"Der Papa"

No man has more profoundly affected modern thought than the late, great Sigmund Freud. Yet few close-ups of Freud exist. The father of psychoanalysis has usually been seen from afar. Last week appeared a warmly intimate portrait of Freud: Master and Friend (Harvard University Press; $2.50), by Dr. Hanns Sachs of Harvard, a survivor of the early group of six close disciples.*

Dr. Sachs first met his fellow Viennese in 1904. Sachs was then a law-school graduate bored with the law, fascinated by literature and, especially, by the psychological insights of Dostoievski. "I hoped to tread in broad daylight the obscure and labyrinthine paths of passion which he had traced." At this point, Sachs came upon Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. "I said to myself that these stupendous revelations needed and merited the most complete scrutiny; even if it should in the end turn out that every theory advanced in its pages were wrong, I would not regret the loss of time."

Freud then held the rank of "professor extraordinary" of neurology, but had turned his back on orthodox research channels ("his monograph on the coca-plant gave the first indication of its wide possibilities as an anesthetic") for pioneer psychological theorizing which rarely drew more than a dozen listeners to his weekly lectures at the General Hospital.

Twenty Cigars. "[Freud's] office consisted of a dark little anteroom and three chambers. . . . Each room had but one window opening onto a courtyard in the middle of which stood a tall and beautiful tree." The man who placed so much importance on erotic drives that he was widely regarded as monstrous was "der Papa" to six adoring children--"when one of the children had been absent for some time and was met by another, the first word from the newcomer was: 'Father now drinks his tea from the green cup instead of from the blue one.'" As for Frau Professor: "I am sure that he was a great man to her before a word of his books was written as well as afterwards, and that he will remain so for her till the end."*

Freud received analytical patients all day, avoided society but not the theater or museums, worked most of his evenings, played cards on Saturdays after his lectures. He smoked 20 cigars a day--"he was so fond of smoking that he was somewhat irritated when men around him did not smoke." His talk was sharp and often humorous (he described one worn-out political friend as an "aged lion, well on his way to becoming a couch cover"). He did most of his writing during his annual three months' summer vacation, conceiving his works in his head and writing them down almost without correction.

"Incredibly Old." The son of a Jewish tradesman, Freud came of tough stock--his mother died at 93, when he himself was in his 70s. For 16 years before his death he endured the constant pain, intermittent surgery and increasing speech impairment which were the results of cancer of the mouth. When the Nazis invaded Austria, they allowed Freud to leave the country, but not until they had seized his psychoanalytical publishing house, "the institute, and the Clinic, lock, stock and barrel. . . ."

In England in 1939 Dr. Sachs found Freud "very ill and incredibly old. It was evident that he pronounced every word at the cost of an enormous effort. . . . But these torments had not worn down his will. I learned that he still kept his analytical hours whenever he had a time of slight alleviation of pain. . . . He discussed problems and personalities of the psychoanalytic movement in America with full knowledge of the details. . . . The greatest part of the time we ... stayed in the garden and looked over the lawn where he rested, sometimes in light slumber, sometimes caressing his chow who did not leave his side for a moment-..." He died of cancer and heart disease in 1939, at the age of 83.

Freud, says Dr. Sachs, "saw everywhere around him the struggle of two opposing forces" (life instinct v. death instinct, subconscious drives v. repression). "He was not dazzled by the illusion of progress. . . . For this reason he was skeptical about the promises of communism. When a prominent Bolshevist told him that Lenin, who had been his personal friend, had predicted that Europe would have to go through a period of desolation much worse than that caused by the revolution, the civil war and famine in Russia, but that after that a period of unbroken happiness and stability would follow, Freud answered: 'Let's make it 50-50. I will accept the first half.' " Some years after his only visit to the U.S. in 1909, he remarked: "America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success."

* The others: the late Drs. Carl Abraham and Max Eitingon of Berlin, Sandor Ferenczi of Budapest, Otto Rank of Vienna, Ernest Jones of London (still living). *Fran Profesor, 80, is still living in London.

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