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PARTISAN REVIEW
he was not simply a hypocrite when he brought prostitutes home for
tea and tried to reform them. They reveal instead the
terrib~e
tempta–
tions he was tormented by, how he struggled against them, how he
punished himself for them, how he tried in fact to live up to the
impossible moral ideals and demands of his culture and what an
immense toll that effort exacted.
The life.and biography of Freud represent a peculiarly acute and
perhaps unique instance of these difficulties. When it comes to him it
is not simpl y a matter of idealizing, de-idealizing and then the
correction of both again, although such considerations doubtless enter
into our dealings with this figure. Freud created psychoanalysis, and
part of that creation was the institutionalized development of a new
kind of relation. It is known as transference. Freud began the work of
psychoanalyzing western cu lture, and he has become such a personage
in that culture that almost everyone who has come into touch with his
work experiences some kind of a transference relation to him.
It
seems
to
be a curiosity in the nature of this relation that it cannot be put
aside, transcended or eliminated. It is on the contrary a constitutive
part of one's relation to Freud in cu lture, and perhaps the best means
we have of dealing with it is by conscious recognition and acknowledg–
ment that this is indeed the case. It cannot-at least for the foreseeable
future-be made to disappear.
That there was much in Freud that positively promoted such a
development is abundantly clear. For example, quite early in Zweig's
correspondence with him, Zweig takes to opening his letters with the
salutation, "Dear Father Freud." There is no evidence at my disposal
which suggests that Freud ever responded with some German equiva–
len t of "Hey, cut it out." To be sure, there were certain limits that even
Freud could not help but observe. When Zweig responds to the report
of a new flare-up of Freud's cancer by stating that part of Freud's
endurance of his suffering is done for mankind-since his continued
existence allows him to go on thinking and writing-the old man
characteristicall y replies:
I sti ll have so much capacity for enjoyment that I am dissatisfied
with the resignation that is forced upon me. It is a biller winter here
in Vienna and I have not been out for months. I also find it hard
to
adapt myself to the role of the hero suffering for mankind , which you
so kindly assign me. My mood is bad, lillie pleases me, my self–
criticism has grown much more acute. I would diagnose it as seni le
depression in anyone else.
The sinuosities of thought and feeling in such a passage-its dramati–
zation of a highl y complex, dry ironic consciousness-is for this reader
