BOOKS
Luther and Freud
BY CHRISTOPHER HILL H1STORIANS have never taken Freud seriously enough. Yet since psychoanalysis deals with man, it should be invaluable for those whose study concerns the past life of men in societies. It should provide a link between biography and history. For the merely biographical explanation tends to explain away. Amateur psychologists who attribute Wyclif's theology to his high blood pressure, Rousseau's political theory to his un- happy childhood, Marx's economics to an inferiority complex, leave us wondering why their ideas influenced millions of other men and women. Were there more unhappy children in eighteenth-century France than elsewhere in Europe? We have indeed been told that un- desirable Russian behaviour may be explained by the too tight ,swaddling of Russian babies. But so far the marriage of psychoanalysis and history has been singularly barren. No attempt to relate the two disciplines in theory or to apply them in practice has significantly advanced knowledge.
Astonishingly enough, two books have been published almost simultaneously which say something important on this subject, and say it in an adult, serious and sophisticated manner. Professor Brown is a historian, Mr. Erikson a psychoanalyst*; but each has taken the trouble to master the other discipline. 'We cannot leave history,' says Mr. Erikson, 'entirely to non- clinical observers and to professional historians who all too often nobly immerse themselves into the very disguises, rationalisations and idealisa- tions of the historical process from which it should be their business to separate themselves.'
Mr. Erikson's subject, Luther, receives exten- sive treatment in Professor Brown's book too. Both authors stress his 'anal character,' Professor Brown after remarking wryly that the psycho- analysts' capacity for finding the anus in the most unlikely places is notorious.' Luther indeed is a gift for the psychoanalyst: consider (as our authors do) his conflicts with his father, his violence, his foul language, his naïve self- revelations. His actions and theology can be interpreted in classic Freudian terms. His father, Hans, was a small industrial capitalist, who wanted Martin to better himself by law or politics. Luther rebelled against his father's ambitions for him, and against the world of early capitalism which Hans took for granted. He became a monk. All his life he oscillated between sub- missive acceptance and violent rejection. He rebelled against the monastic rule he had freely chosen, and against the Pope. He established a theology which centres on the reconciliation of man to the Father by a power outside himself. When German peasants, stimulated at least in part by Luther's teaching, rose in social revolt, Luther threw himself into the arms of the princes, * LIFE AGAINST DEATI1: By N. 0. Brown. (Rout- ledge, 30s.); YOUNG MAN LUTHER. By Erik H. Erikson. (Faber, 25s.)
and preached submission to the powers that be, taking 'Honour thy father and thy mother' as his text. 'When Martin learned to speak •up,' Mr.
Erikson writes, 'much that he had to say to the devil was fuelled by a highly compressed store of defiance consisting of what he had been unable to say to his father and to his teachers; in due time he said it all, with a vengeance, to the Pope.' But the biographical solution poses the historical problem. Why did Lutheranism take on? Did all Lutherans have conflicts with their fathers?
Perhaps they did. At least the historical con- text suggests that new types of stress may have arisen. The household was becoming the basic economic unit, with the father extending over wife, children, servants, prentices and journey- men the combined authority of employer, magistrate, schoolmaster and almost priest. Capitalism increased social fluidity; many men who got rich quick might have the same vaulting ambitions for their sons as Hans had for Martin. Rome tried to tap this expanding wealth by commercialising religion. The Papacy, Luther thought, was indistinguishable from the business world : both paid homage to the Devil. There was no refuge from Satan in the Church: he had to be fought in each man's own heart. Yet in this world the prosperity of the small capitalist was fundamentally insecure. He was at the mercy of natural forces; he was fleeced by the Church; he was oppressed by secular authority, yet he needed it to overthrow the Church and to pre- serve social order. Luther recoiled quickly enough when he found a peasants' revolt claiming him as its leader. For Luther the tensions of life in such a world were made tolerable only' by his belief that the last days were at hand. What Professor Brown regards as 'the decadence of Protestantism' may be measured by 'the decline of diabolism and eschatology.' Later Protest- antism substituted for Luther's vision that we are bondsmen in the Devil's hostelry the notion that our calling is divinely appointed.' Mr. Erikson attributes the adaptation to Luther himself : 'In spite of having reacted more violently than any- one else against indulgences and against usury, Luther helped prepare the metaphysical alliance between economic self-interest and church affiliation so prominent in the Western world. Martin had become the metaphysical jurist of his father's class.'
So Luther freed Christians from the devil but cast them at the feet of Leviathan. Rejecting the commercialisation of religion, protestantism ultimately spiritualised commerce. The tension in Luther between revolt and acceptance, joy and guilt, freedom and necessity, must reflect that of many of his middle-class contemporaries. 'God bestows all good things,' Luther told them; 'but . . . you must do the work and so provide God with an opportunity and a disguise.' It is the
paradox of all revolutionary predestinarians from Augustine to Marx. Active theological understanding had previously been 'restricted to small groups of ecclesiastic and secular aristocra- cies.' Mr. Erikson says. 'The masses could participate only as onlookers.' When a more democratic layman's theology broke through, Luther's God was formed in the image of the head of a small master's household: a Great Taskmaster. The Virgin and the saints were relegated to the subordinate position of women and dependants. The new theology had both a psychological and a social basis in the family which was also the unit of economic production.
Professor Brown gives Luther one chapter in his book. The author turned to Freud because he felt the need 'to reappraise the nature and destiny of man.' Civilisation, he has concluded, is a disease. 'The difference between "neurotic" and "healthy" is only that the "healthy" have a socially usual form of neurosis.' Mystics and poets have glimpsed this: 'the doctrine of the universal neurosis of mankind is the psycho- analytical analogue of the theological doctrine of original sin.' Civilisation has made 'antagonistic opposites out of economics and love, work and play. . . . Mankind will not cease from discon- tent and sickness' until this antinomy is over- come. By the facts of our psychological make-up, by having a father and mother and therefore an (F.dipus complex, we appear to be ordained to perpetual repression and guilt. 'Man entered social organisation in order to share guilt.' Hence compulsive work, division of labour and all that we regard as the rational aspects of civilisation and that Professor Brown regards as symptoms of disease.
This is strong meat. Professor Brown asks for 'a willing suspension of common sense'; and one must abandon many assumptions and prejudices to follow his ruthless, not to say rash, pursuit of logic to conclusions. But the effort is worth making. Professor Brown's diagnosis is provoca- tive and disturbing. His refusal to accept defeat is exhilarating, even if he has no very clear counsel to give us. 'Is it possible,' he asks, 'that mankind may one day live to enjoy itself?' Freud thought not. Professor Brown is more Freudian than many Freudians, but he rejects the master's pessimism. Freud 'carried into his analysis of the family the presupposition that the antinomy of Master and Slave is given by Nature.' He also went wrong in supposing that the Primal Crime leading to the CEdipus com- plex is biologically inherited. It is, Professor Brown tries to demonstrate, 'a fantasy,' repro- duced by each child for himself. The ultimate problem therefore is 'not guilt but the incapacity to live. The illusion of guilt is necessary for an animal that cannot enjoy life.' The only grounds for hope which he sees are in the facts of human childhood, the state of innocence and of nature. 'Psychoanalysis is nothing without the doctrine that mankind is that species of animal which has the immortal project of recovering its own childhood.'
Caricature is inevitable in trying to summarise a book whose object is to change our lives. Pro- fessor Brown is passionately committed, but he is also scholarly and witty. No one young enough not to be impervious to ideas should miss his book. If Freud is the Luther of our day, as Mr. Erikson suggests, Professor Brown recalls those angry young protestants who asked for heaven on earth too. They resented priests fobbing them off with the after-life; Professor Brown castigates psychoanalysts who tell us how to adapt our- selves to the world instead of helping us to change it.
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