Ernest Gellner on Freud and Reich

Sigmund Freud: The Complete Introduce tory Lectures on Psychoanalysis translated and edited by James Strachey (Allen and Unwin £4.20) – Professor Wollheim's book on Freud's in- tellectual development is closely packed with information and argument and is, on the whole, disappointing. Wollheim is a pro- fessional philosopher and the author of an excellent account of F. H. Bradley, and also of a much shorter and in my view unac- ceptable account of David Hume. What those two accounts had in common, however, was that, whether or not one agreed with them, they interestingly related their subject-matter to contemporary ideas. It is just this which is so crucially lacking in the book under review.

In general, I subscribe to the sacred right of authors to write the book they wish to write, rather than a book which the reviewer would wish them to write instead. Nevertheless, certain terms of reference are on occasion dictated by time and circumstance. Freud's ideas were not born yesterday. In rough and possibly distorted outline, they are common property. Hence an author writing a short book on them, clearly aimed at an unspecialised audience, cannot content himself with a simple ac- count of those ideas and their genesis. He must attempt to relate his hero to the in- tellectual climate which owes him so much, and offer some kind of stocktaking.

For instance: academic philosophy has in recent decades been preoccupied with the philosophy of mind. What was at issue was the standing of or normal conceptualisation of our mental activities, and the question of the nature, need, possibility and desirability of supplementing this ordinary way of look- ing at ourselves by some other set of con- cepts, perhaps resembling, perhaps con- trasted with those of natural science. Heaven knows that I am not an uncritical admirer of this tradition in philosophy (which postdates most of Freud), but the fact remains that it is hardly conceivable that if these two tradi- tions are brought in contact, one or the other (probably both) will not require some modification. To find an author who is ut- terly familiar with both traditions, writing a book about one without referring to the other (Wittgenstein is mentioned only as a fellow-admirer of Lichtenberg), gives one an uncomfortable feeling that the author is badly scared of something. Are the allegedly razor-sharp tools of logical analysis used only on dead traditions, and not on on cur- rent faiths? Does this lion prefer carrion?

This is a suspicion I have long and, as some would say, unworthily entertained. I am genuinely sorry to find Wollheim's book providing it with encouragement. Or again, it would be most interesting to have some discussion of whether the Freu- dian model is vulnerable to the kind of onslaught to which Chomsky subjected behaviourism. (Contrary to popular belief, that onslaught does not in any way hinge on the 'soulless' properties of behaviourism, but only on its explanatory poverty.) This question should be of special interest to Wollheim, for it is a distinctive feature of his exegesis that he takes very seriously Freud's rather physicalist Project of a Scientific Psychology of 1895, about which Freud himself became ambivalent and which he chose to leave as a torso, and which other analysts, as Wollheim observes, considered baneful. Wollheim himself rates its im- portance highly. Yet one wonders what would happen to this model and its variants, if one subjected it to the test of requiring it to provide genuine, non-circular ex- planations of human performances, instead of tolerating it as a para-mechanical just-so story, items within which cannot be in- dependently described (let alone located), without tacitly invoking those very bits of behaviour which they are meant to ex-c plain Or again, the most fundamental criticism to which psychoanalysis is open is' that Freud unwittingly invented a system in which doctrine, concepts, •technique and organisation form an interlocking whole, so arranged that any difficulties or counter-ex- amples are systematically evaded. No one should nowadays be able to write a general book about Freud without at least at- tempting to deal with this. Wollheim makes no effort in this direction. His account con- centrates on doctrine. Therapeutic problems and their contribution to the genesis of doc- trine are of course mentioned, but on the whole the tacit assumption seems to be that Freudian concepts and doctrines are capable of living a life of their own: `... the relation of therapy to theory in psychoanalysis is just a special instance of the way in which every empirical science permits of practical ap- plication'. He admits that special problems arise from the fact that the application con- sists of handing out explanations drawn from the very theory that is being applied, but does not seem to think this affects the general principle. The intriguing contrary possibility, that psychoanalytical concepts come to life only in the special milieu created for them by a therapeutic technique and its social organisation, is not considered.

There is only one all too brief chapter, the final one concerned with Freud's social philosophy, in which the book really comes to life in terms imposed by its format and context. Here Wollheim concludes that there is no excuse for enlisting Freud, 'in the interest of this or that piety', as a 'recruit ... to ... optimism'. On the whole I agree, but Wollheim does not really dispose of the possibility that the facile optimism of some post-Freudians, indisputably in conflict with much of what Freud says, is nevertheless a, perfectly logical development of Other themes also genuinely present in Freud.

Why did Wollheim fail to make the con- nections, to ask the questions which so clearly impose themselves? One can only suspect misplaced reverence. Though his dense style is not starry-eyed at all, there is a profoundly disturbing final sentence in the preface, which unambiguously implies that undergoing analysis is a necessary (sic, but italics mine) qualification for writing about Freud. A professor of philosophy does not use the term necessary lightly, and I fear Wollheim means what he says.

But if so, one can only hope that Wollheim will acquire the courage of his reverence and write that explicit defence of Freudianism which seems implicit in his extraordinary disregard of critics or even friendly commentators. (The book does not mention those numerous philosophers or philosophically oriented analysts who have attempted to relate this complex of ideas to other visions or external standards.) Of course, there is also room for the kind of book of which this one seems a fragment—a meticulous account of the genesis of Freud's ideas, one which in philosophy goes no further back than Bren- tano, which stresses doctrine more than therapy, and within doctrine treats the rather physicalist early model as crucial, and which contents itself with raising problems internal to the outlook and its language, rather than fundamental and external. Such a book would of course have to be longer and ad- dressed to specialists. The present book, though it leans heavily towards this pole, is an unhappy compromise between it and the wider terms of reference imposed by the con- text.

Lady Balogh's book covers roughly the same ground as Wollheim's, though it does not aspire to the same level, and its bias is, as the subtitle implies, biographical rather than doctrinal. Where Wollheim's reverence is stylistically discreet and betrayed mainly by what is evaded (should I say repressed?), Penelope Balogh's is feminine and open. Her paragraphs do not actually end in ex- clamation marks, but one is always surprised when they don't!

She rushes in where Wollheim fears to tread, but her reply to critics (p. 101) is of terrifying superficiality. She is also plainly rather grieved by what poor Freud had to put up with from disloyal followers. It is all rather like the servant problem, my dear: it is so difficult these days to get good and loyal followers! All in all, this is pleasant, readable and totally innocuous devotional literature, and no girls' school library should be without it.

Mr Charles Rycroft's book about Wilhelm Reich is altogether admirable, and a model of what a book of this kind should be. For one thing, it is just right stylistically : without ever being superficial, it is extremely readable, and one is never obliged to retrace one's step in order to discern the structure of the argument. On a number of occasions, his dry but unmalicious humour made me laugh out aloud. For another thing, it is im- possible to read this book without gaining in a kind of collective ideological self- knowledge : ideas which are very much in the air, whether or not one likes them, are convincingly traced to what clearly is one of their important sources, or at any rate one of their earliest articulations in a modern idiom.

Fate was cruel to Reich in a number of ways, but perhaps most of all in letting him live, or rather die, a decade or so too soon. It was he above all who forged the most characteristic items in the intellectual armoury of the secessio iuventutis. He forged that curious mixture of sexual .mysticism, the blaming of ills on an op- pressive social structure, and a passionate anthropoidicy, which is so central to the movement. I suppose that in a world without god, it is essential that the earlier justification of the ways of god be replaced by a de- monstration that, appearances notwithstand- ing, man is basically good. (If not, one is left with the discomfort of irreducible, inex- plicable evil.) The only thing which prevents man from acceding to his rightful heritage of both virtue and happiness are distorted and distorting social and psychic structures,

which, however, are contingent and not necessary evils. But where do they conic from, given that they are not inherent in quintessential man? In this form, the pro- blem of evil, exorcised at the first step of the argument, makes its reappearance, and not the least interesting part of Rycroft's hook are the passages which describe Reich's struggles with this problem, struggles so arduous and demanding that they led even this otherwise most dogmatic of men into tentativeness and tolerance.

Reich believed himself to have burst through the conceptual fetters that have bound humanity for quite some millennia, and inferred logically enough that in conse- quence, his views could not be criticised by those who were still fettered. This logic, impeccable as far as it goes, has also been inherited by the protest movement. But, except for its extravagance, it is not inher- ently different from the practice of invoking resistance as supporting evidence for the justice and penetration of your views. Over and again, Rycroft shows how various of Reich's extravagances arise by pushing psychoanalytic ideas to their limit. It is not always clear that orthodoxy also possesses the logical, as opposed to prudential, means for not pushing on to some similar limits. This might lead one to adapt an eighteenth- century aphorism and reflect that if you really want to make it as a prophet, it is not enough to be outrageous—you need some social skills as well. These poor Reich on the whole lacked.

He was well placed in time to come in early on an attempt to fuse the messianic elements in Marx and Freud, and he was expelled from both movements for his pains. Rycroft shows the half-suppressed debt which orthodox analysis owes him, quite apart from the most manifest debt owed him by the more freisehwehend gurus. Their gain is Reich's loss, for were he still with us they would have to share some of their glory.

Reich was, not to put too fine a point on it, as crazy as a coot. He believed he could isolate the life force chemically and consign it to boxes which were supplied to his followers. . . orgone boxes . .. were con- structed of alternating layers of steel wool and rock or glass wool . . . they were the shape of a telephone box or coffin .. . and I am told that one did indeed feel a bit strange after being encased in one, probably on ac- count of their poor ventilation.' What makes Rycroft's book so admirable is that he takes this complex of ideas, which most of us would dismiss as far beyond the pale of reason and possible interest, and shows not merely its genesis and crystallisation in the mind of a man, its intimate relation to the problems and conceptual equipments of an age, but also its elements of plausibility and the points at which it might contain some- thing of merit. It is done with sympathy and not with derision, and in the end Rycroft converts the reader to a similar attitude. Given vitalism as a philosophical back- ground, given the principle that psychic forces must in the end have a physical base, given a time in which both Freudianism and Marxism were making a powerful impact, given some therapeutic successes, the Reich- ian synthesis was not at all points absurd,

and may have sinned by consistency rather than otherwise.

Rycroft's vision of him is as of a mystic who asserted insights which are within the Western mystical tradition. commonplace rather than extravagant, who was led by a combination of scientism and scientific in- competence to formulate those insights in an inanpropriate idiom, who responded to the problems of his age, borrowed from its visions and contributed to them, and within whose thought something of value might also be found alongside the absurdities. As an hermeneutic exercise. Rycroft's book is superb, for it converts one to sympathy without at any point abandoning sobriety and critical standards. Rycroft also com- passionately observes that Reich was a cen- tral European and, as such, lacking in humour and incapable of .formulating insights without wishing to anchor them to a System. He also had a central European trait which might have been a point of friction with his knowing or unknowing followers of today—he took academic titles and rank with utmost seriousness.

Finally, there is a work which is not a con- temporary exegesis, but an authorised part of the Scriptures themselves. This elegant and well-produced volume combines, for the first time, both sets of Freud's introductory lec- tures on psychoanalysis, those of 1917 and those of 1933, and is very much worth hav- ing.

Ernest Geliner is Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science