To what extent have Freud’s ideas actually influenced our culture? Hans Meyerhoff contends that they have had far less effect than appears on the surface.
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A year after the world-wide celebrations of the hundredth anniversary of Freud’s birth, Ernest Jones has completed the third and last volume of his biography of his friend and teacher.1 This is bad timing: so many words have recently poured forth from so many pens that the mind is surfeited. Thus it is almost embarrassing to join in praise of Dr. Jones’s biography. Yet it is true that his work ranks, both on literary and scientific grounds, with the great biographies of the ages, for it combines two excellences as difficult as they are rare: the delineation of an unforgettable personal portrait, and the reconstruction of an enormously complex scientific system. But just because Dr. Jones’s is an accomplishment of unique distinction, it is only fair to add that this last volume has its flaws and defects: it does not achieve the same mastery over its diffuse and difficult subject matter that made the first volume such an exciting intellectual adventure.
As far as Freud himself is concerned, it is now a cliché to repeat that he was a “maker of the modern mind.” Yet perhaps it is appropriate to ask, after the echoes of the recent celebrations have faded away, what the success of “Freudianism” actually means in our culture.
Dr. Jones offers some highly perceptive and pertinent remarks on this question. “What chiefly impresses” the psychoanalyst, he writes, “is the shallowness of so much of what passes as acceptance of Freud’s ideas, and the superficiality with which they are treated. They are so often bandied about lightly as a form of lip service that one cannot help suspecting that much of the so-called acceptance is really a subtle form of rejection, a protection against assimilation of their profound import.” This reflects Freud’s own skepticism. Even when great fame had come to him, Freud never underestimated the degree of resistance that continued underneath the surface acceptance of his ideas. In proud moments, he used to compare himself to Copernicus and Darwin. As Copernicus had displaced the earth from the center of the universe, as Darwin had deprived man of his previously unique place in the animal kingdom, so psychoanalysis had delivered a third blow to human amour propre by dislodging man from his alleged sovereignty in his own house. He did not think that mankind would take this dethronement lightly.
In this “last phase” of his life Freud returned, “after making a life-long detour through the natural sciences, to the cultural problems which had fascinated me long ago, when I was a youth scarcely old enough to think.” What Freud did was to superimpose a general theory of man and culture upon the technical, therapeutic aspects of psychoanalysis. In doing this he had the courage at the age of sixty to revise some of his own basic ideas. These revisions caused considerable consternation even in psychoanalytic circles. They also widened, I believe, the gap between Freud and the prevailing winds of doctrine in our own culture. The summing up of his life’s work recalls the highly offensive nature of some of Freud’s basic ideas and brings home the strange ambivalence with which our culture has absorbed the impact of psychoanalysis and the intellectual legacy of its founder.
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First (in time) among the “offenses” is the discovery of the unconscious. It is, of course, true that the unconscious is on everybody’s lips; but it is “hardly possible,” as Freud noted himself, “to exaggerate the power of inner resistance against the acceptance of unconscious tendencies,” in the specific way in which he understood them. We repeat, after Freud, that the discovery of the unconscious world has deepened the Socratic quest for self-knowledge. Today “few people,” as Dr. Jones says, “would claim a complete knowledge of themselves”; but I am not sure that we have even begun to think seriously about the baffling consequences that this new look of man has for such problems as human motivation, freedom, and responsibility. According to Freud’s final theory of man, parts of the ego, as well as the super-ego, are submerged in the subterranean world of the unconscious, where they mingle with the unruly forces of the id. How far can we carry our old comfortable conceptual stereotypes over into these new dimensions of depth psychology? What happens to some of our most cherished ideas of man in the light of unconscious motivation? I don’t presume to know myself; but it seems to me that the standard practice is to affirm the truth of Freud’s discovery, and then to proceed as if it didn’t make any difference.
Freud adapted Darwinism to psychology. Eventually, he composed a model of man in which the biological heritage was consigned to the realm of the id. This has been another major stumbling block; for the id is a terrifying world. Freud compared it to a “seething cauldron” from which love and death instincts erupt in perennial struggle with the so-called higher achievements of man and culture. In religious language, the instincts are “demonic” agents that reveal us in our “creatureliness.” It is true that Freud showed, not least by the example he set in his own life, how this biological fate could be transcended and transformed into a human existence; but it is also true that the repudiation of Freud’s “biological” thinking has been the point of departure for all deviations of psychoanalysis. And it is hardly the case that our culture has accepted Freud’s thesis that man’s creatureliness can be converted into civilization, science, and art by man’s own powers, a process of spiritualization, or sublimation, which masters the very energies that, to begin with, are so threatening. For the most part, we continue to think that this task surpasses human powers and can be accomplished only with the aid of miracle, magic, and authority—or by means of reinterpreting the unconscious world so that it loses most of its threatening aspects.2
We are still a long way from accepting what Thomas Mann hailed as Freud’s message for a “humanism of the future”—not to succumb to the seductive lure of the unconscious, nor to appease it by magical thinking, but to overcome and appropriate it for a new image of man. If such an ideal is not itself a delusion, it obviously belongs to the distant future.
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Everybody knows that Freud “discovered” sex; and presumably it is here to stay. But whether it has come to stay with us in the sense in which Freud conceived of it is still another question. It is, of course, known that his early treatment of sexuality, especially infantile sexuality, caused the most violent and vitriolic denunciations of psychoanalysis as the scourge of Satan. But before we congratulate ourselves on how far we have come in our enlightenment since the beginning of the century, it is perhaps also worth noting that Freud’s libido theory has been a bone of contention even in psychoanalytic circles—from the early defection of Jung to the later revisions of the “cultural school”—and that it may have been adopted by our culture in a form which Freud himself would not have recognized. Thus one reads in the recent works of Erich Fromm that “creative love” is a composite of care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge; and one also observes that, in this highly popular revision of psychoanalysis, sex is quietly exiled from the domain of Eros.
Now, on the subject of sexuality Freud was uncompromising. Why? Not, as is often said, because he was a “pan-sexualist.” Freud always knew, long before the “cultural school” came along, that social and historical conditions influence human behavior; but he also believed that the libido theory was absolutely essential to an analysis “in depth,” whether the patient was the individual or society. Giving up the libido theory, therefore, meant surrendering the depth-dimension of psychoanalysis and returning to a pre-Freudian type of psychology. The total human situation, according to Freud, was a complex system in which external nature, social institutions, and libidinal drives were caught in dynamic interactions. His offending emphasis on sexuality implied a recognition that the libido is a newcomer to this triad and that the biological fate adds a new dimension to our understanding of man and society. If the libido theory is dropped or re-interpreted without the sexual sting, we return to the commonplace thesis that man is a product of nature and culture—something we have known all along.
In this respect he was “the revolutionary,” as he told his Swiss friend Ludwig Binswanger, while Binswanger was “the conservative”; for Binswanger returned to the traditional approach of analyzing the highest products of culture (art, religion, etc., etc.) in their own terms, i.e., divorced from the “lowly dwelling” of the libido. Freud’s was a revolutionary attitude (a) because nobody, save Nietzsche, had approached culture from this biological perspective and (b) because it enabled him to judge, and criticize, civilization on the scales of libidinal satisfactions and sacrifices.
If Freud was adamant on the significance of sexuality, he was more permissive about the death wish. Originally introduced in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the death wish preoccupied Freud increasingly in his later years and deeply influenced his thinking about man’s nature and destiny. It quickly became a center of controversy; and, as Dr. Jones points out, the original doctrine is no longer held even in orthodox psychoanalytic circles. I am not competent to judge the clinical evidence; but I think it is fairly clear why the destructive or death instinct occupied a central place in Freud’s thought—in addition to the deep personal meaning it had in Freud’s own life.
The death wish puts one source of suffering into the organism itself. The human being is divided even in his deepest layers—not only, as for Hegel, on the highest level of consciousness. This division, in turn, and the perennial test of strength between the two immortal adversaries, Eros and Thanatos, make a satisfactory solution of the human equation even more precarious than the necessities of nature and the repressions of culture have already made it. In the light of the terrifying expansion of “man’s destructive powers,” on which Dr. Jones comments in conclusion, it is rather odd that few people, if any, have drawn what would seem to be the natural conclusion from a denial of Freud’s death wish. If he was mistaken—if aggression is not a primary instinct, but derived from frustration—the present situation would indicate that suffering, sacrifice, and frustration must be running amuck in our civilization, which, I suppose, is not an acceptable answer to the problem either. Moreover, it is curious to note that the Christian dogma of “original sin,” which at least in part corresponds to Freud’s doctrine, nowadays again commands a respectful hearing. Apparently, what makes good sense in a theological context, where the evil is absolute, does not make any sense in a natural or human setting where, as Freud insisted, man might at least achieve some partial mastery over himself.
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The human situation, according to Freud, is always precarious and ambiguous. I have tried to show elsewhere3 that this outlook on life was a characteristic ingredient of Freud’s Weltanschauung. There are no pat formulas for universal happiness, peace of mind, or creative love. Freud never preached morality; nor did he provide inspirational comfort; and he knew that this was another stumbling block to the acceptance of his views by his fellow men. For consolation, as he wrote in his old age, is “at bottom what they all demand—the frenzied revolutionary as passionately as the pious believer.” And that is precisely what the various types of inspirational psychoanalysis, from Jung to Fromm, have come along to supply. (Regardless of whether they are right or wrong, they, not Freud, have captured the market.)
Freud’s own attitude toward morality was extremely simple. Ethics was something “to be taken for granted”; and the much-maligned pleasure principle, modified in the light of reality, yields an ethical theory in the tradition of a refined Epicureanism or Stoicism. Not the pursuit of pleasure (which is the aim of the instincts), but the minimizing of pain, is the goal of human existence. “The more civilized and refined one is the more does one devote oneself to avoiding pain rather than seeking pleasure,” Freud wrote to his future wife; and this formula accompanied him as a moral guide throughout life. It is quite different from, and more modest than, the numerous popular versions of psychoanalytically inspired happiness-theories and the exalted precepts of traditional ethics.
Freud knew suffering—in himself and in others. Yet this man, whose work has done so much to alleviate sickness and despair, also clung to the idea, as other great thinkers have done, that suffering and pain are inherent in the structure of the universe and indispensable for human progress. He never abandoned the conviction that “the gradual widening of human consciousness,” which is the fruit of civilized existence, is accompanied by renunciation and a heightened susceptibility to pain. It was this conviction that led him to the melancholy conclusion that man’s struggle for existence against the hardships of nature, the difficulties in society, and his own limits, would never yield a clear-cut permanent solution in terms of human happiness. Perhaps this was the greatest challenge he posed to the prevailing conceptions of Western culture, according to which life is unendurable and meaningless if there be no promise or hope of a happy end either in this life or in the hereafter. Again, it is no accident that all the popular revisions of Freud have come along to repudiate this challenge and to make the adjustments necessary to bring psychoanalysis into line with traditional hopes and aspirations.
In spirit and effect, these revisions—however helpful they may be for therapeutic purposes—are the very antithesis of Freud’s outlook on life. His was a Promethean image of man. “The moment one inquires about the meaning and value of life one is sick,” he wrote at the threshold of death. He meant that the question arose from a “surplus of unsatisfied libido” and reflected the individual’s failure to give meaning to his life by his own powers. Independence, autonomy, integrity, and self-reliance are perhaps the most characteristic traits of Freud’s personality. They expressed his ideal of man. It was his ambition, as we know, to reclaim territory for man that was lost or submerged, like the Zuider Sea; to gain consciousness and mastery, to the limits imposed by human nature and external necessity, over inner resources and remote realms of being—the unconscious, Eros, destruction, and super-ego—that had never been accessible to man. He believed that man could redeem this promise by his own powers, and that the prize was only worth winning if it were so earned. Any other solution seemed to him a betrayal of the inherent dignity of man.
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That this image was more than an ideal he proved as much by the way he lived and died as by any arguments. This last volume brings to us the poignant story of how he prevailed over the prolonged agony of the cancer from which he died. That Freud, like Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, or Goethe, lived unaided and died unconsoled by a religious faith is obviously a stumbling block to a culture which holds that man can only be saved from his sickness unto death by powers beyond him.
Like Epicurus, Freud waged a lifelong campaign against the wish-world of religion—though he identified himself consciously as a Jew. As Dr. Jones shows, the religious issue aroused almost as much resentment against Freud as his treatment of sexuality. Throughout his life Freud insisted that “the beginnings [my emphasis] of religion, morality, social life, and art” are to be found in the Oedipus situation. When he first advanced the idea in Totem and Taboo, the public, including the experts, greeted this “fairy tale” with derision and scorn. Of all his works, this speculative inquiry into the origins of social life fared worst in its reception; yet Freud counted its last chapter among his three most valuable contributions.
Later, in the future of an illusion, Freud broadened his approach to religion. In addition to the Oedipus situation, he now recognized that religion also arose from an overwhelming need for protection against the helpless and anxious condition into which man is thrown in life. This essay has also been criticized severely. Yet, strangely enough, its main theme is actually enjoying great popularity. Our culture, however, has drawn its own conclusions—contrary to Freud’s and compatible with the traditional vindication of religious faith. Following the lead of William James’s essay “The Will to Believe,” perhaps the most influential work in popular theology, many writers have acknowledged that there is a great need for religion, because man is a weak and helpless being. But they have argued that, because the need is so great, religious beliefs must be true; whereas Freud argued that the beliefs are palpably false, but are accepted as true because they satisfy such deep needs. In either case, it is agreed that religious beliefs are so significant, and occupy a central place in the psychic economy, because they respond to powerful needs. But our culture has decided that, when such needs are at stake—“living, forced, and momentous options,” as James called them—it is legitimate to think that the beliefs are true; or it is legitimate to cling to them regardless of whether they are true or false.
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Freud’s personal choice was a radical and, at times, a violent repudiation of this option. Why did he refuse to compromise on the issue, as so many others have done since in an effort to reconcile psychoanalysis and religion? Not because he did not appreciate the function religious beliefs perform on behalf of “psychic hygiene,” in Jung’s words. As early as 1909 he wrote to his Swiss associate, Oskar Pfister, a Protestant clergyman—in his characteristic mixture of irony and seriousness: “You are in the fortunate position of leading them [i.e., the patients] on to God . . . ; fortunate at least in the one respect that religious piety stifles neuroses. We no longer have this opportunity of settling this matter.” Thus “it is much harder for us.” Moreover, the long interior dialogue that Freud conducted with himself in The Future of an Illusion, while concluding with a moving affirmation of an enlightened, scientific rationalism, also shows the other side of his nature, which was fully cognizant of the psychic benefits bestowed by religion.
What tipped the scales in Freud’s mind against religion were, I think, aside from his own childhood influences, two major considerations: (1) that religion had actually failed, that it had missed its unchallenged opportunity “for many thousands of years . . . to show what it can achieve” in improving the lot of man; (2) that the religious superstructure was incompatible with the dignity of the free man.
His denunciation of religion as “mental infantilism . . . and mass delusion” expressed Freud’s passionate commitment to a Promethean image of man. Ultimately, psychoanalysis was more than an “instrument” for the cure of neuroses; it was also, Freud believed, a rational way of life leading to the eventual emancipation of man from any bondage and allegiance to powers other than his own. “Nor can religion keep its promises either. When the faithful find themselves reduced in the end to speaking of God’s ‘inscrutable decree,’ they thereby avow that all that is left to them in their sufferings is unconditional submission as a last remaining consolation and source of happiness.”
Religion thus appeared as a symbol of self-abasement and self-alienation. And Freud’s struggle against religion was an attempt to wean mankind from the magic powers on which it had leaned during its prolonged childhood, to cut the umbilical cord alienating man from himself. The crucial issue was not, as Freud sometimes said it was, that religion provided nothing but substitute gratifications; he was more than willing to make room for such gratifications in the wish-world of art. The decisive difference was that aesthetic gratifications still asserted and enhanced the autonomy of the self, whereas religion demanded “unconditional surrender” to a sovereignty beyond man. Freud agreed that religion was a way out of the human dilemma; but at a price that he was not willing to pay.
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In the light of these reflections, it is perhaps premature to conclude that the basic ideas which shaped Freud’s mind, and to which he assigned increasing significance in the “last phase” of his life, have gained general acceptance in our world. Appearances are deceptive. “Freudianism,” to be sure, is an integral part of our culture, but in such a modified sense that one can almost hear Freud protesting from beyond the grave: “I am not a Freudian.” The technical tools that he forged have been eagerly appropriated; the philosophical outlook at which he arrived is not shared even by many practicing analysts. As therapy, psychoanalysis is a faithful bedside companion; as a Weltanschauung, it is quite alien to the modern mind.
Of course, Freud may have been mistaken in his philosophical reflections about man and culture. But if he was right, at least in substantial parts of his general system of thought, it is not the present age but some future race of man that will vindicate his legacy.
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1 The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 3, Basic Books, 537 pp, $7.50.
2 This is the device used by C. G. Jung. Behind the “shadow” world of the “personal” unconscious there lies the “collective” unconscious—a part of which suddenly becomes a source of the deepest wisdom and the highest conscious aspirations of man.
3 “Freud and the Ambiguity of Culture,” Partisan Review (Winter 1957).
