The Freud Files

by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen

  Strachey, quite perceptively, puts his finger on the oddities that we have already encountered:189 if Freud heard the story directly from Breuer, why would he have needed to ‘reconstruct’ it? Obviously, Strachey suspected Freud of having improperly presented, under the guise of historical fact, what was merely an interpretation. Jones, who knew perfectly well that this was the case – since he was able to use the letter to Martha as a means of comparison – nevertheless decided to stay the course.

  Jones to Strachey, 27 October 1951: Freud gave me two versions of the Breuer story. The theatrical one about his grabbing his hat, and then the true one that Breuer hypnotized Anna and calmed her before leaving. I have left out the hat; ‘rushed from the house’ seems to me legitimate, since it conveys the spirit of the situation.190

  The nasty rumour started by Freud now became the official public version. Strachey, in a note appended to his translation of the Anna O. case, aligned himself with Jones, an example of the synchronisation between the biography and the ‘standard’ edition.

  Strachey: On this point (said Freud one day to the present translator, with his finger on an open copy of the book), there is a hiatus in the text. What he was thinking of and proceeded to describe was the episode that had marked the end of Anna O.’s treatment. The story is told by Ernest Jones in his biography of Freud and it will suffice here to say that once the treatment had seemingly been crowned a success, the patient suddenly exhibited to Breuer the presence of a strong, positive, and unanalyzed transference that was indubitably sexual in nature.191

  In the same way, Jones also took up the theme of Freud’s ‘splendid isolation’ and the ‘boycotting’192 of his work by his colleagues, systematically blowing out of proportion the negative reviews of his works, while treating the several positive reviews that he cited as courageous ‘exceptions’: Studies on Hysteria hadn’t been well received by the medical community,193 The Interpretation of Dreams had been greeted with ‘a most stupid and contemptuous review’194 by Burckhardt, who had halted outright its sales in Vienna, and the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality along with the case history of ‘Dora’ had caused their author to be ostracised from his profession.

  Jones: The Interpretation of Dreams had been hailed as fantastic and ridiculous, but the Three Essays were shockingly wicked. Freud was a man with an evil and obscene mind . . . At about the same time Freud filled his cup of turpitude in the eyes of the medical profession by . . . deciding to publish a case history which is generally referred to as the ‘Dora analysis’ . . . But his colleagues could not forgive the publication of such intimate details of a patient without her permission, and still more the imputing to a young girl tendencies towards revolting sexual perversions.195

  Quite strangely, this rehashing of the puritanism which supposedly confronted the nascent psychoanalysis went hand in hand with Jones’ launching of a new myth, that of Freud’s puritanism. Freud, if we are to believe his biography, was an ‘unusually chaste person – the word “puritanical” would not be out of place’:196 he was a father and family man with Victorian morals and he was an ‘uxorious’197 and ‘quite peculiarly monogamous’ husband,198 who had very early on renounced all sexual activity,199 while personally condemning the familiarities that his writings seemed to justify. Consideration of Freud’s correspondences is sufficient to repudiate this legend200– what is worth noting is that it corresponded with a dramatisation of the positivistic legend Freud had forged.

  Jones: To his own great surprise, and against his personal puritanical predilections, Freud was finding himself more and more compelled by the results of his investigations to attach importance to the sexual factors in aetiology . . . It was no sudden discovery, and – in spite of what his opponents have suggested – it was quite unconnected with any preconceptions.201

  The creation of psychoanalysis had thus been literally immaculate and asexualised. As Bruno Bettelheim noted in regard to the first two volumes of the biography, Jones paradoxically ended up shielding Freud from all psychoanalysis.

  Bruno Bettelheim: How unpsychoanalytic Jones, as biographer, can be is further illustrated by the way he disposes of what may have been one of Freud’s most intimate relations. Speaking of Freud’s sister-in-law, who, for forty-two years, was part of his household circle, Jones simply says, ‘There was no sexual attraction on either side.’ One must wonder about the man Freud who traveled for long periods alone with this mature woman, roomed in hotels with her, but did not find her sexually attractive; one wonders even more how it was possible for this woman not to become sexually attractive to Freud.202

  Faithful lieutenant of the first Freud wars, Jones also revived the strategy of pathologisation mobilised by Freud against his adversaries with renewed vigour. Any person who had ever had the misfortune of being opposed to Freud at one point or another was systematically presented as a ‘case’, or else as having a personality deficiency: Fliess was a ‘paranoiac’, Meynert was ‘highly neurotic’,203 Breuer had a ‘weakness in his personality’,204 Stekel suffered from ‘moral insanity’205 and a ‘troublesome neurotic complaint, the nature of which I need not mention’,206 Jung had a ‘confused mind’,207 Morton Prince was ‘rather stupid’,208 Ferenczi was ‘haunted by a quite inordinate and insatiable longing for his father’s love’,209 Adler was a ‘cantankerous person . . . constantly quarreling . . . over points of priority in his ideas’,210 Rank had ‘unmistakable neurotic tendencies’,211 Aschaffenburg and Vogt were subject to revealing Freudian slips,212 Moll’s ‘vehemence’ almost justified a ‘libel action’,213 Joseph Collins was ‘notorious for his proclivity to indecent jokes’,214 Oppenheim was affected by a ‘severe anxiety condition’ and his wife was a ‘bad case of hysteria’,215 Friedländer was ‘a doubtful personality with a shady past’216 and Hoche was ‘both a secret admirer and bitter enemy’ of Freud’s.217 Even Dora was a ‘disagreeable creature who consistently put revenge before love’.218 All sorts of anecdotes were mobilised to ridicule opponents and trivialise their arguments, preventing them from being heard with their own voices. Thus Wilhelm Weygandt, at a psychiatry conference held in 1910 supposedly shouted, while hitting his fist against the table, that psychoanalysis ought to be tried in a courtroom; in 1908 and in 1909, two lectures given by Abraham had successively provoked a ‘furious outburst’ by Oppenheim and another ‘angry outburst by Ziehen against these monstrous ideas’;219 Friedländer had threatened Freud with a lawsuit;220 Raimann had criticised The Interpretation of Dreams without having even read the book;221 Collins had protested to the American Neurological Association for allowing James Putnam to give a presentation full of ‘pornographic stories about pure virgins’.222

  Jones: Freud lived in a period of time when the odium theologicum had been replaced by the odium sexicum . . . In those days Freud and his followers were regarded not only as sexual perverts but as either obsessional or paranoiac psychopaths, and the combination was felt to be a real danger to the community . . . No less than civilization was at stake. As happens in such circumstances, the panic aroused led in itself to the loss of that very restraint the opponents believed they were defending. All ideas of good manners, of tolerance and even a sense of decency – let alone any thought of objective discussion or investigation – simply went by the board.223

  Jones received the assistance of Lilla Veszy-Wagner – an analyst in training being analysed by Balint224 – who compiled and catalogued the contemporary literature of the period on psychoanalysis. It is clear, to judge from the abstracts which she had prepared for him,225 that he systematically discarded all the nuanced assessments of Freudian theory (Warda, Gaupp, Möbius, Binswanger, Näcke, Stern), while holding onto only the most negative formulations – which were made even more so by detaching them from any context: Spielmeyer described psychoanalysis as ‘mental masturbation’,226 Hoche claimed that it was ‘an evil method born of mystical tendencies’,227 Rieger saw a ‘simply gruesome old-wives’ psychiatry’,228 etc. Thus reduced to an exchange o
f epithets, the intense scientific controversy that had taken place around psychoanalysis was trivialised to the point of sinking into total insignificance.

  With most of the protagonists in the Freudian wars no longer around to defend themselves, Jones clearly had an easy go of it. Still, it was necessary to verify that all these people were definitely in cemeteries. In January 1955, just as the second volume of the biography was going to print, one of the lawyers for Hogarth Press, J. E. C. Macfarlane, sent Jones a list of around sixty ‘defamatory passages’229 that he insisted be removed or modified in order to protect the publishing house against future lawsuits. Since British libel law did not protect the dead, Jones could keep these passages as they were if he succeeded in establishing that the persons concerned were deceased. Adler, Rank, Ferenczi were no longer alive, but what about Oppenheim, Ziehen, Collins, Vogt, etc.? Jones had already asked Lilla Veszy-Wagner to research Freud’s former adversaries.

  Lilla Veszy-Wagner: When writing Freud’s biography, Jones carefully checked whether (and how many) of these bugbears were still alive. I had expressed doubts about the death of one individual, and in a letter to me dated December 13, 1954, Jones could scarcely conceal his pique when he wrote: ‘I don’t care when he died so long as I can be sure he is thoroughly dead now, since I am libeling him severely.’230

  To Jones’ delight, most of the slandered parties turned out to be dead and buried. Those who remained were spoilsports. With regret, Jones was forced to remove a note on Gezá Roheim, which was ‘capable’, said the lawyer, ‘of an extremely uncomplimentary interpretation’.231 It was also necessary to tone down certain passages on Helen Puner and Adler’s biographer, Phyllis Bottome. Then there was Jung, about whom Jones had a long series of discussions with Peter Calvocoressi, one of the Hogarth Press directors.

  Peter Calvocoressi to Jones, 17 February 1955: We now come to the much more tricky subject of Jung. Broadly speaking, there are two serious allegations against Jung which cannot stand: that he was anti-Semitic and that when he and Freud parted company there was not merely a parting of the ways but also an element of disloyalty or turpitude in Jung’s action . . . I have been through a great number of questionable references to Jung and must raise a dozen of these with you. If we can settle these principal items, then I think we can let the others go.232

  Several of the passages that Calvocoressi advised removing concerned Jung’s ‘racial prejudice’, his ‘antagonistic attitude’ towards Freud and finally his putative mental derangement.

  Calvocoressi to Jones, 17 February 1955: The expression: ‘Jung is crazy’ must come out. As I have already explained, the fact that this is Freud’s remark does not make it less defamatory or make us less liable to an action.233

  Jones, though, wasn’t ready to sacrifice these passages which he held particularly dear, and he thus negotiated tooth and nail. And if ‘Jung is cracked’ was used in place of ‘Jung is crazy’, would this be more acceptable? ‘National prejudice’, instead of ‘racial prejudice’? ‘Disagreeable look’, instead of ‘sour look’? Finally, Jones offered to accept all financial responsibility for the costs of a future lawsuit.

  Jones to Calvocoressi, 17 February 1955: I am so completely convinced from all I know of Jung’s personality and career that he would be the last person to expose himself to the ridicule of a libel action that I feel like guaranteeing to pay the expense myself in such an extraordinarily unlikely eventuality.234

  In the end, Hogarth Press accepted this proposal, which allowed Jones to keep certain contentious passages. As Jones had predicted, Jung did not pursue any legal action, and thus the claims about him entered the public domain without the slightest protest.

  Jung to Jones, 19 December 1953: Of course you have permission to read Freud’s letters copies of which are in the Freud Archives . . . it would have been advisable to consult me for certain facts. For example, you got the story of Freud’s fainting attack quite wrong. It also was by no means the first one; he had such an attack before in 1909 previous to our departure for America in Bremen, and very much under the same psychological circumstances.235

  E. A. Bennet, 15 September 1959: C. G. [Jung] spoke of Ernest Jones and some of the inaccuracies in his biography of Freud . . . When Jones was writing his book on Freud, he never asked him (C. G.) anything about the early years when he and Freud were working together. As Freud and Ferenczi were dead C. G. was the only person who could have given him accurate information, and he could easily have done so. Jones was not there, and there were a number of errors in his book.236

  Jung was still alive, but this was not the case for Rank and Ferenczi, who could be easily assassinated post-mortem. Rank and Ferenczi, Jones recalled in the last volume of his biography, were both members of the famous Secret Committee created to defend psychoanalysis against doctrinal deviations (it was Ferenczi who had had the idea, even if Jones happily credited himself with its founding).

  Jones: Adherence to what psychoanalysis had revealed signifies the same as retaining one’s insight into the workings of the unconscious, and the ability to do so presupposes a high degree of mental stability. My hope when founding the Committee naturally was that the six of us were suitably endowed for that purpose. It turned out, alas, that only four of us were. Two of the members, Rank and Ferenczi, were not able to hold out to the end. Rank in a dramatic fashion presently to be described, and Ferenczi more gradually toward the end of his life, developed psychotic manifestations that revealed themselves in, among other ways, a turning away from Freud and his doctrines. The seed of a destructive psychosis, invisible for so long, at last germinated.237

  On what basis did Jones make this impressive diagnosis? Had Rank and Ferenczi sunken into delirium? Had they been committed? Had they been hearing voices? Not at all: Ferenczi had died in 1933 of pernicious anaemia, while he was testing a new psychoanalytic technique (‘neo-catharsis’), and Rank, after his break with Freud, had become a prolific author, while also developing a form of short therapy (‘will therapy’). In reality, Jones once again made himself the mouthpiece for Freud’s polemical diagnoses, which he nonchalantly presented as if they were proven facts.

  It seems that Rank, who was extremely energetic, was also subject to bouts of despondency, this being the reason that Freud, in 1920, described him to Ferenczi as a ‘periodical’238 (that is, a person afflicted by manic-depression). It was this diagnosis, completely innocent to begin with, that Freud several years later seized upon during his dispute with Rank over the latter’s arguments in The Trauma of Birth. Shortly after Rank temporarily renounced his heresies and confessed his Oedipal sins,239 Freud wrote to Ferenczi that their colleague had emerged from a serious ‘psychiatric state’240 – and he stood by this diagnosis of manic-depressive psychosis once Rank definitively broke with him.

  Freud to Eitingon, 13 April 1926: The demon in him has now carried him along a slow tranquil path to the goal he tried to reach at first in a pathological attack . . . I confess I was very deceived in my prognosis of the case – a repetition of fate.241

  Freud quoted by Joseph Wortis: I can say one thing, because it is generally known: since leaving me, Rank has been having periodic bits of depression, and in between, sort of manic phases – periods in which he does a great deal of work, and others in which he cannot do any at all.242

  This is the ad hoc diagnosis that Jones revisited, which he thus transformed into the key for Rank’s entire biography: if his personality had changed after the war, ‘it must have been a hypomanic reaction to the three severe attacks of melancholia he had suffered while in Krakow’;243 if he had become authoritative and domineering in his relations with Jones, it was because a ‘manic phase of his cyclothymia was gradually intensifying’;244 the ‘hyperbolic’ style of The Trauma of Birth ‘accorded with the hypomanic phase through which Rank was then passing’;245 as for Freud, he had been mistaken in thinking that Rank’s repudiation of his errors was definitive, because his ‘present melancholic phase was again replaced
by another manic one only six months later, with the usual oscillation in later years’.246 Jones concluded his long chapter on Rank by insisting, ‘we are not concerned here with Rank’s further career’247 – which was extremely opportunistic, since an attentive examination of this career would have made it abundantly clear that the ‘mental trouble that wrecked Rank’ and prevented him from leading a ‘fruitful and productive life’248 was a complete fabrication.