and  Harrys  of  his  time  saw  them, 
despised  them,  and  mocked  them,  and  hated  them.  But  something 
greater  than  his  conscious  thought  gave  that  Jew  a  voice  of  his 
own,  a  rancorous  voice  that  speaks  in  icy  sarcasm,  biting  ami  ac- 


364  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

cusing,  a  voice  full  of  sound  and  fury,  rising  In  passionate  protest 
and  ebbing  In  utter  despair.  The  creative  and  re-creative  Imagina- 
tion of  this  man  Shakespeare  poured  Into  the  trivial  plot  of  the 
three  thousand  ducats  something  of  the  stuff  the  great  myths  of 
people,  the  dreams  of  mankind,  are  made  on.  He  added  the  figure 
of  Antonio,  who  was  to  be  cut  and  mutilated,  to  the  mythical 
figures  of  Attis,  Adonis,  and  Jesus  Christ,  who  were  torn  to  pieces. 
Only  small  Inconspicuous  traits,  little  features  overlooked  and 
neglected,  Invisible  or  only  visible  under  the  microscope  of  psy- 
choanalytic scrutiny,  reveal  that  behind  the  trivial  figures  of  the 
comedy  are  hidden  Jehovah  and  Jesus,  that  the  real  personae 
dramatis  are  overdimensionaL 

In  the  battles  between  the  Danal  and  the  Trojans,  as  Homer 
describes  them,  the  gods  of  Olympus  fought  In  the  skies  above 
the  heads  of  the  combatants.  In  the  fight  between  the  Gentiles  of 
Venice  and  the  Jew  Shylock,  the  greatest  conflict  of  the  world  is 
presented  in  a  courtroom  scene.  I  am  toying  with  the  plan  to 
publish  this  new  concept.  Perhaps  in  a  literary  magazine.  .  .  . 
And  why  not  in  a  psychoanalytic  journal  since  it  is  the  result  of 
psychological  evaluation  of  small  Inconspicuous  traits  In  the  clas- 
sical manner  of  analytic  observation  of  trifles?  .  .  .  Perhaps  I 
should  entitle  the  paper  with  the  sentence  "Et  hie  dei  sunt"  Also 
here  are  gods. 

When  I  arrived  at  this  concept— or  should  I  say  rather  when 
this  concept  arrived  at  me?— I  felt  that  glow  of  thought  known  to 
all  explorers  who  first  recognize  a  secret  connection,  that  burning 
felicity  of  discovery.  It  was,  to  be  sure,  only  a  small  thing,  a  tri- 
fling contribution  to  the  Interpretation  of  a  Shakespearean  play, 
only  a  little  bit  of  a  new  construction,  yet  ...  The  Inscription  I 
had  often  seen  on  old  Austrian  cottages,  when  I  was  a  boy, 
occurred  to  me:  "Klein,  aber  mein"  (Small,  but  my  own.) 

It  Is,  I  thought,  only  a  trifle  of  an  idea,  but  it  is  original.  And 
then  came  the  doubt  as  to  Its  originality.  I  had  the  feeling  that  I 
had  had  this  very  thought  before,  a  long  time  ago.  .  .  .  Yet,  I 
knew  it  had  occurred  now,  when  I  reread  The  Merchant  of 
Fmice.  ...  Is  there  a  phenomenon  analogous  to  the  sensation 
of  deja  vu  in  the  area  of  thinking,  a  feeling  of  deja  pensef  .  .  . 
Perhaps  I  read  it  once  and  have  forgotten  It,  and  now  I  think  of 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

it  as  an  original  idea  of  my  own.  ...  I  am  trying  to  remember 
what  various  critics  and  historians  of  literature  wrote  on  The 
Merchant  of  Venice.  .  .  .  No,  there  is  nothing  comparable  to 
my  concept.  .  .  .  Yet,  I  know  this  thought  from  somewhere.  .  .  . 
When  it  occurred  to  me,  I  nodded,  so  to  speak,  to  it  as  you  do  to 
ail  old  acquaintances  whom  you  run  into  on  the  street  and  whom 
you  have  not  seen  for  many  years. 

When  did  1  first  see  The  Merchant  of  Venice?  It  was  when  I 
was  sixteen  or  seventeen  years  old,  in  Vienna.  .  .  .  Wait!  I  ad- 
monished myself.  Let  me  think.  ...  I  have  forgotten  who  acted 
—a  thin  man  with  an  iron-gray  wisp  of  beard,  a  dark  gaberdine, 
and  the  little  black  cap  of  the  orthodox  Jew.  His  too  vivid  ges- 
tures and  his  expressive  voice  that  ran  the  gamut  from  cold  logic 
to  embittered  passion  and  spoke  the  verse  of  Shakespeare  with  a 
Yiddish  modulation  which  was  not  at  all  ridiculous.  .  .  .  That 
was  in  1904  or  1905. 

The  play  occupied  my  thoughts  for  a  long  time.  .  .  .  I  was  a  boy, 
and  another  still  younger  boy  lived  in  Vienna  then  whose  name 
was  Adolf  Hitler.  ...  At  this  time,  when  I  was  sixteen,  I  did  not 
love  Shakespeare,  but  Heinrich  Heine.  ...  By  God,  Heine.  .  .  . 
That  is  it.  ...  I  read  then  the  splendid  prose  of  Heine,  and 
among  his  writings  the  paper  Gods  in  Exile.  In  this  essay  the 
writer  imagines  that  the  ancient  gods  of  the  Greeks  did  not  perish 
when  Christ  triumphed  and  conquered  the  world.  They  became 
refugees  and  left  their  country.  They  immigrated,  went  under- 
ground. They  disguised  themselves  and  lived  anonymously  in 
exile  a  pitiful  or  comfortable  life.  They  tried  to  get  jobs,  in- 
cognito, of  course.  They  drank  beer  instead  of  nectar.  Apollo, 
who  had  once  led  the  cows  of  Admetos  to  pasture,  became  a  shep- 
herd in  Lower  Austria;  Mars  became  a  soldier,  and  Mercury  a 
Butch  merchant  who  was  quite  prosperous.  Bacchus  became 
Father  Superior  of  a  monastery.  ...  I  must  have  read  that  very 
picturesque  fantasy  of  the  vicissitudes  of  the  ancient  Greek  gods  be- 
fore or  at  the  time  when  I  first  saw  The  Merchant  of  Venice  in  the 
Burgtheater.  .  ,  .  Sometime  and  somewhere  the  memory  of  those 
pages  of  Heine's  Gods  in  Exile  must  have  merged  with  vague 
ideas  and  impressions  about  the  figures  of  Antonio  and  ShylocL 
.  .  .  The  two  thoughts  met  and  coalesced.  The  result  of  their 


366  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

mixture  was  the  concept,  then  only  dimly  perceived,  that  Shylock 
and  Antonio,  too,  are  disguised  figures  of  gods,  reduced  to  very 
human  size,  reappearing  in  the  earthly  shape  of  a  noble  Venetian 
merchant  and  of  an  old  vengeful  Jew.  .  .  .  This  paper  by  Heine, 
therefore,  is  the  birthplace  or  the  source  of  my  "original"  concept 
or,  at  least,  it  stimulated  its  genesis.  Yes,  Heinrich  Heine.  ...  I 
suddenly  remember  that  the  same  great  German  writer  wrote 
another  short  essay  on  Shakespeare's  "Maiden  and  Women/'  .  .  . 
I  had,  of  course,  read  this  paper  too,  perhaps  about  the  same  time 
I  read  "Gods  in  Exile."  The  coincidence  facilitated  perhaps  the 
meeting  of  the  two  thoughts  in  my  mind  after  the  performance  of 
The  Merchant  of  Venice. 

I  walk  over  to  my  bookcase  and  I  take  the  volume  of  Heine's 
collected  works.  Here  is  the  essay  on  Shakespeare's  women  .  .  . 
and  here  are  the  passages  on  Jessica.  I  begin  to  read  and  again 
I  am  under  the  spell  of  Heine's  magnificent  diction  as  I  once  was 
when  I  was  a  boy. 

Heine  writes  about  a  performance  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice: 
"When  I  saw  this  play  at  Drury  Lane,  there  stood  behind  in  the 
box  a  pale,  fair  Briton  who  at  the  end  of  the  Fourth  Act  fell 
a-weeping  passionately,  several  times  exclaiming,  'The  poor  man 
is  wronged!' "  The  poet  thinks  of  this  lady  when  he  visits  Venice 
later  on:  "Wondering  dream-hunter  that  I  am,  I  looked  around 
everywhere  on  the  Rialto  to  see  if  I  could  find  Shylock  .  .  .  But 
1  found  him  nowhere  on  the  Rialto,  and  I  determined  to  seek  my 
old  acquaintance  in  the  Synagogue.  The  Jews  were  then  celebrat- 
ing their  Day  of  Atonement.  .  .  .  Although  I  looked  all  around 
the  Synagogue,  I  nowhere  discovered  the  face  of  Shylock.  I  saw 
Mm  not.  But  toward  evening,  when,  according  to  Jewish  belief, 
the  gates  of  heaven  are  shut  and  no  prayer  can  then  obtain  ad- 
mission, I  heard  a  voice,  with  a  ripple  of  tears  that  never  were 
wept  by  eyes.  It  was  a  sob  that  could  come  only  from  a  breast  that 
held  in  It  all  martyrdom  which  for  eighteen  centuries  had  been 
borne  by  a  whole  tortured  people.  It  was  the  death  rattle  of  a 
soul  sinking  down  dead-tired  at  heaven's  gate,  and  I  seemed  to 
know  the  voke  and  I  felt  that  I  had  heard  it  long  ago;  in  utter 
despair,  it  moaned  out,  then  as  now,  'Jessica,  my  child! '  " 

In  these  lines*  written  more  than  one  hundred  years  ago,  Heine 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  367 

has  touched  the  most  vulnerable  spot  of  Shakespeare's  Shylock* 
The  picture  of  the  old  man  who  has  broken  down  and  means* 
"Jessica,  my  child"  has  the  gloomy  grandeur  of  the  biblical  paint- 
ings of  Rembrandt. 

It  is  strange  that  Heine  has  so  little  to  say  about  Jessica  with 
whose  personality  this  piece  should  deal  She  is  for  him  just  a 
pleasure-seeking,  egocentric  female.  But  he  had  quite  a  few  things 
to  say  about  those  Venetian  young  men  who  are  friends  of  the 
noble  Antonio.  He  sees  them  with  a  critical  eye  and  he  is  right 
in  looking  down  on  them.  Bassanio  is  a  fortunehunter  who  adds 
debts  to  debts  to  make  a  luxurious  trip,  and  who  does  not  hesitate 
to  risk  the  life  of  his  best  friend  in  order  to  impress  Portia  by  his 
elegance.  How  low  can  you  get?  There  is  Lorenzo  who  elopes 
with  Jessica  and  lives  on  the  money  and  jewels  she  has  taken  from 
her  father,  lives  sumptuously,  throwing  Shylock's  naoney  around. 
There  are  those  other  playboys,  irresponsible,  flippant,  crude 
conceited,  shallow  and  out  for  fun  only— such  charming  people! 

Is  Shylock  not  right  when  he  looks  down  upon  those  noble 
Venetian  young  gentlemen  and  speaks  aside: 

These  be  the  Christian  husbands.  I  have  a  daughter- 
Would  any  of  the  stock  of  Barrabas 
Had  been  her  husband  rather  than  a  Christian! 

1  have  two  daughters  and,  considering  these  young  noblemen, 
I  feel  as  he  does.  .  .  . 

And  Jessica  falls  in  love  with  one  of  those  guys  who  talks  big 
and  is  an  empty  shell.  He  will  be  fed  up  with  her  very  soon,  will 
soon  throw  her  over,  and  will  look  down  on  her  because  she  is 
Jewish.  And  the  girl  herself?  She  is  ashamed  of  her  father,  calls 
herself  daughter  of  his  blood,  not  of  his  heart.  She  robs  him  and 
leaves  him  alone  and  in  despair.  Farewell,  she  says: 

And  if  my  fortune  be  not  crcst, 

I  have  a  father,  you  a  daughter,  lost. 

I  begin  to  wonder  how  1  came  to  all  these  thoughts  and  I  am 
curious.  How  did  I  arrive  from  thinking  of  an  alcoholic  patient 
to  an  analytic  contribution  to  Shakespeare's  play?  I  fail  to  recog- 


THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

nlze  any  connections  In  my  associations.  ...  It  is  really  puzzling, 
and  I  would  like  to  find  out  on  which  ways  my  train  of  thought 
wandered.  I  want  to  discover  the  truth  about  them,  and  about 
myself,  the  truth,  fair  or  foul.  .  .  . 

I  first  remembered  the  remark  of  my  patient  Bill,  who  is  a 
playboy  and  drunkard,  about  Negroes  and  Jews.  Then  only  words 
came  when  I  was  half  asleep.  Only  names:  Jones,  Jericho,  Jeph- 
thah,  Jessica,  Jehovah,  Jesus.  .  .  .  Oh  yes,  there  were  thought- 
connections:  Emperor  Jones,  Jericho,  that  Jewish  peddler  in  the 
film,  who  appeared  to  me  as  a  kind  of  degraded  Jehovah,  Jeph- 
thah,  who  had  to  sacrifice  his  own  daughter,  Jessica,  the  daughter 
of  Shylock.  And  then  Shylock  himself  as  a  human  representative 
of  the  God  of  the  Jews,  reduced  and  despised  in  his  earthly 
shape,  and  Antonio,  a  small-sized  edition  of  the  Nazarene.  . .  .  The 
trial  as  a  miniature  of  the  great  conflict  of  the  old  and  the  new 
God  .  .  .  "Gods  in  Exile"  .  .  .  Heine  .  .  .  and  Heine's  words 
about  Shylock  and  Jessica. 

Bet  what  was  there  before  I  thought  of  that  patient  and  of  his 
anti-Semitic  remark?  .  .  .  Nothing  occurs  to  me.  .  .  .  There  is 
a  blank,  I  think  only  that  I  am -very  tired  and  that  I  should  go  to 
bed.  ...  It  is  long  after  midnight.  Thody  is  not  home  yet  ... 
Thody  .  .  . 

All  of  a  sudden  I  recognize  with  full  clarity  where  the  whole 
train  of  thought  started  and  why  it  took  this  direction  and  what 
it  means.  I  am  amazed,  and  it  is  at  this  point  that  I  repeat  whole- 
heartedly that  sentence  of  my  patient,  "Our  mind  is  an  insult  to 
our  intelligence." 

When  Thody  came  into  the  room  to  say  good  night  and  went 
out  for  a  date,  I  must  have  thought  some  uncomfortable  thoughts. 
I  brushed  them  aside  and  tried  to  run  away  from  them.  I  turned 
my  attention  to  the  analytic  sessions  of  the  day  and  thus  arrived 
at  the  thought  of  my  patient  and  his  remark  about  Negroes  and 
Jews.  ...  It  started  there  and  now  all  comes  back  to  me,  also 
the  thoughts  I  tried  to  escape  from.  .  .  .  Thody's  date  must  have 
awakened  a  dormant  fear  that  she  could  get  infatuated  or  even 
fall  in  love  with  one  of  those  worthless  New  York  playboys,  one 
o£  the  ilk  to  which  my  patient  Bill  or  Lorenzo  in  The  Merchant 
oj  Venice  belongs*  It  occurred  to  me  that  she  will  be  eighteen 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

years  old  next  year  and  that  she  could  take  the  funds  I  saved  for 
her  education  and  for  which  I  toiled  and  worked  so  hard  so  many 
years.  She  could  elope  with  just  such  an  immature  young  fellow 
and  give  him  her  money.  .  .  .  She  could  elope  as  Jessica  did  .  .  . 
and  the  young  ne'er-do-well  would  use  her  and  the  money  and 
would  shortly  afterwards  throw  her  over  and  abuse  her. 

I  know,  of  course,  that  none  of  those  fears  is  justified.  Tfaody 
is  not  Infatuated  with  any  boy  and,  even  if  she  were,  she  Is  quite 
Intelligent  and,  although  she  Is  temperamental  and  Impulsive,  she 
has  a  lot  of  common  sense.  How  do  I  come  to  have  such  vain 
fears  and  nonsensical  thoughts?  They  mest  have  originated  in 
fleeting  Impressions  I  have  received  lately.  The  other  day  Thody 
expressed  her  discontent  with  our  very  modest  apartment.  She 
seems  to  be  ashamed  of  It  and  hesitates  to  invite  her  girl  friends 
to  her  house.  She  is  sometimes  Impatient  with  my  old-fashioned 
views,  and— who  knows?— perhaps  she  is  somewhat  ashamed  of  me. 
She  is  also  dissatisfied  with  me,  It  seems,  because  I  am  always 
working  and  1  do  not  explain  things  to  her  that  she  wants  to 
know.  The  other  day,  when  I  had  no  time  to  explain  some  psy- 
chological terms,  she  said  angrily,  "I  could  just  as  well  be  a  shoe- 
maker's daughter."  She  Is  dissatisfied  with  her  home,  Its  atmos- 
phere, and  also  In  other  directions.  .  .  .  And  girls  In  such  moods 
are  sometimes  tempted  to  elope  with  the  first  boy  with  whom  they 
get  infatuated. 

But  this  is  nonsense,  idle  fancy,  and  vain  fears!  ...  I  am  not 
Shylock  and  my  daughter  Is  not  Jessica.  .  .  .  Even  if  she  should 
want  someday  to  elope  with  such  a  playboy  and  give  him  the 
money  I  saved  for  her  college  education,  1  mused,  what  could  I, 
an  old  codger,  do?  .  .  .  Have  I  the  right  to  do  anything?  .  .  . 
You  cannot  teach  anO'ther  human  being  how  to  live  .  .  .  not 
even  your  own  child.  .  .  .  Perhaps  especially  not  your  own  child. 

It  is  strange  how  the  Idea,  or  the  fear,  I  ran  away  from  followed 
me.  I  tried  to  escape  from  It  and  it  pursued  me.  In  my  associations 
I  went  off  on  a  tangent  and  was  led  to  the  center  of  the  problem 
that  unconsciously  preoccupied  me.  My  alcoholic  patient  took  in 
my  thoughts  the  place  of  the  imaginary  playboy  who  is  the  future 
suitor  of  Thody.  From  there  I  drifted  Into  speculations  on  Shy- 
lock,  Jessica,  and  Antonio  and  then  went  into  a  psychological 


370  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

analysis  of  the  secret  background  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  of 
the  second  concealed  compartment  of  the  play. 

How  did  I  come  to  the  new  idea?  Certainly  not  by  conscious 
logical  conclusions.  If  there  were  any,  they  followed  the  concept 
I  had  already  reached.  It  was  an  intuitive  insight  that  suddenly 
emerged.  .  .  .  Out  of  the  nowhere  into  the  here.  .  .  .  But  such 
intuition  is  only  the  sudden  perception  of  an  earlier  intellectual 
experience  which  had  remained  unconscious  and  surprisingly 
reached  the  threshold  of  conscious  thinking  with  the  help  of  new 
impressions.  Could  I  not  later  on  remember  some  parts  of  those 
old  thoughts,  recognize  in  retrospect  the  raw  material  out  of 
which  the  new  concept  was  made? 

Looking  back  at  the  process,  I  still  wonder  how  the  thought 
about  my  patient  suddenly  turned  to  those  names:  Jones,  Jericho, 
Jephthah,  Jehovah,  Jesus.  Chaotic  and  yet  following  their  hid- 
den laws,  my  associations  arrived  by  a  detour  at  their  destination. 
There  is  a  psychological  resemblance  between  this  disjointed  way 
of  thinking  and  the  "flight  of  ideas/'  to  be  found  in  manic  states 
and  in  the  "word  salad"  of  the  schizophrenics.  The  pathological 
flight  of  ideas  is  perhaps  also  not  a  flight  toward  certain  things, 
but  a  flight  away  from  a  pursuing  idea.  The  old  German  expres- 
sion Ideen-Jagd  is  more  appropriate.  From  casually  progressing 
associations,  my  thoughts  increased  their  tempo,  began  to  chase 
each  other.  It  was  as  if  they  first  were  comfortably  pacing  and 
suddenly  went  into  a  gallop,  like  a  horse  that  shies  away  from  its 
own  shadow.  Then  they  changed  their  pace  again  when  I  drifted 
into  those  thoughts  on  Shakespeare's  characters.  I  really  reached 
the  phase  of  objective  study,  and  the  origin  of  my  thoughts,  their 
personal  sources,  were  forgotten  or  submerged.  Here  is  an  alloy  of 
aim-directed  logical  and  rational  thinking  and  hidden  irrational 
and  emotional  thoughts  directed  by  unconscious  drives.  As  far  as 
I  know,  psychiatry  has  no  name  for  such  composite  processes, 
which  are  logically  progressing  but  governed  by  invisible  emotions 
and  forces. 

While  I  thus  reviewed  my  own  mental  process,  I  felt  no  emotion 
except  the  curiosity  of  the  psychological  observer.  I  asked  myself: 
Did  I  feel  any  emotion  during  the  whole  process?  Oh  yes,  there 
was  this  moment  of  glow  when  I  discovered  traces  of  the  old  myth 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  371 

in  the  plot  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  but  nothing  else.  Even 
when  I  reread  the  play,  there  was  no  strong  emotion.  Nothing  of 
the  cathartic  effect  Aristotle  recognized,  no  purification  of  emo- 
tions through  fear  and  pity. 

But  that  impression  must  have  been  self-deceiving.  I  grinned 
to  myself  ironically:  this  is  certainly  not  a  deep  observation.  Noth- 
ing penetrating  about  it.  ...  Of  course,  there  must  have  been 
emotions  that  directed  the  course  of  my  thoughts.  There  was, 
no  doubt,  jealousy  of  my  daughter,  also  possessiveness,  fury 
against  the  unknown  young  man  who  will  take  her  away  from  me. 
I  sense  how  intense  the  rage  and  revengefulness  against  that  imag- 
inary young  man  must  have  been,  because  it  emerged  in  the  sub- 
stitution displacement  of  the  trial  scene  between  Shylock  and 
Antonio,  in  the  Jew's  insistence  on  cutting  a  pound  of  flesh  from 
his  opponent.  Also  an  intense  anger  against  my  daughter  can 
easily  be  conjectured,  because  the  thought  of  Jephthah  appeared. 
The  scene  in  which  Shylock  wishes  to  see  his  disloyal  daughter 
dead  at  his  feet  was  vividly  recalled.  There  were,  I  am  sure,  also 
love  for  my  daughter  and  the  awareness  of  my  helplessness,  if  and 
when  a  certain  situation  might  endanger  her  safety,  and  quite  a 
few  other  emotions. 

But  all  of  them  are  only  suggested  by  pychological  reasoning. 
All  this  is  only  theoretical  insight.  I  don't  feel  any  of  those  emo- 
tions. They  are  only  guessed  and  not  experienced. 

But  then,  all  of  a  sudden,  I  know  that  they  are  there  because  I 
hear  my  own  voice  moaning,  "Thody,  my  child!" 


On  the  little  table  beside  my  bed  are  a  few  books  (I  have  kept 
since  my  childhood  the  bad  habit  of  reading  in  bed),  amongst 
them  Anatole  France  en  Pantoufies  and  Itineram  de  Paris  m 
Buenos  Aires  by  Jean  Jacques  Brousson  and  Conversations  eatec 
Anatole  France  by  Nicolas  Segur.  I  had  read  them  when  they  were 
first  published,  shortly  after  France's  death,  but  1  return  to  them, 
from  lime  to  time,  because  of  my  love  for  the  old  Sage  of  the  Villa 


j<j2  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

Said,  for  his  melancholic  wisdom  and  his  critical  intelligence,  Ms 
lucidity  and  his  subtle  wit.  He  really  lived  without  illusions,  and 
yet  knew  that  living  without  them  is  impossible.  He  was  at  a  cer- 
tain time  the  most  celebrated  writer  of  the  world,  surrounded  by 
admirers,  loved  by  beautiful  women,  honored  by  the  intellectual 
elite  of  his  era.  Yet  he  confided  to  J.  J.  Brousson  that  he  had  not 
been  happy  a  single  hour  of  his  life.  He  asserted  that  only  the  poor 
in  mind  are  happy;  that  he  himself  lacked  the  wonderful  gift  of 
self-deception  and  that  he  had  always  felt  "les  melancholies  de 
I' intelligence!' 

Why  is  it  that  reading  books  by  Anatole  France  makes  me 
serene,  quiets  and  consoles  me?  It  cannot  be  only  his  magnificent 
style,  his  wisdom  or  his  wit  which  affect  the  reader  in  this  manner. 
Something  of  his  personality,  of  his  voice  that  comes  through  the 
lines,  gives  relief  and  relaxation,  removes  the  Erdenschwere,  as 
Goethe  would  put  it,  alleviates  the  oppression  of  living  on  this 
planet.  To  show  that  every  human  relation  and  institution  is 
transitory  and  founded  on  illusions  is  in  itself  a  triumph  of  a 
melancholic  mind  over  the  shabby  and  unsatisfactory  matter. 

Turning  over  the  pages  of  the  three  books  out  of  which  the 
voice  of  old,  wise,  and  witty  Anatole  France  speaks,  reading  some 
paragraphs  here  and  there,  I  chanced  upon  two  anecdotes  that 
brought  my  thoughts  back  to  analytic  sessions  of  the  same  day. 
The  two  anecdotes  which  the  old  master  recounts  appeared  sud- 
denly like  analogies  or  counterparts  of  certain  situations  whose 
detailed  report  I  had  heard  only  a  few  hours  before  in  analytic 
sessions  with  a  woman  and  with  a  man  patient. 

Jane  is  a  young  widow  with  two  children.  As  a  very  young  girl 
she  had  fallen  in  love  with  a  man  more  than  ten  years  older  than 
herself.  The  gentle,  scholarly  man  began  to  pay  attention  to  her 
and  wanted  to  marry  her.  Overcoming  the  resistance  of  his  family 
to  Ms  marriage  with  a  girl  who  was  so  much  younger  and  compar- 
atively poor,  the  couple  got  married  and  lived  happily  ever  after. 
It  was  for  the  girl  as  if  a  fairy  tale  had  become  real.  Living  in 
coiafortabie,  later  on  even  in  wealthy  circumstances,  the  two  peo- 
ple who  shared  many  interests  found  satisfaction  in  each  other's 
company  and  realization  of  their  hopes  in  their  life  together.  They 
enjoyed  their  social  as  well  as  their  sexual  life  for  ten  years.  This 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  373 

happy  .time  came  to  its  end  when  the  husband  became  ill.  The  di- 
agnosis of  the  physicians  was  brain  tumor.  The  husband  died 
afterwards,  and  the  young  widow  whose  happiness 
broken  off  so  suddenly  was  inconsolable.  A  few  weeks  after  his 
death  she  found  among  his  papers,  which  she  had  to  examine  for 
some  legal  purpose,  a  concealed  bundle  of  notes,  diaries,  and  pho- 
tographs dating  from  the  last  years.  These  papers  left  no  doubt 
that  her  adored  husband  had  lived  a  double  life,  many 

affairs,  including  a  long  one  with  her  best  friead,  and  had  also 
indulged  in  certain  perversions  during  those  years  of  their  mar- 
riage which  had  been  sexually  very  satisfactory.  The  young  widow 
\iras  deeply  shocked.  She  tried  to  master  her  indignation  and  con- 
fusion, but  she  suffered  from  depression  and  Insomnia  and  became 
emotionally  ill.  She  tried  in  vain  to  find  diversion  in  journeys, 
theaters,  and  so  on.  Her  thoughts  invariably  returned  to  the 
shocking  discovery  she  had  made. 

In  the  analytic  session  of  that  afternoon  she  had  told  me  of  an 
incident  that  had  taken  place  shortly  after  her  husband's  death  a 
few  years  before.  A  terrible  forest  fire  had  broken  out  near  the  city 
in  which  she  lived.  It  destroyed  whole  villages  and  left  hundreds 
of  families  homeless  and  destitute.  The  young  widow  drove 
around  in  her  car  with  food,  clothes,  and  money  and  did  all  she 
could  to  help  these  people.  In  touring  the  devastated  places  while 
the  fire  was  still  raging  nearby,  she  was  stopped  at  one  point  by  a 
young  State  Trooper  who  warned  her  that  bands  of  loiterers  made 
the  villages  and  roads  unsafe.  The  officer  offered  to  accompany  the 
young  lady  on  her  tour  in  the  neighborhood  to  protect  her.  She 
accepted,  and  they  drove  together  along  the  forests.  After  a  few 
hours  the  young  State  Trooper  made  a  timid  pass  at  her.  She 
quickly  yielded  to  him  and  they  had  sexual  intercourse  the  same 
evening  on  the  border  of  the  blazing  forest.  The  sudden  surrender 
of  the  well-bred  woman  to  the  unknown  officer  only  a  few  weeks 
after  her  husband's  death  was  certainly  determined  in  part  by  her 
emotional  reaction  to  the  deeply  disappointing  discovery  of  her 
husband's  infidelity.  She  told  me  that  the  sight  of  the  tumult  and 
riot  of  nature,  of  the  forest  in  flames,  had  sexually  excited  her.  It 
was  as  if  the  elementary  forces  around  her  reflected  the  emotions 
she  herself  'experienced. 


374  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

Nicolas  S^gur  In  his  book  of  memories  gives  a  lively  report  of 
one  of  the  evenings  at  the  salon  of  Madame  de  Cavaillet  at  the 
Avenue  Hoche.  There  were  many  guests,  among  them  Anatole 
France,  who  was  always  in  the  center.  The  topic  of  conversation 
was  China  and  the  Yellow  Peril,  and  the  old  master  commented 
on  the  subject  in  his  usual  Ironic  and  brilliant  manner.  The  gra- 
cious mistress  of  the  house  asked  him  to  tell  a  certain  Chinese 
story.  He  protested,  asserted  that  everybody  knew  it,  but  finally 
obeyed  the  soft  command  of  Madame. 

The  place  of  the  story  is  a  cemetery  in  China.  In  the  middle  of 
this  locality  a  charming  young  woman  is  seen  as  she  is  bending 
over  a  grave,  ceaselessly  waving  her  paper  fan  over  the  freshly 
turned  mold.  A  student  of  philosophy,  coming  by  chance  upon 
the  strange  sight,  stops  and  addresses  the  lady  in  the  most  polite 
and  respectful  manner,  asking  her  what  she  is  doing  there.  He  ex- 
plains that  it  is  not  idle  curiosity  that  makes  him  ask  this  question, 
but  that  he  Is  a  philosopher,  eager  to  inquire  into  the  causes  and 
effects  of  things,  and  he  would  like  to  make  an  entry  concerning 
her  activity  in  the  little  scroll  of  paper  he  always  carries  in  his 
girdle.  The  lady  just  glances  at  him  and  stammers  a  few  unintel- 
ligible words  while  she  continues  to  fan  the  grave.  The  woman 
servant  standing  beside  her  bows  to  the  philosopher  and  speaks 
to  him.  She  explains  that  the  young  lady  at  the  grave  is  the  widow 
of  a  great  mandarin  who  had  died  a  few  days  before.  Her  love  for 
her  husband  had  been  equaled  only  by  his  for  her.  He  had  been 
Inconsolable  when  he  realized  that  he  had  to  die.  His  wife  called 
heaven  and  earth  to  witness  that  she  could  not  survive  him.  She 
vowed  that  she  would  die,  too,  when  his  soul  left  his  body,  that  she 
would  shot  herself  up  in  a  convent  of  Buddhist  nuns,  that  she 
would  never  marry  again  or  even  look  at  another  man  for  the  rest 
of  tier  days. 

The  dying  husband  assured  her  that  he  did  not  wish  her  to  bind 
herself  by  any  such  vows.  He  merely  asked  her  not  to  forget  him 
till  the  earth  on  his  grave  was  dry.  She,  of  course,  took  this  oath. 
Her  grief  after  his  death  was  so  great  that  it  almost  killed  her. 
She  shut  herself  up  In  her  house,  wept  aod  wept  and  could  not  be 
consoled  in  her  mourning.  Slie  would,  no  doubt,  have  still  been 
weeping,  had  not  the  dead  man's  youngest  popil  come  the  next 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  375 

day  to  express  his  condolence  and  sympathy.  He  had  talked  at 
length  about  her  husband's  excellent  qualities,  but  then  he  had 
talked  about  herself  and  himself.  He  told  her  that  he  loved  her 
and  that  he  could  not  live  without  her.  He  informed  her  that  lie 
would  come  again  soon  to  see  her.  He  was  very  handsome,  well 
proportioned,  and  well  spoken,  and  the  young  widow  was  greatly 
impressed  by  his  appearance  and  his  ine  manners.  It  is  for  this 
reason,  the  servant  explains,  that  her  mistress  spends  her  time  fan- 
ning the  earth  on  her  husband's  grave  with  her  fan.  "It  behooves 
her/*  she  adds,  "to  lose  no  time  in  drying  it,  else  there  might  be 
some  risk  that  she  might  break  her  vows/' 

The  threads  running  from  this  anecdote  to  the  report  of  my 
patient  of  the  same  day  are  obvious:  the  great  love  of  the  woman 
for  her  husband,  the  deep  grief  after  his  death,  the  turning  to  an- 
other man  after  a  short  time.  The  accompanying  melancholic 
tune  was  composed  by  Verdi:  "La  donna  c  mobile" 

My  thoughts,  however,  were  not  directed  to  this  eternal  and 
always  actual  theme.  They  went  ofi  on  an  analytic  tangent,  to  the 
significance  and  the  contrast  of  fire  and  water  in  the  two  stories. 
The  two  elements  have,  of  course,  only  a  marginal  part  in  the  re- 
port of  my  patient  and  in  the  Chinese  anecdote.  The  forest  ire  in 
its  grandiose  power  represents,  as  it  were,  only  a  mirror  or  a  mi- 
rage in  which  the  concealed  desires  of  the  young  widow  are  re- 
flected. In  the  mixture  of  the  still  painful  disappointment  with 
her  husband  and  of  the  sexual  desires  suppressed  since  his  death* 
the  sight  of  the  flames  around  her  play  only  a  subsidiary  role. 
Their  uproar  corresponds  to  the  power  of  this  desire  breaking 
through  all  barriers.  The  sexual  wishes  of  the  young  State 
Trooper,  soon  perceived  by  her,  iash  across  to  her  and  set  her  own 
lingering  desires  ablaze.  The  uproar  of  nature  puts  a  model  to 
her.  The  sensual  excitement  of  the  officer  beside  her  adds  fuel  to 
her  own  fire  smoldering  under  the  ashes. 

One  can  scarcely  speak  of  ao  unconscious  symbolic  significance 
of  the  forest  fire  in  this  case.  The  poets  use  expressions  like  iames 
of  passion,  burning  desire,  and  so  on,  but  in  tier  report  of  the  In- 
cident it  appears  rather  as  if  this  metaphor  has  returned  to  the 
place  of  its  origin. 

But  how  about  the  other  case?  There  is  certainly  a  symbolical 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

significance  in  the  condition  of  the  dying  husband  that  his  widow 
should  think  of  him  till  the  earth  on  his  grave  is  dry.  The  earth  as 
a  symbol  of  the  female  body  was  not  discovered  by  psychoanalysis; 
man  had  been  aware  of  it  many  thousand  years  before  Freud,  who 
found  it  only  again  in  the  dream.  ("Mother  Earth/'  the  Earth  god- 
desses in  Chinese,  Babylonian,  and  other  mythologies.) 

If  the  earth  is  unconsciously  a  symbol  for  the  female  body,  the 
new  vow  the  dying  Mandarin  demands  from  his  wife  can  have 
only  the  significance:  I  expect  that  you  will  be  faithful  to  me  at 
least  till  the  lubrication  from  sexual  intercourse  with  me  has  dried 
up.  The  grave  in  which  he  rests  is  thus  compared  with  the  living 
body  of  the  woman,  and  the  humidity  of  the  earth  upon  it  with 
the  lubricated  quality  of  her  vagina.  The  other  possible  interpre- 
tation would  be  that  the  humidity  is  put  equal  to  that  caused 
by  the  man's  semen.  The  concealed  significance  of  the  vow  the 
dying  man  demands  would  thus  be:  I  want  you  to  be  faithful  to 
me  till  my  semen  in  your  body  has  dried  up. 

It  is  interesting  that  the  opposite  elements  of  fire  and  water 
have  a  sexual  significance  in  the  report  of  my  patient  and  in  the 
Chinese  story.  Fire  represents  the  passionate,  as  it  were  the  mas- 
culine quality  of  sexual  desire,  here  in  a  woman.  In  the  anecdote 
of  the  cemetery  in  China  the  feminine  side  is  emphasized.  The 
lady  should  wait  until  the  living  traces  of  her  husband's  sexual 
desire  have  vanished  from  her  body. 

In  both  cases  the  sexual  wishes  of  a  younger  man  awakened  the 
dormant  desires  of  the  widow  soon  after  the  beloved  husband's 
death.  It  is,  however,  not  accidental  that  the  shock  and  indigna- 
tion about  the  deceased's  infidelity  facilitated  the  sexual  break- 
through of  my  patient,  while  the  Chinese  lady  had  only  to  deal 
with  what  she  considered  the  demands  of  respect  and  decency  to 
the  ghost  of  her  spouse.  The  thought  of  the  sexual  trends  of  the 
husband  to  which  those  papers  bore  such  shocking  witness  helped 
to  kindle  the  fire  in  the  young  widow.  The  masculine  note  is  here 
apparent  in  the  urgency,  immediateness,  and  suddenness  of  the 
emergent  sexual  desire.  The  Chinese  woman  is  not  less  eager  to 
Icaget  her  dead  husband,  but  her  more  feminine  nature  endeavors 
to  obliterate  the  memory  of  his  love  before  she  yields  to  the  wishes 
of  her  new  suitors.  The  contrast  of  fine  and  water  represents  the 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES  377 

difference  of  a  more  masculine  and  feminine  quality  in  the  sexu- 
ality of  the  two  women.  It  Is  the  same  differentiation  which  seven 
centuries  ago  St.  Francis  of  Asslsi  expressed  In  that  hymn:  "Praised 
be  my  Lord  for  onr  brother  Fire"  and  "Praised  be  my  Lord  for 
our  sister  Water/* 

The  comparison  between  the  two  stories  was,  of  course,  stimu- 
lated by  the  similarity  of  the  situation  of  the  two  young  widows, 
but  the  Interest  of  the  psychoanalyst  was  more  concerned  with 
the  contrast  of  fire  and  water  on  the  margin  of  the  stories*  so  to 
speak,  with  the  stage  set  of  the  show. 

The  other  case  to  which  my  thoughts  returned,  stimulated  by 
another  passage  in  a  book  of  memories  of  Aratole  France,  had 
quite  a  different  character,  and,  accordingly,  my  attention  fol- 
lowed another  direction.  The  young  lawyer  I  had  seen  at  noon  of 
that  day  had  had  what  Is  popularly  called  a  nervous  breakdown  a 
few  years  before  and  had  spent  a  long  time  In  a  psychiatric  hospi- 
tal. He  had  been  treated  with  electric  shocks^  and  his  doubts  aad 
fears  had  disappeared  for  a  short  time  under  the  Influence  of  this 
"therapy."  He  had  adjusted  himself  to  the  routine  life  at  the  hos- 
pital, in  which  he  felt  safe.  Until  his  doubts  reappeared,  he  had 
been  able  to  do  some  work  In  the  office  of  the  hospital's  manager. 
Such  temporary  adaptation  to  the  isolated  area  of  the  hospital, 
and  a  relative  feeling  of  security  as  long  as  the  retreat  from  society 
lasts,  is  not  rare  with  patients  of  this  kind.  Robinson  Crusoe  was 
neither  shy  nor  afraid  of  people  as  long  as  he  was  on  his  island. 

The  chief  psychiatrist  recommended  psychotherapy  to  the  pa- 
tient. His  long  and  careful  psychoanalysis  with  me  led  to  a  full 
success.  His  main  neurotic  symptoms  disappeared.  He  regained 
his  self-confidence,  mastered  certain  character  difficulties,  and  be- 
gan to  work.  During  analysis  he  had  fallen  in  love  with  a  girl 
whom  he  married  at  its  end  and  who  proved  to  be  a  good  mate. 
The  patient  decided  not  to  return  to  Ms  law  practice.  He  bought 
a  farm  not  far  away  from  New  York  and  raised  poultry,  doing 
some  real-estate  business  on  the  side. 

From  time  to  time,  perhaps  once  a  month,  he  came  to  New  York 
and  saw  me  for  an  hour  to  discuss  some  actual  emotional  difficul- 
ties. They  were,  however,  never  very  serious  and  could  be  con- 
quered without  great  efforts:  Also,  in  the  session  of  this  noon,,  lie 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

had  given  me  an  almost  hunioristic  report  of  some  obsessional 
doubts  he  had  experienced  in  the  past  weeks,  faint  echoes  of  the 
serious  obsessions  that  had  been  all-pervasive  and  had  governed 
his  life  before  psychoanalysis. 

Most  of  those  doubts  originated  in  everyday  situations  in  which 
he  felt  uncertainty.  He  had,  for  instance,  an  appointment  with  a 
lawyer  about  some  real-estate  business.  While  he  waited  until  the 
lawyer  had  finished  a  conference  with  another  client,  he  had  felt 
an  urgent  need  to  move  his  bowels.  Should  he  go  to  the  toilet  and 
let  the  lawyer,  who  would  perhaps  be  free  in  a  few  minutes,  wait? 
What  would  the  lawyer  think  of  him  when  he  was  absent?  The 
very  busy  man  would  perhaps  call  in  one  of  the  other  clients  wait- 
ing for  him.  After  that  he  might  have  another  appointment  or 
even  leave  the  office.  In  this  case  my  patient's  business  affair  could 
not  be  taken  care  of  on  this  day,  and  he  would  have  to  drive  from 
his  farm  to  the  village  another  day,  and  by  the  delay  lose  precious 
time  much  needed  for  his  work  with  the  poultry.  After  he  had 
tentatively  decided  to  visit  the  toilet  (in  these  rural  surroundings, 
an  outhouse),  he  remembered  from  previous  occasions  that  there 
was  never  toilet  paper  around.  Unfortunately,  he  had  thrown 
away  the  local  newspaper  which  had  come  in  handy  on  previous 
occasions.  Should  he  now  ask  one  of  the  clients  waiting  at  the  of- 
fice to  let  him  have  a  section  of  the  newspaper  he  was  reading? 
But  there  was  no  possibility  of  returning  it  after  it  had  been  used 
the  way  he  intended  to.  (He  laughingly  added  that  it  was  the  only 
way  it  deserved  to  be  used.)  Asking  the  lawyer's  secretary  for  some 
paper  was  excluded  for  several  reasons.  Modesty  forbade  that  he 
tell  the  young  girl  the  purpose  for  which  he  needed  the  paper. 
What  would  the  young  woman  think  if  he  whispered  his  delicate 
request  into  her  blushing  ear?  No  doubt,  she  would  be  severely 
shocked.  But  could  he  use  a  pretext  and  ask  her  for  some  paper  to 
write  a  letter  during  the  time  of  his  waiting?  Here  he  was  uncom- 
fortably reminded  by  unpleasant  sensations  within  himself  that 
he  had  hardly  time  to  wait  any  more.  There  was,  furthermore,  the 
possibility  that  the  girl  would  give  him  a  single  sheet,  and  this 
would  not  do.  He  could  not  ask  for  several  sheets,  yet,  he  needed 
perhaps  as  many  as  her  boss  might  use  for  the  first  draft  oi  a  legal 
brief.  (At  this  point,  the  patient's  low  opinion  of  the  lawyer  be- 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

comes  very  obvious  In  the  displacement)  Wouldn't  the  secretary 
mind  letting  him  have  several  sheets  of  the  expensive  office  sta- 
tionery? And  would  it  not  be  conspicuous  if,  after  receiving  the 
saving  sheets,  he  should  get  up  from  his  chair  and  disappear  with- 
out explanation,  instead  of  writing  a  letter  as  lie  was  expected 
to  do? 

The  patient  and  I  laughed  together  when  he  gave  me  this  vivid 
report  of  the  emergency  situation.  I  could  not  help  smiling  when 
he  told  me  of  a  minor  dilemma  in  which  he  had  found  himself  a 
few  days  before:  It  was  early  in  the  evening  and  he  had  fed  only 
part  of  the  chickens,  of  which  he  had  several  thousands  on  his 
farm.  Just  when  he  turned  to  the  other,  large  group  of  birds,  his 
young  wife  called  to  him  that  dinner  was  ready.  What  should  he 
do  now?  Mary  did  not  like  to  wait  for  him  for  dinner.  If  he  con- 
tinued to  feed  the  chickens,  she  would  be  annoyed,  she  would  re- 
sent his  letting  the  steak  get  cold.  If  he  asked  her  to  wait  until  he 
had  finished  Ms  work— perhaps  more  than  half  an  hour— she 
would  be  hurt.  But  if  he  interrupted  the  feeding  and  foiowed  her 
call  and  had  dinner  then,  wouldn't  he  hurt  the  feelings  of  the  sev- 
eral hundred  chickens  that  had  not  yet  been  fed  while  the  other 
members  of  their  community  had  had  their  meals?  He  saw  himself 
in  a  difficult  situation,  caught  in  a  dilemma  and  unable  to  decide 
what  was  the  right  thing  to  do. 

Reporting  these  instances  of  the  problems  which  occupied  the 
patient's  thoughts  and  which  he  recounted  that  day,  I  wished  to 
show  the  kind  of  minor  obsessional  thoughts  that  remained  as 
remnants  of  the  severe  neurosis  that  had  kept  him  in  the  hospital 
for  two  years.  In  these  doubts  and  dilemmas  are,  of  course,  re- 
flected the  great  problems  of  his  life.  They  represent  displaced 
details  and  trifles,  his  vital  interests  as  in  a  diminishing  glass.  In 
the  state  of  tapering  off,  those  symptoms  cannot  be  compared 
with  regard  to  their  scope  and  importance  to  those  before  analysis. 
Hit  by  his  intense  drives  from  one  side  and  by  his  social  and  inner 
demands  from  the  other,  his  ego  had  been  helpless  at  that  time, 
clinging  to  the  ropes  like  a  pundidrunk  boxer,  while  he  now  put 
up  an  energetic  and  brave  defense  against  the  Meeting  and  ob- 
sessional thoughts  that  occasionally  bothered  him. 

The  patient  had  broken  down  or,  as  he  put  it,  had  a  "blackout/* 


3§0  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

when  he  could  not  solve  his  sexual  problem.  Brought  up  In  an 
extremely  Puritan  family  of  a  southern  state,  he  had  a  furious  and 
desperate  fight  against  the  temptation  of  masturbation  in  his  pu- 
berty years.  He  had  then  been  convinced  that  masturbation  was  not 
only  sinful  but  also  extremely  dangerous  and  that  one  could  be- 
come "crazy"  by  indulging  in  it.  When,  in  his  early  and  late  twen- 
ties, sexual  desires  appeared  in  their  full  power,  he  renewed  his 
fight  with  all  the  energy  at  his  disposal.  Too  shy  and  too  moralis- 
tic to  approach  women  with  sexual  Intentions,  he  fought  with  the 
sensual  wishes  that  attacked  him  as  desperately  as  any  of  the  Chris- 
tian saints  of  the  fourth  century  in  the  Thebais  of  Alexandria.  In 
the  time  before  his  mental  breakdown,  he  sometimes  yielded  to 
the  terrible  temptation  to-  masturbate.  He  found  an  ingenious 
way  to  rationalize  and  justify  these  occasional  Indulgences.  He 
had  read  many  books  on  sexuality,  also  on  the  danger  or  inno- 
cence of  sexual  gratification.  While  his  intelligence  told  him  that 
there  is  a  biological  necessity  of  sexual  expression,  his  emotions 
were  "agin  It."  When  the  desire  overwhelmed  him,  he  used  the 
following  rationalization:  He  would  experiment  with  Ms  sexual 
drive  and  find  out  whether  masturbation  was  permitted  if  he  per- 
formed it  only  to  relieve  his  nervous  tension  without  allowing 
himself  to  get  any  pleasure  from  it.  Being  a  lawyer,  he  applied  a 
legal  term  in  his  thoughts  to  the  procedure.  He  thought:  I  have  to 
yield  to  the  temptation,  but  I  shall  withhold  my  consent.  He  re- 
ferred, thus,  to  certain  legal  cases  in  which  a  person  is  not  respon- 
sible for  a  criminal  deed  if  there  is  no  "Intent"  of  it. 

He  masturbated  but  withheld  his  consent,  and  this  experiment 
in  thoughts  worked  for  a  short  time.  As  was  unavoidable,  serious 
doubts  about  the  legitimacy  of  his  experimentation  caught  up 
with  the  procedure,  and  his  rationalization  threatened  to  break 
down.  He  often  had  to  Interrupt  his  sexual  activity  and  to  Investi- 
gate whether  he  was  now  merely  experimenting  or  felt  pleasure, 
whether  he  really  only  wanted  to  get  rid  of  the  physical  tension  or 
whether  he  also  enjoyed  the  process.  In  the  long  ran,  it  became  Im- 
possible to  maintain  the  conviction  that  he  withheld  his  consent. 
•Even  when  he  succeeded  in  overcoming  the  interfering  thoughts 
and  In  reaching  a  sexual  orgasm,  he  was  terrified  later  on  at  the 
thought  that  he  had  enjoyed  masturbation.  He  frequently  brooded 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  381 

about  whether  he  had  withheld  his  consent  during  the  whole  act 
or  only  at  Its  beginning,  whether  he  had  been  still  experimenting 
at  this  or  that  point  of  his  excitement  or  had  already  felt  pleasure, 
yes,  even  whether  he  really  handled  the  problem  from  a  strictly 
legal  point  of  view  or  not,  and  so  on.  From  here  he  arrived  at  re- 
flections about  certain  cases  he  had  studied  in  his  law  practice  and 
at  doubts  as  to  how  far  a  person  is  legally  responsible  if  he  with- 
holds his  consent,  etc.  Most  of  his  obsessional  doubts  at  the  time 
circled  around  the  problem  of  how  much  of  a  single  masturbatory 
act  could  be  attributed  to  the  purpose  of  experimentation  and 
how  much  to  the  aim  to  get  pleasure  from  it.  In  pursuing  these  se- 
rious questions,  he  often  found  himself  in  a  mental  blind  alley.  At 
a  certain  point  of  his  obsessional  thinking,  the  world  appeared  to 
him  like  an  alien  place.  He  did  not  know  any  more  where  he  was 
and  lost  the  feeling  of  his  identity.  This  was  the  "blackout"  that 
landed  him  in  the  psychiatric  hospital. 

While  I  read  the  books  reporting  conversations  with  the  late 
Anatole  France,  my  thoughts  returned  twice  to  the  patient  I  had 
seen  this  noon.  Nicolas  S^gur  reports  in  a  passage  of  his  memories 
that  the  "bon  mattre"  once  made  the  statement  that  Christianity 
does  not  oppose  the  sexual  act  in  itself,  but  only  the  pleasure  con- 
nected with  it  or  in  it.  Christian  morals  are,  he  asserts,  not  against 
sexual  activity  as  such,  but  they  condemn  its  enjoyments.  He 
quotes  many  instances  from  theology  and  from  the  history  of  the 
Church  and  her  saints  in  which  the  performance  of  the  sexual  act 
is  even  considered  as  meritorious.  One  example  is  St.  Mary  of 
Egypt  who  unhesitatingly  offered  her  virginal  body  to  the  ferry- 
man so  that  she  could  continue  her  pilgrimage  to  the  sacred  places 
where  our  Saviour  had  preached  and  suffered.  France  points  out 
that  the  Church  does  not  condemn  prostitutes.  They  don't  have 
sexual  intercourse  to  get  pleasure  from  it  but  to  keep  themselves 
alive.  But  life  has  to  be  preserved  to  fulfill  the  demands  of  the 
Church  and  to  praise  the  Lord.  While  I  enjoyed  the  inimitable 
wording  of  France's  remarks,  my  thoughts  returned  to  my  patient 
and  his  ine  discrimination  between  experiment  and  pleasure  in 
his  sexual  activity.  Here  was  a  religious  analogy  to  his  dif eren- 
tiation. 

Turning  to  the  other  book  on  the  table  beside  my  bed,  I  chanced 


382  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

upon  a  passage  that  secured  a  much  more  impressive  analogy  of 
the  individual  with  a  collective  phenomenon.  It  is  an  especially 
beautiful  instance,  which  demonstrates  the  psychological  paral- 
lelism between  theological  and  obsessional  thought-processes,  as 
had  been  shown  so  often  by  Freud  and  myself.  In  this  book  Ana- 
tole  France  is  portrayed  on  his  lecture  tour  to  South  America.  The 
old  man  liked  to  chat  with  his  young,  trim,  and  correct  secretary, 
J.  J.  Brousson,  who  accompanied  him.  In  casual  conversations  he 
often  told  the  young  writer  of  some  material  he  perhaps  intended 
to  use  in  stories  to  be  written.  The  anecdote  he  once  recounted  be- 
longed, no  doubt,  to  this  kind  of  material,  told  in  the  informal 
manner  of  a  rehearsal.  At  the  time  of  the  wars  of  succession,  the 
Portuguese  had  taken  the  part  of  the  Archduke  and  had  turned 
against  King  Philip.  They  besieged  Madrid  in  1701,  and  the  city 
was  in  great  danger.  The  courtesans  of  the  capital  decided  to  save 
their  beloved  city.  Those  who  were  most  certain  they  were  in- 
fected dressed  up  and  perfumed  themselves.  In  the  dusk  they  went 
to  the  outskirts  of  the  enemies'  camp.  The  ardent  women  did  their 
work  with  such  great  zeal  that  within  three  weeks  more  than  sixty 
thousand  Portuguese  were  in  the  hospital,  where  the  greater  part 
of  them  perished  of  the  pox. 

Later  on  the  problem  was  raised  as  to  whether  these  women 
had  committed  the  sin  of  fornication.  Many  of  the  most  enlight- 
ened theologians  examined  the  case  of  the  Madrid  courtesans. 
Some  pronounced  their  action  as  sin,  others  declared  them  inno- 
cent because  their  intentions  had  been  honorable:  they  wanted  to 
save  their  country.  The  learned  doctors  remarked  that  in  time  of 
war  it  is  not  only  permitted  but  even  commanded  to  massacre  ene- 
mies and  to  employ  the  most  atrocious  means  to  destroy  them. 
Why  should  one  neglect  the  pox?  It  is  God  who  gives  the  victory, 
but  He  uses  primary  and  secondary  means,  and  the  pox  belongs  to 
the  latter  category.  One  has  furthermore  to  consider  the  feelings 
of  the  Madrid  women.  Did  they  share  the  enthusiastic  sensations 
they  inspired  in  the  enemy?  Obviously  they  could  not  behave  like 
marble  statues  if  they  wanted  to  succeed  in  their  patriotic  task. 
There  is,  however,  a  professional  limit  to  their  behavior.  The 
question  was  whether  they  were  propelled  only  by  love  of  the 
fatherland  or  by  lechery  in  every  individual  case.  The  problem 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES  383 

was  carefully  Investigated,  but  only  God  who  plumbs  the  depths 
of  heart  and  of  loin  can  decide  whether  the  Madrid  courtesans  fol- 
lowed only  the  call  of  their  patriotism  or  whether  they  also  experi- 
enced some  pleasure  in  the  fulfillment  of  their  heroic  task. 

Thus  spoke  Anatole  France.  If  he  had  written  the  story,  he 
would,  no  doubt,  have  introduced  the  learned  theologians  and 
their  sagacious  arguments  and  discussions  of  the  difficult  case  of 
the  Madrid  women.  The  historic  anecdote  would  in  his  elaboration 
be  comparable  to  some  chapters  of  his  Vile  des  Pingouins.  His 
necklace  was  so  rich  that  he  coulcl  easily  afford  to  throw  some  of 
its  pearls  away  in  conversation. 

A  few  supplementary  remarks  on  the  comparisons  between  the 
cases  of  my  patients  and  the  figures  of  Anatole  France's  anecdotes 
are  here  appropriate.  What  led  my  thoughts  from  France's  story 
about  the  Chinese  widow  to  my  patient  Jane?  There  is  the  re- 
semblance of  the  external  situations  of  two  women  who  were  re- 
cent widows,  but  this  external  connection  is  hardly  sufficient  to 
explain  the  comparison  of  the  symbolic  role  of  fire  and  water. 

Here  is  the  missing  link  in  my  thoughts:  Some  weeks  before 
Jane  told  me  of  her  experience  with  the  State  Trooper  during  the 
forest  fire,  the  analytic  situation  had  changed  its  character.  Jane 
had  shown  distinct  signs  of  a  positive  transference  to  me  before 
that,  which  means  she  had  an  attitude  proving  that  she  had  trans- 
ferred feelings  and  reactions,  originally  tied  to  the  figure  of  her 
father,  to  the  analyst.  She  now  spoke  freely  of  her  love  for  me  and 
told  me  about  sexual  fantasies  with  me.  When  she  expressed  her 
disappointment  because  I  did  not  respond  to  her  feelings,  I  had  to 
explain  to  her  the  significance  of  the  transference  love.  I  told  her 
that  her  emotions  were  only  new  editions  of  old  forgotten  feelings 
that  had  once  been  directed  to  her  father.  They  had  been  reac- 
tivated by  the  process  of  analysis  and  had  nothing  to  do  with  me 
personally.  I  was  only  a  reincarnation  of  her  father  in  the  de- 
velopment of  her  affectionate  and  sensual  desires,  and  the  figure 
of  the  analyst  in  the  process  is  comparable  to  that  of  a  frame  for  a 
finished  picture.  Jane  insisted,  however,  that  her  love  for  me  was 
genuine.  Later  on  I  tried  to  explain  to  her  that  the  emotional 
mastering  of  her  transference  love  would  help  her  to  overcome 
certain  old  conflicts  and  would  prepare  a  more  mature  attitude 


384  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

toward  her  future  love  object.  Mr.  Reik,  I  said,  serves  only  as  a 
herald  of  Mr.  Right.  In  an  attempt  at  explanation,  I  used  a  com- 
parison I  had  once  heard  in  a  play.  In  Vienna  before  the  first 
World  War  modern  drying  processes  were  unknown.  The  land- 
lords of  new  buildings  rented  the  still  damp  apartments  to  poor 
people,  who  paid  little  and  spent  the  winter  in  them  heating  the 
rooms.  When  this  aim  was  reached,  the  provisional  tenants  had  to 
leave  and  other  families,  the  permanent  tenants,  moved  in,  paying 
the  regular  rent,  A  figure  in  a  comedy  by  Raoul  Auerheimer  I  had 
seen  more  than  twenty  years  before  in  Vienna  compares  the  place 
of  a  certain  group  of  young  men  in  the  life  of  wromen  with  those 
provisional  drying  tenants.  Those  young  men  take  girls  out  and 
provide  pleasant  company  and  harmless  flirtation  for  them,  but 
the  young  women  do  not  think  of  marrying  one  of  that  group. 
They  function,  so  to  speak,  as  drying  tenants  who,  in  due  time, 
will  be  replaced  by  the  permanent  possessors  of  the  apartment.  In 
my  explanation  of  the  transference  situation,  I  compared  the  pre- 
paratory and  provisional  role  of  the  analyst  with  the  function  of 
those  drying  tenants. 

This  comparison  came  to  mind  when  I  read  France's  anecdote 
of  the  Chinese  widow  who  fans  the  damp  earth  on  the  grave  and 
brought  this  woman  in  associative  connection  with  Jane.  The 
character  of  the  connection  is  obvious:  the  drying  tenants  inhabit 
the  apartment  only  as  long  as  the  walls  are  still  damp  and  have  to 
leave  when  they  become  dry.  The  Chinese  widow  has  to  wait  un- 
til the  grave  of  her  husband  dries  out  before  she  can  grant  her 
favors  to  the  new  suitor.  The  symbolic  significance  of  the  apart- 
ment (or  the  grave)  as  substitute  of  the  woman's  body  and  of  the 
moisture  as  the  state  after  emission  is  clear. 

It  is  psychologically  interesting  that  the  role  of  fire,  neglected  in 
this  interpretation,  lingered  in  my  thoughts.  It  followed  me  even 
after  making  the  comparison  of  my  other  patient's  doubts  with  the 
theological  reflections  of  the  priests  concerning  the  Madrid  pros* 
titutes.  My  thoughts  turned  to  the  Holy  Inquisition,  which  in 
Spain  longer  than  in  other  countries  found  and  punished  heretics 
and  condemned  many  thousands  of  people  to  be  burned  alive. 
The  fate  of  those  unknown  men  was  shared  by  Savonarola,  Hus, 
and  other  well-known  historic  figures  who  died  as  witnesses  of 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES  385 

their  religious  convictions.  The  moral  courage  of  martyrs 

and  their  modern  successors  who  sacrificed  in  the  serv- 

ice of  political  ideas  is  certainly  admirable.  One  wonder 

aboot  the  absolute  faith  they  had  in  the  correctness  of  their  opin- 
ion, wonder  why  they  thought  that  they  aione  were  in 
of  the  truth.  There  is  a  lack  of  modesty  in  the  exclusion  of  any 
doubt,  and  a  fanaticism  that  insists  that  oneself  is  infallible,  a 
fanaticism  which  almost  equals  that  of  their  persecutors. 

At  the  end  my  thoughts  returned  to  old,  wise  Anatole  France, 
who  once  wrote  the  wonderful  sentence:  "There  is  some  impu- 
dence in  letting  oneself  be  burned  at  the  stake  for  a  cause."  f  71  y 
a  qudque  impudence  a  se  laisser  bruler  pour  une  cause") 


II 


THE  HISTORIANS  of  music  tell  us  that  the  original  form  of  the 
overture  was  a  fanfare  whose  purpose  was  to  command  silence 
and  to  make  an  end  to  the  noisy  conversation  of  the  audience.  It 
was  originally  not  a  transcribed,  but  an  improvised  piece.  Later 
on  it  became  an  introductory  composition  that  attempted  to  pre- 
pare listeners  for  the  character  of  the  opera.  In  later  phases  of  its 
evolution,  it  contained  some  musical  themes  that  would  appear 
in  the  work  itself. 

Like  the  old  type  of  overture,  this  introductory  material  starts 
from  a  fanfare-like  question  which,  so  far  as  I  know,  has  not  yet 
been  raised:  Why  does  music  play  no  role  in  the  work  of  Freud, 
which  was  to  the  greatest  extent  basal  on  impressions  received  by 
hearing?  In  the  fifteen  volumes  of  his  collected  writings  musk  is 
only  mentioned  three  or  four  times.  In  his  psychoanalytic  prac- 
tice, his  own  musical  associations  or  those  of  his  patients  were 
scarcely  noticed.  This  question  has  a  considerable  bearing  on 


386  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

the  problems  we  shall  deal  with,  because  the  musical  aspect  in 
analytic  work  has  been  neglected  by  almost  all  analysts. 

Personal  characteristics  of  Freud  were  responsible  for  the  lack 
of  Interest  and  attention  paid  to  musical  Impressions.  It  Is  certain 
that  he  heard  very  little  music  In  the  first  four  years  he  spent  In 
the  little  town  of  Freiburg  In  Moravia.  We  know  how  important 
the  Impressions  of  those  early  years  are  for  the  development  of 
musical  sensitivity  and  interest.  Then,  besides  this  factor,  there 
were  in  Freud's  case  psychological  reasons  that  prevented  the 
development  of  a  love  of  music.  He  himself  gives  significant  In- 
formation about  those  reasons  in  a  passage  whose  psychological 
and  biographical  importance  has  been  overlooked.  He  declared 
that  works  of  art,  especially  those  of  literature  and  sculpture,  had 
a  strong  and  lasting  effect  on  him.*  He  tried  to  comprehend  them 
In  his  way,  that  is,  to  understand  why  they  worked  upon  him: 
"Where  I  cannot  do  that,"  he  says,  "for  Instance,  in  music,  I  am 
almost  Incapable  of  enjoying  them.  A  rationalistic  or  perhaps  an 
analytic  trait  In  me  struggles  against  my  being  affected  and  not 
knowing  why  I  am  so  and  what  it  Is  that  affects  me."  The  word 
"almost"  in  this  Interesting  statement  should  be  well  considered. 
The  very  wording  of  that  statement  about  his  restricted  capability 
for  enjoying  music  proves  that  there  was  an  emotional  reluctance 
against  this  art  operating  In  Freud.  He  fought  against  the  effects 
of  music  because  a  rationalistic,  or  perhaps  an  analytic,  trait  in 
him  could  not  tolerate  not  knowing  why  he  was  affected.  The 
most  important  part  of  this  statement  is  the  admission  that  he  is 
or  was  affected  by  music.  One  assumes  that  he  turned  away  from 
the  emotional  Impressions  of  music  and  that  the  explanation  of 
Ms  attitude,  the  pointing  to  a  rationalistic  or  analytic  trait,  is  a 
secondary  one—we  would  say,  itself  a  kind  of  rationalization.  It  Is 
likely  that  this  turning  away,  this  diversion  was  the  result  of  an 
act  of  will  In  the  interest  of  self-defense,  and  that  It  was  the  more 
energetic  and  violent,  the  more  the  emotional  effects  of  music  ap- 
peared undesirable  to  him.  He  became  more  and  more  convinced 
that  lie  had  to  keep  his  reason  unclouded  and  his  emotions  in 
abeyance.  He  developed  an  Increasing  reluctance  to  surrender- 
ing to  the  dark  power  of  music. 

*  "Ber  Moses  des  Michelangelo,"  Gemmmdte  Schriften,  Vol.  IX. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  387 

Such  an  avoidance  of  the  emotioeal  effects  of  melodies  can 
sometimes  be  seen  in  people  who  feel  endangered  by  the  intensity 
of  their  feelings.  I  know  a  man  who,  at  least  on  the  surface,  be- 
came almost  insensitive  to  music  after  a  phase  in  which  he  was 
too  much  subjected  to  its  effects.  He  told  me  that  he  began  to 
avoid  listening  to  music  because  it  induced  daydreams  and  awak- 
ened fantasies  of  grandeur  and  victory,  evoking  vague  but  intense 
longings  and  desires  in  him.  When  the  music  ended,  he  always 
felt  disappointed.  He  began  to  build  a  wall  of  protection  against 
that  very  unpleasant  reaction  of  disillusionment,  to  erect  barriers 
of  defense  against  the  effects  of  musical  impressions  because  he 
hated  to  be  duped  by  the  influence  of  melodies.  In  this  avoidance 
of  the  state  of  emotional  unbalance  into  which  music  could 
bring  him,  he  avoided  listening  to  symphonies  and  finally  became 
almost  insensitive  to  their  power.  It  seems  to  me  that  Freed  built 
up  similar  defenses  and  later  on  hardened  himself  against  the 
emotional  appeal  of  music.  There  are  other  intensified  reactions 
of  a  similar  kind. 

In  the  first  years  of  my  psychoanalytic  studies,  I  wrote,  besides 
analytic  papers  and  book  reviews,  a  great  number  of  literary  and 
general  articles  for  Viennese  newspapers  and  magazines.  Influ- 
enced by  French  and  Austrian  writers,  I  perhaps  immodestly  felt 
that  I  had  acquired  a  considerable  facility  of  presentation.  In% 
a  conversation— it  was  perhaps  in  1913  or  1914— Freud  spoke 
pleasantly  of  my  literary  talent  but  surprised  me  by  asking 
whether  or  not  I  could  suppress  the  stimuli  for  literary  produc- 
tion of  this  kind.  He  felt  I  could  perhaps  develop  as  a  writer  to 
the  rank  of  A.  P.  (he  mentioned  a  well-known  Viennese  novelist), 
but  that  the  renunciation  of  cheap  literary  laurels  would  greatly 
benefit  my  psychoanalytic  research  work,  which  he  considered 
more  important.  I  followed  his  advice  and  have  never  regretted 
it,  but  did  not  understand  the  mental  economy  and  dynamics  of 
his  advice  until  later,  when  I  recognized  that  he  himself  had  made 
a  similar  renunciation.  Wilhelm  Stekel  reports  in  Ms  autobiog- 
raphy that  Freud  told  him  that  he  had  once  wanted  to  use  the 
material  his  patients  provided  in  the  writing  of  novels  of  Ms  own. 
He  sacrificed  literary  ambition  of  this  kind  in  the  service  of  scien- 
tific research,  but  an  echo  of  it  is  sometimes  noticeable,  especially 


388  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

in  the  case  histories  he  wrote.  He  says  occasionally,  "I  have  been 
brought  up  with  strict  science  and  I  cannot  help  it  If  my  case 
histories  sometimes  sound  like  novels."  Traces  of  the  emotional 
reaction  against  that  earlier  tendency  can  still  be  found  later  In 
the  form  of  rejection,  as  In  that  exclamation,  "Don't  put  me  into 
literature!"  In  his  discussion  of  lay  analysis.* 

There  are  other  instances  that  show  Freud,  sometimes  force- 
fully and  purposely,  resisting  tendencies  in  himself  which  he 
recognized  as  opposed  to  the  goals  he  wished.  Such  reactions 
seemed  to  take  the  form  of  an  energetic  and  sometimes  even  over- 
emphasized turnabout.  He  himself  mentioned  several  changes  of 
this  kind  In  his  writings.  He  reported,  for  instance,  that  he  had 
developed  an  inclination  for  the  exclusive  concentration  of  his 
work  on  one  topic  or  problem,  much  In  contrast  with  the  diffuse 
nature  of  his  studies  in  the  first  years  at  the  university.  This 
"turn"  came  after  1882,  and  he  remained  true  to  it.  He  renounced 
also  his  original  speculative  tendencies  because  he  did  not  wish 
them  to  interfere  with  his  objective  observations.  He  relinquished 
earlier  Interests  In  favor  of  psychoanalytic  research,  etc. 

The  psychological  expectation  In  his  advice  to  me  was  that  to 
sacrifice  my  facility  in  writing  would  benefit  my  research  interest 
and  enrich  and  enlarge  my  analytic  studies. 

Is  It  unlikely  that  Freud  turned  determinedly  away  from  music 
because  he  felt  too  deeply  affected  by  its  power  at  a  certain  phase 
of  his  life?  Do  not  his  own  words  show  such  an  emotional  reaction 
when  he  says  that  something  in  him  struggles  against  his  being 
affected  by  music?  It  is  furthermore  very  probable  that  his  reac- 
tion was  Intensified  by  the  impression  of  the  rnusicomania  of  the 
Viennese,  which  in  the  years  between  1890  and  1910  reached  its 
climax. 

The  denied  and  rejected  tendencies  against  whose  influence 
Freud  built  up  such  strong  defenses  did  not  disappear,  but  left 
traces  in  him  and  found  different  and  distant  expressions.  Some 
of  them,  for  instance,  speculative  inclinations  and  interests  in 
early  history,  worked  their  way,  in  his  old  age,  from  the  depth 
into  which  they  were  banished  to  the  surface, 

Freud's  confession  that  he  did  not  often  respond  to  music  doe$ 

*  The  Problem  of  Lay  Analysis  (New  York, 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  389 

not  mean  that  he  was  insensitive  to  its  message,  but  that  he  fought 
against  his  own  sensitiveness.  He  had  unconsciously  foregone 
subjected  to  its  lure  and  language,  and  this  voluntary  sacriSce 
benefited  his  ine  ability  to  hear  the  unconscious  processes,  helped 
him  to  develop  the  sense  for  the  rhythm  of  subterranean  move- 
ments of  the  mind. 

In  a  passage  of  his  writing*  he  discussed  the  teaching  of  G. 
Jung  and  of  his  school,  and  stated  that  here  a  new  religious- 
ethical  system  was  created  that  had  to  reinterpret,  distort,  or  remove 
the  actual  results  of  psychoanalysis.  He  develops  this  idea:  "In 
reality  one  had  heard  a  few  cultural  overtones  of  the  symphony 
of  the  world  and  had  again  missed  its  all-powerful  melody 
of  the  drives."  A  man  that  hath  no  music  in  himself  could  not 
have  thought  of  this  magniScent  comparison.  Freud  had  heard 
that  forceful  melody  of  the  world  symphony  and  he  wrote  its 
score  in  his  analytic  books. 

Do  we  not  all  sometimes  feel,  as  Freud  did,  a  certain  reluctance 
to  the  compulsion  of  music  that  affects  us  and  does  not  let  us 
what  affects  us  and  why?  We  surrender  to  an  adagio  a 

Beethoven  symphony,  yet  we  cannot  say  what  it  was  that  trans- 
ported us  with  emotion.  Here  is  a  message  which  everybody  un- 
derstands, but  nobody  can  translate.  It  is  easy  enough  to  explain 
what  a  musician  playing  upon  his  instrument  does,  but  very  diffi- 
cult to  find  why  the  do  Ice  of  the  strings  in  the  adagio  sways  us,  to 
define  its  special  expressive  value  or  even  the  precise  nature  of  our 
emotional  response.  Yet  we  hear  in  the  language  of  music  "the 
secret  history  of  our  will,"  as  Schopenhauer  said;  of  our  drives, 
as  we  would  say  today.  The  affinity  of  music  to  the  other  expres- 
sions of  the  unconscious,  the  kinship  of  this  art  with  the  dream- 
like and  intangible  element,  with  the  night  aspect  of  our  emo- 
tional life  is  of  a  special,  not  easily  definable  kind,  because  music 
itself  cannot  be  defined  except  in  the  superficial  terms  of  a  dic- 
tionary. Bruno  Walter  tells  of  a  young  New  York  enthusiast  who 
asked  many  well-known  musicians,  "What  is  music?"'**  The 

*  "Zur  GesdBchte  der  psydioanalytiscfaen  Bewcgpng,"  Oemmmelte  $chriftens 
Vol.  V. 

**  "Von  dm  moralisdim  Kraften  der  Muslk"  (Wfen,  1955),  p.  ».  (Thfe  kc- 
ture  given  in  the  Kelturbund  in  Vienna  was  not  translated  into 


390  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

answers  he  received  appeared  to  Bruno  Walter  either  false  or  un- 
satisfactory, but  he  confessed  that  he  felt  incapable  of  answering 
the  question  himself.  He  admitted  that  he  could  not  say  to  this 
day  what  music  is,  in  spite  of  a  long  search  after  appropriate 
definitions.  One  is  unable  to  grasp  its  nature  with  the  clarity  of 
reason  and  cannot  give  it  an  abstract  verbal  expression,  "Music/' 
says  Bruno  Walter,  using  a  beautiful  comparison,  "is  like  a  seraph 
in  the  temple  of  the  Lord  and  covers  its  eye  with  two  of  its  wings." 

The  intimacy  of  musical  experience  in  which  the  pulse  beat  of 
a  composition  becomes  our  own  cannot  be  caught  in  the  paltry 
net  of  the  words  we  utter.  Bernard  Shaw  once  said,  "I  could  make 
musical  criticism  readable  even  to  the  deaf/'  This  is  believable; 
it  is  a  question  of  style.  But  can  Shaw  or  anyone  else  convey  the 
meaning  music  has  for  the  individual?  Can  he  communicate  the 
experience  he  had  when  he  heard  a  Mozart  sonata? 

Language  develops  more  and  more  in  the  direction  of  objective 
communication,  denotes  things  and  acts.  It  becomes  simultane- 
ously impoverished  as  an  expression  of  emotions.  Music  is  the 
language  of  psychic  reality.  Music  does  not  name  objects  and 
events.  It  can,  at  very  best,  conjure  them  up.  There  is  much  con- 
troversy about  the  meaning  of  words;  a  discussion  of  the  meaning 
of  music  is  condemned  to  fail  before  it  starts.  The  rigid  "tyranny 
of  words*'  is  contrasted  with  the  sweet  compulsion  John  Milton 
Attributed  to  melody.  Words  have  strings,  but  songs  have  wings. 

Music  is  the  universal  language  of  human  emotion,  the  expres- 
sion of  the  inexpressible.  The  composers  articulate  "subtle  com- 
plexes of  feeling  that  language  cannot  even  name,  let  alone  set 
forth/**  This  book  does  not  deal  with  problems  of  music,  but 
*vith  a  problem  of  psychology,  namely,  with  the  question  of  the 
significance  of  musical  recollections  within  the  flow  of  our 
thoughts.  We  do  not  speak  here  of  music  as  an  actual  emotional 
experience.  What  can  be  said  of  it  that  could  come  close  to  its 
immediacy  and  intimacy?  We  speak  here  rather  of  musical  recol- 
lections in  the  middle  of  other  associations.  No  attempt  is  made 
to  describe  or  transcribe  the  emotional  response.  Wherever  reac- 
tions to  musical  experiences  are  mentioned,  words  are  function- 

*  Stisanne  R.  Langer  "On  Significance  in  Music"  in  Philosophy  in  a  New  Key 
(Harvard  University  Press,  1.942),  p.  222. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  jgi 

ing  only  as  guideposts  leading  to  the  threshold  of  the  domain 
where  melodies  live.  In  our  musical  associations  the  Impressions 
tunes  once  made  upon  us  are  renewed  In  their  effect.  They  re- 
semble the  bush  Moses  saw,  the  bush  that  burned  with  fire  and 
was  not  consumed. 

Among  the  physicians  who  practice  psychoanalysis,  there  are 
-quite  a  few  who  are  excellent  neurologists,  of  high  Intelligence, 
men  and  women  well  trained  In  psychiatry,  well  meaning,  hard- 
working, and  entirely  out  of  touch  with  the  unconscious  process. 
Caught  In  the  tangle  of  theoretical  sophistication,  filled  with 
terminological  labels  and  thought  cliches,  their  minds  move  in 
the  psychoanalytic  groove  without  a  trace  of  Insight  that  they  are 
In  the  wrong  profession.  What  could  you  tell  those  who  have 
spent  so  much  energy,  time,  and  money  on  a  study  for  which  they 
have  all  the  external,  but  none  of  the  Inner  qualifications?  Bee- 
thoven said,  in  a  similar  situation,  to  a  young  man  who  played 
to  him,  "My  dear  fellow,  you  will  have  to  practice  a  long  time 
before  you  recognize  that  you  have  no  talent/** 

Fortunately,  the  majority  of  the  young  people  who  are  trained 
In  psychoanalytic  Institutes  have  that  native  gift  that  Is  the 
important  psychological  premise  for  understanding  of  uncon- 
scious processes.  There  Is  nothing  wrong,  but  there  is  something 
lacking  In  their  training.  Also,  the  native  talent,  In  various  de- 
grees present  In  them,  has  to  be  developed.  Psychoanalysis  can  be 
taught  as  far  as  it  is  a  craft  and  cannot  be  taught  as  far  as  It  Is  an 
art.  Its  methods,  its  means  and  Instruments  can  be  demonstrated 
to  the  student  In  the  same  manner  as-  a  carpenter  can  show  his  ap- 
prentice how  to  put  boards  together  to  make  a  table.  All  other 
aspects  of  analysis  can  be  acquired  by  a  gifted  student,  but  they 
cannot  be  taught.  He  has  to  learn  them  in  studying  the  examples 
that  the  masters  show  In  their  work.  To  teach  a  student  the  tech- 
nique of  psychoanalysis  is  possible  only  to  the  same  extent  It  is 
possible  to  teach  a  musician  the  technique  of  composition.  Arnold 
Schdaberg  once  said  that  If  there  were  ateliers  of  composition, 
as  there  are  studios  of  painters  In  which  the  students  watch  the 
masters  at  work,  the  theoreticians  of  music  would  be  superflu- 

*  Reported  by  Wilhelm  Rust  in  a  letter  to  his  s»ter  Henri-cite  0tily  ^ , 
1808).  Published  in  Monatshejte  fur  Mustitgeschichtc  (1869),  p.  6ft. 


jgo  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

ous.*  "The  training  that  would  educate  an  artist  could  in  the  best 
case  consist  in  helping  him  to  hear  himself.  ...  He  who  hears 
himself  acquires  that  technique."  (Also,  Freud's  comparison  of 
the  analytic  technique  with  the  "fine  art  of  the  game  of  chess** 
emphasizes  that  the  endless  variety  for  the  moves  defies  descrip- 
tion. The  gap  In  the  Instructions  "can  only  be  filled  in  by  the 
zealous  study  of  games  thought  out  by  masters.")  ** 

The  basic,  most  Important  rule  of  the  psychoanalytic  investiga- 
tion of  others  and  ourselves,  the  procedure  of  free  association,  is 
best  expressed  in  the  words  of  Rudyard  Kipling:  "If  you  can 
think— and  not  make  thoughts  your  aim  .  .  /* 

Self-observation  can  teach  each  of  us  that  such  "aimless"  con- 
scious thinking  Is  much  rarer  than  we  would  assume.  We  demand 
a  license  from  our  thoughts  and  are  afraid  to  let  them  run  loose. 
Not  only  our  patients,  but  also  we  analysts  hold  our  thought  on 
short  reins.  The  main  psychological  premise  of  the  success  of  free 
associations  Is  moral  courage  alongside  the  conscious  decision  to 
follow  one's  thoughts  without  distortions  and  censured  misrepre- 
sentations. Lies  and  pretenses  to  ourselves  are  more  dangerous 
and  harmful  to  self-confidence  than  lies  and  pretenses  toward 
others. 

Besides  those  emotional  and  intellectual  hindrances  which 
psychoanalysis  calls  resistance,  there  are  others  not  based  on  inner 
objections,  but  determined  by  the  inadequacy  of  human  com- 
munication. The  words  we  think  and  the  words  we  say,  the  sen- 
tences we  have  in  our  minds  and  those  we  utter  would  not  be  the 
same  even  If  they  were  phonetically  identical.  Our  language 
emerges  from  a  subsoil  in  which  sounds,  fleeting  images,  organic 
sensations,  and  emotional  currents  are  not  yet  differentiated. 
Something  gets  lost  on  the  way  from  the  brain,  which  senses,  feels, 
and  thinks,  to  the  lips  which  speak  words  and  sentences.  The 
most  essential  part  of  that  loss  and  lack  is,  of  course,  emotional, 
or  rather  the  specific  and  differentiated  quality  of  our  emotions; 
one  could  say  the  personal  and  intimate  note  or  the  emotional 

*  H&rmonielehre  (yd  edition,  Vienna)*  p.  2. 

**  "Further  Recommendations  in  the  Technique  of  Psychoanalysis/*  Col- 
lected PapeB,  Vol.  II. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

significance  of  what  we  want  to  express.  Language  is  at  its 
when  it  wishes  to  grasp  and  communicate  of 

feelings— in  that  very  area  in  which  music  is 
expressive.  Even  in  the  language  of  poetry  not  much  of  the 
life  of  emotions  comes  across.  Music,  so  poor  in  definite          de- 
finable objective  and  rational  contents,  can  convey  the  infinite 
variety  of  primitive  and  subtle  emotions. 

In  the  flow  of  free  associations,  snatches  of  tunes  are  inter- 
spersed at  certain  significant  points.  Their  perception  ana- 
lytic evaluation  are  part  of  the  analytic  technique  of  Ending  con- 
cealed and  unconscious  processes.  To  be  aware  of  their  emergence, 
not  to  exclude  them  from  observation,  is  imperative  "if  you  can 
think  and  not  make  thoughts  your  aim."  It  have  psychologi- 

cal significance  that  not  words,  but  a  musical  theme  occurs  to  you. 
Why  is  it  that  your  thought  process  is  not  expressed  in  imagining 
and  planning,  but  in  "inward  singing,"  to  borrow  a  term  of 
Eduard  Hanslick?*  It  must  make  a  difference  whether  a  sentence 
from  a  speech,  a  line  from  a  poem,  or  a  tune  emerges  in  your 
train  of  thoughts.  If  a  melody  from  a  Mozart  concerto  occurs  in 
the  midst  of  clear,  aim-directed  ideas,  the  psychoanalytic  investi- 
gation could  perhaps  discover  not  only  what  is  on  your  mind 
without  your  being  aware  of  it,  but  also  whatfs  in  your  heart.  A 
musical  passage  flowing  through  your  brain  perhaps  indicates 
your  mood,  expresses  some  feelings  unknown  to  you,  besides 
thoughts.  Its  emotional  significance  cannot  be  translated  in  words, 
but  can  be  communicated  to  yourself  or  to  the  listener  who 
knows  the  composition.  It  is  certainly  meaningful  when  a  sen- 
tence, heard  or  thought,  pursues  you,  and  a  psychoanalyst  could 
perhaps  have  discovered  the  unconscious  significance  of  those 
words  that  haunted  Mark  Twain;  "A  blue  trip  slip  for  a  three- 
cent  fare."  Yet  not  only  lines,  but  also  melodies  that  run  through 
your  mind,  phrases  from  a  Schubert  symphony  or  from  a  Diver- 
timento by  Mozart  may  give  the  analyst  a  due  £0  the  secret  life 
of  emotions  that  every  one  of  us  lives.  In  fleeting  tunes 
wings  have  fluttered  away  into  the  unknown  as  in  a  melody  that 
has  a  hold  on  you  and  will  not  release  you  for  hoars,  that  life,  c0»- 

*  Vom  Musikalhch  Schonen  (Vienna,  1876),  p.  75, 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

cealed  from  yourself  has  sent  messages  to  the  mental  surface.  In 
this  Inward  singing,  the  voice  of  an  unknown  self  conveys  not 
only  passing  moods  and  impulses,  but  sometimes  a  disavowed  or 
denied  wish,  a  longing  and  a  drive  we  do  not  like  to  admit  to 
ourselves.  The  theme  that  is  stirring  deep  inside  you  imposes 
itself  on  you,  interferes  with  rational  thoughts,  and  obscures  the 
swift,  straight  line  of  logic  But  the  recurring  tune  may  announce 
In  its  compelling  and  compulsive  pressure  the  working  of  an  un- 
known power  in  you.  Whatever  secret  message  it  carries,  the  in- 
cidental music  accompanying  our  conscious  thinking  is  never  ac- 
cidental. 

Sensitivity  to  the  almost  imperceptible  is  present  in  most  psy- 
choanalysts. Not  many  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  emotional  under- 
tones. What  is  neglected  in  the  study  program  of  psychoanalysts 
is,  to  use  the  musical  term,  ear  training:  the  development  of  a 
higher  sensitivity  to  musical  phenomena  of  all  kinds— for  in- 
stance, to  minute  distinctions  in  tones.  Some  psychoanalysts  are 
too  eager  to  recognize  and  to  define  those  undertones,  or  are  un- 
willing to  pursue  them  in  their  variations  and  combinations  after 
they  have  acknowledged  them.  The  comparison  with  musical 
phenomena  can  here  be  followed  up  even  to  the  terms.  In  the 
development  of  a  composition,  the  latent  possibilities  of  a  theme 
are  unfolded  by  means  of  melodic,  harmonic,  or  contrapuntal 
variations.  Development  is  also  called  working  out,  which  is 
Identical  with  the  Freudian  term  (Durcharbeiten)  used  for  a  cer- 
tain phase  of  the  analytic  process.  To  continue  the  comparison  of 
the  analytic  procedure  with  artistic  creation:  Schonberg,  listening 
to  the  composition  of  one  of  his  pupils,  sometimes  said,  "Das  ist 
nickt  ausgehort"  meaning  that  the  musical  idea  was  not  heard 
to  Its  end  by  the  composer  inside,  was  not  thought  and  experi- 
enced to  its  last  and  decisive  consequences.  It  remained  In  its  first 
phases,  In  Its  early  form. 

It  Is  not  enough  to  Introduce  a  new  instrument  or  to  improve 
an  did,  forgotten  one.  You  have  to  demonstrate  how  it  can  be 
used.  This  Is  best  done  by  examples.  There  is  an  abundance  of 
such  examples  In  the  mental  lives  of  the  patients  we  treat  as  well 
as  10  our  own,  but  this  material  has  remained  almost  unnoticed 
and  unused,  its  psychological  significance  unrecognized.  The 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

other  day  a  patient  reported  that  a  trivial  tune  had  occurred  to 
him  together  with  the  line: 

Did  you  ever  see  a  lassie 
Do  this  way  and  that? 

He  did  not  know  what  this  banal  tune  wanted  to  convey,  but 
when  it  recurred,  he  became  aware  that  it  was  accompanied  by 
memories  of  a  recent  sexual  experience  and  of  visual  images  of 
the  responsive  movements  of  the  woman  during  sexual  inter- 
course. Is  it  without  significance  that  another  patient  cannot  get 
rid  of  the  second  part  of  a  children's  ditty  in  his  thoughts? 

Ten  little,  nine  little,  eight  little  Indians, 
Seven  little,  six  little,  five  little  Indians, 
Four  little,  three  little,  two  little  Indians, 
One  little  Indian  boy. 

A  few  minutes  before  the  patient  had  spoken  of  his  brothers 
and  sisters.  It  was  easy  to  guess  that  the  unconscious  desire  to  re- 
move his  siblings  and  to  have  the  position  of  an  only  child  had 
found  its  expression  in  that  ditty. 


Music  expresses  what  all  men  feel  much  more  than  what  they 
think.  Its  language  is  an  esperanto  of  emotions  rather  than  of 
ideas.  It  does  not  emerge  from  the  iow  of  conscious  thought,  but 
from  the  stream  of  preconsciousness*  The  following  are 
where  tunes  appeared  either  as  still  unformulated  thought 
or  as  heralds  of  thoughts  that  were  still  on  the  preverbal  level 

Let  me  begin  this  potpourri  with  the  story  of  an  intelligent 
patient  of  mine.  In  her  rather  stormy  married  life  with  a 
cian,  she  observed  a  recurrent  trait  of  bar  husband's  behavior. 
After  an  argument  or  quarrel  with  her,  he  often  sits  at  the 
and  improvises  some  music,  mostly  popular  tunes.  After  a  few 


596  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

bars  he  regularly  begins  to  play  a  tune  the  patient  knows:  "Glad 
to  be  unhappy."  She  remembered  a  line  of  that  inane  lyric:  "I'd 
rather  be  blue  thinking  of  you."  The  patient  interpreted  this 
habit  of  beginning  his  improvisation  with  this  tune  as  "musical 
confession/'  and  told  me  that  her  husband  often  provoked  marital 
scenes  by  nagging  about  some  trifling  thing  in  the  apartment 
and  that  he  seemed  to  get  some  masochistic  satisfaction  from  feel- 
ing unhappy  later  on.  The  other  day  when  he  again  played  that 
tune  a  few  hours  after  a  sharp  argument,  he  turned  to  her  and 
said,  "I  don't  know  why  I  always  play  that  trash."  She  was  too 
clever  to  enlighten  him,  but  she  felt  some  satisfaction  when  he 
immediately  began  to  play  the  title-song  of  I  Married  an  Angel. 
The  husband  does  not  have  the  slightest  notion  why  he  plays  that 
song  on  such  occasions,  but  it  is  obvious  to  the  patient  that  he 
expresses  his  regrets  or  remorse  in  this  musical  form. 

Here  are  a  few  of  my  own  experiences  that  cast  light  on  the 
determining  factors  that  decide  about  the  preconscious  selection 
of  emerging  musical  ideas  and  their  function  as  announcing  con- 
scious thought.  I  was  present  at  an  amateur  performance  of 
Strauss's  opera  Salome.  A  young  lady  of  my  acquaintance  sa,ng  the 
part  of  the  Princess.  I  didn't  like  the  way  she  sang  it,  but  I  was,  of 
course,  not  competent  to  have  an  opinion  about  her  artistic  qual- 
ities. A  few  days  later  she  asked  me  about  my  impressions.  Put 
on  the  spot,  I  felt  embarrassed  because  I  could  not  praise  either 
her  singing  or  her  acting.  At  this  moment  a  fleeting  impression  of 
the  opening  bars  of  the  opera  occurred  to  me,  and  I  answered,  "I 
entirely  agreed  with  the  first  sentence  of  the  score."  The  first 
words  axe  sung  by  a  young  Syrian  soldier  on  the  walls  of  Jerusa- 
lem: "How  beautiful  is  the  Princess  Salome  tonight!"  In  avoiding 
giving  my  acquaintance  insincere  praise,  I  had  said  something 
complimentary  that  was  also  true:  she  had  indeed  looked  beauti- 
ful that  evening.  The  first  bars  of  the  opera  came,  so  to  speak, 
"handy"  to  my  mind 

In  a  conversation  I  was  trying  to  give  some  American  friends 
an  idea  of  the  character  of  old  Vienna  and,  since  the  last  war 
was  mentioned,  of  the  Austrian  army  in  co-operation  with  Ger- 
man divisions  in  Russia.  It  was  difficult  to  present  the  mixture  of 
the  resolute,  military,  and  disciplined  conduct  of  Viennese  sol- 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  J97 

diers  on  the  parade  ground  their  avoidance  of  every  real 

effort  during  the  last  war.  How  can  one  describe  the  contrast  of 
showy  militarism  with  the  easygoing  and  deeply  unmartial  nature 
of  the  soldiers  of  my  native  city?  While  I  speak  of  the  good- 
natured  and  jovial  manner  of  the  Viennese,  a  few  bars  of  a  Schu- 
bert  Landler  (slow  waltz)  are  dimly  in  my  memory,  to  be  immedi- 
ately replaced  by  the  Deutschmeisterrnarsch,  the  forceful  military 
march  of  the  Austrian  Infantry  regiment  No.  4,  whose  soldiers 
were  all  Viennese.  As  If  the  intertwining  of  the  two  tunes  had 
opened  a  door,  an  anecdote  that  well  characterized  the  attitude 
of  the  Austrian  infantry  came  10  mind  During  the  war  a  cannon 
got  stuck  In  the  Galician  mud*  and  ten  soldiers  of  that  regiment 
were  ordered  to  free  It  and  to  put  It  into  motion  again.  The 
soldiers  put  their  shoulders  on  the  gun,  counted,  "One,  two, 
three/'  many  times,  and  shouted  "Ho!"  and  "Go!"  but  the  gun 
did  not  move.  A  lieutenant  in  command  of  a  Prussian  company 
chanced  to  march  along.  The  officer  scolded  the  Viennese  for 
their  sloppiness  and  ordered  some  Prussian  soldiers  to  put  the 
gun  Into  motion  while  the  Au&trians  had  to  stand  by.  He  com- 
manded in  sharp  and  determined  tones,  "One,  two,  three!"  and 
the  cannon  was  moving.  The  Deutschmeister  were  not  Impressed 
and  said,  "Naturally,  If  you  use  force!"  The  emergence  of  the 
march  of  the  regiment  together  with  the  easygoing  Schubert  tune 
In  my  mind  paved  the  way  for  the  memory  of  that  well-known 
anecdote. 

Other  musical  echoes  from  the  war  intruded  into  different 
trains  of  thought.  A  young,  beautiful  woman  confided  to  me  that 
she  now  had  a  lover.  A  few  minutes  afterward,  while  I  was  still 
talking  with  her,  a  tune  came  to  mind  which  I  could  not  identify. 
I  had  heard  it  a  long  time  ago.  Only  after  I  heard  it  In  my  mind 
again,  I  remembered  what  it  was:  a  song  I'd  heard  our  soldiers 
sing  when  we  returned  from  exercise  marches: 

Was  nutzet  mir  ein  Rosengarten, 
Wenn  and' re  drin  spazicren  gehenf 

What  use  is  a  rose  garden  to  me, 
When  others  are  walking  In  it? 


398  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

The  regret  expressed  In  such  symbolical  language  was,  at  the  mo- 
ment when  the  tune  occurred,  not  consciously  felt,  but  following 
its  emergence  in  the  very  next  moment. 

On  another  occasion  belated  regret  that  I  had  not  enjoyed  my 
youth  more  came  to  surprising  expression.  In  this  case,  also,  the 
emotion  was  consciously  felt  only  after  a  melody  had  heralded 
it.  A  memory  from  the  years  of  my  military  service  was  present, 
and  I  had  no  doubt  as  to  the  origin  of  the  melody,  but  its  emo- 
tional significance  became  conscious  after  it  was  put  into  the  con- 
text from  which  it  was  taken.  In  a  conversation  I  had  spoken  of 
a  relatively  free  and  gay  phase  in  1916,  during  which  our  troops 
were  garrisoned  in  a  city  near  the  field  of  battle.  I  was  a  young 
officer  then  and  I  enjoyed  going  out  on  horseback  every  morning, 
It  felt  good  to  pass  from  a  trot  to  an  easy  canter  after  one  had 
gone  beyond  the  suburbs  and  had  reached  the  open  country. 
Thinking  of  those  carefree  months,  I  imagined  the  sounds  of  the 
hoofbeats  and  that  rhythmical  tone  went  over  into  a  well-known 
melody:  the  hard  C  Major  marching  rhythms  from  the  Song  of 
Beauty  in  Mahler's  Song  of  the  Earth.  These  sounds  imitate 
onomatopoetically  the  noise  of  tramping  horses. 

It  was  not  astonishing  that  these  rhythms  came  to  mind.  It  is  a 
musical  portrait  of  riding,  but  there  are  many  other  expressive 
motives  of  this  kind:  Schubert's  Erlkonig,  Liszt's  Mazeppa  and 
some  ballads  .by  Karl  Lowe,  the  names  of  which  elude  me  at  the 
moment.  (Rereading  this  page,  I  remembered  another  song  in 
which  the  trotting  of  horses  changes  into  a  waltz  melody.  It  is  the 
Fiacre  Song  by  Gustav  Pick,  a  popular  tune  in  the  Vienna  of  my 
youth.)  Why  just  the  C  Major  tune  from  Mahler's  work?  The 
sounds  of  the  horses  galloping  from  Schubert's  lied  are  there  for 
a  moment,  but  they  immediately  give  way  to  the  C  Major  march. 
And  then  it  comes  to  an  abrupt  end.  The  tender  Andante  that 
follows  appears  in  rny  memory  together  with  the  image  that  is 
called  up  by  the  Chinese  poem  for  which  the  tune  was  written. 
Young  beautiful  girls  plucking  flowers  near  a  stream  in  which 
their  figures  are  reflected;  a  group  of  young  horsemen  storming 
by.  And  then  the  stormy  scales  of  the  strings  are  replaced  by  that 
melody  of  the  contralto  voice,  accompanied  by  harp  and  violins: 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

And  the  loveliest  of  the  maidens 

Sends  the  rider  glances  of  yearning, 

Her  haughty  bearing  Is  no  more  than  feigned. 

In  the  sparkle  of  her  wide  eyes, 

In  the  darkening  of  the  eager  glance, 

Ascends  the  plaint  of  the  passion  in  her  heart. 

While  the  flageolets  of  the  harp  and  the  flutes  die  away,  a  visual 
memory  comes  to  mind.  On  those  morning  rides  1  often  saw  a 
young,  beautiful  girl  in  a  meadow  and  sometimes  felt  her  glance 
following  me  when  I  galloped  by,  but  I  was  too  shy  even  to  speak 
to  her.  How  young  and  stupid  I  was! 

The  other  day  an  old  tune  occurred  to  me  in  the  middle  of  a 
conversation.  A  lady  with  whom  I  am  on  "teasing"  terms  ap- 
peared at  a  party  in  a  dark  dress  and  a  necklace  of  black  pearls 
with  a  cross.  The  lady  is  Irish  Catholic,  her  husband  Jewish,  but 
he  wishes  her  to  go  to  church  and  bring  up  their  children  as 
Roman  Catholics.  It  was  perhaps  this  thought  that  made  the  tune 
Silent  Nighty  Holy  Night  appear  in  my  memory.  The  solemn 
melody  was  immediately  followed  by  the  memory  of  an  anecdote 
they  told  in  old  Vienna.  A  little  Jewish  girl  once  asked,  "Mum, 
have  Gentiles  Christmas  trees,  too?"  The  emergence  of  thai 
Christmas  hymn  (by  the  Austrian  composer  Franz  Gruber)  pre- 
ceded and  announced  the  thought  expressed  in  that  anecdote. 

This  example  has  some  psychological  interest  because  the 
thought  implied  in  the  anecdote  led  to  a  remark  that  indulgent 
listeners  might  call  witty.  Glancing  at  the  big  cruciix  hanging 
from  her  necklace,  I  said  teasingly  to  the  lady,  "You  have  to  be 
careful  at  this  party.  Some  people  might  think  you  were  Jewish-." 
In  contrast  to  the  preconscious  thought,  heralded  by  that  melody, 
the  thought  was  for  a  moment  submerged  and  left  to  elaboration 
in  the  unconscious— the  dynamic  process  that  results  in  the  pro- 
duction of  wit. 

The  following  are  instances  of  melodies  occurring  in  the  mid- 
dle of  work.  I  am  choosing  as  a  representatiYe  example  a  musical 
phrase  that  came  to  my  Eiind  while  I  was  writing  a  psychoana- 
lytic paper  that  is  connected  with  my  "witty"  remark  mentioned 
before.  Almost  twenty  years  ago  I  wrote  an  analytic  article,  "The 


400  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

Intimacy  of  Jewish  Wit,"  that  attempted  to  study  certain  charac- 
teristics of  Jewish  humor.*  I  pointed  out  that  its  warmth  and 
intimacy  are  expressions  of  an  unconscious  affectionate  attitude 
on  the  part  of  Jews  toward  their  fellow  people,  of  a  love  of 
mankind,  as  it  were.  One  of  the  cases  I  wanted  to  mention  in  this 
context  was  an  anecdote  heard  before  the  outbreak  of  the  First 
World  War.  A  Jew  mistakenly  came  into  territory  near  the  Rus- 
sian frontier  where  a  soldier  stood  guard.  At  his  approach  the 
sentry  raised  his  gun  and  shouted,  "Halt  or  I  shoot!"  The  Jew 
replied  indignantly,  "Are  you  meschugge  [crazy]?  Put  your  gun 
away!  Don't  you  see  that  here  is  a  Mensch?"  While  I  smilingly 
jotted  down  that  anecdote,  expressing  a  sublime  and  utter  lack  of 
belief  in  the  possibility  that  one  human  being  could  really  want 
to  kill  another,  the  solemn  melody  of  the  final  movement  of  Bee- 
thoven's choral  symphony  occurred  to  me.  The  Ode  to  Joy  pro- 
claims the  same  theme  as  the  Jew's  words  in  that  anecdote:  the 
conviction  that  all  men  should  become  brothers. 

The  tunes  occurring  to  the  analyst  during  sessions  with  patients 
are  preconscious  messages  of  thoughts  that  are  not  only  meaning- 
ful, but  also  important  for  the  understanding  of  the  emotional 
situation  of  the  patient.  It  would  be  an  analytic  mistake  to  brush 
them  aside  or  to  take  them  on  face  value,  and  to  dismiss  them  as 
chance  musical  reminiscences.  They  not  only  convey  contents  un- 
known to  the  analyst's  conscious  thinking,  but  also  communicate  to 
him  something  of  the  hidden  emotions  that  he  has  not  yet  been 
able  to  catch  while  he  listens  to  his  patient.  The  tunes  stand  in 
the  service  of  the  agents  responsible  for  the  communications  be- 
tween the  unconscious  of  two  persons.  These  melodies  present 
themselves  clearly  or  dimly  to  the  mind,  but  what  they  have  to 
convey  becomes  comprehensible  only  when  the  analyst  listens 
"with  the  third  ear/'  There  is  a  considerable  psychological  dif- 
ference between  those  "chance"  tunes  and  quotations  from  poems 
or  sentences  from  novels  or  plays  that  sometimes  emerge  in  the 
thoughts  of  the  analyst  during  a  therapeutic  session.  A  quotation 
from  a  poem  can  be  fraught  with  meaning  and  can  allude  to 
something  that  had  remained  dark  or  unknown  to  the  analyst;  it 

*  Published  In  a  book  Nackdenkliche  Heiterkeit  (Wien,  1933).  (Not  trans- 
lated Into  English.) 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  401 

can  carry  an  emotional  quality  of  which  his  conscious 
had  not  been  aware.  The  melody  that  occurs  to  him  while  he 
listens  to  his  patient  is  perhaps  not  as  meaningful  as  lines 
a  poem  in  the  intellectual  understanding  of  the  case,  but  it  in- 
duces a  recognition  of  its  emotional  qualities.  The  poetic         or 
the  sentence  from  a  play  is  perhaps  more  "telling."  The  musical 
phrase  can  say  more  in  its  sound  allusion. 

An  example  may  be  helpful  in  comparing  the  two  elects.  At 
the  Highland  Hospital  in  Asheville,  where  I  spent  vacation 

months  as  consulting  psychoanalyst,  I  had  to  interview  a 
man.  While  talking  with  him,  I  had  the  impression  that  he 
withdrawn  from  reality,  involved  in  fantasies  or  daydreams.  He 
was  there  physically,  but  his  mind  was  wrapped  in  thoughts  far 
away,  from  which  my  questions  could  scarcely  call  him  back.  He 
was  polite,  but  certainly  not  interested  in  finding  out  anything 
about  himself.  His  lack  of  co-operation  did  not  have  the  charac- 
teristics of  negativism,  but  rather  that  quality  of  absent-minded* 
ness  which  is  a  form  of  concentration  on  something  else.  While  I 
tried  with  little  success  to  pierce  the  glass  curtain  that 
him  from  the  external  world,  a  melody  sounded  in  me  which  I 
quickly  recognized  as  the  first  bars  of  "Ich  bin  der  Welt 
gekommen"  by  Gustav  Mahler.  The  slow  melody  of  tender  resig- 
nation, akin  to  the  Adagietto  of  Mahler's  Fifth  Symphony,  ex- 
pressed better  than  the  words  the  emotional  character  of  the  song: 

I  am  lost  to  the  world 

With  which  I  have  watted  so  much  time  before  .  .  . 

People  will  perhaps  think  that  the  artist  is  dead: 

I  cannot  object  to  that 

Because  I  really  died  to  the  world. 

He  rests  in  a  quiet  area  and  lives  only  in  his  thoughts  and  songs. 
The  emergence  of  the  Mahler  song  heralded  the  diagnosis  of 
schizophrenia  that  was  consciously  made  a  few  minutes  later  on, 
If  the  rather  pallid,  intellectualized  verses  by  Friedricfa  Riickeit, 
whose  poem  Mahler  used  as  text  for  his  song,  had  come  to  mind 


THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

without  the  fine  melody,  they  would  have  certainly  announced 
the  same  diagnosis  at  which  I  would  have  arrived,  at  all  events, 
without  verses  and  music.  But  the  moving  melody  conveyed  some- 
thing more  of  the  emotional  atmosphere  In  which  this  patient 
lived. 

Let  me  describe  another  Instance  of  this  kind.  At  the  same 
psychiatric  hospital  I  treated  a  young  woman  who  had  Intense 
anxiety  attacks  with  many  psychosomatic  symptoms.  Her  anxie- 
ties occurred  mostly  when  she  was  alone  in  her  house,  on  a  farm 
In  Kentucky.  The  first  approach  to  the  analytic  understanding  of 
the  case  was  secured  by  her  complaints  about  her  sexual  life.  Her 
husband,  a  salesman,  was,  It  seemed,  of  weak  or  capricious  sexual 
potency  and  could  not  satisfy  her.  It  was  guessed  that  she  had  un- 
conscious fantasies  that  a  tramp  could  enter  the  house  while  she 
was  alone  and  rape  her,  and  that  she  reacted  with  extreme  anxiety 
to  the  unconscious  wish  In  these  fantasies.  Later  on  this  guess  had 
to  be  replaced,  or  rather  modified,  by  the  insight  that  her  anxiety 
attacks  were  reactions  against  the  temptation  to  masturbate  when 
she  was  alone.  When  she  again  complained  about  the  sexual  in- 
adequacy of  her  husband,  a  simple  ditty  I  had  heard  another  pa- 
tient In  the  hospital  sing  on  the  evening  before,  resounded  in  me. 
The  words  followed  immediately: 

Three  blind  mice, 

Three  blind  mice, 

See  how  they  run. 

They  all  ran  after  the  farmer's  wife, 

Who  cut  off  their  tails 

With  a  carving  knife. 

Three  blind  mice.  .  .  . 

The  thought  was,  of  course,  the  precursor  of  the  recognition 
that  my  patient  was  unconsciously  partly  responsible  for  the  sex- 
ual failure  of  her  husband,  that  she  frustrated  him  by  her  attitude 
and  castrated  him  in  her  fantasy.  (The  three  mice  as  representing 
the  male  genitals  in  its  three  parts,  the  farmer's  wife  cutting  off  the 
tails.)  If  the  words  of  the  ditty  alone  had  occurred  to  me,  they 
could,  of  course,  have  contained  the  same  unconscious  idea.  What 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  403 

did  the  simple  tune  contribute  to  it?  Nothing  to  the  content  but 
something  signlScant  to  the  characterization  of  the  patient.  It  was 
not  "just  music/'  but  the  just  kind  of  musk.  The  young  woman, 
when  she  did  not  have  her  anxiety  attacks,  behaved  very  cheerfully 
and  was  easygoing,  speaking  of  her  husband's  sexual  Inadequacy 
as  If  it  were  a  negligible  weakness.  There  was  not  the  slightest  con- 
scious notion  of  her  own  hostile  and  castrating  tendencies  toward 
him.  The  contrast  between  the  cheerful  tune  of  that  ditty  and  Its 
pathetic  content  reflects  the  other  contrast  between  the  gay  and 
gleeful  behavior  of  the  patient  and  her  sinister  and  hostile  atti- 
tude against  her  husband,  whom  unconsciously  she  would  Hie  to 
have  emasculated  while  she  complained  about  his  lack  of  virility. 

The  modulation  or  the  cadence  of  a  ditty  of  such  a  kind  often 
remains  astonishingly  long  In  one's  memory,  sometimes  much 
longer  than  its  lines.  That  alone  proves  that  It  has  a  psychological 
significance  beyond  the  text  that  Is  never  a  literarv  achievement. 
Drawing  analytical  conclusions  from  the  material  a  patient  had 
presented  during  the  therapeutic  session,  I  expressed  the  conjec- 
ture that  she,  the  patient,  might  have  experienced  a  scene  in  child- 
hood in  which  she  had  felt  very  ashamed  and  was  made  fun  of  by 
other  children  because  she  had  soiled  herself.  The  patient  could 
not  remember  anything  of  this  kind  and  considered  such  a  scene 
very  unlikely.  On  her  way  out,  waiting  for  the  elevator,  a  ditty 
from  early  childhood  occurred  to  her  and  she  remembered  other 
children  singing  It  to  her:  "Shame,  shame,  I  know  your  name." 

Psychology  asserts  that  tone  Images  are  grasped  earlier  than 
word  Images,  and  that  the  memory  for  the  first  is  more  tenacious 
than  for  the  latter.  It  Is  likely  that  this  is  one  of  the  factors  respon- 
sible for  the  fact  that  our  memory  frequently  retains  a  melody 
after  we  have  forgotten  the  text  of  the  song.  The  emotional  value 
might  be  responsible  for  the  partiality  we  show  for  the  melody 
compared  with  the  text.  Even  where  the  text  Is  maintained  in  our 
memory,  we  use  It  to  call  up  the  forgotten  melody.  It  Is  much  rarer 
that  we  make  use  of  the  melody  of  a  song  or  of  an  aria  to  remem- 
ber Its  lines.  The  libretto  of  an  opera  lives  in  our  memory  by  the 
grace  of  the  score.  With  most  of  us,  also,  the  visual  impression  of  a 
performance  of  an  opera  is  less  vivid  than  Its  melodies. 

Here  are  a  few  instances  from  psychoanalytic  practice  as  cvi- 


404  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

deoce  for  the  priority  of  the  tune.  A  patient  has  a  dream:  She  is  in 
the  and  is  worried  because  she  has  forgotten  to  take  off  her 

watch  which  could  be  mined  if  it  gets  wet.  There  were  no  helpful 
thought-associations  to  the  dream.  In  the  pause  between  her  re- 
port of  the  dream  and  the  following  sentences  she  spoke,  a  long- 
forgotten  tune  came  to  my  mind.  I  recognized  it  later  as  the  open- 
ing bars  of  a  song  by  Karl  Lowe  I  had  not  heard  since  childhood. 
The  title  Is  The  Watch,  and  the  first  lines,  remembered  only  after 
the  analytic  session,  are: 

Ich  trage  wo  ich  gehe 
Stet$  cine  Uhr  bei  mir. 

Where'er  I  go,  I  carry 

A  watch  with  me  always, 

And  only  need  look 

Whenever  I'd  know  the  time  of  day. 

The  watch  meant  in  Lowe's  song  is  the  heart.  Only  after  I  had 
remembered  those  lines  did  other  associations  help  to  interpret 
the  dream.  The  Viennese  girls  used  to  say,  "With  me  it  is  punctual 
as  a  watch/'  referring  to  the  regularity  of  their  monthly  period.  I 
remembered  a  proverb  I  heard  the  Serbian  peasants  quote  during 
World  War  I:  "With  a  watch  and  a  woman  there  is  always  some- 
thing to  repair/'  alluding  to  troubles  of  the  genital  region. 

At  her  next  analytic  session,  the  patient  returned  to  her  dream 
and  said  she  had  forgotten  to  put  the  diaphragm  in  when  she  had 
taken  a  bath  before  going  to  bed,  and  she  was  worried  because  she 
might  have  become  pregnant  the  last  time  she  had  sexual  inter- 
course. 

As  In  this  case  where  the  mentioning  of  a  watch  awakened  musi- 
cal memories  followed  by  associations  to  the  dream  interpretation, 
in  another  case  a  melody  was  suggested  by  the  idea  connection- 
hair,  hairdresser.  Marion,  a  young  woman,  began  her  analytic  .ses- 
sion with  reproaches  because  I  had  kept  the  patient  preceding  her 
a  minute  overtime  and  her  own  time  was  shortened  by  my  prefer- 
ring the  other  girl.  What  had  that  blond  hussy  got  that  she, 
Marion,  hadn't  got?  There  followed  a  critical  comment  on  the 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  405 

physical  shortcomings  and  possible  intellectual  of  the 

other  patient.  An  attack  on  me          my  partiality  easily  to 

suspicions  and  doubts  concerning  my  capabilities  as  an  analyst. 
The  rest  of  the  analytic  session  was  to  a  great  extent  with  a 

discussion  of  Marion's  troubles  with  her  lover,  who  pays 
to  other  girls  when  he  goes  with  Marion  to  a  party,  often  at 

other  women  when  he  is  with  her  at  dinner  in  a  restaurant,  so 
on.  Near  the  end  of  her  session  Marion  reported  that  yesterday 
she  had  been  very  annoyed  with  Henry,  the  at  Ca- 

ruso's. He  had  done  her  hair  badly  and  she  the  atten- 

tion and  care  he  shows  toward  other  customers  with  work  he 
for  her.  What  have  those  dolls  got  that  she  hasn't?  There  followed 
an  extensive  description  of  the  appearance  and  manner  of  the 
blond  young  woman  in  the  neighboring  booth  at  Caruso's.  The 
pattern  is,  of  course,  clear. 

What  does  it  mean  that,  after  Marion  left,  an  old  tune  occurred 
to  me  of  which  I  had  not  thought  for  several  decades?  1  recognized 
it  as  the  "Lorelei,"  the  poem  by  Heinrich  Heine,  competed  by 
Friedrich  Silcher.  What  has  Marion  to  do  with  that  beautiful 
minx  on  the  rock  on  the  Rhine?  I  tried  to  remember  the  lines.  Oh, 
of  course,  the  fairy  sits  on  the  rock  and  combs  her  golden  hair  with 
a  golden  comb  and  sings  a  sweet  song,  bewitching  boatmen  on  the 
Rhine.  The  comparison  was  suggested  by  the  thought-association 
—hair,  hairdresser.  I  did  not  remember  the  final  stanza  of  Heine's 
poem.  Only  the  slow  sentimental  melody  returned  to  my  mind  as 
if  It  wanted  to  be  heard.  Only  then  the  content  of  those  lines  was 
recalled:  that  at  the  end  the  waves  engulf  boatmen  and  ship,  and 
that  the  Lorelei  has  cast  an  evil  spell  over  the  men  who,  en- 
chanted, look  up  at  her,  sitting  on  that  rock  and  singing.  Not  the 
lines,  but  the  music  with  its  sad  finale  told  roe  the  story  and 
brought  the  concealed  message  to  me  of  the  meaning  of  Marian's 
behavior.  Her  unconscious  hostility  against  men,  concealed  be- 
hind her  passionate  pleading  for  more  attention  and  considera- 
tion, and  her  hidden  destructive  trends  became  clearer  to  me  with 
the  help  of  that  old  tune. 

This  is  perhaps  the  place  to  report  another  instance  that  shows 
image  and  tune  in  competition,  where  the  musical  memory 
proved,  though  more  fleeting  than  the  picture  in  my  mind,  more 


THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

helpful  to  analytic  understanding.  My  patient  Charles,  a  lawyer 
in  his  late  thirties,  showed  unusually  intense  resistance  during  a 
certain  phase  of  his  analytic  treatment.  He  fell  into  long  silences 
and  declared  that  nothing  occurred  to  him.  Pressed  to  say  what- 
ever he  thought,  he  uttered  some  trifling  sentences  and  relapsed 
into  silence  and  sighing.  During  an  analytic  session  that  was  char- 
acterized by  that  negative  pattern,  he  interrupted  his  silence  for 
some  minutes  to  mention  a  thought  that  had  just  occurred  to  him. 
It  was  a  memory  from  the  war,  in  which  he  had  served  as  a  com- 
mander in  the  Navy.  He  recalled  the  exhaust  of  the  engines  of  the 
ship  and  that  in  some  weather  it  escaped  in  a  certain  direction. 
I  guessed  then  that  he  must  have  fought  with  flatulence  and  that 
he  thought  I  would  smell  the  "exhaust."  That  did  not  explain  the 
nature  of  his  resistances,  but  it  alluded  to  it.  When  I  had  recog- 
nized the  concealed  meaning  and  hint  in  his  thought-associations, 
I  remembered  a  picture  I  had  once  seen  in  a  book  on  Felicien 
Rops,  the  Belgian  painter.  The  reproduction  of  the  etching 
showed  a  nude  young  woman,  crouching  in  the  grass,  her  beauti- 
ful behind  raised  in  the  air.  In  the  distance  a  windmill  is  merrily 
revolving.  The  artist  has  entitled  his  picture  with  a  sentence  from 
the  Gospel  of  John:  "Spiritus  flat  ubi  vult"  ("The  mind  waves 
where  it  wishes"). 

In  the  pause  provided  by  the  continued  silence  of  my  patient,  I 
could  give  myself  freely  to  my  thoughts:  for  a  fleeting  moment  a 
phrase  from  the  Bacchanale  of  the  Boklin  Suite  by  Max  Reger  oc- 
curred to  me.  I  had  heard  the  piece  only  once,  and  that  theme  now 
occurring  was  in  the  next  moment  gone  with  the  wind  or  rather 
with  the  wind  instruments  that  had  played  it  in  the  performance. 
In  the  next  moment  a  little  story  I  had  heard  about  it  popped  into 
my  mind.  The  princess  of  a  Middle  German  state  attended  the 
first  performance  of  this  suite  and  was  very  impressed  by  the  polyph- 
ony of  the  orchestra.  She  had  paid  special  attention  to  the 
themes  of  the  fagots  in  the  bacchanale  movement  and  asked  the 
composer  later  on  whether  the  musicians  had  produced  those 
strange  tone  figures  with  the  mouth.  With  great  seriousness  Max 
Reger  replied,  "I  would  very  much  hope  so." 

The  memory  of  that  passage  from  the  Boklin  Suite  paved  the 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  407 

way  for  the  return  of  the  story,  but  the  meaning  of  the  story  was 
already  implied  in  the  mental  reproduction  of  the  musical  phrase. 
When  the  psychological  moment  came,  1  could  tell  my  patient  not 
only  that  his  resistance  during  the  session  was  determined  by  his 
effort  to  control  the  impulse  to  expel  gas  (the  of  the 

"exhaust"  of  the  ship  was  a  hint  in  this  direction),  but  what 
the  unconscious  expression  of  this  impulse  meant.  In  contrast  to 
his  respectful  and  even  sometimes  admiring  attitude  toward 
the  impulse  to  pass  wind  expressed  feelings  of  unconscious  con- 
tempt and  disdain.  His  silence  was  his  defense  the 
lion,  against  the  wish  to  let  go.  He  was  afraid  I  would  hear  the 
noisy  demonstration  of  these  tendencies.  I  could  meet  his  cloubt 
by  pointing  out  that  in  our  society  an  indulgence  of  this  kind  is 
considered  indecent,  and  the  company  reacts  to  it  with  indigna- 
tion and  rejection,  as  if  it  conceived  of  it  as  an  expression  of  con- 
tempt for  those  present. 

The  affinities  of  certain  melodies  to  some  unconscious  or  pre- 
conscious  emotions,  as  in  those  cases  mentioned,  were  observed 
and  well  described  by  Marcel  Proust  in  his  Remembrance  of 
Things  Past  "The  little  phrase"  from  the  andante  movement  of 
Viuteuil's  sonata  for  the  piano  and  violin*  had  become  merged 
with  Swann's  ideas  in  an  inextricable  whole:  the  sorrow  and 
charm  of  la  petite  phrase  speak  to  him  and  remind  him  of  Odette. 
The  memory  of  it  haunts  him,  evokes  the  image  of  his  lost  sweet- 
heart and  brings  about  her  magic  presence.  Those  Boating  chords 
become  a  kind  of  national  anthem  of  their  passion  ("unc  sorte  d'mif 
national  de  leur  amour").  Hearing  the  fugitive  phrase,  emerging 
for  a  few  moments  from  the  waves  of  sounds,  has  for  him  the  sig- 
nificance of  an  actual  idea.  Musical  phrases  occurring  to  us  in  this 
manner  may  not  be  as  significant  as  other  associations,  but  they 
are  as  worthy  of  special  psychological  attention  as  immediate  emo- 
tional expressions.  And,  for  the  psychoanalyst,  heard  melodies  are 
sweet,  but  "those  unheard"  are  not  only  sweeter,  but  also  more 
meaningful. 

*  French  musicians  thought  that  the  phrase  can  be  found  in  Samt-Saeas's 
Sonata  in  D  Minor  lor  violin  and  piano. 


.£08  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 


My  memory,  otherwise  reliable  in  such  things,  sometimes 
threatens  to  fail  me  when  I  want  to  remember  who  composed  the 
two  Liebeslieder  Walzer.  I  have  heard  those  graceful  melodies 
often  enough,  and  I  know,  of  course,  that  Johannes  Brahms  wrote 
them,  but  it  needs  a  little  effort  to  remember  his  familiar  name  as 
their  composer.  There  is  a  kind  of  small  mental  pause  before  the 
name  is  called  to  mind.  Yet  the  character  of  that  uncertainty  is 
not  the  same  as  in  other  cases  when  I  try  to  remember:  "Who 
wrote  this?'*  It  is  rather  the  conquest  of  a  doubt  or  the  expression 
of  some  disbelief.  When  this  weakness  of  my  memory  occurred,  I 
decided  to  find  out  what  caused  this  special  failing.  Such  a  deci- 
sion can  be  compared  to  making  up  one's  mind  to  clean  a  neg- 
lected drawer.  The  analytic  method  lends  itself  rather  well  to  the 
service  of  a  mental  vacuum  cleaner  in  cases  where  emotional  dust 
prevents  our  memory  from  smooth  functioning. 

The  first  attempt  at  free  thought  association  revealed  that  my 
doubt  or  disbelief  hung  somewhere  on  the  word  Liebe,  as  if  I 
were  doubting  that  those  waltzes  really  express  genuine  feelings 
of  love,  as  if  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  Johannes  Brahms  could 
have  been  deeply  in  love  with  a  woman.  My  subjective  concept  of 
the  composer  is  that  of  a  shy,  remote,  and  inwardly  cool  personal- 
ity, unable  to  express  his  emotions  freely  except  in  music.  This 
impression  is,  of  course,  not  based  on  knowledge  of  his  life  his- 
tory, of  which  I  know  but  little,  and  I  wonder  about  it.  I  argue 
with  myself:  What  about  that  deep  and  lasting  affection  for  the 
widow  of  Robert  Schumann?  If  this  intimate  and  tender  emotion 
for  Clara  Schumann  for  so  many  years  was  not  love,  what  else 
was  it?  But  the  counter-voice  makes  itself  heard:  In  spite  of  all  in- 
timacy, of  all  protestations  of  love  and  of  passion,  he  never  ap- 
proached her  sexually.  He  loved  and  desired  her  in  his  mind  only. 
.  .  .  What  in  Heaven's  name  kept  him  back?  .  .  .  She  was  four- 
teen years  older  and  had,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  seven  children. 
.  .  .  They  were  both  free,  loved  each  other— why  did  he  not 
possess  her  in  those  many  years?  .  .  .  There  were,  I  am  sure, 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  409 

caresses,  something  of  what  Is  called  "heavy  petting"  today,  but 
nothing  else.  .  .  .  "Tout  excepte  fa/9  say  the  Parisians:  "all  but 
that/*  She  was  perhaps  a  mother-representative  to 

as  such  sexually  untouchable,  while  he  Ms 

by  relations  with  degraded  objects,  streetwalkers.  As  a  of 

fact,  the  latter  point  is  detailed  by  the  biographers  of  the  com- 
poser,* but  I  know  it  from  more  direct  sources. 

The  image  of  my  Aunt  Resi  (Viennese  abbreviation  of  Therfcse) 
appeared  in  my  memory.  1  remember  Taete  Resi  as  an  old 
woman,  but  she  was  perhaps  middle-aged  when  she  and  I 

was  eight  or  nine  years  old.  She  lived  in  the  Wieden,  a 
of  Vienna  that  appeared  suburban  to  us  children  at  the  in 

a  small  apartment  on  a  narrow  side  street.  She  had  a 
for  many  years,  living  on  a  small  pension.  She  kept  her 
immaculately  clean  and  neat,  and  I  still  remember  how  carefully 
we  children  had  to  wipe  our  shoes  before  we  were  allowed  to  en- 
ter her  apartment.  There  we  had  to  sit  quietly  on  the  couch  and 
were  forbidden  to  touch  any  of  the  numerous  pictures,  knick- 
knacks,  and  whatnots  which  stood  on  little  tables.  We  did  not  like 
to  visit  Aunt  Resi  because  we  had  to  be  on  our  best  behavior 
with  her,  but  our  mother  took  us  there  every  Saturday.  In  my 
family  they  frequently  told  the  story  of  how  Aunt  Resi  promised 
my  little  sister  to  leave  her  a  golden  bracelet  in  her  will,  anci  that 
my  sister  asked  her  immediately  after  arriving  for  the  weekly 
visit,  "Wenn  sterbst  du  schont"  ("When  are  you  going  to  die?"}. 

Xante  Resi  spent  many  hours  of  her  day  sitting  at  her  window 
and  observing  all  her  neighbors.  She  knew  a  lot  about  each  of 
them  and  she  liked  to  tell  what  she  knew.  Otherwise  put,  she  was 
a  gossip  and,  if  one  could  trust  family  hearsay,  of  a  malicious 
kind.  My  sister  Mai^aret  and  I  listened,  of  course,  to  what  our 
aunt  had  to  say  to  my  mother  about  her  neighbors. 

In  my  thoughts,  Aunt  Resi  is  connected  with  my  early  recogni- 
tion of  some  facts  of  life  and  with  Johannes  Brahms.  It 
that  my  aunt's  pet  hate  was  a  pretty  young  woman  whose  win- 
dows faced  hers  in  the  apartment  across  the  street.  Aunt  Resi 

*  Dr.  Edward  Hitsdunann  described  this  characteristic  division  of  Brahms's 

love  life  in  a  paper  "Johannes  Brahms  und  die  Fxauen/'  Die  Psychmn&iytixhe 
(1953),  No.  2,  Vol.  V. 


41O  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

knew  quite  a  few  things  about  this  neighbor  whom  she  could  see 
when  she  leaned  out  her  window.  If  one  believed  our  aunt, 
"that  woman"  was  no  good,  she  slept  till  noon,  was  lazy  and 
sloppy  to  a  scandalous  degree,  and  she  saw  "men"  in  her  apart- 
ment. .  .  .  Aunt  Resi  mentioned  that  a  Herr  von  Brahms  used 
to  visit  this  lady  regularly  and  then  added  something  in  a  lower 
voice.  This  Mr.  Brahms  appeared  to  me  as  someone  a  little  lower 
than  a  criminal  as  he  kept  company  with  that  woman,  whom  our 
aunt  sometimes  called  a  Hur  (whore).  This  was  the  first  time  I 
had  ever  heard  this  expression— It  was  certainly  before  the  age  of 
kindergarten— and  I  asked  my  mother  on  the  way  home  what  the 
word  meant.  My  mother  was  shocked  and  forbade  me  ever  to 
utter  that  bad  word.  She  gave  me  no  information  about  its  mean- 
Ing,  but  even  at  the  time  I  must  have  sensed  what  it  signified. 
Some  of  that  foreknowledge  about  sex,  so  regularly  met  with  in 
children,  must  have  told  me  why  the  unknown  Herr  von  Brahms 
used  to  visit  that  woman. 

The  second  time  I  heard  the  name  of  Brahms  was  not  long 
after  Aunt  Resi's  circumstantial  gossip.  On  a  walk  with  my  father 
we  met  a  stocky  old  man  with  a  long  gray  beard.  My  father  took 
his  hat  off  to  him,  and  the  man  did  likewise  to  my  father.  "That 
was  Herr  Brahms,"  said  my  father.  "You  know  he  is  the  man  who 
wrote  many  of  the  lieder  Mother  sings.  He  has  written  beautiful 
music"  I  turned  around  and  looked  after  the  man,  who  walked 
in  a  very  dignified  manner,  I  remembered  that  Aunt  Resi  had 
spoken  of  this  man,  and  also  in  what  connection,  but  I  did  not  tell 
Father.  In  spite  of  her  report,  it  was  difficult  to  imagine  Mr. 
Brahms  as  a  lover— he  was  old  and  dignified—but  I  had  to  believe 
Aunt  ResFs  words. 

His  name  had  come  up  in  the  meantime  because  Mother  had 
sung  some  of  his  songs,  accompanying  herself  on  the  piano.  I  did 
not  like  all  of  them,  but  some,  like  the  vivid  and  tuneful  Verge- 
bliches  Standchen,  I  could  soon  hum.  When  Mother  once  men- 
tioned the  composer's  name  to  a  lady  visitor,  I  had  asked 
whether  that  was  the  same  man  who  used  to  visit  the  lady  across 
from  Aunt  Resl*s  house.  Mother  answered,  "Yes." 

I  understood  the  text  of  Vergebliches  Sidndchen  in  a  vague  and 
childish  manner.  I  realized  that  the  song  is  a  dialogue  between  a 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  41! 

lover  who  pleads  with  a  girl  to  let  him  come  to  her  In  the  evening 
and  that  she  refuses  him  and  finally  sends  him  away.  I  knew 
that  the  title  of  the  song  Vergebliches  meant,  in  effect, 

a  disappointed  or  futile  serenade.  In  a  naive  manner  I  brought 
the  text  in  intimate  thought-connection  with  the  life  of 

the  composer  about  whom  I  knew  only  what  Aunt  Resi 
my  mother.  I  imagined  that  "that  woman"          once  to 

let  Mr.  Brahms  come  to  her  room  and  that  he  complained 
this  misfortune  in  his  song.  It  seems  I  did  not  give 
to  the  fact  that  such  behavior  on  the  part  of  the  lady  would  be  in 
contradiction   to  her  attitude  on   otber   occasions  when    Mr. 
Brahms  spent  the  night  in  her  apartment,  according  to  Aunt 
Resi's  report.  I  assumed  that  the  lady  once  rejected  him  for 
reasons  of  her  own. 

My  mother  sang  the  Vergebliches  Standchen  occasionally  In 
later  years.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  heard  her  sing  it  after  I  was  In 
my  adolescence.  The  title  and  the  content  of  the  song  had,  in  the 
meantime,  taken  on  a  new  and  secret  meaning  for  me. 

I  had  then  acquired  not  only  an  adequate  knowledge  of  what 
adults  do  in  sex,  but  also  a  rich,  if  vulgar,  vocabulary  for  sexual 
activities.  The  boys  in  school  and  on  the  playgrounds  were 
teachers,  and  the  gutter  was  an  excellent  school  for  a  toy  curious 
about  the  facts  of  life.  The  vulgar  word  for  the  erection,,  the  up- 
right position  of  the  penis,  in  Vienna  is  St&nder,  a  derivative  of 
the  word  "stand/*  comparable  to  the  American  vulgar  expression 
"hard-on."  Standchen  could  be  interpreted  as  a  diminutive  of 
"stand/'  and  would  then  mean  a  small  or  modest  erection.  The 
title  of  the  Brahms  lied  Vergebliches  Standchen  would,  thus 
understood,  mean  futile  small  erection,  that  is,  a  state  of  sexual 
excitement  of  the  male  without  release.  In  that  phase  of  boy- 
hood the  fantasy  was  filled  with  sexual  images  and  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  song  and  of  its  title  is  not  as  astonishing  as  it  now 
sounds.  The  lascivious  fantasy  of  the  "naughty"  boy  transformed 
the  disappointed  serenade  into  the  picture  of  an  erection  not 
brought  to  its  organic  end,  a  sexual  excitement  that  was  frus- 
trated by  the  cruelty  of  a  girl. 

In  later  years,  also,  when  I  read  about  the  relationship  of  the 
composer  and  Clara  Schumann,  the  thought  of  that  lady  of  easy 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

virtue,  Aunt  Resi's  neighbor,  sometimes  appeared.  It  was  so 
persistent  that  It  emerged  when  I  heard  the  Vergebliches  Stand- 
chen  again.  In  spite  of  what  mental  and  emotional  maturity  I 
could  muster  In  the  meantime,  the  suspicion  remained  that  the 
Standchen  was  futile  or  the  sexual  performance  of  poor  Brahms. 
So  stubborn  was  this  impression  from  boyhood  that  this  thought 
sometimes  emerged  disturbingly  when  I  passed  the  impressive 
monument  to  the  great  composer  that  stands  before  the  Techni- 
cal College  at  VIenna-not  far  from  the  street  where  Aunt  Resi 
and  her  blond  young  neighbor  lived. 

Remnants  of  that  old  doubt  of  Brahms's  capabilities  as  a  lover 
were,  it  seems,  displaced  to  his  authorship  of  the  Liebesliedcr 
Walter  as  If  I  were  not  certain  that  the  master  was  able  to  love  a 
woman.  Later  on  there  was  the  puzzling  problem  of  how  it  was  pos- 
sible that  Brahms  was  so  much  In  love  with  Clara  and  yet  could 
regularly  visit  that  slut  in  a  back  street  of  Vienna.  I  still  remember 
that,  during  junior  high-school  years,  I  read  the  shocking  sen- 
tence Gustave  Flaubert  once  wrote  to  the  effect  that  a  young  man 
can  worship  a  certain  woman  and  in  spite  of  it  run  every  evening 
to  prostitutes  ("Un  jeune  homme  pent  adorer  une  femme  et  aller 
chaque  soir  chez  les  filles").  But  many  years  had  to  pass  before  I 
found,  In  Freud's  psychoanalytic  writing,  an  explanation  of  that 
division  in  the  love  life  of  many  men. 

Returning  In  thought  to  the  Liebeslieder  Walzer,  one  remem- 
bers that  the  North  German  Brahms  spent  most  of  his  life  In 
Vienna,  and  Johann  Strauss  was  his  contemporary.  The  two  com- 
posers knew  each  other  well  and  often  met  in  Vienna  and  in 
IschI,  the  lovely  summer  resort  near  Salzburg.  Brahms  admired 
the  melodic  Invention  of  the  Waltz  King.  Asked  to  autograph 
the  fan  of  Alice  Strauss,  he  wrote  the  first  bars  of  the  Bine 
Danube  waltz  and  beneath  it:  "Alas,  not  by  Johannes  Brahms." 

This  enchanting  waltz  came  to  my  mind  the  other  day  in  an- 
other connection  and  with  It  another  memory  of  young  years.  It 
deals  with  a  different  aspect  of  the  sexual  problems. 

The  other  night  before  falling  asleep  I  skimmed  through  the 
pages  of  two  books  I  had  read  before:  Anatole  France  en  pan- 
toufles  and  Itineraire  de  Paris  au  Buenos  Aires  by  Jean  Jacques 
Brotissoe,  the  master's  secretary.  The  wit  and  the  wisdom,  the 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  413 

mordant  skepticism  and  the  penetrating  of  Aeatole  France 

delighted  me  again.  In  a  certain  the  old  of  the 

Villa  Said  alludes,  in  conversation  with  his  young,  secretary, 

to  Remy  de  Gourmont's  de 

snails  as  masterpieces  of  creation  because  they  are  fe- 

male simultaneously  and  can  try  now  one  sex  the  other. 

Their  sexual  union  lasts  five  or  six  Anatole  France  re- 

marked, "That  would  be  worth  while  indeed," 
for  us  poor  humans  the  pleasure          but  the          of  a 
lash. 

He  reminded  Brousson  of  the  Capuchin  friar9  Barbette, 
thundered  to  his  audience  from  the  pulpit  a  few 
ago:  "You  give  yourself  up  to  frivolous  living         to  fornication, 
you  poor  people,  you  are  nothing  but  fools.  The  is  not 

worth  the  candle!  In  your  ecstasy  you  touch  the  seventh  heaven, 
but  how  long  do  you  remain  there?  If  It  lasted  seven  years,  seven 
months,  seven  days,  seven  hours  only!  But  it  lasts  only  a  moment 
and  In  a  trice  you  are  already  IE  hell  I""  The  old  master  certainly 
Imitated  the  pious  indignation  of  the  Capuchin  father  who  tried 
to  convince  the  faithful  that  the  short  duration  of  sexual 
pleasure,  followed  by  hell-fire,  Is,  so  to  speak,  a  bad  investment. 
Anatole  France  regretted  with  Father  Barbette  the  transitoriness 
of  sexual  pleasure  and  pointed  out  that  the  snails  who  are  ugly 
and  repugnant  animals  have  some  advantages  over  human  be- 
ings: they  are  hermaphrodites,  their  loves  last  six  weeks  and  they 
have  an  exitatory  genital  instrument  with  a  long  point.  "Yes, 
my  friend,"  Anatole  France  added,  "just  this  is  worth  an  Im- 
mortal soul." 

The  secretary  gave  a  detailed  and  intimate  report  of  France's 
lecture  tour  In  Latin  America.  On  board  ship,  the  writer,  now  al- 
most sixty-five  years  old,  began  an  affair  with  a  French  actress.  He 
admitted  to  Brousson  that  she  was  no  youngster— as  a  matter  of 
fact,  she  was  fifty  years  old— and  that  her  face  had 
marked  wrinkles,  but  the  rest  of  her:  "Ah!  youth  itself!"  In  the 
meantime,  Madame  de  Cavaillet,  his  mistress  of  so  man?  years, 
sat  alone  In  Paris  in  despair  because  the  news  reaching  her  left  no 
doubt  that  Anatole  France  had  made  a  fool  of  himself, 
reported  in  his  books  many  witty  sayings  of  his  genial  master  who 


414  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

still  did  not  believe  in  "pure  love."  France  amused  his  serious 
Provencal  secretary  in  elaborating  on  and  embroidering  the  story 
Seigneur  de  Bran  tome  told  in  his  Mf  moires  in  1650:  that  he  met 
an  old  man  whom  he  had  once  known  as  a  young,  gallant,  and 
handsome  fellow  and  as  a  favorite  of  the  ladies.  He  had  become 
a  druggist  and  now  manufactured  all  kinds  of  excellent  drinks. 
Brantome  visited  him,  surrounded  by  his  vials,  and  congratulated 
him.  But  the  old  man  confessed  to  the  young  one  that  all  his 
liquors,  however  excellent,  were  not  as  valuable  as  the  wonderful 
liquid  which  he  had  once  used  and  enjoyed  so  much  and  of  which 
old  age  had  deprived  him. 

Did  not  Schopenhauer  praise  old  age  because  the  sexual  de- 
sire ceases  with  it?  But  it  is  not  true,  only  the  sexual  power  ceases. 
A  clever  German  woman,  Alice  Berend,  once  wrote  that  the  bad 
thing  in  getting  old  is  not  that  one  becomes  older,  but  that  one 
remains  young.  The  French  writers  are  not  only  more  worldly- 
wise  but  also  more  sincere  and  courageous  in  sexual  matters  than 
the  writers  of  other  nations.  They  candidly  state  that  it  is  not  the  de- 
sire that  is  wanting  in  old  age,  but  the  performance.  They  do 
not  play  hide-and-seek  with  themselves,  and  they  assert  that  the 
sexual  pleasure  is  one  of  the  greatest  that  human  life  has  to  offer. 
What  other  satisfaction  can  be  compared  with  it?  Achievement, 
fame,  social  recognition?  Zola's  Pascal  Rougon,  sixty  years  old, 
looks  back  on  his  life  and  often  feels  like  cursing  his  science  which 
he  accuses  of  having  stolen  from  him  "le  meilleur  de  sa  virilite" 
In  Maupassant's  Bel  Ami,  an  old  writer  speaks  to  a  younger  one 
in  the  same  vein  as  Anatole  France  spoke  to  young,  alert  Jean 
Jacques  Brousson,  who  flattered  and  envied  the  famous  master: 
"What  use  is  the  goal,  fame,  if  I  can't  enjoy  it  any  more  in  the 
form  of  love?"  And  he  adds  the  wonderful  sentence:  "Encore 
quelques  baisers  et  vous  serez  impuissant"  France  himself  calls 
the  impotence  of  old  age  "la  premiere  mart." 

Yes,  the  French  writers  have  the  courage  and  the  candor  to  ex- 
press a  high  evaluation  of  sexual  satisfaction,  and  they  do  not 
shrink  from  presenting  the  sexual  misery  of  old  age  whose  desire 
is  mostly  in  the  mind.  There  is  a  lot  of  talk,  serious  and  flippant* 
about  sexuality  in  American  literature,  but  what  writer  speaks 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  415 

as  clearly  and  definitely  and  in  such  matter-of-fact  of 

certain  aspects  of  sex  as  the  French? 

They  are  neglected  or  brushed  even  IE  psychoanalytic 

literature.  Only  Freud  courageously  turned  against  the 
hypocrisy  of  our  society  that  looks  at  sexual  pleasures  condescend- 
ingly at  best,  In  some  passages  of  his  writings,  he  of  the 
high  evaluation  of  sexual  satisfaction  in  contrast  to  a  conven- 
tional and  hypocritical  attitude  that  treats  it  as  if  it  were 
and  really  dispensable.  He  reports,  for  instance,  that  the  Turks  in 
the  Herzegowina  evaluate  sexual  pleasure  above  all  others 
that  sexual  disturbances  make  them  fall  into  despair  that  strangely 
contrasts  with  their  fatalistic  resignation  when  facing  death.*  A 
Turkish  patient  told  his  doctor,  "You  know,  sir,  if  that  not 
function  any  more,  life  has  no  value/* 

While  I  was  pondering  on  such  a  high  evaluation  of  sexuality 
as  is  expressed  by  Zola,  Maupassant,  France,  and  that  Turkish 
patient,  I  felt  increasingly  sleepy  and  I  was  gliding  into  that  state 
between  being  awake  and  falling  asleep  which  is  favorable  to  a 
looser  way  of  thinking.  On  the  threshold  of  sleep  the  first  bars 
of  the  Strauss  waltz  On  the  Beautiful  Blue  were 

heard  by  the  inner  ear.  I  wondered  from  where  these  bubbling 
rhythms  emerged.  The  face  of  Johann  Strauss  appeared  in  my 
mind,  as  I  have  seen  it  in  photographs  and  on  the  monument  in 
the  Stadtpark  in  Vienna:  a  grand  seigneur  of  music,  surrounded 
by  beautiful  women.  Some  memory  connected  with  that  monu- 
ment was  stirred  up,  but  I  could  not  grasp  it.  I  was  too  tired  to 
think.  The  tune  of  the  Blue  Danube  waltz  accompanied  me  into 
sleep. 

A  few  weeks  later  I  invited  a  lady  to  have  dinner  with  me  at 
Fassler's  Viennese  Room  on  Fifty-first  Street  On  the  walk  of  that 
restaurant  are  pictures  of  different  places  and  houses  in  Vienna, 
and  on  the  tables  are  wind-protected  candles  as  at  the  Heungem, 
those  little  restaurants  in  the  suburbs  of  Vienna,  and  there  is 
music,  too:  a  piano  player  and  a  violinist  as  well  as  a  singer*  Be- 
hind the  piano  is  a  life-sized  bronze  bust  of  Johann  Strauss,  illumi- 
nated by  light  from  above.  For  a  moment  you  cam  have  the  illu- 
sion that  you  sit  again  at  a  Heurigen,  listening  to  the  old 

*  In  On  the  Psychopethotogy  of  Everyday  Life  (New  Y®*, 


416  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

familiar  melodies.  Now  the  piano  player  begins  to  play,  the 
violinist  joins  him,  and  there  It  is:  the  Blue  Danube  waltz. 

That  tune  In  my  ears  and  the  bust  of  Strauss,  shining  in  the 
candlelight  in  the  corner,  brought  back  in  a  flash  the  memory  for 
which  1  had  searched  In  vain  the  other  day.  It  had  not  been  really 
forgotten;  It  was  only  that  I  had  not  thought  of  it  for  many,  per- 
haps for  forty  years.  There  was  the  distinct  image  of  the  alleys 
and  meadows  of  the  Stadtpark  and  of  that  monument  of  the  Waltz 
King  on  the  right  side. 

Quite  clearly  I  see  the  figure  in  my  mind's  eye,  his  face,  the  full 
head  of  hair,  the  mustache  (he  dyed  both  when  he  became  old). 
The  violin  under  his  chin,  the  bow  In  an  elegant  pose.  At  the 
right,  at  the  left,  and  on  the  high  arch  above  the  composer's  figure 
are  beautiful  dancing  women  whose  dresses  seem  to  flow  into 
waves  at  their  feet,  the  waves  of  the  beautiful  blue  Danube. 

And  now  that  scene  comes  distinctly  back  to  mind,  as  if  It  had 
been  yesterday  and  not  forty-five  years.  .  .  .  Ah,  I  was  twenty-two 
years  old  and  it  was  early  In  the  summer,  the  time  before  the  last 
examinations.  .  .  .  When  we  did  not  have  to  attend  lectures,  we 
took  our  books  to  a  public  garden  to  study  there.  Once  I  sat  IE 
the  Stadtpark  on  a  bench  facing  the  monument  of  Johann  Strauss. 
I  had  the  psychology  books  by  Wundt  and  Ziehen  with  me  and 
made  a  determined  effort  to  cram  as  much  knowledge  of  physio- 
logical and  psychological  facts  as  possible.  There  was  an  old  mam 
sitting  beside  me,  comfortably  smoking  his  cigar  and  sometimes 
looking  into  his  newspaper.  I  rarely  glanced  up  from  my  book. 
When  I  once  looked  after  a  pretty  young  girl  who  had  just  passed 
the  bench,  I  felt  that  the  man  smiled  at  me.  He  said  in  a  broad 
Viennese  dialect,  "Quite  good-looking,  isn't  she?  ...  I  bet  you 
would  not  say  no,  if  she  would  ask  you  to,  would  you?  .  .  .  Yes, 
It  is  nice  to  be  young.  .  .  .  You  will  understand  that  much  better 
when  you  become  old." 

I  must  have  made  some  inane  remarks  to  the  effect  that  to  be 
old  had  some  advantages  also,  because  the  man  replied  in  a  vivid 
manner,  "Oh,  don't  say  that,  my  young  friend!  Look  over  there, 
yeas,  to  that  monument."  He  pointed  to  the  statue  of  Strauss.* 

*  Here  is  3  mistake  of  memory:  Strauss's  monument  was  erected  a  few  years 

later. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  417 

"They  called  him  King  the  his 

who  was  a  conductor  was  also  called  Johann.  You  know,  1  am  a 
violinist  and  I  played  In  his  orchestra  many  years.  ...  I  quit 
only  after  he  died.  Back  in  1894— you  were  a  child— they  cele- 
brated his  fiftieth  jubilee  as  an  artist.  There  was  a  week  of 
in  his  honor,  a  brilliant  torch  parade,  all  the  streets  full  of 

banners  and  decorations.  The  Emperor  and  the  Court  congratu- 
lated him,  and  thousands  of  cables  arrived  all  the 
world  to  pay  homage  to  him,  Verdi  and  all  the  com- 
posers wrote  and  praised  him.  I  shall  never  forget  he  con- 
ducted our  orchestra  on  that  day  in  the  Theater  an  der  Wien. 
We  played,  of  course,  the  Blue  waltz  and  all 
beautiful  tunes.  Each  of  us  came  over  to  him  and  his  re- 
spects. He  pressed  my  hand  and  he  took  me  aside.  And  you  know 
what  he  said?  "Look,  my  dear  fellow,  what's  the  use  of  and 
all  that?  ...  I  can't  any  more,  don't  you  understand,  I  can't 
any  more/*  The  old  musician  wanted  to  tell  me  more  about  his 
beloved  master,  but  I  had  to  hurry  to  a  lecture  at  the  university, 
"What  were  you  thinking  of?"  asked  the  lady  who  was  my 
dinner  guest  "You  smiled  the  way  you  do  when  you  think  of  a 
delightful  anecdote."  I  told  her  that  I  had  returned  in  my 
thoughts  to  old  Vienna  and  to  the  time  when  I  was  twenty  years 
old.  I  spoke  also  of  Johann  Strauss  whose  bust  glimmered  in  the 
candlelight  over  there  and  whose  sparkling  Blue  waltz 
the  musicians  had  just  finished  playing.  1  told  her  about  his  anni- 
versary at  which  he  was  celebrated  by  the  Viennese  like  a  god.  But 
I  did  not  tell  her  of  the  conversation  with  the  musician  in  the 
Stadtpark  nor  of  what  Johann  Strauss  had  said  at  Ms  Jubilee. 


It  has  often  been  said  that  "music  and  mathematics  go  to- 
gether/* that  composition  and  mathematical  creation  have  a 
sturdy  stem  in  common  from  which  they  branch  in  opposite 
directions.  The  most  fundamental  of  the  arts  and  the  most  fun- 
damental of  the  sciences  show  in  their  best  creations  the  necessary 
conditions  of  inevitability,  importance,  and  economy,  the 


418  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

logical  progression  from  one  stage  to  another,*  The  Interest  In 
music  that  appeals  to  emotion  and  in  mathematics  that  appeals 
to  Intellect  often  coexist.  Many  mathematicians  and  mathematical 
physicists  from  Pythagoras  to  Einstein  feel  very  attracted  to  that 
art,  and  quite  a  few  composers  have  occupied  themselves  with 
mathematical  problems.  It  seems  to  both  groups  possible  to 
turn  with  relief  from  one  interest  to  the  other.  We  are  not 
astonished  when  we  learn  that  musical  associations  sometimes 
stimulate  mathematical  research  work. 

Nothing  of  such  an  affinity  Is  known  between  music  and  scien- 
tific psychology,  although  the  one  speaks  the  language  of  emotions 
and  the  other  explores  them.  The  urge  of  imaginative  expression 
on  one  side  and  the  special  curiosity  that  leads  to  scientific  in- 
quisitiveness  do  not  often  meet.  The  preceding  chapters  presented 
many  examples  in  which  tunes  appeared  In  the  mind  of  the  psy- 
choanalyst or  the  patient  during  analytic  sessions  or  in  connection 
with  them.  It  was  pointed  out  that  they  fulfill  a  certain  psycho- 
logical function  and  that  the  analyst  has  to  listen  to  the  whisper  of 
their  meaning  while  until  now  he  did  not  give  them  a  second 
thought,  If  he  gave  them  any.  In  this  chapter,  an  example  will  be 
presented  in  detail  which,  I  hope,  will  prove  that  musical  associa- 
tions also  have  an  unconscious  purpose  in  abstract  psychological 
research. 

My  restricted  reading  does  not  allow  me  to  state  that  there  are 
no  statements  or  reports  on  whether  and  how  musical  associations 
have  influenced  scientific  work,  interfered  with  or  advanced  the 
mental  task  of  research.  It  would  be  very  interesting  to  know  what 
influence  musical  impressions  had  on  the  thought  processes  of 
Theodor  Billroth,  to  whom  modern  surgery  owes  so  many  new 
methods,  and  who  was  a  friend  of  Johannes  Brahms  and  very  in- 
terested in  music.**  Were  the  profound  reflections  on  physics  of 
Albert  Einstein,  who  was  an  excellent  violinist,  sometimes  inter- 
rupted by  melodies? 

Cautious  questioning  concerning  the  emergence  and  influence 
of  musical  associations  was  neither  encouraging  nor  conclusive. 

*  Guy  Warrage,  "Music  and  Mathematics;'  Music  and  Letters  (Jan.,  1945), 
Vol.  XXVI,  No.  i. 

**  0r.  Biilroth  published  a  book  Wer  ist  mutikalishf  (Vienna,  1896.) 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  419 

Some  scientists  could  not  remember  that  their  research  work  was 
ever  influenced  by  musical  ideas.  Others  stated  that 
had  occasionally  occurred  to  them  during  their  research  work,  but 
they  treated  such  emergence  as  a  pleasant  diversion  which  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  intellectual  task  that  occupied  them.  A 
few  attributed  a  vague  stimulating  effect  to  tunes  that  had  come 
to  mind,  or  considered  them  as  expressions  of  or  sad  moods. 

Two  physicians  told  me  that  they  liked  to  listen  to  music  while 
they  pondered  on  possible  diagnosis  of  cases.  A  chemist  said  that 
he  had  caught  himself  humming  a  phrase  from  Beethoven's  Sixth 
Symphony  while  he  considered  a  certain  succession  of  biochemi- 
cal experiments,  but  that  he  was  irritated  when  he  heard  piano 
playing  while  he  worked  in  his  laboratory  on  experiments  that 
demanded  precision  and  undivided  attention. 

Even  when  inquiries  are  restricted  to  the  group  of  researchers 
who  love  music,  the  danger  of  glib  generalizations  has  to  be  con- 
sidered. The  emotional  situation  of  the  investigator  while  he  is 
working  has  to  be  taken  into  account  as  well  as  the  nature  of  his 
specific  work.  It  is  less  likely  that  the  solution  of  an  equation, 
some  logarithmic  calculation,  or  the  search  for  a  chemical  for- 
mula is  accompanied  by  a  musical  association  than  an  abstract 
speculation  about  some  mathematical  or  chemical  process.  It 
,  might  seem  that  a  purely  mechanical  occupation,  let  us  say  a 
laboratory  experiment  in  the  pursuit  of  a  research  project,  favors 
the  emergence  of  some  tune,  but  we  ran  here  into  the  psychological 
problem  of  attention.  It  is  very  possible  that  the  mind  of  the 
chemist  who  is  performing  the  experiment,  just  because  his  work 
is  at  the  moment  of  a  mechanical  nature,  is  occupied  with  some 
complex  problem. 

Our  mental  activity  is  a  mixture  of  goal-directed,  logical,  and 
rational  thinking  and  of  loose,  imaginative,  fantastic,  and  irra- 
tional thought-processes.  The  ratio  of  mixture  in  each  individual 
thought-act  is  different,  and  in  our  thinking  as  a  whole  variable. 
We  say  "sober  as  a  judge/*  and  mean  that  the  opinion  of  the 
judge  is  as  much  as  possible  unbiased,  devoid  of  emotional  inter- 
ferences, and  governed  only  by  logical  and  rational  conclusions 
and  considerations.  But  we  cannot  know  to  what  extent  tiratioaal, 
prejudiced  'emotional  factors  enter  even  into  what  we  Mie  to  call 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

"our  considered  judgment/'  It  seems  that  melodies  express  that 
emotional  and  loose,  fantastic  component  of  our  thinking  and 
manifest  that  part  of  our  thought-productivity  which  results  more 
from  our  imagination  than  from  logical  operations.  The  informa- 
tion I  was  able  to  get  from  quite  a  few  researchers  and  scientists 
seems  to  confirm  this  conjecture,  at  least  in  the  majority  of  cases. 

As  a  kind  of  psychological  circumstantial  evidence,  the  follow- 
ing observation,  reported  by  different  scientists,  can  be  con- 
sidered: The  hearing  of  a  symphony  or  of  some  chamber  music, 
far  from  interfering  with  the  intellectual  work,  had  an  indefinite, 
but  distinct  stimulating  effect  upon  the  research  as  long  as  the 
scientist  did  not  pay  more  than  casual  attention  to  the  music  and 
was  concentrated  on  his  research  problem.  Whenever  he  became 
more  attentive  to  the  melodic  texture  or  the  harmonic  structure  of 
the  composition,  he  felt  that  his  interest  in  the  research  problem 
was  receding.  It  did  not  vanish,  but  it  moved  into  the  background 
and  reappeared  only  after  that  other  musical  interest  flagged.  A 
psychiatrist,  occupied  with  a  theory  on  schizophrenia,  reported 
that,  while  considering  the  physiological  and  psychological  factors 
of  that  psychosis,  he  could  listen  to  the  Fourth  Symphony  of 
Brahms  in  the  described  aloof  manner.  He  enjoyed  the  theoretical 
speculations  about  the  nature  of  that  psychotic  disease  at  the  same 
time  as  the  melodies  of  the  symphony.  His  trains  of  thought,  di- 
rected to  the  relation  of  somatic  and  psychogenic  factors  in 
schizophrenia,  were  interrupted  by  the  memory  that  he  had  once 
read  that  this  Brahms  symphony  had  teen  called  the  Oedipus  Sym- 
phony. The  name,  meaningful  to  the  psychiatrist,  interfered  with 
the  pleasure  of  scientific  daydreaming  as  well  as  with  the  enjoy- 
ment of  music. 

In  another  case  the  thought-process  of  a  chemist,  directed  to  the 
possibility  of  finding  a  new  antitoxin*  was  interrupted  because  he 
followed  a  certain  musical  motive  through  a  Mozart  quartet.  Be- 
fore this  moment  he  was  well  able  to  pursue  his  ideas  while  listen- 
ing to  the  composition.  When  he  began  to  pay  attention  to  that 
motive,  when  he,  so  to  speak,  waited  for  its  reappearance  within  the 
movement,  his  attention  was  deflected  from  the  chemical  problem. 
I  can  add  a  self-observed  experience  to  these  examples:  While 
ihlnklng  of  a  psychological  theory  on  the  differences  of  the  sexes, 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  |2I 

1  listened  to  the  Siegfried  by  Richard  Wagner.  When  it 

occurred  to  me  that  the  composition  celebrated  the  birth  of  Wag- 
ner's son,  my  thoughts  moved  from  the  psychological  subject  to 
my  own  son  Arthur  and  to  memories  of  his  birth,  to  my  wife,  to 
Vienna  where  he  was  born,  and  so  on.  While  listening  to  a  sym- 
phony or  to  chamber  music  in  many  cases  not  interfere  with 
and  sometimes  even  favorably  influences  theoretical  abstract 
thinking,  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  follow  or  re- 

flections of  this  kind,  if,  for  instance,  the  attention  is  directed 
to  the  words  of  a  song  or  to  the  text  of  an  opera  aria.  The  indefi- 
nite and  wide-spaced  character  of  the  melodic,  rhythmical,  and 
harmonic  development  of  a  symphonic  movement  does  not  inter- 
fere with  the  thought-process,  while  the  words  of  a  lied  or  of  an 
aria  compel  the  turning  of  the  listener's  attention  in  a  certain 
direction. 

The  bits  of  information  gathered  in  the  preceding  paragraphs 
are  in  no  way  appropriate  to  fill  the  gap  in  our  knowledge  about 
the  influence  of  musk,  especially  of  musical  associations,  on  ab- 
stract and  scientific  thinking.  They  cannot  satisfy  our  hunger  for 
understanding  because  they  are  too  unsubstantial  and  light.  They 
do  not  provide  enough  food  for  thought,  but  rather  whet  our 
appetite.  They  are  more  comparable  to  hors  d'oeuwes  served 
before  a  meal  than  to  its  regular  courses. 

Since  there  is  such  a  lack  of  information  and  a  complete  ab- 
sence of  appropriate  instances,  any  contribution,  however  trifling, 
should  be  welcome.  The  following  presents  an  instance  that  at- 
tempts, for  the  first  time,  as  far  as  I  know,  to  demonstrate  the 
way  in  which  a  musical  association  can  enter  the  area  of  theoreti- 
cal scientific  thinking.  In  giving  a  precise  description  of  the  origin 
and  the  evolution  of  the  intellectual  process  up  to  the  point  where 
the  melody  emerged,  I  hope  to  make  obvious  the  psychological 
meaning  and  function  of  its  appearance  and  how  it  differs  from 
other  associations.  Needless  to  say  that  the  theoretical  part  of  the 
research  here  considered  is  of  secondary  importance.  It  has,  never- 
theless, to  be  accurately  described  and  minutely  presented  in  or- 
der to  define  at  which  point  the  musical  association  intruded  the 
area  of  scientific  hypothesis.  The  patient  reader  will  thus  bear 
with  a  detailed  presentation  of  the  psychological  problem  of  re- 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

search  which  is  followed  by  a  shorter  discussion  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  tune  that  surprisingly  emerged  in  the  middle  of  at- 
tempts to  come  to  conclusions.  The  subject  matter  of  the  research 
was  as  remote  from  the  area  of  music  as  possible.  It  concerned 
the  psychology  and  psychopathology  of  obesity,  especially  its  emo- 
tional factors.  I  shall  try  to  show  what  the  emerging  melody 
meant,  but,  more  than  this,  that  its  occurrence  within  a  certain 
train  of  thought  gave  me  a  new  angle  on  the  problem  and  marked 
progress  on  the  way  to  its  solution. 

The  evolution  of  psychological  theory  does  not  take  place  in  a 
vacuum  remote  from  the  experiences  of  everyday  life.  It  is  a  re- 
sult of  many  impressions  and  insights  that  have  to  be  verified  and 
checked  many  times  before  they  reach  the  first  and  still  vague 
shape  of  a  tentative  theory.  From  where  I,  as  psychoanalyst,  sit, 
namely,  on  a  chair  behind  the  patient,  human  emotions,  thoughts, 
and  impulses  look  one  way,  while  they  have  a  different  appear- 
ance when  you  look  at  them  from  your  desk,  alone  late  at 
night,  trying  to  abstract  their  general  character  from  the  individ- 
ual cases  and  formulate  their  essential  qualities  apart  from  the 
particular  and  personal  traits.  The  different  phases  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  a  theory  require  different  talents  of  the  researcher.  For 
the  first  phase  originality  of  observation  is,  it  seems  to  me,  the 
most  important  requirement,  while  for  the  following  the 
capability  of  seeing  phenomena  in  a  general,  abstract  way  is 
indispensable. 

The  following  concept  is  taken  from  the  transition  phase  be- 
tween observation  and  the  first  shaping  of  a  new  theory.  During 
the  analysis  of  several  cases,  I  had  received  certain  impressions, 
condensed  by  accumulation,  about  the  emotional  dynamics  of 
aggressive  drives  in  obese  and  overweight  persons.  Certain  be- 
havior traits  of  patients  seemed  to  point  to  a  common  pattern, 
however  different  their  personalities  were.  The  representative 
instances  considered  in  this  period  of  the  formation  of  a  theory 
germ  were  two  men  and  two  women. 

Jack,  a  man  in  his  late  thirties,  had  some  emotional  difficulties 
with  his  boss  in  the  office.  He  often  felt  insulted  and  humiliated 
by  the  criticism  of  the  older  man,  who  was  a  father-representative 
person  for  him.  Jack  had  many  revenge  fantasies  and  often  day- 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

dreamed  that  he  would  give  his  "a  piece  of  my  mind."  The 
samples  he  presented  in  analytic  sessions  were  filled  with 
and  curses  of  the  vilest  kind.  Jack's  vivid  imagination  went  be- 
yond scenes  In  which  he  cursed  his  superior  to  In  which 
he  added  cruel  Injuries  to  unprintable  Insults.  Jack's  aggressive- 
ness exhausted  Itself  In  those  fantasies.  He  realized  that  in  real  ilfe 
fie  was  unable  to  inflict  any  harm  on  his  antagonist.  He  com- 
plained that  he  could  not  be  a  heel  and  a  villain  as  he  would  like 
to  be,  and  daydreamed  that  he  might  Just  once  become  a  ruthless 
and  reckless  character,  able  to  walk  over  the  corpses  of  his 
enemies.  He  was  sometimes  desperate  because  he  behaved  in  a 
quite  friendly  way  toward  a  man  whom  he  hated  and  whom  he 
wished  to  destroy.  He  sometimes  had  short-lived  iare-ups  of  tem- 
per, but  was  soon  reconciled  by  a  few  friendly  words.  The  com- 
plaint he  expressed  several  times  during  an  analytic 
sounded  almost  pathetic:  "If  I  only  could  be  a  son  of  a  bitch 
just  once,  I  need  not  be  a  son  of  a  bitch  any  more."  It  Is  conspicu- 
ous that  in  moods  of  indignation  or  rage  he  sometimes  ate  much 
more  than  usual.  On  some  occasions  he  indulged  himself  In  a 
moderate  kind  of  eating  orgy— for  instance,  taking  dinner  twice 
within  an  hour.  Jack  was  stout  and  will  perhaps  become  fat  in 
progressed  middle  age. 

The  case  of  Alice  was  distinctly  different  in  all  essential  traits. 
She  had  been  a  very  fat  child  and  continued  to  be  plump  until 
her  late  twenties  when  she  reduced  under  an  energetic  regime  of 
diet,  drugs,  and  exercises.  When,  ten  years  later,  she  became  my 
patient,  she  had  a  perfect  figure  according  to  the  present  fashion. 
She  wanted  to  keep  it  because  she  wished  to  remain  attractive,  but 
she  had  an  Intense  craving  for  food  to  which  she  occasionally 
yielded  with  subsequent  regrets  and  remorse.  Her  attitude  to  food 
was  also  Influenced  by  various  neurotic  fears;  for  Instance,  by  hypo- 
chondriacal  alarms.  She  suffered  periodically  from  the  fear  that 
she  had  tuberculosis,  cancer,  and  various  Infectious  diseases,  and 
attacks  of  these  fears  sometimes  reached  the  degree  of  panic.  Many 
of  them  could  be  traced  back  In  analysis  to  reactions  on  ajgresslve 
impulses  against  persons  of  her  family.  She  wa%  for  instance, 
afraid  that  she  might  take  a  knife  and  cut  the  throat  of  her  daugh- 
ter or  in  a  moment  of  absent-mindedness  poison  bar  husband. 


424  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

The  connection  between  this  kind  of  obsessive  thinking  and  her 
hypochondriacal  symptoms  "became  obvious  on  many  occasions. 
One  instance  will  serve  as  representative.  She  had  cocktails  before 
dinner  with  her  husband  vith  whom  she  chatted  amiably.  When 
she  went  to  the  kitchen  to  get  something,  she  suddenly  had  the 
suspicion  that  her  husband  would  use  her  absence  to  put  some 
poison  into  her  cocktail  glass.  Shortly  after  dinner  she  felt  very 
ill  and  "unswallowed,"  the  refined  expression  she  used  for  vomit- 
ing. The  operating  of  a  paranoid  projection  mechanism  became 
obvious  on  many  occasions  of  this  kind. 

The  patient's  attitude  to  ker  appearance  was  dependent  on  her 
emotional  situation  in  more  ways  than  one.  On  the  whole,  she 
felt  satisfied  with  her  youthful  figure  when  she  looked  at  herself 
in  the  mirror.  But  sometimes  her  slimness  became  the  very  reason 
for  hypochondriacal  fears,  and  she  anxiously  asked  herself:  "Is 
anything  the  matter  with  me?  I  am  perhaps  ill  without  feeling 
pain."  She  remembered  having  seen  some  cases  of  cancer  in  which 
the  patients  rapidly  lost  weight,  and  she  became  terrified  at  the 
thought  that  she  could  have  various  forms  of  the  dreaded  disease. 
She  then  detected  several  symptoms  of  carcinoma  in  herself  and 
became  the  victim  of  intense  anxieties  anticipating  the  agonies  and 
the  inevitable  end.  To  assuage  her  fears,  she  began  to  eat  compul- 
sively until  she  looked  too  fa  t  and  started  a  strict  diet  again.  Dur- 
ing the  analytic  treatment,  this  cycle  could  be  observed  several 
times.  It  was  interesting  that  Alice's  temperament  seemed  also 
to  be  affected  by  it.  When  she  ate  too  much,  she  appeared 
amiable,  well  meaning,  and  affable,  good-tempered  and  inclined 
to  do  favors  far  people.  When  she  kept  a  strict  diet  and  became 
slim,  she  was  often  sharply  critical  and  sarcastic,  suspicious,  re- 
mote, and  cautious  in.  social  intercourse. 

The  third  case  is  that  of  "Victor,  a  writer,  forty-one  years  old. 
The  center  of  his  emotional  difficulties  was  formed  by  his  attitude 
to  his  father,  stepmother,  and  his  brothers.  He  had  considerable 
swings  of  mood,  reaching  fropa  depressions  in  which  he  was  almost 
apathetic,  to  hypomanic  states  in  which  he  made  himself  the  butt 
of  many,  sometimes  exceileu  t,  jokes.  He  described  his  emotional 
situation  as  a  battlefield  of  opposite  forces,  and  felt  best  when 
those  antagonists  in  him  had  arrived  at  an  armistice.  The  well- 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  4*5 

read  patient  described  those  peaceful  in  theological  terms; 

for  instance,  In  those  of  the  German  mystics  as  Eckhart, 
Tauler,  and  others.  He  spoke  of  periods  as  of  "states  of 

grace"  in  which  he  was  neither  under  the  compulsive  of 

Intense  drives  of  hatred  and  sexual  desires  nor  subjected  to  over- 
powering feelings  of  guilt  and  shame.  He  oscillated  In  his  emo- 
tions from  those  of  a  sinner  in  despair  atonement  to  of 
a  saint  who  feels  superior  to  others,  and  but  rarely  in 
reaching  the  state  of  a  person  ready  to  be- 
tween his  own  impulses  and  the  demands  of  society. 

The  change  from  depression  to  an  almost  humorous  self-mock- 
ery was  sometimes  immediate.  During  a  of  his 
analysis,  when  he  had  been  lying  on  the  couch  in  a  kind  of  apatiiy 
for  a  longer  time  than  usual,  he  interrupted  his  silence  with  the 
following  sentence:  "I  don't  know  why  I  am  punishing  so 
cruelly,  -All  this  because  I  have  killed  a  few  people  in  my 
thoughts?  When  you  think  of  the  millions  murdered  during  the 
war,  the  number  of  persons  I  killed  does  not  even  need  con- 
sideration." This  kind  of  sorry  humor  ie  which  he  looked  at  Ms 
troubles  and  emotional  difficulties  from  a  bird's-eye  view  also 
appeared  in  his  writings.  He  was  able  to  deprive  himself  of  food 
when  he  felt  in  the  mood  of  atonement  and  to  go  on  a  "'binge"  of 
eating  when  the  severity  of  his  self-accusations  diminished.  The 
following  action  appeared  to  me  very  significant:  He  once  ap- 
peared on  a  Sunday  morning  at  the  apartment  of  his  family, 
ready  to  make  peace  with  his  father  and  stepmother.  When,  un- 
announced, he  entered  the  living  room,  he  saw  among  the 
laid  out  on  the  breakfast  table  a  big  coffeecake.  His  relatives 
who  were  unaware  of  his  arrival  were  in  the  next  room,  he 
overheard  some  unfavorable  comments  they  made  about  him. 
Seized  by  a  sudden  rage,  he  took  the  coieecake  destined  for  the 
whole  family  from  the  plate,  and  tiptoed  to  the  door  without 
revealing  Ms  presence.  While  he  hurried  home  through  the  streets, 
he  ate  the  whole  cake  in  an  attack  of  voracious  fury. 

The  last  case  to  be  considered  in  this  context  is  not  as  colorful 
as  the  previous  one.  Margaret,  a  woman  in  her  late  thirties,  had 
divorced  her  first  husband  and  had  married  a  man  much  younger 
than  herself.  She  discovered  some  years  later  that  her  husband 


426  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

had  resumed  an  earlier  affair  and  recognized  that  she  could  not 
hope  to  win  back  his  love.  After  a  time  of  stormy  scenes  in  which 
she  expressed  her  rage  and  despair,  she  glided  into  depression 
bordering  on  a  melancholic  state.  She  neglected  her  appearance 
and  started  to  eat  excessively.  In  a  relatively  short  time  she  was 
transformed  into  an  overweight  matron  of  stout  figure,  double 
chin,  and  excessive  bust  and  hips.  She  neglected  her  household 
duties  and  dedicated  most  of  her  time  to  playing  rummy  and 
gossiping.  Margaret  appeared  phlegmatic  and  egocentric,  al- 
though friendly  and  good-natured.  While  her  mood  was  in  gen- 
eral depressive,  she  had  moments  in  which  a  kind  of  resigned  and 
even  lovable  humor  broke  through  the  clouded  atmosphere  of  her 
life. 

The  first  impression  these  representative  cases  of  obese  per- 
sonalities make  is  that  the  patients  have  reacted  to  an  emotional 
frustration,  or  rather  to  several  frustrations,  by  oral  regression— 
that  is,  by  returning  to  an  early  phase  of  development  in  which 
the  gratification  of  food  is  most  prevalent.  The  excessive  intake 
of  food  has  the  function  of  consolation  and  compensation  for  those 
emotional  frustrations  among  which  unfulfilled  desire  for  love 
and  social  recognition  has  the  first  rank.  The  consolation  in  these 
cases  would  be  basically  the  same  as  in  the  case  of  a  child  to 
whom  a  wish  is  denied  and  who  forgets  his  unhappiness  when  he 
gets  a  lollipop.  This  impression  or  psychological  hypothesis  is 
accepted  by  the  majority  of  psychoanalysts  who  have  investigated 
many  cases  of  obesity  and  consider  it  as  the  result  of  a  personality 
disturbance  in  which  excessive  bodily  size  becomes  the  expression 
of  an  emotional  conflict.* 

That  general  impression  becomes  qualified  by  the  study  of 
compulsive  eaters,  a  type  that  contributes  most  cases  to  the  group 
of  overweight  persons.  These  patients  admit  that  they  are  not 
hungry,  but  that  they  cannot  resist  the  craving  for  food.  Almost 
all  analysts  can  report  cases  of  men  and  women  who  after  a  rich 
dinner  sneak  to  the  refrigerator  and  eat  all  within  their  reach. 
The  psychological  concept  of  this,  as  of  all  compulsions,  is  that 

*  The  analytical  literature  on  the  problem  has  recently  been  enlarged  by 
oontributioos  by  Hilde  Brnch,  Gustav  Bychowsky,  Alfred  ScMck,  Eduardo 

Weiss,  and  many  other  investigators. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES  427 

it  generally  appears  as  a  defense  against  a  danger  or  a  threat 
from  within— original!}  from  without,  but  later  internalized  and 
transformed  in  o  a  part  of  the  ego.  The  earliest  and  primi- 

tive form  of  such  a  danger  in  the  cases  here  considered  would  be 
that  of  starving.  Compulsive  eating  would,  thus  considered, 
amount  to  an  exaggerated  defense  to  ward  off  the  anxiety  of 
starving.  Compulsive  intake  of  food  and  the  resulting  obesity  are 
determined  by  the  dread  of  famishing  which  is  met  by  the  tend- 
ency to  stuff  oneself.  That  elementary  fear  can  be  put  into  the 
formula:  Eat  or  you  will  starve.  Nothing  or  nothing  of 

such  a  primitive  menace  reaches  the  conscious  level  It  is  mute, 
yet  able  to  express  itself  in  the  language  of  neurotic  symptoms. 

Thus  far,  this  presentation  has  followed  the  line  of  psy- 

choanalytic theories  on  obesity.  At  this  point  it  branches  of  in  a 
new  direction:  at  the  roots  of  that  primitive  fear  there  must  be 
something  still  more  elementary  and  more  intimately  connected 
with  the  struggle  for  existence  than  expresses  itself  in  the  return 
to  oral  satisfaction.  It  is  to  be  assumed  that  this  unknown  impulse 
does  not  belong  to  the  early  history  of  the  individual,  but  to  Ms 
prehistory  or  even  to  the  prehistory  of  the  race.  Speaking  in  com- 
parison, the  elementary  drives  and  the  collateral  fears  are  not  to 
be  traced  back  to  the  era  of  the  earliest  Egyptian  dynasties,  but 
to  the  ancestors  of  Neanderthal  Man.  The  most  primitive  forms 
in  which  those  impulses  are  expressed  live  only  in  remnants  with 
the  cannibalistic  tribes  of  Australia.  Other  traces  are  to  be  found 
in  distorted  forms  of  neurotic  symptoms  and  in  ancient  myths 
and  fairy  tales.  The  alternative  in  the  tale  of  "Hansel  and 
Gretel"  appears  in  the  shape:  to  eat  or  to  starve.  But  when  the 
children  arrive  at  the  house  of  the  witch,  the  situation  is  changed. 
Through  all  tranfonnations  and  distortions  you  will  find  below 
the  superstructure  of  those  old  myths  and  fairy  tale  the  canni- 
balistic drives  and  cannibalistic  dreads.  Hansel  and  Gretel  are 
afraid  of  being  eaten  up  by  the  witch.  But  at  the  end  they  are 
pushing  her  into  the  oven,  we  have  to  add,  to  be  cooked  and 
eaten.  Even  before  that  they  are  eating  from  the  witch's  ginger- 
bread house,  which  is  a  symbolic  substitute  of  her  body.  Behind 
that  fairy  tale  is  the  alternative  to  eat  or  to  be  eaten.  That  was 
then  the  question. 


THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

At  this  point  the  clinical  pictures  before  described  and  others 
not  here  recorded  led  to  the  budding  of  a  little  analytic  contri- 
bution. Its  original  form  attempts  an  answer  to  the  question:  Why 
are  obese  and  overweight  people  supposed  to  be  harmless,  realis- 
tic, and  not  malicious  or,  otherwise  put,  what  happens  to  the 
cruel  and  aggressive  drives  of  those  persons? 

The  germination  of  that  tiny  theory  was  favored  by  the  re- 
reading of  the  famous  book  Korperbau  und  Character  by  Ernst 
Kretzschmer.* 

Otto  Fennichel  considers  Kretzschmer's  attempt  to  co-ordinate 
certain  types  of  character  with  body  structures  "not  very  attrac- 
tive to  the  analyst."**  That,  of  course,  is  a  question  of  taste.  The 
fact  that  Kretzschmer's  work  is  not  analytic  in  its  point  of  view 
does  not  exclude  that  It  is  of  great  importance.  It  is  very  attractive 
to  this  analyst,  especially  because  its  thesis  was  Intuitively  antici- 
pated by  great  writers  and  because  its  basic  view  of  characterologi- 
cal  types  coincides  with  my  own  observations  and  experiences.  In 
spite  of  its  obvious  shortcomings,  Kretzschmer's  differentiation 
of  schizoid  and  cycloid  personalities  and  the  characterological 
distinction  between  them  Is  a  valuable  and  valid  contribution  to 
the  recognition  of  human  temperaments.  Kretzschmer  attributes 
to  the  schizoid  type  a  slim  body  build  and  a  cold,  remote  person- 
ality, and  to  the  cycloid  type  a  rather  stocky  or  stout  physique  and 
a  warm,  conciliatory,  and  realistic  personality. 

The  German  psychiatrist  considers  those  types  as  extreme  ones 
and  differentiates  many  mixed  forms,  alloys,  and  so  on.  In  the 
description  of  the  cycloid  type,  mostly  found  in  well-nourished 
or  obese  persons,  Kretzschmer  points  out  different  basic  groups 
of  temperaments:  sociable,  good-natured,  and  genial  people;  an- 
other, he  characterizes  as  cheerful,  humorous,  and  jolly  and  soft- 
hearted. In  general,  obese  people  are  friendly  and  sociable,  toler- 
ant and  affable,  compared  with  the  thin,  sharp-featured  schizoid 
type  which  is  often  fanatic,  idealistic,  introverted,  philosophically 
inclined,  systematic,  often  sarcastic  and  scheming,  of  a  cold  and 
remote  personality. 

The  aggressiveness  of  fat  people  is  not  of  a  cruel  and  sadistic 

*  English  translation  (and  ed.;  London,  1925). 

**  The  Psychoanalytic  Theory  of  Neurosis  (New  York,  1948). 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  429 

type,  but  rather  characterized  by  primitive  orality.  It  is 
directed  to  incorporate  their  object  to  tear  it  to  pieces.  Fat 

people  are  more  inclined  to  eat  their  object  to          it  The 

clinical  papers  of  Karl  Abraham  divide  the  oral  of 

the  child  into  two  stages,  an  early  suckling  a  bit- 

ing one.*  According  to  this  differentiation,  or 

persons  either  remained  in  their  development  on 
phase  or  returned  to  it  under  the  influence  of  frustrations.  In 
contrast  to  the  lean  and  hungry  type,  they  are  less  inclined  to 
be  aggressive,  biting,  tyrannical,  and  argumentative. 

Kretzschmer  remarked  that  the  Devil  usually  in  the 

fantasy  of  the  people  as  lean,  with  a  thin  beard  growing  on  a  nar- 
row chin.  He  should  have  added  that  God,  in  contrast  to  the  Evil 
One,  is  mostly  imagined  as  an  old,  stout  man  with  a  bushy  white 
beard. 

The  analytic  continuation  of  Kretzschmer's  theory  would 
to  the  assumption  that  the  cycloid  type  is  characterized  by  a  re- 
gression to  the  irst  phase  of  orality.  In  this  return,  the  aggressive 
and  cruel,  sadistic  drives  are  to  a  great  extent  replaced  by  oral 
tendencies.  A  finer  distinction  would  perhaps  differentiate  an- 
other group  within  the  cycloid  one  which  has  built  a  kind  of 
oral  defense  against  the  danger  of  retribution  for  his 
and  cruel  drives.  Otherwise  put:  this  type  is  afraid  of  the  intensity 
of  his  own  aggressive  and  hostile  drives  and  therefore 
to  an  earlier  phase  in  which  there  were  no  serious  and  dangerous 
conflicts  with  the  external  world.  The  energy,  otherwise  used  in 
the  pursuit  of  aggressive,  hostile,  and  sadistic  strivings,  becomes 
redirected  to  protect  the  self  that  is  afraid  of  the  consequences  of 
its  repressed  aggressiveness.  The  mechanism  is  thus  a 
against  the  threatening  retribution  and  at  the  same  time  a  re- 
gression to  the  phase  of  an  infantile  pleasure-ego,  an  early  organi- 
zation of  the  individual  in  which  the  world  is  "tasted,"  orally 
tested  as  to  whether  it  tastes  good  or  bad.  That  defense  would 
manifest  itself  not  only  in  a  lack  of  aggressiveness  and  cruelty 
that  could  endanger  the  self  in  the  form  of  retribution,  but  also 
generally  in  avoidance  of  dangers,  risks*  and  bold  adventures,  and 
in  the  last  consequences  in  physical  caution  and  even  cowardice. 

*  In  Selected  Papers  on  Psychoanalysis  (London*  1942). 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

The  four  clinical  pictures  presented  before  show,  in  various 
forms  and  variations,  those  emotional  dynamics  or  their  results. 
Jack  is  full  of  rage  against  his  boss,  but  his  vengefulness  is  ex- 
pressed only  in  curses  and  abuses,  and  his  conscience  or  his  cau- 
tion does  not  allow  him  to  transform  his  fantasies  into  deeds;  he 
cannot  even  give  his  boss  a  piece  of  his  mind.  In  his  reflections  he 
oscillates  between  expressions  of  his  impulses  and  those  invisible 
counter-tendencies  and  his  imagined  enterprises  lose  in  this  way 
"the  name  of  action."  His  sentence  "If  I  could  be  a  son  of  a  bitch 
just  once,  I  need  not  be  a  son  of  a  bitch  any  more"  is,  so  to  speak, 
a  Hamlet  reflection  in  Brooklynese.  The  case  of  the  patient  who 
vacillates  between  her  craving  for  food  and  her  hypochondriacal 
fears  shows  the  suggested  process  in  flux.  She  protects  herself 
against  the  dreaded  retribution  for  her  murderous  impulses  in 
the  form  of  eating.  The  nature  of  her  fear  points  in  the  direction 
of  the  menace  of  being  eaten  up  from  within  (cancer).  Her  anx- 
iety when  she  sees  herself  becoming  thin  reflects  the  elementary 
dread  of  starving.  Margaret's  obesity  is  the  result  of  excessive 
intake  of  food  after  her  frustration  and  disappointment  in  her 
marriage.  At  the  same  time  it  marks  her  resignation  and  renun- 
ciation of  her  aggression  and  rage  against  her  husband  and  her 
rival.  Her  regression  to  oral  gratification  replaces  her  violent  out- 
bursts and  is  her  defense  against  their  repetition.  Her  depression 
seems  to  show  that  she  still  has  to  fight  against  guilt  feelings.  Victor's 
symptomatic  action,  the  eating  of  the  breakfast  coffeecake,  is  al- 
most a  manifestation  of  a  certain  phase  of  that  process,  in  which 
aggressiveness  expresses  itself  in  a  purely  oral  form.  As  such,  it 
marks  a  transition  from  a  progressed  stage  of  aggressive  action  to 
an  infantile  level. 

This  theory— better,  this  onset  of  a  theory— went  a  few  steps 
farther  beyond  the  area  here  sketched  in  the  investigation  of  the 
vicissitudes  of  aggressive  drives  of  obese  personalities.  It  at- 
tempted to  conceive  of  the  swings  of  moods,  so  conspicuous  in  the 
cycloid  types,  in  terms  of  their  oral  attitudes.  It  is  daring,  but  not 
nonsensical,  to  compare  the  hypomanic  mood  or  phase  with  the 
emotional  attitude  of  enjoyment  of  a  meal  and  with  the  mood  of 
saturated  appetite,  and  the  depressive  phase  with  the  time  of  un- 
satisfactory or  unpleasing  digestion.  Putting  aside  all  intellectual 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  43! 

cautions  for  a  moment,  one  could  venture  to  that  the 

elation  or  the  manic  phases  manifest  the  enjoyment  of          (lick- 
ing one's  lips!),  while  the  depression  would  the 
meal  did  not  agree  with  the  person.*  To  evaluate  this  psycho- 
logical alternative,  one  has  to  regress  In  one's            to  the 
elementary  level.  The  elation,  thus  considered,  would            that 
an  incorporated  object  was  well  digested,           the 
would  signify  that  the  incorporation  was  not  very  successful.  The 
proof  of  the  incorporated  object  is  in  the  eating,  or  rather  at 
some  time  after  it.  At  the  highest  level  such  disagreeing  of 
would  find  its  emotional  correlation  in  depression  or  guilt  feel- 
ings. Following  the  two  possibilities  of  elation  or  mania          of 
depressions,  the  investigator  who  has  picked  up  a  trail  has 
the  limit  of  a  working  hypothesis,  from  the  earliest  of 
primitive  incorporation  to  the  last  in  which  all  is  in  the  mind, 

The  preceding  theory  was  no  more  than  an  attempt  to 
understandable  to  myself  the  lack  of  aggressiveness,  cruelty,  mal- 
ice, and  grudge  in  obese  or  overweight  persons.  It  was  freely  ad- 
mitted that  the  hypothesis  at  which  I  arrived  had  not  matured 
enough  to  be  validated  or  voided.  It  had  scarcely  progressed  be- 
yond the  phase  of  conjectures  and  suggestions  and  had  not  jelled 
enough  to  deserve  the  name  of  an  analytic  theory,  merely  that  of 
an  outset  of  theoretical  reflections. 

I  do  not  share  with  my  fellow-psychoanalysts  the  worship  of 
science,  and  I  do  not  kneel  down  before  science  which  has  been 
enthroned  in  the  place  left  by  God  in  the  modern  world.  A  re- 
spectful bow  to  scientific  research  is,  to  my  way  of  thinking,  enough. 
This  lack  of  awe  might  explain,  but  perhaps  not  excuse,  why  I 
did  not  pursue  the  theoretical  possibilities  sketched  before  nor 
test  and  reexamine  them  by  verification.  I  left  the  idea  in  suspense. 
It  was  at  this  point  not  a  conscious  decision,  but  a  kind  of  indiffer- 
ence that  left  the  future  of  the  budding  thought  to  destiny.  I 
could  have  tossed  a  coin:  heads  I  stick,  tails  I  quit.  Instead  of 
trying  that  popular  modern  oracle,  I  let  my  thoughts  wander  into 
some  sort  of  scientific  daydreaming. 

*  These  tentative  psychoanalytic  assumptions  were  jotted  down  long  before 
Bertram  Lewin's  book  The  Psychoanalysis  of  Elaticm  was  published  (New  YoA, 
1950).  Dr.  Lewin's  interesting  contribution  does  not  mention  Kxetzschmer. 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

The  continuation  of  Kretzschmer's  thesis  took  its  point  of  de- 
parture from  observations  of  clinical  cases.  It  moved  from  there 
to  psychological  assumptions  and  logical  conclusions  near  the 
point  where  it  should  be  formed  and  formulated  into  a  scientific 
theory.  Before  it  was  crystallized,  my  attention  was  deflected  and 
turned  in  a  new  direction.  The  process  may  well  be  compared  to 
walking  to  a  certain  goal.  On  his  way  the  wanderer  becomes  inter- 
ested in  something  on  a  bypath  and  turns  his  attention  to  this 
new  impression,  forgetting  for  the  moment  his  original  goal.  One 
is  not  always  master  of  one's  interests.  Sometimes  one  does  well 
in  following  one's  inner  voice  rather  than  one's  considered  in- 
tentions. The  destination  that  we  had  in  mind  can  be  quite  re- 
mote from  the  place  to  which  destiny  sends  us. 

In  the  second  part  of  his  scientific  work,  Kretzschmer  occasion- 
ally refers  to  proverbs  and  sayings  of  the  people  who  seem  to  have 
anticipated  some  of  his  typological  findings  and  who  bring  body 
build  and  character  into  intimate  connection.  He  could  have 
quoted  many  more  and  have  added  the  sentences  of  writers  who 
some  centuries  before  his  book  confirm  his  opinions.  There  is, 
however,  one  greater  authority  he  quotes.  Shakespeare,  speaking 
with  the  voice  of  Julius  Caesar: 

Let  me  have  men  about  me  that  are  fat; 
Sleek-headed  men  and  such  as  sleep  o'nights; 
Yond'  Cassius  has  a  lean  and  hungry  look; 

In  spite  of  what  Antony  has  to  say  in  praise  of  that  Roman  noble, 
Caesar  remains  unconvinced: 

Would  he  were  fatter! 
...  He  loves  no  plays 
As  thou  dost,  Antony;  he  hears  no  music; 
Seldom  he  smiles,  and  smiles  in  such  a  sort 
As  if  he  mock'd  himself  and  scom'd  his  spirit, 
That  could  be  moved  by  smile  at  anything 
Such  men  as  he  be  never  at  heart's  ease, 
Whiles  they  behold  a  greater  than  themselves, 
And  therefore  are  they  very  dangerous. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  433 

While  following  Kretzschmer's  typological  considerations 
great  attention,  I  had  been  thinking  coherently  and  rationally, 
but  at  this  point  my  mind  slipped  away  to  all  of 

thoughts.  I  can  only  guess  that  It         the  memory  of  my 
Jack  whom  I  had  seen  the  day  before  that  led  my  to  the 

subject  of  vengeance  In  connection  with 
Jack  had  again  uttered  wild  curses  against  his 
bloody  revenge,  which,  I  knew,  he  would  never  take.  In 
to  him,  the  figure  of  Shylock  and  his  terrible  revengefulness 
to  mind.  I  Imagined  the  Jew  of  Venice,  a  thin, 
older  man,  full  of  nervous  energy          aggressiveness,  a 
schizoid-paranoid  type.  There  is  no  superfluous          on  his 
and  his  mind  does  not  know  a  moment  of  leisure.  The 
terms  he  uses  with  regard  to  that  bond  are  not  accidentally 
from  the  area  of  food:  "I  will  feed  fat  the  ancient  1 

him."  The  question  of  what  good  a  pound  of  flesh  would  do 
is  answered  In  the  same  vein:  "To  bait  fish  withal  If  It 
nothing  else,  It  will  feed  my  revenge."  Shylock  Is  starving  In  this 
voracious  hunger  of  vengeance  and  he  does  not  allow 
much  food.  The  sentence  Helerich  Heine  once  wrote  an 

antagonist  could  be  applied  to  Shylock:  "He  would  not  be  so  bit- 
Ing  If  he  had  more  to  bite."  His  sarcasm  Is  bloody  aod  Its 
correspond  to  the  sense  of  the  Greek  word  which  tearing 

the  lesh  to  pieces.  His  insistence  on  that  pound  of  from 

Antonio's  body  Is  a  substitute  for  a  cannibal  craving.  He  to 

be  a  personification  of  that  second  sadistic,  cannibal  of 

orality  as  it  is  sketched  In  Karl  Abraham's  psychoanalytic  theory. 

Still  under  the  Impression  of  that  clinical  picture  of  my  patient 
Jack,  my  random  associations  now  glide  to  the  figure  of  the  Dan- 
ish Prince  with  whom  he  shares  the  incapability  of  taking  re- 
venge. Like  Jack,  he  has  the  "motive  and  the  cue  for  passion"  and 
he,  too, 

must,  like  a  trull,  unpack  my  heart  with  words 
And  fall  a-cursing,  like  a  very  drab, 
A  scullion! 

Hamlet's  aggressiveness  exhausts  Itself  in  curses,  abuses*  and  self- 
complaints.  In  the  sense  of  Kretzschiner's  theory  he  presents  a 


434  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

mixed  type  of  schizoid  and  cycloid  temperament.  His  body  build 
is  described  by  the  Queen:  "He's  fat  and  scant  of  breath."  There 
are,  however,  many  characterological  features  that  point  in  the  di- 
rection of  a  schizoid  personality. 

While  my  thoughts  wander  to  other  Shakespearean  characters, 
to  Othello,  lago,  Richard,  and  Macbeth,  a  figure  emerges  in  my 
associations,  so  voluminous  and  bulky  that  there  is  no  place  for 
others  beside  him:  Sir  John  FalstafL  As  in  those  sacred  halls  of 
the  Magic  Flute,  vengeance  is  unknown  in  the  Boar's  Head  Tav- 
ern of  Eastcheap.  Sir  John  is  not  revengeful  and  he  does  not 
understand  how  others  could  be.  Poins  warns  the  irritated  Prince 
that  Falstaff  had  spoken  vilely  of  him  before  Doll:  "My  lord,  he 
will  drive  you  out  of  your  revenge  and  turn  all  to  merriment." 

In  omitting  his  figure,  Kretzschmer  has  renounced  the  most 
representative  example  of  the  cycloid  type  as  far  as  body  build 
and  temperament  are  concerned.  Sir  John  is  not  just  obese.  He  is 
obesity  personified.  He  is  sociable  and  jolly,  full  of  zest  of  life 
and  good  humor.  He  has  distinct  features  of  oscillating  between 
manic  and  depressive  moods.  There  are  sudden  changes  from  an 
uninhibited  joie  de  vivre  to  gloominess,  from  elation  to  a  melan- 
cholic attitude.  The  greatest  comical  figure  of  world  literature 
has  conspicuous  moments  of  sadness  and  expectancy  of  doom.  He 
sighs,  "  'Sblood,  I  am  as  melancholy  as  a  gib  cat  or  a  lugged  bear," 
and  confesses  that  he  is  now  "little  better  than  one  of  the  wicked." 
He  is  ready  to  repent  and  reform,  but  in  the  next  moment  he  is 
very  willing  to  rob  some  travelers.  The  Prince  sees  "a  good 
amendment"  in  him  "from  praying  to  purse-taking."  The  knight 
himself  brings  his  fatness  in  causal  connection  with  his  sadness: 
"A  plague  of  sighing  and  grief.  It  blows  a  man  up  like  a  bladder." 
Is  it  not  strange  that  Shakespeare,  four  hundred  and  fifty  years 
before  the  analytic  investigation  of  obesity,  gives  here  an  etiologi- 
cal  explanation  for  the  emotional  genesis  of  overweight?  Kretz- 
schmer, who  mentions  the  German  expression  Kummer  speck 
( =  grief-belly)  in  the  context  of  his  typology,  has  deprived  him- 
self of  that  classical  explanation.  There  is  even,  comparable  to  the 
second  clinical  case  described,  a  hypochondriacal  fear  in  Falstaff 
that  he  might  fall  off  in  flesh,  and,  as  in  that  case,  the  fear  is 
clearly  connected  with  guilt  feelings  and  expectancy  of  impend- 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

Ing  personal  calamity:  "Bardolph,  am  I  not  away  vilely 

since  this  last  action?  do  I  not  bate?  do  I  not  dwindle?  Why,  my 
skin  hangs  about  me  like  an  old  lady's  gown;  I  am 

like  an  old  apple-john.  Well,  111  repent,  and  that  suddenly, 
I  am  in  some  liking;  1  shall  be  out  of  heart  shortly  and  I 

shall  have  no  strength  to  repent," 

No  doubt,  that  incomparable  creation  of  a  writer's 
anticipated  the  scientiSc  description  of  the  cycloid  character. 
More  than  this,  we  psychologists  will  have  trouble  catching  up 
with  it.  Kretzschmer  emphasizes,  it  is  true,  that  the  cycloid  per- 
sonality is  generally  earth-bound,  realistic  in  contrast  to  the  ideal- 
istic and  sometimes  fanatic  and  fantastic,  eccentric,  lofty  fea- 
tures of  the  schizoid  type.  Is  there  a  better  example  of  traits 
than  that  pet  mountain  of  a  man?  This  full-grown  full-blown 
old  man  has  kept  the  gaiety  of  a  little  boy,  but  also  his  of 
realism.  He  is  not  in  awe  of  conventions,  and  the  so-called  sacred 
Ideas  do  not  impress  him.  He  walks  over  them  and  laughs 
off.  He  steals  the  show  as  he  does  any  purse  within  his  reach.  He 
Is  amoral,  a  Mar,  a  coward,  a  glutton,  and  a  buffoon,  a  cheater,  a 
reprobate,  and  Invincible  and  Irresistible  in  his  charm  free- 
dom, gained  in  humor.  He  sees  through  all  make-believe 
considers  discretion  the  better  part  of  valor.  The  self-protection 
and  the  absolutely  realistic  outlook,  characteristic  of  the  extreme 
cycloid  temperaments,  make  him  "a  coward  on  instinct"  while 
he  Is  "as  valiant  as  Hercules."  His  creed  on  honor  will  survive  all 
the  codes  of  nature.  "Give  me  life!"  cries  Falstaff  on  the  battle- 
field of  Shrewsbury.  The  fear  of  death,  so  remote  to  the  schizoid 
type,  drives  him  to  stuff  himself  with  food. 

He  enjoys  everything,  but  before  all  himself.  This  huge 
of  flesh,  this  ton  of  a  man  will  never  "leave  gormandizing/'  as  the 
new  King  admonishes  him.  When  we  first  meet  Falstaff,  tie  asls 
what  time  it  is,  and  Prince  Hal  says:  "Thou  art  so  fat-witted,  with 
drinking  of  old  sack,  and  unbuttoning  thee  after  supper,  aaci 
sleeping  upon  benches  after  noon  that  thou  hast  forgotten  to  de- 
mand that  truly  which  thou  wouldst  truly  know.  What  a  devil 
hast  thou  to  do  with  the  time  of  the  day?  unless  hours  were  cups 
of  sack,  and  minutes  capons/*  Sir  John  Is  not  only  fun-loving,  but 
funny,  not  only  witty,  but  also  the  cause  for  other  people's  wit. 


436  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

He  does  not  think  too  much,  he  is  fat  and  sleeps  well,  loves  play 
and  music.  Caesar  would  not  have  considered  him  dangerous  but 
would  have  wished  to  have  him  around. 

The  old  rogue  shouts  a  lot,  but  he  barks  rather  than  bites.  He 
can  abuse  and  curse  as  well  as  the  next  man.  As  well?  No,  much 
better.  He  is  a  genius  at  abusive  comparisons  and  vile  language, 
and  has  no  par  in  the  invention  of  invectives.  But  he  is  not  sar- 
castic in  his  aggressiveness.  He  prefers  biting  into  meat  and  fowl 
to  making  biting  remarks  on  people.  He  lives  on  a  minimum  of 
activity  if  it  is  possible,  and  he  is  hurrying  only  to  the  set  table,  is 
not  eager  to  arrive  anywhere  except  to  come  and  get  it.  He  loves 
company  and  company  loves  him.  He  knows  that  he  is  loved  and 
expresses  the  general  liking  people  have  for  obese  persons:  "If  to 
be  fat  be  to  be  hated,  then  Pharaoh's  lean  kine  are  to  be  loved." 
He  is  the  life  of  the  party  because  he  is  the  party  of  life. 

We  speak  of  fleeting  thoughts,  of  the  flash  of  an  idea,  but  we 
have  really  no  appropriate  expression  for  the  rapid  speed  with 
which  thoughts  cross  time  and  space.  In  a  split  second  I  searched 
the  little  I  know  of  world  literature  for  obese  and  distinct  cycloid 
personalities  to  be  compared  in  some  way  or  other  to  plump  Jack, 
to  the  immortal  figure  of  Sir  John  FalstafL  The  express  train  of 
associations  rushed  from  the  stocky  figure  of  the  squire  Sancho 
Pariza,  representing  common  sense,  earthiness,  and  flexibility  in 
contrast  to  the  rigid  insanity  of  his  master,  to  the  corpulent  Nero 
Wolfe,  the  almost  immobile  gourmand  and  gourmet  of  Man- 
hattan. 

I  heard  my  thoughts,  so  to  speak,  racing  through  the  centuries 
of  writing,  but  then  I  suddenly  heard  something  very  different 
The  Rosenkaualier  waltz  danced  through  my  mind.  The  % 
measures  moved  in  casually  and  with  sovereign  indifference  for 
the  serious  nature  of  the  preceding  associations,  just  as  if  they  felt 
entirely  at  home  in  this  intellectual  environment.  I  had  left  the 
domain  of  purely  theoretical  reflections,  it  is  true,  but  I  was  still 
searching  for  cycloid  figures  in  world  literature. 

What  business  had  that  waltz  in  that  sphere?  To  use  a  compari- 
son, it  was  as  if  the  secretary  of  a  trust  company  were  called  to 
the  conference  of  the  board  of  directors,  and  in  her  place  at  the 
door  of  the  conference  room  appeared  a  ballerina  in  short  skirts. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  437 

I  certainly  had  not  called  that  abounding  waltz.  At  this 
It  was  completely  uncalled  for,  but  I  did  not  It  immedi- 

ately. It  is  psychologically  interesting  that  we  treat 

musical  associations  occurring  to  us  in  the  of 

work  differently  than  others.  They  are  not  violently  ejected, 
rather  politely  dismissed.  We  bow  to  we 

them  to  the  door  of  conscious  thoughts,  almost  with 
they  appear  at  an  inappropriate  moment.  And  we  wel- 

come them  although  they  come  unannounced.  Many  have 

stopped  thinking  of  the  brief  they  were  working  on 
for  a  few  moments  to  a  barrel  organ  that  played  Tea  for  Two 
on  the  street.  This  by  way  of  apology  I  let  the  Rosen- 

kamlier  waltz  dance  through  my  serious  thinking. 

But  then  I  began  to  ponder  why  it  reappeared.  What  have 
those  tuneful  54  measures  to  do  with  Sir  John  of  I 

thought  before?  I  had  been  in  the  England  of  virginal  Elizabeth 
in  my  ideas  and  not  in  Vienna  at  the  time  of  that  other  great 
queen,  Maria  Theresa.  If  the  association  had  at  the 

picture  of  the  fat  rogue  as  Edward  Elgar  paioied  it  in  the  gar- 
gantuan boastfulness  of  his  symphonic  poem,  the  overture  to  the 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  by  Nicolai,  a  composition  I  heard  so 
many  times,  or  the  opera  Faktajf  by  Verdi! 

Only  a  few  days  ago,  I  had  listened  to  the  abundant  of 

melody  of  that  late  work  on  the  radio  and  had  admired  the  vigor 
and  the  serenity  of  the  old  master.  But  the  waltz? 

I  thought  of  the  first  performance  I  heard  of  the  opera  in  Vienna 
in  1911,  and  I  saw  in  my  mind's  eye  the  corpulent  igere  of  the 
bass  singer,  Richard  Mayr,  who  always  had  the  part  of  Ochs  von 
Lerchenau  in  the  Vienna  Opera:  the  image  of  the  aristocrat  at 
the  level  of  the  marschallin,  then  making  a  pass  at  her  maid  who 
is  young  Octavian  in  disguise,  the  great  scene  of  the  tete-a-tete 
with  the  maid  in  that  chambrc  separee.  Poor  Ochs  von  Lerchena« 
becomes  the  victim  of  an  intrigue,  as  does  Sir  John  in  the 
Wives  of  Windsor.  He  is  frustrated  like  the  fat  knight.  The 
scene  in  which  Ochs  is  afraid  to  die  from  a  harmless  wound  and 
the  battle  scene  from  which  Sir  John  escapes  with  the  cry  "Give 
me  life!**  And  again  that  tender  waltz,  as  background  music  to  the 
images  called  up  by  the  memory  of  that  first  performance. 


438  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

Of  course,  that's  It.  I  had  thought  of  successors  of  Sir  John  in 
world  literature,  found  none  worthy  of  walking  in  his  bulky 
shadow,  and  then  in  a  long  distance  from  that  miraculous  crea- 
tion appeared  Ochs  von  Lerchenau  with  his  belly.  There  are  so 
many  differences  between  the  two  figures!  Yet  the  coarse  Ler- 
chenau is  a  Viennese  miniature  edition  of  the  knight  with  whom 
he  shares  the  zest  of  life  and  an  indomitable  self-love.  He  is  a 
weaker  great-grandson  of  the  British  character,  and  in  spite  of  all 
divergencies  a  certain  family  resemblance  is  unmistakable. 

The  emergence  of  the  Rosenkavalier  waltz  made  the  impression 
of  a  hopscotch  idea,  but  now  it  makes  some  sense.  The  line  of 
thought,  stimulated  by  Kretzschmer's  characterological  descrip- 
tion of  the  cycloid  type,  went  from  that  huge  mass  of  flesh  in  the 
person  of  Sir  John  to  the  corpulent  figure  of  the  Austrian  aristo- 
crat, from  the  Boar's  Head  Tavern  to  a  chamber  in  Vienna. 
Really  there  was  a  direct  line  from  Falstaff  in  that  Eastcheap 
tavern  to  Ochs  von  Lerchenau  in  a  dubious  restaurant  in  Vienna. 

The  surprising  emergence  of  the  waltz  was  only  partly  ex- 
plained by  the  remote  resemblance  of  the  two  corpulent  men  and 
of  the  situations  in  which  they  became  the  victims  of  an  amorous 
intrigue.  Force  of  psychological  habit  made  me  search  for  other 
connecting  links  between  my  associations.  These  links  were  few 
and  far  between:  the  characterological  features  of  the  obese 
cycloid  type,  the  zest  for  life,  the  congenital  optimism,  the  narcis- 
sistic self-love  .  .  .  Kretzschmer's  careful  description  ...  my 
search  for  figures  in  world  literature  who  resemble  in  body  build 
and  temperament  that  walking  human  barrel  Sir  John.  .  .  . 

But  why  the  waltz?  .  .  .  Another  waltz  by  another  Strauss  oc- 
curs to  me  ...  Wine,  Women  and  Song.  Perhaps  that's  it.  ... 
Sir  John  enjoys  his  liquor,  of  course  .  .  .  and  so  does  Ochs  von 
Lerchenau.  (Here  is  again  that  waltz  .  .  .  the  dinner-scene  .  .  . 
Octavian  Mariandl  sings,  ""New,  nein,  nein,  nein>  ich  mag  kan 
Wein.  .  .  /')  But  that  other  fat  man,  Nero  Wolfe,  drinks  beer, 
many  bottles  daily.  ...  It  can't  be  the  wine.  .  .  .  Besides  that, 
overweight  people  become  obese  rather  by  excessive  intake  of 
food, 

And  women?  .  .  .  Yes,  Falstaff  is  eager  for  amorous  adventures 
with  three  women  at  Windsor,  and  Ochs  wants  to  seduce  the 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

chambermaid  of  the  marschallie.  .  .  .  But  Nero  Wolfe. 

...  He  is  not  very  fond  of  women.  .  .  .  Let  me  the 

circumstantial  evidence  of  that  associative  link.  .  .  .  not 

the  Prince  express  his  astonishment  that,  in  FalstafFs  the  de- 
sire survives  the  performance  so  long?  .  .  .  The  fat  pre- 
tends that  he  is  a  great  ladies'  man— he  is  not  very  discriminating 
and  they  are  rarely  ladies—but  is  he  really?  He  at- 
tracted to  the  company  of  men.  .  .  .  There  is  Prince  Hal,  Pistol, 
and  Bardolph.  ...  Sir  John  Falstaff  has  a  distinct  treed  of 
homosexuality  that  is  unconsciously  denied.  .  .  .  His  love  for  the 
young  Prince  has  almost  a  maternal  character,  its  expression 
is  sometimes  pathetic.  .  .  .  One  of  his  sentences  concerning  his 
young  friend  comes  to  mind:  "If  the  rascal  have  not  given  me 
medicine  to  make  me  love  him,  111  be  hanged."  .  .  .  And  Ochs 
von  Lerchenau?  It  must  have  a  secret  meaning  that  the  pretty  girl 
to  whom  he  makes  propositions  is  really  a  young  man  in  disguise. 
...  He  makes  love  to  a  male.  .  .  .  The  third  fat  man,  Nero 
Wolfe,  takes  a  vicarious  pleasure  in  the  seducing  facilities  of  his 
assistant,  Archie  Goodwin,  and  his  relationship  to  him  is  charac- 
terized by  a  kind  of  contemptuous  and  protective  affection.  The 
relationship  of  that  fresh  young  man  to  his  rotund  Is  almost 
the  same,  although  mixed  with  much  admiration  for  the  old  man. 

Strange  it  is  that  I  did  not  think  along  those  lines,  but  it  now 
seems  to  me  that  these  three  obese  men  show  a  homosexual  in- 
clination for  their  young  companions.  .  .  .  And  those  young 
men,  in  turn,  tease  them,  take  them  in,  but  admire  them,  never- 
theless. .  .  .  Should  I  have  accidentally  run  into  another  charac- 
teristic trait  of  obese  persons,  not  mentioned  in  Kretzschmer*s 
book  or  In  other  literature  known  to  me?  ...  Is  there  an  un- 
conscious, patronizing,  almost  maternal  affection  for  younger 
members  of  the  same  sex,  a  secret  and  denied  homosexual  trend 
for  son-  or  daughter-representatives? 

Wine,  Women  and  Song.  ...  I  don't  remember  anything 
about  Nero  Wolfe's  relationship  to  music,  but  Sir  John  is  cer- 
tainly fond  of  it.  He  declares  to  the  Chief  Justice  that  he  lost  Ms 
voice  in  hallooing  and  singing  anthems,  (He  does  not  mention 
earthy  and  bawdy  songs.)  And  Ochs  von  Lerdienau  .  .  .  but  tie 
loves  music,  of  course. 


44®  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

I  just  had  an  idea,  but  it  faded  away.  It  evaporated  without  any 
trace.  We  say  that  a  man  is  lost  in  thoughts.  Can  thoughts  be  lost 
in  a  man?  I  have  to  find  that  idea  that  vanished.  Where  can  I 
search  for  it?  It  must  be  hiding  itself  behind  those  other  associa- 
tions. I  started  from  the  question  as  to  why  the  Rosenkavalier 
waltz  occurred  to  me  rather  than  any  other  tune;  or,  otherwise 
put,  from  the  problem  of  selectivity  of  musical  remembrances 
and  associations.  The  figure  of  Falstaff  should  have  suggested  the 
emergence  of  Nicolaf  s  overture  to  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor 
or  some  melody  from  Verdi's  opera.  But  those  compositions  are 
centering  on  the  figure  of  Falstaff,  and  I  was  roaming  through 
world  literature  searching  for  comparable  characters.  Then  the 
R&senkavalier  waltz  emerged.  Of  course,  it  strikes  nearer  home 
than  the  music  of  Nicolai  and  Verdi.  Home  meaning  Vienna. 
And  Ochs  von  Lerchenau  is  really  a  distant  relative  of  Falstaff. 

But  why  should  a  musical  association  appear  instead  of  a  sober, 
rational  thought,  why  a  tune  at  all?  .  .  .  Wine,  women,  and  song 
.  .  .  Oh,  song  and  the  obese  cycloid  type  and  temperament.  .  .  » 
By  God,  that  is  it!  Did  I  not  at  the  beginning  think  of  Caesar's 
characterization  of  Cassius:  "he  hears  no  music"?  This  thought, 
the  comparison  of  the  lean,  schizoid,  unsmiling,  and  scheming 
type,  in  contrast  to  the  other  (Falstaff,  Ochs  von  Lerchenau),  must 
have  lingered  on  without  my  being  aware  of  it.  Those  obese, 
cycloid  personalities  hear  music  and  love  it.  The  memory  of  the 
Rosenkavalier  waltz  is  also  determined  by  that  unrecognized,  sub- 
terranean idea:  by  the  contrast  of  the  music-loving,  sociable,  jolly, 
and  obese  person  with  the  other,  represented  by  Cassius,  the  man 
who  hath  no  music  in  himself  and  is,  in  Shakespeare's  sense,  so 
capable  of  treachery.  Instead  of  the  logical  and  reasoned  thought 
that  one  of  the  features  of  the  obese  cycloid  type  is  love  of  music- 
Hot  mentioned  by  Kretzschiner— the  Rosenkavalier  waltz  suddenly 
danced  into  my  mind,  so  to  speak,  as  a  musical  illustration  of  that 
Idea.  At  the  same  time,  the  tune  represented  the  appearance  o£ 
that  other  rotund  cycloid  character,  Ochs  von  Lerchenau,  a 
Viennese  chip  of  that  old,  big  block,  Sir  Falstaff.  As  I  later  dis- 
covered, the  characteroJogical  resemblance  between  Sir  John 
Falstaff  and  the  Baron  von  Lerchenau  had  been  recognized  by 
the  composer  and  the  librettist  of  the  Rosenkavalier.  In  their 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  441 

correspondence,  published  in  1926,  Strauss 

thai  of  the  beautiful  monologue  of  Falstaff  IB  Verdi's 

adds:  '1  Imagine  the  scene  of  the  baron  after  Octavian's 

ture  should  be  similar'*  [August  12,  1909].  Hofmannsthal 

that  a  certain  actor,  considered  for  the  part  of  Ochs  von  Ler- 

chenau,  does  not  have  "just  the  most  features"  of  the 

character,  namely,  "the  buffoonish,  the  Falstaffian*  the 

the  laughter-awakening''  [January  2,  1911],  In  the  of 

that  waltz*  a  condensation  of  thoughts  had  come  to  a 

expression  whose  meaning  I  had  not  recognized. 

While  1  am  still  wondering  about  the  layer  structure  of 
thoughts,  which  unconsciously  continued  the  con- 

trast of  the  man  who  loves  music  and  the  other  who          not 
It,  I  am  returning  to  the  problem  that  had  originally  my 

interest— namely,  to  the  question  of  what  happens  to  the  creel, 
sadistic,  and  vicious  drives  of  obese  persons,  I  no 

conclusive  solution  of  the  problem,  only  suggestions  con- 

jectures, all  concerning  the  primitive  orality  of  this  type.  It 
to  me  now  that  the  love  of  music,  which  1  now  found  as  an  over- 
looked characterologkal  feature,  also  belongs  to  this  instinctual 
area.  What  is  musk  O'ther  than  sound,  originally  made  by  the 
mouth,  sound  or  scream  that  has  become  song?  We  speak  of  the 
magic  of  musk*  of  Its  soothing  power.  Perhaps  musical  expression 
sublimates  and  masters  our  violent  drives  and  has  the  magic 
force  to  defend  us  against  the  evil  dangers  within  ourselves,  as 
it  originally  banned  the  menace  from  without  us.  By  that  process 
of  transformation  from  a  wild  scream,  which  expressed  primitive 
aggression,  to  a  melody,  the  violence  was  mitigated  and  another 
oral  gratification  obtained.  Did  Bruno  Walter,  who  wields  the 
pen  as  masterfully  as  the  baton,  Intuitively  reach  this  insight, 
when  In  his  book  he  asserted  that  music  Is  unable  to  express  the 
evil,  to  communicate  the  vicious  and  cnie!  sadistic  drives  that 
live  in  all  of  us?*  In  the  analytic  sense,  the  magic  of  musk  would 
be  mainly  of  the  nature  of  an  emotional  defense  against  the 
power  of  aggressive  drives. 

The  emergence  of  the  Rosenkaimlier  waltz  Indicated  the  sur- 

*  Von  den  moralischen  Krdften  der  Musik  (Vienna,  1955). 


442  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

prising  arrival  of  an  unconscious  thought  that  contributes  an- 
other characterological  feature  to  the  analytic  theory  on  obesity. 
The  love  of  music  is  another  expression  of  oral  activity  and 
gratification  of  the  cycloid  type.  That  neglected  idea  lingered 
on  and  has  exerted  a  remote  control  on  the  train  of  my  thoughts. 
They  had  consciously  aimed  at  the  solution  of  a  problem,  but 
they  arrived,  invisibly  directed  to  their  goal  when  they  were  not 
any  longer  endeavoring  to  reach  it  by  way  of  rational  conclusions. 
The  carefully  aimed  bullet  went  astray,  and  the  shot  in  the  dark 
hit  near  the  target.  The  facts,  ascertained  and  verified  by  scien- 
tific research,  and  the  fancy  of  the  great  writers  in  the  form  of 
intuitive  insights  seemed  to  coincide  with  the  views  of  the  people 
in  a  consensus  about  the  love  of  music  and  the  relative  lack  of 
aggressiveness  and  viciousness  in  the  character  of  obese  persons. 
While  I  am  writing  these  final  sentences,  two  lines,  heard  as  a 
child  in  grammar  school,  spring  up  as  from  a  trap  door.  They 
seem  to  confirm  Shakespeare's  views  and  the  results  of  modern 
psychological  research: 

Wo  man  singt,  da  lass  dich  ruhig  nieder, 
Bose  Menschen  haben  keine  Lieder. 

With  people  who  sing  you  will  get  along, 
Evil  men  don't  have  any  song. 


There  is  an  unknown  melody  that  has  been  haunting  me  now 
for  several  days.  It  appears  sometimes  very  clearly,  and  sometimes 
only  the  first  bars  are  heard  by  the  inner  ear  as  a  faint  echo.  It 
came  like  an  unannounced  guest  one  has  once  known,  but  whose 
name  one  has  forgotten.  Its  repeated  emergence  irks  me  now,  and 
I  try  to  turn  it  away  as  if  the  unrecognized  guest  had  stayed  too 
long  and  has  become  wearisome.  If  I  but  knew  what  that  tune  is! 
I  am  searching  in  vain  in  my  memory.  I  must  have  heard  it  long, 
long  ago.  Where  was  it? 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES  443 

Was  it  not  in  the  Vienna  Opera?  It  occurs  to  me  the 

melody  I  do  not  recognize  must  have  something  to  do  with  my 
father.  .  .  .  My  memory  calls  his  up  .  .  .  his  face  .  .  . 

his  side  whiskers  ...  his  was  like  Kaiser  Franz  Josefs 

...  or  rather  like  Jacques  Offenbach's.  .  .  .  The  of  the 

composer  emerges  quite  distinctly  as  if  it  were  a  photograph.  .  .  . 
The  penetrating  eyes  and  the  pince-nez  on  a  ribbon.  .  .  .  And 
then  I  know  suddenly  what  the  melody  is:  the  aria  of 
from  The  Tales  of  Hoffmann.  As  if  a  floodgate  had  opened, 
an  abundance  of  images  emerges.  When  my  sister  and  1  went 
to  the  Vienna  Opera  for  the  Srst  time  in  1901,  1  was  thirteen 
years  old. 

We  had  heard  our  father  speak  about  The  Tales  of 
before.  At  the  first  performance  of  Oien bach's  opera  in  1881,  a 
terrible  fire  had  consumed  the  Vienna  Ringtheater.  Many  hun- 
dreds of  people  had  perished;  my  father  had  saved  himself  by 
jumping  from  a  window.  Many  superstitious  persons  in  our  city, 
at  that  time*  had  tried  to  establish  a  connection  between  the 
catastrophe  and  the  personality  of  the  composer.  They  said  Oien- 
bach  had  an  "evil  eye"  whose  glances  had  magical  power  to 
harm  people.  They  called  him  a  "jettatore,"  meaning  a  wicked 
sorcerer.  Poor  Offenbach,  whose  picture  we  had  and  in 

whom  we  had  discovered  a  likeness  to  our  father,  had  in  fact 
not  lived  to  witness  the  opening  performance  of  his  opera. 

The  Tales  of  Hoffmann  had  not  been  performed  in  Vienna 
for  a  long  time,  in  fact,  not  until  1901.  My  sister  and  I  were 
with  anticipation.  In  those  days,  the  performances  of  the  Opera 
were  a  frequent  subject  of  discussion  in  the  homes  of  the  middle- 
class  people  of  musical  Vienna,  We  had  often  heard  the  orchestra 
praised  and  the  individual  singers  evaluated.  Then  there  was  the 
new  director  whose  artistic  and  creative  zeal  had  revolutionized 
the  old  institution  and  who  had  become  the  subject  of  bitter 
contention  and  ardent  enthusiasm.  Every  one  of  the  performance 
which  he  conducted  aroused  a  storm  of  controversy:  his  lack  of 
respect  for  tradition  which  he  had  once  characterized  as  "sloppi- 
ness,"  his  startling  innovations*  his  musicianship,  and  his  in- 
spired energy  which  demanded  perfection  from  himself  and 


444  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

working  with  him.  His  name,  which  we  heard  spoken  so  often 
at  home,  was  Gustav  Mahler.  We  were  told  that  he  would  con- 
duct the  orchestra. 

Memories  emerge  of  our  first  night  at  the  Opera  House;  the 
crowded  theater,  the  box  reserved  for  the  Court,  the  tuning  of 
the  instruments.  The  lights  are  out  now;  only  stage  and  orchestra 
are  illuminated.  A  man  of  small  stature,  with  the  ascetic  features 
of  a  medieval  monk,  is  seen  hurrying  toward  the  conductor's 
stand.  His  eyes  are  flashing  behind  his  glasses.  He  glances,  as 
if  in  fury,  at  the  audience  that  applauds  his  appearance.  He  raises 
the  baton  and  throws  himself,  with  arms  uplifted,  ecstatically 
almost,  into  the  flood  of  melody. 

Slowly  the  curtain  rises.  There  Is  a  students'  tavern,  the  young 
men  drinking,  boasting,  and  jesting.  Hoffmann,  the  poet  and 
musician,  appears  on  the  scene  and  is  teased  by  his  comrades 
because  he  has  fallen  in  love  once  again.  They  ask  him  to  re- 
count the  story  of  his  foolish  amours  and  he  begins:  "The  name 
of  my  first  beloved  was  Olympia.  .  .  ." 

The  play  takes  us  back,  in  the  ensuing  act,  to  what  happened 
to  young  E.  T,  A.  Hoffmann  as  he  met  Olympia  in  the  home  of 
the  famous  scientist  Spalanzani,  whose  daughter  she  appears  to 
be.  It  is  love  at  first  sight,  with  no  realization  that  she  is  not  a 
living  woman  but  an  automatic  doll,  fashioned  with  the  utmost 
skill.  The  charming  girl  is  seen  at  a  party.  When  Spalanzani 
pushes  a  concealed  button,  she  speaks,  she  walks,  she  sings  and 
dances.  Hoffmann  confesses  his  love  for  her  and  is  elated  when 
he  hears  her  "yes."  She  dances  with  him  until  exhausted,  then 
her  father  or  maker  leads  her  to  her  chamber.  Then,  a  malignant- 
looking  man  by  the  name  of  Coppelius  enters  in  a  rage  and 
claims  to  have  been  swindled  by  Spalanzani.  Vengefully,  he  man- 
ages to  slip  into  Olympiad  chamber  and  to  smash  the  manificent 
doll  Spalanzani's  cleverness  had  wrought.  E.  T.  A.  Hoffmann  is 
made  the  butt  of  the  assembled  guests"  ridicule  for  having  fallen 
in  love  with  a  lifeless  automaton. 

The  second  act  takes  place  in  Venice,  at  the  home  of  beautiful 
Giulietta,  who  receives  the  young  poet  as  graciously  as  she  does  all 
the  other  young  men  to  whom  she  grants  her  favors.  Dapertutto, 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  44JJ 

a  demoniac  figure,  bribes  the  siren  to  a          for 

love.  She  promises  the  ardent  the  key  to  her  He, 

however,  gets  into  a  fight  with  of  her 

him.  She  jilts  Hoffmann,  who  her 

espies  her,  in  the  embraces  of  another,  entering  a 

floats  down  the  Canalo  Grande. 

The  third  act  is  laid  in  Munich,  in  the  of  old  Crespel, 

with  whose  fair  daughter,  Antonia,  Hoffmann  has  in  love. 

The  girl  has  inherited  her  mother's  beautiful  but 

also  her  fatal  disease*  consumption.  Father  with 

her  not  to  sing.  But  Dr.  Mirakel,  a  physician  and  an  evil 
makes  her  doubtful  again  when  he  reproaches  her  for  up  a 

promising  career.  In  her  presence  he  conjures  up  the  of 

her  dead  mother  who  joins  with  Dr.  Mirakel  in  Ms 
to  break  her  promise  and  to  continue  with  her  singing.  Antonia 
yields  and  dies  while  singing  her  aria.  Dr.  Mirakel  then 
pears,  emitting  peals  of  triumphant,  mocking  laughter,  leaving 
father  and  lover  prey  to  their  despair. 

In  the  epilogue,  we  witness  the  as  in  the 

the  students  singing  and  jesting,  shouting  "bravo"  to  Hoffmann's 
tale  of  his  thwarted  love.  He,  in  turn,  proceeds  to  drown  his 
in  drink. 

When  I  went  to  the  opera  that  evening,  I  had  a 

and  amusing  operetta  in  the  manner  of  LA  or 

Orphic  aux  Enfers,  with  sparkling  melodies,  debunking 
heroes  of  Greek  mythology.  But  this  opera  was  so  different,  it 
a  deep  impression  on  the  thirteen-year-old  boy.  For 
afterward,  some  tune  from  The  Tales  of  as  the 

charming  aria  of  Olympia,  the  chorus  of  the  guests,  the  moving 
'aria  of  Antonia,  haunted  me*  Images  from  the  re- 

curred to  the  Inner  eye:  there  were  the  evil  and 
of  Coppelius,  Dapertutto,  and  Dr,  Mirakel,  played  by  the 
singer.  They  appeared  as  personifications  of  a 
that  destroys  again  and  again  the  young  poet's  love  and  happi- 
ness. Also,  the  image  of  the  pale  face  of  Gustav  Mahler 
reappeared,  looking  like  a  sorcerer,  like  a  spiritualized  Dr.  Mira- 
kel»  performing  wonders  with  the  orchestra.  And  then  the 


446  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

figures,  played,  as  they  were,  by  the  same  singer:  Olympia, 
Giulietta,  and  Antonla.  They  appeared  to  be  three  women  in  one, 
a  triad  which  is  always  the  same.  There  was,  in  the  boy,  a  fore- 
knowledge or  presentiment  of  a  deeper  meaning  behind  the 
succession  of  the  three  loves  and  their  tragic  endings,  but  this 
concealed  meaning  eluded  him  whenever  he  tried  to  penetrate 
the  mystery. 

When  I  heard  the  opera  again,  almost  twenty  years  later,  that 
which  had  been  dark  became  transparent.  It  was  like  developing 
an  old  photographic  plate.  The  chemical  processes  to  wThich  the 
plate  had  been  subjected  in  the  meantime  had  now  made  it  pos- 
sible to  obtain  a  positive  print.  The  triad  had  revealed  its  secret 
in  the  light  of  what  I  had  learned  and  experienced  in  psycho- 
analysis. 

In  every  one  of  his  attachments,  young  Hoffmann  had  met  an 
antagonist  called  variously,  Coppelius,  Dapertutto,  and  Dr. 
Mirakel.  This  secret  opponent  was  out  to  defeat  the  poet;  he 
turned  the  beloved  against  Hoffmann  or  destroyed  her.  At  the 
beginning  we  see  Hoffmann  infatuated  or  in  love.  We  see  him 
broken  in  spirit,  in  misery  and  despair,  at  the  end.  The  easily 
inflamed  passion  of  the  young  man  meets  an  antagonistic  power, 
self-deceiving  and  self-harming,  which  causes  him  to  fail.  That 
which  makes  him  luckless  and  miserable  is  conceived  as  outside 
forces.  But  is  it  not  rather  some  agent  within  himself  emerging 
from  dark  subterranean  depths?  The  sinister  figures,  who  blind 
him  about  Olympia,  who  cause  Giulietta  to  jilt  him,  and  to  bring 
death  and  destruction  to  Antonia,  are  personifications  only  of  a 
foiling  power  which  is  an  unconscious  part  of  Hoffmann  himself. 
This  hidden  factor,  which  frustrates  him  each  time  in  the  end,  is 
already  operative  in  his  choice  of  his  love  objects.  As  if  led  by  a 
malicious  destiny,  as  if  thwarted  by  a  demon,  he  falls  in  love  each 
time  with  a  woman  who  is  unsuitable:  Olympia,  a  lifeless  autom- 
aton; Giulietta,  a  vixen;  and  Antonia,  doomed  from  the 
beginning. 

The  personalities  of  the  three  women  themselves,  as  well  as 
the  sequence  of  their  succession,  seem  to  express  a  concealed 
significance,  hint  at  a  symbolic  meaning  behind  the  events.  It 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  447 

is  as  if  the  author  were  presenting  not  only  the  particular  of 
this  German  poet  and  musician,  Hoffmann,  but  a 

situation  of  universal  significance.  Does  the  play  want  to  say 
every  young  man  follows  such  a  pattern  in  his  loves?  Yet  our 
feeling  balks  at  such  a  meaning.  We  find  ourselves  at  a  of 

psychological  impasse,  both  milling  and  recalcitrant  to  believe, 
feeling  a  fusion  and  confusion  of  emotions  which 
other.  We  sense  there  is  a  hidden  meaning;  yet 

happens  to  E.  T.  A.  Hoffmann,  especially  Ms  loves  for 
strange  female  characters,  is  so  specific  and  personal         it  cannot 
relate  to  us. 

The  closest  coincidence  to  the  love  life  of  the  young 

man  may  be  seen  in  Hoffmann's  infatuation  for  Giuiietta  the 
heartless  Venetian  courtesan,  who  wants  to  enslave  for  rea- 
sons of  her  own.  Her  charm  fills  him  with  consuming  ire,  he 
puts  himself  in  bondage  to  her,  ready  to  sacrifice  all  to  his  pas- 
sion. Need  we  search  here  for  a  deeper  meaning?  We  have  the 
lady  of  easy  or  absent  virtue,  who  plays  with  all  men  and  with 
whom  all  men  play.  Here  we  really  have  a  type  which  is  to  be 
found  in  every  man's  life;  the  object  of  uninhibited  sexual  wishes, 
the  mistress  desirable  in  the  flesh. 

But  what  should  we  think  of  Olyrapia?  We  meet  here  with  an 
odd  love  object,  something  almost  incredible.  The  girl  walks  and 
laughs,  speaks,  dances,  and  sings.  She  is,  as  Hoffmann  discovers 
later  and  too  late,  really  only  an  automaton,  and  does  not  func- 
tion unless  her  clever  creator  pushes  certain  buttons.  Where  Is 
the  place  of  such  a  strange  creature  in  every  man's  life?  Should 
we  assume  that  the  author  wanted  to  give  an  exaggerated  carica- 
ture of  the  baby-faced,  doll-like  darling  who  has  no  life  of  her  own, 
the  girl  without  brains  and  personality,  the  society  glamor  girl,  the 
plaything  and  toy?  Such  an  interpretation  Is  tempting,  it  makes 
rational  sense,  but  remains  unconvincing.  And  Antonia?  Should 
she  be  regarded  as  the  woman  who  hesitates  between  choosing  a 
man  or  a  career?  But  her  character  does  not  tally  with  this  con- 
cept. The  outstanding  feature,  after  all,  is  the  menace  of  death 
connected  with  her  singing. 

If  we  tentatively  .accept  these  rational  concepts,  we  arrive  at  the 


448  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

conclusion  that  the  author  wanted  to  portray  three  typical  figure 
who  play  a  role  in  a  young  man's  life.  They  are  the  child-woman, 
the  siren,  and  the  artist,  or  a  woman  who  oscillates  between 
wanting  to  be  a  wife  or  to  follow  a  career.  Olympia,  Giulietta, 
and  Antonia  would  then  represent  three  types  whom  every  young 
man  meets  and  finds  attractive  in  different  ways,  appealing  as 
they  do  to  the  playful,  the  sensual,  and  the  affectionate  part  in 
him.  Was  this  in  the  writer's  mind  when  he  created  the  three 
women  representative  of  their  sex?  Have  we  now  reached  a  better 
understanding? 

If  we  have,  we  do  not  feel  satisfied  yet.  Something  warns  us 
against  contenting  ourselves  with  such  an  interpretation.  Should 
we  give  up  our  attempts  at  searching  for  a  deeper  meaning  in  the 
three  female  figures?  Should  we  not  rather  take  them  at  the  value 
of  their  beautiful  faces?  We  cannot  do  it.  We  cannot  escape  the 
haunting  impression  of  a  concealed  significance.  There  is  the 
repetitive  character  in  spite  of  individual  variations,  the  hidden 
logic  which  gives  the  play  its  tragic  atmosphere.  The  sinister 
figures  of  the  mysterious  antagonist  intensify  the  impression. 
They  give  to  the  events  on  the  stage  a  sense  of  something  pre- 
ordained and  fateful  which  cannot  be  accidental.  Other  traits, 
too,  make  it  evident  that  the  author  was  well  aware  of  the  veiled 
significance,  for  instance,  the  remark  of  one  of  the  students  after 
Hoffmann  has  told  the  story  of  his  loves:  "I  understand,  three 
dramas  in  one  drama." 

Beside  and  beyond  such  small  but  telling  items  in  the  text, 
there  is  the  force  of  this  music  in  which  the  secret  power  of  the 
inevitable,  the  shadow  of  near  death,  and  the  spell  of  destiny 
have  been  transformed  into  song.  This  power  is  felt  in  the  play- 
ful and  sparkling  tunes  of  the  students,  in  the  Mozartian  entrance 
of  the  guests,  in  the  sweet  aria  of  Olympia,  and  in  the  alluring 
Barcarolle  of  Giulietta.  It  laughs  and  mocks  in  Dr.  MirakeFs 
tunes.  It  pleads  in  Hoffmann's  confessions  of  love,  in  the  exhor- 
tations of  the  dead  mother,  and  in  Antonia's  swan  song.  There  is 
something  in  the  conjuring  power  of  this  music,  in  the  depths  of 
feeling  it  stirs,  in  the  death  fear  and  death  desire  it  pours  into 
unforgettable  melodies,  which  does  not  allow  you  to  escape  from 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES 

this  haunting  sense  of  a  or  not 

the  librettist  meant  to  express  a  symbolic  meaning,  can  be 

no  doubt  that  the  composer  did.  There  is  in  the  events  on 

the  stage  and  in  this  music  than  the  eye         the  ear. 

Impossible  that  the  interpretation  of  the 
has  reached  the  deepest  level  yet.  They  must  be 
types  of  women,  even  if  they  are  also  that.  There  is 
more  meaningful  in  the  three  acts  than  the  choice  of  girls 

and  three  disappointments  in  love.  The  concept  of  the 

meaning  of  the  three  women  all  of  a  sudden  strikes  me  as  super- 
ficial, flat,  and  banal.  It  is  very  possible,  even  probable,  that  such 
a  commonplace  was  in  the  mind  of  the  writer,  but  unconsciously 
he  said  more  than  he  consciously  knew,  expressed  a  be- 

yond his  grasp.  It  should  not  be  forgotten   that  the  French; 
librettist  took  the  material  of  the  text  for  The  Tales  of 
from   various   novels   by    the    German    writer   Ernst   Theodor 
Amadeus  Hoffmann  (1776-1822),  whom  he  then  the  leading 

figure  of  the  opera.  In  these  stories,  Hoffmann  showed  a 
mixture  of  the  realistic  and  the  fantastic,  of  the  grotesque  and  the 
tragic,  creating  a  ghastly,  haunting  atmosphere  even  where  he 
depicts  only  everyday  events.  Offenbach's  melodies  communicate 
to  you  the  deeper  insight;  they  speak  immediately  to  your  emo- 
tions, alerted  as  they  are  by  the  hidden  element  0!  the  dramatic 
action,  although  the  plot  itself  presents  only  the  surface  aspect 
of  something  elusive  and  mystifying. 

In  a  situation  like  this,  psychoanalytic  interpretation 
into  its  own,  furnishing  a  key  as  it  does  to  a  locked  room,  allow- 
ing us  to  penetrate  below  the  surface  of  conscious  thinking.  There 
is  not  much  of  a  mystery  about  Giulietta:  she  remains  the  "cour- 
tesan with  brazen  mien/*  as  she  is  called  in  the  play.  What  might 
give  us  food  for  thought  is  rather  her  place  in  the  sequence  of  the 
female  igures.  She  stands  in  the  middle,  following  after  Olympia, 
the  doll,  and  preceding  Antonia  over  whom  looms  the  of 

death.  Since  Giulietta  represents  the  woman  who  and 

appeals  to  man's  sensual  desires,  promising  their  fulfillment,  her 
middle  position  in  the  sequence  suggests  the  interpretation  that 


450  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

in  her  is  represented  the  figure  which  governs  the  mature  years  of 
a  man's  life. 

More  intriguing  is  the  personality  of  Oiympia.  How  does  this 
doll,  the  child-wroman,  appear  in  the  light  of  psychoanalytic  inter- 
pretation? What  can  be  the  significance  of  her  appearance  in  Hoff- 
mann's life,  with  this  mixture  of  features,  both  grotesque  and 
pathetic?  Freud  has  taught  us  that  the  hidden  meaning  of  many 
dreams,  neurotic  symptoms,  and  other  products  of  unconscious 
activity  remains  obscure  as  long  as  their  manifest  content  alone 
is  taken  into  consideration.  In  certain  instances  the  concealed 
meaning  of  a  dream,  for  example,  can  only  be  understood  by  re- 
versing important  parts  of  the  dream  plot.  Then,  and  only  then, 
and  in  no  other  way,  may  the  meaning  be  unraveled  from  the  dis- 
tortions in  such  cases.  Oiympia  is  a  doll  wTho  speaks  and  moves  and 
sings  only  if  and  when  appropriate  buttons  are  pushed,  when  she  is 
being  led  and  manipulated.  If  we  are  to  reverse  the  story,  we  get 
the  picture  of  Hoffmann  being  led  by  hidden  strings  like  a 
marionette.  Or,  if  we  go  one  step  farther,  he  is  made  to  walk  and 
talk  and  sing  and  act  like  an  infant.  The  reversal  of  this  part  of  the 
plot  seems  thus  to  place  the  story  of  Hoffmann's  first  love  in  his 
infancy.  The  poet  appears  in  the  reversal  as  a  little  boy,  and  Oiym- 
pia as  representing  his  mother  who  plays  with  him.  He  cannot 
act  independently  of  her,  and  follows  her  about.  If  we  are  willing 
to  trust  this  psychoanalytic  interpretation  which,  after  all,  does 
not  sound  any  more  fantastic  than  the  story  of  Hoffmann's  first 
love  in  the  operatic  plot,  some  meaning  in  the  succession  of  the 
two  figures  dawns  on  us:  Oiympia  and  Giulietta.  If  Oiympia  rep- 
resents the  mother,  the  first  love  object  of  the  small  boy,  then 
Giulietta  is  the  woman  loved  and  desired  by  the  grown  man,  the 
object  of  his  passionate  wishes,  the  mistress  who  gratifies  his 
sensual  desires. 

But  what  is  hidden  then  behind  the  last  figure?  Who  is  con- 
cealed behind  Antonia?  When  we  trust  to  psychoanalytic  inter- 
pretation, this  riddle  will  not  be  hard  to  solve.  Antonia  vacillates 
between  her  love  for  Hoffmann  and  her  love  for  music.  She  dis- 
obeys the  warnings  not  to  sing,  and  dies.  When  we  reverse  the 
contents  again,  as  we  did  before,  we  arrive  at  the  following  mean- 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  45! 

ing:   Hoffmann,  the  poet,  his  and  his 

art,  and  he  dies.  In  the  sequence  of  the  plot,  Antonia  is  the  last 

Image  of  woman  as  she  appears  to  the  old  man.  Antonia  is  the 
figure  of  death.  The  three  female  figures  to  us  in  a 

new  light:  Olympia  as  the  representative  of  the  mother,  of 

the  love  of  the  helpless  and  dependent  little  ix>y;  Giulietta  as 

the  desired  mistress  of  the  grown  man,  Aatonia  as  the 
cation  of  death  which  the  old  man  is  approaching. 

It  is  at  this  point  in  our  attempts  at  unraveling  the 
pattern  of  meaning  behind  Offenbach's  the 

image  of  the  composer  himself  emerges,  by  the 

of  his  life  story.  Can  it  be  incidental  that  he,  ill, 

worked  feverishly  at  this,  his  last  opus  which  he  was 

to  be  his  best  accomplishment?  They  called  him  in  Paris 

"Mozart  of  the  Champs-Elysees."  Mozart,  his  beloved  revered 
master,  knew  when  he  composed  his  Requiem  he  would  die 
soon.  Offenbach,  too,  realized  that  Ms  end  was  approaching.  He 
put  his  full  creative  power  into  his  work,  and  he  died  after  it  was 
completed  like  Antonia  during  her  swan  song,  In  the 
tunes  of  Dr.  Mirakel  are  all  the  shudders  of  the  approaching 
annihilation.  All  passionate  longing  for  life  and  is  poured 

into  the  third  act.  Offenbach  wrote  to  M.  Carvallio,  Director  of 
the  Paris  Opera:  "Hurry  to  produce  my  play.  Not  much  is 

left  to  me  and  I  have  only  the  one  wish  to  see  the  per- 

formance/' He  knew  he  had  to  complete  his  work  even  if  his 
efforts  should  accelerate  his  death.  They  did.  He  died  a  few 
months  before  the  opening  night.  Like  Antonia,  he  perished  in 
his  song. 

It  is  not  accidental  that  E.  T.  A.  Hoffmann,  the  hero  of  the 
opera,  was  himself  a  musician  as  well  as  a  poet.  The  identifi- 
cation of  Offenbach  with  the  igure  of  Antonia  is  also  indicated 
in  her  passionate  desire  to  become  an  artist  like  her  mother, 
whose  spirit  exhorts  her  to  sacrifice  all  to  her  singing.  Offenbach's 
father  was  a  singer  in  the  synagogue  and  a  composer  of  Jewish 
religious  music. 

The  psychoanalytic  interpretation  here  presented  may  seem 
forced  to  the  reader  unfamiliar  with  the  methods  of  eliciting  tin- 


452  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

conscious  meanings.  It  will  be  helpful  to  point  out  that  the  sym- 
bolic significance  here  discovered  Is  only  a  restatement  In  new 
form  of  an  old  motif  well  known  from  numerous  ancient  myths 
and  tales.  It  can  be  called  the  motif  of  the  man  and  the  three 
women,  one  of  whom  he  has  to  choose.  Freud  gave  the  first  psy- 
choanalytic Interpretation  of  this  recurrent  plot  in  one  of  his  less 
known  papers.*  He  deciphered  the  concealed  meaning  in  the 
material  of  Lear,  which  Shakespeare  had  taken  from  older 
sources.  The  old  King  stands  between  his  three  daughters,  of 
whom  the  youngest,  Cordelia,  is  the  most  deserving.  Goneril  and 
Regan  vie  with  each  other  in  protestations  of  their  affection  for 
the  father,  but  Cordelia  'loves  and  is  silent."  In  the  last  scene  of 
the  drama,  Lear  carries  Cordelia,  who  is  dead,  across  the  stage. 
Freud  elucidated  the  hidden  significance  of  this  scene  by  the  proc- 
ess of  reversal.  It  means,  of  course,  the  figure  of  death  who  car- 
ries away  the  body  of  old  Lear,  as  the  Valkyries  carry  off  the  slam 
hero.  Traces  of  this  original  meaning  can  already  be  seen  In  the 
scene  of  Cordelia  bending  over  her  "childchanged  father."  As  is 
frequently  the  case  In  dreams  about  persons  dear  to  the  dreamer, 
Cordelia's  silence  In  itself  signifies  unconsciously  that  she  is  dead, 
that  she  is  death  itself  in  a  mythical  form. 

The  same  motif,  displaced,  distorted,  and  elaborated,  appears 
in  another  one  of  Shakespeare's  plays.  The  Portia  scenes  in  The 
Merchant  of  Venice  reveal  to  the  interpretation  of  Freud  an  un- 
expected aspect.  Portia  will  yield  her  hand  to  the  man  who, 
among  three  caskets,  chooses  the  one  which  contains  her  picture. 
Here  we  encounter  a  hidden  symbolism  which  we  already  know 
from  Greek  antiquity:  boxes,  chests,  and  other  receptacles  are 
symbolic  substitutes  for  the  female  body.  In  the  Bassanio  scene 
of  the  play,  the  motif  of  the  man  who  has  to  choose  between  three 
women  is  thus  expressed  in  symbolic  form,  Bassanio  prefers  the 
casket  which  is  leaden  to  the  gold  and  silver  ones: 

.  .  .  but  thou,  thou  meager  lead, 

Which  rather  threatenest,  than  dost  promise  aught. 

Thy  paleness  moves  me  more  than  eloquence. 

*  **Das  Motif  der  KSstchenwahl,"  Gesttmmelte  Sckriften,  Vol.  X. 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  453 

The  features  of  paleness,  like  silence  in  the          of  aj> 

pear  frequently  In  dreams  to  signify  that  a  figure  Is  cteac!: 

who  are  deathly  pale  or  who  are 

or  death  Itself.  Antonia  in  The  Tales  of  is  a  it  Is 

true,  but  to  sing  is  forbidden  to  her          It  is  her 

brings  about  her  death,  silences  her  forever.  In 

ductions,  opposltes  may  stand  for  other,  can 

other.  The  secret  similarities  between  the 

plays  become  transparent:  an  old  motif  la  the  one  in  a 

tragic,  In  the  other  In  a  light  version.  What  Is  IB  reality 

and  preordained,  namely,  that  In  the  end  has  to  to 

death,  Is  here  turned  Into  a  free  choice.  That  which  is 

changed  into  wish  fulfillment— a  Itself  of 

There  are  hints  which  point  to  the  orginal  meaning,  to  the  kind 

of  a  choice  Involved.  ("Who  me  must  give          hazard 

all  he  hath,"  says  the  leaden  casket*  "which  rather 

than  dost  promise  aught/1  to  Bas&anlo.) 

Let  me  follow  the  old  motif  Into  the  realm  of  the  fairy  talc 
where  we  meet  with  it  frequently  In  Its  diverse  forms,  for  Instance, 
In  the  story  of  Cinderella  who  Is  the  youngest  of  the  sisters, 
conceals  herself.  We  can  trace  it  farther  back  to  the  Erinyes,  Far- 
cae,  and  Moirai,  the  of  fate  who  are 

over  Individual  destiny,  The  third  figure  Is  Atropos, 

who  cut  the  thread  of  life.  Corresponding  to  the  Parcae  are  the 
Norse  In  Germanic  mythology,  who,  too,  are  conceived  as  watch- 
Ing  over  human  fate.  They  rule  over  gods          men  alike, 
from  what  Is  decreed  by  them  neither  god  nor  man  can 
Man's  fate  is  determined  by  them  at  the  hour  of  the  child's  t>irthy 
by  what  they  say  to  the  newborn  infant.  The  word  fate 
itself  is-  derived  from  the  same  root  as  "word"  or  fisthat  which  Is 
spoken."  That  what  they  say  in  magic  words  is  a  man's  fate.  De- 
rived from  the  same  lado-German  root,  the  word  "fee"  in 
German,  the  word  "feie"  In  old  French,  and  the  Irish  adfeeiiw 
"fay/*  which  is  contained  In  fairy,  all  originally  denoted 
of  fate.  In  many  fairy  tales  the  fairies  are  represented  as 
gifts  to  a  newbora  infant.  In  most  Instances  they  appear  as 
cent,  as  kind*  lovely,  well-wishing  figures.  But  in  of  the 


454  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

stories  their  original  fata!  character  re-emerges  behind  the  benign 
aspect. 

In  conformity  with  the  psychological  law  of  the  opposite  which 
can  replace  one  aspect  by  its  protagonist  in  our  unconscious  think- 
ing, the  goddess  of  death  sometimes  appears  under  the  aspect  of 
the  great  goddess  of  love.  In  most  ancient  mythologies  the  same 
female  figure  has  both  functions  like  Kali  in  India,  Ashtar  with 
the  Semitic  tribes,  and  Aphrodite  with  the  Greeks.  Yes,  indeed,  it 
is  wishful  thinking  which  succeeded  at  last  in  transforming  the 
most  terrifying  apparition  into  the  desirable,  the  female  figure  of 
death  into  that  of  the  beloved. 

We  look  back  at  Offenbach's  opera:  Olympia,  Giulietta,  An- 
tonia.  Here  are  three  women  in  one,  or  one  woman  in  three 
shapesr  the  one  who  gives  birth,  the  one  who  gives  sexual  gratifi- 
cation, the  one  who  brings  death.  Here  are  the  three  aspects 
woman  has  in  a  man's  life:  the  mother,  the  mistress,  the  anni* 
hilator.  The  first  and  the  last  character  meet  each  other  in  the 
middle  figure.  In  mythological  and  literary  reactions,  the  repre- 
sentatives of  love  and  of  destruction  can  replace  each  other  as  in 
Shakespeare's  plays,  or  they  succeed  each  other  as  in  Hoffmann's 
tales  of  thwarted  love.  In  his  three  loves  a  reaction-formation  un- 
folds itself:  the  woman  chosen  appears  in  each  beginning  as  the 
loveliest,  most  desirable  object,  and  always,  in  the  end,  represents 
doom  and  death.  It  is  as  if  her  true  character  reveals  itself  only  in 
the  final  scene.  For  as  long  as  the  reaction  formation  is  in  power, 
the  most  terrible  appears  as  the  most  desirable. 

Behind  all  these  figures  is  originally  a  single  one,  just  as  in  the 
triads  of  goddesses  whom  modern  comparative  history  of  religion 
has  succeeded  in  tracing  back  to  their  prototype  of  one  goddess, 
Foe  all  of  us  the  mother  is  the  woman  of  destiny.  She  is  the  femme 
fatale  in  its  most  literal  sense,  because  she  brought  us  into  the 
world,  she  taught  us  to  love,  and  it  is  she  upon  whom  we  call  in 
our  last  hour.  The  mother  as  a  death-dealing  figure  became  alien 
to  our  conscious  thinking.  But  she  may  become  comprehensible 
in  this  function  when  death  appears  as  the  only  release  from  suf- 
fering, as  the  one  aim  desired,  the  final  peace.  It  is  in  this  sense 
that  dying  soldiers  call  for  their  mothers.  I  can  never  forget  a 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  455 

little  boy  who,  in  the  agonies  of  a  illness,  cried,  "Mother, 

you  have  brought  me  Into  the  world,  why  can't  you  me 

dead  now?" 

It  Is  noteworthy  that  the  motif  of  one  man 
women  appears  In  an  earlier  opera  of  Offenbach,  an  ac- 

tive part  in  the  choice  and  shape  of  the  libretto.  La 
uses  a  plot  from  Greek  mythology-  Paris,  son  of  Frames,  has  to 
choose  between  Athene,  Hera?  and  Aphrodite.  The 
aria  of  the  mythological  playboy  says:  "On  Mount  Ida  god- 

desses quarrelled  in  the  wood.  'Which/  said  the  'of 

us  three  is  the  fairest?'  "  Here,  again,  we  have  the  of 

ing,  this  time  in  a  frivolous  version.  To  the  young  ladies* 
Hera  promises  power  and  fame,  Athene  wisdom,  but 

...  the  third,  ah,  the  third 

The  third  remained  silent. 

She  gained  the  prize  all  the  same, 

Is  it  not  strange  that  Aphrodite,  the  of  love,  remains 

silent?  She  does  not  speak,  yet  she  is  eloquent.  In  the  end  the 

young  prince  chooses  her,  only  it  is  not  choice,  it  is  necessity.  She 
is  not  only  the  goddess  of  love,  but  also  of  death.  The  Tales  of 
Hoffmann  tell  and  sing  the  role  of  women  in  a  man's  life;  that  is 
to  say,  in  every  man's  life. 

I  now  remember  when  the  melody  that  haunted  me  for 
days  irst  emerged.  It  was  a  week  ago,  on  my  way  back  the 

Public  Library.  J  had  looked  up  something  there.  Before  leaving 
I  had  seen  on  a  desk  a  book  which  was  a  biography  of  Jacques 
Offenbach.  I  took  it,  looked  at  the  composer's  picture,  and  ran 
over  the  pages,  reading  a  paragraph  here  and  there:  the  story  of 
his  childhood  in  Germany,  his  struggle  and  triumph  in  Paris,  his 
way  of  composing,  the  feverish  working  on  the  score  of  The  T&ks 
of  Hoffmann.  He  had  a  presentiment  he  would  not  live  to  see  the 
opening  night  of  the  opera.  He  felt  the  end  was  near.  He  a 
few  months  after  he  had  reached  sixty-one. 

Walking  home  through  the  streets  that  evening,  I  thought  of 
the  book  I  am  working  on,  and  a  sudden  anxiety  overcame  me 
that  I  would  die  before  finishing  it.  It  occurred  to  me  that  1 


456  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

passed  sixty-one  a  few  months  ago.  And  then  the  aria  from  The 
Tales  of  Hoffmann  emerged  and  the  unrecognized  melody  began 
to  haunt  me  as  if  it  wanted  to  remind  me  of  something  one  would 
like  to  forget. 


After  I  recognized  the  melody  that  had  haunted  me  as  being 
Antonia's  aria  from  The  Tales  of  Hoffmann,  I  remembered  with 
astonishment  that  this  same  tune  had  frequently  occurred  to  me 
more  than  thirty  years  ago  and  that  I  had  then  written  a  paper  on 
the  unconscious  content  of  Offenbach's  opera.  I  found  this  piece 
in  one  of  my  folders  and  with  it  a  letter  which  Freud  had  written 
to  me  after  he  had  read  the  article.  His  letter  was  dated  March 
24,  1918,  and  reads  in  part  as  follows:  "I  liked  your  Offenbach 
article  very  much.  I  think  it  is  correct.  Only  in  one  part  of  your 
indentation,  in  tracing  back  Olympia  to  the  mother-image,  you 
should  have  enlarged  more  freely  and  more  fully  and  should  have 
avoided  giving  the  impression  that  you  are  fulfilling  a  prescribed 
task.  You  will  perhaps  rewrite  that  passage  of  your  thoughtful 
contribution  with  your  previous  literary  facility.  With  cordial 
thanks  and  regards,  yours,  Freud." 

I  rewrote  that  part  and  then  put  the  manuscript  away.  It  ap- 
pears here  in  the  main  part  of  the  preceding  chapter.  It  was  note- 
worthy that  the  same  melody  emerged  thirty  years  later  and  led 
my  thoughts  back  to  a  subject  which  had  preoccupied  me  such  a 
long  time  before.  That  early  draft  was  not  written  for  the  day.  It 
must  have  originated  in  some  deep,  unrecognized  emotions.  It 
survived  the  day  together  with  the  emotions  which  continued 
to  live  in  the  unknown  underground.  It  may  have  hovered  at 
the  brink  of  conscious  memory  before,  but  only  the  re-emergence 
of  that  melody  brought  it  back  from  its  submersion  after  I  had 
reached  sixty-one  years,  the  age  at  which  Offenbach  died.  It  can- 
not be  accidental  that  its  essential  part  was  written  and  given  to 
Freud  when  he  had  passed  his  sixty-first  year. 

The  jinx  was  off:  unlike  Jacques  Offenbach,  I  did  not  die  upon 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

reaching  my  sixty-first  year.  Recently  I  saw  The  of 

once  more,  this  in  the  movies.  It  me 

during  and  after  that  performance  my  did  not 

to  the  hidden  significance  of  the  its  It  was  as  if 

writing  that  paper  about  the  in  a  life         ex- 

hausted the  emotional  content  of  the  subject  for  me.  Or  it  be- 
cause there  was  so  much  to  look  at  in  the  version  nsy 
attention  was  distracted? 

At  all  events  a  conspicuous  of  the         act  of  ihe 

version  turned  my  thought  in  a  new  direction.  The 
went  back  to  E.  T.  A.  Hoffmann's  novel  Tfte 
which  the  plot  of  the  Olympia  is  and 

place  and  significance  to  the  fabrication  of  the 

nettes.  Not  only  was  Olympia  a  puppet,  but         the  at  her 

party.  The  figures  of  Professor  Spalanzani          of  the 
Coppelius  are  shown  in  this  movie  at  their  work  of 

manufacturing  the  puppets,  Spalanzani's  is  not  a 

house,  but  a  workshop  full  of  dolls. 

After  that  performance  a  memory  to  I 

never  recalled  before.  Psychology  still  cannot  satisfactorily  ex- 
plain why  memories  of  previously  unrecollected 
peniogs  emerge  with  lull  vivacity  in  one's  old  age.  It  to 

me  that  such  occurrence  of  events  and  to 

the  remote  past  of  the  individual  are  by  a  per- 

ceptible loss  of  emotional  interest  in  the  present  It  is  as  if  the 
diminution  of  the  importance  of  actual  situations  a 

regression  to  earlier  phases  of  one's  life  and  gives  a 

heightened  HveMness. 

I  had  always  believed  the  first  theater  performance  I 
to  have  been  Orphms  in  the  1 

that  this  had  been  a  treat  on  my  tenth  birthday.  The 
memory,  now  emerging,  revealed  that  I          teen  at  a 
before  that.  I  now  recalled  that  a  Moravian  had  me, 

then  a  small  boy,  to  a  puppet  theater  in  the  Prater  and  that  1  had 
enjoyed  myself  thoroughly.  The  marionette  show  was  a  fairy 
and  fairies  and  bad  demons  struggled  with  each  other  the 

hero  of  the  show,  which  ended,  of  course,  with  the  victory  erf 


458  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

over  evil.  The  puppets  appeared  to  me  full  of  life  and  power. 
They  acted  under  their  own  will  and  were  led  to  heroic  actions  or 
bad  deeds  by  their  own  good  or  evil  intentions.  It  did  not  disturb 
me  in  the  least  that  they  were  pulled  by  very  conspicuous  strings. 
I  then  believed  in  free  will  as  do  only  our  lawgivers  and  educators 
who  conveniently  overlook  that  we  all  are  pulled  hither  and 
thither  by  invisible  strings. 

To  playwrights  and  actors,  as  well  as  to  women  and  children, 
the  theater  is  so  much  nearer  to  material  life  than  to  us  disen- 
chanted realists.  A  patient  remembered  in  his  analysis  that  as  a 
small  boy  he  believed  that  going  to  the  theater  meant  climbing 
up  to  the  roofs  of  certain  buildings  on  Broadway  and  standing 
up  there  during  an  evening.  This  strange  idea  had  a  simple 
origin  in  the  thoughts  of  the  child.  When  his  parents  took  him 
on  a  walk,  they  sometimes  talked  of  theaters  and  actors  and  re- 
ferred to  billboards  on  which  new  plays  were  announced  high 
up  on  the  houses  of  Broadway  as  they  passed  by.  The  boy  also 
saw  on  these  posters  pictures  of  actors  in  wooden  frames  and  the 
electrified  letters  of  their  names.  What  was  more  natural  than  to 
assume  that  his  parents  went  up  there  when  they  announced  to 
him  that  they  were  going  to  the  theater? 

It  seems  that  these  childhood  convictions  remain  undisturbed 
and  are  as  indifferent  to  the  views  of  grownups  as  a  Siamese  cat 
is  to  the  opinions  of  people  around  him.  From  that  puppet  show 
I  must  have  conceived  the  idea  that  the  theater  was  something 
like  a  palace  of  fairies,  and  the  plot  a  fairy  tale,  not  acted  but 
brought  alive.  A  remnant  of  this  old  concept  of  the  stage  as  the 
meeting  and  matching  place  of  superhuman  forces  has  remained 
with  me.  The  strings  on  which  the  puppets  were  pulled  became 
invisible.  They  have  been  transformed  into  those  threads  by 
which  the  forces  of  destiny  lead  the  figures  to  their  destination. 

In  the  tracks  of  this  old  concept,  I  was  not  astonished  when  I 
was  told  before  my  tenth  birthday  that  I  would  see  the  gods  and 
heroes  of  Greek  antiquity  at  a  performance  of  Orpheus  in  the 
Netherworld.  The  Greek  and  Roman  gods  had  taken  the  place  of 
sorcerers,  fairies,  and  evil  demons  in  my  fantasies  as  they  did  in 
the  real  evolution  of  religious  beliefs.  My  interest  had  shifted 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES 

from  the  fairy  tales  of  the  Brothers  Grimm  and  Andersen  to  the 
igures  of  the  ancient  mythology,  to  the 

figures  were  to  be  seen  in  the  colored  illustrations  of  a  The 

Most  Beautiful  Sagos  of  Ancient  by  Gustav  Schwab,  1 

knew  ail  the  tales  about  Jupiter,  Pluto,  Mars,  Venus,  and  Styx 
and,  of  course,  Orpheus  and  Eurydice,  I  see 

on  the  stage,  and  I  looked  forward  to  IB  the 

because  the  theater  still  appeared  to  me  as  to 

life,  as  tableaux  vivants.  I  have  often  myself  since  whether 

it  Is  much  more. 

Thus,  for  me,  the  theater  was  a  continuation  of 
show  seen  as  a  small  boy.  There  must  have  been,  horn-ever,  a 
chological  justification  for  my  so  long  mistakenly  believing 
Orpheus  in  the  Netherworld  was  the  first  show  I  had  It 

seems  that  the  puppet  show  had  been  disavowed 
because  It  was  "kid  stuff."  But  here  was  real  theater,  the 
where  adults  go.  The  boy  at  the  advanced  age  of  ten  years 
down  contemptuously  on  the  puppet  show  of  his  early  child- 
hood. It  was  strange  that  the  memory  of  it 
movie  performance  of  The  Tales  of  In  which  Olympia 

and  her  guests  are  marionettes.  Perhaps  an  accidental 
facilitated  the  occurrence  of  this  memory:  leaving  the 
crossing  Broadway,  I  saw  high  up  on  a  building  a  poster  on  which 
another  play  was  announced  in  electrified  letters.  Its  title  was 
Guys  and  Dolls. 

Some  months  after  this  performance  in  the  movies,  I  founcl  in 
a  folder  two  old  yellowed  sheets  on  which  I  had  written 
notes.  Some  of  them  were  hardly  legible.  They  were  not  dated, 
but  their  content,  after  having  been  deciphered,  showed  that  they 
must  have  been  jotted  down  when  I  was  thinking  of  The  Tales  of 
Hoffmann,  which  means  before  1918  when  I  gave  Freud  the 
manuscript  of  my  paper.  The  notes  of  the  first  sheet  already  con- 
tained the  outline  of  the  concept  I  later  worked  out  IB  my  draft, 
but  on  the  second  were  some  words  which  to  my  great  surprise 
pointed  to  an  Idea  I  had  dropped  or  brushed  aside  when  1  wrote 
that  manuscript  early  In  1918.  The  notes  said:  Olympia,  Giulietta, 
Antonia,  originally  ooe  woman-figure— the  early  pattern  Is  Euryd- 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

Ice 'in  Orpheus  in  the  Netherworld-tilt  revolution  of  the  gods 
against  Jupiter— death  as  punishment— Offenbach  and  Jehovah- 
Carl  BlaseL 

The  last  name  brought  back  an  abundance  of  memories  of  that 
performance  on  my  tenth  birthday.  Carl  Blasel  was  then  a  well- 
known  Viennese  comedian  who  sang  and  acted  the  part  of  Jove 
in  that  matinee.  I  still  know  that  I  connected  the  name  of  Blasel 
with  his  figure  because  the  German  word  aufblasen  means  blow 
up,  and  the  funny,  obese  old  man  was  very  fit  to  act  as  the  help- 
less Jove  in  Offenbach's  parodistic  presentation. 

Out  of  the  submersion  of  almost  fifty-four  years,  as  from  a  trap 
door  on  a  stage,  his  comical  figure  appeared  in  my  mind,  and  I 
saw  him  as  he  emerged  with  all  mythological  attributes,  includ- 
ing the  lightning,  as  Jupiter  amongst  the  gods  who  revolt  against 
Mm.  They  are  sick  to  death  of  sipping  ambrosia  and  nectar  and 
wish  to  drink  champagne.  I  seem  to  hear  that  revolutionary  song 
0f  the  Olympians  into  which  Offenbach  skillfully  inserted  some 
bars  of  that  other  revolutionary  tune,  the  Marseillaise.  And  by 
Godl— or  rather  by  Jove!— I  remembered  all  of  a  sudden,  after 
fifty-four  years,  the  exact  words  of  indignant  Jupiter  which  did 
not  appear,  of  course*  in  the  libretto  of  the  operetta,  but  were 
improvised  and  were  pronounced  in  a  broad  Viennese  dialect: 

No  w&rt's,  ihr  Mordsbagage, 
Ihrgebt's  mir  noch  ka  Ruah! 
Ich  zahl  euch  keine  Gage 
Und  sperr  den  Himmel  zuaf 

You  bums,  no  peace  by  night  and  day! 
If  you  don't  stop  this  uproar, 
I'll  give  you  no  more  pay 
And  close  up  Olympus'  store. 

Of  course,  I  enjoyed  the  scintillating  music,  but  I  was  much 
more  fascinated  by  the  debunking  and  parodying  of  the  gods  and 
half-gods  of  ancient  Greece.  Only  later  I  learned  to  appreciate 
the  "supreme  form  of  wit"  (Nietzsche's  praising  words)  of  the 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  461 

composer  who  expresses  his  travesty  in  music  itself,  as  for  instance 
in  that  solemn  hymn  in  praise  of  Jupiter  which  suddenly  jumps 
into  that  exuberant  cancan,  that  galop  infernal  of  all  gods.  Later 
I  also  began  to  understand  that  my  extreme  enjoyment  of  the 
mythological  caricature  introduced  a  phase  of  revolution  against 
religion  and  tradition  in  my  young  life.  The  appearance  of  an- 
noyed Jove  in  the  middle  of  the  outrage  of  gods  represented  a 
substitute  memory  of  my  father  appearing  in  the  nursery,  ex- 
tremely annoyed  by  the  turmoil  and  noise  we  children  made. 
That  phase  of  rebellion  against  authority  lasted  to  the  end  of 
puberty.  I  still  remember  that  the  mockery  of  the  Greek  and 
Roman  gods  and  half-gods  was  followed  by  the  debunking  of  the 
heroes  of  the  German  sagas  in  whom  the  boy  had  been  interested 
for  a  short  time.  As  the  degradation  and  desecration  of  the  figures 
of  Greek  mythology  is  connected  in  my  mind  with  the  perform- 
ance of  Orpheus  in  the  Netherworld,  the  mockery  and  the  de- 
bunking of  the  gods  and  heroes  of  Valhalla  is  tied  to  another 
operetta  seen  much  later.  It  is  The  Merry  Nibelungs  by  Oskar 
Straus,  the  composer  who,  later  on,  wrote  A  Waltz  Dream  and  The 
Chocolate  Soldier.  In  that  early  operetta,  Straus  parodies  Wagner's 
operas,  as  Offenbach  occasionally  did  Gluck's  Orpheus  and  Euryd- 
ice.  (Did  not  Wagner  say  about  Offenbach  as  a  composer,  "Yes, 
he  has  warmth,  the  warmth  of  a  manure  heap"?)  Oskar  Straus, 
who  follows,  in  The  Merry  Nibelungs,  Offenbach's  pattern  of 
witty  parody,  must  have  recognized  early  the  shame  and  nonsense 
of  that  racial  glorification  which  was  introduced  by  the  Wagner 
cult  and  culminated  in  the  Nazi  terror. 

While  I  am  writing  this,  some  of  the  enjoyment  of  that  travesty 
comes  back  to  mind  with  the  memory  of  some  lines  which  pro- 
claim the  Nibelungen  treasure  was  not  hidden  at  the  bottom  of 
the  Rhine,  but  invested  at  the  Rhine  Bank  at  6  per  cent.  The 
images  of  Siegfried,  Gunther,  and  Hagen,  of  Kriemhild  and  her 
mother  Utah,  of  all  those  Teutonic  knights  emerge  together  with 
some  bars  of  Straus's  witty  music.  I  am  humming  the  aria  of 
Siegfried  after  he  had  killed  the  dragon  and  dipped  into  its 
blood: 


^62  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

1  have  taken  a  bath 
Too  soon  after  I  did  sup, 
It  didn't  agree  with  me 
I  don't  feel  freshened  up. 

Or  that  other  tune: 

And  how  about  Lady  Utah? 
She  has  not  much  to  brag  on, 
Master  Siegfried  becomes  her  son-in-law 
Who  isn't  afraid  of  any  dragon. 

The  chorus  sings: 

So  war's  bei  den  Germanen 
Seit  alters  Branch, 
So  taten's  unsre  Ahnen 
Und  wir  tun's  auch. 

That's  a  dear  German  custom 
From  early  ages  through, 
Thus  acted  our  ancestors 
And  thus  we  act  too. 

And  this  whole  sordid  mixture  of  "Kraft  durch  Freude"  (in 
the  tortures  of  Poles  and  Jews),  of  heroism  and  moronism,  of 
bravery  and  depravity  which  that  operetta  shows  as  already  pres- 
ent in  the  ancient  Teutons  appears  now  as  a  prophetic  vision  of 
the  horrible  things  to  come  some  thirty  years  later.  The  light  and 
parodistically  dancing  tunes  of  the  Straus  operetta  are  relieved  in 
my  mind  by  the  orgiastic  cancan  of  Offenbach,  by  that  irresistible 
galop  which,  according  to  a  contemporary  critic,  could  "awaken 
the  dead." 

Tearing  the  mask  from  the  face  of  an  age  in  which,  as  in  our 
own,  all  vices  hide  behind  the  hypocrisy  of  decency  and  moral- 
istic integrity,  Offenbach's  riotous  and  exuberant  tunes  bravely 
proclaimed  enjoyment  of  life  and  made  fun  of  all  that  official 
show  of  chastity,  honesty  and  patriotism.  They  have  a  satanic 
spirit,  those  tunes,  a  beaute  de  diable.  An  American  colloquialism 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES  463 

says  "ugly  as  sin/*  But  sin  is  not  only  tempting,  it  is  also  very 
attractive.  They  should  say  "ugly  as  virtue." 

The  children  of  the  Jewish  ghetto  have  very  few  occasions  to 
see  pictures.  In  extension  of  the  biblical  commandment  forbid- 
ding the  making  of  images  of  God,  the  religious  Jews  do  not 
permit  illustrations  of  the  figures  of  the  Holy  Scripture.  There  is 
really  only  one  exception— the  Haggadah,  the  book  in  which  the 
tale  of  the  exodus  of  the  Jewish  people  from  Egypt  is  told  and 
which  is  recited  at  the  festival  of  Passover.  Here  is  the  tale  of 
the  slavery  of  the  Israelites  in  Egypt  and  of  their  miraculous 
salvation  from  Pharaoh's  cruel  oppression.  There  are  also  some 
very  primitive  pictures  of  these  events  in  the  old  book. 

There  is  an  anecdote  about  how  the  first  religious  doubts  awak- 
ened in  a  little  boy  who  grew  up  in  the  pious  atmosphere  of  a 
Russian  ghetto.  The  child  saw  the  picture  of  Moses  in  the  desert 
in  the  Haggadah.  The  drawing  showed  the  great  lawgiver  of 
Israel  dressed  as  a  Russian  Jew,  since  the  medieval  artists  gave 
the  persons  of  the  Bible  the  costumes  of  their  times.  After  having 
looked  long  at  the  picture,  the  boy  asked  the  Rabbi,  "Why  is 
Moses  wearing  a  fur  cap  in  the  hot  desert?"  With  this  little  prob- 
lem began  the  child's  doubt  of  the  truth  of  the  religious  tradition. 

As  far  as  I  can  remember,  my  first  doubt  of  the  Jewish  faith  is 
also  connected  with  the  Haggadah,  not  with  one  of  its  pictures, 
but  with  one  of  the  songs  which  is  recited  there.  My  father  was 
an  agnostic,  but  my  grandfather  was  a  fanatically  religious  man 
who  demanded  that  we  children  attend  the  Jewish  festivals.  On 
the  evening  of  the  Passover  meals  that  Haggadah  was  read  aloud 
and  also  the  traditional  song  was  sung.  It  is  called  Had  Gadja 
and  is  a  kind  of  long  nursery-rhyme  tale.  Its  story  is  that  a  father 
purchased  a  little  kid— two  pieces  were  the  prize— and  that  the 
cat  came  and  ate  the  kid.  Then  came  the  dog  who  bit  the  cat, 
the  stick  came  and  hit  the  dog,  the  fire  burned  the  stick,  the  water 
quenched  the  fire.  Then  came  the  ox  and  drank  the  water.  The 
slaughterer  killed  the  ox,  but  then  came  the  angel  of  death  and 
killed  the  slaughterer.  The  Most  Holy  (God)  destroyed  the  angel 
of  death  who  slew  the  slaughterer  that  killed  the  ox  that  drank 
the  water  that  quenched  the  fire  that  burned  the  stick  that  bear 


464  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

the  dog  that  bit  the  cat  that  ate  the  kidling,  which  "my  father 
bought  for  two  doggerel  zuzlm."  As  a  child,  I  repeatedly  heard 
that  old  Aramaic  song,  translated  into  German  and  chanted  in 
the  traditional  style  of  synagogical  cantillation.  It  illustrates  the 
age-old  law  of  retribution,  the  ins  talionis  as  is  appears  in  the  laws 
of  the  ancient  Orient.  There  are  traditions  that  this  Had  Gadja 
is  a  symbolical  presentation  of  the  destiny  awaiting  the  enemies 
of  the  chosen  people. 

My  doubts  started  at  the  first  verses,  to  which  I  returned  in  my 
childish  thoughts  after  the  recital  of  that  stanza  which  was  con- 
cerned with  the  first  victim,  if  God  was  powerful  enough  to 
destroy  the  angel  of  death,  why  did  he  allow  the  cat  to  eat  the 
poor  kidling  for  which  I  felt  sorry?  Could  he  not  have  prevented 
that  first  murder?  There  I  began  to  doubt  the  omnipotence  of 
the  Lord.  My  doubt  continued  until  I  realized  that  His  omnipo- 
tence is  infinite. 

Not  only  the  content,  but  also  the  tune  of  that  song  aroused  my 
attention.  At  this  time  the  little  boy  used  to  ask  who  had  "manu- 
factured" this  or  that  melody  he  liked.  He  imagined,  it  seems, 
that  tunes  were  made,  manufactured  like  toys,  in  a  mechanical, 
artificial  way— an  assumption  which  is  correct  only  for  the  most 
modern  compositions.  He  was  interested  in  the  name  of  the  com- 
poser of  melodies  he  had  enjoyed,  because  names  say  much  more 
about  people  to  children  than  to  adults.  Children  connect  definite 
ideas  with  names  which  they  do  not  yet  separate  from  the  person 
himself,  but  which  they  consider  a  significant  and  inherent 
quality  of  the  individual.  The  name  of  the  composer  of  the  Had 
Gadja,  thus  my  father  told  me,  was  Jacques  Offenbach  and  he  was 
a  very  famous  man.  For  a  long  time  I  believed  that  the  composer 
of  La  Belle  Helene  and  Orphee  aux  Enfers  had  also  been  the 
author  of  that  song,  A  Kidling.  I  learned  only  much  later  that 
Jacques's  father,  Isaac  Offenbach,  who  had  been  cantor  of  the 
synagogue  of  Koln,  had  composed  the  strange  song  that  pro- 
claimed the  eternal  law  of  retribution  in  a  solemn  tune  which 
sometimes  struck  me  as  almost  parodistic. 

When  Jacques  Offenbach  wittily  mocked  the  Greek  and  Roman 
gods,  he  unconsciously  made  fun  of  his  father  as  well,  and  of  the 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  465 

moral  and  religious  values  of  the  tradition  in  which  he  had 
grown  up.  Yes,  it  is  very  likely  that  some  of  the  satiric  attitude  he 
felt  toward  that  traditional  code  of  his  Jewish  environment  was 
displaced  to  the  Greek  gods  and  heroes  of  antiquity,  whom  he 
made  subjects  of  his  superb  mockery. 

Yet  he  had  never  got  rid  of  unconscious  feelings  of  devotion 
and  respect  for  those  old  values.  In  the  celebrated  composer,  in 
the  world-famous  musician  whose  tunes  reflect  the  spirit  of 
Paris,  of  the  mundane  Second  Empire  and  of  the  frivolity  of  the 
time  of  Napoleon  III,  a  Jewish  boy  who  had  sung  in  the  choir  of 
his  father's  synagogue  at  Koln  continued  a  subterranean  life.  Is 
it  accident  that  in  his  arias  there  occur  so  many  reminiscences  of 
the  synagogical  tunes  he  had  heard  there  in  his  childhood?  In 
the  great  aria  of  Styx,  in  Orpheus  in  the  Netherworld,  "Quand  f 
etais  roi  de  Boetie"  a  typical  bit  of  Jewish  liturgic  music  appears 
as  the  end.  The  Barcarolle  of  The  Tales  of  Hoffmann  reminds 
the  hearer  in  some  of  its  bars  of  melodies  of  the  synagogue.  There 
is  even  a  suggestion  of  that  old  song  A  Kidling,  which  his  father, 
the  cantor  of  Koln,  had  composed  in  a  tune  of  Une  Nuit  Blanche. 

The  Jew-boy  who  went  to  Paris  to  study  music  when  he  was 
thirteen  years  old,  and  who  later  spoke  French  with  a  German 
accent  and  German  with  a  French  one,  the  destructive  moqueur 
who  had  such  an  excellent  sense  for  the  incongruities  of  life  and 
such  sharp  wit  directed  against  tradition,  remained  ambivalent 
toward  it.  That  revolutionary  spirit  was  also  conservative. 

When  the  ten-year-old  boy  saw  Orpheus  in  the  Netherworld,  he 
was  mostly  interested  in  the  mythological  figures  whom  the  com- 
poser and  the  librettist  had  treated  so  disrespectfully.  I  am  sure 
he  did  not  understand  many  things,  misunderstood  others,  and 
paid  no  attention  to  certain  aspects  of  the  plot.  I  heard  the  other 
day  that  a  boy  of  this  age  came  home  from  a  movie  whose  title 
promised  scenes  from  the  wild  West,  and  answered,  when  asked 
whether  he  enjoyed  himself,  "It  was  a  waste  of  looking.  It  was 
full  of  love  and  such  stuff."  Like  this  boy,  I  was  neither  interested 
in  nor  amused  by  the  love  affairs  of  the  gods. 

The  figure  who  interested  me  most  was  Orpheus,  the  only 
mortal  amongst  the  Olympians.  I  had  read  about  him  in  my  book 


THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

of  mythology  and  I  had  often  looked  at  his  picture  in  it,  which 
showed  the  master  musician  playing  the  lyre,  surrounded  by  wild 
animals  whom  he  had  tamed  by  his  sweet  strains,  and  by  rocks 
and  trees  he  could  move  by  the  power  of  his  tunes.  I  knew  also 
that  he  had  descended  to  the  Netherworld  to  get  his  wife  Euryd- 
ice,  who  had  died,  that  he  had  returned  without  her  and  that 
the  bacchantes  had  torn  him  to  pieces  during  a  Dionysiac  orgy. 
His  figure  aroused  admiration  and  pity  in  the  boy. 

I  understood  that  in  Offenbach's  travesty  no  love  is  lost  between 
Orpheus  and  Eurydice.  I  understood  less  well  that  public  opinion 
compelled  the  great  musician  to  follow  his  wife,  whom  he  de- 
tested, into  Hades.  "I  would  not  do  that,"  I  thought  as  a  boy  (and 
I  think  so  now  as  an  old  man).  "I  would  not  die.  To  hell  with 
public  opinion!"  Even  before  this  I  felt  a  kind  of  antipathy 
against  Eurydice.  She  despises  her  husband  as  an  artist  and  she 
dislikes  hearing  him  play. 

The  violinist 
Is  very  triste, 

she  says,  and  is  terrified  when  he  wants  to  play  for  her  his  recent 
concerto,  which  will  last  only  one  hour  and  a  quarter.  The  humor 
of  that  scene  was  entirely  lost  on  me.  There  was  another  feature 
that  disturbed  me:  Eurydice  changes  at  the  finale  into  one  of  the 
bacchantes  and  sings  a  hymn  in  praise  of  Bacchus,  that  ecstatic 
and  wild  song: 

Evohe!  Bacchus  inspires  me! 

Was  she  one  of  the  bacchantes  who  tore  the  marvelous  musician 
limb  from  limb?  Was  she  a  member  of  that  ferocious  cult  of 
Thracian  women  who  killed  the  great  singer?  Did  she  kill  him 
herself?  There  was,  it  seemed,  a  confusion  in  the  writer's  mind— 
or  was  it  in  my  own? 

Looking  back  at  that  performance,  I  wonder  why  the  numer- 
ous anachronisms  in  the  dialogue  did  not  disturb  me  in  the  least. 
Jupiter,  Styx,  and  other  gods  spoke  genuine  Viennese  dialect,  and 
made  numerous  jokes  about  Vienna  local  events  or  situations  in 


PSYCHOANALYTIC  EXPERIENCES  467 

their  improvised  lines.  I  took  that  in  my  stride  and  was  not  as- 
tonished that  the  Olympians  spoke  the  language  of  my  native 
town.  There  was,  however,  a  tiny  detail  that  annoyed  me:  Or- 
pheus played  the  violin.  I  then  played  the  violin  myself— misera- 
bly enough— and  I  should  have  been  attracted  by  the  brother- 
musician,  but  I  was  disappointed.  It  was  certainly  not  because  of 
the  anachronistic  nature  of  this  feature.  I  was  annoyed  because 
I  expected  to  hear  Orpheus  play  the  cithara,  that  ancient  instru- 
ment somewhat  like  a  lyre.  Before  he  appeared  on  the  stage,  I 
looked  forward  to  seeing  him  with  this  instrument  as  he  was 
pictured  in  my  mythology  book.  I  cannot  be  positive  whether  I 
was  just  curious  to  see  what  a  cithara  looked  like  or  whether  I 
expected  that  I  would  listen  to  some  miraculous  music.  I  had 
heard  plenty  of  violin  music  in  my  young  life,  but  never  a  cithara. 

Looking  back  from  a  distance  of  fifty-four  years  at  that  stranger, 
that  boy  who  was  I,  I  know  his  main  impressions  at  that  perform- 
ance were  a  very  intense  enjoyment  of  Offenbach's  music  and  of 
his  travesty  of  the  gods,  compassion  for  the  figure  of  Orpheus,  and 
a  distinct  antagonism  against  Eurydice  whom— I  don't  know  why 
—I  held  somehow  responsible  for  the  fact  that  the  divine  singer 
had  to  die. 

How  rich  is  life  in  childhood  and  how  impoverished  it  becomes 
in  old  age!  For  the  boy  to  whom  the  world  unfolds,  all  is  full  of 
colors  and  sounds,  life  and  movement,  all  new  and  interesting. 
How  little  of  that  remains  when  the  shadows  become  larger, 
how  cool  and  remote  one's  own  life  and  that  of  others  appear! 
You  look  at  it  as  if  from  a  far  distance,  as  through  the  diminishing 
lens  of  binoculars.' 

A  German  writer,  Jean  Paul  Richter,  wrote  more  than  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  that  memory  is  the  only  paradise 
from  which  we  cannot  be  expelled.  But  it  gets  lost  and  is  not 
often  regained.  We  return  to  it  in  psychoanalysis  when  we  re- 
member early  childhood  impressions  and  events.  But  such  mem- 
ories surprisingly  turn  up  outside  the  analytic  treatment  as 
well,  when  one  gets  old.  Those  memories  of  a  very  remote  past 
occur  then  in  a  sudden  flash,  or  they  appear  in  a  slow  process 
of  re-emergence  that  can  even  be  observed  on  rare  occasions,  as 


468  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

in  this  instance.  It  is  as  if  buckets  are  slowly  raised  from  a  deep 
well  that  has  held  them  for  a  long  time,  and  now  they  are  sent 
up  to  the  surface,  filled  with  cool  and  refreshing  water. 

The  preceding  paragraphs  form  a  too  lengthy  introduction  to 
the  main  theme,  a  long  runway,  as  it  were,  for  a  short  flight.  I 
rambled  on  about  my  childhood,  the  theater  performance  and 
that  Passover  song,  Had  Gadja.  How  will  I  find  the  way  back 
to  The  Tales  of  Hoffmann?  But  I  have  never  turned  away 
from  it  in  my  thoughts,  because  numerous  threads  run  from 
those  memories  to  the  opera  in  my  mind.  I  need  only  pick  them 
up  and  define  them. 

There  is,  of  course,  the  personality  of  the  composer.  It  is  the 
same  man  who  near  the  end  of  his  life  shaped  the  destiny  of 
K  T.  A.  Hoffmann,  who  in  his  middle  age  wrote  the  travesty  of 
the  Orpheus  myth  and  who,  as  I  mistakenly  believed  when  I 
was  a  boy,  composed  that  Jewish  song  which  in  a  nursery-rhyme 
manner  presents  the  ancient  law  that  the  killer  will  be  killed, 
the  cat,  the  dog,  the  stick,  the  fire,  the  water,  the  ox,  the  slaugh- 
terer, the  angel  of  death. 

It  is  odd  that  the  detail  in  the  performance  of  Orpheus  in  the 
Netherworld  that  irked  me  as  a  boy  of  ten— namely,  that  the 
musician  plays  the  violin  instead  of  the  lyre— now  becomes  a  psy- 
chological clue.  It  is  possible  (more  than  this,  it  is  likely)  that  the 
substitution  of  the  violin  for  the  lyre  was  necessitated  for  musical 
and  theatrical  reasons,  that  the  fiddle  replaced  the  ancient  instru- 
ment because  the  tunes  of  the  violin  were  more  effective  than 
those  of  the  antique  cithara.  But  beside  and  beyond  these  con- 
siderations, there  is  the  fact  that  the  violin  (and  later  on  the  vio- 
loncello) was  the  instrument  on  which  Offenbach  excelled.  As  a 
young  child,  he  played  the  violin  well,  and  he  went  to  Paris  when 
he  was  thirteen  to  study  violoncello.  Yes,  he  played  as  soloist  on 
this  instrument  in  several  concertos.  Orpheus,  playing  the  violin, 
represents  the  creator  of  that  music,  the  composer  himself.  In  a 
kind  of  self-persiflage,  Offenbach  demonstrates  a  potentiality  of 
his  own  destiny  in  the  figure  of  that  mythological  musician. 

What  destiny?  Well,  when  you  peel  the  comical  and  mythological 
covers  from  the  plot  and  strip  it  to  the  essentials,  there  remains 


PSYCHOANALYTIC   EXPERIENCES  469 

the  story  of  an  ambitious  musician  and  composer  who  is  thwarted 
in  his  profession  and  in  his  love  life,  dies,  and  goes  to  Hades.  But  is 
this  not,  raised  from  the  level  of  fun-making  to  that  of  the  tragic, 
the  destiny  of  E.  T.  A.  Hoffmann  in  Offenbach's  last  work? 
There  the  three  demoniac  figures  of  Spalanzani,  Dapertutto,  and 
Dr.  Mirakel  defeat  the  young  musician  and  deprive  him  by  a 
trick  of  his  sweetheart  as  Jupiter  does  Orpheus.  The  Olympian 
god  is  here  replaced  by  the  three  figures  representing  a  mysterious 
and  malicious  antagonist  with  magical  powers. 

And  Eurydice?  Does  she  not  appear  at  first  as  a  spoiled  child- 
woman  like  Olympia,  then  as  a  heartless  bacchantic  adventuress 
like  the  wanton  Giulietta,  and  at  the  end  like  the  ecstatically 
singing  Antonia?  Is  she  not  a  figure  representing  lust  and  death, 
as  are  those  women  in  the  opera?  Here  the  three  women  are  re- 
duced to  one  fatal  figure.  Here  is  the  primal  image  of  death  which 
later  on  reappeared  in  a  veiled  form  in  Antonia  because  Euryd- 
ice is  dead  and  it  is  in  search  of  her  that  Orpheus  descends  to 
the  Netherworld,  to  Hades,  which  is  easily  to  be  understood  as 
the  symbolical  expression  of  his  own  death.  As  in  our  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Antonia-figure,  we  recognize  in  the  mythological 
formation  of  Eurydice  the  threat  of  death  for  the  man. 

In  the  tale  of  Orpheus  is  the  germ  of  what  later  on  became  the 
tale  of  Hoffmann.  Here,  as  there,  is  the  story  of  thwarted  love,  of 
frustrated  ambition,  of  the  expectancy  of  the  end  that  is  near.  But 
in  the  early  work  all  somber  and  fateful  figures  are  dressed  up  in 
a  gay  mythological  costume  as  at  a  fancy-dress  ball,  and  they  ap- 
pear as  butts  of  jokes  and  pranks.  (By  the  way,  Hoffmann  is  also 
the  subject  of  mockery  by  the  students  in  the  tavern  where  he 
tells  the  story  of  his  three  frustrated  amours.)  The  same  fateful 
development  that  was  first  presented  as  funny  will  be  seen  as  a 
tale  of  gloom  and  of  defeat  when  the  end  draws  near.  Frustrated 
love,  thwarted  ambition— one's  life  as  failure.  Orpheus  and  Hoff- 
mann, Eurydice  and  Antonia— they  are  the  same  figures  seen  in  a 
comic  light  at  first,  and  as  tragic  at  the  end.  When  the  end  is  near, 
their  composer  gathers  up  all  his  energies,  summons  up  all  his 
musical  power  to  achieve  what  had  been  his  hidden  aim,  to  ex- 
press the  best  that's  in  him,  all  that  is  his  inner  self— before  he 


47<>  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

goes  down  to  Hades.  He  will  show  his  adversaries  what  he  can 
accomplish,  if  it  is  the  last  thing  he  does.  It  was. 

The  observer  who  follows  with  analytic  attention  the  creative 
stream  of  Offenbach's  imagination  will  find  that  the  secret  main 
theme  remains  the  same  in  Orpkee  aux  Enfers,  in  La  Belle 
Helene,  and  in  The  Tales  of  Hoffmann.  When  the  trimmings  are 
stripped  away,  the  identical  motif  of  love  and  death  is  discernible 
in  these  changing  forms.  There  are  rivers  that  disappear  in  the 
ground,  flow  on  subterraneously  for  many  miles,  and  re-emerge 
very  far  away  from  their  previous  place.  Yet,  it  is  the  same  river. 
Psychoanalysis  enables  us  not  only  to  interpret  those  different 
formations  and  to  recognize  their  concealed  meaning,  but  also  to 
demonstrate  the  continuity  of  the  emotional  trends  in  so  many 
varieties  of  shapes. 


PART  FIVE 


Adventures  in  Psychoanalytic 
Discovery 


Adventures  in  Psychoanalytic  Discovery 


w 


HILE  FREUD  was  in  the  middle  of  his  great  discoveries  he 
often  found  time  and  felt  in  the  mood  to  study  valuable 
works  dealing  with  ancient  history.  In  January,  1899,  he  wrote  his 
friend  Fliess  that  he  was  reading  Burckhardt's  History  of  Greek 
Civilization  and  that  the  book  provided  him  with  unexpected 
parallels  to  the  psychology  of  pathological  phenomena:  "My  pre- 
dilection for  the  prehistoric  in  all  its  human  forms  remains  the 
same."  He  kept  this  intense  interest  to  the  end  of  his  life;  in  his 
last  years  it  came  even  more  strongly  to  the  fore. 

A  few  months  after  he  wrote  that  letter  (May  28,  1899)  he  re- 
ported to  the  same  friend  that  he  had  bought  Schliemann's  book 
on  ancient  Ilios  and  had  enjoyed  the  account  of  the  archaeolo- 
gist's childhood:  "The  man  found  happiness  in  finding  Priam's 
treasure  because  happiness  comes  only  from  fulfillment  of  a  child- 
hood wish/5  In  another  letter  he  gave  a  definition  of  happiness 
which  he  considered  "the  deferred  fulfillment  of  a  prehistoric 
wish,"  and  added:  "That  is  why  wealth  brings  so  little  happiness; 
money  is  not  an  infantile  wish"  (January  16,  1898). 

What  had  happened  to  this  Heinrich  Schliemann  as  a  little 
boy?  In  the  cemetery  of  the  little  village  in  the  state  of  Mecklen- 
burg-Schwerin  where  he  was  born  in  1822,  there  was  the  grave 
of  a  man  Hennig  who  had  once  cruelly  tortured  and  murdered 
a  shepherd.  People  said  that  on  a  certain  day  of  each  year  the 
left  foot  of  the  murderer  stuck  out  from  the  grave.  Little  Hein- 
rich patiently  waited  by  the  grave,  and  when  the  foot  failed  to 
appear  asked  his  father  to  dig  up  the  grave  and  find  out  why  the 
foot  of  the  monster  did  not  emerge.  The  father,  who  was  the 
pastor  of  the  village,  had  told  the  boy  many  fairy  tales  and 
legends.  He  had  also  recounted  the  tales  of  Paris  and  Helena, 
Achilles  and  Priam,  of  Hector  and  of  the  heroes  whose  battles 

473 


474  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

around  ancient  Troy  were  sung  by  Homer.  When  the  boy  was 
seven  years  old,  he  was  given  as  a  Christmas  present  an  Illus- 
trated History  of  the  World  in  which  he  saw  a  picture  of  Aeneas 
holding  his  little  son  by  the  hand  and  carrying  his  old  father 
Anchises  on  his  back  as  he  fled  the  burning  city  of  Troy.  The  boy 
Schliemann  did  not  believe  that  the  ancient  citadel  with  its 
Cyclopean  walls  had  been  burned  to  the  ground  and  that  no 
one  knew  where  it  had  stood.  He  announced  that  when  he  was 
grown  up  he  would  go  to  Greece  and  find  ancient  Troy  and  the 
king's  treasure.  In  June,  1873,  when  Heinrich  Schliemann  was 
past  sixty,  he  dug  in  the  hills  of  Hissarlik  in  Asia  Minor  and 
discovered  the  golden  treasure  of  a  prehistoric  king. 

It  seems  to  me  that  Freud  could  have  reached  still  another 
conclusion  if  he  had  gone  a  few  steps  farther.  (Perhaps  he  did  by 
implication.)  He  points  out  that  the  fulfillment  of  a  child's  day- 
dream meant  happiness  to  the  man.  Although  his  father  laughed 
at  him,  the  boy  Heinrich  was  convinced  that  the  city  of  Troy  was 
buried  somewhere  and,  moreover,  remained  convinced  although 
contemporary  scientists  considered  Homer's  description  mythical. 
The  same  boy  who  decided  he  would  some  day  dig  out  ancient 
Troy  had  clung  a  few  years  before  to  the  belief  that  a  dead  mur- 
derer would  stretch  his  leg  out  from  his  grave  in  the  cemetery  of 
Neu-Bukow.  The  belief  that  Troy  and  Priam's  treasures  were 
only  covered  up  is  the  continuation  of  the  earlier  conviction  that 
the  dead,  buried  in  the  ground,  are  not  entirely  dead  and  still 
have  a  certain  amount  of  will  and  power. 

We  do  not  doubt  that  the  archaeological  interests  of  the  man 
Heinrich  Schliemann  had  deep  unconscious  roots  in  the  child's 
notion  that  the  dead  can  express  their  wishes  from  the  grave,  can 
send  messages  to  the  living.  This  superstitious  belief  of  the  boy 
was  perhaps  the  soil  from  which  his  passionate  interest  in  archae- 
ology grew.  When  the  aging  man  discovered  remnants  of  ancient 
Troy,  he  was  overwhelmed  because  a  childhood  wish  was  ful- 
filled so  late  in  life.  Indeed,  a  great  part  of  his  satisfaction  was 
the  confirmation  of  that  childhood  belief  that  the  dead  are,  in 
some  form,  still  alive.  Discarded  when  the  boy  became  an  adult 
and  consciously  dismissed  long  ago,  that  belief  still  continued  its 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          475 

existence  in  unconscious  depths.  On  the  surface,  it  had  been  re- 
placed by  a  rational  and  scientific  opinion  about  the  state  of  men 
who  had  perished  a  few  thousand  years  before  his  time.  The  man 
Heinrich  Schliemann  certainly  smiled  when  he  remembered  that 
he  had  once  asked  his  father  to  dig  out  the  leg  of  the  murderer 
who  hesitated  to  stretch  it  out  through  his  grave. 

It  may  well  be  that  we  do  not  realize  how  persistent,  tenacious, 
and  headstrong  most  of  us  were  as  children,  or  how  we  clung  to 
our  preconceived  ideas  and  early  beliefs  in  spite  of  adults,  yes, 
even  in  spite  of  ourselves,  and  of  our  later,  rational  knowledge. 
We  analysts  often  are  astonished  when  we  realize  with  what 
great  energy  those  infantile  opinions  are  unconsciously  kept.  For 
example,  we  often  wonder  at  the  tenacity  with  which  an  infantile 
theory  explaining  the  nature  of  sexual  intercourse  is  believed,  al- 
though it  has  been  consciously  discarded  long  ago.  In  one  of  my 
cases  a  little  girl  was  convinced  that  her  doll  would  speak  to  her 
if  she  looked  at  her  in  a  certain  way.  She  once  took  the  doll  with 
her  on  the  subway,  and  from  time  to  time  glanced  at  the  play- 
thing in  her  arms  because  she  expected  that  the  doll  would  say 
something  about  this  new  experience.  As  an  adult  woman  she 
was  still  sometimes  inclined  to  believe  that  a  bust  of  Shakespeare 
in  her  husband's  studio  would  suddenly  begin  to  speak. 

Another  patient  believed  as  a  child  that  her  uncle,  a  surgeon, 
would  one  day  perform  an  operation  on  her  by  which  she  would 
be  transformed  into  a  boy  and  thus  made  equal  to  her  envied 
young  brother.  An  alternative  possibility  to  which  she  adhered  in 
her  thoughts  was  that  she  would  wake  up  some  beautiful  morn- 
ing and  discover  that  she  had  blond  curls  instead  of  her  straight 
black  hair.  Modern  devices,  by  the  way,  make  this  miracle  really 
happen. 

It  is  very  likely  that  partial  confirmations  of  childhood  beliefs 
often  have  a  considerable  place  in  the  mental  processes  leading 
to  many  new  discoveries,  that  at  their  core  they  are  returns  to 
early  convictions  that  have  remained  unconsciously  alive.  Trans- 
formed and  adjusted  to  a  more  appropriate  concept,  they  recur 
as  new  insights  or  as  surprising  hunches.  Such  returns  to  infan- 
tile beliefs,  conceived  as  new,  explain  not  only  the  genesis  of 


476  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

many  discoveries,  but  also  the  nature  of  the  emotions  that  accom- 
pany them. 

For  the  child  knowledge  is  power,  and  giving  up  his  early  no- 
tions means  renouncing  power.  In  his  urge  to  understand  the 
world,  the  child  builds  certain  primitive  theories  which  are  des- 
tined to  be  deserted  at  a  later  time.  The  little  boy  slowly  and 
reluctantly  sacrifices  his  early  notions  and  yields  to  the  better 
knowledge  and  superior  mentality  of  adults.  In  doing  this  the 
child  sacrifices  the  uninhibited  freedom  of  intellectual  move- 
ment, the  immediacy  of  experience,  and  the  originality  of  his 
points  of  view.  He  will  acquire  certain  thought-habits  and  self- 
discipline,  but  also  mental  cliches  and  rigid  patterns  of  logical 
and  rational  thinking.  In  giving  in  to  the  adults  in  his  thinking, 
he  loses  not  only  his  immaturity  and  irrationality,  but  also  the 
best  part  of  his  imaginative  and  creative  faculties.  Modern  educa- 
tion to  "emotional  maturity"  reaches  its  aim— if  it  reaches  it— at 
the  expense  of  the  child's  originality  and  intuition  which  con- 
tinue to  live  only  in  the  achievements  of  the  best  artists  and  scien- 
tists in  combination  with  critical  and  rational  intelligence.  Full 
intellectual  complaisance  which  deprives  many  children  of  their 
early  independence  of  thought  would  make  them  merely  con- 
formers  in  later  life. 

Many  discoveries  are  in  this  sense  rediscoveries,  returns  to  old 
views  of  childhood  which  have  been  dismissed,  and  are  met  again 
when  the  man  is  seeking  new  truths.  Such  an  unconscious  return 
is  accompanied  with  the  recovering  of  self-confidence.  The  boy  in 
the  man,  who  has  been  very  sensitive  to  intellectual  criticism  and 
whose  feelings  have  been  hurt  by  the  smiling  superiority  of  the 
"grownup,"  has  in  his  discovery  asserted  himself  against  the 
"better"  judgment  of  the  others  and  has,  self-willed,  followed  his 
own  way  of  thinking.  (The  "grownup"  of  his  childhood  had  been 
replaced  by  the  scientific  tradition  and  by  the  conservatism  of  his 
colleagues.)  But  to  assert  oneself,  to  prove  that  one  has  been  right 
in  facing  the  intellectual  resistance  of  the  world  means  to  ex- 
perience a  deep  satisfaction.  Here  Freud's  sentence  that  happi- 
ness lies  only  in  the  fulfillment  of  childhood  wishes  requires  a 
continuation  in  the  direction  of  intellectual  achievement:  the 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  477 

happiness  of  the  explorer  is  often  in  the  recovery  of  an  old 
conviction. 

The  exciting  and  exhilarating  character  of  a  new  finding,  the 
felicity  and  the  thrill  of  a  new  insight,  the  adventure  and  tri- 
umph of  an  analytic  discovery  are  to  a  great  extent  founded  on 
the  unconscious  gratification  of  such  a  return  to  early  beliefs. 
They  had  been  right  after  all!  The  feeling  of  victorious  self-as- 
sertion in  rediscovery  is  a  good  part  of  the  satisfaction  of  search 
and  research  in  the  area  of  archaeological  psychoanalysis.  I  am 
giving  this  name  to  the  analytic  study  of  prehistoric  customs,  be- 
liefs, and  religions  by  excavating  and  interpreting  the  remains  of 
the  emotional  and  mental  life  of  the  remote  past.  Those  of  us 
who  are  fortunate  find  out  the  truth  about  ourselves  sooner  or 
later,  also  the  truth  about  the  whole  of  mankind.  And  each  find- 
ing, each  dredging  of  a  piece  of  prehistoric  life  also  means  a 
better  understanding  of  our  present,  of  the  world  around  and 
within  us. 

Those  who  are  doing  creative  work  in  a  certain  area  rarely 
feel  the  incentive  to  reflect  on  the  process  of  their  mental  pro- 
ductivity. This  is  valid  not  only  for  the  writer  and  composer,  but 
also  for  the  explorer,  the  seeker  of  new  truth,  and  it  is  also  valid 
for  the  analyst  who  is  eager  to  discover  new  laws  in  the  dynamics 
of  unconscious  processes. 


There  was  no  necessity  for  me  to  probe  into  the  course  of 
psychoanalytic  discovery  in  the  area  of  the  history  of  human  civi- 
lization until  I  had  to  lead  a  seminar  on  research  in  the  field  of 
prehistoric  religion  and  primitive  customs.  In  the  endeavor  to 
give  the  students,  psychiatrists  and  psychologists,  a  notion  of  the 
process  which  might  bring  new  insight  into  still  dark  areas  of 
many  prehistoric  phenomena,  I  was  compelled  to  make  clear 
to  myself  what  the  characteristics  of  this  branch  of  analytic  re- 
search were.  I  introduced  my  first  lecture  by  pointing  out  that 
the  premise  for  arriving  at  new  insights  in  this  field  is  still  an 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 


original  idea  although  the  reading  of  many  papers  in  the  Psycho- 
analytic Quarterly  seems  to  contradict  this.  If  one  can  trust  the 
statement  of  some  analysts,  an  idea  appears  fully  elaborated  and 
ready,  a  finished  product  in  their  thoughts,  as  Pallas  Athena 
sprang  from  the  head  of  Zeus.  The  creative  process  is  in  reality 
much  more  complex,  and  comparable  to  that  of  impregnation 
and  delivery.  Some  women  assert  that  they  can  say  with  precision 
at  what  moment  they  were  with  child.  But  these  are  exceptional 
cases  and  most  women  realize  that  they  are  pregnant  much  later, 
yes,  some  only  when  they  feel  the  first  movement  of  the  embryo. 
In  a  similar  manner  an  analyst  can  but  rarely  say  with  certainty 
when  the  first  still  vague  insight  into  a  puzzling  phenomenon 
occurred  to  him,  the  exact  moment  of  the  catch.  In  certain  cases, 
however,  it  is  possible  to  reconstruct  the  beginning  phases  of  the 
creative  process  as  examples  in  the  following  chapters  will  prove. 
In  three  preceding  books,  Listening  with  the  Third  Ear,  The 
Secret  Self,  and  The  Haunting  Melody,  I  tried  to  present  charac- 
teristics which  distinguish  the  manner  of  psychoanalytic  research 
from  that  of  other  sciences.  The  first  feature  concerns  the  nature 
of  the  instrument  which  is  used  nowhere  else  in  reaching  new 
and  decisive  insights,  the  second  feature  concerns  the  special 
inner  experience  in  their  emergence.  That  instrument,  added  to 
those  of  other  explorers,  is  the  unconscious  of  the  analyst  by 
which  he  receives  and  interprets  the  secret  messages  in  the  words 
of  his  patients.  By  this  additional  piece  of  instrumentation  a  new 
source  of  perception  and  understanding  is  made  available  to  the 
analytic  investigator.  The  nature  of  the  inner  experience  in  a 
new  discovery  is  best  described  this  way:  The  most  important 
analytic  insights,  those  that  are  crucial  in  the  grasping  of  secret 
meanings,  have  the  character  of  surprise  for  the  psychoanalyst. 
From  first  indefinite  impressions,  which  are  almost  intangible, 
vague  hunches  develop  followed  by  a  phase  of  haze  or  confusion 
and  suspense.  That  chaotic  pre-phase  is  ended  with  the  emergence 
of  a  clear  recognition  of  the  unconscious  meaning  of  the  phe- 
nomenon that  had  been  incomprehensible. 

This  development  was  described  and  illustrated  by  many  in- 
stances taken  from  analytic  practice  in  Listening  with  the  Third 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          479 

Ear.  It  was  a  surprise  that  new  findings  in  the  area  of  social  and 
collective  phenomena  such  as  prehistoric  rituals  or  primitive 
customs  also  follow  the  same  course,  that  in  the  analytic  under- 
standing of  a  mysterious  religious  belief  or  of  a  puzzling  social 
organization  the  unconscious  of  the  analyst  also  functions  as  a  re- 
ceiver which  is  much  more  important  and  sensitive  than  his  in- 
tellectual and  rational  thinking.  But  not  only  that,  the  phases  of 
the  discovery  are  also  of  the  same  or  of  a  similar  kind  in  the 
search  and  research  of  collective  mental  and  emotional  life.  Here, 
too,  the  way  goes  from  perceptions  to  haze  and  confusion,  here, 
too,  follows  a  phase  of  suspense  out  of  which  the  new  original 
concept  emerges.  We  will  discuss  later  on  certain  differences  re- 
sulting from  the  fact  that  in  clinical  psychoanalysis  individuals 
are  treated,  while  in  the  case  of  analysis  applied  to  the  history  of 
civilization  we  deal  with  groups  and  masses.  Here,  I  like  to  em- 
phasize that  the  manner  of  reaching  new  insights  is  essentially 
the  same  as  far  as  the  decisive  operating  of  unconscious  factors  is 
concerned.  I  believe  that  this  point  of  view  secures  a  new  ap- 
proach to  the  exploration  of  social  phenomena  and  represents 
a  pioneer  attempt  on  a  new  frontier  of  psychoanalytic  thought. 

The  time  when  you  become  acquainted  with  material  which 
becomes  the  object  of  analytic  inquiry  is  not  necessarily  identical 
with  the  time  when  it  makes  an  emotional  and  intellectual  claim 
on  you.  For  instance,  such  material  as  a  strange  ritual,  a  puzzling 
custom,  a  mysterious  myth  or  legend  makes,  when  first  met,  no 
special  impression  upon  you.  You  take  it  for  granted  and  treat  it 
in  your  thoughts  like  another  piece  of  tradition  or  social  custom 
from  ancient  times  or  from  foreign  and  remote  lands.  The  mo- 
ment of  claim  on  you  often  comes  later,  sometimes  many  years 
later.  I  call  this  silent,  but  eloquent  demand  material  makes  on 
the  analyst  its  "challenge."  The  challenge  of  the  material  com- 
pels him  to  turn  his  attention  to  its  puzzling  aspects.  Here  is  the 
point  of  departure  for  a  description  and  characterization  of  psy- 
choanalytic discovery. 

To  my  way  of  thinking,  or  rather  observing,  there  are  three 
phases  which  can  be  clearly  distinguished  in  the  process.  In  the 
beginning  all  seems  clear  and  understandable.  There  may  be 


480  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

some  remarkable  features  in  the  material,  but  nothing  to  wonder 
about.  Some  things  may  strike  the  observer  as  curious,  but  they 
need  not  arouse  his  curiosity.  The  onset  of  a  new  approach  is 
determined  by  the  moment  when  you  begin  to  wonder,  to  be 
astonished,  when  no  easy  and  glib  explanation  of  the  observed 
seems  to  be  satisfactory  any  longer.  It  is  as  if  you  had  seen  an  ob- 
ject quite  clearly  on  the  table  and  had  realized  what  it  was,  but  in 
the  next  moment  your  sight  became  uncertain,  the  vision  blurred, 
and  you  could  not  recognize  it  any  longer.  In  moments  like  this, 
experienced  by  everybody,  the  temptation  is  strong  to  leave  the 
matter  as  it  is,  or  rather  as  it  was  before  astonishment  was  experi- 
enced. In  other  words,  to  tell  oneself  there  was  a  knife  on  this 
table  just  a  second  ago;  it  now  seems  as  if  something  else  is 
there.  But  it  must  be  this  knife.  What  else  can  it  be?  You  dismiss 
the  challenge  of  that  moment.  It  can,  however,  happen  that 
astonishment  recurs  and  spreads  out  from  a  patch  into  a  wider 
area,  that  the  twilight  can  change  into  darkness.  Some  people 
then,  and  only  then,  bring  their  minds  to  bear  on  that  strange 
business. 

The  transition  from  the  conventional  perception  to  this  pro- 
ductive astonishment  can  easily  be  observed.  It  marks  the  initial 
phase  of  a  new  insight  and  often  results  in  a  kind  of  mental 
haziness  or  fog  in  which  the  old  concept  of  things  suddenly  or 
slowly  evaporates.  In  the  endeavor  to  describe  this  initial  chaotic 
phase,  a  sentence  the  composer  Arnold  Schonberg  once  said 
helped  me:  "When  one  observes  well,  things  gradually  become 
obscure."  (I  would  like  to  replace  the  adverb  "well"  by  "in  a 
certain  manner/')  This  statement  sounds  at  first  paradoxical, 
but  it  makes  good  sense  in  the  area  we  are  now  discussing.  A 
change  in  the  quality  of  attention  or  observation  makes  you  see 
things  and  people  anew  or  makes  you  see  new  aspects  of  them. 
The  light  suddenly  falls  on  them  at  an  unusual  angle  and  what 
has  been  transparent  a  minute  before  glides  into  twilight  and 
even  darkness  from  which  later  new  profiles  begin  to  appear. 
Before,  you  had  taken  things  for  granted,  all  was  clear  and 
obvious,  and  now  they  lose  their  distinctness  and  definitiveness. 
In  other  words,  before  a  new  discovery  is  made,  substance  has  to 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  481 

become  shadow  again;  the  obvious,  ambiguous  or  oblique,  even 
enigmatic.  Old  views  are  not  familiar  any  more,  old  figures 
seem  to  lose  their  contours  before  new  patterns  reveal  them- 
selves. This  mental  pre-phase  precedes,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, the  clarity  of  new  findings.  It  is  the  dawn  before  the  new 
day.  Whoever  has  lost  the  faculty  of  wondering  and  of  the 
dynamic  change  of  view  has  become  unable  to  do  creative  re- 
search work. 

In  that  pre-phase  you  have  to  mistrust  sweet  reason  and  to 
abandon  yourself  to  the  promptings  and  suggestions  emerging 
from  the  unconscious.  You  will  even  let  the  seemingly  fanciful 
and  irrational  enter  your  thoughts  and  remain  always  ready  to 
assume  that  there  is  something  unknown  even  in  the  well  known. 
The  true  enemy  of  original  ideas  is  that  kind  of  familiarity 
which  breeds  intellectual  contempt  for  phenomena  we  thor- 
oughly understand.  Not  only  a  little,  but  also  much  knowledge 
can  be  a  dangerous  thing,  because  it  compels  the  "experts"  to 
think  in  a  certain  groove  and  close  their  minds  to  an  original 
view.  Only  when  you  leave  your  mind  alone,  will  it  throw  up  new 
patterns.  We  see  things  so  often  and  so  long  that  we  scarcely  see 
them  any  longer  as  they  really  are,  and  their  presence  has  no 
meaning  any  more.  They  have  to  become  strange  again  before 
we  can  see  something  new  in  them,  before  we  rediscover  them.  The 
great  divide  is  marked  by  the  point  where  the  obvious  becomes 
obscure  again,  where  order  yields  to  chaos,  where  facts  and 
figures  do  not  matter  so  much  and  yield  their  place  to  novel 
factors  and  figurations.  From  here  it  is  only  one  step  to  the 
moment  when  a  new  idea  emerges  with  clarity  and  force  and 
reveals  a  strange  reality  beyond  the  surface.  When  investigation 
and  verification  confirm  what  has  been  intuitively  perceived,  the 
circle  is  rounded. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  assume  that  an  original  idea  of  this 
analytic  type  has  to  be  born  in  an  intellectual  environment.  It 
need  not  emerge— as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  rarely  emerges—from 
profound  thoughts  and  deep  reflections.  It  is  often  stimulated  by 
a  chance  observation,  by  some  everyday  impression,  by  a  farrago 
of  marginal  thought-associations.  The  mental  environment  from 


482  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

which  a  far-reaching  idea  springs  is  of  as  little  importance  as  the 
birthplace  of  a  baby  who  will  one  day  become  a  great  man. 
Buddha  was  born  as  a  prince  in  a  royal  place,  but  Jesus  Christ 
saw  the  light  of  the  world  as  a  carpenter's  son  in  a  stable. 

It  need  scarcely  be  said  that  the  characterization  of  a  certain 
group  of  analytic  insights  does  not  mean  that  results  of  research 
arrived  at  by  different  scientific  exploration  in  this  area  are  less 
valuable.  The  characterization  concerns  only  the  initial  phases 
of  the  discovery  process  which  continues  along  the  way  of  other 
research  methods.  Finally,  it  is  obvious  that  the  area  where  the 
creative  unconscious  does  its  hidden  work  in  finding  new  psycho- 
logical truths  becomes  narrower,  the  more  increased  knowledge 
and  conscious  understanding  conquer  unknown  areas.  Also,  in 
the  intellectual  domain  of  the  analyst  who  investigates  ancient 
customs  and  rites,  the  terrain  that  belonged  to  the  It  gradually 
becomes  an  area  of  the  Ego.  The  task  of  the  pioneers  is  different 
from  that  of  the  colonials  who  succeed  them.  There  remain,  how- 
ever, many  unknown  areas  in  prehistory  and  in  the  early  phases 
of  civilization,  and  in  these  areas  new  far-reaching  insights 
emerge  only  when  the  imaginative  and  intuitive  faculties  of  the 
analyst  are  unleashed,  when  his  unconscious  leads  him  to  the 
destination  of  unexpected  meanings.  The  surprising  is  not 
reached  on  marked  roads,  and  no  guidepost  points  in  its  di- 
rection. 

When  is  the  right  moment  to  get  hold  of  such  an  idea?  This 
is  difficult  to  say.  If  I  can  trust  self-observation,  the  best  mo- 
ment is  not  when  the  idea  first  occurs,  but  when  it  recurs,  and 
then  when  it  is,  so  to  speak,  at  the  zenith  of  conscious  atten- 
tion, on  full  swing.  This  last  expression  reminds  me  of  a  com- 
parison 1  read  the  other  day.  A  well-known  musician  discuss- 
ing phases  of  musical  performance  speaks  of  the  moment  when 
the  singer  should  start  at  the  beginning  of  a  song:  "Have  you 
seen  a  little  girl  anxiously  watching  a  skip  rope?  .  .  .  With 
one  foot  advanced  ready  to  spring,  her  body  sways  forwards, 
backwards,  forwards,  backwards.  .  .  .  'Now/  cry  her  companions. 
'Now,  now/  "*  In  the  researcher  there  are  unconscious  mental 

*  Gerald  Moore,  Singer  and  Accompanist  (New  York,  1954). 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          483 

movements,  comparable  to  those  of  the  little  girl,  in  his  approach 
to  the  secrets  of  his  material.  There  are,  alas,  no  companions 
helpful  in  timing.  The  explorer  must  trust  a  voice  within  him- 
self that  cries,  "Now!" 


The  main  material  used  in  psychoanalysis  is  provided  by  a 
person's  biography.  We  cannot  understand  the  character,  mo- 
tives, and  actions  of  an  individual  without  insight  into  his 
development  from  early  childhood.  We  cannot  understand  the 
general  situation  of  human  civilization  without  studying  the 
history  and  prehistory  of  its  evolution,  without  knowing  the 
biography  of  mankind.  In  individual  analysis  we  often  have 
to  reconstruct  parts  of  early  childhood  which  are  no  longer  re- 
membered by  interpreting  remnants  in  dreams,  screen  memories, 
and  other  productions  of  the  unconscious.  In  the  same  manner 
we  have  to  sketch  the  mental  and  emotional  prehistory  of  our 
ancestors  from  myths,  customs,  legends,  and  rituals. 

The  difference  between  dealing  with  individual  phenomena 
and  with  those  of  the  psychology  of  masses  and  nations  becomes 
immediately  evident  when  you  consider  that  the  fact  of  the  group 
itself  creates  divergencies  in  the  emotional  life,  produces  new 
emotions,  and  changes  those  within  the  individual  to  a  consider- 
able extent.  But  apart  from  these  difficulties  conditioned  by  the 
character  of  society,  there  is  an  added  one  which  is  connected 
with  empathy.  When  you  listen  to  a  patient,  you  hear  a  person  of 
your  own  time  speak,  a  member  of  the  same  or  of  a  similar 
civilization,  of  a  common  cultural  atmosphere,  however  much  his 
personality  may  differ  from  yours  and  however  his  disturbance 
may  have  changed  his  mental  attitude.  There  is  a  common 
ground  between  you  and  him:  you  breathe  the  same  air.  But 
when  you  try  to  penetrate  the  secret  meanings  of  the  rites  and  cus- 
toms of  a  past  civilization,  you  live  in  a  past  remote  from  all 
human  memory.  When  you  set  yourself  the  task  of  interpreting 


484  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

the  legends  of  a  primitive  tribe  in  Central  Australia,  you  have  to 
learn  to  think  entirely  differently.  You  are  living  not  only  in  a 
very  distant  country,  but  in  the  barbarous  and  remote  atmosphere 
of  the  Stone  Age.  You  are  then  a  dweller  in  a  period  several 
thousand  years  before  your  time. 

After  emphasizing  the  differences  in  analytic  research  in  these 
two  areas,  we  still  think  that  the  methods  of  inquiry  are  basically 
the  same,  the  ways  of  reaching  the  goals  similar.  The  approach  to 
the  problems  of  mass-psychoanalysis  shows  the  same  phases  in  the 
experience  of  the  explorer.  Here  also  is  the  challenge  of  the  emo- 
tional material;  here  also  the  haze  or  fog  before  the  first  insight 
into  the  hidden  meaning  emerges.  Here  also  the  surprise  when 
the  first  hunch  of  the  concealed  significance  occurs,  and  finally  the 
extraordinary  clarity  which  follows  and  illuminates  not  only  the 
center  of  the  special  problem,  but  also  its  surrounding  areas. 

There  are,  however,  specific  characteristics  of  this  kind  of 
analytic  research  that  have  not  yet  been  mentioned.  It  is  not 
simply  the  night  side  of  the  human  soul  which  demands  our  at- 
tention in  analysis,  but  the  side  which  is  banned  to  darkness  by 
powerful  forces  within  us.  The  area  of  the  repressed  is  thus  de- 
fended against  penetration  by  the  inquiring  mind.  Other  ex- 
plorers are  also  prevented  from  reaching  their  aims  by  difficulties 
in  the  accessibility  of  their  material  as  well  as  by  deficiencies  of 
their  tools  and  instruments,  by  lack  of  knowledge,  and  by  the 
limitations  of  their  intelligence  and  imagination.  The  new  factor 
added  in  the  case  of  the  analytic  researcher  is  that  active  forces 
in  himself  resist  the  new  finding.  The  haze  or  confusion  preceding 
each  fundamental  and  original  insight  is  an  expression  of  that 
resistance  to  the  new  idea  which  leads  to  the  solution  of  the 
problem.  That  chaotic  feeling  indicates  the  mobilization  of  those 
undercurrents  that  defend  the  entrance  into  a  forbidden  territory 
full  of  intellectual  dangers. 

The  feeling  o£  helplessness  caused  by  the  repressing  forces  and 
the  transition  from  haze  into  a  surprising  insight  often  acquires 
a  quality  "which,  as  far  as  I  know,  is  very  rarely  experienced  in 
individual  analysis.  I  shall  facilitate  the  task  of  describing  and  de- 
fining the  new  feeling-tone  by  presenting  three  examples  of  ana- 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          485 

lytic  interpretation  of  similar  problems  in  different  areas.  By 
contrasting  the  analysis  of  a  neurotic  symptom,  of  a  poem,  and 
of  a  prehistoric  belief,  I  hope  to  show  the  quality  of  this  new 
emotion  accompanying  many  discoveries  in  the  field  of  the  ana- 
lytic research  of  collective  phenomena. 

I  take  at  random  as  an  example  from  clinical  experience  the 
case  of  a  patient,  a  woman  in  her  early  forties,  whose  history  had 
quite  a  few  obsessional  features.  She  lived  in  a  very  modest 
furnished  apartment  in  the  suburbs  of  New  York.  One  of  her 
most  frequent  daydreams  was  that  she  would  have  a  large  apart- 
ment in  the  city,  most  elegantly  furnished  and  with  modern 
equipment  in  every  room.  Her  husband,  who  had  long  been  re- 
luctant to  spend  the  amount  of  money  needed  for  a  lavish  apart- 
ment, learned  by  accident  that  an  acquaintance  had  to  leave 
town  suddenly  for  South  America  with  his  family  on  business, 
and  was  eager  to  sell  his  large  penthouse,  which  was  modern 
and  luxuriously  furnished,  for  a  moderate  price.  The  husband  of 
the  patient  bought  the  apartment  with  all  the  furniture,  and  the 
patient  was  suddenly  the  possessor  of  a  most  elegant  residence. 
It  was,  she  said,  like  a  fairy  tale.  Overnight  her  most  ardent  wishes 
had  become  true.  After  she  moved  to  her  new  home,  the  patient 
reacted  in  a  strange  manner.  A  short  time  of  exultation  and  joy- 
ousness  was  followed  by  many  weeks  in  which  she  felt  very  sad. 
In  her  depression  she  often  complained  that  life  no  longer  had 
any  meaning  for  her.  This  paradoxical  mood  left  her  only  for  a 
few  hours  at  a  time.  She  often  walked  through  the  rooms  of  the 
new  apartment  as  if  in  a  wonderful  dream  and  told  herself  it 
could  not  be  true.  The  more  she  admired  the  luxury  she  now 
called  her  own,  the  more  depressed  she  became.  Strangely  enough, 
she  felt  a  little  better  and  easier  in  her  mind  when  she  could  find 
some  small  flaws  in  the  furniture— for  instance,  a  tiny  spot  on  a 
carpet  or  a  little  scratch  on  a  table.  Such  small  imperfections 
seemed  to  diminish  her  melancholy  for  a  few  minutes.  It  was  not 
difficult  to  guess  that  her  depression  emerged  not  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  her  wish  had  been  fulfilled,  but  because  of  it.  It  was  the 
expression  of  an  unconscious  guilt  feeling  which  reacted  upon 
the  unexpected  stroke  of  luck.  She  expressed  in  her  depressed 


486  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

mood  her  unconscious  conviction  that  she  did  not  deserve  to  be 
thus  favored  by  destiny,  that  she  felt  unworthy  of  it. 

The  first  insight  into  the  character  of  the  depression  was  gained 
when  I  realized  that  she  felt  better  when  she  found  some  fault  in 
the  elegant  apartment.  Her  intense  guilt  feeling  was  lifted  for  a 
moment  when  her  good  luck  appeared  less  abundant  and  over- 
powering. The  depression  gradually  decreased  and  finally  evapo- 
rated after  we  worked  its  origin  and  unconscious  motives  through, 
in  analytic  sessions.  However,  it  was  an  unpleasant  surprise  when, 
after  the  disappearance  of  the  depression,  an  unexpected  new 
emotion  appeared  which  was  even  more  difficult  to  grapple  with, 
which  was  more  perilous  and  lasted  several  weeks.  The  patient 
now  experienced  a  puzzling  anxiety  that  filled  her  days.  Of  un- 
known origin,  this  new  affect  was  without  any  recognizable  con- 
tent, an  emotion  without  name.  The  anxiety  seemed  to  increase 
the  longer  the  patient  was  unable  to  say  what  caused  it.  What 
was  the  meaning  of  this  aggravating  new  emotion  and  how 
could  one  explain  that  it  replaced  the  depression  which  had 
yielded  to  analytic  treatment?  I  understood  neither  the  origin  of 
this  unexpected  feeling  nor  its  succession  to  the  melancholic 
mood  of  the  previous  weeks. 

The  first  ray  of  light  fell  into  the  dark  situation  when  the 
patient  once  mentioned  casually  that  yesterday  she  had  had  the 
anxious  feeling  that  her  little  dog  whom  she  loved  might  have 
been  run  over  by  a  car.  Soon  other  instances  of  thoughts  occur- 
ring to  her  in  the  middle  of  her  anxiety  secured  more  insight: 
When  she  walked  through  her  beautiful  rooms  she  sometimes 
thought  how  terrible  it  would  be  if  her  husband  who  was  on  a 
business  trip  had  a  car  accident  and  left  her  the  apartment  to 
herself.  She  was  sometimes  frightened  that  her  sister  who  had 
flown  to  Europe  would  be  killed  in  a  plane  crash.  This  first 
approach  to  determining  some  objects  of  her  anxiety  enabled  us, 
of  course,  to  guess  its  unconscious  character  as  well  as  the  reasons 
why  it  had  replaced  her  depression.  When  she  now  looked  at 
her  luxurious  apartment,  she  did  not  feel  guilty  or  unworthy, 
but  frightened.  She  had  daydreamed  of  such  elegance,  but  now  it 
was  as  if  her  wish  had  brought  about  a  reality  which  she  could 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          487 

never  hope  for.  But  if  her  thoughts  had  such  power  to  direct  the 
course  of  events,  was  it  not  possible  that  other  wishes,  much  less 
harmless  than  the  desire  for  a  luxurious  penthouse,  could  be 
fulfilled?  Old  aggressive,  hostile,  and  murderous  impulses  which 
had  often  led  to  fantasies  in  previous  years  re-emerged  and  were 
rejected.  It  was  as  if  the  realization  of  her  wish  for  a  penthouse 
had  reawakened  those  other  fantasies,  had  brought  their  realiza- 
tion within  reach.  Her  anxiety  was  her  unconscious  reaction  to 
the  imagined  possibility  that  those  secret  wishes  could  be  fulfilled. 
The  thought-danger  to  which  she  reacted  with  anxiety  was  the 
secret  belief  that  persons  she  loved  could  be  killed  by  the  power 
of  her  thoughts.  With  the  disappearance  of  the  depression  the 
door  was  opened  to  those  exiled  and  forbidden  wishes.  The  tiger 
had  licked  blood  and  this  whetted  his  appetite. 

In  Schiller's  ballad  "The  Ring  of  Polycrates,"  which  is  based 
on  a  tale  of  Herodotus,  each  wish  of  the  tyrant  of  Samos  is  ful- 
filled and  the  monarch  boasts  of  his  extraordinary  luck.  Even 
a  ring  he  throws  into  the  sea  is  shortly  afterward  brought  back 
by  a  fisherman  who  has  found  it  in  a  fish.  His  friend,  the  King 
of  Egypt,  who  becomes  witness  of  Polycrates'  good  luck,  is  taken 
by  a  shudder: 

The  guest  in  terror  turned  away. 

"I  cannot  here,  then,  longer  stay. 

My  friend  you  can  no  longer  be! 

The  gods  have  willed  that  you  should  die. 

Lest  I,  too,  perish,  I  must  fly/' 

The  favorite  of  fortune  is  doomed;  the  gods  want  him  to  perish. 
Let  us  add  to  this  example  the  narrative  of  the  Scripture  which 
recounts  the  census  of  the  Israelite  tribes.  In  II  Sam.  24,  it  is  the 
Lord;  in  I  Chron.  31,  it  is  Satan  who  provokes  King  David  to. 
number  Israel.  Although  warned  by  faithful  Joab,  who  is 
ordered  to  undertake  the  census,  the  King  insists  that  Joab  go 
through  all  the  tribes  from  Dan  to  Beersheba  and  number  the 
thousands  of  men  who  could  draw  sword  in  Israel.  But  the  Lord 
was  displeased  with  this  and  smote  Israel  The  Destroying  Angel 
with  his  sword  stretched  out  over  Jerusalem,  and  the  people  were 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

stricken  with  the  great  pestilence.  The  King  repented  and  offered 
sacrifice  to  reconcile  angry  Jahweh  who  finally  said  to  the  De- 
stroying Angel,  "It  is  enough;  stay  now  thine  hand!" 

Comparing  these  three  examples,  we  find  that  they  present 
essentially  the  same  emotional  reactions  in  a  neurotic,  mytholog- 
ical, and  theological  garb.  The  fear  which  my  patient  ex- 
perienced concerned  persons  whom  she  loved,  while  the  friend 
of  Polycrates  feels  the  threat  of  impending  calamity  for  himself. 
But  the  nameless  terror  in  the  face  of  extraordinary  luck  is  the 
same.  The  mythological  encasement  of  Schiller's  ballad  is  absent 
in  the  biblical  tale,  but  it  is  replaced  by  the  theological  garb  of 
the  historic  report.  The  depression  of  my  patient  is  the  manifesta- 
tion of  an  unconscious  guilt  feeling;  Polycrates  throws  his 
precious  ring  into  the  sea  to  mitigate  the  envy  of  the  gods,  and 
King  David  atones  for  the  mysterious  offense  against  Jahweh. 
What  is  the  nature  of  the  crime  common  to  the  three  cases?  My 
patient  was  afraid  that  destiny  would  fulfill  her  secret  wishes, 
of  whose  power  she  was  unconsciously  convinced.  Polycrates 
boasts  of  his  good  luck  and  even  tests  it.  The  ancient  Greeks 
would  accuse  him  of  hubris,  of  a  form  of  conceit  which  makes 
men  compare  themselves  with  the  gods  and  attribute  to  them- 
selves the  power  of  deities.  The  tyrant  in  Schiller's  poem  does 
not  experience  any  presentiment  of  impending  calamity,  but  his 
friend  expresses  his  intense  fear.  In  the  biblical  report  David  is 
warned  by  the  voice  of  Joab,  but  insists  and  is  severely  punished. 
Instead  of  fear  the  consequences  of  his  nefarious  action  are 
clearly  demonstrated  by  the  pestilence.  The  dark  emotions  of  the 
patient  found  their  interpretation  in  psychoanalysis,  in  which 
she  recognized  the  depression  as  a  symptom  of  her  unconscious 
guilt  feeling  and  her  anxiety  as  reaction  to  her  conviction  of 
the  power  of  her  thoughts.  But  what  is  the  crime  of  King  David 
who  ordered  that  his  men  should  be  numbered?  J.  G.  Frazer 
attempted  to  explain  the  sin  of  the  census  with  the  superstitious 
fears  many  primitive  and  half-primitive  people  have  about  count- 
ing and  being  counted.*  To  quote  only  a  few  examples:  among 
the  Cherokee  Indians  of  North  America  melons  and  squashes 

'    *  Folklore  In  The  Old  Testament  (Abridged  edition,  New  York,  1927). 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          489 

must  not  be  counted  while  still  growing  because  otherwise  they 
will  cease  to  thrive.  When  a  British  officer  in  Columbia  took  a 
census  of  the  Indians,  many  natives  died  of  measles.  The  Indians  at- 
tributed the  calamity  to  their  having  been  numbered.  In  Germany 
there  was  a  belief  that  when  you  counted  your  money  it  would 
steadily  decrease.  Some  people  when  asked  how  old  they  are 
answer,  "As  old  as  my  little  finger."  Examples  from  the  Lapps, 
the  Scots,  from  the  Greeks,  Germans,  and  Armenians  complete 
the  list  the  well-known  anthropological  industry  of  Frazer  has 
brought  together.  The  scholar  is  of  the  opinion  that  the  objection 
of  the  Jews  to  the  taking  of  the  census  rests  "on  no  firmer 
foundation  than  sheer  superstition  which  may  have  been  con- 
firmed by  an  outbreak  of  plague  immediately  after  the  number- 
ing of  the  people."  He  adds  that  the  same  repugnance  lives  to 
this  day  among  the  Arabs  of  Syria  who  are  averse  to  counting 
the  tents,  the  horsemen,  or  cattle  of  their  tribes  lest  some  mis- 
fortune befall  them. 

Frazer  is  certainly  right  in  comparing  the  biblical  story  with 
the  reports  of  anthropologists,  missionaries,  and  travelers  about 
the  superstitions  about  counting  of  so  many  African,  American, 
and  European  people.  He  need  not  have  gone  to  Africa  and 
America  to  find  the  same  fears.  When  an  Eastern  orthodox  Jew 
is  asked  today  how  old  he  is,  he  will  answer,  "Seventy  to  a 
hundred,"  which  means:  I  am  seventy  years  old  and  wish  to 
reach  a  hundred.  The  superstitious  addition  means  that  he 
wishes  to  avert  evil  powers  around  him  that  might  grudge  his 
age.  The  same  superstition  appears  when  a  woman  is  asked  how 
many  children  she  has.  She  will  say,  "Four—unberufen!"  (Similar 
to  "touch  wood").  We  regret  that  Frazer  remained  satisfied  with 
the  explanation  that  the  Israelites  at  David's  time  had  the  same 
superstitions  as  other  people  and  did  not  attempt  to  find  the 
emotional  motives  of  those  beliefs. 

In  the  biblical  story  the  nature  of  David's  sin  becomes  obvious 
in  the  fact  that  the  punishment  fits  the  crime.  The  King's  army 
is  decimated  by  the  plague  the  offended  Deity  sends.  In  taking 
the  census  David  put  his  trust  in  the  number  of  his  soldiers 
instead  of  in  God.  He  was  proud  of  his  power  and  his  ability  to 


490  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

lead  his  people  to  victory,  but  should  rather  have  believed  in  the 
power  of  Jahweh  who  taught  him  a  theological  lesson. 

The  psychoanalyst  cannot  acquiesce  in  the  explanation  that 
the  case  of  David,  like  those  of  the  primitive  tribes,  shows  super- 
stitious fears.  He  will  search  for  the  origin  and  motives  of  those 
beliefs.  He  will  compare  the  superstitions  of  the  people  with 
those  he  has  frequently  met  in  analytic  experience  with  neurotic 
individuals,  and  trace  them  back  to  their  unconscious  sources. 
The  superstitious  person  unconsciously  recognizes  in  himself 
the  existence  and  activity  of  hostile  and  murderous  wishes,  and 
is  compelled  to  project  those  unconscious  tendencies  into  the 
external  world  since  he  cannot  acknowledge  them  in  himself. 
He  constructs  a  supernatural  reality,  the  existence  of  gods  and 
demons  who  operate  from  the  outside  and  direct  his  actions.  It 
is  the  task  of  the  psychoanalyst  to  retransform  this  construction 
into  psychology  of  the  unconscious,  to  resolve  metaphysics  into 
metapsychology.  In  the  analysis  of  very  intelligent  obsessional 
patients  we  discover  how  often  their  superstitions  originate  in  the 
repression  of  hostile  and  cruel  tendencies.  They  are  prevented 
from  acknowledging  that  they  often  wish  evil  things  to  others; 
they  have  repressed  those  forbidden  impulses,  but  unconsciously 
expect  calamity  as  a  punishment  for  their  aggressive  and  cruel 
thoughts;  death  or  serious  damage  as  the  penalty  for  the  evils 
they  wish  to  others.  In  that  projection  is  also  the  fear  of  the  power 
of  evil  wishes  other  persons  have  against  them,  of  hostile  and 
envious  thoughts  that  could  damage  or  kill  themselves.  They 
are  thus  afraid  of  the  power  of  the  same  malicious  or  envious 
tendencies  in  others  that  they  unconsciously  experience  in  them- 
selves. The  antipathy  against  being  counted,  telling  one's  age, 
or  saying  how  many  children  one  has,  has  unconscious  roots 
in  the  projection  of  the  envious  and  hostile  feelings  we  suspect 
in  others  because^we  have  felt  them  in  ourselves. 

The  fact  that  behind  all  those  projections  there  are  some 
psychological  truths  concealed  is  a  leading  principle  in  archae- 
ological psychoanalysis,  as  developed  in  the  following  chapters. 
Scratch  a  superstition,  a  religious  ritual,  a  myth  or  a  legend,  and 
you  find  unconscious  facts.  It  is  easy  enough  to  dismiss  all  those 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  49! 

strange  beliefs  and  customs  as  superstitions.  It  is  more  difficult 
to  discover  that  there  is  a  psychological  core  of  fact  in  old  men's 
sayings  and  old  wives'  tales. 


The  purpose  of  the  preceding  comparison  was  not  so  much 
to  give  a  minor  example  of  analytic  interpretation  of  different 
unconscious  reactions  to  the  same  emotional  problem,  but  to 
introduce  some  characteristics  of  psychoanalytic  research  into 
the  nature  of  religious  beliefs,  customs,  and  rituals.  The  element 
of  haze  and  suspense  that  can  be  observed  before  each  decisive 
new  insight  often  has  an  emotional  quality  of  its  own  in  the  field 
of  analytic  research  into  ancient  customs  and  beliefs.  In  the  cases 
which  were  accessible  to  self-observation  there  was  for  a  split 
second  a  definite  feeling  of  the  uncanny.  I  am  prepared  to  meet 
the  indignation  of  many  readers  at  this  point.  Why  should  the 
first  reaction  of  a  scientific  explorer  to  whom  a  new  discovery 
dawns  be  an  uncanny  feeling?  What  has  this  emotion,  rarely 
experienced  by  us,  to  do  with  the  initial  phase  of  new  findings 
of  social  psychology?  The  expression  "uncanny"  is  mostly  current 
today  in  aesthetics;  we  speak  of  the  uncanny  impression  made  by 
a  scene  in  a  play  or  a  movie. 

That  remote  region  of  aesthetics  was,  however,  considered 
worthy  of  Freud's  attention  when  he  wrote  a  paper  on  this 
neglected  problem.*  The  emotion  of  the  uncanny,  akin  to  that 
of  the  terrifying,  is  there  traced  back  to  something  that  was  once 
familiar  which  has  been  alienated  to  the  ego  by  the  process  of 
repression.  An  experience  appears  uncanny  when  repressed  in- 
fantile complexes  are  reactivated  by  an  impression  or  when 
primitive  convictions  we  have  discarded  seem  once  more  con- 
firmed. Freud  differentiated  two  kinds  of  uncanny  feelings,  al- 
though he  pointed  out  that  sometimes  no  sharp  demarcation  can 
be  made:  the  uncanny  met  in  experience  and  the  uncanny  met 

*  "Das  Unheimliche,"  Gesammelte  Schriften,  X,  369. 


492  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

in  fiction.  Many  things  that  strike  us  as  spooky  in  fiction  would 
not  be  reacted  to  in  this  way  in  real  life. 

I  do  not  assert  that  the  experience  of  the  uncanny  is  felt  in 
each  case  in  which  the  analyst  is  on  the  track  of  a  new  discovery 
in  the  field  of  primitive  religion  and  prehistoric  customs,  but 
it  is  often  present  in  those  exceptional  cases  when  analytic  re- 
search reaches  an  unconscious  meaning  that  is  at  first  entirely 
strange.  In  the  following  chapters  I  shall  present  examples  of 
occasions  on  which  the  researcher  felt  that  quality  of  the  uncanny 
in  the  pre-phase  of  haze  and  confusion  within  the  process  of 
discovery. 

We  learned  from  Freud  that  the  feeling  of  the  uncanny  often 
occurs  when  old,  long-overcome  infantile  convictions  seem  to  be 
confirmed  by  some  impression.  That  is  frequently  the  case  when 
we  hear  or  read  reports  of  primitive  customs,  make  the  acquaint- 
ance of  prehistoric  rituals  and  magical  performances.  For  a 
second  those  old,  obsolete  convictions  and  beliefs  seem  to  have 
been  right.  We  relapse  for  a  moment  into  a  phase  in  which  we 
believed  in  the  omnipotence  of  wishes  and  in  magical  powers 
around  us,  in  which  we  did  not  consider  death  final,  but  thought 
the  dead  continued  to  live  in  some  form,  and  so  on.  Such  a 
momentary  relapse  into  infantile,  long-overcome  ways  of  think- 
ing not  only  produces  a  second  of  intellectual  uncertainty,  but 
also  a  kind  of  half-anxious  feeling  similar  to  that  of  a  person  who 
is  under  the  impression  that  the  ground  beneath  his  feet  threat- 
ens to  slip  away.  This  is  also  the  case,  because  for  that  moment 
the  reality  function  seems  to  fail  and  be  replaced  by  magical 
thought-processes  and  animistic  beliefs  we  have  long  discarded. 
The  rational  and  logical  structure  of  our  Weltanschauung, 
founded  on  scientific  results,  gives  way  for  a  second  to  primitive 
superstitions. 

The  kind  of  material  we  study  favors  the  emergence  of  this 
uncanny  feeling  and  give  special  flavor  to  the  haze  and  suspense 
that  often  characterize  the  pre-phase  of  a  new  analytic  finding. 
Exotic  and  prehistoric  rites,  magical  practices  and  other  rem- 
nants from  the  infancy  of  mankind  cannot  shake  our  rational  and 
mechanical  view  of  the  world,  but  they  tempt  us  to  return  to  the 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  493 

beliefs  o£  our  childhood  that  continue  to  live  in  our  unconscious. 
We  return  for  a  second  to  the  world  of  fairy  tales  and  myths,  of 
superstitions  and  magic.  The  feeling  of  uncanniness  is  an  indica- 
tion of  the  intrusion  of  those  old  beliefs  demanding  entrance  into 
the  region  of  our  rational  mind.  But  this  second  when  we  are  in 
unconscious  touch  with  convictions  long  relinquished  is  fruitful. 
It  opens  an  avenue  to  the  understanding  of  the  hidden  meaning 
of  many  puzzling  phenomena  of  the  remote  past,  to  the  discovery 
of  the  oldest  in  the  most  recent. 

That  phase  of  confusion  or  haze  is  almost  identical  with  that 
of  suspense  before  the  new  insight  emerges.  The  twilight  seems 
to  be  peopled  with  figures,  shapes,  and  forms  never  seen  before, 
Out  of  the  silence  of  suspense  strange  messages  reach  the  mind, 
vague  noises  like  steps  muffled  in  the  fog.  There  a  kind  of  mental 
mobilization  takes  place.  In  it  the  previously  unidentified  and 
unconstructed  material  obtains  forms  and  patterns.  Pieces  fall 
into  their  proper  place,  and  infinite  affinities  between  areas  far 
remote  from  each  other  become  transparent.  Theories  which 
gave  a  slanted  or  unfaithful  image  recede  and  give  way  to  sud- 
denly revealed  new  meanings.  Disengaged  attention  finds  novel 
objects,  and  in  this  creative  wondering  and  renewed  imaginative 
act  the  solution  of  the  problem  is  reached  long  before  its  validity 
can  be  proved.  From  the  state  of  intellectual  fermentation  the 
explorer  glides  into  a  phase  of  reorganization  of  the  material 
which  slowly  opens  its  possibilities  like  flowers  their  petals.  What 
was  once  considered  understood  is  reinterpreted,  and  new  rela- 
tionships of  far-reaching  significance  are  recognized.  From  pre- 
verbal  perception  the  trend  leads  to  thinking  in  formulated 
concepts.  The  circle  which  the  new  insight  draws  becomes  wider. 
The  magic  lantern  by  which-  we  see  gives  a  stronger  light.  Also, 
the  implications  of  a  discovery  have  to  be  uncovered.  The  imag- 
inative act  separates  the  relevant  from  the  immaterial.  The  mind 
marches  ahead  with  lack  of  caution,  with  abandonment,  leaving 
the  necessary  re-examination  and  verification  to  a  later  process. 
Now  is  the  time  to  grasp  the  significance  of  clues;  to  snatch  the 
wordless  messages;  to  give  rein  to  the  functions  of  the  uncon- 


494  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

scious;  to  become  aware  of  the  forces  and  counter-forces  beneath 
the  conscious  surface. 

This  is  the  process  leading  from  the  moment  of  challenge  to 
that  of  illumination.  This  is  the  analyst's  response  to  the  lure  of 
the  secrets  of  the  human  soul  as  they  reveal  themselves  in  ancient 
religion,  prehistoric  customs,  and  myths.  This  is  the  psychologi- 
cal stuff  the  analyst's  daydreams  are  made  of. 

The  old  master  Anatole  France  once  said:  "One  gets  tired  of 
everything  except  of  understanding"  ("On  lasse  de  tout  excepte 
de  comprendre").  The  analyst  who  has  once  experienced  the  trial, 
the  thrill,  and  the  triumph  of  discovering  the  secret  behind  the 
prehistoric  will  always  return  to  that  ennobling  adventure  of  the 
mind.  He  will  always  remain  a  searcher  after  the  concealed  truths 
of  emotional  life,  and  sometimes  he  will  become  a  finder. 


II 


THE  FOLLOWING  chapter  will  present  an  example  of  one  of  the 
possibilities  of  future  analytic  research.  An  insignificant  and 
everyday  experience  is  reported,  and  it  is  shown  at  what  new, 
unexpected,  and  unsuspected  insights  the  analyst  can  arrive  when 
he  pursues  the  train  of  thoughts  such  a  trifling  incident  pro- 
vokes. None  of  the  analytic  results  will  be  used  in  this  new  ap- 
proach, none  of  the  numerous  results  of  analytic  practice  and 
theory  will  be  applied,  and  none  of  the  conclusions  of  our  sci- 
ence will  be  quoted.  They  are  not  avoided.  There  was  simply  no 
place  for  them  in  the  process  here  presented.  Yet  the  way  of 
thinking  and  of  arriving  at  a  new  discovery  is  entirely  analytic,  is 
in  the  spirit  of  Sigmund  Freud.  I  will  endeavor  to  show  that  the 
Insight  was  unconsciously  already  implied  in  the  train  of  associa- 
tions stimulated  by  that  small  slice  of  experience,  and  that  it 
only  had  to  be  extracted  from  its  context,  extricated  from  the 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          495 

incidental  entanglements  of  the  original  situation,  and  to  be 
consciously  conceived. 

It  seems  to  me  that  an  analyst  does  not  go  out  in  search  of  a 
problem,  but  that  the  problem  is  rather  within  him  and  tries  to 
be  released,  like  a  prisoner  who  makes  all  efforts  to  win  his 
freedom.  In  his  desperate  efforts  to  be  released  the  prisoner  digs, 
unsuspected  by  his  guardians,  a  subterranean  corridor  below  the 
encircling  walls.  An  unconscious  idea  thus  works  its  way  into  the 
open  in  the  darkness,  works  its  way  through  and  out.  Much  more 
search  than  research  in  its  beginning,  this  new  technique  of 
analytic  discovery  is  more  akin  to  art  than  to  science.  But  so  was 
psychoanalysis  in  general  at  its  departure,  and  it  will  always  be 
at  the  crossroads  of  art  and  science  when  it  starts  a  new  expedi- 
tion. It  will  first  be  led  by  hunches  and  guesses  rather  than  by 
clear  and  objective  directions.  The  conqueror  wants  to  reach  his 
destination  and  often  recognizes  much  later  which  road  led  him 
there.  The  drawing  of  a  precise  map  is  not  his  task,  but  that  of 
the  geographers. 

The  thoughts  provoked  by  this  experience  are  in  no  way  dif- 
ferent from  the  jetsam  and  flotsam  of  everyday  associations,  they 
are  fleeting  impressions,  carried  away  by  the  next  wave.  Also  the 
thought-fragments  which  emerge  later  on  are  not  recognized  as 
significant.  Only  after  they  are  spilled  to  the  shore  of  conscious 
thinking  is  their  meaning  understood. 

One  evening  a  few  years  back  I  rested  on  the  couch,  tired  after 
many  analytic  sessions,  but  not  yet  ready  to  go  to  bed.  The  visit 
I  had  paid  to  a  hospitable  family  on  the  previous  day  came  to 
mind.  After  dinner  some  new  records  had  been  played.  I  saw 
before  me  the  cozy  room,  beautifully  furnished  and  brilliantly 
lighted  by  a  chandelier.  I  sat  near  the  recording  machine  while 
listening  to  the  gracious  Symphony  No.  83  by  Haydn  and  read- 
ing the  program  notes  on  the  jacket  of  the  album.  Some  com- 
ments on  the  symphony  were  now  recalled:  that  it  is  one  of  a  set 
of  six  composed  by  Haydn  for  a  Parisian  organization  and  that 
the  first  audience  called  it  La  Poule.  Its  first  movement  came 
vividly  to  mind.  I  must  have  gotten  up  from  the  couch  because 
I  caught  myself  in  the  next  minute  walking  the  floor  and  singing 


THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

the  first  strong,  rhythmic  theme  which  is  replaced  by  the  second 
subject  with  its  beautiful  oboe  part  sounding  like  the  clucking 
noises  of  a  hen.  (I  doubt  if  anyone  listening  to  me  would  recog- 
nize the  two  themes.)  While  I  thus  walked  across  the  room,  re- 
producing the  two  themes  half  aloud,  I  moved  my  hands  with 
great  vivacity  as  if  conducting  an  invisible  orchestra.  Marking 
the  beat  with  the  right  hand  and  illustrating  the  phrase  with 
the  left,  I  became  self-conscious  or  rather  conscious  of  what  I 
was  doing.  Before  that  I  was  naively  enjoying  the  graces  of  the 
hen  motif,  heard  with  the  inner  ear,  walking  or  rather  dancing 
across  the  room. 

Before  I  became  fully  aware  that  I  was  doing  this,  there  was  a 
split  second  in  which  I  experienced  a  sensation  the  nature  of 
which  can  be  described  only  as  uncanny.  This  distinct  feeling 
was  a  mixture  of  strangeness  and  suspense,  akin  to  anxiety,  and 
bordered  on  the  sense  of  dreamlike  unreality.  It  became  clear  to 
me  later  on  that  this  sensation  set  in  as  soon  as  I  became  aware  of 
my  odd  activity  and  that  it  marked  the  moment  of  transition 
into  a  changed  inner  state.  No  uncanny  feeling  of  this  kind  would 
emerge  in  a  professional  musician  in  the  same  situation.  Such  a 
person  remembering  the  Haydn  symphony  and  reacting  to  the 
recollection  in  tranquillity  in  the  same  manner  would  find  noth- 
ing odd  or  uncanny  in  what  is  known  as  "mental  conducting." 
I  later  recalled  an  anecdote,  quoted  by  most  biographers  of 
Mozart.*  It  emphasized  that  emotional  difference  and  made  me 
more  embarrassed.  Mozart,  who  was  eight  years  old  and  had  made 
his  first  attempt  at  writing  a  symphony,  was  once  left  alone  at 
home.  When  his  parents  returned  after  two  hours,  they  became 
aware  of  an  almost  unnatural  quietness.  When  they  entered  the 
apartment,  they  heard  a  series  of  light  tappings  and  the  sound  of 
the  boy's  voice  mumbling  some  indistinct  phrases.  But  then  he 
shouted,  "You  fool!  Why  don't  you  play  your  instrument  as  I 
conduct?  Now  we  must  begin  over!"  Wolfgang  had  the  score  of 
his  first  symphony  on  a  chair  before  him,  the  orchestral  parts 
were  spread  out  on  the  bed.  The  boy  had  vividly  imagined  that 
he  was  conducting  an  orchestra  playing  his  work. 

*  Adolf  Schmid,  Language  of  The  Baton  (New  York,  1935),  p.  10. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          497 

The  fleeting  uncanny  sensation  was  followed  by  a  moment  of 
self-mockery.  The  slight  feeling  of  anxiety  was  replaced  by  a 
humorous  view,  by  making  fun  of  myself  and  of  my  silly  actions. 
Was  I  becoming  senile?  I  had  behaved  like  a  little  boy.  I  called 
myself  an  old  fool.  My  conducting  now  appeared  to  me  as  an  act 
and  a  miserable  pantomime.  That  which  strikes  us  as  queer  and 
uncanny  in  ourselves  often  changes  easily  into  something  that 
seems  funny  or  ridiculous.  I  felt  a  little  ashamed  of  myself  and 
was  ready  to  dismiss  this  incident  as  one  of  those  petits  riens  of 
everyday  life.  (Did  the  thought  of  Mozart  linger  on?)  Yet  I  did 
keep  wondering  about  it.  The  sensation  of  the  uncanny  is  very 
rarely  experienced  by  me.  What  had  happened  in  that  moment? 
I  have  not  the  slightest  knowledge  of  the  art  and  technique  of 
conducting.  As  far  as  I  remember,  I  was  never  interested  in  it. 
That  is,  I  never  felt  the  wish  to  become  a  conductor.  I  don't  even 
know  the  musical  requirements  of  conducting,  know  nothing 
about  baton  technique,  score  studying,  rehearsal  and  perform- 
ance practice  of  a  concert  orchestra. 

At  this  point  I  abandoned  myself  to  "free"  associations.  Was  I 
really  never  interested  in  conducting?  ...  I  was  once,  in  my 
teens,  it  is  true,  enthusiastic  about  Mahler,  but  that  was  rather  a 
fascination  with  his  personality  than  with  his  function  as  con- 
ductor. ...  I  suddenly  see  "in  my  mind's  eye"  Mahler  rushing 
out  from  the  Cafe  Imperial  on  the  Ringstrasse  when  the  Burg- 
musik  came  marching  on.  (The  Burgmusik  was  a  military  band 
with  drums,  wind  instruments,  and  clarinets  in  Vienna  during  the 
old  Austrian  monarchy.  At  the  stroke  of  twelve  noon  when  the 
guards  were  changed,  the  Burgmusik  marched  to  the  Imperial 
Palace,  and  a  crowd  of  grown-up  Viennese  and  children  marched 
over  the  Ringstrasse  to  the  tunes  of  the  band.)  Richard  Specht  in 
his  book  on  Mahler  calls  the  march  of  the  Third  Symphony  an 
"ideale  Burgmusik!'  .  .  .  Yes,  I  see  Mahler  standing  on  the  side- 
walk as  if  spellbound  looking  at  the  Burgmusik.  .  .  .  And  then  I 
seem  to  see  him  again  at  his  desk  in  the  Vienna  Opera  when  he 
raised  the  baton  for  the  overture.  .  .  .  The  sergeant  marching 
ahead  oi  the  Burgmusik,  too,  swings  a  big,  ribboned  baton.  .  .  . 
The  image  o£  the  bright  uniform  of  the  officer  and  then  the  black 


498  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

coattails  of  Mahler  standing  before  the  orchestra,  illuminated  by 
the  light  from  the  stage.  ...  I  now  remember  a  series  of  silhou- 
ettes presenting  the  famous  conductor  and  his  various  gestures. 
.  .  .  The  name  of  the  artist  who  made  those  pictures,  well  known 
in  Vienna,  occurs  to  me:  Otto  Boehler.  .  .  .  Black  pictures,  sil- 
houettes;   only    Mahler's   eyes    blazing.  .  .  .  Suddenly    another 
band  occurs  to  me  ...  jazz  players.  .  .  .  Negroes  swinging  it 
...  the  eyes  wide  open  in  the  dark  faces  as  if  in  trance  ...  the 
violent  movements  of  the  jazz  players,  .  .  .  Behind  the  picture 
of  the  jazz  band  appears  now  another  one,  different,  yet  alike  in 
some  ways:  that  of  an  early  childhood  memory.  ...  I  have  not 
thought  of  that  for  ages.  .  .  .  The  first  time  I  saw  Negroes.  .  .  . 
When  I  was  a  boy,  I  was  taken  to  the  Prater  by  my  parents:  there 
were  Negroes,  a  group  of  Ashantis,  who  had  been  brought  to 
Vienna.  .  .  .  They  lived  in  huts  on  a  wide  meadow,  and  the 
Viennese  enjoyed  the  opportunity  of  looking  at  those  exotic 
people  and  their  primitive  households.  .  .  .  The  Ashantis  were 
performing  their  dances.  ...  I  remember  how  they  sat  cross- 
legged  on  the  ground,  beating  the  drums.  All  of  a  sudden,  a  big 
fellow,  perhaps  their  chieftain,  jumped  up  and  ran  about  danc- 
ing, howling,  and  wildly  shaking  his  spear.  Many  other  men 
followed  him,  danced  after  him,  with  unco-ordinated  movements 
of  their  black  bodies,  raucously  singing— if  you  could  call  it  sing- 
ing—and swinging  their  primitive  weapons.  ...  I  stood  there 
fascinated  and  did  not  want  to  leave  when  admonished  by  my 
parents.  .  .  .  And  then,  as  if  in  contrast  to  the  memory  of  the 
Ashantis  of  my  childhood,  the  image  of  a  parade  I  had  seen  in 
Manhattan  emerges.  .  .  .  There  is  a  band  playing;  at  its  head  a 
majorette   swirls   her   heavy    baton.  .  .  .  The    girl    pirouettes, 
throws  her  baton  into  the  air  and  catches  it,  trips  and  dances. 
.  .  .  The  half-naked  Negroes  in  the  Prater  and  the  fantastic 
white  uniform  of  the  majorette  .  .  .  both  appear  in  spectacles. 
(The  contrast  of  appearance  suggests  the  fact  that  in  dreams  and 
legends  nudity  is  often  presented  by  very  rich  dresses.  .  .  .  Damn 
those  analytic  associations  which  interfere  with  the  freedom  and 
spontaneity  of  thoughts.  .  .  .  But  I  am  suspicious  of  my  indigna- 
tion. ...  In  that  contrast,  especially  in  the  picture  of  the  pretty 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  499 

uniformed  majorette,  is  perhaps  more  than  meets  the  eye,  namely, 
something  the  eye  wants  to  meet.  At  this  point  I  called  myself 
some  names  and  forced  my  thoughts  back  to  the  associations  of 
the  jazz  band).  Jazz  players  and  Negroes  in  America,  colored  peo- 
ple in  Vienna.  .  .  ,  Then  it  occurred  to  me  that  the  quarter 
where  we  now  live  in  Manhattan  is  facetiously  called  Schwarz- 
spanierstrasse  by  some  Viennese  people.  Schwarzspanierstrasse 
(literally,  Black  Spaniard  Street),  because  in  that  street  and  those 
surrounding  it  many  Puerto  Ricans  live.  .  .  .  There  is  a  Schwarz- 
spanierstrasse in  Vienna.  It  was  thus  called  because  the  Bene- 
dictines, the  "black  monks"  who  came  from  France  and  Spain, 
had  a  church  there.  Beethoven  died  in  the  Schwarzspanier- 
haus.  .  .  . 

At  this  point  I  became  painfully  aware  of  how  disjointed  and 
disassociated  my  thoughts  were,  how  they  wandered  all  over  in 
place  and  time.  I  said  to  myself  that  they  had  no  rhyme  nor 
reason.  Yet  they  had  one  common  feature,  namely,  rhythm.  They 
circled  around  the  central  point  of  music.  More  than  that,  they 
described  the  cycle  of  musical  development  from  Ashanti  drums 
through  military  bands,  Beethoven  and  Mahler,  to  jazz  players, 
a  condensed  version,  as  it  were,  of  the  history  of  music  from  the 
primitive  natives  of  Africa  to  modern  composers.  .  .  .  There 
must  be  something  meaningful  in  their  sequence.  They  might 
contain  the  clues  to  the  understanding  of  that  uncanny  moment 
that  puzzled  me,  but  I  was  unable  to  grasp  them.  When  I  finally 
dismissed  that  train  of  thought,  I  did  not  know  that  it  really 
contained  the  solution  of  the  problem.  Everything  was  there,  con- 
cealed but  complete.  Everything  was  already  unconsciously  per- 
ceived.  At  the  moment  I  did  not  even  recognize  what  was  the 
real  problem  that  unconsciously  occupied  my  thoughts.  I  dwelt 
in  an  unknown  building  of  ideas. 

"Those  free  associations!"  I  thought.  "Well,  you  have  to  let  the 
chips  of  thought-processes  fall  where  they  may!  You  can  always 
pick  them  up  later  on."  I  decided  to  jot  down  those  associations 
and  put  the  sheet  into  a  folder.  I  felt  discouraged  because  I  had 
failed  in  a  very  modest  intellectual  task.  "Some  enchanting  eve- 
ningl"  I  thought  ill-humoredly. 


5OO  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 


During  the  next  weeks  the  memory  of  that  evening  emerged 
unexpectedly  on  several  occasions.  I  added  some  notes  on  them 
to  my  previous  memorandum,  unfortunately  without  dating 
them.  During  a  session  a  young  psychiatrist  who  was  in  training 
analysis  with  me  mentioned  that  he  had  compared  two  records 
playing  the  Blue  Danube  waltz  by  Johann  Strauss.  The  one  was 
by  a  well-known  American  orchestra,  and  the  waltz  was  beauti- 
fully performed,  with  perfect  phrasing  and  precision.  He  felt, 
said  the  physician,  like  singing  with  the  instrumentalists.  When 
he  listened  to  the  same  waltz,  played  by  the  Vienna  Philharmonic 
Orchestra,  he  did  not  feel  like  following  the  familiar  melody, 
but  was  carried  away  by  it.  He  wanted  to  dance  and  had  to  make 
an  effort  to  keep  his  feet  on  the  ground.  I  had  in  this  moment  a 
fleeting  image  of  the  Vienna  Philharmonic  Orchestra  playing  in 
the  Konzerthaussaal  where  I  had  so  often  sat.  But  in  that  elusive 
mental  picture  the  violinists  on  both  sides  of  the  conductor  seem 
to  sway  with  the  tunes,  to  nod  their  heads  and  to  tap  their  feet 
on  the  floor.  ...  I  realized,  of  course,  that  the  grotesque  image 
had  been  suggested  by  the  words  of  the  young  psychiatrist,  but 
why  did  the  memory  of  my  own  conducting  occur  immediately 
after  that  image?  There  was,  it  seemed  to  me,  no  bridge  except 
the  general  connection  of  music. 

The  succeeding  occasions  that  brought  the  memory  of  that 
evening  back  were  also  accidental.  It  was,  however,- not  accidental 
that  they  brought  the  memory  back.  We  have  to  ascribe  it  to  the 
selectivity  of  memory  that  the  mental  material  which  uncon- 
sciously preoccupied  me  was  approached  from  different  sides. 

A  few  days  later  I  listened  to  Dimitri  Mitropoulos  being  inter- 
viewed by  a  lady  on  the  radio.  The  artist  said  in  the  conversation 
that  the  conductor  plays  all  the  instruments  of  his  orchestra  and 
could  be  compared  to  an  actor  who  plays  not  only  Hamlet,  but 
also  the  ghost  of  his  father,  Polonius  and  Ophelia,  Claudius  and 
the  Queen.  Here  was  at  least  a  discernible  thought-connection 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  501 

with  the  memory  of  my  amateurish  attempt  at  conducting,  but 
why  was  the  emphasis  in  my  thoughts  now  on  acting? 

The  third  occasion  had  no  manifest  associative  threads  with 
conducting,  except  again  the  general  one  of  music.  It  took  my 
thoughts  very  far  away  from  the  Haydn  symphony  and  Vienna, 
namely,  to  Africa.  A  friend  kindly  sent  me  a  record  of  the  various 
phases  of  the  African  initiation  rites  which  take  place  through- 
out the  equatorial  forest  once  every  five  years.  The  expedition 
under  the  leadership  of  Armand  Denis  and  Leila  Roosevelt  that 
visited  the  Belgian  Congo  in  1935  and  1936  prepared  a  sound 
recording  of  the  primitive  music  that  accompanies  these  religious 
ceremonies.  The  two  records  give  an  excellent  idea  of  the  cir- 
cumcision ritual  in  the  Northern  Ituri  Forest,  where  at  a  certain 
age  the  boys  are  segregated  for  many  weeks  and  introduced  to  the 
beliefs  and  traditions  of  their  tribes.  You  hear  the  ceremonial 
dances  of  the  Negroes,  their  chanting  and  beating  the  drums. 
Then  the  "circumcision  bird"  appears.  The  part  of  this  mythical 
animal  is  played  by  a  Negro  who  hides  in  the  bushes  near  the 
women's  hut  and  utters  the  nasal  cries  of  a  huge  bird.  He  is  ac- 
companied by  another  man  who  whirls  a  lath  of  wood  on  a  short 
piece  of  vine.  The  whirring  sound  imitates  the  wings  of  the  bird. 
You  hear  in  the  following  flagellation  of  the  boys  the  lashings  of 
the  whip  and  the  cheering  of  the  crowd.  During  the  circumcision 
ceremony  a  stick  orchestra  is  heard:  rough  sticks  of  wood, 
trimmed  to  different  lengths,  are  struck  by  wooden  mallets.  After 
the  initiation  the  boys  shout  obscene  insults  to  the  women  of  the 
tribe.  Now  they  have  left  the  women's  care  and  are  recognized  as 
adult  members  of  their  people.  Their  triumphant  shouting,  ac- 
companied by  the  cheering  and  laughter  of  the  men  to  whom 
they  now  belong,  presents  the  last  phase  of  the  ritual.  The  records 
transcribe  the  primitive  music  of  a  strange  vanishing  tribe.  For 
the  explorer  of  primitive  culture  they  provide  a  valuable  source 
which  brings  him  as  close  as  possible  to  prehistoric  music  and  its 
performance  in  bygone  ages. 

Listening  to  the  primitive  rhythms  of  the  Congo  tribes  took 
my  thought,  of  course,  back  to  the  analytic  study  on  puberty 
rituals  of  the  savages  which  I  had  published  more  than  forty 


THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

years  ago,*  but  it  renewed  also,  strangely  enough,  the  memory  of 
the  other  evening.  Clearly  only  a  single  feature  connected  the 
crude  music  of  those  Negroes  with  the  Haydn  symphony:  the 
imitation  of  a  bird.  In  the  ceremony  of  the  natives  the  nasal  cries 
of  the  circumcision  bird  are  produced.  In  the  Haydn  symphony 
an  oboe  peevishly  repeats  the  same  note  while  the  first  violin 
sings  a  piquant  melody,  adorned  with  many  graces,  imitating  a 
clucking  hen. 

I  remembered  that  on  that  evening  the  childhood  memory  of 
the  Ashantis  beating  their  drums,  shouting  and  dancing  had 
emerged.  Here  was  the  associative  tie  of  primitive  or  prehistoric 
music.  It  did  not  matter  that  in  one  case  Negro  tribes  of  the 
Belgian  Congo,  in  the  other  the  Ashantis  of  British  West  Coast 
Africa  produced  the  music.  The  essential  factor  was  that  the 
scene  of  the  Ashantis  dancing  and  making  music  must  have  im- 
pressed the  boy  I  was  then. 

The  last  occasion  renewing  the  memory  of  my  acting  the  con- 
ductor came  a  few  days  later  when  I  saw  the  film  Limelight.  Many 
people  will  remember  Charlie  Chaplin  in  the  part  of  an  old 
comedian  who  was  once  a  success  in  the  music  halls  and  is  now 
almost  destitute.  Chaplin's  performance  presents  a  strange  mix- 
ture of  genius  and  ham  acting.  When  he  talks  about  the  dignity 
of  the  artist  and  about  the  ultimate  goals  of  life,  and  so  on,  it  is 
often  not  worth  listening  to.  How  much  more  eloquent  was  he 
when  he  was  silent!  There  are,  rare  enough,  a  few  moments  when 
you  feel  that  what  he  says  is  not  contrived  or  merely  high-sound- 
ing, but  genuinely  experienced.  He  is  still  far  from  being  a 
philosopher,  but  when  the  old  and  dying  clown  says  near  the 
end,  "Everyone  is  so  kind  to  me.  Makes  me  feel  isolated,"  the 
voice  of  a  long  life's  experience  speaks. 

One  scene  of  the  film  made  a  strange  impression  upon  me: 
the  comedian  is  shown  on  the  stage  singing  a  song  "Love,  love, 
love"  and  accompanying  it  by  his  incomparable  pantomime.  The 
camera  gently  moves  from  the  stage.  It  shows  the  upper  part  of 
the  figure  of  the  conductor  who  leads  an  invisible  orchestra,  with 

*"The  Puberty  Ritual  of  the  Primitives"  in  my  book  The  Ritual,  1915 
(English  translation,  New  York,  1945). 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          503 

his  right  hand  beating  the  time,  with  his  left  expressing  the 
phrases  and  the  character  of  the  tune.  The  scene  of  the  comedian 
and  of  the  conductor,  so  to  speak,  cut  into  half,  below  him,  lead- 
ing an  unseen  orchestra,  made  a  bizarre,  ghostlike  impression.  It 
was  as  if  the  two  figures  were  a  single  one,  and  as  if  the  panto- 
mime of  the  actor  and  the  gestures  of  the  conductor  comprised 
one  movement.  For  a  second  there  was  just  a  trace  of  that  un- 
canny feeling. 

While  I  walked  home  from  the  movie  theater,  the  memory  of 
that  experience  many  weeks  ago  came  vividly  back  again.  It  was 
followed  by  vague  thoughts  and  musings  over  the  figure  of  the 
conductor  in  general.  I  wondered  about  his  role  and  position  in 
relation  to  the  orchestra  and  within  the  orchestra,  and  about  his 
function  as  a  part  of  the  musical  performance.  The  figure  of  that 
man  with  the  baton,  so  familiar  to  me,  now  appeared  suddenly 
strange,  problematical,  even  incomprehensible.  It  was,  all  of  a 
sudden,  a  puzzling  phenomenon  which  I  did  not  understand  any 
longer.  As  if  pulled  by  a  magnetic  power,  my  thoughts  were 
thrown  back  to  that  evening  when  I  conducted  the  Haydn  sym- 
phony alone  in  my  room,  as  if  in  that  scene  were  the  clues  to  the 
solving  of  the  mystery.  But  no  helpful  ideas  occurred  to  me. 

On  reaching  home,  I  looked  at  the  manuscript  on  my  desk— it 
was  a  book  on  Gustav  Mahler  on  which  I  was  then  working— I 
remembered  some  sentences  he  had  written  in  a  letter  to  his 
friend  Bruno  Walter  in  1909.*  Mahler  asked:  "What  is  it,  after 
all,  that  thinks  within  us?  And  what  acts  within  us?"  And  then 
follows  the  sentence:  "Strange!  When  I  hear  music— even  while  I 
conduct— I  can  hear  definite  answers  to  all  my  questions  and  feel 
entirely  clear  and  sure  or  rather  I  feel  quite  clearly  that  there  are 
no  questions  at  all."  Comparing  my  present  situation  with  that 
of  the  composer,  I  realized  that  my  study  and  experience  could 
provide  a  general  answer  to  Mahler's  question— what  it  is  that 
thinks  within  us?— but  no  more  than  that.  Mahler  felt  that  he  no 
longer  had  any  problems  when  he  heard  music  or  even  when  he 
conducted.  Of  course,  music  was  for  him  the  answer.  Far  from 
such  a  gratifying  experience,  my  astonishment  had  just  begun 

*  Quoted  from  Bruno  Walter,  Gustav  Mahler  (1941),  p.  153. 


504  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

when  I  caught  myself  mentally  conducting  a  symphony  in  this 
very  room.  And  that  astonishment  had  been  enlarged,  had  shifted 
from  wondering  at  that  feeling  of  the  uncanny  to  the  mysterious 
activity  of  conducting  itself. 


It  is  said  that  man  is  a  creature  of  habit,  and  that  certainly  in- 
cludes his  personal  habits  of  thoughts,  his  mental  reactions  to  his 
experiences.  It  was  thus  unavoidable  that  analytic  thoughts  and 
reflections  entered  into  my  musing  over  the  position  and  function 
of  the  conductor.  Those  analytic  considerations  emerged  on  two 
points,  but  I  hasten  to  add  that  their  result  was,  in  both  cases, 
negative.  No  light  fell  from  my  analytic  knowledge  and  clinical 
experience  on  the  puzzling  phenomenon  of  conducting.  Nothing 
I  had  learned  in  study  and  practice  helped  me  to  understand 
the  significance  of  the  part  pertaining  to  the  man  with  the  baton. 
The  purely  mechanical  application  of  analytic  knowledge  failed. 
What  was  explained  when  you  thought  of  the  conductor  as  a 
father-representative  figure  and  of  the  instrumentalists  and  sing- 
ers as  son-figures  who  had  an  ambivalent  attitude  toward  their 
leader?  I  imagined  a  young  psychoanalyst  who  would  point  out 
to  me  that  the  baton  of  the  conductor  has  a  symbolic,  phallic 
significance.  I  grinned  at  the  thought:  "Elementary,  my  dear 
Watson  1"  All  such  knowledge  remains  immaterial  and  irrelevant 
in  this  context,  and  we  are  none  the  wiser  for  such  explanations. 

There  was  nothing  well  considered  or  methodical  about  the 
fact  that  analytic  thinking  entered  the  area  of  my  wondering  at 
the  function  of  the  conductor,  a  domain  where  it  had  no  place.  It 
was  rather  by  force  of  intellectual  habit,  almost  automatically, 
that  I  began  to  see  the  problem  of  the  conductor  at  an  angle  at 
which  other  difficult  questions  appeared  in  analytic  practice.  I 
had  found  that  certain  puzzling  phenomena  showed  new  aspects 
when  I  applied  two  mental  techniques.  Since  both  are  almost 
unknown  and  have  been  acquired  in  personal  experience,  I  shall 
demonstrate  their  character  as  simply  as  possible.  We  follow  in 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  505 

psychoanalysis  the  principle  of  free-floating  attention;  in  other 
words,  we  do  not  concentrate  our  observation  on  one  or  the  other 
preferred  part  of  the  material  because  we  do  not  want  to  cater 
to  our  pre-conceived  psychological  ideas.  We  turn  our  attention 
equally  to  all  manifestations  of  the  unconscious  life  as  it  unfolds 
in  analytic  sessions.  Free-floating  attention,  comparable  to  a  mov- 
ing, equally  distributed  light,  will  sometimes  be  focused  on  cer- 
tain points  and  can  then  be  compared  to  a  searchlight  resting  on 
one  place.  Such  temporary  concentration  or  overillumination 
will  result  in  a  kind  of  oversensitiveness,  of  hyperesthesia  for  the 
marginal,  for  phenomena  or  parts  and  aspects  of  them,  which 
until  then  have  been  only  casually  observed,  neglected  or  un- 
appreciated in  their  significance.  Thus,  certain  features  appear 
isolated  and  overclear. 

The  natural  consequences  of  viewing  things  this  way  were 
often  artificially  emphasized  by  me  in  the  two  directions,  namely, 
of  isolating  and  then  of  exaggerating  these  features  in  a  kind  of 
thought-experiment.  Isolation  in  this  connection  means  separat- 
ing a  symptom,  for  instance,  from  its  environment,  from  the 
external  and  internal  situation  in  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
see  it.  Thus  detached,  certain  manifestations  are  sometimes  seen 
anew  or  can  reveal  new  aspects.  Side  by  side  with  this  mental 
device  I  recommend  to  my  students  another  one,  namely,  that  of 
exaggerating  and  magnifying  selected  features  or  trends  so  that 
they  appear  increased  in  size,  look  larger.  Do  we  not  use  micro- 
scopes in  science  and  industry  to  enable  us  to  see  objects  better 
and  more  sharply?  No  one  will  deny  that  such  an  instrument— 
for  instance,  a  thread-counter  in  weaving— is  an  artificial  help  for 
the  eye,  that  it  makes  things  appear  much  too  large.  Of  course, 
this  means  that  they  are  distorted;  but  no  one  will  deny  the 
great  usefulness  of  the  instrument.  Why  should  we  not  also  apply 
such  expedient  help  in  our  thought-processes? 

By  this  method  of  isolation  and  exaggeration,  the  full  import 
of  which  as  a  means  of  finding  psychological  facts  will  be  dis- 
cussed elsewhere,  certain  features  and  trends  appear  conspicuous. 
After  that  mental  experiment  things  are  again  reduced  to  their 
natural  size  and  put  back  into  their  inner  environment,  into  the 


506  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

context  in  which  they  belong.  Only  the  results  of  this  technique 
can  decide  if  the  experiment  of  isolation  and  enlargement  was 
fruitful  in  the  individual  case  and  led  to  new  insights  and  sur- 
prising views.  The  devices  here  recommended  can  have  as  their 
objects  certain  puzzling  symptoms  as  well  as  character  traits, 
features  of  behavior,  habits  of  acting  or  speaking.  In  taking  it 
from  its  frame  and  in  exaggerating  it  in  imagination,  a  special 
trait— for  instance,  a  gesture— presents  to  the  analytic  observer  a 
picture  of  sharp  contours. 

A  patient  had,  for  instance,  a  habit  of  looking  around  sus- 
piciously in  the  consultation  room  before  he  lay  down  on  the 
couch.  This  feature  became  transparent  only  after  it  was  isolated 
in  observation  from  such  things  as  his  walking  into  the  room,  his 
first  words  and  gestures,  the  movements  of  his  hands  and  legs. 
Loosening  the  trait  from  this  particular  situation  and  exaggerat- 
ing it  in  thought,  you  tentatively  imagine  the  patient  looking 
around  mistrustfully  wherever  he  goes  and  you  arrive  at  the 
assumption  of  suspiciousness  and  perhaps  even  of  paranoid 
trends  of  which  you  were  not  aware  before  that  time.  Or  here  is 
another  example  from  analytic  practice:  A  patient  generally  be- 
gan his  analytic  sessions  speaking  in  his  natural  voice.  After  some 
time  he  spoke  lower  so  that  I  had  to  make  an  effort  to  hear  him.  I 
had  to  ask  him  repeatedly  to  speak  louder.  He  did  so,  but  soon 
lowered  his  voice  again.  I  recognized,  of  course,  that  this  trait 
expressed  his  unconscious  resistance.  Since  nothing  in  the  mate- 
rial he  reported  seemed  to  justify  the  reaction  at  the  time,  the 
character  of  the  resistance  remained  unclear  until  I  applied  those 
devices  of  isolating  and  magnifying  this  trait  in  my  thoughts.  I 
recognized  then  that  his  manner  of  speaking  had  the  character  of 
an  aggression  against  me.  I  could  tell  my  patient  a  little  story 
I  heard  recently  which  illustrates  beautifully  this  character  of  his 
behavior.  The  well-known  actress  Tallulah  Bankhead,  who 
usually  speaks  loudly  and  often  shrilly,  got  into  an  argument 
with  the  comedian  Jimmy  Durante.  At  a  certain  point  he  said  to 
her  angrily,  "Don't  you  dare  to  lower  your  voice  at  me!" 

The  drawbacks  and  uncertainties  of  such  a  mental  experiment 
are  not  unknown  to  me,  but  its  performance  at  appropriate  oc- 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  507 

casions  can  open  a  new  path  to  fresh  insights  and  lead  to  original 
interpretations  and  bold  and  surprising  concepts. 

Is  it  venturesome  to  use  those  daring  methods  of  tentative 
isolation  and  exaggeration  in  the  approach  to  a  problem  so  far 
remote  from  those  of  analytic  practice?  Let's  try  it.  The  task  of 
isolating  the  appearance  of  the  conductor  from  its  frame  is  facili- 
tated for  us  by  a  fact  which  otherwise  has  to  be  considered  a 
decided  disadvantage,  namely,  by  our  lack  of  knowledge  and 
understanding  of  conducting.  Since  our  notions  of  baton  tech- 
nique, of  the  signaling  and  expressive  meaning  of  conducting 
gestures  are  very  superficial  and  general,  we  have  no  difficulty  in 
separating  his  appearance  from  the  real,  very  complicated  func- 
tions he  has  to  fulfill.  The  mechanism  of  mental  isolation  is 
made  even  easier  by  the  fact  that  there  is  a  material  technical 
device  that  supports  our  imagination.  Did  we  not  see  the  other 
day  a  television  program  presenting  the  performance  of  a  sym- 
phony under  the  baton  of  Stokowski?  While  our  ears  followed 
the  themes  of  the  first  movements,  we  saw  the  orchestra  playing 
its  instruments.  The  camera  turned  to  the  conductor,  focused  on 
him  alone,  and  concentrated  on  him  and  his  expressive  gestures. 
Here  is  the  figure  of  the  leader  isolated  and  in  full  limelight. 
(The  memory  of  the  conductor  in  Charlie  Chaplin's  film  occurs 
here  because  the  movie  scene  almost  fulfilled  the  requirements  of 
the  experiment.) 

How  about  the  other  part  of  our  mental  test,  which  should 
take  place  simultaneously,  that  of  exaggerating  or  magnifying? 
No  stretching  of  imagination  was  needed  before  since  we  had  the 
reality  of  the  television  show,  but  to  see  the  activity  of  the  man 
on  the  platform  in  a  magnifying  distortion  is  obviously  more 
difficult.  Will  we  succeed  when  we  try  to  imagine  a  very  tempera- 
mental virtuoso-conductor  who  throws  himself  into  the  flood  of 
melodies,  and  when  we  exaggerate  the  violence  of  his  gestures 
and  the  spontaneity  of  his  bodily  movements?  A  felicitous  acci- 
dent comes  to  our  aid:  we  remember  at  the  right  time  reports  of 
Beethoven's  conducting  methods,  for  instance,  the  one  from  an 
eyewitness  that  Ludwig  Spohr  presents.  Let  us  imagine  the  great 
composer  conducting  his  Eroica  in  the  Palais  of  Prince  Lobko- 


508  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

witz,  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  He  conducts  holding  a  roll 
of  sheet  music  in  his  hand.  (The  use  of  the  baton  was  first  intro- 
duced in  Germany  by  Mosel  in  181 2.)  Beethoven  was  accustomed, 
Spohr  reports,  "to  insert  all  sorts  of  dynamic  markings  in  the  part 
and  to  remind  his  players  of  the  marks  by  resorting  to  the  most 
curious  bodily  contortions.  At  every  sforzato  he  would  thrust  his 
arms  away  from  his  breast  where  he  held  them  crossed.  When  he 
desired  a  piano,  he  would  crouch  and  bend,  when  the  music  grew 
louder  into  a  forte,  he  would  literally  leap  into  the  air  and  at 
times  grow  so  excited  as  to  yell  in  the  midst  of  a  climax/'  This 
description  does  not  provide  the  maximum  of  exaggeration  we 
desired,  yet  it  is  the  best  at  our  disposal.  And  what  better  example 
than  the  conducting  of  the  greatest  of  composers  could  we  choose? 
Now,  ready  for  our  thought-experiment,  what  do  we  see  in  this 
caricaturing  picture,  in  this  distorting  mirror?  We  see  a  man 
alone,  but  aware  that  he  has  an  audience,  a  showman  who  is 
violently  gesticulating  and  moving  his  body  about,  who  leaps  and 
jumps,  stamps  around,  and  does  astonishing  things  with  his  legs 
and  hands.  Here  is,  no  doubt,  an  acrobat  or  a  dancer  performing 
in  the  rhythm  he  hears.  Is  he  only  a  dancer?  Is  what  he  does  only 
choreography?  No,  look  at  him,  his  face  is  as  expressive  as  his 
body  and  his  hands  and  feet.  He  is  also  a  mimic,  he  is  an  actor 
and  he  acts  the  part  the  music  dictates.  You  remember  conduc- 
tors, for  instance,  Felix  Weingartner,  who  studied  their  parts 
before  the  mirror.  The  conductor  is  an  actor  devoted  to  his  art, 
sometimes  even  in  bondage  to  it.  Toscanini  puts  all  passione  and 
emotione  into  his  performance  on  the  platform.  Asking  for  a 
pianissimo  from  his  orchestra  he  once  fell  on  his  knees,  clasped 
his  hands  in  prayer,  and  cried,  "Pianissimo,  please."  A  conductor 
certainly  wears  his  heart  on  his  sleeve  or  in  his  hands.  In  trying 
to  transmit  his  interpretation  of  a  composition  to  his  players,  he 
acts,  he  postures.  Toscanini  gesticulates  "Like  this  the  music 
should  sound,"  or  explains  it  should  be  like  a  mother  rocking  her 
baby  to  sleep  while  he  actually  rocks  his  hand  in  cradle  fashion. 
The  conductor  is  not  only  a  dancer,  he  is  also  an  actor.  Is  he  a 
musician?  That  sounds  paradoxical,  but  he  does  not  play  an  in- 
strument. Some  people  call  him  "a  frustrated  instrumentalist,"  but 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  509 

many  excellent  artists,  like  Ossip  Gabrilowitsch,  Casals,  Kousse- 
vitzky,  exchanged  their  instruments  for  the  baton.  The  conductor 
plays  all  instruments.  He  is,  so  to  speak,  the  all-round  musician, 
the  supermusician.  But  he  is  not  heard,  only  seen.  He  is  a  silent 
musician.  What  a  paradoxical  figure!  Not  only  improbable,  but 
impossible.  A  musician  who  does  not  make  music?  Imagine  a 
sculptor  who  makes  other  artists  work  on  a  monument  or  a 
painter  who  not  only  lets  George  do  it,  but  also  tells  him  how  he 
should  do  it! 

The  audience  at  a  concert  will  sometimes  see  only  the  con- 
ductor, will  change  into  nothing  but  eye-listeners.  The  conductor 
is  not  only  a  musician,  but  also  a  magician  who  celebrates  a  com- 
position with  the  solemnity  of  a  priest  who  says  Mass.  When  he 
conducts,  he  himself  often  feels  inspired  by  a  higher  power. 
That  violent  Maestro  Toscanini,  who  sometimes  smashes  his 
baton  as  Moses  did  the  tablets,  once  said  to  a  musician  who  had 
performed  poorly,  "You  see,  God  tells  me  how  the  music  should 
sound  and  you  get  in  the  way."  We  are  momentarily  under  the 
impression  that  the  conductor  is  the  composer  of  the  wonderful 
symphony  played  under  his  baton,  as  if  he  had  not  only  repro- 
duced but  created  it.  And  then  we  feel  that  we  have  been  his 
dupe.  He  is  not  Beethoven  or  Mozart,  only  their  interpreter, 
speaking  for  them  as  Moses  spoke  for  God.  Is  he  a  prince  of 
genius  or  only  his  butler,  a  creator  or  only  the  composer's 
hand  and  foot  man?  His  signs  and  designs  seem  to  have  magical 
power  and  we  are  under  his  spell.  Yet  when  we  shake  it  off,  he 
appears  to  us  sometimes  a  comedian,  a  fraud  and  freak,  a  four- 
flusher  and  floor-flusher.  No  doubt,  he  occasionally  attributes 
supernatural  power  to  himself.  Did  Mahler  not  once  say,  "There 
are  no  bad  orchestras,  only  bad  conductors"  as  if  he  were  al- 
mighty and  the  musicians  of  the  orchestra  only  willing  or  reluc- 
tant instruments?  Yet  these  musicians  themselves  adore  some  con- 
ductors as  great  artists  and  look  down  on  others.  We  heard  the 
other  day  the  story  of  an  orchestra  player  who  was  asked  what 
a  visiting  guest  conductor  would  perform  and  answered,  "I 
don't  know  what  he'll  conduct,  but  we  will  play  Brahms's  First 
Symphony." 


KIO  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

The  image  that  emerges  from  our  thought-experiment  is,  of 
course,  only  phenomenological.  But  in  applying  the  devices  of 
isolation  and  exaggeration,  the  phenomenon  of  the  conductor 
appears  even  more  mysterious  than  before;  the  signals  he  gives 
and  which  we  know  as  rational  and  conventional  seem  even  more 
fantastic.  How  can  we  reconcile  so  many  contradictory  features? 
What  an  enigmatic  figure!  A  creative  artist  and  the  servant  of  the 
composer,  a  silent  musician,  a  magician  and  a  make-believe,  a 
dancer,  mimic,  and  actor,  a  man  who  is  mute  and  who,  as  they 
facetiously  say,  "talks  with  his  hands." 

We  tried  to  approach  the  problem  from  the  analytic  angle, 
once  by  direct  approach  and  the  other  time  by  applying  those 
artificial  methods  of  isolating  and  magnifying  the  phenomenon. 
Both  attempts  were  failures.  The  first  supplied  a  clue  which  led 
into  a  blind  alley,  the  second  let  us  see  the  figure  of  the  conductor 
with  all  its  contradictions  in  an  oversharp  light,  so  glaring  that 
it  left  us  more  confused  than  we  had  been  before.  It  seems  that 
the  problem  cannot  be  solved  by  analytic  methods  or  by  using  or 
transferring  analytic  results  to  its  area.  Yet  we  know,  somehow, 
that  it  cannot  be  solved  without  psychoanalysis. 

Seeing  that  scene  in  Limelight  had  given  me  enough  to  think 
about,  but  thinking  was  not  enough.  Everybody  can  produce 
thoughts  on  a  certain  subject  as  a  spider  can  weave  a  web  on  a 
corner.  But  such  meditations  have  no  more  durability  or  sub- 
stance than  a  spider's  toils.  In  order  to  understand  more  about 
the  function  of  the  conductor,  one  has  to  know  more  about  the 
history  of  that  figure,  to  study  why  and  how  conducting  entered 
the  evolution  of  music,  where  it  came  from  and  what  it  came  to. 


A  prominent  historian  of  music*  introduces  his  survey  of  con- 
ducting with  the  remark  that  the  activity  "is  doubtless  as  old  as 
music  itself  and  was  probably  always  employed  whenever  the 

*  Georg  Schunemann,  Geschichte  des  Dingier  ens  (Leipzig,  1913). 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          5!! 

musical  performance  called  for  several  or  more  participants." 
That  may  or  may  not  be  correct,  but  we  know  very  little  about 
the  earliest  times  of  conducting  and  cannot  trace  it  back  much 
more  than  two  thousand  years.  To  make  a  short  story  shorter, 
then,  only  a  brief  outline  of  the  evolution  of  the  art  of  the  baton 
is  here  presented.  The  ancient  Greeks  had  two  kinds  of  conduct- 
ing. The  leader  of  the  chorus  indicated  the  beat  by  stamping 
his  foot,  which  was  iron-soled.  Beside  this  way  of  marking  the 
beat,  there  was  the  chironomia,  a  system  by  which  the  progress  of 
a  musical  composition  was  indicated  by  arm,  hand,  and  finger 
motions  corresponding  to  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  melody.  In  the 
Vedic  music  the  leader  designated  the  sacred  melodies  with  the 
knuckles  of  the  right  hand,  beating  them  with  the  forefinger  of 
the  left  hand. 

Schunemann  states  that  both  kinds  of  directing  "the  noisy 
beating  of  time  as  well  as  the  chironomy  form  the  point  of 
departure  of  a  history  of  conducting."  But  the  scholar,  as  all  au- 
thorities in  the  field,  emphasizes  that  music  has  no  singular  posi- 
tion within  the  ancient  civilizations.  It  is  not  a  separate  and  inde- 
pendent part  of  art,  but  part  and  parcel  of  the  whole  or  united 
art  and  intimately  connected  and  interwoven  with  dance,  drama, 
and  poetry.  The  factor  of  rhythm  is  the  uniting  principle  of  all 
these  arts.  The  choir  leader  led  the  dance  and  the  music  and 
song  with  the  choir.  The  great  festivals  and  processions  of  ancient 
cultures  were  not  musical  performances,  but  rhythmical  presen- 
tations of  cult,  dance,  and  songs,  accompanied  by  instrumental 
music.  The  choragus  leading  his  choir  of  twelve  to  fourteen  men 
originally  marked  the  beat  with  his  foot.  His  hand  was  also  used 
in  the  display,  and  ultimately  replaced  the  foot.  In  the  chiro- 
nomic  system,  the  measured  movements  of  the  hand  signify  the 
beating  of  time.  The  Romans  followed  suit.  With  them  the  flutist 
often  seems  to  have  marked  the  beat.  The  noises  made  by  slap- 
ping the  fingers  won  over  those  made  by  feet.  In  early  ecclesiasti- 
cal singing  the  beat  was  marked  by  backward  and  forward  move- 
ments of  the  hands.  The  Gregorian  chants  which  in  some  aspects 
resembled  our  modern  operative  recitative  were  led  by  a  pre- 
ceptor who  gave  the  pitch  and  the  chironomic  signs,  sang  himself, 


512  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

helped  with  "voice  and  hand."  Slowly  the  signs  and  designs  be- 
came expressive  and  more  differentiated. 

With  the  entrance  of  the  cembalo  a  new  trend  within  the  or- 
chestra appeared.  The  conductor  led  the  performance  from  the 
clavicembalo.  Bach  presided  at  the  organ  or  cembalo  while  con- 
ducting; as  did  Handel  and  Gluck.  Haydn  appeared  in  London 
in  1791  and  1794  leading  his  symphonies  sitting  at  the  piano.  The 
main  part  of  the  conducting  was,  however,  done  by  his  impre- 
sario, the  violinist  Salomon.  The  combined  leadership,  cembalo 
and  first  violinist,  was,  it  seems,  in  general  use  during  the  eight- 
eenth century.  The  first  violinist  led  by  beating  with  his  bow. 
The  keyboard  player  helped  him  by  pulling  things  together.  Two 
conductors  shared  the  responsibilities  of  producing  the  music: 
one  looked  after  the  singers;  the  violinist  was  in  charge  of  the 
instrumentalists. 

Other  methods  of  conducting  emerged  mostly  from  the  Italian 
and  French  orchestra.  Here  the  time-beater  became,  by  and  by, 
the  maestro  di  cappella,  le  chef  d'orchestre.  The  time-beater  (bat- 
teur  de  mesure  in  France)  kept  strict  discipline  and  marked  the 
time  beat  very  audibly.  Rousseau  told  us  in  his  Dictionary  of  Music 
(1769)  of  the  noise  of  the  conductor  ("le  bruit  insupportable  de 
son  baton  qui  couvre  et  amortit  tout  I'effet  de  la  symphonie"),  and 
remarked  that  Paris  is  the  only  place  in  Europe  "where  they  beat 
time  without  keeping  it  since  in  all  other  places  they  keep  time 
without  beating  it."  Because  of  the  custom  of  conductors  of  strik- 
ing their  batons  on  the  floor  or  on  the  desk,  they  were  called  "wood- 
choppers/'  Eighty  years  before  Rousseau's  complaint  the  famous 
French  composer  Jean  Baptiste  Lully  had  conducted  a  Te  Deum 
for  the  recovery  from  illness  of  Louis  XIV.  In  thumping  the  time 
on  the  floor  with  his  long  heavy  baton,  Lully  struck  his  foot.  He 
died  from  the  consequences  of  the  infection  that  resulted  from 
his  mistake. 

The  noisy  knocking  of  the  beat  continued  during  the  musical 
career  of  Bach.  Leigh  Hunt  is  still  complaining  in  1822  that  the 
roll  of  paper  which  the  conductor  in  the  cathedral  at  Pisa  wielded 
made  a  noise  sounding  "like  cracking  the  whip."  The  period  in 
which  the  conductor,  maestro  di  cappella,  and  the  time-beater 
stood  side  by  side  lasted  a  few  centuries.  They  could  not  co-exist 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  513 

any  longer.  At  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  Gluck  was  still 
leading  from  the  piano,  and  the  twelve-year-old  Beethoven  sat  in 
the  opera  orchestra  of  Cologne  and  led  the  musicians  from  the 
harpsichord.  The  orchestra,  until  then  conducted  by  a  player  at 
the  harpsichord  or  the  first  violinists,  did  not  react  in  a  friendly 
fashion  to  a  conductor  who  did  not  play  his  instrument.  When 
Ludwig  Spohr  came  to  London  to  direct  the  Philharmonic  So- 
ciety in  1820,  he  was  supposed  to  play  his  violin  and  conduct  with 
its  bow.  It  was  no  small  sensation  when  he  took  a  baton  from  his 
pocket  and  conducted  from  his  desk.*  The  use  of  the  baton  spread 
rapidly.  It  was  already  being  used  by  Carl  Maria  von  Weber  in 
Dresden  in  1817,  by  Mendelssohn  in  1835,  anc^  ^Y  Schumann, 
who  tied  a  baton  to  his  wrist  with  a  special  gadget  We  stand 
here  at  the  threshold  of  modern  times,  of  the  age  of  the  great 
masters  of  the  baton,  of  Biilow,  Mahler,  Nikisch,  Toscanini.  We 
followed  the  development  from  the  time-beater,  from  the  Kapell- 
meister to  the  conductor  of  the  twentieth  century  who  is  no 
longer  only  a  leader  of  the  orchestra,  but  a  master  himself  and 
the  interpreter  of  the  masters  of  great  music. 

It  is  only  appropriate  to  add  a  brief  history  of  the  baton  to  the 
preceding  sober  and  short  survey  of  conducting.  The  baton 
is,  of  course,  a  late  acquisition  in  music.  The  hands  and  legs  were 
originally  the  best  and  only  instruments  to  indicate  time  and 
rhythm.  To  focus  the  attention  of  early  ecclesiastical  singers,  the 
leaders  had  devices  ranging  from  abbot's  and  bishop's  staffs  to 
scrolls  and  kerchiefs,  alone  or  tied  to  sticks.  Some  organists  even 
tapped  upon  their  instruments  with  their  keys.  Till  the  fifteenth 
century  the  leader  directed  choirs  with  a  roll  of  paper.  The  con- 
ductor Anselm  used  a  leather  roll  filled  with  calf  hair,  Carl  Maria 
von  Weber  a  paper  roll,  Gasparo  Spontini  an  ebony  stick.  (Wag- 
ner describes  that  contrivance  which  had  a  billiard  ball  at  either 
end,  used  by  the  Italian  composer,  "more  to  command  than 
to  conduct.") 

The  baton  has  undergone  many  alterations.  It  has  decreased 
from  a  length  of  forty  inches  to  about  eighteen  inches  or  less. 
There  are  no  gold  or  ivory  batons  with  ebony  inlays  any  more. 

*  Schmid,  Language  of  the  Baton,  p.  4. 


514  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

The  modern  baton  is  a  simple  stick  of  light  material  such  as 
vulcanite,  celluloid,  usually  of  light  color.  Also  its  significance  has 
changed.  It  once  had  the  same  character  as  other  musical  instru- 
ments and  was  supposed  to  have  magical  power.  Some  supersti- 
tions still  cling  to  it.  When  Richard  Strauss  was  guest  conductor 
at  the  Vienna  Opera,  he  once  forgot  his  baton  but  did  not  care 
and  selected  one  of  those  on  the  stand.  Just  as  he  was  ready  to 
give  the  signal  to  begin,  the  principal  viola  player  stepped  for- 
ward and  courteously  handed  him  another  baton,  saying,  "Please, 
master,  take  this  one;  the  other  has  no  rhythm/'  The  baton  was 
once  akin  to  the  scepter  and  later  signified  a  staff  of  command. 
(A  field  marshal  also  has  a  baton.)  In  Lully's  time  it  was  a  herald's 
staff.  It  has  more  than  once  been  compared  to  a  weapon.  When 
Berlioz  and  Mendelssohn  met  at  Leipzig  in  1841,  they  exchanged 
batons,  and  Berlioz  accompanied  his  with  a  letter  in  the  vein  of 
Fenimore  Cooper,  addressing  the  friend  as  "great  chieftain/'  He 
reminds  him  of  the  promise  to  exchange  their  tomahawks.  His 
own  is  simple;  "only  the  squaws  of  the  pale-face  love  ornate 
arms."  He  expressed  the  hope  that  when  the  Great  Spirit  sent 
them  to  the  Land  of  Souls  to  hunt,  their  warriors  would  suspend 
their  tomahawks  at  the  door  of  their  council  hut.  That  little 
stick  wrhich  was  once  the  symbol  of  royal  power  and  authority 
and  seemed  to  emit  sparks,  became  a  signaling  instrument,  to  pro- 
long the  arm  and  to  amplify  the  movements  of  arm  and  wrists. 
Although  some  conductors  like  Stokowski,  Mitropoulos,  and 
Bernstein  lead  their  orchestras  batonless,  the  little  stick  remains 
not  only  the  instrument,  but  also  the  badge  and  insignia  of  the 
master  of  the  orchestra.  We  follow  the  designs  it  draws.  We  can 
read  the  "baton  handwriting/'  and  we  unconsciously  distinguish 
between  the  signaling  and  the  expressive  significance  of  the  con- 
ductor's gesture. 


An  eminent  historian  of  music  tells  us*  that  "not  even  the 
earliest  civilizations  that  have  left  their  traces  in  the  depths  of 
*  Curt  Sachs,  Our  Musical  Heritage  (New  York,  1948),  p.  i. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  515 

the  earth  are  old  enough  to  betray  the  origins  of  music/'  The 
same  historian  informs  us  that  the  oldest  civilization  from  which 
information  about  musical  performance  is  accessible  is  that  of 
Mesopotamia  where  excavations  uncovered  pictures  of  musical 
instruments.  The  music  of  ancient  Egypt  had  already  reached  a 
relatively  high  standard.  We  cannot  pursue  the  evolution  of 
music  more  than  a  few  thousand  years.  The  attempt  at  investi- 
gation of  primitive  music  of  the  savage  and  uncivilized  tribes  of 
today  cannot  hope  to  unearth  the  earliest  phase  of  musical  per- 
formance. Peoples  on  the  lowest  level  of  civilization,  like  the 
tribes  of  Southeast  Australia,  also  have  a  long  past  behind  them 
and  have  gone  through  many  stages  of  evolution.  Comparative 
musicology  dealing  with  the  music  of  those  tribes  is  aware  that 
it  can  reach  only  remnants  of  earliest  art  practice  and  can  only 
observe  and  describe  musical  performance  at  a  relatively  pro- 
gressed stage— so  to  speak,  at  a  later  phase  of  the  childhood  of 
mankind. 

All  observers  agree  that  our  division  of  the  arts  into  music, 
dance,  and  acting  is  not  valid  for  that  period.  They  are  inextri- 
cable in  their  beginnings.  The  whole  or  united  art  of  which 
Richard  Wagner  daydreamed  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  future  of 
human  civilization,  but  in  its  remote  past.  Before  speech,  pre- 
historic man  gave  expression  to  his  emotions  in  bodily  move- 
ments and  raucous  screams.  His  shouts  and  the  movements  of  his 
hands  and  legs  gradually  became  song  and  dance.  He  danced  and 
sang  not  for  pleasure,  but  for  magical  purposes.  "Dance,"  says 
that  historian,*  "is  the  mother  of  arts.  .  .  .  The  creator  and  the 
things  created,  the  artist  and  the  work  are  still  one  and  the  same 
thing."  Man  creates  the  rhythmical  patterns  of  movement,  the 
vivid  representation  of  the  world  "in  his  own  body  in  the  dance 
before  he  uses  substance  and  stone  or  word  to  give  expression  to 
his  inner  experiences."  The  dancer  did  not  possess  his  instrument. 
He  inhabited  it.  His  palms  slapped  together  or  against  his  thighs, 
his  feet  pounded  on  the  earth.  He  had  his  own  rhythmic  and 
percussive  accompaniment. 

The  only  form  of  artistic  manifestation  that  has  been  ob- 

*  Curt  Sachs,  World  History  of  The  Dance  (New  York,  1937),  p.  3. 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

served  among  the  lowest  of  all  savages,  the  Wood  Veddas  of 
Ceylon,  consists  of  an  exalted  dance  in  which  each  dancer  turns 
around  on  one  foot  while  performing  some  spasmodic  movements 
with  the  free  leg.*  The  arms  describe  circles  in  the  air  and  the 
head  is  thrown  backward  and  forward.  The  music  is  howled  out 
by  the  dancers,  while  the  time  is  marked  by  strokes  of  the  hand 
on  the  nude  belly.  The  dances  of  those  savages  like  those  of  most 
primitive  tribes  are  mostly  imitative.  The  "image  dancer"  is 
possessed  by  his  part.  The  animal  or  the  spirit  which  he  repre- 
sents takes  control  of  his  body.  The  dancer  becomes  that  animal 
or  spirit.  Every  imitative  dance  bears  within  it  the  germ  of  the 
pantomime.  Every  dancer  who  feels  himself  into  the  living  or 
lifeless  object  recreates  their  appearance  with  his  body.  Imita- 
tions in  animal  dances  reproduce  in  a  lifelike  manner  the  charac- 
teristic bearing  and  movements  of  an  animal  and  "are  ac- 
companied—almost as  a  matter  of  course— by  sounds  which  are 
appropriate  to  this  animal.  Every  primitive  hunter  has  the  gift  of 
imitating  convincingly  the  growling,  grunting,  howling,  whis- 
tling, yelling  of  the  animals.  .  .  ."**  The  dancer  thus  becomes  an 
actor,  a  mimic.  We  cannot  imagine  how  those  primitive  howls 
became  simple  melodies.  From  their  character  to  that  of  an  aria 
is  really  a  far  cry,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  wordless  singing,  if 
one  can  call  it  that,  is  the  origin  of  music.  The  instruments  en- 
large and  intensify  the  rhythm  made  by  handclapping  and 
pounding  of  feet,  later  helped  by  wooden  sticks,  spears,  and  other 
objects  at  hand.  The  example  of  our  children  who  use  pots  and 
pans  or  other  available  objects  when  they  feel  like  making  music 
helps  us  to  understand  that  development. 

A  prehistoric  rock  painting  found  in  South  Africa  shows 
women  dancing.f  A  Bushman  of  today,  a  remote  descendant  of 
those  primitive  cavemen,  interpreted  that  early  painting  as  fol- 
lows: "They  seem  to  be  dancing  for  they  are  stamping  with  their 
legs.  This  man  who  stands  in  front  seems  to  be  showing  the 
people  how  to  dance,  that  is  why  he  holds  a  stick.  He  feels  that 

*  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics,  I,  818. 

**  Cert  Sachs,  World  History  of  The  Dance  (New  York,  1937),  P-  *75- 
t  Quoted  by  Howard  D.  Kinny  and  W.  R.  Anderson  in  "Music  In  History 
(New  York,  1940),  p.  26. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  517 

he  is  a  great  man,  so  he  holds  a  dancing  stick  because  he  is  one 
who  dances  before  the  people  that  they  may  dance  after  him.  The 
people  know  he  is  one  who  dances  first  because  he  is  a  great  sor- 
cerer." Here  is,  it  seems  to  me,  the  prehistoric  representative  of 
the  man  with  the  baton  who  is  still  a  great  magician. 

We  have  endeavored  to  detect  the  origin  of  conducting  and  the 
primeval  functions  of  the  conductor.  The  history  of  music  and 
comparative  ethnology  have  given  us  valuable  information  trac- 
ing musical  performance  back  to  very  early  practices.  No  record 
can  take  us  back  to  those  prehistoric  times  and  to  that  no-man's 
land  in  which  conducting  originated.  Neither  the  history  of  civi- 
lization nor  comparative  musicology  reaches  that  far  back.  We  can- 
not explore  the  character  of  prehistoric  conducting  and  we  know 
it  as  little  as  what  song  the  sirens  sang.  We  feel  like  throwing  up 
our  hands.  But  as  if  in  contrast,  the  image  of  the  conductor 
emerges,  and  his  open  hand  urgently  demands  volume  and  "pulls 
out  the  sound/'  calling  for  a  crescendo. 


Out  attempts  to  apply  those  mental  devices  of  isolation  and 
exaggeration  to  the  material  have  perhaps  not  been  entirely  use- 
less. Did  we  not  see  the  figure  of  the  conductor  successively  as 
dancer,  actor,  and  musician?  He  was  all  these,  but  at  one  time, 
he  was  all  these  not  in  succession  but  simultaneously.  When  we 
condense  and  comprise  all  the  traits  which  were  artificially 
severed  in  that  thought-experiment,  it  gives  us  heart  to  venture 
on  a  reconstruction  of  the  prehistory  of  the  conductor.  The  smat- 
tering of  knowledge  of  the  history  of  music-making  will  certainly 
lead  us  to  the  point  where  the  work  of  the  imaginative  and  com- 
bining function  has  to  set  in.  In  such  an  attempt  at  reconstruc- 
tion we  have,  of  course,  to  consider  the  mind  of  prehistoric  man, 
which  was  so  different  from  and  yet  so  similar  to  our  own. 

Hans  von  Bulow's  sentence  "In  the  beginning  was  rhythm" 
shall  introduce  our  venture.  Tension  and  relaxation,  breathing 
in  and  breathing  out  as  upbeat  and  downbeat,  are  manifestations 


518  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

of  the  same  rhythmic  principle  which  governs  music,  dance,  and 
poetry;  the  same  principle,  also,  which  shapes  the  expressions  of 
our  emotions.  Rhythm,  not  melody,  was  the  principle  that  gave 
prehistoric  art  its  character. 

Suddenly,  driven  and  pushed  by  some  intense  emotion,  one  of 
the  tribesmen  of  a  prehistoric  people  jumped  up  and  moved  about 
in  a  primitive  dance  and  act.  He  was  inspired  by  the  impression 
that  he  was  a  tree  or  a  lion.  His  hands  were  flapping  and  flying  to- 
gether with  the  stamping  of  his  feet.  They  slapped  parts  of  his 
body  which  became  musical  instruments,  the  upper  arms,  the 
flanks,  the  abdomen,  the  buttocks.  The  stamping  feet  as  well  as 
the  slapping  hands  were  the  original  time-beaters.  The  other 
members  of  the  tribe  followed  suit  and  danced  after  the  initiator 
of  the  primitive  song  and  dance.  He  was  perhaps  the  chieftain  of 
the  tribe  or  he  would  become  its  head.  We  here  introduced  the 
first  conductor,  who  is  also  the  first  dancer  and  musician.  He  is 
also  the  first  composer  because  the  raucous  sounds  he  emits  are 
created  by  himself.  He  is  the  first  leader  of  the  chorus  and  the 
first  leader  of  a  primitive  orchestra  without  instruments.  Much 
later,  when  primitive  instruments  magnified  and  complemented 
the  subhuman  voices  of  the  group,  that  first  dancer  also  became 
the  first  instrumentalist,  because  in  dancing  he  struck  something 
with  a  stick  or  a  spear.  There  is  not  yet  any  division  between 
composer  and  performer,  nor  any  difference  between  dance- 
musicians  and  audience,  because  all  the  members  of  the  group, 
inspired  by  their  leader,  perform.  This  division  belongs  to  a 
much  later  phase  of  artistic  production. 

Until  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  leader  will 
also  be  a  player,  will  direct  the  others  with  his  instrument,  for 
instance,  with  the  bow  of  his  violin.  The  conductor  is  only  primus 
inter  pares,  first  among  his  peers.  Priority  and  primacy  of  the 
feet  as  time-beaters  will  later  yield  to  the  hands  which  gesticulate 
and  to  the  body  which  imitates  and  pantomimes.  Prehistoric  per- 
formance was  a  combination  of  dance,  music,  and  acting  or 
mimicry,  and  was  an  expression  of  emotions  as  well  as  magical 
ritual.  But  slowly  there  begins  a  differentiation  of  the  arts.  In  the 
Stone  Age  they  are  still  an  inseparable  unit,  but  they  separate 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          519 

into  individual  and  almost  independent  arts.  The  dance  will  be- 
come an  important  artistic  branch  and  so  will  acting  and  music. 
There  are  still  traces  of  their  past  unity:  the  dancer  will  make 
gestures  like  an  actor  and  will  be  accompanied  by  music,  and 
music  will  at  first  be  an  eminent  factor  of  ancient  poetry.  But 
more  and  more  the  individual  art  will  free  itself  from  its  former 
companions,  go  its  own  ways,  and  develop  its  own  expressions. 
The  ballet  is  now  an  independent  art  and  so  are  poetry,  acting, 
and  music-making.  That  process  of  loosening  of  the  primitive 
ties,  of  differentiation  and  isolation  of  one  art  from  the  others 
took  place  in  different  forms  and  in  various  tempi. 

It  seems  that  music  first  succeeded  in  getting  loose  from  its 
connections  with  dancing  and  acting  and  detaching  its  produc- 
tion from  its  allied  arts.  This  is  perhaps  due  to  the  fact  that,  in 
contrast  with  choreography  and  pantomime,  music  had  instru- 
ments which  were  not  identical  with  the  bodies  of  the  performers 
and  so  was  no  longer  restricted  to  voices,  hands,  and  legs  as  its 
only  organs  of  production.  Yet  we  do  not  forget  that  the  orches- 
tra was  originally  that  part  of  the  Attic  theatre  on  which  the 
chorus  danced. 

It  interests  us  more  in  which  forms  dancing  and  acting  sur- 
vived in  the  long  evolution  of  instrumental  music.  The  first  con- 
ductor was  a  dancer  and  actor  as  well  as  a  musician.  With  the 
suppression  of  dancing  and  acting  and  with  the  development  of 
the  orchestra,  his  fate  seemed  to  be  sealed.  He  was  going  to  be 
absorbed  into  the  instrumental  body,  submerged  into  the  or- 
chestra. There  was  the  time  when  he  was  simultaneously  the  first 
violinist  or  the  cembalo  player  or  the  choir  leader  singing  with 
the  others  while  he  conducted.  And  now  something  strange  hap- 
pened: he  became  isolated  and  disassociated  from  the  players.  He 
relinquished  the  functions  of  an  instrumentalist.  He  was  pushed 
out  from  the  middle  of  the  orchestra  and  drawn  up  at  the  same 
time.  He  was  removed  by  promotion.  Just  when  it  seemed  that 
his  function  would  be  merged  and  submerged  into  the  orchestra, 
an  unknown  emotional  power  lifted  his  figure  and  raised  it  to  a 
position  outside  and  above  the  orchestra. 

We  know  what  that  hidden  power  was:  the  force  of  those  drives 


520  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

that  were  there  at  the  beginning  of  musical  performance  and 
which  had  been  suppressed  for  so  long.  Those  urges  which  had 
once  expressed  themselves  in  bodily  movements,  in  gestures  and 
dancing,  in  acting  and  pantomiming,  had  been  more  and  more 
pushed  back  and  suppressed  in  favor  of  the  purely  musical  ele- 
ment, of  the  factor  of  sounds.  They  were  suppressed,  but  they  did 
not  vanish.  They  demanded  satisfaction  and  continued  to  call 
urgently  for  expression.  In  the  emergency  situation  in  which  they 
were  banned  by  the  primacy  of  musical  gratification  and  by  the 
necessities  of  orchestral  performance,  they  forced  a  side  entrance. 
The  underground  activity  developed  by  those  forces  led  finally  to 
a  break-through,  and  to  their  at  least  partial  victory. 

When  a  conductor  stood  freely  at  his  elevated  desk  and  waved 
his  baton  or  his  hand  at  the  orchestra,  it  was  the  success  of  a 
coup  d'etat,  of  a  revolution  of  those  powers  which  wanted  bodily 
movement  and  acting  within  the  musical  performance.  It  marked 
the  return  of  the  repressed.  The  expressive  gestures  of  the  con- 
ductor are  essentially  dancing  gestures,  and  the  players  dance 
with  the  maestro,  dance  to  his  tune.  Those  gestures  are,  it  is  true, 
only  "hand  dances/'  that  is  to  say,  they  symbolize  and  express 
emotions  only  by  means  of  arms  and  hands,  but  the  whole  body 
takes  part  in  the  movements.  The  gestures  are  also  never  entirely 
free,  the  impulses  leading  to  them  are  controlled,  canalized,  and 
stylized.  But,  however  conventional  their  designs  become,  there  is 
enough  spontaneity  in  them  not  only  to  express  the  emotions  of 
the  conductor,  but  also  to  stimulate  the  members  of  the  orchestra. 
The  facial  expressions  of  the  conductor  and  the  movement  of 
his  body  while  leading  his  orchestra  represent  the  element  of 
pantomime  and  remind  us  of  the  part  acting  and  imitation  once 
had  in  primitive  music  performance.  Degraded  and  almost  dis- 
integrated, debased,  disassociated  and  disinherited,  the  primal 
impulses  of  prehistoric  art  production  asserted  themselves  at  last 
in  the  function  of  the  conductor.  He  is  still  the  leader  he  once 
was.  He  is  again  the  dancer  within  the  orchestra.  He  is  the  last 
musician  as  he  was  the  first.  As  a  remnant  and  revival  of  an  art 
past  beyond  any  human  memory,  he  represents  the  earliest  stage 
of  music. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          521 

He  is  again  the  magician.  His  upbeat  will  open  the  door  of  a 
domain  of  miracle.  He  does  not  play  any  instrument,  but  his  very 
gestures  convey  to  us  the  significance  of  a  symphony.  His  signal 
starts  the  performance,  and  his  downbeat  puts  an  end  to  it.  The 
rest  is  silence. 


When  we  now  return  to  our  point  of  departure,  we  recognize 
that  the  result  of  this  expedition  into  prehistory  was  uncon- 
sciously anticipated  in  the  intuitive  understanding  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  my  conducting  the  first  movement  of  the  Haydn 
symphony.  There  must  have  been,  concealed  to  myself,  a  pre- 
recognition  of  the  meaning  of  my  activity,  namely,  that  I  had  as 
in  a  flash  experienced  that  conducting  is  a  survival  of  the  most 
primitive  musical  performance,  in  which  singing,  dancing,  and 
acting  were  one  thing.  What  else  but  a  symptom  of  such  un- 
conscious understanding  and  its  clash  with  a  rational  and  con- 
ventional concept  is  the  meaning  of  that  momentary  feeling  of 
uncanniness?  In  that  second,  an  old  belief,  a  discarded  concept 
was  resuscitated,  to  yield  immediately  to  an  adult  and  "reason- 
able" view  that  rejected  it  as  incongruous.  For  a  second  a  recogni- 
tion, swift  as  lightning,  had  penetrated  the  dull  surface  of  con- 
ventional thinking.  Instead  of  consciously  grasping  that  hidden 
meaning,  I  took  the  part  of  intellectual  and  sober  judgment 
which  is  superior  only  when  it  is  put  into  the  service  of  such 
intuitive  insights.  I  made  fun  of  such  "fantastic"  vision  and 
pushed  it  contemptuously  out  of  my  thoughts.  Many  flashes  of 
unconscious  insight  are  lost  in  this  manner  to  scientific  research, 
destroyed  by  worship  of  common  sense  which,  applied  prema- 
turely and  inappropriately,  is  very  insensible.  The  concept  that 
conducting  is  the  last  remnant  of  dancing,  once  inextricably 
united  with  music-making,  the  revival  of  rhythmic  performance, 
restricted  to  gestures,  to  finger  dance,  was  submerged  after  it  had 
occurred  in  that  moment  which  was  experienced  as  confusing 
and  uncanny. 

Following  the  train  of  my  associations  later  on  amounts  to  an 


522  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

attempt  at  recovering  the  lost  insight.  It  was  certainly  not  a 
methodical  and  well-considered  psychological  experiment,  but 
an  almost  automatic  way  of  proceeding,  by  now  so  familiar  that 
it  scarcely  deserved  the  name  of  scientific  exploration.  It  was  close 
to  a  habit  of  thinking  in  this  particular  manner,  my  usual  ap- 
proach of  exploration  whenever  I  do  not  understand  my  own 
mental  processes.  This  direction  of  thinking  can  be  called  psy- 
chology with  as  much  or  as  little  justification  as  adding  your 
grocer's  bill  can  be  called  mathematics. 

A  review  of  my  train  of  thoughts  reveals  that  the  vanished 
insight  was  trying  to  re-emerge  in  personal  reminiscences,  to 
regain  entrance  into  conscious  thought  by  side  doors.  Those  asso- 
ciations are  signals  which  have  to  be  deciphered,  and  their 
significance  can  be  recognized  only  in  their  sequence  and  conse- 
quence. They  illuminate  the  mental  process  in  the  same  way  as  a 
blinker  lights  a  dark  street.  It  seemed  that  I  was  swimming  in  that 
stream  of  consciousness  from  the  present  to  the  prehistoric  past, 
from  the  modern  form  of  musical  performance  to  that  of  for- 
gotten ages.  The  train  of  association  departed  from  the  memory 
of  Mahler  whom  I  had  seen  conducting  in  the  Vienna  Opera 
when  I  was  a  boy.  It  flitted  from  there  to  the  Burgmusik,  to  the 
jazz  players,  to  the  dancing  and  singing  Ashantis,  and  to  a  drum 
majorette  in  a  Broadway  parade.  The  highly  artistic  gestures  of 
one  of  the  greatest  of  conductors  are  here  not  contrasted,  but  put 
side  by  side  with  those  of  the  Kapellmeister  of  the  Burgmusik  and 
of  the  leader  of  a  jazz  band  as  if  they  were  the  same.  In  the 
swinging  of  the  bodies  of  the  jazz  players  and  of  their  leader  who 
trembles,  wobbles,  quivers  whenever  he  conducts  the  original 
dance  and  mimicking  of  primitive  music  is  still  preserved.  In  the 
body  movements  of  the  majorette,  who  struts  and  tap-dances  and 
twirls  her  baton,  the  primitive  musician  is  resurrected.  Here  is  an 
echo  from  the  jungle  of  prehistoric  performance.  From  here  to 
the  violent  dance  and  music-making  of  the  Ashantis  is  only  one 
step. 

In  those  associations  visual  perceptions  appeared  instead  of 
formulated  concepts.  The  occasions  at  which,  in  the  following 
weeks,  the  memory  of  that  evening  occurred  prove  that  the  un- 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  523 

conscious  work  of  probing  and  searching  continued.  In  the  as- 
sociations the  basic  idea  announced  itself,  but  remained  invisible. 
The  subterranean  insight  into  the  character  of  primitive  music 
tried  to  break  through  to  the  conscious  level  in  that  bizarre 
visual  image  of  the  Viennese  Philharmonic  players  swaying  with 
the  Blue  Danube  waltz,  nodding  their  heads  and  tapping  their 
feet  on  the  ground.  The  remarks  of  Mitropoulos  in  the  radio  in- 
terview must  have  brought  the  idea  of  an  original  identity  of 
conductor  and  actor  closer  to  the  threshold  of  conscious  thoughts. 
The  records  of  the  African  initiation  rites  led  directly  back  to  the 
concept  of  music-making  of  the  primitive  tribes,  reminded  me  of 
mimetic  dancing,  imitating  the  birds  (la  poule,  the  circumcision 
bird),  and  reconnected  the  actual  hearing  with  the  memory  of 
the  Ashanti  performance.  The  impression  at  seeing  Charlie 
Chaplin's  mimickings  and  the  gestures  of  the  conductor  leading 
an  unseen  orchestra  was  that  the  actor,  the  dancer,  and  the  musi- 
cian appeared  almost  as  one  person.  Those  impressions  are  com- 
parable to  the  thrusts  of  an  unborn  baby,  are  phases  in  the  de- 
livery of  an  idea.  The  attempt  at  applying  the  mechanisms  of 
isolating  and  exaggerating  helped  to  see  the  figure  of  the  con- 
ductor in  a  sharper,  almost  caricatured  manner  and  paved  the 
way  to  the  understanding  of  his  function.  The  still  vague  percep- 
tions, half  formulated,  then  became  fully  clear  in  studying  the 
historical  material  which  preserves  traces  of  the  prehistoric  music 
performance. 

Reviewing  the  process  by  which  the  result  was  reached  makes 
us  wonder  what  kind  of  research  technique  is  here  applied.  It 
seems  that  here  is  an  innovation  in  the  discovery  process,  since 
analysis  is  used  only  as  a  pervasive  and  general  view  of  human 
emotional  life  and  as  a  premise  of  thinking  in  a  certain  way. 
Neither  the  results  nor  the  mechanism  of  analytic  theory  and 
practice  were  quoted.  Yet  it  is  due  to  the  way  of  thinking  which  is 
characteristic  of  analysis  that  an  insight  was  gained  which  none  of 
the  other  sciences  dealing  with  the  same  problem  could  obtain. 
The  process  itself  will  perhaps  be  called  a  psychological  tour  de 
force,  but  the  decisive  factor  is  whether  such  bold  and  daring 
enterprises  reach  their  aim  or  not. 


THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

We  cannot  say  if  and  to  what  degree  the  reconstruction  of  pre- 
historic music  and  of  conducting  within  it  comes  close  to  reality. 
It  does  credit  to  its  value  or  validity  that  the  hypothesis  here 
presented  is  in  accordance  with  our  knowledge  of  music  in  its 
earliest  stages  and  with  the  information  reaching  back  to  the 
paleolithic  culture  in  which  human  civilization  started.  More 
important  than  this  result  appears  to  me  the  new  method  by 
which  it  was  reached.  The  still  unknown  and  unacknowledged 
approach  to  analytic  discovery  in  the  area  of  prehistory  is  repre- 
sented by  this  example  in  which  the  insight  was  unconsciously 
anticipated,  and  in  which  the  problem  was  only  to  find  a  way 
leading  to  its  conscious  recognition.  In  other  words,  the  inquirer 
had  to  explore  what  he  had  unconsciously  thought.  The  study  of 
the  historical  material  is,  in  these  cases,  of  course,  taken  for 
granted  and  has  to  be  used  to  confirm  or  to  invalidate,  to  modify 
or  qualify  the  unconsciously  anticipated  insight. 

In  the  beginning  we  had  nothing  but  a  trifling  experience  with 
its  repercussions.  We  started  on  a  mental  shoestring,  or  on  a  thin 
string  of  associations,  and  arrived  at  a  discovery  which,  however 
small,  was  not  reached  by  the  other  sciences.  The  concept  of  pre- 
historic music  and  of  the  origin  of  conducting  is  perhaps  not  im- 
portant, is  only  comparable  to  an  instrument  or  ancient  piece  of 
pottery  dug  up  in  excavation.  More  important  is  the  new  tech- 
nique of  finding,  since  many  rich  treasures  deep  down  in  the 
earth  await  discovery.  Future  research  workers  in  the  field  of 
archeological  psychoanalysis,  better  equipped  and  more  for- 
tunate, will  continue  where  we,  their  forerunners,  left  off.  A  past 
beyond  all  memory  will  become  alive  through  their  work. 

It  is  good  to  feel  the  spade  in  one's  hand  and  to  break  new 
ground.  There  is  no  reason  to  feel  self-complacent  when  we  con- 
sider how  miserably  we  failed  in  the  initial  phase  of  our  explora- 
tion. What  a  piece  of  work  is  man!  How  noble  in  reason,  how 
infinite  in  faculty!  Yet  he  is  not  even  able  to  think  all  he  knows, 
or  to  know  all  he  thinks. 


ADVENTURES  IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          525 
III 


THE  FOLLOWING  PAGES  seek  to  delineate  a  representative  ex- 
ample of  the  process  of  psychoanalytic  discovery  together 
with  its  special  result,  the  sources  and  the  course  of  analytic 
findings.  The  findings  present,  in  this  case,  the  train  of  thoughts 
that  led  the  analyst  to  the  threshold  of  exploration.  These 
thoughts  are  here  reproduced,  from  the  moment  when  his  interest 
was  awakened  by  a  chance  impression  on  Broadway  to  the  point 
when  the  first  vague  notion  occurred  to  him  of  the  unconscious 
significance  of  a  certain  religious  custom,  and  then  to  the  stage 
where  this  concept  became  verifiable.  In  following  the  course 
of  associations  from  the  point  of  departure  to  that  of  arrival,  I 
shall  present  a  picture  of  analytic  finding  as  it  unfolds  from  per- 
sonal impressions  and  fleeting  images  to  the  pursuit  of  objective 
truth. 

Walking  on  Broadway  one  summer  afternoon,  I  felt  tired  and 
depressed.  The  faces  of  the  people  I  passed  were  tense,  haggard, 
and  harassed.  Most  of  them  appeared  homely  to  me,  men  as  well 
as  women  and  children.  The  heat  was  oppressive.  An  old,  bald 
man,  badly  shaved,  with  small  and  sad  eyes,  glared  back  at  me  in 
the  mirror  of  a  barbershop.  On  the  next  corner  an  old  Jew,  bent 
on  a  cane,  walked  slowly  and  heavily  toward  me.  He  was  a  small 
man  with  a  long  gray  beard  and  glasses  set  slantingly  on  a  long 
nose.  He  wore  the  caftan  and  black  skullcap  of  East  European 
Jews.  Long  gray  sidelocks  reached  beyond  the  tips  of  his  ears.  He 
looked  at  me  with  a  glance,  timid  and  yet  challenging  at  the 
same  time,  like  a  wild  animal  recently  caught  looking  at  its 
tamer.  As  if  pushed  by  a  sudden  decision,  he  turned  to  me  and 
asked  me  where  West  End  Avenue  was.  He  spoke  Yiddish.  His 
voice  was  as  unattractive  as  his  appearance.  While  I  showed  him 
that  he  had  only  a  block  to  turn  I  looked  at  him  and  was  in- 
trigued by  his  long  sidelocks  standing  out  on  both  sides  of  his 
forehead. 


526  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

Walking  along  I  caught  myself  having  an  odd  thought.  The 
idea  that  crossed  my  mind  like  a  bolt  from  the  dark  was:  God 
cannot  be  beautiful.  It  was  a  sober  statement  and  seemed  to 
emerge  from  nowhere,  spoken  by  an  unknown  self.  In  that  mo- 
ment nothing  was  farther  from  my  mind  than  theological  specu- 
lations. I  understood  only  later  that  the  irrelevant  idea  must  have 
sprung  from  the  impressions  of  the  last  minutes.  I  could  easily 
trace  it  back  to  the  impression  people  had  made  upon  me,  of 
looking  at  them,  at  myself,  and  at  the  old  Jew.  I  corrected  my- 
self—at the  other  old  Jew.  The  blasphemous  sentence  was,  of 
course,  a  conclusion  drawn  from  the  premise:  If  we  are  created  in 
His  image,  God  cannot  be  beautiful.  There  is  more  than  a  super- 
ficial family  resemblance  between  the  creator  and  the  creature. 
The  book  speaks  of  a  distinct  similarity.  Do  not  people  say  of  a 
child,  "The  very  image  of  his  father"? 

From  there  I  was  gliding  into  musing  about  whether  the 
quality  of  beauty  is  imminent  to  the  concept  of  God  in  the  mono- 
theistic religions.  I  could  not  remember  any  biblical  passage  in 
which  the  Almighty  is  called  beautiful.  (The  image  of  the  Lord 
in  Michelangelo's  "Creation  of  Adam"  flitted  through  my  mind.) 
I  doubt  if  the  quality  of  beauty  is  to  be  found  among  the  ninety- 
nine  attributes  the  Mohammedans  ascribe  to  Allah.  I  must  look 
that  up. 

In  that  rambling  manner  of  thinking  I  drifted  from  the  idea 
that  God  cannot  be  beautiful  to  wondering  whether  an  atheist 
can  think  blasphemous  thoughts.  At  first  that  sounded  funny- 
odd  and  ha-ha— but  it  made  sense:  you  cannot  abuse  or  revile  a 
non-existent  Deity.  You  cannot  inflict  indignity  on  a  mere  crea- 
ture of  your  fancy  or  maliciously  attack  a  non-entity.  It  would 
be  as  silly  as  hitting  the  air.  Only  persons  who  in  some  way  be- 
lieve in  God,  if  only  as  a  potentiality,  can  be  blasphemous  in 
word  or  thought. 

I  tested  the  argument  on  examples  that  occurred  to  me  from 
literature.  Lucifer's  fierce  defiance  and  his  proud  "Non  serviam" 
is  a  defiance  of  the  Lord  rather  than  blasphemy.  And  so  is 
Mephisto's  accusation.  The  thought  of  the  Prelude  in  Heaven,  and 
of  the  fact  that  Goethe  took  its  pattern  from  the  book  of  Job,  led 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          527 

me  to  the  figure  of  this  biblical  patriarch.  To  my  surprise  a 
jingle  formed  itself  in  my  thought: 

The  sufferer  Job  made  a  fuss 
And  did  not  cease  to  cuss. 
"I  tell  you  to  shut  up," 
Said  God,  "I  know  the  rub 
Which  I  choose  not  to  discuss/' 

Job  denied  neither  the  existence  nor  the  power  of  the  Lord 
who  severely  rebuked  him.  Crossing  the  bridge  from  ancient 
Hebrew  to  modern  literature,  that  famous  or  infamous  sentence 
of  Renan's  occurred:  "To  God  all  is  possible  even  that  He  exists." 
In  Huysmans'  novel  La-Bas,  a  Catholic  priest  is  introduced  who 
has  cut  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  from  his  prayer  book  and  has 
put  it  into  his  shoes  so  that  he  treads  on  it  with  every  step*  That 
priest  who  inflicts  such  unheard-of  disgrace  on  the  holy  name  can- 
not be  called  an  atheist.  Did  not  Huysmans  himself  land  in  a 
Trappist  monastery  after  that  period  of  morbid  mysticism  and 
satanism?  Anatole  France,  who  used  to  be  one  of  his  friends, 
was,  it  is  true,  convinced  that  the  writer's  conversion  was  due  to 
a  physical  complaint  and  advised  him  to  let  his  urine  be  ex- 
amined. .  .  .  Anatole  France  was  himself  a  master  of  subtle 
blasphemy.  Is  the  scene  I  now  remember  not  from  one  of  his 
novels?  During  the  French  Revolution  a  young  aristocratic  lady 
is  taken  to  the  guillotine.  She  turns  to  her  lover  and  says,  "Good- 
bye, sweetheart,  in  a  few  minutes  I'll  meet  God.  I  am  curious  as 
to  whether  He  is  worth  knowing/' 

Coarse  or  subtle,  malicious  or  playful,  flippant  or  taken  seri- 
ously, blasphemy  implies  a  latent  belief.  It  is,  I  argued  with  my- 
self, possible  that  someone  may  tentatively  or  vicariously  assume 
the  attitude  of  a  believer  in  order  to  degrade  or  mock  the  rever- 
ence of  religion.  But  such  a  temporary  attitude,  psychologically 
akin  to  irony,  presupposes  at  least  the  mental  potentiality  of 
religious  belief.  Was  it  not  in  this  vein  that  Freud  once  said  to 
me,  "The  ways  of  the  Lord  are  dark,  but  they  are  rarely 
pleasant"? 

I  wondered  why  some  sophisticated  theologian  did  not  arrive 
at  the  idea  that  the  very  concept  of  blasphemy  could  be  added  to 


528  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

the  proofs  of  God's  existence.  It  could  have  its  place  beside  the 
cosmological,  theological,  and  ontological  arguments.  .  .  .  There 
is  perhaps  something  of  this  kind  in  the  writings  of  medieval 
scholastics.  Maybe  there  is  more  latent  blasphemy  to  be  found  in 
the  casuistic  and  scholastic  literature  than  in  the  books  of 
atheists.  Someone  better  read  in  the  field  of  theology  and  history 
of  civilization  than  I  would  have  no  trouble  in  proving  that 
there  were  many  blasphemers  among  the  great  believers  and 
many  great  believers  among  the  blasphemers. 

But  how  did  I  get  into  reflections  of  this  kind?  By  what  erratic 
thought-process  did  I  arrive  at  such  speculations  which  are  other- 
wise alien  to  my  way  of  thinking?  Could  it  be  true,  as  a  friend 
half  seriously  asserted  the  other  day,  that  the  hound  of  heaven  is 
after  me?  Considering  my  age,  he  has  to  race  mightily  to  reach 
me. 

When  you  come  right  down  to  it,  it  is  strange  that  I  am  sud- 
denly interested  in  the  psychology  of  blasphemy.  .  .  .  It's  funny 
on  the  face  of  it.  ...  That  is  it,  of  course.  ...  It  started  with 
the  face  of  that  old  Jew  seen  on  Broadway.  .  .  .  There  was  noth- 
ing funny  about  his  face  except  the  long  sidelocks.  .  .  .  From 
them  my  thoughts  drifted  to  God,  to  the  God  of  his  and  my 
people.  .  .  .  Those  ringlets  standing  forth  under  the  skullcap~I 
remembered  their  Hebrew  name:  payoth  or  payesl— gave  to  his 
appearance  not  only  a  foreign  and  exotic  character,  but  also 
something  bizarre  and  unreal  .  .  .  They  are  strange,  yet  they 
are  familiar  at  the  same  time.  .  .  .  Familiar  ...  of  the  family. 
...  I  recognized  immediately  of  whom  the  old  Jew  had  re- 
minded me,  of  my  own  grandfather  who  still  wore  sidelocks.  .  .  . 
When  I  first  saw  him,  I  was  a  little  boy  and  very  intrigued  by 
the  funny  curls  over  his  ears.  I  could  scarcely  turn  my  eyes  away 
from  them.  The  interest  with  which  I  looked  at  the  payoth  of  the 
old  man  was  a  revival  and  renewal  of  my  curiosity  felt  as  a  child. 
Strangely  enough,  the  memory  of  my  grandfather,  of  whom  I 
had  not  thought  for  many  years,  turned  up  again  on  the  next 
evening  when  I  jotted  down  a  dream  interpretation  made  a  few 
hours  before.  A  young  psychiatrist,  in  training  analysis  with  me, 
reported  the  following  dream-fragment:  He  saw  me  eating 
spaghetti.  There  were  no  thought-associations  concerning  the  con- 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          529 

tent  of  the  dream  and  helpful  in  its  interpretation.  .  .  .  Only 
two  day  remnants,  impressions  from  the  day  before  the  dream, 
occurred  to  the  physician.  He  and  his  wife  had  been  to  dinner 
with  a  colleague  who  is  like  himself  resident  at  a  state  institu- 
tion. At  the  meal  no  spaghetti  had  been  served,  but  a  Jewish  dish 
which  the  dreamer,  who  is  Gentile,  had  relished.  The  other  day 
residue  was  that  during  dinner  my  name  had  been  mentioned* 

When  I  asked  the  psychiatrist  to  divide  the  word  spaghetti,  he 
said  "spa"  and  "ghetti."  He  remembered  that  yesterday  evening 
his  colleague  had  spoken  of  a  trip  to  Europe  made  last  summer 
during  which  he  had  visited  various  health  resorts.  Spa  is,  of 
course,  the  well-known  Belgian  resort,  but  the  name  is  used  for 
mineral  springs  in  general.  "Ghetti"  is  the  plural  of  "ghetto/* 
The  interpretation  of  the  dream  was  not  difficult  any  more.  The 
combination  of  "spa"  and  "ghetti"  points  to  a  mocking  or  ridi- 
culing allusion  to  Jews  who  come  from  ghetti  and  visit  fashion- 
able mineral  springs.  A  sarcastic  thought  of  this  kind  must  have 
occurred  to  the  psychiatrist  during  dinner  at  which  the  Jewish 
dish  was  served  and  discussed  as  well  as  his  Jewish  colleague's 
visit  to  a  health  resort.  The  implied  thought,  transferred  to  the 
analyst,  reveals  an  unconscious  sneering  impulse.  The  dreamer, 
who  had  several  times  before  stated  that  he  was  free  from  racial 
and  religious  prejudices,  expresses  in  his  dream  an  idea  which, 
translated  into  the  language  of  conscious  thinking,  would  be  as 
follows:  Reik  is  also  one  of  those  ghetto  Jews  who  visit  French 
resorts.  The  connection  with  eating  is  determined  by  the  dish, 
which  in  the  dream  represents  belonging  to  a  national  group. 
The  element  of  spaghetti  is  overdetermined  by  the  fact  that  the 
dreamer  lived  as  a  little  boy  near  an  Italian  quarter  and  that  his 
father  often  spoke  of  Italians  and  Jews  with  the  same  contempt. 

When  I  jotted  the  dream  down,  it  occurred  to  me  that  I  had 
once  really  lived  in  a  ghetto  during  two  summer  months.  When 
my  sister  and  I  were  children,  Mother  took  us  for  a  vacation  to  a 
little  town  on  the  Austrio-Hungarian  border  (Nagy-Marton, 
now  Mattersdorf)  where  her  father  lived.  There  was  still  a  kind 
of  ghetto,  a  quarter  in  which  the  Jews  lived  separated  from  the 
other  people.  (I  was  told  later  on  that  one  of  them  went  to 
Vienna  for  a  year  to  study  the  Gentiles  and  then  wrote  a  book 


THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

entitled  The  Goyim,  Their  Customs  and  Habits,  as  if  he  had  re- 
turned from  an  expedition  to  study  a  foreign  people.)  I  still  re- 
member the  narrow  and  noisy  streets  of  the  ghetto  and  its  syna- 
gogue to  which  my  grandfather  took  the  little  boy  very  much 
against  his  will.  He  was  a  very  religious,  strange-looking  man 
whose  long  sidelocks  ran  into  his  white  beard.  I  was  afraid  of 
him.  Do  I  only  imagine  that  the  old  Jew  I  saw  yesterday  looked 
like  him? 

At  this  point  another,  much  more  recent  memory  concerning 
sidelocks  occurred  to  me.  In  1913  I  moved  from  Vienna  to  Berlin 
to  finish  my  analytic  training.  Soon  after  my  arrival  a  kind  col- 
league took  me  sightseeing  in  the  German  metropolis.  We 
walked  on  the  Kurfurstendamm,  the  broad  avenue  on  which 
elegant  Berlin  promenaded  in  the  evenings.  The  colleague  told 
me  that  a  certain  part  of  the  avenue  was  spoken  of  as  "vom 
Kaufhaus  des  Western  zum  Taufhaus  des  Western"— an  untrans- 
latable pun  describing  the  section  as  being  from  the  department 
store  of  the  West  to  the  church  of  the  West  (Gedachtniskirche) 
in  which  many  wealthy  Jews  were  baptized.  He  also  turned  my 
attention  to  a  new  hair-do  which  had  just  become  fashionable. 
The  sophisticated  ladies  of  West  Berlin  then  wore  single  locks 
of  hair  reaching  over  their  ears.  "Look/*  said  the  psychiatrist, 
"at  the  little  curl  on  both  sides  of  the  forehead.  ...  It  is  the 
return  of  the  repressed."  In  wittily  using  the  psychoanalytic  term, 
he  characterized  the  new  hair  fashion  as  a  manifestation  of  the 
prevailing  style's  Jewish  descent.  The  long  sidecurls  their  fathers 
had  worn  before  they  were  baptized  had  come  back  in  the  hair-do 
of  the  Germanized  daughters. 

The  subject  of  baptism  of  Jews  or  the  more  general  one  of 
Israelites  and  other  anti-Semites  was  picked  up  again  in  my 
thought-associations  later.  The  heat  of  the  day  had  continued 
into  the  night  and  I  could  not  fall  asleep.  While  lying  awake  in 
bed  I  thought  of  the  family  S.,  acquaintances  of  mine.  Mr.  S. 
is  Jewish,  his  wife  Irish-Catholic.  He  has  broken  off  all  ties  with 
his  family,  is  proud  of  his  purely  Anglo-Saxon  friendships  and  of 
his  exclusive  club  whose  members  favor  the  sport  of  fox-hunt- 
ing. (Heinrich  Heine  once  wrote  that  his  ancestors  belonged  to 
the  hunted  rather  than  to  the  hunters.)  Mr.  S.  would,  I  am 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  531 

sure,  say  that  he  has  no  prejudices  and  that  some  of  his  best 
friends  are  Jewish.  His  children  have  been  christened  and  he 
wishes  them  to  practice  their  Catholic  religion.  For  some  reason 
his  youngest  child  was  not  christened  until  after  his  second  year. 
During  the  Sacrament  in  the  church  the  frightened  little  boy 
cried  bloody  murder  when  the  priest  sprinkled  him  with  water 
and  put  some  salt  on  his  tongue.  The  child  had  been  accustomed 
to  eating  almost  everything,  but  after  the  ceremony  he  developed 
an  intense  reluctance  to  eating  solid  food.  I  ventured  the  guess 
that  Christianity  did  not  agree  with  him. 

Following  this  train  of  thought,  I  remembered  the  last  time 
I  had  been  inside  a  church.  That  was  long  ago,  in  Austria  during 
summer  vacation.  There  were  pictures  on  the  many  colored 
windows  of  the  village  church.  One  of  them  showed  Jesus  Christ 
surrounded  by  lambs  ...  the  Good  Shepherd.  .  .  .  Surprisingly 
the  question  arose  whether  or  not  Jesus  Christ  had  worn  such 
sidecurls.  .  .  .  There  was  the  doubt  if  those  payoth  were  not 
rather  introduced  into  Judaism  by  medieval  rabbis.  .  .  .  Why, 
I  mused,  that  hair  style  had  perhaps  already  been  started  after 
the  return  of  the  Jews  from  Babylon  and  was  perhaps  in  vogue 
at  the  time  of  the  Saviour.  .  .  .  Did  He  not  wear  a  prayer 
shawl,  the  tallith,  and  the  fringes,  the  zizith  on  it,  as  other 
religious  Jews  according  to  the  Gospel?  ...  He  wore  perhaps 
sidelocks. 

In  this  looser  way  of  thinking,  favored  by  sleepiness,  the  picture 
of  the  Good  Shepherd  brought  up  the  association  of  the  Lamb 
of  God  ...  the  lamb  that  carries  the  sins  of  the  world  and  is 
slaughtered  as  atonement.  .  .  .  There  is  perhaps  more  than  a 
simile  in  it,  the  lamb  was  perhaps  once  a  tribal  totemistic 
animal.  .  .  .  "Mary  had  a  little  lamb"  ...  I  wonder  whether 
He  was  not  originally  meant  in  that  nursery  rhyme.  .  .  . 

Still  desperately  trying  to  fall  asleep,  I,  half  amused,  applied 
the  old  device  of  visualizing  many  lambs  jumping  over  the  fence. 
And  then,  already  on  the  threshold  of  sleep,  I  had  an  odd  ex- 
perience. I  was  catching  a  hypnagogic  picture,  one  of  those 
puzzling  visual  images  that  sometimes  mark  the  transition  from 
the  waking  to  the  sleeping  state. 

A  moment  before  I  had  imagined  many  lambs  jumping  over 


532  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

the  fence,  then  there  was  for  a  split  second  a  blank  or  void  in 
my  thoughts,  a  chaotic  mental  sensation,  un  moment  d' absence. 
I  then  saw  distinctly  "in  my  mind's  eye"  a  big,  powerful  ram 
jumping  over  the  fence,  followed  by  a  meek,  little  lamb,  hesi- 
tantly doing  the  same. 

For  a  moment  I  was  flabbergasted  and  greatly  puzzled  by  the 
surprising  image.  In  the  next  second  I  experienced  with  full 
clarity  the  hunch  which  had  been  playing  vaguely  around  the 
edges  of  my"  mind  since  yesterday  when  I  had  run  into  that  old 
Jew  on  Broadway.  The  thought  had  come  into  the  open  in  the 
shape  of  the  hypnagogic  image.  I  suddenly  recognized  the  secret 
meaning  of  the  sidecurls.  I  knew  then  that  I  would  study  the 
problem  and  not  rest  until  I  arrived  at  its  core.  Much  reading 
and  research  work  had  to  be  done.  The  visual  image  had  antici- 
pated the  solution  of  the  problem,  but  what  had  to  follow  was 
the  plowing  of  the  long,  hard  furrow. 


The  name  payoth  is  the  plural  form  of  pay  a  which  word  means 
segment,  border,  or  corner.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  custom  of 
sidelocks  in  its  present  form  is  not  very  old.  It  cannot  be  traced 
back  to  the  pre-exile  era  and  it  is  not  prescribed  as  a  religious  law. 
The  custom  developed  as  a  result  of  the  biblical  law  not  to  cut 
the  hair  around  the  head  and  emerged  as  a  token  of  obedience 
shown  by  the  Hebrews  to  this  law  of  Jahweh.  The  main  biblical 
passage  in  which  this  law  is  promulgated  is  Lev.  19:27.  In  this 
chapter  the  Lord  repeats  sundry  laws  concerning  many  things  and 
speaks  to  the  children  of  Israel:  "Ye  shall  not  round  the  corner 
of  your  heads,  neither  shalt  thou  mar  the  corners  of  thy  beard 
...  Ye  shall  not  make  any  cuttings  in  your  flesh  for  the  dead 
nor  print  any  marks  upon  you.  I  am  the  Lord."  The  Levitical 
law  in  its  final  form  was  promulgated  in  the  year  444  B.C.,  and 
even  when  we  assume  that  its  draft  brought  laws  and  regulations, 
valid  for  centuries,  into  final  form,  we  have  to  suppose  that  the 
prohibition  concerning  cutting  hair  is  not  old.  The  Lord  speaks, 
in  the  words  of  Jen  9:26:  "Behold  the  days  come  .  .  .  that  I 


ADVENTURES    IN    PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  533 

will  punish  all  of  them  which  are  circumcised  with  the  uncircum- 
cised,  Egypt,  and  Judah  and  Edom  and  the  children  of  Amon 
and  Moab,  all  that  have  the  corners  of  their  hair  cut  off/'  He 
predicts  His  judgment  of  the  enemies:  "And  their  camels  shall  be 
a  booty  and  the  multitude  of  their  cattle  a  spoil  and  I  will  scatter 
into  all  winds  those  that  cut  off  the  corners  of  their  hair"  (Jer. 

25:23;  49:3;0- 

In  obedience  to  this  prohibition,  the  rabbis  ordered  the  Jews 
to  leave  part  of  their  hair  over  the  temples  and  before  the  ears 
uncut.  Ritual  law  has  never  given  a  final  word  as  to  a  definite 
amount  or  length  of  hair.  Length  and  form  depended  upon  the 
customs  of  the  Jews  in  individual  countries,  and  differed  at 
various  times.  Maimonides,  the  great  scholar  and  religious  phi- 
losopher (1135-1204),  states  that  there  is  a  norm  for  the  side- 
locks.  Other  early  rabbis  decided  that  four  hairs  in  the  proper 
place  are  sufficient  to  prove  that  their  bearer  is  devoted  to  the 
law.  The  Shulchan  Aruch,  the  codes  which  became  the  standard 
guide  for  the  orthodox  Jews,  considers  the  proper  length  of  the 
sidelocks  to  be  from  the  temples  to  the  point  where  the  lower 
jaw  begins.  During  the  Middle  Ages  the  Jews  seem  to  have  worn 
sidelocks  of  moderate  length.  The  Sephardim,  the  descendants  of 
Spanish  and  Portuguese  communities,  wear  almost  imperceptible 
sidelocks,  while  the  Eastern  Jews  preferred  them  through  many 
centuries  in  considerable  length  and  conspicuous  shapes. 

Czar  Nicolas  I  of  Russia  decreed  in  1845  that  his  Jewish  sub- 
jects should  not  wear  either  the  Polish-Jewish  costume  or  side- 
locks.  The  Russian  officers  tried  to  enforce  this  ukase,  but  in 
vain.  Many  Jews  used  to  shove  the  curls  behind  their  ears  to 
make  them  inconspicuous.  The  Jews  of  Eastern  Europe  and  of 
the  Orient  still  wear  those  ringlets  extensively.  The  sidelocks 
are  called  simanim  by  the  Jews  of  Yemen  who  let  them  grow 
long.  The  word  means  sign,  because  the  sidelocks  are  considered 
to  be  a  visible  symbol  of  Judaism. 

While  the  rabbinical  literature  offers  very  scanty  information 
about  the  sidelocks,  the  Cabala,  that  mystical  system  of  religious 
philosophy,  frequently  ascribes  great  importance  to  them.  Accord- 
ing to  the  Cabala,  nothing  exists  but  God  and  all  things  are 
emanations  of  the  one  Divine  Being.  Creation  is  a  process  of 


THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

ten  divine  enumerations  known  as  seftroth  (literally,  "enumera- 
tions"). The  Hebrew  word  for  sidelock,  paya,  has  the  same 
numerical  value  as  Elohim,  the  name  of  the  Lord— namely,  86- 
which  has,  according  to  the  developed  Cabala,  a  great  symbolic 
significance.*  The  sidelocks  have,  as  have  all  parts  of  the  human 
body,  their  specific  symbolism:  together  with  the  beard  they 
form  an  additional  means  of  transmutation  of  God's  attributes 
that  stream  from  the  ten  sefiroth  of  the  Divine  Being  into  the 
so-called  Lesser  Face.  Together  with  the  beard,  they  are  part  of 
the  reflection  of  God's  appearance  in  the  face  of  man.  As  a  result 
of  the  Cabala,  the  Hasidim  in  Galicia,  Hungary,  Carpatho- 
Russia,  and  Palestine  wear  long  sidelocks,  often  reaching  down 
below  the  face  and  shining  through  the  application  of  fat.  Many 
Hasidim  never  cut  their  sidelocks  out  of  regard  for  their  sanctity 
and  they  even  braid  them. 

Those  are  the  essential  facts  about  the  sidelocks;  not  more 
than  a  handful.  Their  survey,  far  from  satisfying  our  curiosity, 
rather  whets  it.  The  meager  information  available  seems  to  raise 
several  pertinent  questions:  how  did  that  prohibition  of  the  Lord 
lead  to  the  custom  of  sidelocks?  And  what  is  their  importance 
and  significance?  Above  all,  why  should  the  Lord  be  so  much 
concerned  about  the  hair-do  of  His  chosen  people?  We  would 
think  that  their  miserable  political  and  economic  situation  would 
give  Him  cause  for  other  and  more  urgent  worries— not  to  men- 
tion their  religious  attitudes  at  the  time.  Had  they  not  almost 
given  up  their  monotheism  and  did  they  not  pray  to  many  other 
gods?  In  vain  had  the  prophets  tried  to  imitate  their  compatriots 
and  announce  the  coming  doom  of  the  nation  that  had  forsaken 
their  God  and  His  law.  The  times  were  ripe  and  rotten.  And 
He  should  worry,  He  should  care  about  the  hair-do  of  this 
nation? 

A  more  penetrating  examination  of  the  origin  of  the  custom 
shows,  however,  that  it  is  not  the  hair-do  itself,  but  its  sympto- 
matic significance  or  religious  meaning,  which  turns  Jahweh's  at- 
tention to  this  detail.  However  the  authorities  differ  on  various 

*  The  Universal  Jewish  Encyclopedia,  IX,  527.  (Compare  also  Jiidisches 
Lexikon  [Berlin,  1930],  Vol.  IV,  article  Peot.) 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  535 

points,  they  all  agree  that  the  distaste  of  the  Lord  for  the  round- 
wise  shaving  of  the  hair  had  definite  religious  reasons.  The  main 
purpose  of  that  prohibition  in  Leviticus  was  obviously  to  reject 
the  idolatrous  custom  of  the  people  who  were  neighbors  of  the 
Jews,  a  custom  which  many  Jews  had  adopted. 

The  following  paragraphs  will  review  the  main  theories  repre- 
sentative scholars  have  offered  to  explain  the  dislike  the  Lord 
shows  for  cropped  hair.  All  of  them  quote  the  pertinent  passages 
of  the  Scripture  and  discuss  them.  Immanuel  Benzinger  points 
out*  that  the  peasant  in  the  Near  East,  to  this  day,  usually  shaves 
his  head  and  leaves  only  a  tuft  of  hair  on  top.  With  ancient 
Egyptians  the  priests  and  perhaps  also  the  higher  priests  shaved 
their  heads.  The  statues  from  Telleh  show  that  the  Babylonians 
also  wore  closely  shorn  hair.  It  seems  this  was  also  the  fashion 
among  the  Israelites  in  ancient  times,  and  was  observed  as  a 
token  of  mourning.  Since  the  custom  had  a  ritualistic  significance 
as  well,  it  was  forbidden  by  the  reformers.  The  Jewish  commen- 
taries** also  state  that  the  Law  considers  the  shaving  of  the  head 
in  a  circle  so  that  only  a  strand  remained  in  the  center  heathen- 
ish^ Some  scholars  point  out  that  the  hair  of  young  people  of 
the  surrounding  heathen  nations  was  often  shaved  and  .con- 
secrated at  idolatrous  shrines.  Frequently  this  custom  marked 
the  initiatory  rite  into  the  service  of  a  divinity  (for  Egypt, 
compare  Herod.  I.  65).  It  was  therefore  an  abomination  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Jews.  One  may  compare  the  shaving  of  the  hair 
of  the  Nazarite  to  these  heathenish  practices.  The  man  who  made 
a  vow  to  God  was  responsible  to  Him  with  his  whole  body  and 
being,  and  the  conclusion  of  the  Nazarite  vow  was  marked  by 
sacrifice  and  shaving  of  the  head  at  the  door  of  the  sanctuary 
(Num.  6:11),  indicating  a  new  beginning  of  life.  The  long, 
untouched  hair  was  therefore  considered  as  the  emblem  of  de- 
votion to  God.  In  New  Testament  times  especially,  the  Jews 
frequently  adopted  the  fashion  of  the  Romans  in  cropping  their 
hair  closely  (I  Cor.  11:4).  The  fear  of  being  tainted  by  the 

*  Hebrdische  Archdologie  (edition  Leipzig,  1927),  III,  93. 
**  Jewish  Encyclopedia,  VI,  158. 

f  For  instance,  M.  L.  Lering  in  The  International  Standard  Bible  Encyclo- 
pedia (Chicago,  1915),  I,  1320. 


536  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

idolatrous  practice  of  the  heathen  was  so  great  that  the  sidelocks 
were  untouched. 

The  commentaries  of  Jewish,  Catholic,  and  Protestant  theolo- 
gians in  general  restrict  their  exegesis  of  the  biblical  passages  to 
general  remarks  about  the  religious  significance  of  the  custom 
of  shaving  the  hair  as  token  of  mourning.  As  far  as  I  can  see, 
this  last  view  has  been  prevalent  since  Frazer's  book  Folklore  in 
the  Old  Testament  which  was  published  in  1919.*  There  are 
only  a  few  exceptions  in  books  and  papers  dealing  with  more 
general  subjects,  but  putting  the  biblical  passage  into  a  new 
context.  As  a  representative  example  of  such  an  original  view- 
point, we  choose  George  A.  Barton's  attempt  to  explain  the 
mysterious  prohibition  of  the  Leviticus  passage.**  This  scholar 
points  to  the  special  sacred  significance  supposed  to  pertain  to 
corners  of  structures,  fields,  and  other  objects  in  the  ancient 
Semitic  nations.  Numerous  examples  from  the  religious  customs 
of  Babylonians,  Assyrians,  Egyptians,  Canaanites,  and  Hebrews 
prove  this  special  belief.  Do  we  not  still  speak  of  a  cornerstone 
as  a  part  of  fundamental  importance?  Barton  quotes  among 
other  passages  the  prohibition  against  rounding  the  corners  of 
the  hair,  and  thinks  those  corners  belong  to  Jahweh  and  should 
therefore  remain  untouched.  He  believes  that  this  regula- 
tion is  responsible  for  the  "curious  custom  of  the  curled  sidelocks 
that  present  a  peculiar  appearance  and  distinguish  the  Jews  of 
all  other  religionists  in  that  land." 

The  other  theory  which  is  much  more  widely  accepted  is 
formulated  by  James  George  Frazer.  The  famous  author  of  The 
Golden  Bough  dedicates  a  chapter  of  his  book  on  comparative 
folklore  in  the  Old  Testament  to  the  customs  of  mourning  in 
ancient  Israel.  Those  who  lost  their  dear  ones  testified  their 
sorrow  at  the  death  by  cutting  their  own  bodies  and  shaving  part 
of  their  hair,  making  bald  patches  on  their  heads.  He  quotes 
many  passages  from  the  prophets,  besides  that  of  the  codes,  to 
prove  these  customs  in  mourning  had  been  common  to  the  Jews 
and  their  neighbors,  the  Philistines  and  Moabites.  The  reformers 

*  London,  1919.  Ill,  270. 

**  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics,  Edit,  by  James  Hastings;  IX,  20  f. 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          537 

forbade  those  barbarous  practices,  putting  the  fear  of  God  into 
the  Jews. 

Frazer  shows  that  the  custom  of  cropping  the  hair  and  mu- 
tilating the  body  has  been  widespread  among  many  ancient 
peoples.  An  abundance  of  examples  from  the  ancient  Semitic 
people,  but  also  from  the  Greeks,  Assyrians,  Romans,  Huns,  and 
Scythians  is  vividly  presented.  It  is  compared  with  similar  customs 
from  African,  Australian,  and  American  tribes  who  cut  their 
bodies  and  shave  their  hair  as  token  of  mourning.  With  his 
usual  lucidity  and  sense  of  discrimination,  this  writer  presents 
an  impressive  collection  of  lore  from  the  highly  civilized  nations 
of  antiquity  to  the  savage  tribes  still  living  in  our  time.  Frazer 
shows  the  strength  of  his  point  by  this  abundance  of  instances 
in  which  the  same  mourning  ritual  appears  in  varied,  but  similar, 
forms.  The  affluence  of  this  skillfully  described  material  not  only 
satisfies  our  scientific  curiosity,  but  also  our  aesthetic  sense.  In 
the  words  of  housewives  testing  the  quality  of  meat,  "Where 
there  is  no  waste,  there  is  no  taste/' 

Another  master  of  comparative  history  of  religion,  W.  Robert- 
son Smith,  had  another  hypothesis  about  the  custom  of  shaving 
the  hair  and  the  Lord's  distaste  for  it.  In  his  famous  Lectures  on 
the  Religion  of  The  Semites*  Smith  explains  the  cuttings  and 
shavings  after  death  as  an  attempt  to  intensify  the  blood  cove- 
nant with  the  dead.  The  Australians  of  Darling  River  have  the 
custom,  during  the  first  two  days  df  the  ceremony  of  initiation 
into  manhood,  that  the  boys  drink  only  blood  from  the  veins  of 
their  friends  who  willingly  supply  the  required  food.  In  the  same 
manner  the  mourners  supply  the  souls  of  their  deceased  relatives 
with  their  blood.  The  hair  is  intended  as  a  sacrifice  to  the  dead 
to  strengthen  them,  since  it  is  a  common  notion  that  a  person's 
strength  is  in  his  hair.  The  parallelism  which  runs  through  the 
mourning  customs  of  cutting  the  body  and  polling  the  hair  would 
be  intelligible  if  both  practices,  so  widespread  throughout 
antiquity,  served  the  worship  of  the  dead.  Frazer  is  of  the  opinion 
that  this  hypothesis  of  his  revered  friend  W.  Robertson  Smith 

*  Third  Edition.  London,  1927,  p.  325  f. 


538  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

must  be  set  aside  because  "it  is  not  adequately  supported  by  the 
evidence  at  our  disposal."* 

Smith's  explanation  of  the  cropping  of  the  hair  as  part  of  the 
initiation  ritual  of  youth  is  certainly  valuable,  especially  if  com- 
pared with  the  condition  of  the  uncut  hair  of  the  Nazarites,  and 
its  solemn  cutting  at  the  sanctuary.  There  is  a  custom  in  Chasidic 
circles  in  Palestine  to  this  day  which  seems  to  conform  to  Smith's 
view.**  The  hair  of  boys  who  have  completed  their  fourth  year  is 
cut,  and  for  the  first  time  some  tufts  are  left  at  the  temples  as 
payoth,  sidelocks.  It  seems  to  me  that  Frazer  dismissed  Smith's 
hypotheses  too  early.  But  even  if  we  attribute  some  merit  to 
Smith's  view,  it  is  not  specific  enough.  There  must  be  a  specific 
meaning  to  the  ritual,  a  meaning  which  is  not  covered  by  the 
explanation  that  the  hair  is  considered  the  seat  of  strength  and  is 
sacrificed  to  the  dead. 

Frazer's  interpretation  confuses  two  things  because  both  con- 
cern the  hair:  the  one  is  a  certain  hair-do  displeasing  to  Jahweh 
and  the  other  concerns  certain  mourning  customs  common  to 
the  Israelites  and  neighboring  nations,  who  expressed  their  grief 
by  tearing  their  hair  out  so  that  bald  patches  appeared  on  their 
heads.  The  temptation  to  connect  these  two  things  was  great, 
since  the  prohibition  of  the  roundwise  haircutting  appears  side 
by  side  with  those  mourning  customs  which  the  Israelites  shared 
with  the  Philistines  and  Moabites.  What  was  more  natural  than 
to  assume  that  the  lawgiver  also  meant  those  mourning  rituals 
when  he  forbade  them  to  cut  the  corners  of  their  hair? 

Frazer  was  thus  seduced  to  his  hypothesis  by  the  environment 
in  which  the  prohibition  appeared.  George  A.  Barton  is  led  to 
his  explanation  by  the  word  "corner":  the  law  forbids  trimming 
the  corners  of  the  hair,  and  corners  have  a  special  sacred  place  in 
the  thinking  of  the  ancient  Semitic  nations.  But  the  emphasis  of 
the  prohibition  is  not  on  the  corners,  but  on  the  hair-do.  Frazer's 
preconceived  idea  is  that  the  law  is  directed  against  mourning 
customs;  Barton's  is  that  it  is  intended  to  prevent  the  Israelites 
from  cutting  corners. 

We  do  not  want  to  be  hairsplitters—no  pun  was  intended— but 

*  Frazer,  Folklore,  p.  300. 

**  Judisches  Lexikon  (Berlin,  1930),  Vol.  IV,  article  Peot. 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  539 

the  line  has  to  be  drawn  as  sharply  as  possible.  It  is  disconcerting 
to  see  that  most  scholars  have  collected  all  the  right  facts  from 
the  four  corners  of  the  world  that  can  be  made  to  fit  a  wrong 
theory.  Such  a  theory  can  be  compared  to  pieces  of  a  jigsaw  puzzle 
that  do  not  fit  the  place  one  tries  to  put  them  in,  but  its  neighbor- 
hood. Let  us  assume  that  someone  has  to  finish  a  jigsaw  puzzle 
presenting  Little  Red  Riding  Hood  in  the  forest.  One  of  the 
missing  pieces  is  the  face  of  the  little  girl.  Several  bits  are  lying 
around.  They  are  all  fragments  belonging  to  this  puzzle,  but 
they  are  part  of  the  peripheral  area,  not  of  its  center.  Several 
pieces  may  form,  for  example,  bits  of  the  girl's  hood,  but  they  do 
not  show  her  face,  her  hairline,  or  her  curls. 


Many  of  the  commentaries  and  exegeses  dealing  with  those 
passages  in  Leviticus  and  Deuteronomy  casually  refer  to  a  remark 
of  Herodotus,  when  they  state  that  the  prohibition  of  shaving  the 
hair  round  is  an  attempt  to  set  the  Jews  apart  from  neighboring 
pagan  nations.  In  the  third  book  of  his  work  the  Greek  historian 
says  of  the  Arabs  that  the  only  gods  they  believe  in  are  Dionysus 
and  Urania,  and  "they  affirm  that  they  poll  their  hair  even  as 
Dionysus  himself  is  polled,  for  they  poll  it  in  a  perfect  circle  and 
shave  the  temple  and  they  call  Dionysus  *Orotal/  "  Herodotus, 
who  traveled  between  467  and  484  in  Asia  Minor,  might  well 
have  seen  Arabic  tribes.  He  was,  however,  far  from  being  a  criti- 
cal historian.  Legends  and  traditional  tales  were  interwoven  in 
his  record.  "It  is  my  business  to  relate  what  I  am  told,  but  I  am 
under  no  obligation  to  believe  it,"  he  once  remarked.  However 
charming  and  artistic  are  his  tales,  the  father  of  history,  as  he 
was  called  by  Cicero,  was  simple  and  artless  and  tells  his  story, 
mixing  facts  and  fancy,  without  wasting  time  on  its  critical  dis- 
cussion and  inquiry. 

How  can  we  trust  this  historian  telling  us  about  the  religion  of 
the  Arabs  of  his  time?  It  is  likely  that  his  report  is  not  only  in- 
accurate, but  also  distorted  by  subjective  concepts.  His  identifica- 
tion of  the  Arabic  god  Orotal  with  Dionysus  is  perhaps  more  or 


540  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

less  arbitrarily  founded  on  some  impressions  of  superficial  similar 
traits.  His  report  can  be  helpful  in  defining  the  character  of  that 
god  as  well  as  misleading.  But  it  needed  more  than  a  historian's 
imagination  to  invent  the  special  feature  that  this  god's  worship 
ers  polled  their  hair  in  imitation  of  him,  that  they  shaved  it  in  a 
perfect  circle.  When  we  consider  the  undoubtable  testimony  that 
the  ancient  Egyptian  priests  and  higher  officials  shaved  their 
heads,  that  the  same  custom  prevailed  in  Babylon,  and  that  the 
heathens  are  called  round-cropped  by  Jeremiah  (9:25;  25:23),  we 
would  be  assuming  too  much  coincidence  if  we  rejected  Herodo- 
tus' report  to  this  effect.  We  believe  that,  whatever  was  the  nature 
of  Orotal  in  Herodotus'  concept,  his  statement  that  the  worship- 
ers tried  to  imitate  their  god  in  their  hair-do  is  correct.  Such  an 
attitude  seems  fantastic  to  us,  but  the  deities  of  prehistoric  times 
and  of  the  primitive  tribes  of  today  are  much  more  of  this  earth 
than  the  God  of  the  monotheistic  religions.  An  echo  of  that  desire 
to  imitate  God  is  still  perceptible  in  the  admonition  that  the 
Israelites  should  be  holy  as  Jahweh  is  holy  (Lev.  19:2).  Those 
worshipers  needed  little  imagination  to  visualize  what  their  god 
looked  like,  and  it  was  not  difficult  to  make  oneself  resemble  him, 
to  shape  oneself  in  his  image. 

It  seems  that  totemism,  the  primitive  worship  of  animals,  was 
once  the  universal  concept  mankind  had  of  religion.  Totemism 
marks  the  primal  phase  of  ancient  religions,  and  is  thus  a  very 
important  part  of  the  biography  of  God.  Only  traces  of  that 
primal  concept  are  to  be  discovered  in  the  religion  of  the  Israel- 
ites, but  they  are  definite  and  distinct  enough  to  make  science 
assume  that  the  worship  of  sacred  animals  was  once  the  core 
of  the  Hebrew  religion,  as  it  was  of  that  of  the  Egyptians, 
Babylonians,  Assyrians,  and  Philistines.  We  are  not  concerned 
here  with  that  prehistoric  phase,  but  with  a  later  period  in 
which  the  gods  had  already  regained  a  human  or  half-human 
form  and  in  which  only  some  of  their  properties,  equipment, 
attributes,  emblems,  or  companions  reveal  that  they  them- 
selves had  once  been  animals  or  animal-like.  They  were,  for 
instance,  depicted  with  human  heads  on  animal  bodies  or  animal 
heads  on  human  bodies.  Egyptian  and  Assyrian  statues  and  pic- 
tures prove  how  long  that  half-totemistic,  half-anthropomorphic 


ADVENTURES    IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          541 

phase  of  the  concept  of  the  gods  lasted.  We  know  that  all  those 
nations  had  certain  festivals  and  ceremonies  in  which  they,  like 
the  Arabs  of  whom  Herodotus  speaks,  identified  with  their  gods 
in  one  way  or  another.  It  must  have  been  easy  to  do  as  the  means 
to  obtain  a  superficial  resemblance  were  relatively  simple:  to 
put  a  hair  ornament  or  a  few  bird  feathers  on  one's  head,  or  to 
cover  oneself  with  the  hide  of  the  sacred  animal,  was  enough. 

But  here  is  a  new  thought!  Did  we  not  get  the  impression  from 
the  theories  of  Frazer,  Barton,  Smith,  and  other  scholars  that 
here  we  have  an  entirely  different  set  of  circumstances?  And  did 
we  not  compare  them  to  pieces  belonging  to  a  jigsaw  puzzle  in 
which  the  central  bit  is  still  missing?  To  continue  our  simile: 
What  is  needed'  is  perhaps  only  to  choose  another  fragment  from 
the  handful  of  pieces  already  at  hand.  It  will  perhaps  fill  the  gap. 
The  commentaries  mentioning  that  passage  from  Herodotus' 
history  show  that  at  the  time  when  the  Pentateuch  became  a 
series  of  codes  (that  of  Ezra  about  445),  many  neighboring  tribes 
polled  their  hair  in  a  circle.  The  Arabs  cited  by  Herodotus  were 
such  a  nation.  The  other  fact  that  the  Arabs  shaved  themselves 
as  they  did  in  order  to  resemble  their  god  Orotal  was,  of  course, 
mentioned,  but  none  of  the  scholars  I  know  made  use  of  this 
fact,  drew  conclusions  from  it,  or  considered  it  worthwhile  avail- 
ing himself  of  it  to  explain  that  puzzling  prohibition  of  the  Lord. 

The  Arabic  god  Orotal,  whom  Herodotus  compares  with 
Dionysus,  had,  no  doubt,  certain  features  in  common  with  the 
Thracian  god  of  vegetation.  It  is  very  likely  that  he  was  originally 
a  totemistic  god  like  Dionysus  who  was  believed  to  assume  the 
form  of  a  goat.  We  know  that  an  animal  sacrificed  to  the  god  was 
first  regarded  as  a  divine  incarnation.  Just  the  Dionysiac  cult  pro- 
vides an  excellent  example  of  the  belief  that  a  god  may  incarnate 
himself  temporarily  in  animal  form.  In  the  frenzied  observance 
of  the  cult,  an  ox  or  a  goat,  representing  the  god,  was  rent  by  the 
maddened  worshipers  and  the  raw  flesh  was  devoured.  In  such  a 
sacramental  feast  the  Dionysus-worshipers  clothed  themselves  in 
goatskins.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  similarities  of  the  Arabic 
Orotal  with  Dionysus,  one  of  them  was  most  likely  that  he  had 
still  a  half-totemistic  character,  and  was  believed  to  resemble  a 
goat  or  a  bull.  When  now  Herodotus  reports  that  the  Arabs  tried 


542  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

to  be  like  him  by  polling  their  hair  in  a  circle,  is  it  not  plausible 
that  they  imitated  him  in  his  animal  form?  It  seems  that  this 
hypothesis  presents  a  new  approach  to  the  understanding  of  the 
Lord's  mysterious  prohibition  against  shaving  the  hair.  There  is 
a  line  in  the  prologue  of  Shakespeare's  Henry  V  which  explains 
what  I  mean: 

...  a  crooked  figure  may 
Attest  in  little  place  a  million. 

A  mere  naught  put  in  the  right  place— for  instance,  after  a  row  of 
figures  on  a  check— can  push  the  number  up  into  the  millions.  A 
fact  put  into  the  right  place,  that  is,  alongside  other  particular 
facts,  can  give  an  enormous  significance  to  a  certain  situation  and 
elucidate  a  question  which  has  been  a  mystery.  It  seems  to  me 
that  there  is  such  "a  little  place"  where  "a  crooked  figure  may 
attest"  an  unimagined  lot.  The  unnoticed  second  part  of  Herodo- 
tus' statement,  about  the  Arabs  who  polled  their  hair  roundwise 
to  resemble  their  god,  points  the  way  to  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem of  why  Jahweh  felt  an  intense  antipathy  against  a  certain 
hair-do  of  His  chosen  people.  He  wished  to  set  them  apart  and  to 
prevent  them  from  relapsing  into  an  animal  cult,  a  totemistic 
worship  in  which  they  would  identify  with  a  barbarous  god  in 
imitating  him  with  hide  and  hair  as  the  Arabs,  the  Philistines,  the 
Egyptians,  and  Assyrians  did.  If,  as  I  believe,  this  interpretation 
which  makes  use  of  a  neglected  trifle  of  information  is  correct, 
it  again  conforms  to  that  sentence  of  the  Psalms:  "The  stone 
which  the  builders  refused  is  become  the  headstone  of  the  corner." 


The  endeavor  to  make  oneself  resemble  a  sacred  animal  or  a 
totemistic  god  or  spirit  is  ubiquitous  on  certain  levels  of  the 
evolution  of  human  civilization.  The  reports  of  anthropologists, 
historians,  and  travelers,  of  missionaries  and  explorers  are  filled 
with  descriptions  of  the  manner  in  which  the  ancient  nations  and 
the  savage  tribes  of  today  try  to  identify  with  their  individual 
totem  gods.  In  the  following  small  selection  of  examples  I  shall 


ADVENTURES   IN    PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  543 

restrict  myself  to  the  area  in  which  we  are  here  interested, 
namely,  in  the  hair-do.  A  particular  way  of  arranging  the  hair 
was  the  mark  of  the  tribe  of  the  ancient  Indo-German  Europeans.* 
The  Acheans  wore  their  hair  in  curls,  the  ancient  Britains  and 
Ligurians  let  their  hair  grow.**  The  ancient  Thracians  combed 
their  hair  backward  and  tied  it  together,  braiding  it  on  top  of  the 
head.  Cutting  of  the  hair  is  a  celebration  with  the  young  Hindus; 
some  families  allow  only  one  curl,  others  three  curls  to  grow; 
some  men  wear  the  curl  in  front,  some  behind.  In  commentaries 
the  religious  significance  of  the  different  hair-dos  is  discussed. 
Different  families  in  ancient  India  wear  their  hair  in  different 
manners.  According  to  Xenophon  the  ancient  Medes  combed 
their  hair  to  one  side  to  differentiate  themselves  from  other  tribes. 
The  Longobards  cut  their  hair  at  the  neck,  but  let  it  hang  down 
loose  in  front.  The  Alans  and  the  Scythians  had  similar  language, 
weapons,  and  dress,  but  the  Alans,  according  to  Lucian,  wore 
their  hair  short,  the  Scythians  long.  H.  Hirt,  from  whose  book  I 
took  these  instances,  states  that  style  of  hairdressing  is  a  definite 
tribal  mark.  The  Jowa  clans  in  America  have  each  a  distinguish- 
ing mode  of  dressing  their  hair.  The  Buffalo  clan,  for  instance, 
wear  their  hair  in  such  a  way  that  it  imitates  horns. f  Among  the 
Omahas  the  smaller  boys  of  the  Black  Shoulder  (Buffalo)  clan 
wear  two  locks  of  hair  in  imitation  of  horns.  The  Hanga  clan 
wear  a  crest  of  hair  two  bunches  long,  standing  erect  and  extend- 
ing from  ear  to  ear  in  imitation  of  the  buffalo.  The  Small  Bird 
clan  of  the  Omahas  have  a  little  hair  in  front  over  the  forehead 
and  some  at  the  back  of  the  head  to  resemble  a  tail  with  much 
hair  over  each  ear  for  the  wings. 

Different  tribes  have  their  individual  ways  of  cutting  a  child's 
hair.  Thus  the  Pawnee  Indians  "cut  the  hair  close  to  the  head, 
except  a  ridge  from  the  forehead  to  the  crown  where  the  scalp- 
lock  was  parted  off  in  a  circle,  stiffened  with  fat  and  plaited,  made 
to  stand  erect  and  curved  like  a  horn,  hence  the  name  Pawnee, 
derived  from  pariki-horn/'^  The  Dakota  parted  the  hair  in  the 

*  Herman  Hirt,  Die  Indogermanen  (Strassburg,  1907),  Vol.  II. 
**  Plinius  III.  27. 

j-  Third  Report  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology  (Washington,  1884),  p.  238. 
f  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics,  IX,  467. 


544  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

middle  from  the  forehead  to  the  nape  of  the  neck;  the  scalplock 
was  always  finely  plaited.  The  long  hair  on  each  side  was  braided 
and  wrapped  in  strips  of  beaver  or  otter-skin  hanging  down  in 
front  of  the  chest."  The  Bechuana  warriors  in  Africa  wear  the 
hair  of  an  ox  in  their  own  hair  and  the  skin  of  a  frog  on  their 
coat,  in  the  belief  this  will  make  them  as  hard  to  hold  as  those 
animals.  We  remember  R.  Smith's  theory  of  the  sacrifice  of  the 
hair  as  part  of  the  initiation  ritual,  when  we  learn  that  a  subclan 
of  the  Omahas  cut  off  all  the  hair  from  their  boys  except  six  locks 
on  each  side,  on  the  forehead,  and  one  hanging  down  the  back 
in  imitation  of  the  legs,  head,  and  tails  of  a  turtle.  Livingstone 
reports  that  the  boys  of  the  Menuganga  tribes  in  East  Africa 
"train  their  locks  till  they  take  the  admired  form  of  the  buffalo's 
horns;  others  prefer  to  let  their  hair  hang  in  a  thick  coil  down 
their  back  like  that  animal's  tail."  In  Frazer's  book  there  is  an 
abundance  of  instances  of  this  kind  showing  the  variety  of  forms 
in  which  the  worshipers  of  ancient  nations  and  of  present  savage 
tribes  affect  a  resemblance  as  close  as  possible  to  the  totem  god. 
The  impersonator  of  the  sacred  animal,  of  course,  preferably  uses 
the  skin  or  other  part  of  the  beast,  but  the  arranging  of  the  hair 
is  not  the  smallest  part  of  the  attempt  to  identify  in  appearance 
with  the  totem  ancestor  and  totem  god.  Dr.  Marcel  Baudouin 
considers  the  role  of  the  hair  in  this  function  a  "totem  partial."* 
Another  French  writer,  Maurice  Bensson,  calls  it  "la  carte  d'iden- 
tite"  of  the  worshipers. 

We  venture  the  thesis  that  the  prohibition  of  Leviticus  is 
directed  against  the  temptation  of  the  Israelites  to  imitate  totem- 
istic  gods  whom  they  had  once  worshiped  as  did  all  their  neigh- 
bors. Herodotus'  report  states  that  the  Arabs  polled  their  hair 
in  imitation  of  their  god.  But  this  god,  whom  he  compares  with 
Dionysus,  still  had  a  half-animal  form,  was  perhaps  half  a  bull  or 
a  goat.  Was  not  Dionysus  himself  once  identified  with  a  goat  or  a 
ram?  Do  not  his  companions,  the  satyrs,  still  wear  the  horns  and 
hoofs  of  the  goat?  All  the  neighbors  of  the  Israelites  worshiped 
gods  who  still  had  totemistic  features,  and  the  Israelites  them- 
selves had  adored  images  of  a  'bull  at  Dan  and  Beth  (I  Kings 
12:28).  The  Bible  itself  still  compares  the  power  of  Jahweh  with 

*  Le  Courrier  Medical  (October  23,  1938). 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          545 

that  of  the  horned  beast  Reem.  That  prohibition  is  part  of  the 
great  wall  erected  against  identification  with  the  barbarous 
totem  gods  whose  appearance  his  worshipers  tried  to  imitate  in 
their  dressing  and  their  hair-do. 

The  correct  interpretation  of  the  Lord's  forbidding  his  wor- 
shipers to  trim  their  hair  roundwise  contains  a  premise  without 
which  it  is  impossible  to  understand  why  and  how  the  Jews 
arrived  at  the  custom  of  sidelocks.  They  let  a  few  hairs  on  each 
side  grow  as  token  of  their  obedience  to  the  Law  given  by  the 
Lord.  This  became  a  visible  sign,  an  emblem  or  badge  showing 
that  the  wearer  was  devoted  to  God  and  belonged  to  the  chosen 
people.  From  the  few  hairs  indicating  obedience  to  the  Law 
evolved,  later  on,  the  custom  of  wearing  locks  or  curls.  But  are 
those  sidelocks  as  they  appeared  much  later  only  a  token  of  the 
devotion  to  Jahweh's  prohibition,  a  badge  of  a  religious  and 
national  community? 

At  this  point  the  reader  as  well  as  the  writer  visualizes  the 
variety  of  forms  that  the  payoth  of  the  Eastern  Jews  show.  There 
are  nearly  as  many  kinds  of  those  curls  as  there  are  mustaches, 
thin  and  broad  ones.  Some  are  short  and  some  small,  some 
straight  and  some  curled,  some  neglected  and  others  carefully 
oiled  and  fatted.  The  common  feature  in  all  this  variety  is  that 
the  curls  stand  out  from  the  surface  of  the  beard  and  the  other 
hair,  and  have  a  definite,  recognizable  form. 

In  visualizing  the  many  sidelocks  we  have  seen,  we  get  a 
distinct  impression  of  those  curls  standing  out  from  the  skull- 
caps of  orthodox  Eastern  Jews.  Are  we  victims  of  delusion,  do  we 
play  a  mental  trick  on  ourselves?  There  is  no  doubt  that  the 
conspicuous  examples  of  those  sidelocks  reaching  over  the  ears, 
sticking  up  from  the  head,  look  like  the  horns  of  a  bull  or,  if 
curled,  of  a  ram.  That  is  certainly  a  surprising  impression,  but 
we  have  to  trust  our  eyes.  We  are  confused  and  do  not  understand 
how  such  a  hair-do  can  develop  from  a  few  hairs  left  uncut  to 
show  that  religious  Jews  did  not  shave  their  head  roundwise  like 
the  pagans  of  the  nations  surrounding  them.  How  did  that  new 
hair  style  evolve? 

An  attempt  to  explain  this  development  will  have  to  start 
from  the  phase  in  which  the  Israelitic  tribes  worshiped  totem- 


546  THE  SEARCH    WITHIN 

istic  and  hal£-totemistic  gods  besides  Jahweh.  At  this  time  they 
certainly  tried  to  imitate  those  gods,  including  their  appearance, 
especially  in  ceremonies  initiating  the  young  men  into  the  tribe. 
In  hair  style,  headdresses,  in  badges  and  dress,  they  tried  to  imper- 
sonate those  gods  who  had  only  partly  gained  human  form.  There 
are  still  distinct  traces  of  that  phase  in  later  times.  The  religious 
reformers  and  the  prophets  made  desperate  efforts  to  bring  the 
people  so  far  that  Jahweh  alone  would  be  their  God,  but  the 
Israelites,  who  are  a  stiff-necked  people,  did  not  easily  or  rapidly 
give  up  customs  they  had  followed  for  centuries.  We  have  also  to 
assume  that  the  custom  of  cropping  and  shaving  the  hair  in 
imitation  of  some  totemistic  deity  was  still  followed  in  spite  of 
the  prohibition  of  the  Law  and  of  the  attacks  of  the  prophets 
against  that  heathenish  hair-do.  In  the  Diaspora  the  Jews  cropped 
their  hair  like  people  among  whom  they  lived  and  left  only  a 
small  amount  of  hair  untouched,  thus  indicating  that  they  were 
faithful  to  Jahweh's  law. 

The  following  development  can  easily  be  guessed.  The  stronger 
the  temptation  grew  to  conform  with  the  customs  of  the  other 
people,  the  more  intense  the  pressure  became  of  the  rabbis  upon 
the  community  to  observe  the  Law.  Instead  of  a  few  hairs  as  a 
token  of  religious  observance,  a  kind  of  bunch  was  developed  to 
testify  that  its  bearer  was  loyal  to  Jahweh  and  belonged  to  His 
chosen  people.  It  became  a  sign  of  one's  difference  not  only  from 
the  heathen,  but  also  from  those  Jews  who  had  joined  the  new 
covenant.  Sidelocks  were  small  and  inconspicuous  during  the 
early  Middle  Ages.  Under  the  influence  of  the  Cabala,  that  half- 
mystical,  half-religious  system  of  Judaism,  the  payoth  became 
longer  and  were  carefully  displayed;  they  became,  so  to  speak,  a 
national  or  religious  badge. 

Such  elongation  and  emphasis  was  a  reaction  against  the  negli- 
gence increasingly  shown  to  the  biblical  law.  Out  of  fear  of  sin- 
ning by  default,  the  sidelocks  were  now  displayed  and  were  no 
longer  a  token  of  religiousness,  but  almost  of  saintliness.  Driven 
into  defensiveness  by  the  untiring  pressure  of  their  rabbis,  who 
insisted  on  strict  observance  of  the  Law,  the  Jews  overshot  the 
mark  of  the  Law.  But  in  reaching  as  they  did  they  lessened  their 
vigilance  against  the  hidden  antagonist,  paganism,  which  had  now 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  547 

the  disguise  of  the  most  intense  religious  zeal.  It  is  as  if  the  devil 
should  slip  into  church  in  a  monk's  habit,  wearing  a  hood 
through  which  only  slight  elevations  reveal  the  horns.  The  side- 
locks  that  had  become  longer  and  more  conspicuous  were  not 
only  symbols  of  Jewish  loyalty  to  the  Law  as  it  is  prescribed  in 
the  Bible,  but  also  renewals  of  an  ancient  idolatrous  cult  which 
imitated  the  totem  god  in  the  hair-do  of  the  tribe.  Under  cover  of 
religious  zeal  the  prehistoric  totemistic  custom  entered,  unrecog- 
nized, Jewish  orthodoxy.  The  sidelocks  were  unconsciously 
shaped  and  curled  in  a  manner  resembling  a  bull's  or  ram's  horn 
and  thus  renewed  the  most  archaic  and  primitive  form  of  idola- 
try, the  same  barbarous  totem  worship  which  Jahweh  had  for- 
bidden. Out  of  the  bottom  of  the  pit  into  which  the  idea  of  an 
animal-like  god  was  banished  the  old  totemistic  concept  had 
victoriously  returned.  Masked  as  an  expression  of  high  devotion 
to  Jahweh,  a  visual  badge  of  a  despised,  primitive  idolatrous 
concept  had  re-emerged.  In  their  anxiety  to  avoid  a  sin  by 
neglecting  the  observance  of  a  biblical  prohibition,  the  Jews 
committed  a  much  more  serious  sin  in  their  unconscious  relapse 
into  heathenism.  In  the  display  of  their  sidelocks  an  expression 
of  sacredness  reveals  itself  as  a  sacrilege.  In  the  strict  observance 
of  religious  Law  a  blasphemy  is  acted  out.  Angelo,  in  Shake- 
speare's Measure  for  Measure,  says: 

Let's  write  good  angel  on  the  devil's  horn 
'Tis  not  the  devil's  crest. 

This  is  the  outline  of  a  development  sketched  with  the  help  of 
all  available  data  from  history  and  archeology.  The  result  of  this 
reconstruction,  namely,  that  the  sacrilege  not  only  slips  into  a 
highly  progressed  religious  institution,  but  is  conceived  as  an 
expression  of  special  religious  zeal,  is  so  bizarre  and  odd  that  it 
appears  scarcely  imaginable.  It  is  not  only  that  at  the  height  of 
devotion  an  act  of  religious  rebellion  emerges,  but  also  that  this 
sacrilegious  act  pretends  to  be  a  manifestation  of  unusual  zeal 
and  thus  mocks  all  traditional  belief.  The  process  is  so  ex- 
traordinary that  it  seems  unlikely  to  find  analogies. 


THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 


Yet  there  are  similar  processes  in  an  area  very  distant  from  that 
of  religious  cult  and  custom;  in  the  sphere  of  neurotic  symptoms, 
especially  in  the  typical  manifestations  of  compulsive  and  obses- 
sional neuroses.  This  form  of  mental  disturbance  sets  in  with 
measures  of  defense  against  the  intrusion  of  forbidden  hostile 
and  sexual  impulses  which  have  remained  unconscious.  Strange 
thoughts  and  actions  emerge  in  the  patient  who  tries  to  protect 
himself  against  the  assault  of  trends  which  are  repressed  and 
now  attempt  to  break  through  to  the  surface.  The  ego  of  the 
patient  who  is  frightened  by  puzzling  sexual  and  aggressive 
tendencies  within  himself  sharpens  his  vigilance.  In  order  to  keep 
those  unwelcome  and  alien  impulses  away,  he  erects  measures  of 
defense  which  become  the  more  severe  the  more  urgently  those 
forbidden  impulses  demand  satisfaction.  The  longer  the  neurotic 
disturbance  lasts,  the  more  desperate  and  irrational  those  defenses 
built  against  the  danger  from  within  become.  The  obsessional 
and  compulsive  symptoms,  which  were  at  first  formed  of  the  re- 
jection of  unwanted  trends,  become  more  and  more  manifesta- 
tions of  a  compromise  between  the  controlling  forces  and  the 
repressed  tendencies.  Finally,  those  repressed  impulses  force 
their  entrance  into  the  carefully  reserved  area  of  the  ego,  and  the 
exiled  emotional  trends  infiltrate  the  personality.  They  either 
overrun  its  bastions  of  protection  by  a  sudden  and  surprising 
attack  at  an  unexpected  place  or  infest  them  in  the  form  of  slow 
penetration.  There  is  a  phase  in  which  the  situation  of  the 
symptoms  resembles  the  picture  of  an  undecided  battle  in  which 
the  antagonists  are  entangled  in  an  inextricable  melee  and  in 
which  the  outcome  is  dubious.  Finally,  the  rejected  and  repressed 
ideas  get  the  upper  hand  and  the  symptomatical  picture  is  gov- 
erned by  their  superior  power. 

Here  is  a  representative  case  in  which  an  obsessional  idea 
emerged  in  a  surprising  manner.  The  patient,  a  young  girl,  lived 
a  double  life.  At  home  she  behaved  as  a  "nice  girl"  whose  dates 
with  young  men  had  a  harmless  social  character.  In  reality  she 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  549 

was  promiscuous  and  even  liked  to  take  the  initiative  with 
men.  She  had  discovered  that  a  man  could  easily  be  seduced 
when,  in  the  phase  of  petting,  she  put  her  tongue  into  his  mouth, 
which  she  considered  an  invitation  to  sexual  intercourse.  One 
evening  when  she  left  home  to  go  to  a  man  she  was  tortured  by 
the  feeling  that  she  had  by  mistake  put  her  tongue  into  her 
father's  mouth  when  she  kissed  him  good  night. 

The  emergence  of  such  repressed  tendencies  is  not  restricted  to 
the  area  of  obsessional  thinking:  occasionally  they  flow  also  in 
distorted  forms  in  our  dreams  or  sometimes  appear  in  wit  and  in 
break-throughs,  even  in  the  disguise  of  naivete.  Such  an  anecdote 
is  told  about  the  great  composer,  Anton  Bruckner.  The  cele- 
brated symphonist  who  had  led  a  chaste  life  was  in  the  company 
of  women  often  shy  and  gauche.  A  young  lady  who  was  his  neigh- 
bor at  a  banquet  tried  desperately  to  begin  a  conversation  with 
the  old  man.  Finally  she  said,  "I  dressed  especially  beautifully 
for  you,  professor.  Did  you  not  notice  it?"  The  simple-minded 
composer  answered,  "Oh,  for  me  you  need  not  have  dressed 
at  all/' 

An  example  from  obsessional  symptoms  will  well  illustrate  the 
dynamics  of  such  a  break-through  at  the  peak  of  the  defense  and 
bring  us  at  the  same  time  closer  to  the  area  of  religious  phe- 
nomena. The  patient,  a  woman  in  her  early  forties  and  a  pious 
Catholic,  had  a  little  plaster  bust  of  St.  Anthony  on  her  mantel- 
piece. Once  when  she  dusted  the  room,  she  thought  she  had 
pushed  the  figure  of  the  saint  whom  she  considered  her  personal 
patron  rather  irreverently  aside.  She  made  amends  by  caressing 
the  bust  and  putting  it  at  a  favorite  position  in  the  middle  of  the 
mantel.  Still  not  satisfied,  she  carefully  changed  the  place  of  the 
figure  once  more.  It  now  seemed  to  her  that  it  was  not  standing 
straight.  In  an  effort  to  give  it  the  right  angle  she  set  it  down  too 
energetically  and,  to  her  great  consternation,  broke  it. 

The  counterpart  to  this  symptomatic  action  is  found  in  an 
anecdote  Anatole  France  once  told  his  secretary.  The  writer 
spoke  of  the  great  familiarity  Italian  peasants  show  in  social 
intercourse  with  their  Catholic  priests.  A  Roman  woman  who 
had  her  baby  in  her  arms  got  into  conversation  with  her  priest 
as  he  was  coming  from  Mass  carrying  the  holy  host.  The  bam- 


550  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

bino,  attracted  by  the  sacred  wafer  which  he  perhaps  confused 
with  a  butterfly,  wanted  to  grasp  it.  The  priest  tried  in  vain  to 
keep  the  little  hands  away  and  protect  the  Sacrament  from  their 
touch.  But  the  child  wished  to  get  hold  of  this  consecrated 
bread.  In  his  desperate  effort  to  protect  it  from  the  sacrilegious 
contact,  the  priest  finally  could  not  help  warning  the  child  and 
saying,  "Kaka!"  In  his  most  zealous  defense  he  was  led  to  uttering 
an  atrocious  blasphemy. 


We  have  stated  that  the  sidelocks  of  the  Eastern  Jews  represent, 
unknown  to  them,  a  totemistic  symbol  and  are  to  be  compared  to 
the  hair-dos,  headdresses,  animal  skins  by  which  totem  tribesmen 
indicate  that  they  are  descended  from  this  or  that  sacred  animal, 
to  whom  they  affect  a  resemblance.  To  take  the  bull  or  the  ram 
by  the  horns,  we  need  only  remember  that  the  Scripture  itself 
admits  that  images  of  bulls  were  worshiped  at  Dan  and  Beth, 
that  the  ram  was  sacrificed  to  Jahweh,  and  that  His  power  is  com- 
pared to  that  of  the  horned  beast  Reem.  All  these  features  are 
remnants  of  a  prehistoric  totemistic  phase  in  which  the  Israelites 
also  tried  to  resemble  their  animal  gods  in  appearance,  covering 
themselves  with  their  skins  or  polling  their  hair  to  be  like  them. 
Is  it  necessary  to  remind  the  reader  that  all  the  nations  who  were 
neighbors  to  the  Israelites  had  gods  with  much  more  distinct 
animal  characters? 

The  Hittite  deities  wore  caps  with  several  pairs  of  horns, 
Melkarth  of  Tyre  was  represented  as  an  almost  bestial  god  with 
two  short  horns  on  his  head;  so  was  the  Syrian  Hadad.  The 
Phoenician  goddesses  usually  have  the  horns  of  a  cow,  and 
with  Hathor,  whom  Isis  was  identified,  is  depicted  with  a  cow's 
head  and  horns.  Cows  were  sacred  to  Isis  who  sometimes  wore  a 
ram's  horn.  Ra  sometimes  wears  a  disk  with  a  ram's  horn  and 
Kneph  wears  a  ram's  head  with  horns,  curving,  long,  or  project- 
ing. In  Greece,  Dionysus  also  appeared  in  the  form  of  a  bull  and 
is  often  called  "horned"  or  "bull-horned."  The  Canaanites  wor- 
shiped Baal  as  a  bull.  At  Mendes  at  the  Delta  in  Egypt  as  well  as 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  551 

at  Heraclopolis,  Osiris  was  worshiped  as  a  ram,  and  at  Mendes 
and  Elephantine  burial  places  and  sarcophagi  of  sacred  rams 
have  been  found.  The  long  twisted  horns  of  a  ram  are  often 
attached  to  the  headdresses  of  the  Pharaohs  who  became  Osiiis. 
Attis  was  honored  by  the  sacrifice  of  rams.  The  shophar  or  keren 
of  the  Israelites  which  is  blown  on  Jewish  New  Year's  Day  was 
made  of  a  ram's  horn.  But  why  add  examples  to  examples  when 
any  textbook  of  comparative  history  of  ancient  religions  shows 
an  abundance  of  the  worship  of  bull-  and  ram-headed  gods  of 
antiquity  and  of  the  custom  of  the  Mediterranean  nations  to 
affect  a  resemblance  to  their  animal-shaped  deities? 

It  is  better  to  look  back  at  the  road  by  which  we  came  to  this 
point  where  saintliness  and  sacrilege  seem  to  meet  and  merge  in 
the  custom  of  curled  sidelocks.  Having  finished  the  circle,  we 
have  to  return  from  a  long  detour  to  the  point  of  departure  and 
to  trace  our  steps  back  to  the  result  that  emerged  from  the  fusion 
and  confusion  of  notions. 

Was  not  the  sight  of  that  old  Jew  with  his  conspicuous  side- 
locks  followed  by  the  blasphemous  idea  that  God  cannot  be 
beautiful?  In  falling  asleep  the  next  evening,  that  hypnagogic 
picture  appeared  in  which  a  big  ram  jumped  a  fence,  followed 
by  a  little  lamb.  In  retrospect  that  visual  image  appears  as  the 
most  important  lead  in  the  research  that  followed,  as  preconscious 
anticipation  of  its  result.  Jesus  Christ,  adored  in  the  figure  of 
the  lamb,  became  the  Agnus  Dei.  Is  it  not  logical  that  the  lamb 
follows  his  father  who  is  a  ram?  Godfather  and  Godson  emerge 
here  in  their  original  animal  forms;  their  concept  is,  in  that 
image,  so  to  speak,  re-translated  into  the  language  of  prehistoric 
totemism.  The  impression  the  two  sidelocks  had  made  upon  me 
had  sunk  into  the  unconscious,  had  there  been  elaborated,  and 
had  led  to  a  conclusion.  The  sidelocks  looked  like  a  ram's  or 
bull's  horns.  From  some  unconscious  depth  the  idea  was  dredged 
up  of  the  prehistoric  appearance  of  the  god  the  Israelites  once 
worshiped.  Was  there  perhaps  an  unconscious  memory  operating 
that  brought  up  the  biblical  scene  of  Abraham  sacrificing  a  ram 
instead  of  his  son  Isaac?  I  knew,  of  course,  that  in  prehistory,  the 
sacrificed  animal  originally  replaced  the  animal  god  himself. 

However  this  may  be,  at  the  sight  of  those  sidelocks  tta  COB- 


ggo  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

cept  of  the  resemblance  of  the  children  of  Israel  to  their  creator 
occurred.  Instead  of  the  impression  which  had  remained  uncon- 
scious, the  thought  occurred  that  God  cannot  be  beautiful.  The 
blasphemous  thought  was  stimulated  not  only  by  seeing  the  old 
Jew,  but  also  seeing  the  faces  of  tired  people  around  me  and  my 
own  melancholy  visage:  all  of  us  His  creatures.  The  old  Jew  must 
have  reminded  me  of  the  god  of  our  forefathers  and  of  the  low 
and  humble  beginning  of  his  concept,  of  that  phase  when  he  was 
worshiped  not  in  the  image  of  a  ram,  but  simply  as  a  ram.  In 
prehistoric  times,  the  figure  of  deity  was  really  crude  and  barba- 
rous, ugly  and  terrifying.  God  needed  thousands  of  years  to  emerge 
from  this  beastly  shape  and  to  become  superhuman.  St.  Anthony 
saw,  in  that  grandiose  vision  which  Flaubert  presented,  the  suc- 
cession of  gods  following  each  other  in  the  evolution  of  civiliza- 
tion, but  he  did  not  visualize  the  earliest  beastlike  appearances 
of  God  on  earth. 

We  return  here  to  the  thought  that  God  cannot  be  beautiful 
when  we  are  made  in  His  image.  Did  we  not  learn  that  the 
Cabala  taught  that  the  face  of  God  is  reflected  in  that  of  a  man, 
even  in  the  beard  and  sidelocks  of  His  worshipers?  I  must  have 
seen  His  face  in  the  old  Jew  on  Broadway  who  made  such  an 
uncanny  impression  upon  me. 

It  is  not  so  long  ago  that  blasphemy  was  considered  a  crime 
and  was  severely  punished  by  common  law.  Was  not  C.  B. 
Reynolds,  whom  Robert  G.  Ingersoll  defended  in  that  famous 
Argument,  condemned  for  blasphemy  under  the  laws  of  New 
Jersey  in  a  trial  at  Morristown  in  1887? 

Some  train  of  thought  connecting  the  ugliness  of  the  people 
with  their  creator  had  led  to  that  blasphemous  idea  that  God 
cannot  be  beautiful.  If  this  be  crime,  it  has  a  new  form.  It  is  guilt 
by  association. 

In  his  lectures  on  the  gods  Robert  Ingersoll  once  said,  "An 
honest  God  is  the  noblest  work  of  Man."  He  pointed  out  that 
the  concept  of  the  Deity  is  a  projection  of  our  own  ideas  into  a 
metaphysical  world.  Voltaire  had  expressed  the  same  idea  long 
before  the  forceful  American  advocate  of  enlightenment.  He  said: 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  553 

"If  God  has  made  us  in  His  image,  we  have  certainly  got  even 
with  Him."* 

Was  the  result  reached  here  worthy  of  so  much  search  and  re- 
search? It  is  not  for  us  to  decide.  The  little  curl  on  both  sides  of 
the  forehead  certainly  casts  a  long  shadow  of  meaning.  It  is 
satisfactory  that  the  psychoanalytic  approach  could  elucidate  the 
secret  significance  of  the  sidelocks,  could  solve  a  problem  that  the 
history  of  religions  and  archaeology  were  unable  to  clear  up.** 

A  tiny  stick  put  into  the  earth  can  indicate  the  position  of  the 
sun  as  well  as  the  obelisk  of  Luxor.  Small  bricks  also  make  a  house. 
We  are  content  with  the  discovery  of  why  all  God's  chillun  got 
not  only  wings,  but  also  sidelocks. 


IV 


A  DISCUSSION  which  recentlyf  took  place  in  the  columns  of  the 
New  Statesman,  a  serious  British  magazine,  made  me  take 
out  and  open  old  folders  in  which  many  notes  on  the  psycho- 
logical question  of  prayer  were  preserved.  The  controversy  con- 
cerned the  value  of  prayer,  and  took  as  its  point  of  departure  a 
service  at  which  the  congregation  prayed  for  rain.  A  critic,  who 
was  a  priest,  called  such  an  incantation  a  "blasphemy  in  prayer/* 
Many  correspondents  of  the  New  Statesman  derided  belief  in  the 
prayers  of  rainmakers,  while  others  defended  their  psychological 
value.  A  correspondent  wrote  that  the  expression  of  even  a  foolish 
petition  that  elicits  no  direct  response  makes  us  more  aware  of 
ourselves  and  of  the  nature  of  the  Deity,  and  added  that  "per- 
severance in  prayer  has  a  psychoanalytical  effect"— whatever  that 

*  Les  Sottisier,  XXXII. 

**  It  is  very  likely  that  the  custom  of  the  tonsure  which  is  a  symbol  of 
Jesus'  crown  of  thorns  can  be  traced  back  to  the  same  origin. 
•f  October,  1954. 


554  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

might  mean.  Another  correspondent  is  reminded  by  the  debate  of 
some  verses  of  unknown  authorship  called  "Prayer  for  Rain": 

In  vast  and  unimaginable  space 

Where  countless  Suns  send  forth  their  fecund  rays, 

Each  to  its  group  of  whirling  satellites, 

There  rolled  a  little  miserable  ball, 

And  on  this  ball  a  minute  microbe  knelt 

And  prayed  the  Great  Controlling  Force  of  all 

To  wreck  the  order  of  the  universe, 

Unchain  the  Suns  and  bid  ungovernable  chaos  come  again. 

For  what?  To  damp  the  dot  whereon  the  microbe  knelt. 

Reading  the  notes  I  had  accumulated  over  many  years,  I  be- 
came aware  that  only  a  little  work  was  needed  to  shape  their 
essential  content  into  a  paper  which  would  fit  admirably  into  the 
frame  here  presented.  The  continuation  and  elaboration  of  that 
first  draft  led  to  a  not  unimportant  new  insight  in  the  field  of 
prehistoric  and  primitive  civilization.  The  result  of  that  analytic 
exploration  is  significant  not  only  for  the  remote  past,  but  is,  as 
the  controversy  in  the  New  Statesman  shows,  of  some  importance 
for  the  present  situation  of  our  civilization.  The  course  of  the 
investigation  illustrates  the  process  of  analytic  discovery,  but  with 
a  difference  that  is  interesting  because  it  promises  new  develop- 
ments of  future  research  in  which  the  function  of  the  unconscious 
as  a  receptive  and  interpretative  organ  will  be  more  appreciated 
than  at  present. 

The  instances  of  psychoanalytic  discovery  presented  in  the 
preceding  chapters  showed  how  impressions  of  everyday  life  led 
to  a  problem  which  had  resisted  the  efforts  of  other  sciences,  but 
could  be  solved  by  the  method  of  analytic  penetration.  In  the 
following  instance  the  problem  was  there  in  the  beginning.  It 
had  been  clearly  stated  and  frequently  discussed  by  anthropolo^ 
gists,  students  of  the  evolution  of  religion,  and  historians  of 
civilization,  but  it  could  not  be  solved.  It  remained  obstinate  and 
unsolvable.  It  did  not  yield  to  analytic  exploration  either  until 
some  apparently  accidental  impressions  led  to  certain  decisive 
insights  whose  analytic  interpretation  opened  the  way  to  its 
solution.  It  is  the  same  distance  covered  in  the  opposite  direction; 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  555 

going  from  the  maze  with  its  mysterious  network  of  paths  to  the 
street  and  everyday  life. 

When— more  than  forty  years  ago—my  first  psychoanalytic 
papers  on  the  psychology  of  religion  were  published,  several 
problems  that  had  occupied  my  thoughts  were  skirted  because  I 
had  nothing  to  contribute  to  their  solution.  The  answers  that 
anthropologists  and  historians  of  civilization  had  given  to  certain 
fundamental  questions  did  not  satisfy  me.  One  of  those  problems 
concerned  the  relation  between  magic  and  religion,  one  of  the 
most  obscure  and  controversial  of  subjects.  The  aspect  most  in- 
teresting to  me  within  that  problem  was  the  transition  from 
magic  to  religion.  None  of  the  attempts  made  to  clarify  this 
question  was  satisfactory.  When  you  tried  to  make  a  sharp  dis- 
tinction between  the  two  areas,  the  facts  of  ancient  and  primitive 
civilization  made  the  separation  appear  questionable.  When,  on 
the  other  hand,  you  assumed  a  complete  continuity  between 
magic  and  religion,  it  was  very  difficult  to  subsume  the  two  under 
a  common  heading. 

J.  G.  Frazer  lays  stress  on  the  "fundamental  distinction  and 
even  opposition  of  principle  between  magic  and  religion,"  and 
is  of  the  opinion  that,  in  the  evolution  of  thought,  magic  "has 
probably  everywhere  preceded  religion."*  The  human  race 
which  passed  through  that  age  of  magic  tried  first  to  exert  me- 
chanical control  and  attempted  "to  force  the  great  powers  of 
nature  to  do  their  pleasure."  The  phase  of  magic  gave  place  to  an 
"age  of  religion,"  in  which  men  courted  the  favors  of  those 
powers  by  offering  sacrifices  and  prayers.  The  last  motive  for  this 
replacement  was  disappointment  in  magic.  Man  understood  that 
his  efforts  to  work  by  means  of  imaginary  causes  had  been  vain 
or,  to  use  Frazer's  words,  that  "he  had  been  pulling  at  strings  to 
which  nothing  was  attached."  When  he  gave  up  magic  in  despair, 
man  found  religion  as  a  truer  theory  of  nature. 

Frazer's  theory  was  subjected  to  sharp  criticism  by  R.  R.  Ma- 
rett,**  R.  S.  Hartland,  A.  Lehman,  H.  Hubert,  M.  Mauss,  and 
other  prominent  anthropologists,  who  called  his  distinction  too 

*  The  Golden  Bough,  2nd  ed.;  I,  16. 

**  The  Threshold  of  Religion  (and  ed.;  London,  1914),  pp.  47  ff.,  147  ff. 


556  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

intellectualistic  and  unjustifiably  sharp.  In  spite  of  those  argu- 
ments, it  is  now  assumed  that  the  concept  of  magic  preceding 
religion  in  the  evolution  of  civilization  is  generally  correct.  It  is 
obvious  that  the  transition  phase  from  magic  to  religion  lasted  a 
long  time,  perhaps  a  few  thousand  years.  There  is  a  strong  con- 
servative trend  in  human  nature  which  resists  sudden  change. 
The  old  does  not  disappear  when  the  new  emerges,  but  survives 
a  long  time  and  co-exists  with  the  new  before  it  gives  place  to  it— 
if  it  ever  yields  to  it  entirely.  Magical  rites  existed  side  by  side 
with  religious  ones;  belief  in  spells  and  sorcery  at  the  same  time 
as  worship  of  the  gods.  The  texts  of  the  oldest  Babylonian,  Egyp- 
tian, and  Greek  hymns  and  prayers  prove  that  there  were  mixed 
forms  of  both  systems  of  thought,  magico-religious  concepts.* 
The  fact  that  there  is  a  tendency  to  retain  the  previous  form  or  to 
revert  to  it  does  not  deny  that  there  are  fundamental  differences 
of  attitude  in  magic  and  religion.  Magic  involves  an  attitude  of 
compulsion  and  coercion;  religion  an  attitude  of  dependence  and 
humility.  In  magic  the  medicine  man  or  the  average  tribesman 
performs  an  act  by  which  he,  in  his  imagination,  controls  or  sets 
in  motion  the  events  he  wills.  In  religion  the  worshiper  has  re- 
nounced this  sovereign  attitude  and  submits  to  the  supremacy 
of  God  or  of  several  divine  beings.  Although  the  existence  of 
magico-religious  rites  cannot  be  disavowed,  "the  apprehension  of 
a  qualitative  difference  must  be  taken  as  primary  and  funda- 
mental."** 
The  qualitative  difference  between  magic  and  religion  is  best 

*  M.  Jastrow  (Die  Religion  Babyloniens  und  Assyriens.  Giessen,  1905-1912) 
shows  in  his  collection  of  hymns  how  prayer  grew  out  of  spells.  H.  Oldenberg 
(Religion  der  Veda.  Berlin  1917)  presents  an  analysis  of  the  relation  of  prayer 
and  spells  in  India.  J.  Goldzieher  (Zauberelemente  im  islaraitischen  Gebet 
Orientalische  Studien  Theodor  Noldeke  zum  70.  Geburtstag  gewidmet.  Gies- 
sen 1906  I.  3035.)  discovers  in  the  formulas  and  ritualistic  gestures  of  Mo- 
hamedan  prayer  remnants  of  magical  rituals.  A.  I.  Wensinck  (Animismus  und 
Damonenglauben  im  Untergrund  des  jiidischen  und  islamitischen  Gebets.  Der 
Islam  1913,  sigff*)  does  the  same  with  late  Jewish  prayers.  R,  R.  Marett 
(From  Spell  to  Prayer  in  The  Threshold  of  Religion.  London  1914,  p.  29  ff.) 
sfiows  how  prayer  originates  in  magic;  similarly  L.  R.  Farnell  (The  Evolution 
of  Religion,  London,  1907,  p.  16  if.)  F.  B.  Jevons  (The  Idea  of  God  in  Early 
Religion.  Cambridge  1911.  108  f.)  maintains  that  prayer  and  spell  were  origi- 
nally one  thing  and  became  differentiated  later  on. 

**  Stanley  A.  Cook  in  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  and  Ethica.  X,  615. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  557 

characterized  by  contrasting  the  attitude  of  the  magician  who  per- 
forms a  spell  with  that  of  a  religious  man  who  prays  for  rain.  The 
first  attitude  is  expressed  in  the  words:  "My  will  be  done";  the 
second  by  the  sentence:  "Thy  will  be  done."  Magic  endeavors  to 
influence  the  course  of  events  by  means  of  rites  without  inter- 
vention of  divine  beings.  It  is  coercive.  In  religion  man  tries  to 
cultivate  the  good  will  of  gods  by  means  of  hymns  and  sacrifice, 
and  so  to  induce  them  to  bestow  the  benefits  which  man  desires. 
Prayer  is  pleading  and  persuasive.  In  magic  man  is  master  of  his 
destiny;  in  religion  he  has  submitted  to  God  and  entrusts  his  fate 
to  Him.  No  transition  phase  seemed  possible  between  the  two 
attitudes.  No  bridge  could,  it  seemed,  lead  from  "My  will  be 
done"  to  "Thy  will  be  done."  The  second  concept  was  apparently 
a  reversal  of  the  first.  Even  if  you  assumed  that  there  must  have 
been  an  intermediary  phase,  what  could  have  been  its  character? 
It  was  obvious  that  many  magical  features  survived  in  religion.  It 
is  a  long  way  from  the  Malay  charm  in  which  the  tribesman  treats 
the  soil,  saying:* 

It  is  not  earth  that  I  switch 
But  the  heart  of  So  and  So. 

to  the  man  who  desires  to  bring  sickness  or  death  upon  an  enemy, 
and  says: 

Lo,  I  am  burying  the  corpse  of  So  and  So. 

If  you  do  not  make  him  sick,  if  you  do  not  kill  him, 

You  shall  be  a  rebel  against  Muhamed. 

Here  magic  has  already  passed  into  the  category  of  prayer. 

It  was,  of  course,  easy  to  assume  that  in  his  urge  to  control 
nature  and  the  course  of  events  himself,  man  learned  to  influence 
the  Deity  in  his  prayer  to  the  extent  that  his  wishes  were  fulfilled. 
The  transition  from  magic  to  religion  would  thus  be  made  by  a 
phase  which  could  be  expressed  by  the  formula:  "My  will  be 
done  with  Your  help."  But  the  key  problem  is  not  solved  by  such 
a  concept.  The  gap  between  spell  and  prayer  was  still  too  wide. 
None  of  the  theories  presented  could  fill  it.  The  question  seemed 
unanswerable. 

*  W.  W.  Skeat,  Malay  Magic  (London,  1900),  pp.  569-71, 


558  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 


After  I  had  decided  to  leave  the  problem  alone  because  it  was 
too  difficult  for  me,  I  turned  my  curiosity  to  other  questions.  But 
the  problem  did  not  release  me.  It  crept  up  on  me  or  set  traps 
for  me  along  my  way.  It  emerged  surprisingly  at  other  points  of 
my  research  work.  It  did  not  appear  in  its  previous  form  of  a 
general  question  contrasting  the  principles  of  religion  and  magic, 
but  in  a  more  specialized  shape.  It  came  up  unexpectedly,  and 
not,  as  before,  as  a  theoretical  problem,  and  not  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  study  of  religion,  but  directly  out  of  various  ex- 
periences. Such  re-emergence  can  be  compared  with  a  common  ex- 
perience: You  have  been  introduced  to  a  man  at  a  cocktail  party, 
and  a  few  days  later  you  run  into  him  on  your  way  to  the  office. 
You  see  him  again  when  you  go  to  lunch,  and  catch  sight  of  him 
again  when  you  leave  your  office  in  the  late  afternoon.  It  seems 
that  this  must  be  more  than  coincidence. 

The  impressions  leading  back  to  the  problem  came  from  two 
areas  which  were  as  remote  from  each  other  and  had  as  little 
communication  with  each  other  as  two  planets.  The  first  kind  of 
impression,  received  on  various  occasions  in  the  course  of  the 
following  years,  originated  in  psychoanalytic  practice. 

The  instances  of  prayer  remembered  by  neurotic  persons  in 
analytic  sessions  are  not  very  different  from  those  of  other  per- 
sons. The  differences  we  observe  are  such  as  develop  from  neurotic 
symptoms,  or  from  the  interference  of  aggressive,  hostne,  or 
sexual  impulses.  A  patient  remembers,  for  instance,  that  when  he 
prayed  as  a  boy  that  a  member  of  his  family  should  have  a  long, 
healthy  life,  he  had  to  add  "here  on  earth,"  because  he  was  sud- 
denly attacked  by  the  thought  that  God  might  misunderstand  and 
give  eternal  life  to  that  person.  In  the  case  of  a  patient  who  grew 
up  as  a  practicing  Catholic,  sexual  thoughts  often  disturbed  the 
smooth  flow  of  his  prayers.  He  had,  for  instance,  to  think  that 
the  word  "ejaculation/'  used  for  short,  spontaneous  prayer  ex- 
clamations, referred  also  to  sexual  discharge.  When  he  once 
prayed  before  the  statue  of  the  Holy  Virgin,  the  thought  oc- 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          559 

curred  to  him  that  her  legs  had  nqt  always  been  together,  thus 
expressing  the  blasphemous  idea  that  she  had  sexual  intercourse. 
Some  patients  remembered  that  they  had  sometimes  experienced 
an  inability  to  pray,  that  emotional  dryness  ("secheresse  du 
coeur")  about  which  St.  Teresa  di  Jesus  complained. 

The  symptomatology  of  neuroses,  especially  of  the  obsessional 
neuroses,  is  full  of  magical  thinking,  but  here  I  am  choosing  ex- 
amples not  of  irrational  thoughts,  but  of  magical  rites  performed 
by  persons  consciously  opposed  to  any  superstition.  A  young  girl 
who  is  a  college  student  has  many  difficulties  in  keeping  the  con- 
tent of  textbooks  in  her  memory.  When  she  gets  tired  of  reading 
and  studying,  she  puts  the  book  under  her  pillow.  Although  her 
intelligence  contradicts  this  superstition,  she  still  believes  that  she 
remembers  the  material  she  has  to  study  by  sleeping  with  the 
book.  This  belief  in  mental  osmosis  leads  to  the  performance  of 
the  magical  ritual,  to  the  practice  of  "contagious  magic/*  as 
Frazer  would  call  it,  by  a  modern,  free-thinking  girl. 

Here  is  another  case  of  magical  acts,  this  time  in  a  negative 
form.  A  young  man  who  has  many  difficulties  in  social  intercourse 
with  women  and  shows  distinct  paranoid  characteristics  told  me 
that  he  had  received  a  package  of  cookies  from  a  girl  and  ex- 
plained why  he  had  immediately  sent  it  back  to  her.  He  had 
made  the  acquaintance  of  this  girl  in  L.  where  he  had  worked  as 
an  engineer  for  several  months.  He  had  sexual  intercourse  with 
her  and  suspected  that  she  had  plans  to  marry  him.  After  he  had 
left  L.  because  of  work  that  had  to  be  done  in  another  town,  the 
girl  had  written  him  several  times  and  had  sent  him  cookies  she 
had  prepared  for  him.  He  had  liked  them  in  L.  and  relished 
them  again  now,  but  eating  them  had  a  disastrous  effect.  As  soon 
as  he  had  digested  them,  he  felt,  as  he  reported  in  his  analytic 
sessions,  an  intolerable  desire  for  the  girl  and  in  the  following 
days  was  tormented  by  sexual  fantasies  in  which  he  vividly  re- 
called intimate  scenes  with  her.  At  the  same  time  he  was  afraid 
to  see  her  again  since  he  was  well  aware  that  she  had  matrimonial 
designs  he  was  unwilling  to  fulfill.  The  well-educated  man  first 
playfully,  but  later  seriously,  assumed  that  the  girl  had  "be- 
witched" him  with  the  cookies,  that  she  had  put  some  mysterious 
ingredients  into  them  which  aroused  that  extraordinary  desire 


560  THE  SEARCH    WITHIN 

in  him  which  he  had  never  felt  before.  He  pointed  out  to  me 
that  certain  aphrodisiacal  drugs  and  hormones  could  well  be 
mixed  with  the  other  food  and  began  to  study  the  properties  of 
those  materials  in  scientific  books.  His  conviction  that  the  girl 
had  used  love  magic  to  arouse  his  desire  for  her  was  essentially 
the  same  as  that  of  ancient  and  half-civilized  people  who  believe 
in  love  charms.  Here,  thus,  was  a  modern  variation  of  the  theme 
of  the  potion  which  made  Tristan  and  Isolde  bound  to  each 
other  by  an  imperishable  love.  Putting  a  book  under  a  pillow 
and  returning  a  parcel  of  cookies  are  magical  performances  which 
prove  that  these  persons  believe  in  a  mystical  power  emanating 
from  themselves  and  others.  That  conviction  is,  in  both  cases, 
connected  with  material  objects.  But  this  is  not  important  be- 
cause in  other  cases  magical  words  or  even  gestures  without  words 
are  supposed  to  direct  the  course  of  events. 

These  cases  are  now  to  be  contrasted  with  others  in  which 
neurotic  symptoms  appear  garbed  in  a  form  between  magic  and 
prayer.  Here  are  two  representative  examples:  A  patient  who 
suffered  from  a  serious  obsessional  neurosis  recounted  an  experi- 
ence in  which  he  mastered  a  severe  attack  of  his  compulsive  inhi- 
bitions. One  evening  he  found  himself  unable  to  pass  a  lamp- 
post in  a  lonely  street,  because  to  go  on  the  right  side  meant  in 
his  obsessional  thinking  that  his  father  would  soon  die,  while  to 
pass  on  the  left  meant  that  he  himself  would  die.  Shocked  by  the 
assault  of  those  sinister  thought-conceptions  he  stayed  at  the 
lamppost  for  a  long  time  unable  to  move  one  way  or  the  other. 
Leaning  on  the  post,  he  sighed  and  moaned,  "O  God!  O  God!" 
Only  when  he  finally  said,  "Why  have  You  forsaken  me?"  did  he 
become  aware  that  he,  transfixed  on  the  lamppost,  had  stretched 
out  his  arms  as  if  he  were  being  crucified  like  Christ  on  the  cross. 
One  moment  later  he  felt  he  was  released  from  his  obsessional 
detention  and  could  walk  on. 

A  patient,  educated  in  an  orthodox  Jewish  milieu,  reported 
the  following  memory  from  his  childhood:  According  to  tradition 
the  destiny  of  men  in  the  following  year  is  determined  in  heaven 
on  New  Year's  Day  (Rosh  Hashana).  Once  the  two  older  brothers 
of  the  patient,  who  was  then  not  yet  six  years  old,  play-acted  the 
scene  which  in  their  imagination  took  place  in  heaven  on  this 


ADVENTURES  IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          561 

holiday.  They  predicted  which  relatives  and  acquaintances  of  the 
family  would  die  in  the  year  just  beginning,  and  in  so  doing 
they  carefully  considered  the  age  and  state  of  health  of  the 
people  in  question.  The  youngest  brother,  listening  to  their  de- 
cisions, suddenly  interrupted  them  with  the  words,  "Why  don't 
you  make  Aunt  Fanny  die?"  The  two  brothers  broke  into  laugh- 
ter when  the  little  boy  expressed  his  dissatisfaction  at  their  having 
excluded  the  aunt  he  did  not  like.  Here  is  certainly  a  magical  per- 
formance within  the  framework  of  religious  tradition.  As  in  the 
previous  instance,  the  identification  with  the  Deity— there  in  the 
Crucifixion,  here  in  usurpation  of  the  function  of  Supreme  Judge 
—is  the  determining  factor  in  those  performances  which  belongs 
to  a  transition  phase  from  magic  to  religion.  God  is  absent  in  the 
examples  mentioned  before. 

These  clinical  experiences  were  complemented  by  another  set 
of  impressions  which  also  led  me  back  to  that  problem  of  the 
relation  of  religion  to  magic.  Those  impressions  came  from  old 
experiences  to  which  I  sometimes  returned  in  my  thoughts.  On  a 
walk  in  Vienna  I  once  entered  a  Catholic  church  at  the  begin- 
ning of  a  Mass.  I  had  been  in  churches  before,  but  this  was  the 
first  time  I  had  attended  a  High  Mass.  From  my  studies  of  ritual 
I  had  no  more  than  a  superficial  knowledge  of  the  significance  o£ 
the  service  and  of  the  prayers  of  the  Eucharist.  I  had  missed  the 
Introit,  but  I  followed  attentively  all  the  parts  of  the  holy  action 
until  the  end,  very  much  aware  of  all  the  postures  and  gestures  of 
the  priest  and  of  the  congregation.  While  I  thus  observed  the 
course  of  the  Mass,  I  suddenly  had  a  most  extraordinary  sensa- 
tion. I  would  unhesitatingly  call  it  uncanny  if  there  were  not 
certain  nuances  and  shades  which  qualify  that  feeling.  In  one 
sense  the  uncanny  has  the  character  of  something  mysterious  or 
fateful,  bordering  that  of  the  unearthly  or  weird;  in  another  that 
of  odd,  fantastic,  or  queer,  the  tone  of  the  timid  or  even  of  the 
anxious.  In  this  particular  case  neither  anxiety  nor  awe  was  felt, 
but  the  sensation  was  close  to  that  feeling  experienced  when 
something  long-forgotten,  a  buried  memory,  reawakens.  I  tried 
to  define  the  character  of  this  sensation  or  to  recognize  its  con- 
tent as  precisely  as  I  could  after  leaving  the  church.  It  was  for  a 
second  as  if  I  had  attended  the  ritual  of  a  very  ancient  people, 


562  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

for  instance,  of  the  Sumerians  or  Egyptians  more  than  four  thou- 
sand years  before  Christ,  the  bloody  ritual  of  the  Aztecs  or  of  a 
cannibalistic  tribe  of  Southeast  Australia.  The  uncanny  feeling 
had  lasted  only  a  moment,  and  was  acutely  experienced  at  the 
Consecration  when  the  substance  of  the  bread  is  changed  into 
the  body  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  substance  of  the  wine  becomes 
His  blood. 

When  much  later  Freud's  paper  on  the  uncanny  appeared—the 
author  mentioned  in  a  footnote  the  insignificant  assistance  I 
could  render— I  understood  that  the  sensation  of  uncanniness  in- 
dicated a  relapse  into  mental  habits  I  had  consciously  outgrown, 
a  reaction  to  the  emergence  of  old,  repressed  beliefs.  Later  on  I 
had  learned  by  self-observation  that,  in  my  case,  an  uncanny  feel- 
ing sometimes  heralded  the  emergence  of  a  new  psychoanalytic 
insight  in  the  field  of  prehistoric  civilization,  but  nothing  of  this 
kind  followed  that  moment  of  uncanniness  on  this  occasion. 

When  on  several  occasions  I  attended  services  of  the  Catholics, 
Protestants,  and  Jews,  in  the  following  years,  I  tried  in  vain  to 
re-experience  that  puzzling  feeling.  (Once  I  had  been  present  at  a 
Mohammedan  service  in  the  Balkans  during  the  war.)  I  did  not 
succeed  in  reliving  that  sensation  until  I  accidentally  visited  a 
Jewish  service  on  the  Day  of  Atonement  (Yom  Kippur).  Passing  a 
synagogue,  curiosity  propelled  me  to  enter.  I  had  not  been  in  a 
synagogue  on  that  highest  holiday  since  my  early  teens,  and  the 
interval  of  more  than  fifty  years  had  almost  erased  all  memories 
of  the  service,  so  that  what  I  saw  appeared  new.  A  touch  of  that 
uncanny  feeling  emerged  when  I  looked  at  the  many  men  in 
their  white  prayer  shawls  who  swayed  as  they  said  their  prayers, 
but  the  sensation  became  intensified  and  very  distinct  toward  the 
end  which  marked  the  most  significant  celebration  of  Jewish 
liturgy.  Near  its  end  the  service  reaches  the  highest  degree  of 
solemnity,  similar  to  that  of  the  High  Mass.  It  is  the  moment 
when  the  rabbi  pronounces  his  blessing  on  the  community.  He 
stands  opposite  the  congregation  and  has  drawn  his  prayer  shawl 
over  his  head.  Thus  veiled  and  almost  fully  covered,  wrapped  up 
and  cloaked,  he  spreads  his  hands  in  a  strange  gesture.  The  fourth 
and  fifth  fingers  are  spread  away  from  the  others  and  remain  in 
this  artificial  position  during  the  ceremony.  You  can  see  a  repre- 


ADVENTURES    IN    PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  563 

sentation  of  those  two  hands  spread  in  that  characteristic  gesture 
on  tombstones  of  the  Aaronites.  Strange  notions  about  the  magi- 
cal effects  of  the  priest's  blessing  are  widely  spread  among  the 
Jews.  The  people  are  supposed  to  turn  their  eyes  away  from  the 
rabbi  while  he  recites  it  and  while  he  makes  the  symbolic  gesture. 
It  is  believed  that  he  who  looks  at  the  priest  who,  spreading  his 
hands,  pronounces  "The  Lord  bless  thee.  .  .  ."  will  become  blind 
or  even  die. 

After  forty  years  I  had  again  experienced  that  uncanny  feeling 
during  a  religious  ceremony,  the  same  sensation  of  which  I  had 
been  aware  during  the  consecration  of  the  Holy  Mass.  What  did 
it  mean?  What  traits  do  the  two  ceremonies  have  in  common?  It 
was  not  difficult  to  find  an  answer. 


It  was  easiest  to  determine  where  the  uncanny  quality  of  the 
impressions  I  had  received  on  those  two  occasions  originated, 
since  Freud  had  explained  to  us  in  general  to  what  kind  of  im- 
pressions we  attribute  such  a  character:  to  those  that  seek  to  con- 
firm the  animistic  mode  of  thinking  after  we  have  reached  a  stage 
in  which  we  have  intellectually  abandoned  such  beliefs.  Such 
impressions  were  there  at  the  High  Mass  as  well  as  at  the  Atone- 
ment Day  service.  The  general  impression  was  that  I  was  present 
at  the  ritual  of  a  lost  or  long-forgotten  people  of  antiquity,  that 
I  became  witness  to  an  archaic  and  barbaric  ceremony  of  some 
savage  tribe.  The  Consecration  of  the  Mass  as  well  as  the  priest's 
blessing  mark  the  climax  of  the  service  and  its  holy  actions.  They 
have  another  feature  in  common:  in  both,  the  Divine  Presence 
is  supposed  to  be  most  acutely  felt.  When  the  priest  comes  to  the 
Consecration,  which  is  the  heart,  the  core,  and  the  soul  of  the 
Mass,  he  changes  bread  and  wine  into  the  body  and  blood  of  the 
Lord.  The  priest  assumes  the  person  of  Christ  and  uses  the  same 
ceremonies  that  Christ  used  at  His  last  supper.  "This  is  My 
Body.  .  .  .  This  is  My  Blood.  .  .  .  Drink.  ...  Do  this  in  com- 
memoration of  Me.  .  .  ."  No  one  who  knows  the  evolution  of 
religion  and  studies  the  totemistic  rites  will  deny  that  that  cere- 


564  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

mony  is  a  substitution  for  the  ancient  totem  meal,  in  which  the 
clansmen  who  eat  the  sacred  animal  together  identify  themselves 
with  their  ancestor-god  in  incorporating  him.  The  object  sacri- 
ficed is  now  worshiped  as  God.  The  ancient  totem  meal  was  re- 
vived in  the  form  of  Communion,  and  the  congregation  consumes 
the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  Lord.  The  French  use  the  expression 
manger  du  Bon  Dieu  for  Communion.  In  the  ceremony  the  priest 
is  identified  with  Him. 

The  Christian  Communion  has  absorbed  the  primitive  sacra- 
ment, the  old  feast  of  kinsmen  who  took  the  manna,  the  power  of 
an  admired  and  envied  person,  in  themselves  in  eating  the  sub- 
stance of  his  body.  The  celebration  of  the  totem  meal,  in  which 
the  tribesmen  acquire  sanctity  by  taking  into  themselves  the 
sacred  life,  is  really  a  commemoration  of  the  original  killing  of 
the  god.  Christ  is  present  not  only  in  the  person  of  the  priest 
who  speaks  His  words,  but  in  all  the  members  of  the  congrega- 
tion who  take  part  in  the  holy  action.  Eating  His  body  and  drink- 
ing His  blood  makes  them  Christ-like;  in  the  same  sense,  origi- 
nally, that  Australian  savages  believe  that  they  absorb  the  power 
and  magic  ability  of  the  missionary  whom  they  have  killed  and 
eaten.  The  unconscious  memory  of  those  cannibalistic  features 
that  continue  to  live  in  the  concealed  core  of  the  Eucharist  ex- 
plains the  emergence  of  the  uncanny  feeling.  It  was  only  later 
that  the  researches  of  Robertson,  Smith,  Frazer,  and  Freud  who 
traced  the  Christian  Communion  back  to  the  primitive  totem 
meal  came  to  mind.  What  was  decisive  for  the  uncanny  impres- 
sion was  the  suggestion  contained  in  the  Consecration  that  God  is 
really  present  in  the  sacrifice.  The  most  conspicuous  feature  of 
this  most  solemn  part  of  the  Mass  is  that  the  priest  acts  the  part 
of  Christ,  who  sacrifices  Himself.*  It  was  mainly  this  suggestion  of 

*  Nobody  who  has  attentively  followed  the  Mass  will  deny  this  character  of 
the  holy  action.  I  am  quoting  from  the  passages  in  which  the  Consecration  is 
described  by  a  Catholic  priest  (Ronald  K.nox,  The  Mass  in  Slow  Motion,  New 
York,  1948,  p.  11  of.):  "The  priest  finds  himself  .  .  .  acting  the  part  of  Jesus 
Christ,  .  .  .  But  he  is  not  content  merely  to  tell  the  story;  he  acts  it;  he  suits 
the  action  to  the  word.  When  he  says  the  words  'He  took  bread'  or  'He  took 
the  cup/  the  priest  suits  the  action  to  the  word."  The  writer  explains  further 
the  difference  of  the  activity  of  the  priest  and  of  the  acting  in  a  play:  when 
you  act  you  pretend  that  somebody-for  instance,  Hamlet  or  Macbeth— who 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  565 

the  Real  Presence  of  God,  whose  body  is  eaten  and  whose  blood 
is  drunk  before  our  eyes,  which  is  responsible  for  the  impression 
that  I  was  attending  the  ritual  of  a  prehistoric  people  or  of  primi- 
tive Australian  tribes. 

This  quickly  passing  impression  was  not  revived  until  many 
years  later  when  I  saw  part  of  the  Jewish  Atonement  Day  service. 
Why  did  the  same  impression  arrive  at  that  time?  Why  did  the 
uncanny  feeling  emerge  at  the  priest's  blessing?  Is  the  archaic 
character  of  the  ceremony  enough  to  explain  that  strange  sensa- 
tion? Certainly  not;  there  must  have  been  some  specific  features 
reviving  the  childhood  belief  that  God  was  present  in  the  syna- 
gogue. And  there  are  such  features;  they  are  not  as  outspoken,  but 
they  are  as  eloquent  as  those  at  the  Mass.  Only  during  the  liturgy 
the  tabooed  name  of  Jahweh  was  once  pronounced.  The  rabbi, 
covered  with  the  prayer  shawl,  acts  the  part  of  the  deity.  Is  not 
the  prohibition  to  look  at  him  while  he  speaks  the  priest's  bless- 
ing another  form  of  the  biblical  prohibition  to  look  at  Jahweh? 
And  which  God  is  it  who  is  present  at  that  solemn  moment?  The 
rabbi  garbed  in  the  cloth  made  of  the  hide  of  the  totem  animal 
makes  that  strange  gesture  of  both  his  hands.  The  position  of  his 
spread  fingers  imitates  the  cloven-footed  animal  that  was  once 
worshiped  by  the  Israelite  tribes.  The  prayer  shawl  is  a  substitute 
for  the  ram's  hide,  the  artificial  gesture  of  the  hands  is  an  imi- 
tation of  the  ram's  hoofs—no  doubt,  God  is  present  in  the  cere- 
mony: the  prehistoric  god  in  its  original,  totemistic  shape.  The 
magic  and  mimic  performance  of  the  rabbi  proves  that  the  priest 
took  the  part  of  this  primitive  god.** 

Those  most  solemn  portions  of  the  Catholic  and  Jewish  liturgy 
contributed  the  main  impressions  of  a  prehistoric  ritual,  but 
there  were  others,  so  to  speak,  at  the  fringes  of  rny  observation, 
although  scarcely  perceived  at  the  moment,  which  introduced  and 
intensified  that  odd  sensation.  Gestures,  movements,  and  positions 

isn't  there  is  really  present.  "But  the  priest,  in  this  interval  of  drama,  doesn't 
pretend  that  somebody  is  there  who  isn't  there.  Jesus  Christ  is  really  there. 
...  He  is  really  there,  not  merely  in  the  sacred  Host,  but  also  in  the  person 
of  the  priest.  .  .  .  The  priest  has  become  a  kind  of  dummy  through  \vhich> 
here  and  now,  Jesus  Christ  is  consecrating  the  Sacrament,  just  as  He  did,  but 
in  His  own  person,  nineteen  hundred  years  ago." 
**  Compare  Karl  Abraham,  Der  Versohnungstag,  Imago  (June,  1920). 


566  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

suddenly  appeared  strange,  although  I  had  seen  them  often 
before  and  had  taken  them  for  granted. 

Two  of  them  were  focused  as  distinctly  auxiliary  factors  in  the 
genesis  of  the  uncanny  feeling:  the  one  was  the  sign  of  the  cross, 
so  often  made  during  the  Mass,  and  the  other  was  the  swaying  of 
the  praying  people  during  the  Jewish  service.  Crossing  oneself  is 
obviously  the  expression  of  the  Christian's  identification  with  the 
Lord  and  later  became  the  symbol  of  the  Divine  Victim.  The 
cross  is  only  the  visible  sign  of  this  closest  association,  according 
to  the  words  of  Paul:  "I  am  crucified  with  Christ;  nevertheless  I 
live;  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me"  (Gal.  2:20).  The  swaying 
of  the  body  during  prayer  has  been  explained  as  the  expression 
of  religious  trance  or  ecstasy.  Shortly  after  leaving  the  synagogue, 
it  occurred  to  me  that  the  swaying  is  the  last  remnant  of  the 
original  ritual  dancing  in  which  primitive  nations  imitate  the 
movements  of  their  totem  animals.  My  thoughts  went  from  there 
to  the  dancing  of  David  before  the  Ark,  to  the  jumping  of  the 
Jews  during  the  Esre  prayer,  and  to  the  religious  dancing  of  the 
Hasidim,  to  the  pantomimic  dances  of  the  natives  of  Northwest 
America  and  of  the  Arunta  and  other  tribes  of  Australia.  These 
thoughts  were  the  only  theoretical  result  of  my  attending  the 
service  in  the  synagogue.  That  result  was  poor  enough,  but  it 
became  the  point  of  departure  for  far-reaching  considerations 
about  gestures  in  magic  and  religion  much  later. 

In  some  cases  presented  in  preceding  chapters  the  emergence  of 
uncanny  feelings  heralded  the  occurrence  of  new  analytic  insights 
and  even  of  discoveries.  This  was  not  the  case  in  these  instances. 
The  impressions  received  at  the  Catholic  and  Jewish  services  had 
m^de  me  wonder,  but  they  did  not  lead  to  any  new  insights. 


My  daughter  Theodora,  recently  graduated  from  Benning- 
ton  College,  once  asserted  that  I  am  "intelligent  in  a  dull 
way."  From  the  preceding  conversation,  it  could  not  be  clearly 
concluded  whether  she  meant  that  I  lack  the  spark  that  gives 
light  or  whether  I  am  slow  on  the  uptake.  In  the  case  here 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          567 

sketched,  she  would  have  been  right  in  both  directions.  Not  the 
slightest  notion  occurred  to  me  that  the  impressions  received  on 
both  occasions  could  cast  some  light  on  the  problem  that  had 
preoccupied  my  thoughts  in  my  younger  years.  I  did  not  connect 
those  impressions  in  any  way  with  that  unanswered  question  of  a 
transition  phase  from  magic  to  religion.  Yet  there  was  some  cir- 
cumstantial evidence  pointing  in  this  direction,  there  was  a  path 
leading  back  to  that  problem,  too  early  relinquished.  The  idea 
that  there  are  certain  similarities  between  the  most  important 
parts  of  the  Eucharist  and  the  Atonement  Day  service  remained 
isolated  and  disconnected.  I  remained  content  with  the  recogni- 
tion that  in  both  liturgies  God  is  supposed  to  be  present  at  the 
altar  and  that  the  priest  acts  the  part  of  the  Deity,  that  he  (and  with 
him,  of  course,  the  religious  community)  is  identified  with  Him. 
Similarly,  the  significance  of  the  gestures  and  postures  of  prayer, 
which  I  had  unconsciously  recognized,  was  not  followed  up  in  my 
thoughts.  The  situation  can  well  be  compared  with  that  of  a 
paleontologist  who  has  been  very  interested  in  a  certain  dinosaur 
and  who,  when  much  later  he  finds  footprints  of  an  extinct  gi- 
gantic reptile  in  a  part  of  Central  Australia,  is  too  indolent  to 
pursue  those  traces  further  until  he  discovers  bones  of  the  pre- 
historic beast.  Some  new  impressions  had  to  be  received  to  revive 
the  old  ones,  and  it  took  a  coincidence  of  certain  circumstances 
to  lead  me  back  to  the  unsolved  problem. 

On  one  occasion  I  visited  a  family  I  had  known  for  some  years, 
and  had  a  chance  to  observe  the  couple's  three-year-old  child.  The 
boy  played  by  himself  and  obviously  did  not  pay  much  attention 
to  the  grownups  in  the  room.  He  was  pretending  that  he  was  an 
engine,  and  with  his  arms  and  legs  made  the  appropriate  move- 
ments and  imitated  the  different  noises  an  engine  makes  in  run- 
ning and  in  arriving  at  a  station.  He  then  changed  the  object  of 
his  imitation  and  moved  slowly  around,  opening  his  eyes  wide 
and  then  closing  them  for  some  time.  When  he  had  revolved  In 
this  strange  manner  for  a  while,  his  mother  asked  him  who  he 
was,  and  he  answered,  "A  lighthouse/'  Later  on  he  acted  out  the 
part  of  a  tiger  with  suitable  jumps  and  spitting.  I  was  told  that  he 
also  acted  the  part  of  a  policeman  when  he  got  a  whistle,  walked 
seriously  and  gravely  around  on  his  beat  and  pursued  imaginary 


568  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

criminals.  I  looked  smilingly  at  the  little  boy,  engrossed  in  his 
play  which  was  for  him  not  acting,  but  real  life.  While  he  identi- 
fied with  a  steam-roller  or  an  animal,  he  was  a  steam-roller  or 
that  animal.  He  did  not  act  them.  Only  at  a  later  period  the  boy, 
after  being  transformed  into  a  terrifying  animal  or  an  admired 
person  in  his  play,  sometimes  said,  "But  I  am  really  Peter  Smith." 
Thus  distancing  himself  from  the  object  of  his  metamorphosis, 
he  began  to  "act"  a  part  instead  of  "being"  that  object.  In  a  few 
years  he  will,  we  can  be  sure,  have  forgotten  that  he  "was"  an  old 
watertank  or  an  elephant,  and  will,  if  reminded  of  those  games, 
either  be  ashamed  of  them  or  disavow  that  they  ever  existed.  But 
what  will  happen  to  those  wishes—they  were  obviously  wishes— 
which  were  fulfilled  in  his  vivid  imagination  when  he  was  trans- 
formed into  various  beings  whose  power  he  coveted  or  of  whom 
he  was  afraid?  They  will  be  replaced  by  others—for  instance,  by  the 
desire  to  become  an  engine  driver  or  a  prize  fighter  when  he  is 
grown  up.  By  this  time  perhaps  he  has  already  reached  the  age 
when  he  has  been  told  about  God  and  been  taught  to  pray. 
Maybe  he  now  asks  God  to  make  him  an  excellent  boxer. 

Such  thoughts,  stimulated  by  looking  at  the  boy  playing,  led 
to  all  kinds  of  scientific  daydreams  out  of  which  emerged  the 
picture  of  a  theory,  a  shadowy  picture  sharply  focused  only  at  its 
edges.  The  games  of  the  child  were  magical  in  their  character. 
They  were  the  individual  counterpart  of  the  magic  performances 
which  ancient  peoples  and  savage  tribes  produced  in  their  rituals. 
The  boy  was  transformed  into  a  steam-roller  or  a  tiger  by  an  act 
of  his  will,  by  the  omnipotence  of  his  thought.  The  magical 
ceremony  performed  by  self-produced  noises  and  gestures  is  not 
only  the  means  by  which  the  metamorphosis  is  achieved,  but  also 
its  result.  It  already  follows  the  fulfillment  of  the  wish  to  change 
into  that  object,  a  wish  that  was  first  realized  in  simple  fantasy 
by  way  of  "delusion,"  if  you  can  use  a  psychiatric  term  in  this 
case.  If  there  was  an  age  of  magic  in  the  prehistoric  development 
of  mankind,  the  imagined  realization  of  the  wish  must  also  have 
preceded  the  magical  rite. 

In  his  play  the  boy  does  not  differentiate  between  the  kingdom 
of  plants,  of  animals,  and  of  men.  He  can  as  easily  change  into  a 
lighthouse  as  into  a  policeman.  This  is  quite  as  true  of  the  primi- 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  569 

tive  mind  which  ignores  the  boundaries  between  different  areas  of 
beings,  all  animated  and  tied  together  by  the  "solidarity  of  life," 
as  Ernst  Cassirer  called  it.*  The  objects  the  little  boy  imitates— 
better,  which  he  becomes— in  his  games  are  obviously  such  as  he 
desires  to  be.  In  this  direction  his  games  reminded  me  of  the  con- 
cept of  totemism,  a  mode  of  thought  that  governs  the  whole  re- 
ligious and  social  life  of  the  most  primitive  tribes  we  know,  and 
which  left  deep  traces  in  the  religion  of  advanced  culture.  In  the 
totemistic  system,  the  aboriginal  Australian  tribes  derive  their 
origin  from  a  certain  animal,  plant,  or  stone  and  identify  them- 
selves with  this  worshiped  object.  Their  identity  with  it  is  not 
conceived  as  symbolic,  but  as  real:  the  ethnologist  Karl  von 
Steinen  reports  that  a  certain  Indian  totemistic  clan  stated  that 
they  are  aquatic  animals  or  red  parrots.**  The  Dieri  tribe  in 
Australia  have  a  totem  consisting  of  a  certain  sort  of  seed:  the 
head  man  of  the  tribe  is  spoken  of  as  being  the  plant  itself.f 
Totemism  is  not  only  a  social  system  in  which  the  tribe  traces  its 
descent  back  to  a  certain  animal  to  which  it  is  tied  by  an  in- 
destructible bond,  but  also  the  oldest  and  most  primitive  form  of 
religion.  The  clansmen  worship  the  particular  species  of  animal 
whom  they  consider  their  ancestors,  and  renew  their  unity  with 
them  in  totemistic  rites  in  which  they  imitate  the  animals  by 
dressing  in  their  hides  and  by  moving  in  the  same  way.  The  little 
boy  who  pretended  he  was  a  tiger  behaved  exactly  like  an  African 
tribesman  whose  totem  is  the  tiger.  God  acquired,  in  later  re- 
ligious development,  a  human,  mostly  terrifying  shape,  he  be- 
came anthropomorphic.  There  is  even  a  duplicate  of  this  stage  in 
the  pretending  of  the  little  boy  when  he  identified  with  a  police- 
man, a  feared  and  admired  human  being  who  is  as  close  to  the 
concept  of  a  godlike  power  as  a  little  boy-and  not  only  a  little 
boy— can  reach.  When,  much  later,  he  learns  from  his  mother,  his 
teacher  in  school,  and  finally  in  church  of  the  existence  of  God, 
he  will  already  have  advanced  to  a  phase  of  evolution  in  which 
he  will  expect  the  fulfillment  of  his  wishes  by  Christ.  He  has  in 
his  individual  life  traveled  the  way  from  magic  to  religion,  from 

*  An  Essay  on  Man  (New  York,  1944),  p.  109. 

**  Unter  den  Ndturvolkern  Zentral-Brasiliens  (Berlin,  1897),  p.  307. 

fFrazer,  Lectures  on  the  Early  History  of  Kinship  (London,  1905),  p.  109. 


570  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

spell  to  prayer,  the  same  distance  which  mankind  has  gone  in 
many  thousand  years. 

A  few  days  after  I  had  visited  that  family  and  had  been  witness 
of  the  boy's  pretendings,  I  was  reminded  of  his  imitating  differ- 
ent objects  when  I  read  the  Essay  on  Man  in  which  the  noted  Ger- 
man philosopher  Ernst  Cassirer,  who  taught  at  Yale  and  Colum- 
bia until  his  death  in  1945,  presented  an  introduction  to  a  phi- 
losophy of  human  culture.  One  of  the  chapters  of  the  book  on 
"Myth  and  Religion"  brought  my  thoughts  back  to  the  relation 
between  magic  and  religion  which  is  in  Cassirer's  words  "one  of 
the  most  obscure  and  most  controversial  subjects/'  It  annoyed  me 
that  the  philosopher  in  this  chapter  somewhat  haughtily  dismisses 
the  principle  of  the  "omnipotence  of  thought"  by  which  Freud 
explains  the  psychic  dynamics  of  magic.  Absorbed  in  his  highly 
abstract  speculations,  some  of  which  are  undoubtedly  very  pro- 
found, the  philosopher,  who  has  no  clinical  experience  of  psy- 
choanalysis, can  afford  to  ignore  the  method  by  which  depth- 
psychology  reached  its  results.  I  then  thought  of  the  games  of 
little  Peter.  If  Cassirer  could  have  observed  that  performance, 
which  was  magical  in  its  character,  he  would  have  better  under- 
stood why  Freud  spoke  of  the  "omnipotence  of  thought"  as  the 
principle  of  magic. 

At  the  same  time  I  remembered  another  book  in  German  by 
the  same  author,  which  I  had  read  many  years  before  and  which 
dealt  with  the  philosophy  of  symbolic  forms.*  Cassirer  calls 
gestures  reproductions  of  the  inward  in  the  outward,  and  presents 
a  theory  of  the  sign  language  whose  forms  he  recognizes  as  imi- 
tative. The  memory  of  that  earlier  book  paved  the  way  back  to 
earlier  thoughts  about  the  concealed  significance  of  gestures, 
thoughts  that  had  occurred  to  me  after  that  visit  to  the  synagogue 
and  after  observing  the  strange  position  of  the  rabbi's  hands  at 
the  blessing.  I  had  thus  returned  to  the  old  problem  of  the  rela- 
tion of  religion  and  magic,  and  again  turned  my  full  attention  to 
its  possible  solution. 

It  is  easily  recognized  that  the  way  to  the  solution  of  the  prob- 

*  In  three  volumes  (Berlin,  1923-1929).  The  translation  of  the  first  volume  of 
the  Philosophy  of  Symbolic  Forms  was  published  in  1954  by  the  Yale  Univer- 
sity Press. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          571 

lem  was  not  smooth.  All  the  various  impressions  I  had  received  on 
different  occasions,  separated  by  long  intervals,  all  the  frag- 
mentary and  disconnected  thoughts  stimulated  by  them,  were, 
so  to  speak,  tossed  into  a  mental  pot.  When  I  later  saw  what  it 
boiled  down  to,  I  was  astonished  to  find  that  it  was  a  full  theory 
of  the  transition  phase  from  magic  to  religion.  This  theory  sur- 
prisingly emerged  as  the  result  of  the  process  of  unconscious  elab- 
oration, as  a  concept  that  owed  its  existence  to  the  confluence  of 
several  rivers  of  thought.  It  was  astonishing  to  realize  that  certain 
thoughts,  as  it  were,  attracted  others  and  merged  with  them,  that 
there  was  an  affinity  between  them  and  that  an  unconscious  order 
controlled  their  movements.  The  space  of  our  thought-processes 
seems  to  be  infinite  and  chaotic.  In  reality  it  is  finite  and  is  con- 
trolled by  invisible  forces.  The  old  cliche  can  also  be  used  for  the 
cosmos  of  ideas:  It's  a  small  world. 


When  we  imagine  Truth  as  one  of  the  symbolic  figures  which, 
as  Justice  and  Virtue,  appear  in  pictures  or  sculpture  a  theory 
would  correspond  to  her  dress,  and  a  person  who  formulates  a 
theory  could  be  compared  to  a  dress  designer.  He  designs  a  dress 
which  will  be  exactly  right  for  this  particular  lady,  will  be  ideally 
suited  to  her  figure  and  personality.  The  dress  designer  creates 
the  best  style,  but  he  works  in  his  imagination  drawing  the  pat- 
tern. The  dressmaker  follows  the  designer's  plan  working  directly 
with  the  material,  and  fits  it  to  the  lady  herself.  During  the  fitting 
it  will  be  necessary  to  make  allowances  for  the  real  figure  of  the 
lady,  to  make  slight  alterations,  for  instance,  with  regards  to 
measurements.  The  dressmaker  will  perhaps  lower  the  bodice  or 
let  out  the  waistline,  and  so  on.  In  other  words,  he  will  have  to 
take  into  account  more  precisely  the  realities  of  the  figure  which 
the  dress  designer  considered  in  a  more  general  way.  There  is  no 
such  thing  as  an  ideal  dress,  because  there  is  no  ideal  dress  de- 
signer or  dressmaker,  nor  are  there  measurements  exact  enough 
for  perfect  fit.  The  dress  designer  can  be  compared  to  the  theorist, 
the  dressmaker  to  the  research  worker  who  takes  the  pattern  and 


572  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

fits  it  to  the  real  facts.  It  is  unavoidable  that  during  the  fitting 
some  changes  will  have  to  be  made  before  the  dress  fits  the  figure 
of  Truth.  There  are,  to  continue  the  metaphor,  bad  and  good 
dress  designers  and  dressmakers.  There  are  trends  in  research  just 
as  there  are  fashions  in  dress  designing.  The  work  of  the  dress 
designer  is  creative  and  imaginative,  that  of  the  dressmaker  re- 
quires skill  and  labor,  has  to  be  precise  and  conscientious.  In 
scientific  research  both  processes  are  performed  by  the  same  per- 
son. The  explorer  conceives  the  theory  and  tries  to  verify  it;  he 
tests  its  value  by  investigating  the  facts. 

The  theory  of  a  transition  phase  from  magic  to  religion  had  to 
be  verified  on  the  basis  of  facts  which  the  comparative  history  of 
religions  and  anthropology  had  collected  and  described.  The 
study  of  the  following  months,  taken  up  at  the  point  where  I  had 
interrupted  it  more  than  three  decades  before,  concerned,  of 
course,  the  literature  on  the  subject,  especially  an  abundance  of 
new  books  and  articles,  but  it  could  follow  a  certain  line  through 
the  manifold  and  many-sided  material.  All  the  experiences  that 
had  made  their  contribution  to  the  formation  of  my  theory  had 
one  factor  in  common:  the  central  point  of  observation  was  the 
gestures  and  postures  in  magical  rite  and  prayer. 

When  we  think  of  spell  and  prayer  as  representative  mani- 
festations of  magic  and  religion,  we  obviously  think  of  a  word  or 
words  as  vehicles  of  their  power.  But  words,  and  especially  sen- 
tences or  formulas  as  they  appear  in  rites,  are  late  developments 
of  expression  and  communication.  The  more  you  study  the  ritual 
of  the  most  primitive  tribes  and  the  culture  of  antiquity,  the 
stronger  will  be  your  impression  that  the  word  served  as  the  eluci- 
dation of  the  action,  gesture,  and  posture.  The  language  of  the 
body  is  older  than  the  spoken  word;  it  is  the  primal  and  most 
primitive  language.  The  visible  expression  of  men  was  only  much 
later  replaced  by  the  audible.*  Scholars  agree  that  voice  language 
is  already  a  substitute  for  body  language.  Missionaries  and  an- 
thropologists who  have  lived  many  years  among  savage  tribes  state 
that  the  aborigines  of  Australia  and  Africa  express  much  more 
by  gestures  than  by  words.  For  the  nations  of  antiquity  the  exter- 

*  E.  Saglio,  Adoratio  (Paris,  1877),  p.  90. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          573 

nal  actions  of  the  ritual  were  of  greatest  importance.  A  scholar 
says  that  "they  were  religion  itself."  R.  R.  Marett  asserts*  that 
religion  "according  to  the  savage  is  essentially  something  you  do/' 
and  lays  special  stress  on  the  importance  dance  and  rhythm  had 
for  the  savage.  "Religion  pipes  to  him  and  he  dances.'*  The 
people  of  the  Mediterranean,  among  whom  civilization  made  the 
transition  from  magic  to  religion,  would,  as  M.  Jousse  says,**  "be 
without  gestures  like  birds  without  wings."  It  is  very  well  known 
that  there  are  wordless  magical  rites,  but  it  is  less  well  known 
that  there  are  prayers  that  are  pure  gestures,  for  instance  in  Japan 
and  New  Guinea,f  godless  prayers  (sine  Deum) . 

What  is  the  concept  of  the  scholars  as  to  the  origin  and  the 
meaning  of  the  different  gestures  and  postures  in  prayer,  of  those 
genuflections  and  prostrations,  processions  and  circumambiences, 
of  bendings  and  bowings,  kissings,  fondlings,  and  other  caresses, 
turning  and  knocking,  of  clasped  and  raised  hands,  and  so  on? 
Just  because  those  gestures  and  postures  are  traditional  and 
come  to  us  from  prehistoric  times,  their  interpretation  is  very 
difficult.  While  the  older  school  of  historians  of  religion  did  not 
hesitate  to  see  in  them  a  symbolization  of  the  attitude  of  the  wor- 
shiper to  God,  expressions  of  submission  and  surrender,  of  peti- 
tion and  reverence,  the  new  school  of  comparative  history  con- 
siders these  gestures  remnants  of  magical  practices  aiming  to 
secure  the  help  of  the  gods  or  to  protect  an  individual  against 
their  dangerous  power.  To  convey  an  idea  of  this  contrast,  we 
need  only  compare  the  views  of  two  representative  scholars  of 
two  schools  of  thought  on  the  same  gesture— for  instance,  about 
the  raising  of  hands  in  prayer.  The  German  historian  G. 
MeinersJ  is  of  the  opinion  that,  in  spreading  out  his  arms,  man 
tried  to  pull  down  the  gifts  that  were  slow  in  coming,  and  in 
great  emergencies  to  force  down  quick  help  from  the  gods.  Gold- 

*  Faith,  Hope  and  Charity  in  Primitive  Religion  (New  York,  1932),  p.  11. 

**  Methodologie  de  la  psychologic  du  geste;  quoted  by  Thomas  Ohm,  Die 
Gebetsgebarden  der  Volker  und  das  Christentum  (Leiden,  1948),  p.  90. 

f  Compare  books  on  the  gestures  in  prayer,  quoted  by  Thomas  Ohm  and 
Friedrich  Heiler,  Das  Gebet  (Miinchen,  1923),  p.  98-109. 

JG.  Meiners,  Allgemeine  kritische  Geschichte  der  Religionen  (Hannover, 
1806/07),  II,  272. 


574  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

zieher*  considers  the  raising  of  the  hands  in  Islamic  prayer  a 
residue  of  old  magic  gestures.  It  was  originally  a  gesture  of  curs- 
ing, and  served  as  defense  against  evil  demons. 

The  newest  trend  in  the  science  of  comparative  religion  does 
not  deny  that  the  magical  interpretation  of  various  prayer  ges- 
tures contains  correct  elements,  but  is  inclined  to  accept  the  older 
symbolic  interpretation  as  the  simpler  and  more  obvious  ex- 
planation. According  to  Friedrich  Heiler,  whose  book  on  prayer 
is  considered  a  classic  in  this  field,**  both  interpretations  neglect 
to  refer  to  the  customs  of  greeting.  Heiler  considers  the  gestures 
of  profane  salutation  the  key  to  understanding  of  prayer  gestures 
and  postures.  Most  of  them  were,  he  considers,  and  he  tries  to  prove 
his  point  by  abundant  examples,  originally  gestures  of  saluta- 
tion and  respect,  later  on  transformed  into  forms  of  petition.  In 
the  salutatory  gestures,  submission,  reverence;  and  adoration, 
many  kinds  of  Socialgefuhlen  find  expression. 

Heiler's  reconstruction  of  the  primal  prayer  gestures  as  resi- 
due of  profane  forms  of  social  intercourse,  especially  of  greetings, 
is  nowadays  accepted  by  many  theologians  and  historians.  The 
little  that  is  justified  in  it,  is,  of  course,  adaptation  of  misunder- 
stood or  not  understood,  much  older  meanings  to  social  customs 
of  a  newer  phase  of  civilization.  The  concept  represents  one  of  the 
many  superficialities  in  which  science  is  so  rich,  and  is  hopelessly 
flat  and  rationalistic 

It  is  obvious  that  the  gestures  and  postures  of  prayer  date  from 
different  times,  and  that  even  the  oldest  of  them  have  undergone 
some  changes  and  were  adjusted  to  different  environments.  Very 
few  have  kept  their  original  meaning  or,  better,  have  returned  to 
it  in  new,  transformed  shapes.  Most  of  them  are  remnants  of 
magic  gestures  by  which  man  conjures  something  up  by  repro- 
ducing it  or  protects  himself  against  something  he  is  afraid  of- 
fer instance,  evil  coming  from  sorcerers  or  demons.  We  are  cer- 
tainly not  able  to  penetrate  the  significance  of  all  these  magical 
gestures,  but  we  can  venture  to  express  some  informed  guesses 
about  the  meaning  of  quite  a  few  of  them. 

*J.  Goldzieher,  Zauber element e  im  islamischen  Gebet  (Giessen,  1006),  I, 
303  ff.  V  *^} 

**  Das  Gebet  feth  edit.;  Munich,  1923). 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          575 


Returning  to  the  various  occasions  on  which  the  first  decisive 
impressions  about  the  meaning  of  such  gestures  were  perceived 
in  my  experience,  a  survey  reveals  the  character  of  those  which 
mark  the  transition  from  magical  to  religious  performance.  You 
remember  the  instance  of  the  young  girl  who  put  the  book  she 
studied  under  her  pillow  in  order  to  remember  its  contents  on 
the  next  day.  Here  we  are  still  on  the  ground  of  pure  magic. 
Compare  the  instance  of  the  obsessional  patient  who  was  trans- 
fixed on  the  lamppost  and  was  surprised  to  find  himself  with  arms 
outstretched  as  Christ  on  His  cross.  The  gesture  and  the  words 
that  occurred  to  him  leave  no  doubt  that  the  patient  un- 
consciously identified  with  Christ.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  felt  re- 
leased by  that  union  with  the  Saviour.  Progressing  to  the  chrono- 
logically next  impression  in  the  same  sphere,  we  remember  the 
High  Mass  at  which  I  experienced  a  decidedly  uncanny  feeling 
while  looking  at  the  Consecration.  The  actions  and  gestures  of  the 
priest,  as  representative  of  the  community,  prove  that  he  is  identi- 
fied with  Christ  in  the  Sacrament.  He  not  only  speaks  the  words 
of  the  Lord,  but  renews  in  the  "breaking  of  bread"  the  "table- 
fellowship"  which  the  apostles  shared  with  Him  in  His  ministry. 
But  the  identification  with  God  goes  here  far  beyond  the  symbolic 
and  reaches  the  oldest  and  most  primitive  manner  of  becoming 
one  with  the  Deity:  God  is  eaten  by  the  community.  In  empty- 
ing the  chalice  and  in  eating  the  Host,  the  blood  and  flesh  of  the 
Saviour  are  incorporated  in  the  most  literal  sense.  Behind  the 
Eucharist  appears  the  image  of  the  primitive  totem  meal  in 
which  the  tribe  periodically  ate  the  worshiped  totem  animal  with 
whom  they  renewed  the  bond  of  consanguinity.  The  position  of 
the  fingers  when  the  priest  raises  his  hands  to  his  head  and  pro- 
nounces the  blessing  indicates  that  he  has  taken  the  part  of  the 
ram,  of  the  primitive  totem  animal  of  the  prehistoric  Israelite 
tribes.  In  the  person  of  the  priest  mimicking  and  disguising  the 
sacred  animal  that  was  God,  Jahweh  appears  before  the  descend- 
ant of  the  ancient  Hebrews  during  the  most  solemn  service,  re- 
newing the  old  covenant. 


576  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

The  congregations  in  the  church  and  synagogue  are  identified 
in  those  rituals  with  their  gods  in  the  person  of  the  priest  who 
represents  them,  but  also  by  means  of  their  own  gestures.  Did  we 
not  see  how  frequently  the  faithful  crossed  themselves  in  church? 
And  did  we  not  see  them  covered  by  their  shawls,  swaying  in 
prayer  at  the  synagogue?  Clearly,  making  the  sign  of  the  cross 
has  the  significance  of  sharing  the  fate  of  the  Divine  Victim.  In 
the  swaying  in  prayer  we  recognized  a  remnant  of  original  danc- 
ing movements,  a  last  trace  of  those  mimetic  dances  in  which 
ancient  people  and  the  savage  tribes  of  the  present  imitate  the 
totem  animals  whose  descendants  they  consider  themselves. 

When  we  now  return  to  the  last  occasion,  the  observation  of 
the  boy  who  in  his  playing  changed  into  an  engine,  a  steam- 
roller, a  tiger,  or  a  policeman,  the  circle  we  here  draw  is  closed. 
The  child  does  not  pretend  to  be  those  objects,  he  does  not  act; 
he  is,  in  his  imagination,  transformed  into  them.  In  observing  the 
boy's  behavior  the  magical  character  of  his  postures  and  gestures 
was  conspicuous.  He  sometimes  made  noises  imitating,  for  in- 
stance, a  train  leaving  the  station,  but  he  did  not  speak  except 
when  asked  by  his  mother  "who"  he  "is."  The  metamorphosis 
was  mainly  performed  by  the  omnipotence  of  movements  or  ges- 
tures. He  became  a  lighthouse  revolving  and  opening  and  closing 
his  eyes.  Here,  certainly,  is  a  magic  performance  expressed  by 
gestures  alone.  An  instance  quoted  by  Fennichel*  shows  that  the 
belief  of  children  in  the  omnipotence  of  such  gestures  is  not 
restricted  to  their  own  person:  one  child  had  the  idea  that  when 
the  conductor  closes  his  eyes,  the  train  passes  through  a  tunnel. 

Surveying  the  development  from  magical  gesture  to  the  ges- 
tures in  prayer  and  liturgy  in  general,  we  dare  to  formulate  a 
theory  bridging  the  gap  from  magical  to  religious  ritual  and 
show  the  gradual  change  in  the  emotional  attitude  expressed  in 
this  evolution.  In  magic  the  person  controls  the  course  of  events 
by  gestures  and  spells.  George  Thompson  has  concisely  written 
that  "primitive  magic  rests  on  the  principle  that  by  creating  the 
illusion  that  you  control  reality,  you  can  actually  control  it." 
When  religion  entered  the  world  of  thought,  primitive  man  did 

*  Otto  Fennicfael,  The  Psychoanalytic  Theory  of  Neurosis  (New  York,  1945), 
p,  48. 


ADVENTURES  IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  577 

not  give  up  his  belief  in  the  omnipotence  of  his  thoughts  and 
wishes.  He  was  afraid  of  the  gods  or  demons,  originally  in  the 
form  of  admired  animals  whose  power  he  wanted  to  possess.  In 
identifying  with  this  totem  animal  (and  later  with  the  god  in  his 
anthropomorphic  form),  he  had  part  in  its  strength  and  other 
coveted  qualities.  He  became  this  admired  god  originally  by  tak- 
ing him  into  his  body,  by  eating  the  totem  animal,  later  on  by 
imitating  its  appearance  and  movements,  by  disguise  and  in 
mimetic  dances.  Thus  transformed  into  God,  he  could  still  direct 
nature  and  fulfill  his  wishes  because  he  became  God.  Only  much 
later  did  he  hesitantly  make  God  his  helper,  and  try  to  bend  the 
will  of  the  Deity  in  his  favor  by  sacrifice  and  prayer.  Even  in 
this  phase  man  had  not  entirely  renounced  his  belief  in  his 
own  power.  He  himself  is  not  omnipotent  any  more,  but  power- 
ful enough  to  influence  the  god  to  whom  he  has  ceded  most  of  his 
power.  He  now  participates  in  the  god's  strength.  The  god  who  was 
once  only  feared  gradually  becomes  a  kind  and  benevolent  being 
and  an  ally.  He  was  threatening  the  person;  now  he  is  put  into 
the  service  of  his  wishes,  at  his  disposal  whenever  prayed  to. 
"Whatsoever  ye  shall  ask  in  my  name,  that  I  will  do,"  says  Christ. 
Magical  incantation  becomes  prayer.  For  a  long  time  God  still 
retains  the  shape  of  an  animal,  of  a  tiger,  an  eagle,  or  a  ram,  but 
slowly  becomes  human  and  superhuman.  He  had  already  been 
asked  to  help  and  to  assist  with  his  superior  strength  as  long  as 
he  was  an  admired  totem  animal.  The  tribesman  who  was  afraid 
of  him  did  not  hesitate  to  assume  that  he  would  come  to  the 
rescue  of  his  descendants. 

An  anecdote  Otto  Fennichel  reports*  presents  the  analogy  of 
this  attitude  in  the  mental  life  of  children.  A  mother  asked  her 
child  not  to  open  the  door  in  her  absence.  She  remembered  after 
leaving  the  house  that  she  had  forgotten  her  keys,  and  rang  the 
bell.  The  child  did  not  answer  for  a  long  time,  but  finally  he  said, 
"Go  away,  you  dirty  thief,  there  is  a  huge  lion  here."  From  peti- 
tion, from  asking  God  for  His  assistance,  from  a  childlike  trust  in 
Him  and  His  power  is  a  long  way  to  resignation  and  subjecting 
oneself  to  His  decision,  to  understanding  of  one's  own  weakness 

*  The  Psychoanalytic  Theory  of  Neurosis,  p.  481. 


578  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

and  His  might,  to  the  heights  of  Christ's  prayer:  "Father,  into  Thy 
hands  I  commend  my  spirit/'  With  such  sublime  surrender  to  the 
will  of  God,  religion  has  reached  the  peak  of  its  evolution,  a 
peak  neighbor  to  that  other  summit  on  which  an  agnostic  bends 
to  unchangeable  laws  of  nature. 

If  we  remain  aware  that  subsequent  phases  are  prepared  by 
certain  features  of  previous  development  and  that  no  sharp  de- 
marcation lines  can  be  drawn  in  primitive  civilization,  we  can 
sketch  the  evolution  from  magic  to  religion  in  the  following 
manner:  In  magic  the  person  feels:  "My  will  be  done."  In  the 
phase  of  transition,  we  discovered,  man  has  identified  with  the 
god  whose  superior  power  he  has  usurped  and  whose  strength 
he  has  arrogated  as  his  own.  Full  of  self-confidence  he  now 
claims:  "My  will  be  done  because  I  am  God."  In  the  following 
phase  man  acknowledged  his  weakness  and  helplessness  and  tried 
to  secure  the  support  of  the  Deity  whom  he  influenced  by  prayer 
and  sacrifice.  The  formula  for  this  period  can  be  stated:  "My 
will  be  done  with  God's  help/'  The  principle  of  the  last  develop- 
ment is  immortalized  by  the  final  words  of  the  Lord's  Prayer: 
"Thy  will  be  done/' 

This  characterization  of  the  change  from  magic  to  prayer  and 
its  intermediary  stages  shows  how  difficult  it  was  for  man  to 
renounce  the  belief  in  the  omnipotence  of  his  thoughts.  The 
analytic  method  enabled  us  to  bridge  the  gap  which  the  science 
of  history  of  civilization  could  not  fill.  Our  finding  of  the  missing 
link  between  primitive  magic  and  earliest  religious  beliefs  is  cer- 
tainly open  to  all  kinds  of  argument,  but,  as  far  as  my  knowledge 
goes,  no  such  theory  has  been  published. 


7 

It  is  not  up  to  me  to  decide  whether  the  thesis  here  presented 
is  valid,  but  to  the  scientists  who  have  dedicated  their  lives  to  the 
study  of  prehistoric  civilization  and  the  history  of  religion.  They 
would  certainly  not  object  if  I  myself  express  a  little  doubt  before 
presenting  my  theory  to  their  judgment,  as  follows:  Is  analysis  of 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          579 

the  gestures  in  magic  and  prayer  not  too  slender  and  fragile  a 
bridge  to  span  the  distance  between  the  two  areas?  Is  the  carrying 
power  of  the  bridge  sufficient?  The  newer  research  of  anthro- 
pologists and  historians,  like  R.  R.  Marett,  Th.  Ohm,  E.  Saglio, 
and  others  will  convince  any  unbiased  reader  that  the  role  of 
words  in  primitive  religion  is  of  subordinate  importance  com- 
pared with  its  gesticulatory  part.  The  omnipotence  of  movements, 
observed  by  psychoanalysts  in  early  childhood,  has  here  its  col- 
lective counterpart.  In  the  sense  of  my  thesis  this  importance  of 
the  gesture  can  be  followed  up  from  the  most  primitive  state  of 
religion  to  its  most  elevated  phase.  The  Bantu  of  Ruanda  in 
Africa  worship  an  animal  god  Mandwa  Rumana.*  At  the  initia- 
tion ritual  of  this  bull-god  the  novices  run  around  on  all  fours. 
In  the  Indian  temple  dances  the  postures  of  the  images  of  the 
gods  are  imitated  in  such  a  way  that  each  pose  of  the  fingers  and 
legs  has  a  different  significance  of  devotion.**  The  Mongolian 
Lamas  in  Tibet  retire  with  the  imago  of  the  deity  whom  they 
have  selected  as  their  patron,  in  order  to  shape  the  body  of  this 
god  by  concentration  in  thought.f  When  at  a  late  date  magic  was 
absorbed  by  religion,  gestures  originated  in  the  older  phase  were 
taken  over  by  the  newer  ritual,  often  acquired  another  signifi- 
cance, but  sometimes  remained  almost  unchanged. 

Certain  gestures  of  the  fingers  are  still  used  for  magical  pur- 
poses, good  or  bad.  Such  a  use  is  reflected  in  the  story  in  Exodus 
that  reports  that  Israel  prevailed  in  battle  when  Moses  held  up 
his  hand  while  Amalek  prevailed  when  he  let  his  hands  down 
(Exod.  17:10  ff.).  I  cannot  now  pursue  this  thread  through  all 
forms  and  ages  of  religion  and  will  restrict  myself  to  a  single 
representative  instance  which  proves  that  the  magical  gesture  has 
kept  its  meaningful  significance  in  the  religious  concepts  of  to- 
day. The  well-known  minister  of  a  Presbyterian  church  on  Fifth 
Avenue  in  New  York,  John  S.  Bonnell,  reportsj  in  his  recent  book 

*  E.  Johannsen,  Mysterien  eines  Bantuvolkes  (Leipzig,  1925),  p.  38. 
**  Cf.  Coomaraswamy,  The  Mirror  of  Gesture,  quoted  by  Th.  Ohm,  Die 
Gebetsgebarden,  p.  108. 

f  Cf.  K.  Bleichsteiner,  Die  gelbe  Kirche,  quoted  by  Ohm,  p.  109. 
j;  John  Sutherland  Bonnell,  The  Practice  and  Power  of  Prayer  (New  York, 

1954),  p.  12. 


580  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

that  he  found  himself  overpowered  by  the  subway  crowd  when 
he  had  to  make  a  daily  trip  to  the  Presbyterian  Medical  Center 
at  i68th  Street.  He  had  to  share  the  subway  with  the  swarm  of 
jostling,  perspiring,  weary  people  and  became  uncomfortable  and 
confused.  "Then  one  day  I  happened  to  notice  that  my  hand 
holding  the  strap  in  the  center  of  swaying  was  lifted  up  in  the 
attitude  of  prayer/'  It  occurred  to  the  pastor  that  all  these  men 
and  women  were  also  God's  children  on  whom  life  was  pressing 
hard,  and  that  he  should  pray  for  them  and  himself.  From  then 
on  the  dread  of  the  subway  journey  disappeared;  praying  for 
those  around,  he  found  peace  of  heart.  Here  is  an  excellent  ex- 
ample of  an  individual  case  in  which  a  certain  attitude  of  the 
hand  secured  the  symbolic-religious  meaning  of  charity. 

Such  a  sublimated  meaning  was  given  to  most  gestures  which 
originally  served  magical  purposes.  The  individual  case  just  re- 
ported can  well  be  compared  with  similar  phenomena  of  congres- 
sional worship.  I  am  choosing  the  habit  of  the  swaying  of  Jews 
during  their  prayer,  those  movements  of  their  bodies  that  made 
such  a  strange  impression  upon  me  when  I  attended  the  service. 
The  explanations  of  that  prayer  habit  that  have  become  known 
to  me  are  much  too  rationalistic.  The  Encyclopedia  Judaica  ex- 
presses the  conjecture  that  the  habit  originated  in  circles  of 
mystics  and  had  the  purpose  of  making  the  blood  boil  to  trans- 
port the  worshipers  into  an  ecstatic  state.*  L.  Dembitz  presents, 
as  the  most  rational  explanation,**  that  the  Jew  has  a  nervous 
temperament  and  that  he  likes  to  speak  with  his  whole  body,  not 
only  to  God,  but  also  to  his  fellow-men.  H.  Fischer,  who  discusses 
the  same  habit  of  the  Mohammedans  in  their  devotions,")-  is  of 
the  opinion  that  prayer  is  spoken  in  a  certain  rhythm  and  "one 
is  compelled  by  the  movements  of  the  body,  to  feel  this  rhythm, 
to  experience  the  prayer."  As  will  be  remembered,  the  sight  of  the 
men  swaying  backward  and  forward  in  their  prayers  stimulated 
the  idea  that  the  movements  are  remnants  of  a  ritual  dance  as  it 
was  performed  by  the  Greeks  in  their  crane  dance,  and  by  almost 

*  Vol.  vn,  p.  130. 

**  Lewis  N.  Dembitz,  Jewish  Service  in  Synagogue  and  Homes  (Philadelphia, 
1898),  p.  301. 
t  "1st  der  Islam  modern?"  Moslem  Review  10,  1934,  p.  63. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          581 

all  primitive  tribes  of  Australia  and  Africa  at  religious  ceremonies 
in  which  they  imitate  their  totem  animals  (compare  the  fox  trot). 
This  kind  of  worship,  especially  with  masked  dancers,  can  be 
called  a  prayer.  The  Tarahumare  Indians  of  Mexico,  for  instance, 
think*  that  "the  favor  of  the  gods  may  be  won  by  what,  in  want 
of  a  better  term  may  be  called  dancing,  but  that  in  reality  is  a 
series  of  monotonous  movements,  a  kind  of  rhythmical  exercise, 
kept  up  sometimes  for  two  nights.  By  dint  of  such  hard  work 
they  think  to  prevail  upon  the  gods  to  grant  their  prayers.  .  .  . 
The  Tarahumares  assert  that  the  dances  have  been  taught  them 
by  the  animals.  .  .  ."  (As  an  aside  might  here  be  inserted  that 
a  very  intelligent  priest,  Monsignor  Robert  Hugh  Bension  has, 
compared  the  Catholic  High  Mass**  with  a  religious  symbolic 
dance,  in  which  the  gestures  and  movements  of  the  priest  are 
described  as  "figures/') 

The  meaning  of  the  imitative  and  magical  dance  of  primitive 
Bedouins  who  identified  themselves  with  an  animal  god  has  been 
forgotten  and  lost  to  conscious  thinking  for  many  centuries.  In 
its  place  a  second,  spiritualized— psychoanalysis  calls  it  anagogic— 
interpretation  for  the  habit  of  swaying  had  to  be  given  by  the 
theologians.  They  found  it  in  the  verse  of  Psalm  35:10:  "All  my 
bones  shall  say,  Lord.  .  .  ."  Such  reinterpretation  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  magical  gestures  is  entirely  in  the  spirit  of  the  religious 
tradition  that  disavows  the  past  when  a  certain  state  of  progress 
is  once  reached. 

The  great  Rabbi  Israel  Baal  Schem  Tov,  the  founder  of  the 
sect  of  Hasidirn  (1699),  who  considered  prayer  as  the  great  way 
to  union  with  God,  was  aglow  with  unsuppressed  emotions  when 
he  prayed.  His  opponents  laughed  at  his  swaying  and  grimacing 
in  prayer,  but  Rabbi  Israel  told  his  disciples  the  following  story: 
There  was  once  a  wedding  feast.  The  musicians  sat  in  a  corner 
and  played  upon  their  instruments,  and  the  guests  danced  to  the 
tunes  and  made  merry.  They  swayed  this  way  and  that  way,  and 
the  house  was  filled  with  noise  and  joy.  A  deaf  man  passed  the 
house  and  looked  in  through  the  window  and  saw  the  people 

*  Encyclopedia  o/  Religion  and  Ethics,  IX,  361. 

**  Papers  of  a  Paria  (New  York,  1913).  Compare  the  remarks  of  Ronald 
Knox  in  The  Mass  in  Slow  Motion  (New  York,  1948). 


582-  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

whirling  about  the  room,  leaping  and  throwing  about  their  arms. 
"How  they  fling  themselves  about/'  he  cried  out.  "This  is  a  house 
filled  with  madmen/'  For  he  could  not  hear  the  music  to  which 
they  danced.*  It  is  very  likely  that  we,  too,  have  become  deaf 
to  the  music  that  propels  the  praying  people  and  cannot  see  any 
sense  in  their  gestures.  The  essential  result  of  this  analytic  ex- 
ploration is  the  reconstruction  of  an  until  now  undiscovered 
transition  phase  from  magical  ritual  to  prayer.  We  did  not  forget 
that  after  an  interval  of  forty  years  my  interest  in  the  problem 
was  reawakened  by  the  editorials  in  the  New  Statesman.  The 
president  of  the  National  Farmer's  Union  has  asked  the  Arch- 
bishop of  York  to  call  for  prayers  for  fine  weather.  A  debate 
started  on  the  question  of  whether  the  Deity  can  be  cajoled  by 
the  rainmakers*  Even  in  this  collective  petition,  the  belief  in 
magic  continues  to  live  and  operate. 

In  the  first  World  War  a  poem  described  a  worried  God  listen- 
ing to  all  the  prayers  for  victory  from  the  Germans,  the  French, 
the  Britons,  and  the  Russians.  God  sighs,  "My  God,  I've  got  my 
work  cut  out."  It  is  prescribed  to  Him  by  His  believers.  Prayer 
is  only  the  last  link  of  a  chain  which  began  with  the  belief  in 
the  magical  power  of  man's  own  thoughts  and  desires.  In  this 
phase  we  discovered  man  still  believes  in  his  own  magic  in 
identifying  with  the  god  or  totem  animal.  Secretly,  he  will  always 
believe  in  it  and  listen  to  that  tempting,  false  promise  he  had 
already  heard  in  paradise:  "You  shall  be  as  God  knowing  the  good 
and  evil.  .  .  /* 


rri  HERE  are  coincidences  which  seem  to  have  significance  even 
A  for  those  of  us  who  are  not  superstitious.  It  certainly  was 
coincidental  that  I  read  on  two  successive  days  some  magazine 
*  Jacob  S.  Minkin,  The  Romance  of  Hasidim  (New  York,  1935),  p.  90. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  583 

articles  in  which  the  malignant  spirit  of  the  Pharaoh  was  dis- 
cussed. It  was  not  accidental  that  this  casual  reading  reawakened 
interest  in  a  subject  that  had  preoccupied  my  thoughts  when  I 
was  eighteen  years  old.  An  American  magazine  reported  that  the 
two  little  daughters  of  an  Egyptologist  who  had  assisted  in  the 
discovery  of  the  two  solar  ships  of  Cheops  beside  the  Great 
Pyramid  of  Gizeh  had  suddenly  died.  The  journalist  linked  these 
deaths  in  mysterious  connection  with  the  spirit  of  the  Pharaoh 
whose  solar  ships  were  unearthed.  On  the  next  day  an  issue  of  the 
Paris  Match*  fell  into  my  hands:  in  it  two  special  correspondents 
sent  to  Cairo  presented  in  an  article,  illustrated  by  wonderful 
colored  photographs,  the  story  of  the  discovery  of  the  tomb  of 
Tutankhamen  by  Carter  and  Lord  Carnarvon.  The  article,  writ- 
ten in  sensational  terms,  tried  to  revive  the  romance  of  that  nine- 
teen-year-old Pharaoh  whose  wife  put  flowers  on  his  golden 
coffin  at  his  funeral  thirty-three  hundred  years  ago.  A  tiny  wreath 
of  flowers  was  found  around  the  symbols  on  the  forehead  of  her 
husband.  The  vivid  description  of  the  life  and  of  the  treasures 
of  Tutankhamen  is  followed  by  the  story  of  the  Pharaoh's 
curse. 

The  article  revives  the  memory  of  the  story  of  a  mummy's 
vengeance,  a  story  we  all  heard  back  in  1923,  when  that  perhaps 
most  important  of  all  archeological  discoveries  was  made  in  the 
Valley  of  the  Kings.  From  1923  to  the  beginning  of  the  thirties 
we  heard  story  after  story  of  "the  curse  of  the  Pharaohs."  The 
legend  started  when  Lord  Carnarvon,  the  Maecenas  and  friend 
of  Howard  Carter,  died  on  April  6,  1923,  from  the  effects  of  a 
mosquito  bite.  People  began  to  talk  about  a  punishment  the 
spirit  had  visited  on  the  disturber  of  his  resting  place.  The  world 
press  of  the  following  years  had  headlines  like  "New  Victim  of 
the  Curse  of  Tutankhamen."  The  nineteenth  victim,  the  seventy- 
eightryear-old  Lord  Westbury,  committed  suicide.  He  was  the 
father  of  the  former  secretary  of  Howard  Carter:  his  son  had  been 
found  dead  in  his  apartment  the  year  before.  Archibald  Douglas 
Reid,  who  was  going  to  X-ray  the  mummy,  suddenly  died.  Also 
the  Egyptologist  Arthur  Weigall,  who  had  discussed  that  super- 

*  No.  287  (Sept.  25-Oct  2,  1954). 


584  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

stition  of  the  curse  of  the  Pharaoh,  died  of  an  "unknown  fever.'" 
He  was  considered  the  twenty-first  victim  of  the  Pharaoh's 
vengeance.  Howard  Carter's  partner,  A.  C  Mace,  who  had  as- 
sisted his  friend  in  his  work  on  the  tomb,  died;  he  had  been  ailing 
for  a  long  time,  it  is  true;  Lord  Carnarvon's  half-brother,  Aubrey 
Herbert,  committed  suicide,  and  Lady  Elizabeth  Carnarvon  died 
in  February,  1929.  A  man  named  Carter  died  under  mysterious 
circumstances  in  the  United  States.  He  appeared  as  the  latest 
victim  of  the  Pharaoh. 

Howard  Carter,  who  had  discovered  the  tomb,  continued  to 
live.  He  died  many  years  later  (in  February,  1939).  He  himself 
condemned  the  "ridiculous"  stories  of  Tutankhamen  as  a  form 
of  "literary  amusement/'  adding  that  "in  some  respects  our  moral 
progress  is  less  obvious  than  kindly  people  generally  believe." 
The  German  Egyptologist  George  Steindorff  emphatically  stated 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  the  curse  of  the  Pharaoh,  Also 
Carter  himself  wrote:  "So  far  as  the  living  are  concerned,  curses 
of  this  nature  have  no  place  in  the  Egyptian  ritual."  The  pro- 
tective formulas  found  inscribed  on  the  magical  mannikins  left 
in  the  burial  chamber  like  "Death  will  come  on  swift  pinions  to 
those  who  disturb  the  rest  of  the  Pharaoh,"  were  designed  to 
frighten  away  the  enemies  of  Osiris,  the  deceased  king.  Yet,  the 
legend  of  the  Pharaoh's  vengeance  continued  to  live.  More  than 
twenty  years  after  the  discovery  of  Tutankhamen's  cadaver,  a 
report  from  the  atom  city  Oak  Ridge  expressed  the  guess  that 
the  ancient  Egyptians  had  known  the  secret  of  the  atom  and 
had  put  radioactive  stones  into  their  tomb  whose  rays  were  fatal 
after  many  thousand  years.  Arthur  Weigall,  who  functioned  as 
general  inspector  of  antiquities  for  the  Egyptian  government, 
expressed  another  view  which  seemed  to  be  more  appropriate.  In 
his  book  dealing  with  the  discovery  of  Tutankhamen,  the  scholar 
quotes  several  examples  of  curses  found  in  Egyptian  sepulchers, 
for  instance,  the  inscription  written  upon  a  mortuary  statue  of 
a  certain  Ursu.*  Ursu,  who  was  a  mining  engineer  and  lived  less 
than  a  hundred  years  before  the  times  of  the  young  Pharaoh, 
composed  the  following  curse:  "He  who  trespasses  upon  my 

*  Tutankhamen  and  Other  Essays  (London,  1923),  p.  in. 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          585 

property  or  who  shall  injure  my  tomb  or  drag  out  my  mummy, 
the  Sun-God  shall  punish  him.  He  shall  not  bequeath  his  goods 
to  his  children;  his  heart  shall  have  no  pleasure  in  life;  he  shall 
not  receive  water  [for  his  spirit  to  drink]  in  the  tomb  and  his 
soul  shall  be  destroyed  for  ever."  On  the  wall  of  the  tomb  of 
Harkhut,  at  Aswan,  dating  from  the  Sixth  Dynasty,  these  words 
are  written:  "As  for  any  man  who  shall  enter  into  this  tomb  ,  .  . 
I  shall  pounce  upon  him  as  on  a  bird,  he  shall  be  judged  for  it 
by  the  great  God."  Such  curses,  Weigall  says,  should  have 
frightened  the  tomb  robbers  who  already  systematically  plun- 
dered the  sarcophagus  of  the  dead  Pharaoh  and  whose  activity 
reached  a  peak  during  the  Twentieth  Dynasty. 

We  know  that  thieves  broke  into  the  tomb  of  Tutankhamen 
within  ten  years  after  his  death.  In  Weigall's  opinion,  only  the 
robbers  would  come  under  the  curse.  The  mummy  and  the  tomb 
were  the  earthly  home  of  the  disembodied  spirit,  and  the  fear  of 
the  Pharaohs  was  that  robbers  might  desecrate  their  graves  and 
endanger  their  permanent  security  by  destruction  of  the  mummy. 
By  the  beginning  of  the  Eighteenth  Dynasty  hardly  a  mummy 
remained  undamaged  in  the  vicinity  of  Thebes,  and  almost  all 
royal  tombs  had  been  robbed.  The  consuming  fear  of  a  Pharaoh 
thus  concerned  the  integrity  of  his  mummy  around  which  the 
soul  of  the  king  hovered.  Weigall  emphasizes  the  factor  of  this 
fear  that  the  tomb  and  the  body  might  be  broken  up  and  argues 
that  the  "scientific  excavators  whose  object  is  to  rescue  the  dead 
from  oblivion  which  the  years  have  produced  might  be  expected 
to  be  blessed  rather  than  cursed  for  what  they  do."  Weigall 
himself  reports  some  uncanny  experiences  from  his  Egyptian 
excavations,  but  doubts  that  "the  possibilities  of  that  much 
underrated  factor  in  life's  events,  coincidence,  have  been  ex- 
hausted" in  the  search  of  an  explanation  of  many  tragic  events 
of  that  kind.  While  he  considers  the  rumor  of  the  malevolence 
of  the  ancient  mummies  nonsense,  he  tries  "to  keep  an  open  mind 
on  the  subject."  A  German  writer,  Otto  Neubert,  who  visited  the 
tomb  of  Tutankhamen  at  the  time  when  Carter  discovered  it, 
adds  some  new  data  in  a  book  published  in  1952.*  He  tells  us 

*  Tut-ench-Amun,  Gotterfiuch  und  Abendland  (Hamburg,  1952). 


586  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

that  Lord  Carnarvon  died  from  the  bite  of  a  scorpion,  not  of  a 
mosquito,  and  the  scorpion  was  a  sacred  animal  in  ancient  Egypt. 
He  quotes  a  fellah  who  said  about  the  daring  excavators;  "Those 
people  will  find  gold  and  death,"  and  reports  that  the  nurse  who 
took  care  of  Lord  Carnarvon  in  his  illness  soon  died. 

He  tells  a  story  he  had  heard  during  his  visit  in  the  Valley  of 
Kings  from  Howard  Carter,  who  also  told  it  to  Arthur  Weigall. 
During  the  excavations  that  led  to  the  discovery  of  the  tomb, 
Carter  had  in  his  house  a  canary  bird  who  sang  happily.  On 
the  day  on  which  the  entrance  to  the  tomb  was  laid  bare,  a  cobra 
entered  the  house  and  swallowed  the  bird.  People  imagined  that 
the  cobra  was  the  spirit  of  the  newly  found  Pharaoh,  especially 
since  the  Pharaoh  wore  the  form  of  the  royal  cobra  on  his  fore- 
head, symbolizing  his  power  to  strike  and  sting  his  enemies.  It 
was  at  the  end  of  this  season's  work  that  Lord  Carnarvon  was 
mysteriously  stung  upon  the  face.  Mr.  Neubert  seems  to  believe  in 
the  vengeance  of  the  dead  Pharaoh.  The  sovereignty  of  his 
logic  allows  him  to  overlook  the  fact  that  the  discoverer  of  the 
tomb,  Carter,  continued  to  live  to  an  old  age,  that  most  Egyptolo- 
gists, working  with  Carter,  as  well  as  hundreds  of  workers  re- 
mained unharmed,  and  that  he  himself,  Mr.  Otto  Neubert,  is, 
as  he  assures  us,  hale  and  hearty  twenty-five  years  after  his  visit 
to  the  fatal  sepulchral  chamber. 

When,  at  the  end  of  1922,  the  mummy  of  Tutankhamen  was 
found,  I  followed  the  news  of  the  excavations  with  great  at- 
tention and  interest  in  that  summit  of  archaeological  success.  The 
description  of  the  fabulous  treasures  found  and  of  all  the  com- 
modities for  the  dead  king  fascinated  me.  Such  accumulation  of 
riches  energetically  contradicted  the  contemporary  opinion  that 
"you  can't  take  it  with  you."  The  succession  of  tragic  deaths  and 
illnesses  marking  the  path  of  many  Egyptologists  who  collabo- 
rated with  Carter  intrigued  me,  as  it  did  most  people,  but, 
strangely  enough,  I  never  felt  the  intense  feeling  of  uncanniness 
they  experienced  at  the  mystery.  The  spooky  events  made,  of 
course,  an  impression  upon  me,  but  there  was  none  of  that 
emotional  reaction  observed  in  many  educated  people  around 
me.  It  could  not  have  been  that  I  was  specially  insensitive  to 
uncanny  sensations,  because  I  had  sometimes  experienced  the 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          587 

uncanny  in  life  and  fiction  with  considerable  intensity.  Only 
much  later  it  occurred  to  me  why  I  was  relatively  unaffected  by 
the  reports  of  the  malignant  spirit  of  the  Pharaoh.  I  had  been 
intensively  preoccupied  with  that  same  problem  sixteen  years 
before  the  discovery  in  the  Valley  of  the  Kings,  and  had  then  been 
stirred  up  by  an  experience  which  had  made  a  strong  uncanny 
impression  upon  me.  People  say  that  lightning  does  not  strike 
the  same  spot  twice. 


My  father  died  in  the  summer  of  1906  when  I  had  just  reached 
my  eighteenth  year.  I  have  described  and  analyzed  the  emotional 
upheaval  following  that  event  elsewhere.*  Guilt  feelings  and 
remorse  tortured  me,  an  upsurge  of  sexual  impulses  frightened 
me,  and  I  was  the  helpless  victim  of  an  inner  conflict  that  lasted 
almost  a  year.  A  few  days  after  my  father's  funeral  I  picked  up 
a  book  entitled  Der  Konig  von  Sidon  by  Paul  Lindau  in  a  lend- 
ing library.  The  name  of  the  writer  was  then  unknown  to  me,** 
and  the  title  promised  a  historical  novel.  The  book  made  a 
mysterious  and  lasting  impression  upon  me;  its  plot  entered  my 
dreams  of  that  time  and  I  identified  myself  with  the  leading 
figure.  After  reading  it,  I  misplaced  it  and  found  it  again  several 
years  later.  It  is  the  only  book  from  my  young  years  I  still  possess, 
and  whenever  I  now  see  it  I  still  remember  that  I  had  to  pay 
the  lending  library  for  it—I  was  very  poor— and  I  think  of  the 
unconscious  motivation  of  that  symptomatic  misplacement  which 
resulted  in  my  keeping  it. 

Not  only  the  style  of  printing,  but  the  red  box  framing  each 
page  and  the  decorations  at  the  head  of  the  chapters  are  old- 
fashioned.  Its  style  and  diction,  typical  of  German  writing  at 
the  turn  of  the  century,  is  also  hopelessly  out  of  date.  Here  is  the 
outline  of  the  plot:  A  young  archaeologist,  Andreas  Moeller,  who 
is  devoted  to  his  science,  gets  a  long-expected  telegram  from  Con- 
stantinople calling  him  to  Saida,  the  modern  site  of  ancient 

*  Fragment  of  a  Great  Confession  (New  York:  Farrar,  Straus  and  Co.,  1949). 
**  The  King  of  Sidon  was  published  in  1898.  Paul  Lindau  was  a  well-known 
Berlin  writer  of  novels,  plays,  and  travel  books. 


588  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

Sidon,  to  co-operate  on  excavations  with  Hamdy  Bey,  nominated 
as  conservator  of  antiquities  by  the  Turkish  government.  Moeller, 
now  lecturer  on  archaeology  at  Berlin  University,  is  still  young, 
but  already  well  known  because  he  had  deciphered  a  mysterious 
Phoenician  inscription  and  thus  earned  the  respect  of  the  famous 
French  scholar,  Ernest  Renan.  Moeller  lives  in  a  boarding  house; 
he  is  a  tall,  narrow-chested  man  of  an  almost  pastoral  appear- 
ance, a  bookworm,  and  rather  lonely.  A  few  weeks  before,  his 
landlady,  who  respects  him  highly,  had  asked  him  to  give  a 
young  girl  who  lives  in  the  same  house  and  takes  stenographic 
dictation  some  information  about  the  spelling  of  an  ancient 
Phoenician  name.  The  girl  Sabine  appears;  she  is  employed  by 
Dr.  Scholl,  a  younger  colleague  and  student  of  Moeller.  The 
name  she  cannot  spell  for  her  stenographic  record  is  that  of 
Eschmunazar,  the  King  of  Sidon,  son  of  Tabnit.  Andreas  Moeller 
tells  her  how  to  spell  the  name  and  mentions  the  anthropoid 
sarcophagus  in  which  Eschmunazar  was  buried  and  which  was 
discovered  in  1855.  He  also  explains  the  meaning  of  the  word 
anthropoid  as  manlike,  resembling  the  face  and  body  of  the  dead 
who  rests  in  the  shrine  of  the  mummy. 

During  the  following  weeks  Andreas  Moeller  falls  in  love  with 
the  pretty,  simple  girl,  asks  her  to  help  him  as  a  stenographer, 
and  is  confused  by  the  contradictory  emotions  his  romantic  feel- 
ing awakens  in  him.  Being  with  his  attractive  neighbor,  who 
now  transcribes  what  he  dictates,  he  feels  elated  and  his  work 
makes  excellent  progress.  The  relationship  between  the  young 
professor  and  the  secretary  becomes  more  and  more  friendly, 
yet  Moeller  is  still  too  shy  to  declare  his  love  for  Sabine.  He  feels 
slightly  jealous  of  Dr.  Scholl  for  whom  Sabine  still  works.  The 
telegram  from  Constantinople  calling  him  to  the  excavations 
near  Beirut  throws  him  into  a  conflict.  Here  is  a  long-desired  op- 
portunity to  make  what  may  be  important  archaeological  dis- 
coveries, but  he  must  separate  from  Sabine  whom  he  now  loves. 
There  were  perhaps  archaeological  findings  of  greatest  scientific 
value  to  be  made  down  there  between  the  Lebanon  and  the  sea. 

Sabine  encourages  his  wish  to  leave  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
when  he  tries  to  speak  of  his  feelings  for  her  advises  him  to  write 
to  her  on  his  journey.  He  lands  in  Syria,  always  thinking  of  the 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          589 

beloved  girl,  and  finally  writes  her  asking  her  to  marry  him  after 
his  return.  Arrived  at  Beirut,  he  can  scarcely  control  his  im- 
patience to  hurry  to  the  place  where  Hamdy  Bey,  in  the  mean- 
time, has  discovered  wonderful  Greek  sarcophagi.  The  German 
consul  and  his  gracious  young  wife  treat  him  with  great  hospi- 
tality, but  he  is  driven  to  reach  Sidon  as  soon  as  possible.  His 
guide,  an  old  Arab,  Hassan,  brings  him  in  a  few  hours  to  the 
place  where  Hamdy  Bey  meets  him,  welcomes  him  with  all  signs 
of  friendship,  and  leads  him  to  the  shaft  in  the  rock.  Deeply 
stirred  up,  he  admires  the  wonderful  coffins  and  cannot  fall  asleep 
for  a  long  time. 

The  following  weeks  are  filled  with  work  and  with  dreams  and 
daydreams  in  which  the  young  archaeologist  imagines  new  find- 
ings. His  health  suffers  as  a  result  of  his  morbid  zeal  which  does 
not  allow  him  any  rest  and  because  of  the  Mediterranean  climate 
to  which  he  is  not  accustomed.  He  is  enthusiastic  about  the 
marvelous  Greek  sarcophagi  whose  walls  are  covered  with 
colored  figures  in  perfect  relief,  and  he  is  filled  with  a  passionate 
desire  to  be  the  first  to  discover  a  beautiful  prehistoric  sarcopha- 
gus. When  the  newly  found  treasures  are  finally  brought  on  board 
the  ship  which  brings  them  safely  to  Stambul,  Andreas  refuses 
to  leave.  In  spite  of  all  the  pleading  of  his  friend,  who  is  afraid 
that  Andreas  is  ill,  he  declares  he  wants  to  stay.  Left  alone  he 
writes  Sabine  who  has  not  answered  his  proposal,  and  tells  her 
of  the  strong  impressions  he  has  received  and  of  his  desire  to 
awaken  one  of  the  proud  sleepers  of  the  prehistoric  past  to  new 
life.  He  cannot  leave;  it  would  be  like  a  cowardly  flight,  like 
stealing  away  deceitfully  without  paying  his  debt  to  destiny. 

In  feverish  unrest  he  descends  into  the  shaft  and  finally  finds  an 
unsuspected  opening  in  a  corner  of  the  ceiling  of  the  sepulchral 
chamber.  The  hole  is  enlarged,  the  walls  of  the  rock  removed, 
and  behind  them  an  empty  room  is  found.  It  is  a  rock  grave,  and 
remnants  of  human  bones  are  on  the  ground.  A  terrible  smell  of 
decay  in  the  small,  sticky  room  makes  him  feel  exhausted.  On 
the  next  morning  he  starts  again  to  search  for  a  still  undis^ 
covered  second  shaft.  Tortured  by  impatience,  he  has  to  stay 
in  bed  for  several  days.  Scarcely  convalescing  he  discovers  a 
gigantic  block  of  stone  and,  after  it  is  removed  by  long,  hard 


5QO  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

work,  a  cranny.  When  the  light  of  his  lamp  falls  into  the  depths, 
he  trembles  as  he  sees  an  immense  sarcophagus  of  black  stone.  Who 
is  the  proud,  lonely  sleeper  hiding  in  this  recess?  Andreas  feels 
blood  rushing  to  his  head;  his  pulse  hammers.  Drops  of  per- 
spiration are  on  his  forehead  and  an  anxiety,  never  before  experi- 
enced, makes  him  choke.  .  .  .  Alone  he  stands  before  the  an- 
thropoid sarcophagus  from  which  a  face  with  wide-open  eyes 
seems  to  smile  at  him,  and  discovers  a  hieroglyphic  inscription 
which  he  deciphers.  The  dead  one  is  Tabnit,  King  of  Sidon, 
father  of  Eschmunazar.  Shaken  by  fever,  he  looks  at  the  signs 
which  seem  to  revolve  like  a  terrible  merry-go-round.  The  last 
words  he  can  speak  are  a  command  to  Hassan  to  wash  and  brush 
the  walls  of  the  sarcophagus:  he  is  seized  by  a  fainting  fit  and 
breaks  down  beside  the  sarcophagus.  On.  waking  he  looks  at  the 
mortal  remnants  of  the  man  who  had  once  been  a  great  and 
mighty  king  here  on  earth.  Andreas,  looking  long  at  the  cadaver, 
feels  that  a  terrifying,  threatening  glance  from  the  empty  sockets 
of  the  eyes  is  directed  at  him  and  steps  back.  He  kneels  down 
beside  the  stone  and,  fingering  the  letter  groups  with  the  left 
hand,  jots  with  his  trembling  right  the  translation  of  the  en- 
graved hieroglyphs.  They  say:  "I,  Tabnit,  priest  of  Astarte,  King 
of  Sidon,  am  resting  alone  in  this  chest.  Whoever  thou  art  who 
discovers  it,  man,  do  not  open  my  death  closet.  Do  not  disturb 
my  rest.  Neither  silver  nor  gold  nor  other  precious  things  are  to 
be  found  with  me.  I  am  alone  in  my  closet.  Do  not  open  it  be- 
cause doing  it  is  an  abomination  before  Astarte.  If  thou  open 
my  death  closet  and  disturb  my  rest,  thou  shalt  have  no  rest  on 
earth.  The  blood  shall  boil  in  thy  veins.  The  woman  whom  thou 
lovest  shall  forsake  thee.  Thy  mind  shall  become  confused.  Thy 
limbs  shall  grow  stiff.  Thou  shalt  be  a  living  corpse  and  when 
thou  die,  thou  shall  continue  to  live  without  rest.  Thus  is  the  will 
of  Astarte.  And  thus  it  is  pronounced  to  thee  by  her  priest, 
Tabnit,  King  of  Sidon." 

When  Andreas  has  finished  the  record  after  several  hours,  he 
timidly  .steals  away,  putting  his  left  hand  like  a  blinker  at  his 
temple  so  as  not  to  see  the  priest  of  cruel  Astarte  whose  curse 
echoes  in  him.  He  runs  as  if  haunted  to  his  home,  pursued  by 
the  furious  glance  of  the  king  who  has  cursed  him.  He  closes  his 


ADVENTURES    IN    PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  591 

eyes  so  as  not  to  see  the  irate  look  and  wants  to  cover  his  ears  so 
as  not  to  hear  the  words  "Thou  shalt  have  no  rest  on  earth."  He 
wants  to  barricade  himself  in  his  room  and  close  windows  and 
doors  against  intrusion.  When  he  arrives  at  his  room,  he  finds  a 
letter  from  Sabine,  forwarded  by  the  German  consul  in  Beirut. 
The  girl  writes  that  she  feels  honored  by  his  proposal  and  that 
she  admires  him,  but  has  become  engaged  to  Dr.  Scholl.  He  seems 
to  hear  that  voice:  "The  woman  whom  thou  lovest  shall  forsake 
thee.  .  .  ."  When  old  Hassan  enters,  he  shouts  at  him,  "Don't 
you  know  before  whom  you  stand?  I  am  the  King  of  Sidon.  Get 
out."  His  mind  becomes  confused  and  his  limbs  grow  stiff.  He 
takes  a  carton  on  which  Hamdy  Bey  had  sketched  a  blueprint  of 
the  shaft  and  slowly  writes  angular  lines  and  round  marks.  Then 
he  extinguishes  the  lamp  arid  walks  slowly  to  his  bed.  Hassan 
finds  his  body  the  next  day.  Round  his  head  a  towel  is  tied  cover- 
ing the  forehead  and  the  hair,  the  arms  are  pressed  on  the  body. 
A  sheet  covers  the  body  closely  so  that  the  form  is  delineated 
only  at  a  few  places.  At  the  foot  of  the  bed  is  a  white  carton 
covered  with  Semitic  characters.  Many  months  later  a  young 
archaeologist  is  told  about  the  carton  considered  to  be  an  inscrip- 
tion play  of  the  dying  scholar.  The  young  archaeologist  states 
that  the  three  lines  are  beautiful  and  correct  Semitic  hieroglyphs 
and,  fingering  the  groups  of  characters  and  reading  from  right  to 
left,  he  deciphers  them:  "Let  no  one  dare  to  disturb  my  rest!  I  am 
the  King  of  Sidon." 


My  experience  in  life  and  in  reading  fiction  has  been  such  that 
strong  impressions  I  receive  are  not  lasting.  Their  power  exhausts 
itself,  so  to  speak,  in  the  emotional  explosion  of  the  moment. 
There  are  other  impressions  which  have  no  immediate  intense 
effect  but  whose  emotional  power  increases  with  time.  The  novel 
The  King  of  Sidon  belongs  to  the  second  group.  While  reading 
it,  I  felt,  of  course,  that  special  emotion  of  uncanniness,  but  the 
feeling  was  not  strong  and  was  soon  mastered.  But  images  awak- 
ened by  the  novel  occurred  to  me  repeatedly  during  the  next 


Ijg2  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

months.  The  impression  grew  with  distance  from  the  time  when 
I  had  put  the  book  aside,  which  meant  in  this  instance  so  care- 
fully away  that  it  could  not  be  found  again.  What  had  happened 
to  the  archaeologist  Andreas  Moeller  had  got  under  my  mental 
skin.  It  crept  into  my  dreams  and  often  intruded  on  trains  of 
thoughts  which  were  very  remote  from  the  characters  and  the 
plot  of  the  story  many  weeks  after  I  had  read  it. 

Much  later  I  understood  that  the  uncanny  impression  during 
the  reading  of  the  novel  was  in  more  than  one  way  intimately 
connected  with  the  emotions  stirred  up  by  the  death  of  my 
father.  My  rational  thinking  fought  vainly  in  those  weeks  against 
superstitious  beliefs  that  he  continued  to  live  in  some  form  of 
existence  and  knew  what  I  did  and  thought.  I  tried  to  shake  off 
remorse  because  I  had  often  caused  him  grief  and  had  fallen 
short  of  his  expectations*  A  furious  ambition  that  had  been 
alien  to  me  until  then  had  taken  hold  of  me,  and  I  daydreamed  I 
would  accomplish  something  remarkable  to  honor  the  name  of 
my  father.  I  did  not  know  yet  what  I  would  study,  but  I  was 
determined  that  I  would  discover  something  of  importance  in 
that  field.  Here  already  was  a  trace  of  my  unconscious  identifica- 
tion with  the  archaeologist  Andreas  Moeller.  Another  symptom 
of  mental  preoccupation  with  that  story  was  that  I  felt  a  strange 
interest  in  the  history  of  the  Phoenicians.  During  high-school 
years  I  had  not  learned  much  about  that  ancient  people  and 
biblical  lessons  provided  no  more  than  a  smattering  on  the  sub- 
ject of  their  relations  with  the  Hebrews.  Strangely  enough,  I  had 
not  fully  realized  that  they  were,  so  to  speak,  cousins  of  my 
ancestors,  that  their  language  differed  only  as  a  dialect  from  the 
Moabite  and  Hebrew,  and  that  they  also  wrote  those  square 
letters  found  in  Hebrew  inscriptions. 

Some  passages  of  Paul  Lindau's  story  had  the  character  of  a 
straight  report  of  facts,  as  if  the  discovery  of  that  mummy  of 
Tabnit  and  the  death  of  the  archaeologist  had  really  taken  place. 
It  was  mentioned,  for  instance,  that  Andreas  Moeller's  archaeolog- 
ical work  had  awakened  the  interest  of  Ernest  Renan,  who 
recommended  the  young  scholar  to  the  department  of  antiquities 
of  the  Turkish  government.  The  name  of  Ernest  Renan  was 
known  to  me  as  that  of  a  historian  of  religion,  especially  of  early 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          593 

Christianity  (La  Vie  de  Jesus),  but  I  soon  learned  that  the  French 
orientalist  had  been  on  an  archaeological  mission  in  Phoenicia 
from  which  he  had  brought  back  valuable  inscriptions  to  Paris.* 
I  wrote  Paul  Lindau  asking  him  whether  the  plot  of  his  story 
was  founded  on  real  events,  but  received  no  answer.  I  no  longer 
remember  how  and  where  I  found  out  that  the  tomb  of  Tabnit 
was  really  dug  up  near  the  site  of  ancient  Sidon.  O.  Hamdy  Bey, 
director  of  the  Musee  Imperiale  de  Constantinople,  and  his  col- 
laborators discovered  that  well-preserved  anthropoid  sarcophagus 
of  black  stone  covered  with  Phoenician  hieroglyphs.  Hamdy 
Bey  is  introduced  into  Lindau's  story,  and  also  the  terrible  heat 
in  the  sepulchral  chamber  as  well  as  the  fever  and  fatigue  of 
which  Hamdy  Bey  speaks  reappear.  The  writer  had  followed  the 
report  presented  by  Hamdy  Bey  and  created  only  the  figure  of  the 
German  scholar,  Andreas  Moeller.  Hamdy  Bey  even  mentions 
that  he  was  a  bit  scared  of  becoming  the  victim  of  the  curse  of 
the  priest-king  whose  tomb  he  had  opened  and  whose  mummy  he 
transported  in  an  ordinary  box  of  zinc.  ("Je  m'attendais  un  peu 
d'etre  I'objet  d'une  malediction  .  .  .  de  la  part  du  vieux  roi 
pretre,  dont  favais  ouvert  sans  scrupule  la  chambre  sepulcrale  et 
dont  j'emportais  le  corps  darts  une  vulgaire  boite  de  zinc. 
.  .  .")  Theodore  Reinach  has  presented  a  scientific  report  on  the 
discovery  of  Tabnit's  mummy  and  the  translation  and  historic 
evaluation  of  the  inscriptions  found  in  the  tomb  in  the  second 
volume  of  a  scholarly  work  published  in  1892.**  I  still  remember 
with  what  interest  I  read  the  explanations  of  the  French  archae- 
ologist, and  that  I,  a  boy  of  eighteen,  identified  with  the  promi- 
nent French  archaeologist  who  had  the  same  first  name  as  I.  It 
seems  to  me  that  he  and  Andreas  Moeller  of  Lindau's  story  be- 
came merged  into  a  single  figure  in  my  ambitious  and  ambiguous 
daydreams  during  those  months. 

I  understood  only  later  the  personal  note  in  the  impression 
which  that  second-rate  novel  had  made  upon  me:  it  hit  home,  the 
home  which  had  just  been  struck  by  the  death  of  my  father.  All 
the  ambivalent  feelings  toward  the  deceased  were  brought  close 

*  Published  in  his  Mission  en  Phoenicie  (Paris,  1864). 

**  Theodore  Reinach  and  O.  Hamdy  Bey,  La  Necropole  Royale  a  Sidon 
(Paris,  1892-96). 


594  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

to  the  threshold  of  pre-conscious  thoughts  by  the  novel.  Here 
were  love  and  hate,  honor  and  disgrace;  here  were  furious  hunger 
for  achievement,  burning  ambition  and  its  punishment.  Here 
the  goal  and  the  price  you  had  to  pay  for  reaching  it.  Here  were 
the  mystery  and  majesty  of  death. 

In  the  forty-eight  years  since  that  summer  I  have  sometimes 
been  reminded  of  Paul  Lindau's  story,  but  it  was  never  in  con- 
nection with  any  personal  experience.  Certain  clinical  cases  of 
obsessional  neurosis,  especially  those  whose  compulsive  thoughts 
circled  around  the  problem  of  death  and  of  life  after  death,  re- 
awakened the  memory  of  the  fate  of  that  archaeologist  in  the 
story.  I  recall  a  case  in  which  a  younger  man  complained  about 
strange  pains  in  his  breast.  The  medical  examination  showed 
there  was  no  organic  cause  for  those  painful  sensations.  I  did  not 
understand  the  unconscious  motivation  of  the  mysterious  symp- 
tom for  several  weeks.  One  day  the  patient  again  complained 
about  the  pain  and  described  it  with  the  words,  "It  is  as  if  a 
heavy  stone  had  been  put  on  my  breast/'  A  few  minutes  before 
he  had  spoken  of  the  unveiling  of  a  tombstone  for  his  father  at 
which  he  had  been  present.  It  dawned  on  me  only  then  that  he 
had  unconsciously  identified  with  his  dead  father  in  his  grave.  I 
am  omitting  other  cases  which  brought  that  story  back  to  my 
mind  because  their  presentation  would  lead  us  too  far  astray. 

The  reading  of  the  article  in  the  Paris  Match  as  well  as  the 
paragraphs  in  the  American  magazine  about  the  calamity  in  the 
family  of  an  Egyptologist  who  had  co-operated  in  the  unearth- 
ing of  Cheops'  solar  ship  had  reawakened  my  interest  in  the 
superstitious  fear  connected  with  the  excavation  of  ancient  sar- 
cophagi. In  pursuing  certain  thoughts  about  the  psychology  of 
those  fears,  I  again  recalled  the  plot  of  Lindau's  story.  When  I 
read  it  again,  the  uncanny  feeling  had  almost  disappeared  or  was 
only  present  like  the  faint  echo  of  a  forgotten  tune,  but  I  realized 
why  the  report  about  the  twenty-one  victims  of  Tutankhamen's 
curse  had  made  a  much  weaker  impression  than  the  novel  about 
the  vicissitudes  of  a  German  archaeologist.  The  uncanny  feeling  I 
experienced  reading  the  novel  had  been  more  intense  than  that 
occasioned  by  the  contemporary  news  account  of  the  havoc 
caused  by  the  malignant  spirit  of  the  Pharaoh.  Fiction  was 


ADVENTURES    IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  595 

stranger  than  life  in  this  case,  because  the  interest  awakened  in 
the  story  concerned  the  fateful  events  in  the  life  of  an  individual, 
while  in  the  news  report,  the  very  accumulation  of  victims  of 
Tutankhamen  proved  injurious  to  the  psychological  effect.  It 
moves  me  more  when  I  hear  that  an  old  man  who  lived  in  the 
next  house,  and  whom  I  have  seen  once  or  twice  on  the  street, 
died  from  hunger  than  does  a  report  in  the  newspaper  that  a 
thousand  people  perished  in  a  famine-stricken  part  of  China.  The 
news  in  one  case  concerns  a  human  destiny,  the  other  is  almost 
a  matter  of  statistics— such  is  life.  Furthermore,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  the  vividly  presented  details  in  the  novel  contributed 
to  its  interest,  while  the  enumeration  of  Tutankhamen's  victims 
made  an  impression  almost  like  that  of  a  list  of  also-rans,  or 
rather  of  also-rans  to  the  grave.  Adding  to  these  factors  the  per- 
sonal significance  the  book  had  for  me  at  the  time  will  make  it 
understandable  why  the  rumor  of  Tutankhamen's  curse  affected 
me  less  than  the  tale  of  the  malediction  of  Tabnit,  King  of  Sidon, 
priest  of  Astarte.  Our  age  and  personal  circumstances  at  the  time 
we  read  a  book  often  give  it  an  experiential  meaning  which  is 
not  commmensurate  with  its  artistic  value. 

My  reawakened  interest  in  those  superstitious  beliefs  was  not 
concerned  with  the  facts  reported—if  facts  they  were— but  with 
the  psychological  factors,  with  the  origin  and  motives  of  the 
fear  aroused  by  excavation  of  the  mummy.  Those  superstitions 
were  obviously  not  of  recent  date;  they  could  be  traced  back  to 
the  dawn  of  history.  What  were  the  roots  of  those  magical  beliefs? 
To  understand  them  one  has  to  study  the  development  of  the 
concept  of  death  to  be  found  in  the  traditions  of  ancient  peoples, 
has  to  understand  how  they  felt  and  thought  about  the  relation- 
ship between  the  living  and  the  dead,  the  prehistoric  and  later 
ways  of  burial  and  disposal  of  bodies,  how  ancestor  worship 
developed,  and  so  on.  From  all  we  know  of  the  complicated 
burial  customs,  the  artificial  preservation  of  the  body  and  the 
elaborate  care  provided  for  it  belong  to  a  relatively  late  phase  of 
Egyptian  history.  The  paleolithic  natives  of  Egypt  buried  their 
dead  in  rock  shelters.  In  the  earlier  stages  of  the  evolution  of 
humanity  little  attention  was  paid  to  the  disposal  of  the  dead. 
How  did  this  desire  to  preserve  the  dead  as  long  as  possible  to 


596  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

"those  on  earth  who  love  life  and  hate  death,"  as  an  Egyptian 
funeral  prayer  says,  develop?  What  were  the  Pharaohs  afraid  of 
when,  still  young  and  healthy,  they  made  careful  provision  for 
the  preservation  and  protection  of  their  mummies?  What  were 
the  living  afraid  of  when  they  entered  the  tomb  chambers,  of 
what  the  excavators  who  transported  the  coffins  to  the  light  of 
day?  What  was  the  nature  of  the  desecration  inflicted  on  the 
mummy,  and  why  those  terrible  curses  threatening  anybody  who 
disturbs  the  rest  of  the  dead?  It  is  easy  to  understand  that  the 
mummy  was  considered  the  habitat  of  the  Pharaohs  for  whose 
life  after  death  so  many  objects  were  prepared  when  they  were 
buried,  but  that  does  not  explain  the  deep-rooted  fear,  the  super- 
stition that  whoever  digs  the  body  up  will  die. 

That  fear  of  the  vengeance  of  the  dead  cannot  be  traced  back  to 
the  belief  of  taboo,  of  the  dead  killing  anyone  who  touches  the 
body  or  any  object  belonging  to  the  dead  king.  That  power  works 
like  electricity,  which  must  be  insulated  lest  it  blast  the  unwary. 
Its  effect  is  automatic  and  indiscriminate.  It  destroys  at  touch. 
The  concept  of  primitive  taboo  cannot  be  separated  from  con- 
tagion. "Everything/'  says  Jevons,  "which  comes  in  contact  with 
a  tabooed  person  or  thing  becomes  itself  as  dangerous  as  the 
original  object,  becomes  a  fresh  centre  of  infection.  .  .  ."*  Noth- 
ing of  this  kind  has  been  observed  in  the  case  of  Tutankhamen's 
mummy.  There  is  not  a  trace  of  infectious  unluckiness  for  the 
hundreds  of  fellahs  who  touched  the  coffin,  nor  for  the  many  who 
carried  and  transported  it  until  it  landed  in  the  glass  cases  of  the 
museum  of  Cairo.  This  immunity  would  be  impossible  if  the 
magical  nature  of  the  mummy  were  that  of  a  tabooed  object.  The 
mummy  would  not  have  spared  the  lives  of  many  hundred  visi- 
tors, workers,  and  newspapermen  who  touched  it.  And  did  not 
Howard  Carter  who  discovered  Tutankhamen  in  his  hiding  place 
live  many  years  after  having  examined  the  body  and  the  four 
shrines?  The  mummy  of  Tutankhamen  was,  it  seems,  highly  dis- 
criminating and  made  a  careful  selection  among  those  who  ap- 
proached it  The  taboo  belongs  without  any  doubt  to  a  rudi- 
mentary phase  of  social  and  religious  development,  but  the 

*F.  B.  Jevons,  An  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion  (London,  1896), 
p.  61  f. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  597 

fear-inspiring  character  of  the  curse  of  the  Pharaohs  is  of  a  much 
more  primitive,  one  would  almost  say,  primeval  kind.  There  is  a 
secret  that  cannot  be  reached  by  rational  thinking  and  rational- 
istic arguments.  Was  there  a  desire  or  an  urge  in  the  primitive 
mind  that  has  been  lost  with  growing  civilization,  a  barbaric 
concept  we  can  no  longer  fathom?  What  is  the  nature  of  that 
nameless  and  impending  dread? 

We  know  that  the  mummy  was  the  earthly  home  of  the  disem- 
bodied spirit,  and  the  identity  of  the  living  corpse  depended  on 
its  remaining  inviolate  and  intact,  but  we  can  guess  that  such  a 
belief  is  already  a  late  and  secondary  concept.  What  is  concealed 
behind  the  fear  that  the  mummy  might  be  injured?  Those  terri- 
ble curses  from  the  tomb,  the  threats  of  death  and  perdition  to 
anybody  who  meddles  with  the  dead  king  or  his  property,  are 
difficult  to  understand,  if  we  exclude  taboo  as  the  principle  of 
explanation.  Yet  that  belief  is  older  than  the  taboo  fear,  is,  so 
to  speak,  an  ancestor  from  which  the  taboo  superstitions  de- 
scended. All  elaborate  protective  measures  concern  the  body 
and  its  sacredness;  yet  it  is  not  the  body  as  such,  but  some  spirit- 
ual factor  represented  in  the  body.  Here  is,  it  seems,  an  idea  that 
is  so  archaic  it  is  utterly  alien  to  us.  We  too  preserve  the  bodies 
of  our  dead  and  take  care  of  their  tombs,  but  we  cannot  imagine 
inscriptions  in  our  cemeteries  threatening  any  intruder  with 
annihilation  and  death.  But  is  the  spirit  of  those  curses  really  so 
utterly  alien  to  us?  Is  it  not  rather  alienated?  Is  the  way  of  think- 
ing expressed  in  those  threats  really  so  remote  from  our  own?  If 
it  belonged  to  a  circle  of  prehistoric  superstitions  entirely  inac- 
cessible to  our  ideas,  we  would  be  unable  to  feel  what  prompted 
Shakespeare  to  write  those  lines  for  his  epitaph: 

Good  friend,  for  Jesu's  sake  forbear 
To  dig  the  dust  enclosed  here. 
Blest  be  the  man  that  spares  the  stones, 
And  curst  be  he  that  moves  my  bones. 

Here  is  a  curse  quite  similar  to  that  of  the  Egyptian  Pharaohs 
and  of  the  Phoenician  kings  almost  four  thousand  years  later. 
And  do  we  not  detect  an  echo  of  the  same  feeling  when  we  in  the 


598  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

funeral  Mass  wish  an  undisturbed  rest  for  the  dead  (Requiescat 
in  pace)? 

In  studying  the  rich  material  which  the  history  of  burial  cus- 
toms of  ancient  peoples  provides  and  in  searching  for  a  clue  to 
the  secret  of  those  curses,  I  had  arrived  at  certain  provisional 
hypotheses .  comparing  the  Egyptian  provisions  and  protections 
for  the  mummy  with  obsessional  thoughts  of  neurotics  about  life 
in  the  beyond.  I  assumed  that  at  the  concealed  core  of  the  fears 
that  led  to  the  development  of  such  elaborate  measures  for  the 
body  was  a  special,  single  fear  of  damage  to  some  of  its  parts,  and 
that  this  particular  fear  had  been  displaced  and  generalized  to 
the  mummy  and  its  property.  Such  assumptions  are  harmless  as 
long  as  you  remain  aware  of  their  character  as  preliminary  at- 
tempts at  the  elucidation  of  puzzling  things,  and  as  long  as  you  do 
not  confuse  them  with  a  valid  explanation.  They  have  a  sus- 
picious resemblance  to  the  daydreams  of  an  explorer,  having  in 
common  the  fact  that  they  produce  a  temporary  feeling  of 
gratification. 

In  my  case,  such  transient  satisfaction  was  disturbed  by  two 
facts.  Some  of  the  features  found  in  the  material  of  my  study  did 
not  tally  with  that  assumption.  One  need  not  give  up  a  hypothesis 
because  of  such  minor  contradictions,  but  they  serve  as  warnings 
to  be  especially  cautious,  because  they  sometimes  lead  to  the  dis- 
covery of  irreconcilable  and  fundamental  inconsistencies.  The 
second  factor  was  equally  discontenting  and  came  as  a  surprise: 
at  a  certain  moment  of  my  research—I  do  not  know  where  and 
when— the  odd  idea  occurred  to  me  that  I  had  read  or  heard 
some  French  sentence  which  contained  the  clue  I  searched  for. 
What  were  the  words  of  the  sentence?  I  tortured  my  memory 
in  vain  for  many  weeks.  Among  the  many  French  words  or  phrases 
occurring  to  me,  there  were  a  few  which  seemed  to  refer  to  the 
subject  under  discussion  in  my  thoughts  in  one  way  or  another, 
but  none  that  opened  an  avenue  to  the  solution  of  the  problem 
of  the  Pharaoh's  curse.  There  was,  for  instance,  that  old  exclama- 
tion "Le  roi  est  mart,  vive  le  roil"  but  how  did  it  relate  to  the 
Pharaoh  except  by  the  title  of  royalty?  I  remembered  that  sen- 
tence saying  that  the  dead  have  to  be  killed  ("Ce  sont  les  marts 
qtfil  faut  qu'on  tue?*),  but  m  it  is  only  reflected  the  thought  that 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          599 

the  living  had  better  lay  their  ghosts.  One  is  scarcely  allowed  to 
stretch  the  meaning  of  that  sentence  so  far  that  the  excavation  of 
a  mummy  could  be  brought  under  that  heading.  For  some  time 
the  French  phrase  I  had  forgotten  played  hide-and-seek  with  me, 
but  it  did  not  let  itself  be  found.  (I  read  somewhere  the  definition 
of  a  little  girl:  "Memory  is  what  I  forget  things  with.")  I  sought 
for  it  at  all  possible  and  quite  a  few  impossible  places.  Had  I 
read  it  in  the  issue  of  the  Paris  Match?  It  was  not  there  nor  in 
Theodore  Reinach's  report  giving  full  details  of  the  objects  in 
Tabnit's  tomb.  It  was  not  in  the  few  French  books  and  articles 
by  Egyptologists  I  had  read  in  the  last  months.  Had  I  perhaps 
heard  it  in  Paris  or  read  it  in  a  French  novel?  Such  questions  re- 
mained, of  course,  unanswered,  since  I  had  not  the  slightest  no- 
tion of  what  the  forgotten  phrase  had  said  or  meant;  only  the 
fact  (or  was  it  a  delusion?)  that  it  provided  the  solution  of  that 
problem. 

Don't  get  me  wrong!  The  idea  that  a  lost  sentence  contained 
the  answer  to  the  question  was  not  welcome  to  me.  It  did  not 
come  as  a  guest,  but  as  an  intruder  into  the  home  of  my  thoughts. 
It  did  not  appeal  to  me  because  I  had  marched  along  on  a  certain 
path  and  I  did  not  like  to  learn  that  I  had  taken  the  wrong  turn, 
that  the  right  path  was  somewhere  else,  and  that  I  was  not  told 
where.  It  is  a  most  uncomfortable  situation  to  know  that  some- 
thing exists  somewhere  and  not  be  able  to  catch  it,  to  possess 
something  that  is  not  available.  At  that  time  I  had  not  the  slight- 
est inkling  that  the  phrase  I  sought  was  being  shut  away  by  my- 
self, that  it  was  a  repressed  idea  which  eluded  me  because  I  did 
not  want  to  catch  and  face  it.  Only  after  I  found  it  in  a  strange 
way  did  I  realize  that  the  phrase  had  been  kept  prisoner  in  the 
underground  vault  by  myself,  that  I  had  been  its  unconscious 
jailer. 

The  point  of  departure  for  my  hypothesis  had  been  that  the 
careful  preservation  of  a  mummy  was  a  custom  founded  on  emo- 
tional reactions  to  intense  aggressive  and  hostile  feelings  toward 
the  deceased  Pharaoh,  a  reaction-formation  of  a  structure  simi- 
lar to  those  to  be  found  in  the  symptoms  of  obsessional  neuroses. 
My  recent  notion  that  a  forgotten  French  sentence  pointed  in 
another  direction  shook  the  beautiful  trust  I  had  in  my  thesis.  It 


SCO  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

was  the  first  indication  of  a  surprise  awaiting  me:  what  I  was 
driving  at  was  very  different  from  what  I  was  driven  by. 


It  was  a  strange  situation:  there  were  some  French  words  or 
sentences,  the  key  to  the  problem,  but  the  key  was  lost  and  the 
door  could  not  be  opened.  Actually,  the  key  was  not  lost,  it  was 
only  misplaced,  or  rather  had  been  put  unconsciously  into  an  ex- 
cellent hiding  place.  I  found  it  just  as  I  was  ready  to  give  up  the 
project  of  exploring  the  subject.  I  wanted  to  turn  my  attention  to 
other  themes,  but  all  of  them  mysteriously  led  my  thoughts  back 
to  the  problem  I  wished  to  put  away. 

The  great  German  dramatist  Christian  Friedrich  Hebbel, 
whose  works  are  almost  unknown  in  this  country,  wrote,  looking 
back  to  his  youth,  in  his  diary:  "First  the  cup  is  lacking,  then  the 
wine."  Youth  has  an  overflow  of  ideas  and  does  not  know  how  to 
put  them  into  shape.  Old  age  has  learned  the  method,  but  there 
is  a  scarcity  of  new  ideas.  Thus  I  returned  in  my  thoughts  to  the 
projects  that  had  preoccupied  me  in  younger  years,  and  all  ways 
of  thinking  led,  often  on  strange  detours,  to  that  problem  of  the 
relationship  of  the  living  and  the  dead,  and  indirectly  to  the  curse 
of  Tutankhamen  and  Tabnit. 

When  I  had  finally  decided  to  drop  the  research  plan  on  this 
subject,  that  inaccessible  French  sentence  suddenly  sprang  up  in 
a  dream.  The  dream  is  unique  in  my  personal  experience  because 
it  is  the  only  one  in  which  the  solution  of  a  problem  presented 
itself  to  me.  I  know  that  I  do  not  belong,  alas,  to  the  chosen  ones 
to  whom  the  Lord  unveils  His  secrets  in  their  sleep. 

Before  going  to  bed  I  had  cleared  the  deck,  that  is  to  say,  I  had 
tried  to  bring  about  an  appearance  of  orderliness  to  the  helter- 
skelter  of  books,  magazines,  and  manuscripts  that  littered  my 
desk.  Among  the  scattered  things  were  the  many  sheets  on  which 
notes  on  Tutankhamen,  burial  customs,  Egyptian  prehistory,  and 
primitive  ancestor  worship  were  jotted  down.  I  looked  at  them 
before  I  put  them  together  and  into  a  folder,  to  be  sunk  in  the 
depths  of  one  of  the  drawers.  So  much  work  and  no  result!  When 


ADVENTURES  IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          6oi 

I  put  the  Paris  Match  away,  the  magazine  opened  to  the  pages 
which  showed  the  beautiful  pictures  of  Tutankhamen's  mummy 
and  its  shrines  and  of  the  objects  found  in  the  tomb.  It  was  very 
stupid  of  me  not  to  have  taken  the  train  from  Alexandria  to 
Cairo  when  I  was  in  Egypt  on  my  way  to  Palestine  in  1937.  I  was 
then  too  eager  to  see  my  son  in  Jerusalem;  I  should  have  allowed 
myself  a  week's  sojourn  in  Cairo.  I  could  have  seen  the  golden 
coffin  of  the  Pharaoh  and  the  other  treasures  of  the  museum. 
What  a  pity!  I  should  have  at  least  gone  on  a  tour  with  other 
tourists  to  the  Pyramids.  The  memory  of  a  movie  recently  seen, 
Valley  of  Kings,  emerged.  In  the  movie  people  ride  to  that  famous 
necropolis  on  camels.  The  plot  of  the  picture  was  worse  than 
melodramatic,  it  was  almost  moronic,  but  the  photography  show- 
ing the  desert  landscape,  the  colossal  statues  of  the  kings,  and 
the  tombs  of  the  Pharaohs  was  exciting.  I  should  have  gone  there. 
I  have  never  ridden  on  a  camel. 

This  was  my  last  thought  before  falling  asleep.  I  woke  up  in 
the  middle  of  the  night  and  felt  that  well-known  pressure  from 
my  gallstones.  I  took  decholine  from  the  medicine  chest  and  tried 
in  vain  to  fall  asleep  again.  Lying  there  in  the  dark,  I  was  prey  to 
all  kinds  of  depressing  thoughts.  There  was  no  pain,  but  an  in- 
tense discomfort.  If  painful  attacks  should  occur,  an  operation 
will  be  unavoidable.  I  put  on  the  light  and  smoked  a  cigarette, 
but  it  did  not  taste  good.  It  occurred  to  me  that  a  few  years  ago  I 
had  severe  pains  in  the  throat  which  were  not  alleviated  by  gar- 
gling or  drugs.  I  had  been  worried  and  had  consulted  Dr.  Vogl. 
The  excellent  physician  carefully  examined  me  and  smilingly 
said,  "Not  every  prominent  psychoanalyst  has  to  die  of  cancer  of 
the  throat."  He  wrote  a  prescription  and  the  complaint  soon 
disappeared. 

The  visual  picture  of  Freud  as  I  saw  him  last  emerges:  a  very 
old  man,  his  beard  white,  his  hands  covered  with  wrinkles.  .  .  . 
I  really  should  give  up  the  study  on  Tutankhamen's  vengeance 
and  spend  my  time,  rather,  on  the  translation  of  the  letters  Freud 
wrote  me.  Did  I  not  promise  John  Farrar  to  deliver  the  manu- 
script before  New  Years?  ...  I  now  have  permission  from  the 
Freud  Foundation  in  London  to  publish  the  letters.  What  is  it 
that  makes  me  postpone  the  work?  ...  I  was  always  a  good  pro- 


6O2  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

crastinator  and  there  was  never  a  lack  of  self-excuse.  .  .  .  What 
would  Freud  himself  have  said  to  the  publication  of  his  letters? 
.  .  .  He  would  not  have  objected  to  it.  ...  He  allowed  me  to 
publish  his  letter  on  Dostoyevsky  and  wished  only  a  few  sentences 
concerning  personal  things  to  be  excluded.  .  .  .  But  he  once  de- 
clared that  he  was  quite  indifferent  to  what  was  published  about 
him  after  his  death.  He  did  not  believe  in  an  existence  in  the 
beyond.  I  remember  the  remarks  he  made  about  it  in  a  conversa- 
tion with  George  Sylvester  Viereck  in  London.  .  .  .  Yet  I  have 
some  scruples  about  publishing  certain  passages  in  his  letters  to 
me.  He  would  perhaps  have  frowned  on  it,  although  they,  too, 
show  that  he  was  one  of  the  noblest  of  men. 

The  pressure  in  the  gall-bladder  region  was  still  acutely  felt. 
...  I  must  have  made  a  mistake  in  my  diet,  perhaps  eaten  some 
fat.  .  .  .  What  did  I  eat  at  dinner?  I  cannot  remember.  No  use 
trying  to  sleep.  I  took  a  new  book  which  I  had  begun  reading 
earlier  in  the  week.  ...  It  is  the  report  a  French  missionary, 
Andre  Dupeyrat,  wrote  about  the  twenty-one  years  he  spent 
among  the  barbaric  Papuans  in  New  Guinea.*  It  is  a  realistic  por- 
trayal of  the  life  and  customs  of  a  truly  barbaric  race  of  humans 
who  still  live  as  their  remote  ancestors  did  in  the  Stone  Age. 
Father  Dupeyrat  penetrated  a  region  of  Papua  never  visited  by  a 
white  man,  where  cannibalism  still  flourishes.  He  describes,  for 
instance,  how  one  of  his  native  friends  called  Golopoui  once  took 
him  to  his  hut.  When  he  crawled  through  the  narrow  doorway 
into  the  oppressive  atmosphere  of  the  dark  hut,  he  saw  two  skulls 
and  some  human  bones  on  the  floor.  They  were  shiny  and  pol- 
ished like  ivory.  The  priest  asked  the  Negro  where  his  parents 
were.  "They're  here,"  said  the  man,  and  pointed  to  one  of  the 
skulls  with  his  big  toe.  "That  is  my  father  and  that  one  is  my 
mother."  Without  the  least  embarrassment  he  told  the  priest 
that  his  parents  became  old  and  feeble,  and  that  he  realized  that 
their  time  had  come.  He  asked  friends  in  another  village  to  take 
care  of  them.  They  invited  the  old  couple  to  a  banquet  at  their 
village,  where  they  brained  them  with  clubs,  cut  the  bodies  up, 
cooked  them  in  a  stone  oven,  and  ate  them.  "Afterward  they 

*  Savage  Papua:  A  Missionary  among  Cannibals  (New  York,  1954). 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          603 

washed  and  cleaned  the  bones  and  I  brought  them  back  here. 
You  can  see  what  good  care  I  take  of  them.  .  .  .  But  then,  I  am  a 
dutiful  son."  Father  Dupeyrat  gives  other  descriptions  of  such 
horrifying  repasts  at  which  the  Papuans  drink  bowlfuls  of  liquid 
from  the  body  with  avid  movements  of  their  tongues.  Once  the 
priest  was  told  that  the  natives  ate  the  flesh  of  their  dead  chief  to 
absorb  his  strength  and  other  virtues. 

I  put  the  book  aside  before  I  had  read  its  last  pages,  and  fell 
asleep.  The  dream  that  followed  was  like  a  novel.  Some  psycho- 
analysts assert  that  we  all  become  poets  when  we  dream,  and 
many  of  those  productions  of  our  fantasy  resemble  novels.  It  is 
rare  that  my  dreams  have  this  character,  but  I  remember  that 
some  of  them  have  made  the  same  impression  as  a  long  story. 
They  were  dreamed  when  I  was  young.  The  dream  of  this  night 
was  not  simply  a  succession  of  isolated  pictures,  but  was  really 
like  a  novel  or  a  movie.  Such  an  exception  does  not  contradict 
the  assumption  of  my  lack  of  imagination.  This  dream  used,  in 
the  main,  material  from  the  novel,  The  King  of  Sidon,  as  well  as 
from  the  report  of  the  discovery  of  Tutankhamen's  mummy,  a 
real  event  whose  fantastic  character  surpasses  the  imagination  of 
most  science-fiction  writers. 

Here  is  the  dream:  /  am  in  an  airplane  that  flies  over  Alex- 
andria and  slowly  descends.  I  am  looking  at  the  Pyramids  and  the 
wide  planes  of  yellow  sand  surrounding  them.  I  am  riding  at  a 
gallop  on  a  camel,  and  I  am  wearing  high  cavalry  boots.  I  am 
giving  the  spurs  to  the  camel.  Our  cavalcade  arrives  at  the  foot  of 
colossal  figures  of  Pharaohs.  I  dismount  easily  and  throw  the 
reins  to  a  fellah  who  is  waiting.  I  am  entering  the  sepulchral 
chamber  of  an  Egyptian  or  Phoenician  king,  but  it  is,  at  the  same 
time,  the  hut  of  a  savage  tribesman.  There  are  human  bones  on 
the  ground  covered  by  leaves.  It  is  very  hot  and  there  is  a  stench. 
It  is  windy.  It  is  very  dark,  but  I  have  an  electric  torch  which  I 
turn  around.  The  chamber  is  crammed  with  precious  things  piled 
up.  The  flashlight  falls  on  an  anthropoid  sarcophagus.  The  first 
thing  I  see  is  a  gigantic  canary  bird  with  widely  spread  wings, 
sitting  on  the  breast  of  the  mummy.  There  is  a  snake  about  to 
jump  at  the  c&nary  which  will  devour  it.  I  know  it  is  the  death 


604  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

bird.  It  opens  its  beak  and  sings  in  a  very  low,  ghostlike  voice. 
The  mummy  is  an  old  man  with  a  white  beard.  He  looks  at  me 
with  wide-open  unblinking  eyes.  The  canary  has  stopped  singing. 
There  is  a  silence  without  end.  On  the  sarcophagus  is  an  inscrip- 
tion in  hieroglyphs  like  Hebrew  letters.  I  am  reading  the  lines 
from  right  to  left.  It  is  not  difficult.  I  stand  near  the  sarcophagus, 
but  I  cannot  move.  I  am  scared  stiff.  In  the  midst  of  the  long 
silence  a  voice  says  in  slow  singsong:  "Qui  mange  du  Pharaoh  en 
meurt"  I  have  always  known  it.  A  feeling  of  relief.  I  feel  great. 

I  am  not  sure  whether  the  last  sentences  still  belong  to  the 
dream,  they  may  be  a  part  of  the  beginning  of  conscious  thinking. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  the  words  "I  have  always  known  it"  mean 
that  I  have  always  known  that  whoever  eats  of  the  Pharaoh  dies 
or  that  I  have  always  known  that  sentence.  The  latter  is  more 
likely,  because,  immediately  when  I  awoke,  I  recognized  that  this 
was  the  elusive  phrase  for  which  I  had  searched  so  long  in  my 
memory.  Not  trusting  the  forces  of  repression  that  had  so  often 
pulled  a  dream  clearly  remembered  at  awakening  back  into  the 
unconscious,  I  jotted  down  its  text  and  began,  comfortably 
leaning  on  a  pillow,  its  analysis. 

/  am  in  an  airplane  that  flies  over  Alexandria  and  slowly  de- 
scends. I  am  looking  at  the  Pyramids  and  the  wide  planes  of  yellow 
sand  surrounding  them.  These  first  sentences  revive  the  memory 
of  my  trip  to  Palestine  in  1937  when  I  really  landed  in  Alex- 
andria. Why  is  the  dream  renewing  those  impressions?  In  making 
order  on  my  desk  and  putting  the  notes  on  Tutankhamen  away, 
I  had  thought  of  the  journey  and  had  regretted  missing  the  op- 
portunity to  see  the  Valley  of  the  Kings.  The  dream  gives  me  a 
second  chance  in  starting  again  at  this  point.  /  am  riding  at  a 
gallop  on  a  camel  and  I  am  wearing  high  cavalry  boots.  I  am 
giving  the  spurs  to  the  camel  The  grotesque  picture  of  wearing 
cavalry  boots  and  giving  the  camel  the  spurs  has  the  following 
origin:  In  the  film  Valley  of  Kings,  seen  a  few  days  before  the 
dream,  a  group  of  people  are  riding  camels  in  an  easy  trot  to  the 
tombs.  In  a  later  sequence,  a  sandstorm  surprises  them  and  they 
ride  at  a  furious  gallop  to  escape  it.  Looking  at  the  scene,  I  had 
wondered  what  it  would  be  like  to  ride  on  a  camel  in  such  a  situa- 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  605 

tion.  It  seemed  difficult.  The  dream  disposes  of  this  doubt,  re- 
minding me  that  I  had  been  a  good  rider  when  in  the  Austrian 
army  in  World  War  I.  I  treat  the  camel  as  if  it  were  a  horse, 
giving  it  the  spurs.  It  is  quite  easy  to  ride  on  a  galloping  camel. 
Transferring  the  scene  from  the  picture  to  the  dream,  this  scene 
expresses  my  impatience  to  see  as  soon  as  possible  the  ancient 
monuments,  the  grandeur  that  was  Egypt.  Our  cavalcade  arrives 
at  the  foot  of  colossal  figures  of  Pharaohs.  This  also  is  taken  from 
the  movie.  In  the  picture  a  man  walks  on  the  arm  of  a  statue.  The 
colossal  sizes  of  the  kings'  statues,  so  often  seen  in  photographs 
but  vividly  presented  in  the  film,  had  impressed  me.  /  dismount 
easily  and  throw  the  reins  to  a  fellah  who  is  waiting.  Memories  of 
such  situations  in  which  I,  as  an  officer,  returning  from  riding, 
threw  the  reins  to  the  soldier  who  took  care  of  the  stable.  The 
easy  dismounting  from  the  camel  removes  the  doubt  that  it  would 
not  be  as  easy  to  jump  off  a  camel  as  a  horse. 

So  far,  so  to  speak,  we  have  the  prologue  to  the  play.  What  fol- 
lows is  the  central  scene  of  the  dream,  in  which  I  discover  the 
subterranean  tomb  of  a  prehistoric  Pharaoh.  /  am  entering  the 
sepulchral  chamber  of  an  Egyptian  or  Phoenician  king,  but  it  "is, 
at  the  same  time,  the  hut  of  a  savage  tribesman.  This  scene  fulfills 
the  ambitious  wish  to  make  discoveries  as  sensational  as  those  of 
Howard  Carter  and  Andreas  Moeller  in  The  King  of  Sidon,  at 
the  same  time  to  find  something  remarkable  in  the  field  of  psy- 
choanalysis. We  are  accustomed  in  thought  and  speech  to  con- 
ceiving of  the  unconscious  as  a  subterranean  region  of  the  mind, 
and  to  comparing  our  work  with  that  of  archaeologists.  In  this 
particular  case  the  secret  meaning  of  the  curse  of  the  Pharaoh, 
and  specifically  that  French  phrase,  the  keywords  in  the  literary 
and  metaphorical  sense,  are  to  be  dug  up.  The  dream  exaggerates 
the  importance  of  this  possibility,  comparing  such  a  finding  with 
the  great  discoveries  of  archaeology.  There  are  human  bones  on 
the  ground  covered  by  leaves.  Again  impressions  from  the  book 
Savage  Papua,  read  before  falling  asleep,  where  Father  Dupeyrat 
sees  human  bones  covered  with  leaves  in  the  hut  of  a  native.  It  is 
very  hot  and  there  is  a  stench.  Again  taken  from  the  description 
of  the  French  priest.  The  bad  odor  appears  in  his  tale,  but  I  am 


606  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

suspicious  that  in  this  dream  element  at  the  same  time  there  is 
perception  of  a  bad  smell,  of  the  flatulence  of  my  own  digestive 
process.  It  is  windy.  The  feature  of  strong  wind  was  perhaps  stim- 
ulated by  the  perception  of  the  weather  and  of  the  fluttering  cur- 
tains at  the  half-open  windows.  I  surmise  that  it  concerns  also 
gas  in  the  bowels.  It  is  very  dark,  but  I  have  an  electric  torch 
which  I  turn  around.  Taken  from  the  movie  in  which  an  old 
tomb  in  the  Valley  of  the  Kings  is  found.  Carter  also  used  elec- 
tric light.  The  chamber  is  crammed  with  precious  things  piled  up. 
The  flashlight  falls  on  an  anthropoid  sarcophagus.  The  chamber 
piled  with  precious  things  is,  of  course,  the  tomb  of  Tutankha- 
men of  which  I  have  seen  so  many  pictures,  the  last  ones  in  the 
Paris  Match.  At  the  same  time  the  room  is  that  of  Freud,  in 
which  there  were  many  Egyptian  and  Etruscan  antiquities.  As 
during  the  whole  dream,  the  sepulchral  chamber  also  represents 
the  intestines.  The  crammed  feeling  concerns  the  bowels.  In 
sleep  the  need  to  empty  them  is  perceived.  The  contents  of  the 
chamber  thus  also  symbolize  feces  (contrast:  gold,  ebony,  pre- 
cious things).  The  word  "anthropoid"  is  taken  from  The  King  of 
Sidon  in  which  the  archaeologist  Moeller  explains  the  meaning 
*$.  the  word  (as  equaling  "manlike")  to  Sabine  with  whom  he  fell 
in  love.  The  dream  makes  a  compound  of  the  two  discoveries  of 
the  sarcophagi  of  Tutankhamen  and  Tabnit.  I  am  identified  with 
the  discoverers  of  both  mummies. 

A  scene  repeats  the  experience  of  Howard  Carter  who  describes 
die  appearance  of  the  sarcophagus:  The  first  thing  I  see  is  a 
Canary  bird  with  widely  spread  wings,  sitting  on  the 
©f  the  mummy.  There  is  a  snake  about  to  jump  at  the 
which  will  devour  it.  The  canary  bird  appeared  in  the 
stewj  Barter  told  Weigall  and  Neubert.  The  small  singer  was  de- 
voured by  a  cobra.  Some  people  saw  in  that  incident  a  bad  omen, 
•especially  since  the  newly  found  Pharaoh  had  worn  the  symbol 
^f  a  cobra  on  his  forehead.  On  the  breast  of  Tutankhamen's 
mummy  die  soul  bird,  protecting  the  Pharaoh  with  widespread 
•wings,  was  modeled.  /  know  it  is  the  death  bird.  It  opens  its  beak 
*and  .sings  in  a  very  low,  ghostlike  voice.  The  expectation  of  im- 
pending doom  for  myself  in  the  role  of  the  sacrilegious  disturber 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          607 

of  the  Pharaoh's  hiding  place.  There  is  an  allusion  also  to  a 
sexual  theme  in  which  the  canary  represents  a  penis  symbol.  The 
allusion  uses  not  only  the  general  sexual  symbol  of  the  bird,  but 
also  associations  of  Vienna  slang.  The  vulgar  expression  cor- 
responding to  the  English  word  "fuck"  is  in  Vienna  vogeln,  al- 
luding to  the  erection  of  the  penis.  The  death  bird  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  findings  in  the  tomb.  The  element  is  taken  from  as- 
sociations arising  while  reading  books  on  ancient  Egyptian 
theories  about  life  in  the  beyond.  The  memory  of  the  last  move- 
ment of  Mahler's  Second  Symphony  had  occurred  to  me  during 
the  reading.  In  this  movement  the  composer  presents  a  sound 
picture  of  the  day  of  last  judgment,  when  the  dead  rise  from  the 
grave  and  the  Great  Summons  sounds  in  the  Valley  of  Jehosha- 
phat.  The  dead  march  to  their  court.  They  tremble  and  quiver 
with  fear  because  none  is  just  before  God.  In  the  words  of  Mahler 
himself:  "Finally,  after  all  had  cried  out  in  the  worst  turmoil,  only 
the  long-lasting  voice  of  the  death  bird  from  the  last  grave  re- 
mained." Here,  thus,  is  the  low,  ghostlike  song  of  the  canary:  an 
omen  of  the  terrible  fate  awaiting  me. 

As  readers  of  my  last  book  The  Haunting  Melody  know,  the 
tunes  of  the  last  movement  of  the  Second  Symphony  of  Mahler 
pursued  me  in  a  meaningful  way  after  the  death  of  my  friend 
Karl  Abraham. *  The  resurrection  chorus  unconsciously  became 
the  musical  leitmotif  of  my  ambition,  of  a  silly  wish  to  become 
immortal  by  my  accomplishments.  I  do  not  know  why  at  this 
point  The  Magic  Flute  by  Mozart  occurred  to  me,  but  then  I 
remembered  that  the  voice  of  the  death  bird  in  Mahler's  sym- 
phony is  imitated  by  a  flute.  This  cannot  be  the  only  associative 
connection.  Other,  more  important  ones  emerged  later  on.  The 
mummy  is  an  old  man  with  a  white  beard.  The  old  man  with  the 
white  beard  is,  of  course,  Freud,  but  also  my  father.  He  looks  at 
me  with  wide-open,  unblinking  eyes.  The  wide-open  eyes  appear 
in  the  etching  of  Freud  at  his  desk  by  the  Viennese  artist  Max 
Pollak.  The  picture  hangs  in  my  room.  The  unblinking  eyes  were 
a  peculiarity  of  a  patient  I  had  seen  a  few  days  before.  It 
made  an  odd  impression  that  the  man  blinked  his  eyes  so  rarely. 

*  The  Haunting  Melody  (New  York:  Farrar,  Straus  and  Young,  1953). 


6o8  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

The  canary  has  stopped  singing.  As  in  Mahler's  symphony  the 
death  bird  before  a  long  pause.  Again  a  sexual  allusion:  The  bird 
that  becomes  silent  equals  being  unable  to  reach  an  erection. 
Threat  of  impotence.  There  is  a  silence  without  end.  Again  from 
Mahler's  symphony.  The  silence  without  end  is,  of  course,  that 
of  death. 

On  the  sarcophagus  is  an  inscription  in  hieroglyphs  like  Hebrew 
letters.  I  am  reading  the  lines  from  right  to  left.  It  is  not  difficult. 
A  conglomerate  made  up  of  various  materials.  The  hieroglyphs 
are  taken  from  descriptions  of  Tutankhamen's  grave,  but  the 
Hebrew  letters  are  a  slight  distortion  of  the  inscription  on  the 
Phoenician  sarcophagus.  I  had  read  that  Phoenician  letters  in 
their  early  forms  are  practically  identical  with  those  of  Hebrew. 
Also  the  Phoenician  language  belonged  to  that  North  Semitic 
Canaanite  which  includes  Hebrew.  The  inscription  also  repre- 
sent, of  course,  letters  of  Freud  which  I  will  translate  and  publish. 
I  am  excavating  Freud  in  publishing  memories  and  letters  of  his. 
Hebrew  and  Phoenician  are  read  from  right  to  left.  When  I  was 
a  boy,  I  was  taught  to  read  Hebrew  by  my  grandfather  and  did 
it  quite  well.  I  can  scarcely  read  it  any  more  and  regret  that.  The 
dream  also  fulfills  the  wish  to  understand  Hebrew.  Andreas  Moel- 
ler  in  Lindau's  story,  with  whom  I  identify  in  the  dream,  is  an 
authority  on  Semitic  languages  and  reads  and  translates  the 
Phoenician  inscription  on  Tabnit's  sarcophagus  quite  easily.  7 
stand  near  the  sarcophagus,  but  I  cannot  move.  Taken  from  The 
King  of  Sidon  where  Andreas  Moeller  stands  near  and  kneels 
down  on  the  sarcophagus.  I  cannot  move,  like  Moeller  who  felt 
Ms  limbs  grow  stiff  in  accordance  with  the  curse  of  Tabnit,  priest 
o£  Astarte.  I  am  as  terrified  as  he  who  stepped  back  in  awe  of  the 
lonely  sleeper  who  had  provided  a  concealed  recess  for  his  body. 
The  inability  to  move  is,  as  so  often  in  dreams,  an  indication  of 
a  powerful  inhibition.  It  concerns  my  hesitancy  to  penetrate 
further  the  realm  of  the  secret  of  Pharaoh's  curse.  Deeper  than 
this:  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  publish  the  Freud  letters,  to  ex- 
cavate the  body  of  the  beloved  man. 

/  am  scared  stiff.  The  word  "stiff"  has  in  this  context  several 
meanings:  scared  stiff  is  a  well-known  colloquialism,  but  the  word 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY  609 

"stiff"  has  also  the  sexual  connotation  of  the  erected  penis.  I  had 
recently  read  the  slang  expression  "a  stiff,"  denoting  a  corpse 
in  a  mystery  story.  A  high  degree  of  condensation  is  reached  in 
this  dream  element  which  includes  not  only  paralysis  by  fear,  but 
also  the  contradictory  meanings  of  intense  sexual  desire,  indi- 
cated by  a  strong  erection,  and  of  the  state  of  death.  As  other 
elements  in  this  dream  this  one  is  very  overdetermined.  In  the 
midst  of  the  long  silence  a  voice  says  in  slow  singsong  .  .  .  The 
voice  is  my  own;  at  the  same  time  that  of  Tutankhamen  and 
other  Pharaohs  or  of  the  god  Osiris  into  whom  the  Pharaoh  is 
transformed  after  death.  Where  does  the  feature  of  singsong 
come  from?  In  The  King  of  Sidon  as  the  young  archaeologist 
dictates  his  scientific  paper  on  Phoenician  prehistory  to  the  girl, 
he  sometimes  falls  into  Semitic  singsong  when  he  recites  inscrip- 
tions. Here  also  is  an  echo  of  the  monotonous  up-and-down 
rhythm  in  which  the  Code  of  the  Old  Testament  is  recited  in 
the  Jewish  service.  The  voice  does  not  emphasize  the  words  it 
speaks.  It  does  not  sound  solemn,  but  sober  as  a  judge,  as  the 
Supreme  Judge  on  judgment  day.  Thus  the  singsong  has  a 
parodistic  touch  as  if  to  make  fun  of  the  expected  or  feared 
verdict. 

The  whole  sequence  of  events  also  points  to  the  last  move- 
ment of  Mahler's  Second  Symphony:  after  the  death  bird  has 
sung,  there  is  a  long  silence  as  in  the  dream.  Then  the  chorale 
sets  in,  at  first  mystericfusly  and  darkly,  until  it  leads  to  the  power- 
ful unison  of  voices.  Their  message  says  or  rather  sings  that  res- 
urrection is  a  certainty  and  that  there  is  no  punishment  in  the 
beyond,  that  suffering  has  not  been  in  vain  and  that  wishes  and 
ambitions  will  be  fulfilled:  "I  shall  die  to  live.  .  .  ."  It  seems 
here  that  I  treat  the  resurrection  chorale,  which  appeared  to  me 
in  my  young  days  as  a  prediction  of  power  and  glory,  very  ir- 
reverently, calling  it  singsong.  I  make  fun  of  its  message  of  res- 
urrection and  of  a  life  in  the  beyond.  (While  I  write  this,  a 
sentence  Anatole  France  once  wrote  in  a  review  of  a  novel  by 
Paul  Bourget  occurs  to  me:  "If  we  may  believe  Mr.  Bourget,  none 
of  us  can  help  arriving  in  paradise— unless  there  is  no  paradise, 
which  is  very  likely.")  At  the  same  time  I  express  my  disbelief: 


6lO  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

I  do  not  believe  in  nor  care  for  becoming  immortal  by  achieving 
something  remarkable.  Again  the  ambivalent  attitude  to  my 
youthful  striving  for  accomplishment  and  fame.  "Qui  mange  du 
Pharaoh  en  meurt"  At  first  sight  or  sound,  this  is  the  verdict  on 
the  criminal  who  has  done  an  unspeakable  thing.  But  the  sec- 
ond consideration  says  that  the  voice  is  not  laying  down  the  law, 
but  quoting  it.  What  happens  here  is  not  that  sentence  is  pro- 
nounced, but  that  a  sentence  is  recited.  What  sentence?  Of  course, 
the  phrase  for  which  I  searched  so  long,  that  French  sentence 
with  the  keywords,  unraveling  the  mystery  of  Tutankhamen's  and 
Tabnit's  curses. 

The  sentence  proclaiming  that  who  eats  of  the  Pharaoh  dies 
as  a  result  is,  of  course,  the  center  and  climax  of  the  dream. 
The  manifest  content  of  it  seems  to  make  sense.  It  is  coherent  and 
consistent  and  forms  a  whole.  On  the  surface  there  is  a  story;  a 
beginning,  middle,  and  end:  I  go  to  Egypt  and  discover  a 
mummy,  like  Carter;  decipher  a  hieroglyphic  inscription,  like 
Andreas  Moeller  in  the  novel.  The  dream  obviously  fulfills  an 
ambitious  wish  of  this  kind.  In  the  dream  I  experience  the  panic 
I  imagined  is  connected  with  disturbing  the  peace  of  the  dead 
Pharaoh  and  I  hear  the  sentence  pronounced:  I  have  to  die.  So 
far  so  good.  There  are  at  least  two  factors  disturbing  the  appear- 
ance of  unity  and  continuity  of  the  dream  tale.  Let  me  intro- 
duce their  psychological  evaluation  by  pointing  out  that  the 
sentence  "Who  eats  of  the  Pharaoh  dies"  floes  not  correspond  to 
the  exposition  or  the  premises  of  the  plot.  Howard  Carter, 
Andreas  Moeller,  and  Theodor  Reik— who  is  identified  with  the 
two  archaeologists  in  his  dream— have  not  eaten  the  body  of  the 
Pharaoh,  but  have  discovered  it.  Now  it  is  conceivable  that  the 
crime  we  committed  in  digging  up  the  mummy  could  be  called 
cannibalism  by  the  stretch  of  a  Shakespearean  fantasy.  And,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  Shakespeare  makes  Queen  Margaret  call  her  son's 
murderers  "bloody  cannibals"  (King  Henry  VI;  Part  III,  V,  v,  61). 
They  at  least  were  killers,  but  we,  on  the  contrary,  have  given 
new  life  to  the  hidden  bodies  of  the  kings.  Not  to  mention  that 
such  a  use  of  the  term  "cannibal"  is  even,  in  abuse,  alien  to  us  who 
are  not  contemporaries  of  the  virginal  Elizabeth,  The  phrase 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          6ll 

stating  that  the  eater  of  the  Pharaoh  dies  must  have  a  meaning 
within  the  dream,  because  each  part  of  the  dream  content  is  psy- 
chologically determined,  but  the  eating  of  the  Pharaoh  does  not 
tally  with  the  plot. 

We  remember  at  the  right  moment  that  it  corresponds  rather 
to  something  else,  to  one  of  the  important  day  remnants  of  which 
the  dream  is  made.  Before  that  sentence  there  is  a  dream  part 
saying  that  human  bones  are  on  the  ground  covered  by  leaves. 
But  this  feature,  like  several  others,  is  taken  from  the  description 
of  life  with  the  cannibalistic  Papuans.  In  his  report  the  French 
missionary  describes  in  a  matter-of-fact  way  the  Papuans'  bloody 
meals.  No  human  bones  were,  of  course,  found  in  the  tombs  o£ 
Tutankhamen  or  Tabnit.  And  now  it  occurs  to  me  that  the  dream 
itself  points  to  the  book  Savage  Papua  as  one  of  its  sources:  im 
it  I  am  entering  the  sepulchral  chamber  of  an  Egyptian  or  Phoeni- 
cian king,  but  it  is  at  the  same  time  the  hut  of  a  savage  tribesman 
How  does  this  sound?  If  it  is  not  sheer  nonsense— and  we  do  not 
believe  that  dreams  are  nonsensical— it  can  only  mean  that  there 
is  in  my  thought  some  connection— perhaps  a  comparison?— be- 
tween the  prehistoric  Egyptians  and  the  Papuans  in  faraway  New- 
Guinea.  Be  that  as  it  may,  there  is  no  doubt  that  "Qui  mange  dw 
Pharaoh"  corresponds  to  the  tales  the  French  missionary  telk 
about  the  man-eating  Papuans. 

The  best  is  yet  to  come.  For  a  moment  I  had  the  impression 
that  Father  Dupeyrat's  being  French  had  something  to  do  witb 
the  emergence  of  that  French  sentence  in  my  dream,  but  then  I 
remembered  that  I  had  searched  for  a  lost  French  phrase  whidi 
would  unveil  the  mystery  of  the  Pharaoh's  curse  many  months 
before  reading  the  book  Savage  Papua.  The  only  connection 
could  be  that  the  author's  French  nationality  had  reawakened 
the  idea  of  that  forgotten  sentence,  had  revived  the  wish  to  call 
it  to  mind.  In  the  middle  of  such  reflections  it  struck  me  suddenly 
that  that  French  sentence  I  heard  in  my  dream  is  not  correct.  In 
reality,  the  proverb  says:  "Qui  mange  du  Pape  en  meurt"  ("Who 
eats  of  the  Pope,  dies  of  it").  The  saying,  I  was  told  later,  origi- 
nated at  the  time  when  the  exiled  popes  resided  in  Avignon,  and 
it  means,  of  course,  that  whoever  attacks  the  Pope  has  to  fear  the 


6l2  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

worst.  But  the  dream  changed  this  meaning  in  two  directions:  it 
took  the  word  mange,  "eats,"  literally,  as  the  presence  of  human 
bones  and  the  allusion  to  the  cannibalistic  Papuans  show.  It  thus 
returned  from  the  metaphorical  to  the  crude,  realistic  meaning 
of  the  word.  Furthermore,  the  dream  replaced  the  Pope  with  the 
Pharaoh,  so  that  the  person  who  eats  of  the  Pharaoh  has  forfeited 
his  life. 

The  first  change  is  easily  understandable;  it  fits  the  story  which 
deals  with  the  discovery  of  a  prehistoric  Pharaoh.  In  ancient 
Egyptian  religion  the  place  of  the  Pharaoh  not  only  equals  but 
transcends  the  status  of  the  Pope  in  the  Catholic  Church.  The 
Pharaoh  not  only  represented  the  highest  mundane  and  religious 
authority,  he  was  the  god  Osiris  himself,  on  earth  and  in  the  be- 
yond. One  can  say  that  the  dream  transferred  the  French  saying 
into  the  Valley  of  the  Kings,  and  thus  had  to  replace  the  Pope  by 
the  Pharaoh  in  the  interests  of  coherence  and  local  color.  It  is  as 
if  an  American  play  were  produced  in  London,  and  the  director 
replaced  American  names  and  places  by  familiar  English  proper 
names,  so  that  the  English  audience  could  understand  the  mean- 
ing of  allusions,  and  so  on.  Yet  even  such  a  transformation  must 
have  its  secret  significance  in  the  dream,  and  has  a  certain  bearing 
on  its  unconscious  meaning.  The  change  must  also  serve  another 
purpose.  Here,  clearly,  is  a  gap  in  the  dream  content,  a  gap  simi- 
lar to  that  we  found  before  between  the  excavating  and  eating  of 
the  Pharaoh—perhaps  it  is  the  same,  seen  from  a  different  point 
of  view.  "Once  more  unto  the  breach,  dear  friends,  once  morel" 
One  would  like  to  shout  with  Henry  V. 

The  unconscious  memory  of  the  lost  French  sentence  was 
awakened  by  reading  the  book  about  the  Papuans.  Of  course, 
that's  itl  The  title!  From  Savage  Papua  to  Rape,  the  French  word 
for  Pope  (compare  papacy)  was  not  far.  The  fact  that  the  book 
was  written  by  a  French  Catholic  priest  helped,  of  course,  to  push 
the  forgotten  sentence  still  nearer  to  the  threshold  of  pre-conscious 
thinking.  These  two  factors  joined  an  ardent  wish  to  remember 
those  keywords,  and  their  combined  efforts  succeeded  in  calling 
them  up  from  unconscious  depths.  But  why  didn't  the  saying  ap- 
pear in  its  original  form?  Why  not  "Qui  mange  du  Pape  en  meurt"? 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY  613 

We  have  already  said  the  saying  had  to  be  changed  in  the  in- 
terests of  uniformity  and  coherency  with  the  manifest  dream  text. 
But  there  is  another,  more  important,  reason.  In  its  original  form 
the  word  Pape  is  easily  recalled  by  its  sound  connection  with 
Papua.  (The  word  Papua  is  derived  from  a  Maluccan  word  which 
means  "frizzy"  or  "curly,"  used  to  designate  people  with  curly 
or  frizzy  hair.*)  It  is  not  only  adaptation  to  the  new  environment, 
the  Egyptian  milieu,  which  is  responsible  for  the  replacement, 
but  also  the  avoidance  of  the  word  Pape,  which  equals  "father." 
The  expression  Pape  had  to  be  avoided  because  it  was  too  close 
for  comfort,  namely,  to  the  idea  of  eating  one's  father.  Consider 
that  the  dream  also  returns  in  its  language  to  a  kind  of  children's 
talk.  We  called  our  father  Papa.  The  dream  takes  the  word  Pape 
as  if  it  were  Papa.  Here  is  an  instance  of  such  literal-mindedness 
in  children:  The  German  word  for  parrot  is  Papagei.  When  my 
son  Arthur  was  a  small  boy,  a  parrot  was  shown  to  him  and  its 
name  was  mentioned.  Arthur  asked,  "Where  is  the  Mamagei?" 

It  is  the  experience  of  almost  all  analysts  who  have  interpreted 
many  dreams— and  I  am  an  old  hand  at  it-that  the  emotions 
felt  in  dreams  can  be  considered  a  more  reliable  clue  than  the 
logical  sequence,  which  is  often  deceptive.  After  hearing  that 
sentence  which  sounds  like  a  verdict,  I  do  not  feel  like  a  person 
about  to  die,  but,  instead,  a  feeling  of  relief.  That  surely  does  not 
correspond  to  the  character  of  impending  capital  punishment. 

The  logic  of  the  manifest  dream  content  seems  to  be  stringent 
and  conclusive:  after  I  have  committed  the  abominable  crime  of 
entering  the  sepulchral  chamber,  I  hear  that  sentence  pro- 
nounced. But  all  surface  logic  in  the  dream  is  only  apparent  and 
specious.  Those  treacherous  cracks  in  the  dream  structure  indi- 
cate that  there  is  a  secret  compartment  behind  the  open  sections 
of  the  dream.  The  appearance  of  unity  and  continuity  is  already 
a  result  of  the  secondary  elaboration  operating  in  the  dream 
production  to  give  it  the  appearance  of  a  logical  or  reasonable 
tale.  The  result  is  make-believe,  or  rather  make-me-believe,  which 
means  pretense  before  the  dreamer  who  remembers  his  vision 
after  he  awakens.  The  wish  forming  the  dream  was  not  a  desire 

*  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics,  IX,  628. 


614  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

to  discover  the  sarcophagus  of  a  Pharaoh  or  of  a  Phoenician 
but  to  find  out  the  secret  of  the  curses  threatening  the  discoverer. 
In  order  to  find  that  out,  I  had  in  my  dream  to  take  the  place  of 
an  archaeologist  discovering  a  mummy  and  to  have  the  same  emo- 
tional experience. 

The  basic  wish  of  the  dream  does  not  aim  at  archaeological 
findings,  but  at  a  psychological  discovery  in  the  field  of  archaeol- 
ogy, at  the  solution  of  a  problem  that  prehistorical  and  archaeo- 
logical research  had  not  been  able  to  master.  The  unraveling  of 
that  puzzle  was,  in  my  unconscious  thoughts,  connected  with  a 
forgotten  French  sentence.  And  what  is  the  central  scene  of  the 
dream?  That  French  sentence  is  found,  is  spoken.  After  I  have 
experienced  awe  and  fear,  after  recognizing  the  approach  of 
doom,  a  voice— a  voice  within  me— unveils  the  secret:  Who  eats  of 
the  Pharaoh,  dies  of  it.  In  other  words,  the  curse  of  the  Pharaohs 
originally  had  as  its  purpose  frightening  away  those  who  ap- 
proached the  body  of  the  Pharaoh  in  order  to  eat  a  part  of  it. 
That  seems  to  be  an  atrocious  statement,  but  this  is  not  the  ap- 
propriate moment  to  discuss  its  validity,  but  merely  its  presence 
in  the  dream.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  is  what  the  French 
phrase  says  and  what  I  recognize  as  the  keywords,  as  the  clue  to 
the  mystery  of  the  Pharaoh's  curse.  The  following  sentence  of 
the  dream  text  confirms  it:  /  have  always  known  it.  This  concerns 
both:  I  always  knew  somewhere— namely,  unconsciously— the 
French  sentence,  and  I  have  always  known  that  intimidation  of 
cannibalism  was  the  primeval  purpose  of  those  mysterious  curses, 
A  feeling  of  relief  is  connected  with  the  finding  of  that  phrase  at 
last,  but  also  with  the  cheerful  certainty  of  having  arrived  at  the 
solution.  The  last  sentence  of  the  dream  text,  /  feel  great,  is  the 
natural  continuation  of  that  exalted  feeling  in  the  sense  of  Ameri- 
can colloquialism:  I  feel  very  good  or  fine.  At  the  same  time,  it 
is  a  last  echo  of  that  megalomaniac  idea  that  I  achieved  some- 
thing remarkable  in  solving  that  problem  of  prehistory. 

I  do  not  know  whether  or  not  the  last  three  sentences  were 
thought  in  the  minutes  of  awakening.  They  denote  the  emotional 
state  or  mood  in  which  I  found  myself  when  I  emerged  from  the 
dream.  Also  the  ambiguity  of  the  expression  "I  feel  great"  shows 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          615 

that  this  sentence  belongs  to  the  transition  phase  of  the  dream. 
While  I  sometimes  felt  "great"  in  the  sense  of  that  colloquialism, 
I  never-except  in  dreams-considered  myself  a  "great  man." 
Dreaming  can  be  compared  to  a  ride  in  one  of  those  tunnels  of 
love  in  our  amusement  parks.  You  enter  a  tunnel  in  which  you 
see  wonderful  and  terrifying  pictures,  heroes  and  monsters,  beau- 
ties and  witches,  fantastic  landscapes  and  palaces.  You  start  the 
ride  in  full  daylight,  and  then  gradually  it  gets  darker  and  darker 
until  suddenly  those  pictures  appear.  Entering  and  leaving  the 
tunnel  your  eyes  adjust  themselves  to  the  darkness  and  to  day- 
light. There  are  similar  threshold  sensations  in  gliding  from  con- 
scious thinking  into  the  region  of  dreams  and  in  the  transition 
phase  from  the  dreamland  to  the  realm  of  material  reality.  The 
last  sentences  of  the  dream  belong,  it  seems  to  me,  to  that  no- 
man's  land,  to  the  in-between  region. 


While  I  immediately  recognized  the  French  sentence  as  the 
one  I  had  so  long  been  seeking,  I,  too,  was  at  first  taken  in  by  the 
pretense  of  logic  and  consistency  in  the  dream.  I  considered  the 
French  phrase  the  death  sentence  for  myself,  the  criminal  who 
had  committed  an  outrageous  sacrilege.  It  is  the  purpose  of  elab- 
oration to  make  the  secret  meaning  of  the  dream  unrecognizable 
to  the  dreamer.  It  succeeded  for  just  a  minute,  but  then  those 
minor  inconsistencies  paved  the  way  to  a  better  psychological 
understanding.  The  appearance  of  consistency  and  continuity 
is  not  only  th'e  work  of  the  primary  dream  process,  but  also  of 
the  censorship  operating  while  the  dream  is  produced  and  inter- 
fering with  too  frank  an  expression  of  the  impulses  that  are  sat- 
isfied in  it.  I  am  choosing  a  single  part  of  the  dream  to  prove 
my  point,  the  bird  that  reminded  me  of  Mr.  Carter's  canary 
and  with  it  of  the  superstitious  belief  that  the  spirit  of  the 
Pharaoh  in  the  shape  of  a  cobra  devoured  the  cheerful  singer.  In 
the  dream,  too,  this  is  a  warning  in  symbolic  form.  When  the 
bird  ceases  to  sing  there  is  silence  without  end,  the  silence  of 
death.  But  does  it  not  rather  express  a  feai  of  death?  Identified 


6l6  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

with  Carter  and  Andreas  Moeller,  I  feel  that  intense  anxiety  be- 
fore opening  the  lid  of  the  sarcophagus  and  facing  the  body  of 
the  Pharaoh.  (The  reader  has  certainly  not  forgotten  that  behind 
this  fear  is  hidden  the  hesitancy  to  publish  the  letters  of  Freud, 
as  if  this  would  be  a  sacrilege  against  the  dead  man.) 

The  canary  is  the  death  bird  whose  song  is  heard  in  Mahler's 
Resurrection  Symphony.  In  the  dream  as  in  the  symphony,  the 
last  sounds  of  the  bird  are  followed  by  long  silence.  But  while 
this  silence  is  ended  by  the  voice  pronouncing  the  sentence  in 
the  dream,  in  Mahler's  symphony  it  is  followed  by  the  relieving 
and  releasing  hymn  which  proclaims  that  there  is  no  punishment, 
there  is  only  reward  for  the  striving  of  men,  the  message  of  im- 
mortality. 

Here  then,  is  a  full  reversal  of  the  panic  on  judgment  day.  All 
inner  circumstantial  evidence,  contradicting  the  manifest  dream 
content  with  its  deceptive  appearance  of  homogeneousness, 
points  in  the  same  direction.  Also  found  in  the  dream  is  a  re- 
lease from  anxiety;  a  sentence  is  not  pronounced,  but  a  lost  sen- 
tence is  found.  My  goal  is  reached. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  in  my  thought-associations  to  the 
death  bird  The  Magic  Flute  surprisingly  emerged.  The  connect- 
ing link  was  the  fact  that  the  sounds  of  the  death  bird  in  Mah- 
ler's symphony  (as  those  of  the  bird  in  The  Drunkard  in  Spring 
of  The  Song  of  the  Earth)  are  produced  by  a  flute  or  a  piccolo. 
But  this  thought-association  led  far  beyond  this  point.  In  the 
simple  fairy  tale-like  plot  of  Mozart's  last  opera  a  serpent  appears 
pursuing  Tamino  into  a  cave.  But  not  only  that,  there  is  Papa- 
geno  who  sings  "Der  Vogelfanger  bin  ich  ja"  ("A  fowler  merry 
and  gay  am  I")  and  appears  with  a  large  birdcage  and  various 
birds  (the  canary  and  the  cobra!).  Not  only  that,  there  is  the  sub- 
terranean temple  of  the  second  act.  No  doubt,  the  cult  of  that 
secret  society  is  Egyptian.  The  priest  Sarastro  sings  that  beauti- 
ful aria: 

O  Isis  and  Osiris,  grant 
The  spirit  of  wisdom 

The  goddess  has  imposed  a  holy  silence  on  Tamino  who,  under 
the  spell  of  Sarastro,  has  to  undergo  various  ordeals  so  that  he 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC   DISCOVERY          617 

may  become  a  member  of  that  secret  circle.  Here,  too,  as  in  Mah- 
ler's symphony  are  increasing  fear,  rising  to  panic,  and  then 
sudden  release  from  fear.  Here,  too,  is  the  wonderful  message 
that  there  is  no  punishment,  or  vengeance,  a  message  sung  in 
an  Egyptian  temple  I  And  the  words? 

In  diesen  heil'gen  Hallen 
Kennt  man  die  Rache  nicht. 

Within  these  sacred  halls 
Dire  vengeance  is  unknown. 

It  is  certainly  accidental  that  the  resurrection  chorale  and  this 
aria  of  Sarastro's  proclaim  essentially  the  same  message.  It  is  not 
accidental  that  both  musical  works  emerged  in  my  thought- 
associations  into  which  they  were  introduced  by  the  death  bird. 
In  both  works  the  dread  of  death  is  suddenly  removed  and  re- 
placed by  the  certainty  of  immortality.  In  both  works  the  trem- 
bling creature  is  reassured  that  there  is  neither  punishment  nor 
vengeance.  In  both  Mozart's  opera  and  Mahler's  symphony  the 
struggle  ends  with  the  triumph  of  the  hero.  In  those  two  works 
as  in  my  dream  the  long  silence  is  relieved  by  a  momentous  mes- 
sage. The  last  shred  of  doubt  is  removed:  the  French  sentence  of 
my  dream  does  not  proclaim  death,  but  conquest  of  the  fear  of 
death.  Only  much  later  another  concealed  connection  between 
Mozart's  opera  and  thoughts  on  Freud  emerged:  The  Magic  Flute 
symbolizes  the  rise  and  ideals  of  Freemasonry  in  which  Mozart 
was  very  much  interested.  Freud  was  a  brother  of  the  Jewish 
Freemason  organization  B'nai  B'rith  in  Vienna,  and  so  was  I. 
Here  is  an  allusion  to  certain  ideas  on  Judaism  common  to  both 
of  us,  and  to  the  ideals  of  that  brotherhood.  On  Freud's  seven- 
tieth birthday  I  wrote  a  salutation  in  the  magazine  of  the  B'nai 
B'rith.  Freud  liked  the  phrasing  of  the  article  and  thanked  me  in 
a  letter  praising  a  passage. 

From  here  a  train  of -thoughts  leads  again  to  his  letters,  their 
personal  character,  and  the  problem  of  their  publication.  Al- 
though there  is  not  the  slightest  reason  against  publication— there 
are  many  for  it—I  unconsciously  considered  it  a  kind  of  prof- 
anation of  Freud.  Why?  Every  letter  of  his  does  credit  to  his 
memory  which  I  hold  sacred.  Yet  the  inner  dispute  about  publi- 


6l8  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

cation  of  the  Freud  letters  is  one  of  the  important  day  remnants 
for  the  dream,  in  which  translating  and  commenting  on  these 
letters  was  the  same  as  the  excavation  of  the  mummy  of  an 
Egyptian  Pharaoh.  All  this  sounds  absurd,  but  we  remember  at 
the  right  moment  that  the  discovery  of  Tutankhamen's  body  was 
an  immortalization  of  the  dead  king  in  the  eyes  of  science,  while 
superstition  considered  it  a  desecration  of  the  Pharaoh.  It  is  also 
meaningful  that  the  publication  of  the  Freud  letters  took  in  my 
thoughts  the  place  vacated  by  giving  up  research  on  the  Egyptian 
problem.  We  have  to  wait  for  an  explanation  of  what  this  re- 
placement means. 

While  the  conflict  about  the  Freud  letters  was  the  secret  psy- 
chological source  of  some  significant  dream  thoughts,  the  per- 
ception of  pressure  from  the  gallstones  was  the  somatic  stimulus 
determining  their  formation.  This  physical  complaint,  felt  just 
before  the  dream,  led  to  thoughts  about  a  possible  mistake  in  my 
diet  and  to  doubts  about  what  I  had  eaten  at  dinner.  The  dream 
picks  up  this  thread  and  draws  it  to  the  point  where  it  joins  that 
other  thread  of  Pharaoh's  curse.  If  I  am  the  sacrilegious  criminal 
who  has  eaten  from  Pharaoh's  body,  this  would  be  a  mistake  in 
my  diet  indeed,  and  we  are  not  in  the  least  surprised  that  the 
meal  did  not  agree  with  me.  But  that  sounds  fantastic  and  ludi- 
crous and  leaves  us  with  a  feeling  of  suspense  because  we  cannot 
imagine  its  meaning. 

With  those  uncertainties  and  unanswered  problems,  we  have 
already  entered  the  central  theme  of  the  dream  and  of  the  dis- 
covery supposedly  conveyed  by  that  French  sentence.  The  French 
phrase  was  supposed  to  be  the  key  to  the  problem  of  the  super- 
stition concerning  the  excavation  of  Egyptian  mummies.  At  the 
same  time,  it  should  explain  the  reason  for  those  terrible  curses 
dreadening  the  intruders.  If  we  tentatively  assume  that  the 
French  proverb  really  presents  in  a  few  words  the  quintessence  of 
the  answer  to  this  question,  a  radical  change  in  my  first  hypothe- 
sis becomes  necessary.  Two  assumptions  of  that  original  approach 
to  the  problem  can,  however,  remain  intact,  when  we  believe 
that  the  original  purpose  of  Pharaoh's  curses  was  the  intimidation 
of  cannibalistic  desecrators  of  their  bodies.  The  first  is  that  the 
superstitious  fear  was  of  a  much  older  date  than  the  highly  de- 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          6ig 

veloped  religious  system  of  dynastic  Egypt.  It  must  have  had  its 
roots  in  a  past  in  which  cannibalistic  impulses  were  still  very 
much  alive  and  intensively  felt,  so  that  a  strong  and  efficient 
warning  was  necessary.  That  fear  certainly  antedated  the  develop- 
ment of  the  highly  complicated  pantheon  of  Egyptian  gods,  but 
also  the  careful  preparation  for  the  burial  and  preservation  of 
the  body.  The  custom  of  hiding  and  protecting  the  cadaver  was 
already  a  manifestation  of  a  new  morality  that  fought  against  the 
old  barbaric  impulses,  long  before  the  Egyptian  gods  had  estab- 
lished their  regimen.  The  battle  against  cannibalistic  appetites 
of  the  original  natives  of  Egypt  lasted  perhaps  many  hundred,  if 
not  a  few  thousand,  years,  and  accompanied  the  most  significant 
phase  of  development  from  savagery  to  primitive  culture.  That 
means  it  reached  from  early  prehistory  to  the  dawn  of  the  first 
Egyptian  dynasties  and  beyond  that  phase.  Religion  then  became 
the  strongest  weapon  and  the  firmest  stronghold  in  the  defense 
against  cannibalistic  impulses,  and  the  gods  were  the  most  ener- 
getic protectors  of  the  dead.  We  know  that  cannibalism  has  been 
practically  uprooted  among  the  North  African  tribes  who  were 
man-eaters,  through  the  increasing  influence  of  Mohammed- 
anism.* 

Father  Dupeyrat's  report  shows  that  Christianity  in  New 
Guinea  is  slowly  and  gradually  gaining  ground  in  its  endeavor 
to  make  the  Papuans  renounce  their  cannibalistic  practices.  In  a 
similar  way,  the  fear  of  punishment  by  the  cruel  gods  of  Egypt 
and  Syria  was  once  used  to  deter  the  barbaric  natives  of  those 
countries.  The  names  of  gods  later  appear  in  inscriptions  and 
curses  in  the  sepulchral  chambers,  those  narrow  cells  which  the 
Egyptians  called  "houses  of  eternity."  The  primal  purpose  of  the 
protection  of  bodies  became  repressed  in  a  later  phase  and  was 
replaced  by  more  developed  religious  and  magical  concepts  in 
the  preservation  of  the  dead  and  of  their  possessions.  The  late 
belief  in  an  existence  in  the  beyond  as  the  most  important  idea 
of  Egyptian  religion  covers  and  conceals  earlier  measures  of  de- 
fense to  prevent  the  survivors  from  eating  parts  of  the  body.  The 
-second  assumption  is  that  the  superstition,  expressed  most  vividly 

.  of  Relirion  and  Ethics,  Vol.  III. 


62O  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

in  the  fear  of  the  Pharaoh's  curse,  does  not  belong  to  the  cate- 
gory of  the  taboo,  but  to  a  much  older  and  more  primitive  stage 
of  cultural  development,  even  when  it  continued  to  live  far  into 
the  time  of  blossoming  Egyptian  civilization.  Those  superstitions 
do  not  show  the  characteristics  of  the  taboo  that  operates  auto- 
matically. The  fear  of  tabooed  objects  and  persons  makes  curses. 
and  warnings  superfluous.  If  the  superstition  partook  of  the  na- 
ture of  taboo,  the  inscriptions  on  sarcophagi  and  tombs  would 
not  necessarily  put  the  fear  of  God,  in  this  case  of  Osiris  and 
Astarte,  into  the  clansmen. 

The  next  and  most  urgent  question  at  this  point  is,  of  courser 
the  validity  of  the  view  that  the  origin  of  that  superstitious  fear  is 
the  belief  that  eating  parts  of  Pharaoh's  body  will  be  punished 
by  death.  Instead  of  discussing  the  merits  and  demerits  of  this 
hypothesis,  which  can  only  be  examined  by  historians  of  ancient 
civilization  and  Egyptologists,  I  shall  try  to  find  how  that  view 
unconsciously  emerged  in  my  thoughts.  While  I  studied  the 
historical  works  of  Egyptologists  like  Petrie,  Breasted,  John  A. 
Wilson,  and  others,  I  received  certain  impressions  about  the 
power  and  glory  of  the  Pharaohs.  The  Pharaoh  represented  the 
sun-god  Ra  or  Osiris,  or  his  son  Horus.  But  increasing  knowledge 
provides  us  with  clues  pointing  to  the  fact  that,  at  the  dawn  of 
Egyptian  history,  the  divine  kings  of  the  tribes  on  the  Upper 
Nile  were  slain  before  old  age:  "Behind  the  impressive  figure 
of  the  omnipotent  and  deified  Pharaoh  looms  the  shadow  of  a 
divine  king  as  Frazer  depicted  him,  who  holds  his  sovereignty 
by  virtue  of  his  magic  power  and  as  its  prize  must  lay  down  his 
life  ere  that  power  grow  enfeebled  with  the  decay  of  his  body/'* 
The  ritual  of  the  identification  of  the  dead  king  with  Osiris,  who 
was  himself  killed  and  resurrected,  is  very  impressive.  Osiris  was 
held  to  have  weaned  the  Egyptians  who  ate  human  flesh  in 
neolithic  times  from  their  earlier  cannibalism.  From  here  was 
oaly  a  step  to  the  idea  that  Osiris  was  not  only  killed  and  torn 
to  pieces,  as  the  traditional  tale  reports,  but  also  eaten.  This 
idea  must  have  remained  unconsciously,  but  was  in  its  subter- 

*  W.  Gordon  Childe,  New  Light  on  the  Most  Ancient  East  (New  York,  1953), 
p.  6. 


ADVENTURES   IN   PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          6%1 

ranean  existence  fed  by  new  impressions.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  in  prehistoric  Egypt,  as  in  North  Africa,  Europe,  and  Asia, 
cannibalism  was  general  in  paleolithic  times.  This  cannibalism 
was  not  due  to  hunger  but  was  of  a  magical  nature,  as  it  still  is 
today  with  some  African  and  Australian  tribes.  To  eat  a  man  has, 
in  the  mind  of  primitive  tribes,  the  result  that  one  obtains  his 
strength  and  magical  power,  all  those  qualities  one  had  admired 
in  him.  The  corpse-eater  acquires  in  the  animistic  concept  the 
soul  of  the  deceased,  his  "mana,"  the  spiritual  essence  which  is 
contained  in  his  body. 

The  identification  of  the  dead  Pharaoh  with  Osiris  who,  ac- 
cording to  the  legend,  had  made  the  oldest  Egyptian  tribes  re- 
nounce their  cannibalism  thus  formed  one  of  the  unconscious 
thought-bridges  from  the  area  of  the  dead  king  to  the  subject 
of  cannibalism.  The  blueprint  of  another  thought-bridge  must 
have  emerged  at  another  point  of  my  study.  In  the  Pyramid 
Texts  of  the  Old  Kingdom  I  came  across  a  "cannibal  hymn," 
which  Breasted  quotes*:  King  Unis  is  there  portrayed  as  he 
eats  various  gods  in  order  to  possess  himself  of  their  powers.  King 
Unis,  the  text  says: 

is  one  who  eats  man  and  lives  on  gods,  .  .  . 

It  is  "He—  who=  is—  upon  the  Willows 

Who  lassoes  them  for  him. 

It  is  "Punisher-of-all-Evil-doers" 

Who  stabs  them  for  King  Unis. 

He  takes  out  for  him  their  entrails. 

He  is  the  messenger  who  King  Unis  sends  out  to  punish. 

Shesmu  cuts  them  up  for  King  Unis 

And  cooks  for  him  a  portion  of  them 

In  his  evening  meals. 

King  Unis  is  he  who  eats  their  charms 

And  devours  their  souls 


Their  charms  are  in  his  belly 

He  has  swallowed  the  knowledge  of  every  god 

Lo,  their  soul  is  in  the  belly  of  King  Unis. 
*  Breasted,  Development   of  Religion   and    Thought   in   Ancient  Egypt, 


622  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

This  deceased  Pharaoh  devours  gods  and  men  to  incorporate 
into  himself.  The  Pyramid  Texts  say  in  a  new  translation*  of 
the  gods  whom  King  Unis  gobbles  up: 

The  biggest  of  them  are  for  his  breakfast, 
Their  middle  sized  are  for  his  lunch 
And  the  littlest  of  them  are  for  his  supper. 
Their  old  males  and  females 
Are  for  his  kindling. 

The  Pharaoh  himself  eats  gods  and  men. 

The  impressions  received  during  reading  such  passages  and 
others  I  have  forgotten**  must  have  led  to  the  unconscious  idea 
that  the  primary  and  primeval  purpose  of  the  Pharaoh's  curses 
was  to  terrify  cannibalistic  intruders.  At  a  certain  point  of  my 
unconscious  thought-activity,  I  must  have  arrived  at  the  con- 
clusion that  the  original  purpose  of  the  burial  customs  of  the 
ancient  Egyptians  was  the  protection  of  the  body  against  the 
cannibalism  of  the  natives.  All  those  germinal  thoughts  were 
only  potentially  present,  and  remained  unconscious.  In  their 
place  emerged  a  kind  of  idee  fixe  to  the  effect  that  there  was  a 
French  sentence  containing  a  key  to  the  mystery.  But  I  had  for- 
gotten not  only  that  phrase,  but  also  its  meaning!  That  mys- 
terious idea  was  in  certain  directions  comparable  to  the  belief 
in  God:  it  was  present  without  any  objective  reasons,  remained 
unknown  in  its  nature,  and  did  not  tolerate  another  idea  beside 
it.  It  could  not  be  defined  and  was  as  vague  and  forceful  in  its 
effect  as  the  Deity  which  conceals  itself. 

That  insight  into  the  prehistoric  motivation  of  the  Pharaoh's 
curse  had  remained  unknown  to  me,  or  was  known  only  in  the 
vague  form  that  a  forgotten  French  proverb  pointed  in  this 
direction.  In  place  of  that  repressed  insight,  I  formed  a  thesis  to 
the  effect  that  the  artificial  preservation  of  the  body,  the  elaborate 
care  with  which  it  was  provided  with  covering  and  ornament,  was 
a  late  reaction  to  impulses  of  an  aggressive  and  hostile  nature. 

*  John  A.  Wilson,  The  Burden  of  Egypt  (Chicago,  1951),  p.  146. 

**  In  the  meantime,  I  remembered  that  I  must  have  read  somewhere  in 
Flinders  Petrie's  writings  that  the  disturbed  condition  of  the  bones  in  most  of 
the  neolithic  graves  in  Egypt  is  due  to  ceremonial  cannibalism. 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          623 

What  happened  then  was  described:  when  I  was  ready  to  give  up 
the  search  for  the  forgotten  sentence  and  the  whole  research  plan, 
the  repressed  idea  returned  in  that  dream. 

How  did  that  phrase  succeed  in  breaking  through  the  de- 
fensive walls  just  at  the  moment  I  was  willing  to  forget  my 
thought-preoccupation  with  that  puzzling  subject?  It  is,  of  course, 
undeniable  that  there  was  a  second  of  regret  when  I  put  my  notes 
away.  It  amounted  to  an  admission  of  failure.  My  thoughts  then 
turned  to  the  other  work  I  had  to  do:  the  translation  and  pub- 
lication of  the  Freud  letters.  Some  unknown  powers  in  me  had 
prevented  me  from  penetrating  the  mystery  of  the  Pharaoh's 
curse.  They  were  withholding  the  solution  and  blocked  my  way. 
It  seems  the  same  inhibiting  forces  would  not  allow  me  to  work 
on  the  preparation  of  the  Freud  letters.  There  seems  to  be  not 
the  slightest  connection  between  the  two  subjects.  Yet  if  there 
is  no  visible  connecting  link  (Freud's  great  interest  in  ancient 
Egypt  and  the  excavations  in  the  Nile  Valley  were  later  remem- 
bered), there  is  a  subterranean  thread  leading  from  the  second 
task  to  the  first.  There  had  been  that  inhibition  against  beginning 
the  translation  of  the  Freud  letters,  as  if  their  publication  were 
a  sacrilege.  Is  that  the  only  reason  for  my  procrastination  in 
preparing  the  letters?  I  recognized  that  publication  of  the  great 
man's  letters  was  unconsciously  considered  by  me  as  self-aggran- 
dizement. (I  thought  of  those  letters,  for  example,  in  which  Freud 
in  quite  a  few  passages  acknowledges  my  psychoanalytic  talent  and 
expresses  appreciation  of  various  books  or  papers.)  The  dream 
presents  this  reflection  in  the  form  that  I  am  feeding  on  Freud, 
that  I  am  eating  a  part  of  him.  From  here  thoughts  easily  to  be 
guessed  led  to  the  comparison  with  those  prehistoric  cannibals 
who  ate  of  the  Pharaoh  for  magical  reasons,  namely,  to  acquire 
the  power  and  the  strength  of  the  dead  king.  Reading  the  French 
missionary's  book  on  the  cannibalistic  Papuans  and  the  descrip- 
tion of  their  meals  propelled  those  thoughts  more  into  the  pre-con- 
scious,  because  those  savage  Australian  tribes  were  in  the  dream 
compared  with  the  prehistoric  desecrators  of  Pharaoh's  tomb. 
They  both  still  live  in  the  Stone  Age.  The  gall-bladder  complaint 
was  a  significant  somatic  dream  stimulus  and  lent  itself  easily 


624  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

to  the  dream-presentation  because  the  mistake  in  my  diet  could 
well  take  the  place  of  having  eaten  human  flesh. 

In  the  dream  in  which  I  act  the  part  of  an  archaeologist,  I  com- 
mit the  crime  of  excavating  the  mummy  of  an  ancient  Pharaoh 
(=  publishing  the  letters  of  Freud).  I  am  terrified  and  I  expect  to 
be  punished.  I  hear  the  sentence  of  death.  But  this  same  sentence 
provides  the  solution  to  the  problem  that  had  occupied  my 
thoughts.  The  dream  does  not  compare  the  publication  o£  the 
Freud  letters  with  cannibalism,  but  presents  it  as  such  in  the 
characteristic  magnifying  way  of  dreams.  In  it  I  have  done  the 
horrible  deed  of  eating  of  the  Pharaoh  (=  Freud),  but  that 
outrage  marks  at  the  same  time  my  triumph:  I  found  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  that  eluded  all  my  conscious  efforts. 

In  the  magical  and  animistic  concept  of  ancient  peoples  and  of 
savage  tribes  of  our  time,  eating  parts  of  a  dead  person  means 
not  only  acquiring  his  qualities,  but  incorporating  him,  becom- 
ing him.  Whoever  eats  of  the  Pharaoh  becomes  himself  the  King. 
I  have  eaten  of  Freud,  I  have  picked  his  brain,  I  have  in- 
corporated him.  The  deepest  level  of  the  latent  meaning  of  the 
dream  reveals  itself:  in  publishing  those  letters,  I  wish  to  become 
Freud.  Did  not  Andreas  Moeller,  who  excavated  the  mummy  of 
Tabnit,  become  himself,  in  his  delusion,  the  King  of  Sidon,  the 
priest  of  Astarte?  But  with  such  wish-fulfillment  the  Pharaoh's 
curse  is  also  realized,  because  after  reaching  his  aim  the  researcher 
has  to  die. 

The  discovery  I  was  making  in  the  dream  is  really  a  redis- 
covery, because  I  must  have  unconsciously  arrived  at  the  insight 
into  the  meaning  of  Pharaoh's  curse  long  before.  The  emergence 
of  the  French  sentence  whose  text  had  so  long  remained  inac- 
cessible proves  that  such  an  unconscious  understanding  had  been 
reached.  The  idea  percolated,  but  did  not  boil  over  into  con- 
scious thinking. 

The  horror  of  excavating  the  mummy  of  Tutankhamen  and  of 
exposing  it  in  the  glass  case  of  the  Cairo  Museum  is  a  sacrilege 
only  in  the  eyes  of  the  superstitious.  Its  discovery  is  one  of  the 
proudest  achievements  of  archaeology.  The  same  action  that  had 


ADVENTURES   IN  PSYCHOANALYTIC  DISCOVERY          625 

been  condemned  was  praised  as  honoring  the  memory  of  the  dead 
king. 

We  are  not  unmindful  that  in  my  dream,  too,  the  analytic 
interpretation  of  the  Pharaoh's  curse  is  looked  upon  both  as 
blasphemy  and  as  achievement  ("I  feel  great"),  as  an  insult  and 
as  an  expression  of  respect  and  awe.  The  same  deed  from  which 
I  am  shrinking  as  sacrilegious,  the  publication  of  Freud's  letters, 
immortalizes  his  memory  for  "those  on  earth  who  love  life  and 
hate  death,"  as  the  ancient  Egyptian  formula  says.  The  minor  dis- 
covery in  the  dream  has  been  made  possible  by  the  supreme 
penetration  of  the  meaningfulness  of  dreams  which  we  owe  to 
the  genius  of  Freud.  When  I  think  of  the  creation  of  psycho- 
analysis, lines  of  the  writer  Friedrich  Hebbel,  mentioned  before, 
occur  to  me: 

From  His  unfathomable  depths 
The  Lord  comes  to  the  fore 
To  gather  the  torn  threads 
And  intertwine  them  once  more. 


A  few  minutes  before  seven  o'clock  the  morning  after  the 
dream— no  one  is  yet  awake— I  am  as  usual  at  Horn  8c  Hardart 
for  breakfast.  It  is  cool  and  there  is  a  strong  wind.  I  am  hungry 
as  a  wolf.  The  dream  with  the  leitmotif  of  cannibalism  does  not 
interfere  with  my  appetite.  The  pressure  from  the  gallstones  has 
disappeared.  I  am  thinking  of  the  diet  I  have  to  observe,  but  I 
feel  like  the  patient  in  the  cartoon  who  says  to  his  nurse,  "But 
I  don't  want  nourishment.  I  want  something  to  eat." 

During  breakfast  I  am  skimming  through  the  newspaper.  Since 
my  sixty-sixth  birthday  I  have  acquired  the  ridiculous  habit  of 
looking  at  the  obituaries.  It  is  too  silly!  When  I  read  that  So  and 
So  has  died  at  sixty-one  or  sixty-three,  I  feel  a  little  contemptuous 
of  the  man  besides  a  ludicrous  feeling  of  satisfaction  as  if  I  have 
accomplished  something  in  having  passed  sixty-six.  Before  leaving 
Horn  &  Hardart,  I  notice  a  sign  saying  "No  smoking  please!" 
The  writing  on  the  wall!  I  light  a  cigarette. 


626  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  just  read  in  the  New  York  Times  that  they  have  placed  a 
bust  of  Friedrich  Schiller  somewhere  in  New  York,  and  two  lines 
of  the  poet  occur  to  me: 

Das  Leben  ist  der  Guter  hochstes  nicht, 
Der  Uebel  grosstes  aber  ist  die  Schuld. 

Life  is  not  the  highest  good, 
But  guilt  is  of  the  evils  the  worst. 

Hm  ...  I  am  not  so  sure.  .  .  .  The  scrambled  eggs  and  the 
coffee  tasted  fine.  .  .  .  The  fresh  morning  air  is  delightful.  .  .  . 
I  enjoy  the  sight  of  a  pretty  girl  holding  her  skirts  down  with 
both  hands  against  the  impudent  pass  of  the  wind.  .  .  .  Non- 
sense, my  dear  Mr.  von  Schiller!  Guilt  is  by  no  means  the  worst 
of  evils,  and  life  is  decidedly  of  all  goods  the  highest.  ...  Be- 
sides that,  is  it  the  only  one  of  which  we  are  sure.  ...  I  would 
not  want  to  change  places  with  the  Pharaoh  Tutankhamen  with 
all  the  pomp  and  circumstance  of  dynastic  Egypt.  .  .  .  The 
Viennese  used  to  sing  "You  live  only  once.  .  .  ."  And  a  grim 
counterpoint  (with  the  voice  of  the  Austrian  writer  Karl  Kraus) 
sounds,  "You  don't  live  even  once!" 


PART     SIX 

Letters    of  Freud 


Letters  of  Freud 


THE  FOLLOWING  pages  present  all  Freud  letters  still  in  my 
possession  (except,  of  course,  the  letters  published  in  other 
parts  of  this  volume).  Many  of  his  letters  to  me  were  lost,  some 
on  my  flight  from  the  Nazis,  some  on  account  of  other  circum- 
stances. Among  them,  alas,  was  the  longest  and  perhaps  most 
personal  one  he  wrote  me.  That  letter  discussed  the  study  on 
Goethe  and  Friederike  which  I  had  published  in  the  psychoana- 
lytic magazine  Imago,  edited  by  Freud,  in  1929.  Freud  called  this 
monograph  (later  published  as  a  book  and  now  part  of  my 
Fragment  of  a  Great  Confession*)  very  courageous  and  correct 
in  its  analytic  penetration  and  conclusions.  He  added  some  criti- 
cal remarks  to  the  effect  that  I  had  neglected  the  analytic  elucida- 
tion of  Goethe's  unconscious  motives  from  the  ego-side.  There 
followed  a  discussion  of  some  still  unobserved  character  traits  of 
Goethe's  personality.  I  only  remember  that  Freud  contrasted  the 
unique  sincerity  and  straightforwardness  of  the  great  writer  with 
his  reserve  and  discretion  in  other  directions.  While  Goethe  did 
not  hesitate  to  shape  his  novels,  plays,  and  poems  into  "fragments 
of  a  great  confession,"  he  showed, a  strange  secretiveness  about 
certain  domains  of  his  personal  life  about  \yhich  he  kept  all 
people,  even  his  most  intimate  friends,  in  the  dark.  In  the  last 
lines  of  the  letter  Freud  praised  my  book  and  expressed  the  hope 
that  I  would  continue  with  my  creative  research  work.  When  the 
Nazis  confiscated  the  files  of  the  Internationaler  Psychoanaly- 
tischer  Verlag  in  Vienna,  they  also  seized  this  letter  which  I  had 
lent  to  the  press  for  copying.  It  seems  to  be  irretrievably  lost. 

In  the  letters  the  translations  of  which  follow  I  have,  of  course, 
omitted  all  remarks  about  other  psychoanalysts  and  about  pa- 
tients. A  few  sentences  referring  to  persons  still  alive  are  also  left 
out.  I  considered  it  inappropriate  to  omit  Freud's  critical  com- 
ments on  my  own  shortcomings  and  weaknesses.  Whenever  he 

*  New  York:  Farrar,  Straus  and  Co.,  1949. 

629 


630  THE   SEARCH   WITHIN 

had  to  make  critical  remarks,  he  did  it  with  such  obvious  be- 
nevolence and  in  such  a  form  that  he  almost  never  hurt  my  feel- 
ings. I  remember  that  he  sometimes  said,  "It  makes  me  sad  that 
you  did  this  or  wrote  that/'  almost  always  emphasizing  that  he 
had  great  expectations  for  me  and  wished  I  would  show  more 
moderation  and  self-control.  On  the  few  occasions  on  which  it 
became  necessary  to  censure  me,  he  spoke  and  wrote  plainly  and 
without  mincing  words. 

It  is  unforgettable  that  he  always  expressed  his  belief  that  I 
would  do  valuable  psychoanalytic  research  work  and  was  con- 
vinced (in  contrast  to  the  opinion  of  many  members  of  the 
New  York  Psychoanalytic  Association)  that  I  had  a  special  talent 
for  psychoanalytic  work.  In  praise  and  in  disapproval,  in  en- 
couraging as  well  as  in  warning  me,  he  was  the  great  educator 
whose  words  left  indelible  traces  in  my  memory.  I  shall  not 
speak  here  of  the  personal  character  of  the  style  of  his  letters 
because  every  line  of  them  shows  the  kind  of  man  who  wrote 
them. 

The  first  lines  in  my  possession  are  written  on  a  piece  of  paper 
without  date  (probably  1911),  and  refer  to  an  article  on  psycho- 
analysis which  appeared  in  the  German  magazine  Mdrz: 

Excellently  written  and  very  well  organized,  like  most  of  your 
work  that  I  have  read.  However,  they  will  say  that  you  are  a 
"passionate7"  follower,  and  that  will  settle  it. 

With  hearty  greetings, 
Freud 

The  beginning  of  the  letter  of  December  13,  1913,  is  quoted 
in  the  introduction  to  my  notes  on  a  lecture  of  Freud's  that 
remained  unpublished.  The  continuation  of  that  letter  refers 
to  a  draft  of  a  review  I  had  written  about  a  paper  on  Hamlet 
published  by  the  German  psychiatrist  E.  W.,  in  which  I  had 
accused  the  author  of  plagiarizing  articles  by  Otto  Rank  and 
Ernest  Jones  on  the  problem  of  Hamlet.  Freud's  critical  remarks 
about  my  review  follow: 

I  cannot,  however,  praise  your  essay.  It  is  too  rude,  biting,  and 
contains  a  superfluous  suspicion.  I  suggest  to  you  the  following 


LETTERS  OF  FREUD  6^1 

disposition:  W.'s  paper  awakened  much  interest;  he  is  considered 
as  representing  psychoanalysis.  Some  remarks  on  that.  W.  reports 
that  he  has  not  read  the  papers  of  R.  and  J.  [Full  quotation.] 
Criticism:  you  can  neglect  reading  the  literature  before  finishing 
your  paper,  but  not  at  its  publication.  After  your  work  is  done 
you  have  to  read  and  get  informed.  Otherwise,  it  would  be  a  too 
comfortable  way  of  disregarding  predecessors.  Now  the  question: 
Did  that  precaution  help  W.?  It  is  very  likely  that  he  has  read  my 
remarks.  [Quotation.]  Very  likely  a  case  of  cryptomnesia.  If  not, 
it  is  in  no  way  permissible  to  repeat  discoveries  made  thirteen 
years  ago.  Humor-as  much  as  you  wish  like  that  at  the  end  of 
your  review,  but  no  insults!  More  cheerful  and  superior. 

Cordial  greetings, 
Freud 


November  i,  1913 
Dear  Herr  Doktor: 

May  I  ask  you  to  do  something  for  me,  a  little  task  which  I 
hope  will  not  cost  you  more  than  an  hour?  I  have  let  myself  be 
persuaded  to  pledge  some  material  for  a  biography  and  portrait 
for  a  French  literary  project,  Nos  Contemporains.  The  article 
they  wrote  turned  out  so  stupidly  that  I  objected  to  it,  where- 
upon the  editor  urged  me  to  write  the  text  myself.  The  idea  is 
odious  to  me.  I  think,  however,  that  by  using  the  present  copy 
with  my  criticisms  you  will  easily  be  able  to  whip  a  decent  article 
into  shape  which  will  bring  out  what  is  essential  for  the  reader 
without  sounding  like  publicity,  and  will  at  the  same  time  be 
accurate  and  in  good  taste.*  ...  By  the  way,  I  would  like  to 
speak  with  you  on  the  next  possible  occasion  about  your  difficult 
position  at  Heller's. 

Cordially, 
Freud 

The  critical  remarks  and  corrections  on  the  French  article  are  of 
biographical  interest: 

*  A  few  lines  of  a  personal  nature  "are  here  omitted. 


632  THE   SEARCH    WITHIN 

1)  Too  subjective,  without  interest  for  the  public  I  did  not 
say  anything  about  sleep. 

2)  As  far  as  I  know,  I  have  done  just  that,  namely,  presented 
a  complete  theory  of  the  dream.  Whether  it  is  "definitive,"  only 
the  future  can  decide. 

3)  However  flattering  this  may  be,  I  have  to  repeat  that  I 
consider  discussion  of  personal  relations  in  such  an  article  in- 
appropriate. 

4)  Why  only  "quelques  annees"f  It  was  the  regular  study  of 
medicine. 

5)  There  is  no  such  examination.  It  should  run:  took  up  his 
residence  as  lecturer  on  maladies  nerveuses. 

6)  Incorrect.  I  became  a  practicing  physician  in  1886,  and  still 
am  today. 

7)  I  got  the  title  of  professor  in  1902. 

8)  Entirely  misunderstood.  After  I  had  given  a  lecture  at  the 
celebration  of  the  foundation  of  Clark  University  at  Worcester, 
Massachusetts,  I  received  the  honorary  title  of  LL.D. 

9)  Please  will  you  put  the  German  names  beside  the  French 
ones: 

a)  Zur  Auffassung  der  Aphasieen 

b)  Die  zerebralen  Kinderlahmungen 

10)  To  parenthesize  as  addendum  to  the  previous: 
1  1)  Studien  uber  Hysteric  mit  J.  Breuer: 

c)  Die  Traumdeutung—Lf  analyse  des  reves 

d)  Zur  Psychopathologie  des  A  lltagslebens 

12)  e)  Der  Witz  und  seine  Beziehung  zum  Unbewussten  (I'in- 
conscient) 

13)  Drei  Abhandlungen  zur  Sexualtheorie: 

14)  g)  Kleine  Schriften  zur  Neurosenlehre  (3  Volumes,  1906- 


h)  Der  Wahn  und  die  Trdume  .  .  .  etc. 

15)  Totem  und  Tabu.  Uebereinstummungen  im  Seelenleben 
der  Wilden  und  der  Neurotiker  (Le  Totem  et  le  Tabou.  Quel- 
ques  concordances  entre  la  vie  psychique  des  peuples  savages  et 
les  neuroses). 

16)  Le  "Intern.  Zeitschrift  fur  arztlkhe  Psychoanalyse"  et  le 


LETTERS   OF   FREUD  633 

journal  Imago  destine  a  I' application  de  la  psychoanalyse  aux 
sciences  non-medicales  et  la  collection  des  Schriften  zur  ange- 
wandten  Seelenkunde. 

17)  The  special  science  of  psychoanalysis  created  by  me  is 
cultivated  by  numerous  societies  in  Germany,  England,  and 
America  and  stands  in  the  center  of  discussion  in  the  medical 
world.  The  method  of  treatment  of  nervous  patients  founded  on 
that  science  is  already  practiced  by  many  physicians.  The  applica- 
tion of  psychoanalysis  to  mythology,  pedagogics,  science  of  re- 
ligion and  history  of  civilization  makes  rapid  progress. 

Obviously  not  satisfied  with  the  translation  of  misunderstood 
titles  of  his  books,  Freud  himself  suggested  some  changes.  I  wrote 
the  article  and  gave  it  to  Freud. 

September  17,  1913 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  am  sending  you  the  pages  for  correction  and  delivery  to  Mr. 
Clement  Deltour,  Wien  I,  Hotel  Bristol. 

Cordially, 
Freud 

Should  you  not  mention  the  Jahrbuch  which  I  have  taken 
over  entirely  myself  so  that  Breuer  and  Young  need  not  be 
named? 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  work  Nos  contemporains  was  pub- 
lished. 

January  i,  1914 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

All  my  work  of  the  last  weeks  and  my  departure  immediately 
afterward  have  made  me  put  off  answering  your  letter  and  ex- 
pressing my  thanks  for  the  dedication  of  your  fine  book. 

Let  me  now  tell  you  the  following:  don't  believe  that  I  told 
Heller  anything  negative  about  you.  He  has  communicated  his 
objections  to  you  from  his  own  experience,  and  I  had  to  con- 
firm them  after  I  had  defended  you  for  a  long  time.  I  would 
have  liked  to  contradict  him  if  I  could  have.  Heller  is  a  violent 
man,  and  has  obviously  acted  according  to  the  principle:  "Throw 


634  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

him  out,  he  breaks  my  heart!"  He  is  certainly  not  a  mean  person. 

I  would  be  pleased  if  you  would  learn  from  these  experiences, 
instead  of  suffering  and  being  grieved  by  them.  Your  talent  which 
is  manifest  will  survive  these  years.  If  I  can  do  anything  to  speed 
you  on  your  way,  it  will  be  out  of  inner  necessity  that  I  do  it. 

Perhaps  you  have  to  conquer  in  yourself  a  streak  of  masochistic 
guilt  feeling  which  sometimes  compels  you  to  spoil  favorable 
opportunities. 

Courage  and  good  luck  in  1914! 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

The  book  dedicated  to  Freud  was  Arthur  ScJinitzler  als  Psy- 
chologe  which  was  published  in  1913.  To  explain  certain  para- 
graphs in  the  preceding  letter:  I  had  been  very  poor  and  Freud 
had  secured  a  job  for  me  with  the  Viennese  bookseller  and 
publisher,  Wilhelm  Heller,  who  had  just  published  Totem  und 
Tabu.  At  this  time  Freud  visited  Heller's  bookstore  almost  daily. 
At  Heller's  office  I  read  and  reviewed  the  new  books,  edited 
monthly  brochures,  and  so  on.  I  must  have  made  myself  quite 
objectionable  to  my  boss,  who  was  a  quick-tempered  man  of 
whose  explosions  of  anger  I  was  afraid.  During  the  conflict  Freud 
had  taken  my  side.  He  defended  Heller  here  against  accusations 
I  had  expressed  and  explained  the  man's  behavior  by  alluding  to 
a  well-known  Jewish  -anecdote:  A  schnorrer  (beggar)  most  vividly 
describes  his  poverty  and  the  misery  in  which  he  and  his  family 
live  to  Rothschild.  The  millionaire  is  deeply  touched  and,  crying 
from  pity,  he  calls  his  butler  and  pointing  to  the  schnorrer  shouts, 
"Throw  him  out,  he  breaks  my  heart!"  A  short  time  after  that  I 
left  Vienna  and  moved  to  Berlin  where  I  finished  my  analytic 
training. 

April  20,  1914 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  heartily  approve  your  writing  the  report  on  the  congress 
on  sexuality  for  us,  and  I  also  would  like  the  idea  of  your  taking 
over  the  reviews  on  psychoanalysis  for  the  new  magazine  on 


LETTERS  OF   FREUD  635 

sexual  research.  You  have,  however,  to  restrain  yourself  in  writing 
them. 
With  cordial  wishes  for  your  success  in  Berlin, 

Yours, 
Freud 

The  magazine  here  mentioned  is  the  Zeitschrift  fur  Sexualfor- 
schung,  which  was  published  in  Berlin. 


Dear  Herr  Doctor:  June  * 

I  acknowledge  with  great  pleasure  that  you  are  now  our  most 
industrious  contributor.  I  don't  like  to  learn  that  otherwise  you 
have  no  cause  for  satisfaction.  I  know  that  you  are  again  success- 
fully engaged  in  spoiling  for  yourself  as  many  opportunities  as 
possible.  All  this  because  of  a  few  people  whom  you  would  like 
to  kill!  Too  much  repentance! 

Your  couvade  paper  seems  to  me  really  a  hit.  For  practical 
reasons,  I  restrict  myself  to  a  few  adverse  criticisms.  You  must 
take  the  praise  for  granted,  a)  The  psychoanalytic  explanations, 
which  can  be  easily  altered,  are  in  my  opinion  not  formulated 
clearly  enough  for  lay  readers,  b)  I  would  not  in  your  place  easily 
renounce  the  main  argument  for  your  thesis.  Women  themselves 
lay  the  blame  on  the  father  when  a  child  dies.  That  speaks  a  clear 
language,  c)  With  the  Busch  quotation  you've  dug  one  layer  too 
deep.  You  might  rather  have  said:  With  primitive  man  it  is  just 
the  contrary  of  what  is  described  in  this  passage  from  Busch. 
Becoming  a  father  is  often  difficult;  being  a  father,  however,  is 
mostly  easy. 

Which  of  the  two  papers  you  should  favor?  Hard  to  advise.  I 
should  say:  both.  But  do  not  produce  too  fast.  As  for  the  Heine 
project,  you  should  probably  wait  for  the  other  volumes  of  the 
letters.  It  is  an  utterly  attractive  subject. 

You  know  that  I  have  made  arrangements  with  Abraham  so 
that  you  may  turn  directly  to  him  in  situations  of  emergency. 

I  wish  you  a  sclerotic  conscience  and  swift  success  for  your 

immediate  plans.  _     .  .  ,, 

r  Cordially  yours, 

Freud 


636  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  had  sent  drafts  of  two  papers,  one  of  which  was  on  couvade, 
to  Freud.  His  criticisms  were,  of  course,  highly  appreciated  by 
me  and  carefully  considered  in  the  final  presentation.  The  paper 
was  read  before  the  Berlin  Psychoanalytic  Society  in  April,  1914, 
and  published  in  Imago  of  the  same  year.* 

The  emergencies  of  which  Freud  speaks  are  such  as  originated 
from  my  precarious  financial  situation.  For  many  months  Freud 
generously  furnished  me  with  a  certain  amount  of  money.  The 
last  sentence  refers  to  my  moral  scruples  of  that  period,  par- 
ticularly to  guilt  feelings  because  of  thought-crimes. 

Karlsbad,  July  15,  1914 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  have  just  received  news  about  your  interesting  person  from 
Abraham  and  from  you  at  the  same  time,  and  I  am,  of  course, 
annoyed  that  you  have  wasted  your  time  recently  with  so  much 
neurotic  nonsense.  First  of  all,  therefore,  I  have  had  the  Wiener 
Bank  send  you  200  marks  for  the  last  four  months.  I  had  no  in- 
tention of  stopping  the  promised  subsidy,  but  I  assumed  that  you 
had  fled  to  Berlin  to  avoid  such  pensioning,  and  I  hoped  by  the 
arrangement  with  Abraham  to  put  an  end  to  your  jokes  of 
starvation. 

Thus  everything  remains  as  it  was,  and  nothing  must  interfere 
with  your  taking  all  other  steps  to  provide  promptly  a  decent 
measure  of  comfort  for  yourself  and  your  wife.  We  really  liked 
your  essay  on  couvade  very  much.  I  have  great  hopes  for  you  and 
I  am  glad  to  criticize  you  mercilessly,  although  I  consider  it  in- 
advisable to  exercise  a  similar  control  in  our  magazine  over 
authors  who  do  not  demand  such  criticism  with  as  much  urgency, 
for  that  would  end  in  intolerable  monotony  and  in  the  flight  of 
many  contributors  to  rival  publications,  at  a  time  when  our 
magazine  is  hardly  on  its  feet. 

Your  remarks  on  the  attitude  of  different  neurotic  types  to 
psychoanalysis  are  interesting,  and  we  must  give  the  idea  more 
discussion* 

*  For  English  translation,  see  my  book  Ritual  (New  York:  Farrar,  Straus  & 
Co.,  1946). 


LETTERS  OF    FREUD  637 

We  shall  never  forget  that  Abraham  took  you  under  analysis. 
He  is  really  a  wonderful  person.  Stick  to  him  if  you  must  stay  in 
Berlin,  which  might  not  be  unfortunate  for  your  future.  Those 
who  belong  together  need  not  always  be  thick  as  thieves. 
With  cordial  wishes  for  you  and  your  fiancee—or  wife? 

Yours  sincerely, 
Freud 

Dr.  Karl  Abraham  had  suggested  that  he  would  take  me  under 
analysis,  of  course,  without  payment.  Freud  had  without  my 
knowledge  arranged  with  Abraham  that  he  should  give  me 
money  whenever  I  needed  it.  I  had  tried  to  save  money  by  cut- 
ting down  on  meals,  and  often  felt  hungry.  The  other  allusion  in 
Freud's  letter  refers  to  my  request  that  he  should  criticize  my 
papers  mercilessly  because  I  wished  to  accomplish  the  best  I  was 
capable  of— an  expression  of  my  perfectionism  at  that  time.  I 
married  in  August,  1914. 

July  17,  1914 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

You  know  I  would  never  have  written  the  article,  but  I  do  not 
feel  justified  in  changing  anything  in  it.  Your  planned  contribu- 
tions will  be  very  welcome.  Please  send  all  to  Rank  who  will 
give  them  to  me  to  read.  With  urgent  wishes  for  your  welfare  in 
Berlin  (where  you  do  not  seem  to  be  lonely). 

Yours  very  cordially, 
Freud 

Otto  Rank  was  editor  of  Imago.  The  teasing  allusion  in  paren- 
thesis refers  to  the  presence  of  my  bride  in  Berlin. 

Karlsbad,  July  24,  1914 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  have  satisfied  your  need  for  merciless  criticism  in  speaking 
with  Ferenczi  and  accusing  you  of  various  naughtinesses  in  your 
reviews.  The  "a  quile  dites-vous"  is  a  Jewish  joke,  too  good  for 
those  goyim,  and  makes  a  bad  impression.  I  am,  of  course,  in 
agreement  with  the  content  of  your  criticism. 


638  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

I  asked  L.  about  his  article  in  the  Theologische  Literatur- 
zeitung  and  I  then  got  the  article  and  the  enclosed  letter.  Please 
return  it.  You  will  perhaps  be  persuaded  by  it  to  show  more 
understanding  in  your  criticism  of  the  poor  pastor's  soul  vacillat- 
ing between  the  upperworld  and  the  netherworld. 

Cordial  regards, 
Yours, 
Freud 

Freud's  critical  remark  concerns  a  review  I  wrote  on  an  article 
by  one  of  our  Swiss  contributors  who  was  a  pastor  for  the  Zentral- 
blatt  fur  Psychoanalyse.  I  had  made  fun  of  the  author  who  en- 
deavored to  explain  to  his  readers  that  psychoanalysis  not  only 
deals  with  repressed  sexual  and  aggressive  tendencies,  but  also 
with  unconscious  moral  trends.  The  French  phrase  "a  qui  le 
dites-vous"  ("you  are  telling  me?")  is  here,  of  course,  sarcastic. 
Dr.  S.  Ferenczi  was  editor  of  the  Zeitschrift  fur  Psychoanalyse. 

September  27,  1914 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

a)  p.  9  Kleinpaul,  Das  Fremdwort  im  Deutschen  (Goschen, 
1905):  Heiopopeia  is  an  old  Greek  lullaby  which  a  princess  from 
the  Greek  court  in  Constantinople  brought  to  South  Germany, 
namely,  the  refrain  Haide,  mo  paide,  thus:  Sleep,  my  child,  sleep. 

b)  Mit  Rosen  bedacht 
Mit  Ndglein  bedeckt 

Are  Ndglein  not,  rather,  carnations? 

I  want  to  put  these  two  remarks  at  your  disposal  for  your 
essay  on  lullabies. 

Cordial  regards, 
Yours, 
Freud 

Freud's  remarks  refer  to  an  essay  on  lullabies  which  I  did 
not  publish.  Heiapopeia  is  an  expression  Viennese  mothers  often 
use  rocking  their  babies  to  sleep*  In  the  Brahms  lullaby  I  had 
mistaken  Ndglein  for  little  nails. 


LETTERS   OF   FREUD  639 

November  15,  1916 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  congratulate  you  on  your  promotion  and  gratefully  ac- 
knowledge the  receipt  of  the  manuscript,  which  has  already  found 
its  way  into  our  staff  file.  From  there  it  will  be  sent  to  the  printing 
press  as  soon  as  our  snail's  pace  permits. 

The  contribution  is  original,  contains  much  worth  reading, 
and  pleased  me  very  much.  I  am  glad  to  see  that  your  writing 
is  developing  well  in  spite  of  the  war. 

With  hearty  greetings, 
Freud 

I  was  serving  at  the  front  of  the  Austrian  army  and  was  pro- 
moted to  lieutenant. 

November  7,  1918 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Once  more  your  work  seems  to  me  penetrating  and  thoroughly 
correct  in  interpretation.  I  am  happy  that  you  are  treading  such 
rewarding  paths.  But  the  article  is  poorly  organized,  in  a  way 
making  for  obscurity,  and  you  have  given  insufficient  considera- 
tion to  the  fact  that  the  essay  is  written  for  nonanalysts. 

Please  telephone  me  as  soon  as  you  receive  this  so  that  we  can 
arrange  a  meeting. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

I  cannot  remember  to  which  paper  Freud  refers  here. 

July  11,  1919 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

The  Moses  paper  which  I  have  now  read  is  very  ingenious  and 
convincing.  It  can,  however,  lead  to  one  misunderstanding.  One 
could  be  led  to  believe  that  there  was  once  a  revolution  of  the 
son  in  which  the  father-god  was  replaced  by  the  son-god.  This 
seems  to  be  impossible  because  totemism  is  entirely  a  father- 
religion,  and  the  son-religions  only  begin  later  after  the  anthro- 
pomorphic deity  had  long  been  established  and  only  traces  of 


640  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

totemism  remained.  Therefore,  it  follows  that  a  much  later  revolt 
of  the  son  was,  so  to  speak,  regressively  displaced  forward  and 
told  in  totemistic  language.  All  other  things  are  valid. 

I  would  also  not  conclude  that  the  change  from  bull  to  ram 
represented  a  change  of  totems.  Such  things  are  quite  unwar- 
ranted. It  is  probable  that  there  was  a  condensation  of  the  myths 
of  two  tribes  with  different  totems.  Hoping  that  you  will  have 
a  good  summer, 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

The  essay  on  Moses  is  contained  in  my  book  Das  Ritual  which 
was  published  with  a  preface  by  Freud  in  1919. 

Seefeld,  August  26,  1921 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  am  acknowledging  that  your  demands  are  justified.  The  first 
one  for  an  appropriate  chest  of  drawers  is  the  easiest  to  fulfill 
Please  secure  one  and  I  shall  give  you  the  amount  after  my  return. 
The  typewriter  is  also  only  a  question  of  money.  If  you  find  one 
which  is  not  too  expensive,  there  is  no  reason  why  you  should 
not  buy  it.  I  expect  your  suggestions  about  both  expenses. 

It  is  more  difficult  to  deal  with  the  third  point.  I  believe  that 
the  magazines  can  best  be  edited  in  Berlin.  There  will  be  a 
meeting  in  which  our  moneygiver  Dr.  Eitingon,  Abraham,  and 
Jones  will  take  part.  At  that  time  I  will  present  your  complaints 
and  we  will  discuss  what  can  .be  done. 

With  cordial  regards  to  you  and 

your  family, 

Yours, 

Freud 

At  this  time  I  was  busy  introducing  a  Zentralstelle  fur  psycho- 
analytische  Literatur,  a  scientific  center  of  information  on  ana- 
lytic literature  which  would  help  young  analysts  in  their  research 
work,  provide  scholars  with  psychoanalytic  bibliographies,  and 
so  on.  The  requests  mentioned  here  concern  office  material. 


LETTERS   OF   FREUD  641 

March  10,  1921 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  send  you  the  enclosed  for  authoritative  answer.  By  the  way, 
can  you  tell  me  where  the  following  lines  (which  I  need  for  the 
book  on  psychology  of  the  masses)  are  to  be  found? 
Christophorus  trug  den  Christus 
Christus  trug  die  ganze  Welt. 
Sagt,  wohin  hat  Christophorus 
Eigentlich  den  Fuss  gestellt? 
I  have  searched  in  vain  in  Goethe's  works. 

Cordially, 
Freud 


Freud  who  overestimated  the  scope  of  my  reading  often  asked 
me  for  the  source  of  a  passage  from  literature.  In  this  case  I 
could  find  it. 

The  following  two  communications  were  written  on  visiting 
cards  and  were  brought  to  me  by  patients  whom  Freud  referred 


tome. 


August  20,  1922 

Lady  from  Australia,  26  years  old,,  suspicious  of  psychosomatic 
attacks.  Psychoanalytic  examination  of  2  to  3  weeks  to  decide. 
Eventually  full  treatment.  Patient  speaks  a  little  German.  Don't 
neglect  to  get  lungs  examined. 

Freud 


June  9,  1922 

British,  special  circumstances,  please  occasional  analytic  ses- 
sions on  his  visits  to  Vienna. 

The  trial  analysis  (in  Vienna  analytic  sessions  were  daily)  of 
the  first  case  confirmed  Freud's  diagnosis.  The  second  patient 
who  was  in  diplomatic  service  could  only  come  to  Vienna  oc- 
casionally. 


642  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

Badgastein,  July  8,  1922 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Thanks  for  your  prompt  settlement.  My  expectation  of  getting 
rid  of  some  members  has  not  been  realized.  Not  paying  the  con- 
tribution has,  of  course,  no  consequence  for  those  members. 

Cordially, 
Freud 

Refers  to  some  function  I  had  to  fulfill  as  secretary  of  the 
Vienna  Psychoanalytic  Society. 

Lavarone,  August  17,  1922 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

When  the  countess  writes  to  me,  I  shall  support  you  very  ener- 
getically. But  you  have  to  be  prepared  for  the  fact  that  the  rup- 
ture will  then  take  place.  Has  the  father  no  influence  whatsoever? 
The  contribution  of  your  little  son  is  very  beautiful,  deserves  a 
commentary.  I  am  preserving  it. 
With  cordial  regards  to  you  and  your  wife, 

Yours, 
Freud 

The  countess  was  the  mother  of  a  young  man  whom  Freud 
had  referred  to  me  for  psychoanalytic  treatment.  By  her  inter- 
ference, she  made  continuation  of  analysis  impossible.  The  con- 
tribution of  my  son  Arthur  is  contained  in  my  book  Gestandnis- 
zwang  und  Strafbedilrfnis  ("Compulsion  of  Confession  and  Need 
for  Punishment")  which  was  published  in  1925  and  is  not  yet 
translated  into  English. 

Salzburg,  August  10,  1922 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

"By  general  request/'  which  is  to  say  with  great  reluctance  on 
my  part,  I  have  consented  to  give  an  address  at  the  Congress. 
May  I  be  granted  the  privilege  of  not  revealing  the  subject  until 
I  make  the  address? 

I  have  read  with  disappointment  your  private  memorandum 
on  the  state  of  the  reviews.  It  shows  how  the  analysts  themselves 


LETTERS   OF   FREUD  643 

are  still  slaves  to  the  pleasure  principle.  I  know  no  remedy,  but 
your  proposals  will  be  awarded  the  most  serious  consideration 
at  or  by  the  Congress. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

The  memorandum  I  gave  Freud  concerns  the  reviews  for  the 
analytic  magazines.  I  had  been  dissatisfied  because  many  con- 
tributors did  not  keep  their  promise  to  deliver  reviews  on  time. 
The  next  letter  refers  to  the  book  Gestandniszwang  und  Straf- 
bedurfnis,  mentioned  before. 

January  13,  1925 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  have  read  your  thoughtful  and  extremely  important  book 
with  great  interest.  At  first  it  seemed  to  me  that  you  come  all  too 
easily  to  the  conclusion  that  the  examples  of  self-betrayal  through 
slips  of  the  tongue  are  really  meant  for  the  confessions  that  they 
are  in  effect,  and  you  could  have  emphasized  that  initial  ambi- 
guity. But  the  following  presentation  makes  your  thesis  increas- 
ingly plausible  as  you  expand  upon  it.  Your  attempt  to  demon- 
strate the  role  of  the  superego  in  all  neuroses  seems  as  legitimate 
as  it  is  fruitful.  The  whole  is  on  rather  broad  scale,  but  is  clear 
and  demands  attention.  There  are  many  ingenious  thoughts 
strewn  throughout.  On  reading  a  few  passages  I  have  felt  in- 
clined to  remind  you  with  red  pencil  to  look  over  a  sentence 
again.  Although,  true  to  my  custom,  I  am  avoiding  pronouncing 
final  judgment  on  a  work  I  have  just  read,  still  I  hazard  the  im- 
pression that  here  you  have  produced  something  especially  val- 
uable. Now  dispose  of  the  manuscript. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

February  28,  1926 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  really  should  react  to  your  "Pro  Memoria"  of  February  2 
with  an  invitation  to  take  a  beautiful  walk  with  you.  I  should 
like  to  do  that  if  I,  as  you  know,  were  not  inhibited  by  all  my 


644  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

minor  and  major  complaints  and  symptoms.  At  all  events,  I  was 
very  amused  in  reading  it  even  where  I  was  not  entirely  in  agree- 
ment with  you.  And,  of  course,  you  will  not  have  expected  com- 
plete agreement  in  matters  so  personal.  A  single  correction  of 
your  presentation  you  will  have  to  accept  without  contradicting. 
It  is  the  following:  you  accuse  me  of  having  addressed  Romain 
Holland  as  "incomparable,"  which  appears  inappropriate  to  you. 
But  when  you  read  the  Liber  Amicorum  or  the  excerpts  in  the 
Neue  Freie  Presse,  you  will  find  that  my  word  was  "unforget- 
table" which  adjective  you  will  certainly  not  censure.  This  is  not 
important,  but  is  perhaps  interesting. 

In  spite  of  your  own  confession  that  you  are  vindictive,  I  con- 
sider you  a  rather  kind  and  benevolent  man  and  can  thus  trust 
that  you  will  treat  my  shortcomings'  and  weaknesses  with  leniency. 

Cordial  regards, 
Yours,  Freud 

I  had  written  Freud  that  he  overappreciated  Romain  Rolland 
whom  I  did  not  like  very  much.  Freud  had  contributed  a  salu- 
tation to  the  Liber  Amicorum  published  on  the  occasion  of  the 
writer's  birthday. 

January  23,  1928 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

If  I  failed  to  answer  your  letter,  it  was  certainly  not  with  the 
purpose  of  keeping  you  away.  Rather  because  I  in  my  laziness 
thought  you  would  at  the  meeting  of  the  society  have  occasion 
to  make  an  appointment  with  me.  We  had  such  informal  social 
intercourse  during  the  summer  that  you  need  not  ask  for  an 
appointment  like  a  strange  interviewer. 

Eitingon  will  be  here  by  Friday;  thus  a  conversation  among 
the  three  of  us  would  be  most  appropriate.  But  if  you  will  be  in 
Paris  by  the  ayth  of  the  month,  please  phone  me  before  about 
the  time  of  your  visit  and  I  shall  plead  your  part  with  Eitingon. 

I  know  that  you  are  not  satisfied  here.  I  regret  very  much  that 
your  mood  and  your  attitude  to  life  have  become  so  dissatisfied 
just  when  your  intellectual  achievement  is  developing  so  splen- 
didly, and  I  admit  that  I  cannot  contribute  much  to  the  solution 


LETTERS   OF   FREUD  645 

of  your  problem  on  account  of  my  isolated  position  due  to  my 
illness. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

During  the  previous  summer  Freud  and  his  family  lived  at  the 
Semmering,  a  resort  near  Vienna,  and  I  and  my  family  spent 
the  summer  months  in  the  Sudbahnhotel  nearby.  I  then  saw 
Freud  almost  every  day.  The  remarks  on  my  situation  again  con- 
cern my  financial  worries. 

February  26,  1928 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Of  your  three  contributions  I  appreciate  the  first  as  a  well- 
justified,  ingenious  continuation  of  an  analytic  theory  and  the 
third  one  as  a  beautiful  contribution  to  the  interpretation  of 
dreams  and  to  self-analysis.  It  is  difficult  for  me  to  relate  to  the 
third  one.  The  darkness  which  still  covers  the  unconscious  guilt 
feeling  does  not  seem  to  be  lightened  by  one  of  the  discussions 
about  it.  The  complication  only  increases.  This  contribution  will, 
of  course,  also  be  published,  if  you  wish  it. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

The  three  papers  together  with  others  are  contained  in  a  book 
Der  Schrecken  ("Fright")  which  was  published  in  1929,  and  has 
been  translated  into  English.  The  following  letter  also  refers  to 
this  book. 

Tegel,  October  23, 1928 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  have  read  all  the  essays.  They  are  all  significant  and  finely 
written.  Their  merits  in  respect  to  psychological  depth  are,  of 
course,  uneven.  I  am  most  impressed  by  the  first  on  traumatic 
neuroses.  I  cared  least  for  the  one  which  presented  the  idea  of 
masochism  turned  outward. 

The  dedication  and  the  introduction  are,  of  course,  impossible. 


646  THE   SEARCH  WITHIN 

Also  the  scattered  remarks  on  colleagues,  some  witty  and  some 
merely  spiteful,  should  be  expurgated.  They  betray  that  the 
writer  is  still  too  close  to  the  subjective  material  of  his  investiga- 
tion, and  in  this  way  puts  convenient  weapons  right  into  the 
critics'  hands. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

Berlin  Tegel  [without  date] 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  have  by  no  means  forgotten  about  inviting  you  to  visit  me, 
but  I  am  merely  waiting  for  a  favorable  stage  in  the  course  of 
my  treatment.  Today  I  write  simply  to  ask  you  for  a  bit  of  in- 
formation out  of  your  superior  literary  knowledge.  The  question: 
Where  in  Schiller  or  Goethe  is  the  well-known  maxim:  "He  who 
has  an  and  science  has  also  religion/'  etc.?  My  notion  that  it  was 
in  the  Xenien  has  not  proved  correct.  Goethe's  maxims  in  verse 

PerhaPs?  With  cordial  greetings, 

Yours, 
Freud 

P.S.  Of  course,  also  the  full  text. 

April  10,  1928 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  cordially  congratulate  you  on  the  second  edition  of  your 
Ritual  A  beautiful  success  in  the  midst  of  a  hostile  environment! 
Your  later  contributions  have  kept  the  promise  that  was  given  in 
those  first  ones,  and  one  may  expect  even  more  from  your  future 
work. 

With  many  others  I  only  regret  that  you  give  so  much  expres- 
sion to  your  personal  moods  in  your  objective  studies.  I  regret 
still  more  that  my  circumstances  have  made  it  impossible  to 
change  something  in  the  factors  that  awaken  those  moods,  ex- 
cuse them,  but  do  not  justify  them  in  a  higher  sense. 

Cordial  greetings, 
Yours, 
Freud 


LETTERS  OF  FREUD  647 

October  28,  1928 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

In  memory  of  one  of  your  former  duties,  may  I  ask  you  to 
look  after  the  enclosed  manuscript?  Heard  with  pleasure  that 
your  brilliant  lecture  was  a  success. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 


Tegel,  September  13,  1928 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  cannot  explain  your  attitude  except  in  the  following  way. 
You  send  me  those  remarks,  submit  yourself  to  my  decision  as  to 
whether  they  should  be  printed,  and  anticipate  that  I  shall  con- 
demn them  as  unworthy  of  you  in  form  and  content.  In  doing 
that  you  give  expression  to  your  feelings  and  discharge  them 
without  any  risk. 

The  calculation  is  correct,  but  it  grieves  me  much  that  you 
even  need  such  therapy.  Your  hostility  transgresses  all  justified 
measure,  blasts  the  frontiers  of  what  is  permissible,  spoils  your 
presentation,  and  must  sadden  anyone  who,  as  I,  has  the  interest 
of  a  friend  in  you  and  highly  appreciates  your  achievements.  It 
cannot  possibly  go  on  like  that. 

I  would  have  asked  you  long  ago  to  see  me,  but  I  am  at  present 
in  a  bad  state  of  transition,  still  unable  to  do  anything  and  com- 
pelled to  hide  like  a  crab  that  changes  its  shell. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

I  had  written  a  letter  full  of  bitterness  against  some  colleagues 
who  had  hurt  my  pride,  and  I  had  given  uninhibited  expression 
to  my  indignation.  Freud's  letter  was,  of  course,  well  justified  in 
its  criticism  of  my  attitude. 


Tegel,  October  20, 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

The  famous  story  of  the  mandarin  (tuer  son  mandarin)  comes 


THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

from  Rousseau,  after  all  Could  you  tell  me  without  going  to  too 
much  trouble  where  it  is  to  be  found? 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

November  18, 1929 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Please  don't  bother  yourself  any  longer  about  the  "inch  of 
nature"  and  forgive  me  for  having  bothered  you  with  it.  I've 
done  without  the  quotation.  No  one  was  able  to  locate  it.  Where 
I  could  have  picked  it  up  remains  a  mystery,  for  it  is  hardly 
likely  to  be  of  my  own  coining.  Since,  besides  Shakespeare,  I 
used  to  read  only  Milton  and  Byron,  there  is  still  the  possibility 
that  it  might  be  found  in  Byron.  But  please  do  not  look  for  it, 
and  accept  my  best  thanks  for  your  trouble. 

With  cordial  greetings, 
Freud 

Berchtesgaden,  August  21,  1929 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

In  my  judgment,  you  do  my  little  essay  too  much  honor  by 
commenting  and  elucidating  upon  it,  but  I  do  not  wish  to  quar^ 
rel  with  your  intentions.  Certainly  you  have  added  those  very 
things  which  the  analyst  must  add  to  supplement  the  presenta- 
tion. But  the  psychologists  of  religion  have  got  along  without  it, 
and  after  your  elucidation  they  will  not  understand  it  any  bet- 
ter nor  accept  it  less  grudgingly.  Naturally,  I  was  not  writing  for 
those  readers. 

You  have  my  permission  to  publish  whatever  appears  appropri- 
ate to  you  from  my  letter.  I  am  sure  that  you,  too,  wanted  to 
exclude  the  passages  I  marked  with  red  pencil,  alluding  to  our 
personal  relationships. 

My  prothesis  compels  me  to  consult  Professor  Schroder  again. 
I  am  planning  to  arrive  at  Berlin  on  September  15.  And  this 
time  you  have  to  come  to  dinner  with  us. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 


LETTERS  OF   FREUD  649 

The  letter  refers  to  my  note  on  Freud's  paper  on  a  "religious 
experience/'  contained  in  this  book.  The  other  passage  concerns 
Freud's  letter  on  Dostoyevsky,  published  in  this  volume.  Freud 
periodically  came  to  Berlin  for  readjustment  of  his  mouth  prothe- 
sis.  He  lived  on  these  occasions  at  Tegel  near  Berlin,  where  I 
visited  him.  I  had  moved  from  Vienna  to  Berlin. 

Berlin  Tegel  [no  date] 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  certainly  want  to  see  you  and  talk  to  you.  My  stay  here  will 
still  take  some  weeks.  At  present  I  am  in  my  most  helpless  state, 
comparable  to  a  change  of  shell,  and  have  to  hide. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

March  23,  1930 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

You  know  that  I  try  to  forbear  from  criticisms  of  recent  works 
of  our  school*  When  I  make  an  exception  in  your  case,  you  must 
take  that  as  proof  of  my  special  appreciation  of  your  work, 

I  read  your  last  contribution  to  the  Psychoanalytische  Bewe- 
gung  with  some  uneasiness.  I  have  been  troubled  by  a  change  in 
me  which  was  brought  about  under  the  influence  of  Looney's 
book,  Shakespeare  Identified.  I  no  longer  believe  in  the  man  from 
Stratford. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

Freud's  remarks  refer  to  an  article  The  Way  of  All  Flesh  I  had 
published.  The  paper  deals  mostly  with  the  problem  of  death 
in  Shakespeare's  Hamlet.* 

April  6,  1930 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Thanks  for  sending  your  article  on  my  "Civilization  and  Its 
Discontents/'  It  is  the  best  and  most  dignified  of  all  I  have  read 

*  Translated  in  my  book,  From  Thirty  Years  with  Freud  (New  York,  1940)* 
P- 197- 


650  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

a'bout  it  until  now.  I  hope  to  be  in  Tegel  at  the  beginning  of 
May. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

My  paper  had  been  published  in  Imago.  It  is  contained  in  this 
volume. 

Tegel,  July  10,  1930 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Just  received  your  book  and  letter.  Cordial  thanks.  I  am  wish- 
ing a  beautiful  time  to  you  and  your  wife. 

Freud 

May  30,  1931 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Thanks  for  your  birthday  salutation  which  gives  me  special 
pleasure.  I  considered  the  doubt  of  your  little  son  if  one  is  justi- 
fied in  congratulating  someone  very  reasonable. 

Cordially, 
Freud 

I  had  published  an  article  on  Freud's  birthday  in  the  maga- 
zine of  the  Jewish  organization  B'nai  B'rith.  My  son  Arthur,  then 
six  years  old,  was  quoted  in  it:  the  boy  could  not  understand  why 
you  congratulate  a  person  on  his  birthday  rather  than  his  parents. 
My  article,  beginning  with  a  discussion  on  the  fact  that  we  all 
still  believe  in  the  omnipotence  of  thoughts  when  we  convey  our 
good  wishes  to  someone,  ended  with  the  sentence:  "We  con- 
gratulate ourselves  on  Freud's  birthday/' 

.    May  8,  1932 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

To  the  enjoyable  thoughts  on  your  literary  gift  the  satisfac- 
tion was  added  of  getting  some  information  about  you,  for  in- 
stance that  you  now  live  in  Berlin.  People  said  that  you  had 
moved  and  had  accepted  a  commercial  job  in  Czechoslovakia. 


LETTERS  OF  FREUD  ^£1 

One  feels  even  more  helpless  in  these  miserable  times,  but  one 
does  not  renounce  one's  interest. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

I  had  sent  Freud  my  newly  published  book,  Nachdenkliche 
Heiterkeit  (not  translated  into  English)  on  his  birthday.  The 
depression  in  Austria  made  me  decide  to  move  once  more  to 
Berlin. 

September  9, 1932 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  was  very  happy  to  see  that,  after  emerging  from  your  retire- 
ment, you  have  lost  nothing  of  your  critical  or  literary  abilities. 
Your  book  is  very  interesting.  I  share  your  doubts  concerning 
certain  planned  applications  of  psychoanalysis,  and  I  appreciate 
the  skill  with  which  you  discover  the  decisive  ancient  and  primal 
behind  the  modern.  The  objection  to  the  book  will,  of  course,  be 
that  it  is  essentially  negative—which  does  it  no  harm. 

My  daughter  whom  I  expect  this  evening  will  certainly  bring 
me  some  latest  dispatches  about  your  personal  life. 

I  do  not  indulge  in  any  complaints  about  failing  bodily  func- 
tions, since  at  my  age  I  obviously  have  no  right  to  expect  much. 
Still  I  was  able  to  complete  seven  new  lectures  to  supplement 
those  that  were  published  in  1917.  And  a  few  other  bagatelles. 

With  cordial  wishes  for  you  and  yours, 

Your  Freud 

The  book  is  Der  unbekannte  Morder  ("The  Unknown  Mur- 
derer"), 1932  (English  translation  by  the  Hogarth  Press,  1936), 

[without  date] 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  would  be  very  glad  if  I  knew  that  you  had  found  a  permanent 
home  in  the  charming  Hague.  You  must  again  strike  root  some- 
where. I  have  decided  not  to  leave  Vienna,  no  matter  what 
happens  here. 


652  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

Fine  that  you  are  working,  which  means  creating.  I  can  do  so 
no  longer,  which  clears  me  of  much  responsibility,  but  also 
leaves  me  so  impoverished. 

With  cordial  wishes, 
Yours, 
Freud 

I  had  moved  to  the  Hague  where  I  lived  until  1938  when  I 
came  to  the  United  States.  Austria  was  already  endangered  by 
the  Nazis. 

January  4,  1935 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Thanks  for  your  New  Year's  letter  which  at  last  brought  the 
news  so  long  expected  by  me  that  you  have  settled  down  in  a 
foreign  country,  are  entering  into  good  social  connections,  and 
earning  what  you  need.  Some  stability  and  security  seem  to  be  a 
requirement  for  our  difficult  work.  I  count  upon  it  that  you  will 
still  present  us  with  valuable  achievements  of  the  same  caliber 
as  your  first  studies. 

I  analyzed  Mahler  for  an  afternoon  in  the  year  1912  (or  1913?) 
in  Leiden.  If  I  may  believe  -reports,  I  achieved  much  with  him 
at  that  time.  His  consultation  appeared  necessary  to  him,  be- 
cause his  wife  at  the  time  rebelled  against  the  fact  that  he  with- 
drew his  libido  from  her.  In  highly  interesting  expeditions 
through  his  life  history,  we  discovered  his  personal  conditions  for 
love,  especially  his  Holy  Mary  complex  (mother  fixation).  I  had 
plenty  of  opportunity  to  admire  the  capability  for  pschological 
understanding  of  this  man  of  genius.  No  light  fell  at  the  time  on 
the  symptomatic  facade  of  his  obsessional  neurosis.  It  was  as  if 
you  would  dig  a 'single  shaft  through  a  mysterious  building. 

Hoping  to  hear  good  news  from  you,  with  cordial  wishes  for 

19$6f 

Yours, 

Freud 

This  letter  is  the  answer  to  one  of  mine  in  which  I  asked 
Freud  for  information  about  his  meeting  with  Gustav  Mahler 


LETTERS   OF   FREUD  653 

(in  1910).  A  discussion  of  the  significance  of  this  letter  is  to  be 
found  in  my  book  The  Haunting  Melody. 

Januaryg,  1936 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

You  did  not  predict  correctly  that  I  will  not  read  your  new 
book.  1  consider  it  clever  and  stimulating  as  everything  you 
write,  but  I  would  have  preferred  your  concentration  on  a  single 
problem.  The  danger  threatening  you  is  to  get  scattered. 

Hoping  that  you  will  be  victorious  in  the  fight  with  your 
difficulties, 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

The  book  here  referred  to  is  Der  uberraschte  Psychologe,  pub- 
lished at  Leiden  in  1936. 

April  29,  1936 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

Thanks  for  your  thoughtful  gratulation.  Au  revoir  in  August. 

Cordially  yours, 
Freud 

Before  moving  to  Holland,  where  I  had  a  psychoanalytic 
practice  and  worked  as  training  psychoanalyst  in  the  Hague,  I 
asked  Freud  for  a  letter  of  recommendation: 

Certificate 

No  one  who  knows  psychoanalytic  literature  can  be  ignorant  of 
the  fact  that  the  numerous  contributions  on  applied  psycho- 
analysis by  Dr.  Theodor  Reik,  especially  those  concerning  re- 
ligion and  ritual,  belong  to  the  best  and  most  successful  in  this 
field.  They  are  unique  of  their  kind.  Whoever  has  the  oppor- 
tunity should  feel  obliged  to  support  Dr.  Reik  in  his  career  and 
to  promote  him  so  as  to  make  the  continuation  of  his  work  pos- 
sible. 

Prof.  Dr.  Sigm.  Freud 


654  THE  SEARCH  WITHIN 

The  following  letter  is  Freud's  answer  to  two  questions  I  had 
asked  him.  A  few  remarks  about  the  occasions  on  which  the  two 
questions  emerged  will  be  necessary  for  the  understanding  of 
Freud's  opinions.  The  situation  to  which  the  first  part  of  Freud's 
letter  refers  was  the  following:  Toward  the  end  of  her  analytic 
treatment,  which  had  been  successful,  a  wealthy  patient  of  mine, 
Miss  S.  in  The  Hague,  wanted  to  express  her  gratitude  to  psy- 
choanalysis by  establishing  a  foundation.  She  discussed  with  me 
her  plans  which  were  greatly  influenced  by  her  interest  in  child 
psychology  and  education,  At  the  time  there  were  no  competent 
child  psychoanalysts  in  Holland,  and  Miss  S.  wished  her  founda- 
tion to  give  grants  to  gifted  Dutch  psychiatrists  and  psychologists 
who  would  study  and  be  trained  in  child  psychology  and  psy- 
choanalysis in  Vienna.  The  foundation  would  support  those 
students  during  their  years  of  study  and  training  and  help  them 
to  establish  themselves  after  their  return  to  Holland.  The  patient, 
who  had  undergone  analytic  therapy,  had  no  theoretical  knowl- 
edge of  psychoanalysis  and  wished,  in  mistaken  tolerance,  that 
the  students  be  trained  in  psychoanalysis  as  well  as  in  Jung's 
therapeutic  methods.  The  Dutch  psychiatrist  Dr.  K.,  whom  she 
knew  and  who  had  just  returned  from  a  long  psychoanalytic 
training  in  Vienna,  and  I  tried  to  convince  her  that  such  a  com- 
bination was  inappropriate  and  was  not  available  at  the  Vienna 
Psychoanalytic  Institute. 

The  second  question  concerns  the  case  of  a  psychiatrist  who 
had  applied  for  membership  in  the  Amsterdam  Psychoanalytic 
Association,  of  which  I  was  a  member  and  in  which  I  took  an 
active  interest.  The  candidate  was  a  practicing  Catholic,  and  some 
officials  of  our  association  expressed  their  doubts  as  to  whether 
such  an  attitude  could  be  reconciled  with  the  therapeutic  tasks  of 
psychoanalysis.  I  was  asked  to  find  out  what  Freud  thought  about 
this  problem.  His  answers  to  the  two  questions,  which  are  still 
applicable  in  the  area  of  psychoanalysis,  are  of  considerable  his- 
torical and  theoretical  interest. 


LETTERS  OF  FREUD  655 

_       __      _  November  21,  10*7 

Dear  Herr  Doctor:  y^' 

I  entirely  agree  with  your  and  K's  opinion  that  a  practical  co- 
operation of  psychoanalysis  with  other  psychotherapeutic  direc- 
tions in  pedagogics  and  mental  hygiene  is  hopeless  at  this  time 
and  that  such  an  attempt  is  not  desirable.  Psychoanalysis  would 
come  off  badly  in  the  venture.  It  is  permitted  to  assume  that  the 
analysts  would  consider  valuable  suggestions  from  the  other 
methods,  but  it  is  certain  that  the  others  would  not  appreciate 
analytic  points  of  view.  They  understand  too  little  of  them. 
Perhaps  it  will  be  different  later.  Today  I  would  have  to  advise 
you  to  refuse  participation  in  the  work  of  such  a  foundation.  It  is 
easier  for  me  to  advise  you  than  the  noble-minded  donor.  I  would 
like  to  see  the  lady,  but  qnly  after  she  has  made  her  decision.  If 
her  inclinations  and  her  opinion  vacillate  between  both  schools 
of  thought,  the  best  way  out  would  be  for  her  to  create  not  one, 
but  two  foundations  remaining  independent  from  each  other.  I 
cannot  be  put  in  authority  and  bring  about  a  decision  where  I 
am  undoubtedly  partial. 

In  the  case  of  Dr.  St.,  on  the  other  hand,  the  decision  seems  to 
be  easy.  Psychoanalysis  is  not  much  more  contradictory  to  the 
Catholic  faith  than  to  any  other  religion,  and  not  more  decidedly 
than  any  other  science.  To  act  consistently,  one  would  have  to 
exclude  all  other  believers  from  visiting  a  university  when  they  do 
not  want  to  study  theology.  It  is  certainly  more  justified  not  to  be 
concerned  about  the  faith  of  a  candidate  and  to  leave  it  to  him 
which  attitude  he  can  take  in  the  undeniable  conflict  between 

religion  and  science. 

Cordially  yours, 

Freud 


January  21, 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

I  have  no  objection  to  your  remark  on  the  influence  of 
analysis  on  S's  perversion.  I  did  not  remember  that  the  passage 
V  356  you  refer.  to  concerned  S. 

Cordially  yours, 
Treud 


656  THE  SEARCH   WITHIN 

I  asked  Freud  for  permission  to  quote  certain  passages  from  his 
paper  on  masochism  contained  in  Vol.  V  of  his  Gesammelte 
Schriften.  The  passage  concerns  the  case  of  a  masochist  who  had 
been  under  Freud's  psychoanalysis  for  a  long  time,  and  whom 
Freud  had  referred  to  me  for  continuation  of  the  treatment. 

The  last  three  letters  I  received  from  Freud,  who  was  in 
London,  are  from  the  year  1938  and  addressed  to  New  York. 

After  I  realized  that  I  could  no  longer  stay  in  Holland  with- 
out the  risk  of  becoming  a  prisoner  of  the  Nazis  who  were 
threatening  to  invade  that  country,  I  immigrated  to  the  United 
States  in  June,  1938.  Most  members  of  the  New  York  Psycho- 
analytic Society  treated  me  condescendingly,  and  I  was  strongly 
admonished  against  practicing,  or  rather  forbidden  to  practice, 
psychoanalysis.  I  complained  about  this  when  I  wrote  to  Freud. 
I  asked  him  if  he  could  suggest  some  way  in  which  I  might  con- 
tinue my  work.  The  first  letter,  dated  July  3,  1938,  was  his 
answer  to  this  request.  It  was  accompanied  by  the  second  letter 
which  was  a  recommendation  written  in  English.  The  last  letter 
is  clearly  a  reaction  to  another  letter  of  mine  in  which  I  again 
complained  about  the  hostility  and  indifference  of  my  New  York 
colleagues. 

39  Elsworthy  Road 
London,  N.W.  3 
July  3,  1938 
Dear  Herr  Doctor: 

What  ill  wind  has  blown  you,  just  you,  to  America?  You  must 
have  known  how  amiably  lay  analysts  would  be  received  there 
by  our  colleagues  for  whom  psychoanalysis  is  nothing  more  than 
one  of  the  handmaidens  of  psychiatry.  Could  you  not  have  stayed 
in  Holland  longer? 

I  am,  of  course,  glad  to  write  any  certificate  that  would  be 
useful  to  you,  but  I  doubt  that  it  will  help  you.  Where  over  there 
is  an  institution  which  would  be  interested  in  supporting  the 
continuation  of  your  research?  Have  you  attempted  to  get  in 
touch  with  the  German  Academy  in  America  [Thomas  Mann, 
Prince  Lowenstein,  and  others]? 


LETTERS   OF   FREUD  657 

When  I  think  of  you,  sympathy  and  annoyance  fight  within 
me. 

I  could  feel  well  in  England  if  I  were  not  incessantly  subjected 
to  all  possible  demands,  and  if  I  were  not  reminded  of  my  power- 
lessness  to  help  others. 
With  my  best  wishes,  which  you  will  well  need  at  this  time. 

Yours, 
Freud 

I  am  surprised  to  learn  that  Dr.  Th.  Reik  has  gone  to  Amer- 
ica where  the  fact  that  he  is  not  a  medical  man  is  likely  to 
interfere  with  his  activity  as  an  analyst.  He  is  one  of  the  few 
masters  of  applied  analysis,  as  is  shown  especially  in  his  earlier 
contributions,  while  his  later  work  is  more  concerned  with 
matters  of  general  psychological  interest.  In  both  ways  he  has 
given  proof  of  a  high  amount  of  intelligence,  criticism  and  inde- 
pendent thought.  Any  man  who  is  interested  in  the  progress 
of  the  Science  of  Psychoanalysis  should  try  to  lend  his  assistance 
in  the  continuation  of  his  work. 

Prof.  Sigm.  Freud 

I  am  ready  to  help  you  as  soon  as  I  get  the  news  that  I  am 
equipped  with  the  omnipotence  of  God,  if  only  for  a  short  time. 
Until  then,  you  must  continue  to  toil  alone. 

Most  cordially  yours, 
Freud 

I  did. 


PROF.