196
PARTISAN REVIEW
place in the early psychoanalytic movement would save it from
being thought of as a "Jewish national movement." But Jung with–
drew. And similarly, though Jones does not label the point, one can
see from his account of Freud's struggle for a hearing, that some of
the most violent attacks on him came from Jewish doctors. One
could wish, however, that the well-known Freudian tactic of showing
up every opponent and critic as badly in need of treatment were not
so marked even in someone so humanly impressive as Dr. Jones. The
opponent Oppenheim has to be labelled a neurotic, and "furthermore,
his wife was a bad case of hysteria." Another opponent "was a
curious man, a doubtful personality with a shady past." Freud's old
teacher, Meynert, who had turned unfriendly, is in his turn revealed
as a sick man. The heretics in the Freud circle-Adler, Jung, Stekel,
Rank, and how many others- are all exposed, more or less regret–
fully, but with unmistakable certainty. "Nor did it surprise Freud
that the so-called arguments brought forward by his opponents were
identical with his patients' defenses and could show the same lack
of insight and even of logic. All this was therefore in the natural
order of things and could neither shake Freud's convictions nor
disturb him personally."
So, despite the violent attacks, he persisted (and he never re–
plied; only the disciples do). Why did he persist? Because he believed
it. Had psychoanalysis been entirely a subject susceptible to proof,
like Newton's or Pasteur's, the early hypothesis might have been
confirmed and the discoverer's continuing belief in it would have
seemed less remarkable than it does. Nevertheless, all discoveries, all
works of art, begin in this gift of conviction, long before experimental
confirmation or even realization is possible. And the test of it is
always the same: a piece of reality that no one else sees is real to
someone, and he makes us see it. In the same way, the original in–
sight is either so real that you can convincingly work it out, or it
is no insight at all. The brilliant but marginal thinkers, from Fliess
to Rank, end up as episodes in someone else's life. The give-away is
always in Jung's suggestion that God may not exist, but that He is
good for you.
In Freud's kind of conviction lies the principle of the hero; it
is this that gives him his character. Seen from the outside, a life like
