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Freud was, Sachs says, almost unduly anxious about appearing insincere
or hypocritical. Having devoted his life to unveiling what others habi–
tually repress, the spirit of Vienna was uncongenial to him. And it is
entirely fallacious to assume, as some uninformed persons have done,
that the moral freedom of Vienna contributed in some way to the mak–
ing of psychoanalysis. Victorian England would obviously have been
more challenging in that respect to the vision of the psychologist. Freud
was himself an almost dr:1b personality with no special passion or eccen–
tricity-nothing exciting or thrilling or sensational in his private life.
Sachs is similarly concerned to free Freud from the charge of "tyran–
nical schoolmaster." Admitting that the long series of schisms-with
Adler and Jung, for example-must have had something in common, he
sets out to analyze the situation. There were, to be 5ure, jealousies and
overweening ambitions among the early associates of Freud, but Freud
kept aloof from such bickerings. It was his horror of power and his dis–
trust of possessing it, rather than any need for it, which cau$ed the series
of ruptures between him and his at first loyal sons. He more than once
made the mistake of creating among his followers a "crown prince"
without somehow realizing that the one most likely to turn against the
king is the next in succession. The paradox that the man who under–
stood unconscious motivation so well should h ave repeatedly overlooked
this danger is admitted by
Srtch~
but he neglects further to analyze
either this surprising blindness or the avoidance of power linked with it.
The question remains whether here again, as in the case of the Viennese
milieu, a reaction-formation was at work. Was Freud possibly attempting
to correct by bending over backward the strong need for power which
he recognized in himself and which, in the end, with the return of the
repressed led inevitably at the critical moment to the undoing of all his
generous efforts? Sachs' failure to go beyond the surface of rationaliza–
tion in his analysis of the situation again suggests the possibility of selec–
tive insight.
When Sachs finally does bring himself to the discussion of Freud's
personality in psychoanalytic terms, one might reasonably expect to find
a change in tone. The author begins by emphasizing his constant feeling
that Freud was somehow
different,
"not the same clay." When he at–
tempts to specify in what the difference lay or, in other words, to depict
the essential greatness of Freud, the following traits are
singl~d
out:
dislike of flattery and ostentation in any form, emotional undemonstra–
tiveness, intellectual independence, refusal to accept anything on author–
ity and excessive pride. Obstinacy and severity are thought of as closely
related to these more positive characteristics and the pride is definitely
interpreted as "magnificent." The psychoanalytic portion of the chapter
is an attempt to explain the central place which the dualistic concept,
as Sachs expresses it, seemed to play in Freud's thinking. Referring espe–
cially to the dreams reported in Freud's largely autobiographical book
