The Freud Files
Page 28
Kürzungsarbeit
After Freud’s death on 23 September 1939, his heirs had to confront the question of how to deal with his literary remains. In keeping with his style, Freud had requested that all his papers be burnt after his death, but his widow could not bring herself to do this.3 What should one do with all these documents – leave them in an attic, place them in an archive or publish them? This question had already arisen when Freud’s letters to Fliess re-emerged and were purchased by Marie Bonaparte. As we have seen,4 she had acquired them on the express condition that they would not enter Freud’s possession and she had kept this promise, resisting Freud’s pressure to have them burnt.
Marie Bonaparte’s Diary, entry of 24 November 1937: Freud, when I wrote to him from Paris that Ida Fliess had sold his letters and that I acquired them from Reinhold Stahl, was very moved. He judged this act to be highly inimical on the part of Fliess’s widow. He was happy to know that at least the letters were in my hands, and not sent off to someplace in America where they would no doubt have been published immediately . . . Ida Fliess was determined that the letters not reach the hands of Freud.5
Whilst the letters did not fall into Freud’s hands, his family got hold of them and could decide what to do with them. As Freud had destroyed Fliess’ letters,6 there was no need for negotiations between two literary estates, as later happened with the Freud–Jung letters. Marie Bonaparte thought that ‘this material, so important for the history of psychoanalysis’,7 should be published in its entirety. At the beginning of May 1946, she sent the letters to Anna Freud. The latter hesitated to disregard the expressed desire of her father, but she agreed that the ‘the material is indescribably interesting’, as she described them to Ernst Kris.8 It was finally decided to have Kris prepare an edition under the joint supervision of Anna Freud and Marie Bonaparte. Kris seemed well placed for this task, as a historian of art and a psychoanalyst trained by Anna Freud. Furthermore, he was married to the child analyst Marianne Rie, who had also been analysed by Anna Freud, and was the daughter of Freud’s old friend Oscar Rie and Melanie Bondy, the sister of Ida Fliess. Kris was clearly ‘one of the family’.
Kris commenced work in the summer of 1946.9 A critical problem which confronted him was the addressee of the letters. Wilhelm Fliess was not a nobody. He was an ambitious theoretician and the author of works which had once been quite well known. An oto-rhino-laryngologist by training, Fliess had discovered that through applying cocaine to the nasal mucous membrane he could suppress symptoms such as migraines, diverse neuralgias, and digestive, cardiac and respiratory difficulties. He concluded by affirming the existence of a ‘nasal reflex neurosis’, a clinical syndrome which he attributed to the sequellae of infectious diseases having affected the nasal pathways and to vaso-motor difficulties of the genital zone. Having observed a regular increase of nasal mucous during menstruation, and, inversely, the disappearance of dysmenorrhoea following the application of cocaine to the nasal mucous membrane, Fliess postulated a particular reflex relation between the nose and the female genital organ. In the measure in which he had managed to suppress neurasthenic symptoms in certain of his male patients through applying cocaine to the ‘genital points’ of the nasal mucous membrane, he deduced that the same reflex relation between the nose and the genital zone existed in men and that neurasthenia had a sexual aetiology (masturbation). In a work published in 1897,10 he expanded these observations into a vast theory on the role of biorythms in human life. Alongside the female menstrual cycle of twenty-eight days, he posited another group of masculine periodic phenomena which reproduced themselves every twenty-three days. Both these cycles existed in everyone, corresponding to what Fliess called our ‘bisexual disposition’,11 and their combination, which gave rise to all sorts of complicated calculations, was supposed to determine the events of our biological existence, from the day of our birth (hence infantile sexuality existed) up to the day of our death.
By the time Kris came to edit the letters, Fliess’ theories (aside from an interest in biorhythms in alternative circles) had long been rejected, and no one believed in the nasal reflex neurosis or a twenty-three-day masculine cycle. However, when Freud and Fliess were writing to each other, these hypothesis were far from absurd.
Sulloway: Let’s just take . . . for instance the notion that life is regulated by rhythms, biorhythms and so on. Well, you can go right back to Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man and find an elaborate discussion about why the gestation cycles of all higher vertebrates follow periods of either weeks or a month and always multiples of seven, fourteen and twenty eight days. Darwin argued that this is simply an evolutionary consequence of our having evolved from some kind of invertebrate progenitor which lived in tidal zones, for in tidal zones the food cycles and therefore the reproductive cycles are dependent on the phases of the tides and therefore of the moon. Now, if Charles Darwin is taking this stuff seriously, why shouldn’t all of Fliess’s contemporaries?12
For his part, Freud took Fliess’ ideas completely seriously. As the letters demonstrate, the most minor and major events in Freud’s family life, from Martha’s menstruations to the decrease in Freud’s libido13 and the death of Jakob Freud14 were interpreted in the light of Fliessian cycles and offered to Fliess as confirmations of his theories. Freud did not hesitate to diagnose nasal reflex neuroses in his patients and to apply the treatment advocated by Fliess (cocainum, dosim repetatur), and sometimes sent patients to Berlin to be treated directly by Fliess. Moreover, he had Fliess operate on his nose several times and directly applied cocaine there for a period of at least three and a half years15 to treat migraines, cardiac problems and functional difficulties (anxiety, depression, breathlessness) which his friend attributed to a nasal origin.
Freud to Fliess, 24 January 1895: Last time I wrote you, after a good period which immediately succeeded the reaction, that a few viciously bad days had followed during which a cocainization of the left nostril had helped me to an amazing extent. I now continue my report. The next day I kept the nose under cocaine, which one should not really do; that is, I repeatedly painted it to prevent the renewed occurrence of swelling; during this time I discharged what in my experience is a copious amount of thick pus; and since then I have felt wonderful, as though there never had been anything wrong at all . . . I am postponing the full expression of my gratitude and the discussion of what share the operation had in this unprecedented improvement until we see what happens next.16
More generally, it is evident that Freud and Fliess were engaged in an intense intellectual collaboration, considering their ideas as complementary and joint (in a 1893 letter, Freud spoke of ‘our aetiological formula’ for neurasthenia). Freud was visibly impressed by Fliess’ theories, to the point of designating him as the ‘Kepler of biology’.17 In 1901, he proposed a co-signed work entitled Human Bisexuality18 (which ultimately became the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality). In 1904, he invited Fliess to join him in setting up ‘a scientific journal that will be devoted to the “biological and psychological exploration of sexuality”’.19 However, there is little mention of Fliess in Freud’s publications after 1905. Apart from a few references to the theory of periodicity and some notes where he acknowledged the Fliessian origins of the concept of bisexuality,20 Fliess was an absentee in Freud’s references, and most notably in Freud’s account of his ‘splendid isolation’ during the formation of the theory of psychoanalysis.
For his part, Fliess had publicly implicated Freud in his priority dispute with Otto Weininger and Hermann Swoboda, through publishing the embarrassing letters in which Freud protested that he hadn’t used the concept of bisexuality in his Three Essays and defended himself for having indiscretely communicated Fliess’ ideas to his patient Swoboda, and through him to Weininger, who utilised them in his book Sex and Character.21 In private, Freud fended off Fliess’ detailed accusations through attributing them to a paranoia brought about by repressed homosexuality (the origin, Freud added, of his ideas on par
anoid psychosis).22
Ernst Kris was confronted with the problem of how to square the content of Freud’s letters to Fliess with the legend of the immaculate conception proposed by Freud in his public works. The simplest manner was to employ Freud’s private strategy of pathologising Fliess, and hence portraying his theories as the expression of his paranoia. How could Freud have possibly been influenced by such manifestly delirious speculations? In his ‘introduction’, Kris cited several authors critical of Fliess, claiming that the latter’s scientific pretensions belonged to the ‘realm of the psychopathological’,23 that he suffered from ‘paranoid “overvaluation of an idea”’,24 that his clinical works had a ‘mystical tendency’,25 that his doctrines moved further away from observation and ‘had grown more and more remote from fact and observation’.26 Kris even did some family research to try to get an authorised corroboration of his diagnoses from Fliess’ son Robert, who was his wife’s cousin. This did not prove to be difficult. Robert Fliess had turned against his father, notably after a ‘long conversation’27 with Freud in 1929. He had been trained by Karl Abraham, and was now installed as a psychoanalyst in New York.
Ernst Kris to Anna Freud, 18 October 1946 (with a copy to Robert Fliess): I thank the conversation with Dr. Fliess for information only on a small number of concrete questions. The most important of this information is the fact that Wilhelm Fliess’s mother was living at the time of the correspondence, that she suffered a great deal and already then, or later, became ill with paranoia . . . Dr. Fliess’s report on his own experience with nasal therapy was extremely interesting . . . Dr. Fliess added your father recalled the illness of his grandmother and spoke to him about it in a conversation in Tegel.28
Kris to Anna Freud, 18 October 1946 (without a copy to Robert Fliess): Robert Fliess described precisely the nature of the paranoia of his father, and portrayed in details his views on where reality testing functioned and where it didn’t, as well as describing the later attitude of his father towards Freud entirely in the same sense as Marianne . . . In his view Wilhelm Fliess lied pathologically. He asserted that your father had informed him about this in Tegel.29
Anna Freud to Kris, 29 October 1946: I find the position of Robert Fliess to be thoroughly understandable and also see no reason why he should not read the letters, before he decides to collaborate on the commentary. The more he knows about the illness of his father, the more cautious he must naturally be in his conduct, since it would not do well in any respect if he is just placed as the son of the father.30
Once transformed into someone mentally ill, Fliess could be neutralised and nullified, and his collaboration with Freud presented in an asymmetrical manner. As Kris maintained to John Rodker of Imago Publishing, who had wanted to publish the letters under the title Letters to Fliess, Fliess played no role in the elaboration of psychoanalysis.
Kris to John Rodker, 26 May 1953: First, I remain absolutely and unconditionally opposed to ‘Letters to Fliess’ as title of the publication. There are serious and not only sentimental reasons against this. Fliess was an accident. The friendship was a required outlet . . . Alternately to ‘Dawn of Psychoanalysis’, it seems to me that ‘The Origins of Psychoanalysis’ would be an apt title, but at any rate, the name of Fliess in the main title has to be avoided.31
However, these manoeuvres were hardly sufficient. It was necessary to eliminate the most evident traces of Freud’s interest in the ‘delirious’ theories of his friend. In other words, to censor the letters. It is not clear when this decision was taken, but in October 1946 the first abridged manuscript was ready32 and this ‘shortening work’ (Kürzungsarbeit), as Kris called it,33 continued until the end of 1947, with some further revisions. It was only in 1985 when the complete letters were published that the scale of the censorship became fully apparent: of the 284 letters which Kris had at his disposal, only 168 escaped being totally eliminated, and of these only twenty-nine were published intact. The others (including some of the accompanying manuscripts, such as ‘Manuscript C’) were shortened in differing proportions, often without indication. Nearly two thirds of the letters were discarded. As James Strachey later confided to Max Schur with British understatement, ‘the censorship of Freud’s letters in the Anfänge was rather extreme’.34
Editor’s note to the abridged edition of the letters to Fliess: The selection was made on the principle of making public everything relating to the writer’s scientific work and scientific interests and everything bearing on the social and political conditions in which psycho-analysis originated; and of omitting or abbreviating everything publication of which would be inconsistent with professional or personal confidence.35
Ernest Jones: The letters and the passages omitted in publication, which the present writer has also read, refer to uninteresting details about arranging meetings, news about the health of various relatives and patients, some details of the efforts Freud made to follow Fliess’s ‘law of periods,’ and a number of remarks about Breuer which show that Freud harbored more vigorously critical opinions about him than has generally been supposed.36
However, when one looks at the censored passages, it is clear that a large share of them, far from being solely concerned with Freud’s private life, relate directly to the theoretical interests which he shared with Fliess. Thus one finds no mention in the first edition of his use of cocaine for therapeutic ends, to eliminate either his patients symptoms or his own. There is no mention of Emma Eckstein, one of Freud’s favourite patients who became a psychoanalyst, and who nearly died after a disastrous operation on her nose by Fliess carried out at Freud’s request.37
Anna Freud to Kris, 11 February 1947: One more: From the beginning I had the greatest pleasure in omitting the Eckstein case history. I do not believe that it will be missed by the reader and it seems to me that there is a long series of considerations against it.38
The same goes for Freud’s and Fliess’ exchange in 1904 on the Swoboda–Weininger episode. In the censored version, the correspondence ended with an innocent postcard sent by Freud to Fliess in 1902 from Paestum, giving the reader no inkling of the priority dispute which led Fliess to break relations with Freud.
Anna Freud to Suzanne Bernfeld, 15 December 1951: With the edition of the Fliess letters, Ernst Kris and I have naturally considered where the theme of the Weininger conflict should be drawn out, but then we have decided, and I think correctly, against it. This continuation of the Fliess history is very instructive for the character transformation of Fliess, but it brings very little for the other side.39
More seriously, the cuts in the letters between 1892 and 1896 and Kris’ notes obliterated the connections between Fliess’ theory on the nasal-sexual aetiology of neurasthenia and Freud’s growing interest during these crucial years in the role of sexual ‘noxae’ in the actual neuroses (neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis), and then in hysteria, obsessional neurosis and paranoia.
Freud to Fliess, 6 December 1896: Finally, I cannot suppress the conjecture that the distinction between neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis, which I detected clinically, is connected with the existence of the two 23-day and 28-day substances.
Kris’ note: An assumption from which Freud soon freed himself. It represented the climax of his efforts to connect Fliess’ views with his own.40
It was the initially speculative and biologising character of Freud’s theories on the role of sexuality in the neuroses that was erased, in favour of a selection more in keeping with the official myth of the unexpected discovery in the clinical material.
Freud (1910): Even workers who are ready to follow my psychological studies are inclined to think that I over-estimate the part played by sexual factors . . . Far from this position having been postulated by me theoretically, at the time of the joint publication of the Studies with Dr. Breuer in 1895 I had not yet adopted it; and I was only converted to it when my experiences became more numerous and penetrated into the subject more deeply.41
At the same time, apart from an
important letter of 14 November 1897, one finds hardly any trace in Kris’ edition of the ‘scatology’ (Dreckologie) which preoccupied Freud in the months following the abandonment of the seduction theory, and which concerned the derivation of normal repression from the passage of the human species to the upright posture and to the correlative disgust for the anal and oral ‘erogenous zones’ which were abandoned then.