Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [105]
What is one to make of such contradictions?
But, then, what is one to make of a man who was himself a bundle of contradictions?1 Radical in his theories about human nature and a militant atheist, Freud was, except in his early years, a political conservative. He espoused liberated attitudes toward sexuality but was himself a model of decorum and sexual restraint. He claimed that he rid himself of his own neuroses through his famous self-analysis, but throughout his life suffered from assorted neurotic symptoms, among them migraine headaches, urinary and bowel problems, an almost morbid dislike of the telephone, a tendency to faint at times of intense interpersonal stress, and a pathological addiction to cigars. (He smoked twenty a day and could not stop even after he developed cancer of the jaw as a result.) He hated Vienna and was never part of its easygoing café society but could not bring himself to leave it for any more congenial place until 1938, when he moved to London after the Nazi takeover of Austria.
At times, he was unabashedly egotistical; he likened himself to Copernicus and Darwin, and told an admirer of one of his later works, “This is my worst book, the book of an old man. The genuine Freud was really a great man.”2 At other times he was unassuming and modest; late in life, in “An Autobiographical Study,” he wrote:
Looking back, then, over the patchwork of my life’s labors, I can say that I have made many beginnings and thrown out many suggestions. Something will come of them in the future, though I cannot myself tell whether it will be much or little. I can, however, express a hope that I have opened up a pathway for an important advance in our knowledge.3
He was surrounded by a large and loving family and a circle of devoted followers but over the years fought with a number of his closest friends and disciples. In his seventies he ruefully wrote:
I cannot count on the love of many people. I have not pleased, comforted, edified them. Nor was this my intention; I only wanted to explore, solve riddles, uncover a little of the truth.4
In photographs, Freud invariably looks formal and grave—impeccably dressed, neatly barbered, somber and unsmiling—yet his own writings and the reminiscences of those who knew him well attest that he was uncommonly witty and that he loved telling funny stories with a psychological point to them. An example from his study of humor, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious:
If [a doctor] enquires from a youthful patient whether he has ever had anything to do with masturbation, the answer is sure to be: “O, na, nie!” [German for “Oh, no, never”—but in German Onanie means “masturbation”].5
And a longer joke, of the kind Freud enjoying telling and told well:
The Schadchen [Jewish marriage broker] was defending the girl he had proposed against the young man’s protests. “I don’t care for the mother-in-law,” said the latter. “She’s a disagreeable, stupid person.”— “But after all you’re not marrying the mother-in-law. What you want is her daughter.”—“Yes, but she’s not young any longer, and she’s not precisely a beauty.”—“No matter. If she’s neither young nor beautiful she’ll be all the more faithful to you.”—“And she hasn’t much money.”—“Who’s talking about money? Are you marrying money then? After all it’s a wife that you want.”—“But she’s got a hunchback too.”—“Well, what do you want? Isn’t she to have a single fault?”6
Evidently, the truth about Freud is, to say the least, no simple matter. But let us see what we can see.
The Would-Be Neuroscientist
One thing about Freud is obvious and indisputable: unlike the majority of noted psychologists of his time, he came from far outside the mainstream