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what really matters to us is that by virtue of his greatness-by virtue,
too, of the fact that he was on the whole a liberator of men-Freud
has succeeded in imposing on a later generation a mortgage of re–
actionary and constricting ideas that were by no means universally held
even in his own epoch." (1'he difficulty of extracting the meat from
claws like that is one of the experiences of Riesman's writing on Freud.)
Freud came from a job-minded society. His ideas "circulate today in an
American society that has much more chance to be leisure-minded and
play-minded." Let us hope Riesman has not mistaken a footnote for the
main text, since any important economic constriction would seriously
confound nearly all of his impressions.
In another instance Riesman professes himself amazed at Freud's
desire to get on in the world. "While he was apt to minimize the ex–
tent of his own ambition, it did not trouble him to avow his wish to
be a full professor, to be famous, to be an 'authority' ...." Freud also
was rather embarrassing, in this view, in his gratitude for worldly honors,
for the invitation to speak at Clark University, in speaking of the Goethe
Prize given to him by the City of Frankfort as "the climax of my life."
Psychoanalyzing these sentiments, Riesman says, "here again one is
confronted with the problem of Freud's ambivalence toward authority.
. . . In spite of himself, Freud could not help his preoccupation with
questions of rank within the institutions of solid-seeming Vienna and,
beyond Vienna, solid-seeming 'official' German science and chauvin–
istically hostile but culturally reputed Parisian science." No matter what
Freud "could not help," Riesman's grandeur dazzles us in this m–
stance.
Other interesting notions on Freud: "Freud's work, as I read his
own account of it, seems to me of the very greatest intellectual interest;
beside such detective work, even that of Sherlock Holmes is pallid and
limited." This bizarre comparison is one a man might ponder for a
day without learning how it was arrived at or what the "even" means;
a mysterious image, like something one has in his mind at the end of
a troubled dream. Still this is not nearly so original as Riesman's idea
that Freud "patronizes" childhood; this conclusion is drawn from the
fact that Freud thought children did not want to grow up and had
to be forced to do so by parents and society, by pain and disappoint–
ment.
Both Veblen and Freud are scolded by this author because of their
lack of "sophistication." Sophistication stands enthroned in Riesrnan's
mind, that indefinable something-nature's noblemen like Freud and
Veblen may have their genius but this appealing quality is not theirs.
