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birth of psychoanalysis. "At that time," he wrote later, "I had
reached the
peak
of loneliness. . . . The only thing that kept me
going was a bit of defiance and the beginning of
The Interpreta–
tion of Dreams."
(Incidentally, I was surprised by the strain of
loneliness running through Freud's life despite a big family, many
friends and associates, and correspondents everywhere.) It is also
known how deeply Freud reacted to the reality of death and
violence during World War I; but I confess I wasn't quite pre–
pared for the profound impact which other deaths had upon
him
-the death of his daughter Sophie (in 1920): a "bitter, ir–
reparable narcissistic injury" coinciding with "the undisguised
brutality of our time"; the anguished outcry after the death of
Sophie's younger son, Heinele, aged 4Yz (in 1923): "I have never
experienced such grief ... I was aware of never having loved a
human being ... so much"; the controlled sorrow after the death
of Karl Abraham (in 1925): "the greatest loss that could have
struck us"; and the strange "feeling of liberation [and] release"
after the death of his mother (in 1930): "I was not free to die
as long as she was alive, and now I am."
Reading these letters in succession overwhelms one with the
cumulative sense of gloom and despair they convey-reinforced,
of course, by the increasing burden of physical suffering to which
Freud was condemned in old age. At eighty he wrote: "Truth
is
unobtainable"-yet the critics will continue to blow the horn that
he was dogmatic; "humanity doesn't deserve it, and incidentally,
wasn't our Prince Hamlet right when he asked whether anyone
would escape a whipping if he got what he deserved?" Yet, in
the same breath, he clung to the life-affirming defiance of the
Old Jew. "Even
if
my defiance is silent," he told Stefan Zweig,
who did not hold out, "it remains defiance nevertheless and–
impavid'Um ferient ruinae."
It is the old spirit of Promethean de–
fiance "saved for a long, tenacious struggle" which he recom–
mended to Martha at the beginning of their engagement.
Let
'US
consult
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.
This resolution did not fail him-vindicating Breuer's astute
