THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FREUD
By ERNEST JONES.
WITH the death of Freud passes an outstanding figure in the history of science. He was, if not the greatest psychologist of all time—for that is a title that would call for much definition and discussion—assuredly the author of the most important contribution ever made to psychology. And since psychology means the study of the human mind, with all that interests and concerns the world of man, Freud's work will, when duly appreciated, prove to be of importance, not simply to the student, but to every thinking man. If ever one may venture to acclaim a contemporary as im- mortal one can do so of Freud.
Freud was born in Moravia, but from the age of four had lived his life in Vienna, a city whose fame he enhanced through his genius. But he was not destined to end his life there. Despoiled and insulted by the Nazi invaders of Aus- tria, he chose the road of exile rather than submit to further indignities or worse. I approached Sir Samuel Hoare, then the Home Secretary, and shall never forget the ready and sympathetic welcome he accorded to the idea of a refuge in England being offered to Freud, his family and a number of his colleagues. Freud himself was especially gratified, for England was of all countries the one he had all his life held in .he highest esteem. He was received here with every courtesy. Hearing of the state of his health, the officers of the Royal Society waived the immemorial demand for attend- ance at Burlington House to sign the roll-book, and instead waited on him at his residence, a privilege previously accorded only to a reigning sovereign.
Freud, as his exile implies, was not only a great man of science but was also a distinguished Jew. He held together with his people, was a Governor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and took an interest in all that concerned the fate of Jewry. The Nazi intolerance of this spared him no more than it had Einstein. The fact itself is of more than per- sonal interest, since it is doubtful if without certain traits inherited from his Jewish ancestry Freud would have been able to accomplish the work he did. I think here of a peculiar native shrewdness, a sceptical attitude towards illusion and deception, and a determined courage that made him impervious to hostile public opinion and the contumely of his professional colleagues.
Freud's contribution to knowledge may be epitomised in one phrase: he discovered the Unconscious. Although many poets and philosophers had previously divined the presence of an unconscious mind in man, it was Freud who first demonstrated its existence by devising a special method to render it accessible to study. This he did some forty-three years ago, since when he worked unceasingly at charting this newly discovered province of knowledge. He thus created, under the name of Psycho-Analysis, a completely new depart- ment of science, an achievement with which hardly any other human being can be credited. Nor was the originality of his achievement its most distinctive feature. This resided rather m the profound significance of his detailed findings. For the momentous conclusion he finally reached was that all we
" Dr. Ernest Jones is President of the International Psycho- Analytical Association and of the British Psycho-Analytical Society.
know of ourselves, of our interests, strivings, aversions and aspirations—our conscious mind, in short—is but a pale and distorted reflection of the inner personality from which all the surface manifestations emanate. To explore and under- stand these profound and unknown depths is to learn the inner nature of man.
This is not the place to describe the intricacies of the various laws which Freud discovered to appertain to the workings of the unconscious mind. They are in many respects startlingly different from those of the conscious mind, which was one reason among others why they were widely received with incredulity when first announced. These workings, although they have their own peculiar logic, are above all what the conscious mind would regard as irrational. The unconscious mind, closely tuned as it is to the fundamentals of life—love and hate, birth and death, power and helplessness—is in poor relationship to the outer world of reality. Indeed in this respect it is often as fantastic and delusional as the wanderings of any lunatic. But it is not much concerned with what we call reason. Essentially it is made up of a mass of wishes and strivings that conflict with other elements in the mind, above all with fears and the moral derivatives of fears. The conscious expressions of these wishful impulses may be co-ordinated with a sound apprehension of reality, but only too often they are merely clothed in a mask of pseudo-rationality- of which the world around us today affords a striking spectacle.
Like the Patristic writers, Freud saw man as a creature torn in twain by inner conflicts, though his analysis of the conflicting sides was far from their simplistic concepts of " Good " and " Evil." Sometimes this inner conflict is transformed into an outer one, between, for example, individualism and communism. Both of the conflicting sides are usually unconscious, the only evidence of them being quite indirect disturbances of emotion and judgement. An iron barrier, to which Freud gave the name of Repres- sion, exists, which exercises an extraordinarily powerful resistance against recognition of what is going on in the unconscious mind. The strength of it can hardly be over- estimated, and it accounts not only for the opposition with which Freud's conclusions have been received, but also for the numerous attempts that have been made to weaken and distort them.
The greater part, though by no means all, of Freud's clinical material was derived from the symptoms and phantasy-life of neurotics. He was often reproached with the " abnormality " of his material, but he was able to show that a neurosis originates in the same primitive mental sources as are present in all human beings, and simply repre- sents one of the several developments that may emerge from those sources. The unconscious mind is very much the same as the primitive mind of the child, which later gets, as it were, encased. Freud came to the conclusion that the primitive mind is on the one hand far more savage and " animal " than man is willing to admit, but that on the other hand it also contains much stronger moral deterrent tendencies than he is aware of : " Man is both more moral and more immoral than he knows." The tracing of this mental material back to its origin in infancy forced Freud to realise that something else besides the unconscious mind existed that had previously been denied—namely, the sexual life of the child. Thanks to his work this is now a commonplace, and it is becoming hard to remember the time, thirty or forty years ago, when sexuality was, apart from a few " abnormal " cases, believed to be something that suddenly descended from the skies at the age of puberty.
It may well be said that the main importance of Freud's psychological researches is the contribution they furnish to evolutionary theory. I once called him the Darwin of the Mind, and I still think this designation an apt one. The reason why the great biological discovery of the last century did not affect human thought and social institutions as much as had at one time been expected was evidently that it had stopped short at the human body. To have shown that the same laws of development from lowly origins hold good also for the human mind and the human soul was an outstand- ing merit of Freud's life-work.
Freud had for sixteen years been the victim of a pm. liarly painful complaint. In spite of intense suffering, however, borne with heroic fortitude, he continued his work until the end. His last book, Moses and Monotheism, a treatise on the part played by great men in the genesis of religion, appeared only this spring. With his death we lose a revered teacher, a wise and inspiring companion, and a man of enduring friendship.
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