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Suggestions and Debates

Freud as Hannibal: The Politics of the Brother Band

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

William J. Mcgrath
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Extract

While on vacation in Rome during the fall of 1913, Freud mentioned in a letter that his visit to the eternal city had restored his zest for work and that in addition to several other pieces he had written the preface to his book Totem and Taboo. In this preface he modestly notes that essays “represent a first attempt on my part at applying the point of view and the findings of psycho-analysis to some unsolved problems of social psychology,” but taken as a whole the four essays in fact present as bold and ingenious a theory on the nature and origins of human civilization as that proposed in Rousseau's Second Discourse a century and a half earlier. Rome was, in every sense, an appropriate place to launch such an ambitious undertaking, and as a connoisseur of jokes and irony Freud may well have chosen his vacation residence, the Eden Hotel, at least in part because of its name. However, the picture Freud draws of primitive man's first steps toward the establishment of civilization is far from edenic. Near the end of Totem and Taboo Freud conjures up a description of the primal crime on which human culture rests: “One day the brothers who had been driven out came together; killed and devoured their father and so made an end of the patriarchal horde. United, they had the courage to do and succeeded in doing what would have been impossible for them individually.”

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1974, pp. 31 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1974

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References

1. Letters of Sigmund Freud, ed. Freud, Ernst L. (New York, 1964), p. 302.Google ScholarFreud, Sigmund, Totem and Taboo and, trans. Strachey, James (New York, 1950), p. ix.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., pp. 141–44.

3. In this essay I have attempted to show that Freudian psycholanalytic theory was shaped in important ways by the specific sociopolitical reality of Freud's time, and if this is true it might well suggest limits to the general applicability of Freudian theory to other cultures and other social groups. In the letter of August 1883 which I cite below Freud himself argues that there is a great difference between middle-class psychology and that of the masses. At the same time I believe it involves no inconsistency to use psychological insights and techniques derived from Freud's work to analyze his own dreams as I do in this essay. While it might be argued that Freud has exaggerated a vision of himself and his times to include all mankind there seems to be no reason to doubt the validity of what he says so far his own psychological nature is concerned.

4. Letters, pp. 50–51.

5. Freud, Sigmund, “Jugendbriefe”, Neue Rundschau, vol. 80 (1969), p. 685.Google Scholar Henceforth cited as “Jugendbriefe”.

6. The correlation of lower-class political radicalism and libidinal freedom is also apparent in some of Freud's letters from Paris in 1885–86. See particularly the letter to Berneys, Minna of Dec. 3, 1885, Letters, p. 187.Google Scholar

7. Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Strachey, James (New York, 1969), pp. 229–30.Google Scholar Henceforth cited as Dreams.

8. “Jugendbriefe”, p. 685.

9. Dreams, pp. 230–31

10. Ibid., p. 460.

11. Freud, Sigmund, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, trans. Brill, A. A. (Mentor ed., New York, n.d.), pp. 118–20.Google Scholar See also Rankin, Anne Vannan, “The Three Generations, Freud's Hasdrubal/Hamilcar Error,” The American Imago, vol. 20 (1963), pp. 403–9.Google Scholar

12. Freud, Sigmund, The Origins of Psycho-Analysis. Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes 1887–1902, ed. Bonaparte, Marie (New York, 1954), p. 219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Henceforth cited as Origins.

13. Dreams, p. 521.

14. Letters, p. 379.

15. For Freud's membership see the membership lists printed in the Jahresberichte des Lesevereines der Deutschen Studenten Wiens (Vienna, 1872–1878).Google Scholar For a history of the organization and its impact on Austrian politics and culture see McGrath, William J., “Student Radicalism in Vienna,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 2, no. 3 (07 1967), pp. 183–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I have traced its history and significance in much greater detail in my forthcoming book Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (New Haven and London, 1974).Google Scholar

16. Letters, p. 380.

17. Dreams, p. 246.

18. Grotjahn, Martin, “A Letter by Sigmund Freud with Recollections of his Adolescence,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, vol. 4 (1956), pp. 649–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Letters, pp. 78–79.

20. Ibid., pp. 147–48.

21. Ibid., p. 202.

22. Dreams, pp. 493–94.

23. Ibid., p. 557.

24. Ibid., pp. 492–96.

25. Ibid., p. 493.

26. The dream alluded to an English grammatical error Freud had made on his trip to England. While he was standing on the seashore holding a starfish a little girl had come up to him and asked, “Is it alive?” Freud replied, “Yes,…he is alive,” and then corrected himself, “It is alive.” Freud's analysis shows that this “served as the most innocent possible example of my using a word indicating gender of sex in the wrong place—of my bringing in sex [the word “he”] where it did not belong.” Thus did Freud's unconscious seek to defend him and refute the critics of his sexual theories. In the dream, when Freud corrects the analogous grammatical mistake in his conversation with the English pair, the brother comments to the sister, “Yes,… he said that right,” thus providing the kind of confirmation that Freud always looked for from the various nephew John figures who supported his explorations into the realm of sexuality. Dreams, pp. 557–58.

27. Ibid., pp. 493–96.

28. Dreams, pp. 135, 492. For the significance of Schiller to Viennese liberals see Charmatz, Richard, “Wiens Schillerfeier im Jahre im Jahre 1859,” Neue Bahnen, 5. Jg. (1905).Google Scholar

29. The dream has never before been dated precisely, although Grinstein's, AlexanderOn Sigmund Freud's Dreams (Detroit, 1968), p. 92,Google Scholar places it in early August 1898. I have been able to determine that Count Thun left for the conference with the emperor at Ischl (to which Freud refers in the introduction to the dream) on August 11, 1898. See Baernreither, Joseph Maria, Der Verfall des Habsburgerreiches und die Deutschen, ed. Mitis, Oscar (Vienna, 1939), p. 71.Google Scholar

30. Dreams, pp. 241–42.

31. Ibid., p. 243.

32. Charmatz, Richard, Adolf Fischhof. Das Lebensbild eines österreichischen Politikers (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1910), pp. 5–89.Google Scholar

33. In his analysis Freud masks the identity of both Braun and Adler, but in each case he offers clues to the identity. A knowledge of Freud's youthful political activity in conjunction with the clues makes it obvious that Heinrich Braun lies behind Henry VIII. Adler's identity was long ago discerned by Strachey, James, Dreams, p. 246, fn. 2.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., p. 247.

35. Baernreither, op. cit., pp. 68–69. Schorske (“Politics of Patricide,” p. 339) also discusses this dream at length and develops the complex political background in much more detail than I do here.

36. Ibid., p. 51.

37. Letters (Feb. 2, 1886), p. 203.

38. Dreams, pp. 246–47; Grinstein, op. cit., pp. 111–24.

39. Dreams, p. 243.

40. Ibid., p. 248.

41. Silberer, Herbert, “Phantasie und Mythos,” Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen, vol. 2 (1910), pp. 554–56.Google Scholar In Dreams, p. 248, fn. 3, Freud disputes the use to which Silberer put this relationship between book and dream censorship, but his counterargument depends on an acceptance of Silberer's argument that the meaning of this segment of the dream revolves around this relationship.

42. Dreams. p, 243.

43. Ibid., pp. 175–77.

44. In his article “Politics and Patricide,” pp. 333–34, Schorske describes this correlation of political and psychic life as an anlogy, and in many of the examples of such correlations cited by Freud in his discussion of dream censorship this term would seem appropriate. Nonetheless, I think it significant that when he reaches the crux of his argument he treats the correlation as an identity in which the world of politics reveals the true nature of the inner man.

45. Dreams, p. 248, fn. 3.

46. Ibid., pp. 244, 467.

47. Origins, p. 299.

48. Dreams, p. 468.

49. Ibid., p. 470.

50. Letters, p. 202.

51. Ibid., p. 251.

52. Carl Schorske, “Politics and Patricide”, p. 342.

53. Dreams, p. 660.