The Freud Files
Page 41
115. As we saw above (note 100), the underlining in pencil was subsequent to the underlining in ink.
116. In the margins of the manuscript, Freud wrote in ink (and thus, presumably, the same day): ‘paternal transference’.
117. On this lecture of which we have no trace, see Jones (1955), 42, as well as Rank’s decidedly uninformative ‘report’ (1910). According to a letter from Freud to Édouard Claparède, dated 24 May 1908, which is deposited in the collections of the Claparède Archive in Geneva (and we thank Anthony Stadlen for alerting us to its existence), Franz Riklin had made a rather long report of Freud’s lecture, destined, it seems, for Claparède’s Archives de psychologie. We were, unfortunately, unable to locate this document.
118. Freud and Jung (1974), 131.
119. Ibid., 135.
120. Ibid., 136.
121. Janet (1903), vol. 1, 454, 621 and 641–2.
122. Nunberg and Federn (1962), 370–1.
123. This would tend to support Patrick Mahony’s hypothesis, according to which Freud would have seen Lanzer only sporadically after 20 January 1908, the date on which the analysis notes end: ‘My suspicion is that after January 20 [1908], Freud saw the Rat Man irregularly until April, and after that most irregularly, hence accounting for the absence of any more reference to the patient at meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society’ (Mahony 1986, 81). If we accept this, Lanzer’s treatment, which Freud tells us in the case history lasted ‘for about a year’ (Freud 1909b, 155), would have in fact lasted less than four months, followed by a few individual sessions. This hypothesis would provide an opportune explanation of why the published case, as Hawelka notes, ‘adds very little data to that which already appears in the manuscript’ (Freud 1907–8b, 12). Mahony’s hypothesis, nevertheless, seems to be contradicted by Freud’s letter to Édouard Claparède on 24 May 1908, in which Freud declines Claparède’s invitation to publish his Salzburg lecture in the Archives de psychologie: ‘Another reason standing in the way is that the patient in question will not finish his treatment until July, meaning that a definitive report of the case would, at present, be impossible’ (Archives Claparède, Geneva).
124. Freud (1909b), 210–11.
125. Ibid., 213–14.
126. Lacan (2005), 249.
127. Once again, we observe that Lacan’s narrative revisions are no less blatant than Freud’s: where exactly does Lacan find it that Lanzer’s father had been dismissed from the Army and that this was the reason for his marriage?
128. Lacan (2005), 293. Also see Lacan (1953); on Lacan’s rereading of the ‘Rat Man’ in terms of ‘symbolic debt’, see Forrester (1997b).
129. Ellenberger (1972).
130. Ellenberger (1977); Andersson (1979).
131. Gay (1988), 72.
132. Swales (1986).
133. Swales (1988).
134. Swales (1996).
135. Decker (1991), 14.
136. Anna Freud, in Gardiner (1972), xi.
137. Interview with Karin Obholzer, Vienna, 15 March 1994.
138. Five thousand Austrian shillings per month, which were delivered by Kurt Eissler (interview with Karin Obholzer, Vienna, 15 March 1994). Muriel Gardiner, for her part, would occasionally send him much higher sums (up to 12,000 shillings) as ‘advances’ on the royalties from his ‘Memoirs’, in exchange for receipts signed by him (Muriel Gardiner to Sergius Pankejeff, 1 November 1976, Muriel Gardiner Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC). She also paid his taxes. Wilhelm Solms, President of the Psychoanalytic Society of Vienna, provided free analysis that was in fact paid for by the Freud Archives.
139. Gardiner, for example, wouldn’t forward him the mail from readers of his ‘Memoirs’, which he bitterly complained about (Obholzer 1982, 46). This epistolary embargo didn’t apply, however, to the letters from analysts like Richard Sterba, Frederick S. Weil, Alfred Lubin or Leo Rangell (Sergius Pankejeff Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
140. See Obholzer’s introductory account (1982). Also see Sergius Pankejeff’s letter of 18 July 1974 to Muriel Gardiner, in which he mentions Obholzer’s proposal: ‘Dr. Eissler is of the opinion, as is Dr. Solms, that I should decline this proposition’ (Muriel Gardiner Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
141. Freud (1918), 122.
142. Freud (1937a), 218.
143. Gardiner (1972), 263–4. Passage written after Pankejeff’s breakdown following his wife’s suicide in 1938, which had necessitated a new period of analysis with Mack Brunswick in Paris, then in London.
144. Gardiner (1972), 366.
145. Gardiner sent him psychotropic drugs (Dexamyl) from the United States; see Obholzer (1982), 209–10; see also letter from Kurt Eissler to Muriel Gardiner on 7 March 1965, Muriel Gardiner Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. After meeting Pankejeff in Paris, Marie Bonaparte wrote to Jones on 18 June 1954: ‘He seems a very sick man’ (Jones Papers, Archives of the British Psycho-Analytical Society). According to recently declassified documents at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, Kraepelin, with whom Pankejeff had been in treatment before going to see Freud, had diagnosed him as suffering from a manic-depressive state which was hereditary in nature: ‘We went to see Kraepelin, who knew my father very well since my father was often at his office . . . As far as the diagnosis is concerned, he was of the opinion that like my father I was suffering from states of manic-depression. Exactly like him, I had depression, which was also of a cyclical nature’ (typed interview with Kurt Eissler from 29 July 1952, IV, 13–14, Sigmund Freud Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC). Pankejeff, after decades of analysis, came to the conclusion that it was Kraepelin and not Freud who correctly saw his case for what it was: ‘Ah, Kraepelin, he’s the only one who understood something about it!’ (typed interview with Kurt Eissler from 30 July 1954, 19, ibid.).
146. Letter from Pankejeff to Eissler on 3 December 1955 (Sergius Pankejeff Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
147. Gardiner (1983), 872.
148. Gardiner (1972), 363.
149. Obholzer (1982), 171–2.
150. Ibid., 112–13.
151. Ibid., 35.
152. Interview with Karin Obholzer, Vienna, 15 March 1994.
153. Obholzer (1982), 40.
154. Freud (1918), 93.
155. Ibid.
156. Obholzer (1982), 134.
157. Ibid., 47.
158. Freud (1918), 122.
159. On Freud’s constipation, which he called his ‘Konrad’, and for which he often sought treatment, see Jones (1955), 59–60 and 83.
160. Gardiner (1972), 266.
161. At the beginning of the analysis, Odessa was still under English control. This was not the only time that Freud put the analysis before Pankejeff’s personal wishes and plans: ‘But I remember, one time I wanted to go to Budapest for one or two days, but Freud didn’t let me go . . . “There are many beautiful women in Budapest; you could fall in love with one of them while you’re there!” . . . Eissler: Why didn’t the Professor want you to fall in love? Pankejeff: I believe he thought that the treatment wouldn’t progress any further’ (typed interview with Kurt Eissler of 30 July 1952, V, 9–10; Sigmund Freud Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC). Freud had also forbidden Pankejeff from getting married and having children: ‘Freud hadn’t let P. get married, had forbidden him from having children’ (Kurt Eissler, commentary on two interviews with Pankejeff, 30 July 1952, 12, ibid.).
162. Gardiner (1972), 111.
163. Ibid., 142, n. 2.
164. Interview with Karin Obholzer, Vienna, 15 March 1994.
165. Obholzer (1982), 47–8.
166. Freud (1910d), 134.
167. Freud (1920b), 263.
168. Freud (1960), 339.
169. Remarks quoted in Trilling (1950), 34.
170. Freud (1907b), 8–9.
171. Nunberg and Federn (1967), 189. See Shamdasani (2003b).
172. For an early and penetrating critique of the reductive confusion Freud implemented between hermeneutical understanding and the causal explanation proper to the natural sciences, see Jaspers (1973). For the reuse of this critique in a hermeneutical defence of psychoanalysis, see Habermas (1971), chs. 10 and 11; Ricoeur (1970; 1981). In brief, for Habermas and Ricoeur, psychoanalysis can be saved as a hermeneutics if it lets go of its ‘scientific self-misunderstanding’; for Jaspers this self-misunderstanding irremediably stamped psychoanalysis as a bad hermeneutics.
173. Cocteau (1953), 39–42.
4 POLICING THE PAST
1. Anna Freud Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
2. It is notably true of Pankejeff, who presented two very different versions of his analysis in his Memoirs and in his interviews with Obholzer. One example shows that his memory wasn’t always reliable: to Obholzer, he indicated that he had never corresponded with Jones, contrary to what the latter had written in his Freud biography (Obholzer 1982, 154–5, 167–9; Jones 1955, 273); however, there are two letters sent by Pankejeff to Jones in September 1953 and June 1954 in which he asks Jones to help him publish one of his articles in English (Jones Papers, Archives of the British Psycho-Analytical Society).
3. Wilkinson (1985), 27. On the editing of Freud’s correspondences, see Falzeder (1997). On the editing of the Freud–Jung letters, see Shamdasani (1997).
4. See above, pp. 33f.
5. Cited by Jeffrey Masson in Freud (1985), 9.
6. See his letter of 17 December 1928 to Ida Fliess in ibid., 5.
7. Marie Bonaparte to Freud, 7 January 1937, ibid., 7.
8. Anna Freud to Ernst Kris, 10 May 1946, cited in Young-Bruehl (1989), 283.
9. Ernst Kris to Siegfried Bernfeld, 5 December 1946, Ernst Kris Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
10. Fliess (1897).
11. Ibid., iii.
12. Interview with Frank Sulloway, Cambridge, MA, 19 November 1994.
13. ‘I noticed that on certain dates, which clearly recur every 28 days, I have no sexual desire and am impotent – which otherwise is not yet the case, after all’ (Freud 1985, 217).
14. ‘My father always maintained that he was born on the same day as Bismark – April 1, 1815. In view of the need to convert the date from the Jewish calendar, I never gave much credence to this assertion. So he died after what is probably a typical long life, on October 23/24, 1896; B. on July 30, 1898. B. survived him by 645 days = 23 × 28 + 1. The “1” is no doubt due to my father’s error. Therefore the life difference is 23 × 28. You undoubtedly know what that must mean’ (Freud 1985, 322). The example is reproduced in Fliess (1906b), 154. For other confirmations provided by Freud, see Fliess (1906b), 51 and 60.
15. The references to cocaine in the correspondence run from 30 May 1893 to 26 October 1896.
16. Freud (1985), 106.
17. Ibid., 320.
18. Ibid., 448.
19. Ibid., 461.
20. See above, p. 323, note 313.
21. Weininger (1903).
22. See above, p. 321, note 188.
23. Freud (1954), 8, n. 2.
24. Ibid., 40, n. 1. The thesis of Fliess’ paranoia appears to have been accepted by most of the members of the Freudian circle – see for example the letter of Suzanne Bernfeld to Ernest Jones of 18 November 1953: ‘Of course I think that a correct description of this relationship [between Freud and Fliess] would have to include something which it might not be feasible to say at this time when the son and the niece of Fliess are still alive and active psychoanalysts. I think there can be no doubt that Fliess wound up in a real paranoid delusion’ (Jones Papers, Archives of the British Psycho-Analytical Society).
25. Freud (1954), 8, n. 1.
26. Ibid., 40.
27. Robert Fliess to Siegfried Bernfeld, 28 August 1944, apropos the ‘strongly emotional character’ of the relations between Freud and Fliess: ‘I have heard a good deal about this from both of them – over a long stretch of years, of course, from my father, and in a long conversation with Freud in 1929, in which he spoke with a frankness apparently not too customary to him in personal matters’ (Siegfried Bernfeld Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; cited by Masson in Freud 1985, 3).
28. Ernst Kris Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Anna Freud to Ernst Kris, 29 October 1946, ibid.
33. Ernst Kris to Anna Freud, 29 April 1947, ibid.
34. James Strachey to Max Schur, 22 December 1966, Sigmund Freud Copyrights, Wivenhoe. Strachey was the only member of the Freudian circle who disapproved of Anna Freud’s and Kris’ cuts: ‘I’ve just got hold of the Procter-Gregg translation [of the Fliess letters into English] in typescript. It contains a certain amount that was evidently cut out of the German edition subsequently. I confess that I’m shocked by some of the omissions’ (James Strachey to Ernest Jones, 1 October 1951, Jones Papers, Archives of the British Psycho-Analytical Society; Strachey’s emphasis); ‘I was much interested by your account of the suppressed passages in the Fliess letters . . . I do hope that if they come out in English the censorship may be lifted a bit. Unless Anna [Freud] proposes to burn the originals, they’re bound to come out in the end; and surely it’s better that they should while people are alive who can correct their effect’ (James Strachey to Ernest Jones, 24 October 1951, ibid.). By contrast Jones was unperturbed by the cuts: ‘I am more than half way through the cuts from the Anfänge, most of which, I think, were fully justified’ (Ernest Jones to Anna Freud, 16 October 1951, Anna Freud Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
35. Freud (1954), ix.
36. Jones (1953), 288–9.
37. On this edifying episode, revealed for the first time by Max Schur, see Schur (1966; 1972); Masson (1992).
38. Ernst Kris Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
39. Anna Freud Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
40. Freud (1954), 179. Kris simply omitted to signal that this passage was preceded in the original by two pages of calculations designed to align the ‘psychological epochs’ corresponding to the psychoneuroses with the sexual periods of 23 and 28 days postulated by Fliess.
41. Freud (1910a), 39.
42. Ernst Kris Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
43. On all this, see Sulloway (1992a), ch. 6.
44. Freud (1954), 192; (1985), 230.
45. Freud (1954), 240. Here, without being mentioned, a censored passage ends with ‘enough of my smut’ (1985), 289.
46. On how Freud’s conjectures and hypotheses preceded his clinical observations, see ‘Neurotica: Freud and the seduction theory’, in Borch-Jacobsen (2009).
47. See the passages cited above, chapter 2, p. 147.
48. See the passages cited above, chapter 2, p. 148.
49. Freud (1985), 213.
50. Ibid., 218.
51. Ibid., 220.
52. Ibid., 223–4.
53. Ibid., 230. In a letter to Strachey of 27 October 1951, Jones noted that Freud arrived at Oedipus through accusing his father of incest: ‘And it is odd that he believes his own father seduced only his brother and some younger sisters, thus accounting for their hysteria, at a time when he was suffering from it badly himself ’ (Jones Papers, Archives of the British Psycho-Analytical Society).
54. Ernst Kris Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
55. Ibid.
56. See the letter to Fliess of 28 April 1897: ‘Add to this, first, that you were unable to take any pleasure at all in the Middle Ages’ (Freud 1985, 237).
57. Freud (1
954), 187–8; (1985), 225, for the censured passage. The ‘blood’ is an allusion to Emma Eckstein’s haemorrhages following the disastrous nasal operations performed on her by Fliess.
58. Freud (1985), 189; ibid., 227, for the censored passage.
59. Ernst Kris Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
60. Anna Freud Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; cited in Young-Bruehl (1989), 296.
61. Anna Freud Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.