Medicine: Dr. Freud Honored

For many years Sigmund Freud of Vienna has studied the tortuous ways of the unconscious mind. Moving his pale hands nervously about among the green pagan gods, the bronzes, the bizarre masks which cover the top of his massive desk at his home, he has written the testament of the psychoanalysts. This week in recognition of his lifelong work, he will receive the Goethe prize given by the German City of Frankfurt. The award is especially appropriate for Dr. Freud. Some 50 years ago, Goethe’s essay Die Natur first decided him to abandon the writing of poetry which had been his occupation, and study natural processes. After a course in general medicine, he specialized in neurology. One day, Dr. Josef Breuer, Viennese physician, told him about a girl cured of hysteria by recollecting under hypnosis certain forgotten experiences. From that time, Freud persisted in his neurological studies, built up a psychological treatment for hysteria which led to the system of psychoanalysis.

Although he is now 74, he still works assiduously. This year he published Civilization and Its Discontents,— a psychoanalyst’s survey of modern civilization. We suffer, today, from a cultural super ego, he states. This super ego is a kind of acute group conscience which prohibits and censors the individual, emphasizes standards to be lived up to rather than happiness which is the natural goal of men. As an individual becomes neurotic under these conditions, so the whole of humanity may develop a neurosis. The super ego is a manifestation of aggressiveness, one of the two great antagonistic forces in the world. The other is the love force. Women, representing the love force, have suffered most in civilization. The building of the cultural structure has taken men away from women.

Although he does not care for the honors which are bestowed on most famed scientists, Dr. Freud enjoys understanding. He has a sympathetic, warm personality which seems intuitively to sense human needs. Living today in the same house where 30 years ago he first attracted the students who later became his apostles, he still is intellectual dictator to those about him. Even his critics, who do not admit the value of his psychoanalytic theory, agree that he has had a profound influence in giving a new emphasis, a new method of approach to human problems. In the darkened consulting room of his clinic, he receives a few patients, many of them distinguished doctors from all over the world who come to learn his method of attacking the unconscious by the free association method. He has never taken money from his pupils. What he earns from his books, he turns over to the International Psychoanalytic Publishing Co., a non-profit organization for printing psychoanalytic books. His spare time is spent on a revision of his work in dreams. Anna, his daughter, is his best student, his most loyal supporter. She acts as his interpreter to the world. During his lifetime he has shunned publicity, has had few interviews with the press. He abhors sensationalism, has been so engrossed in study at his desk in Vienna that he is unaware of the great, often flagrant publicity given to him and his work.

—Hogart/i Press, London (8s 6d-).