Abstract
It is said that Freud and his circle put so much emphasis on understanding history, art, literature, religion, and culture generally because, in that early period, they lacked sufficient numbers of patients to discuss psychoanalytic issues among themselves with any degree of scientific rigor. Their real interests were clinical and theoretical, but the only “cases” at hand lay in history, politics, and art and literature.1 While true, the early Freudians were deeply committed to gaining an understanding of the hidden motives and deeper meanings of everything human. The world of the consulting room mattered in special ways (it was the laboratory), but the data it yielded lacked broad theoretical significance unless also applied to culture in the broadest sense. Applied psychoanalysis for the early Freudians was not the frosting on the cake it that it became in later years; everything hung on it.
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Notes
- 1.
Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, ed. Herman Numberg and Ernst Federn, 4 volumes (New York: International Universities Press, 1962), I, xxviii.
- 2.
Ibid., 254–258.
- 3.
Ibid., II, 2–12.
- 4.
Ibid., 299.
- 5.
Ibid., 298–303.
- 6.
Heinz Kohut, “Creativeness, Charisma, Group Psychology: Reflections on the Self-Analysis of Freud,” in The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut, 1950–1978, ed. Paul H. Ornstein, 4 volumes (New York: International Universities Press, 1978), II, 793–843.
- 7.
Ibid., I, 160–161.
- 8.
Ibid., 164.
- 9.
Ibid., I, 169.
- 10.
Ibid., 98.
- 11.
Ibid., II, 338–352.
- 12.
Ibid., I, 267–268.
- 13.
Ibid., 179–180.
- 14.
Ibid., 259–269.
- 15.
Ibid., 8, for example.
- 16.
Karl Abraham, “Amenhotep IV. Psychoanalytische Beitrage zurn Verständis seiner PersOnlichkeit und des monotheistischen Aton-Kultes,” Imago, 1 (1912), 334–360.
- 17.
Ludwig Jekels, “Der Wendepunkt im Leben Napoleons I,” Imago, 3 (1914), 313–381.
- 18.
Emil Lorenz, “Der Politische Mythos. Probleme und Vorarbeiten,” Imago, 6 (1920), 402–421.
- 19.
J. C. Flügel, “Charakter und Eheleben Heinrichs VIII,” Imago, 7 (1920), 424–441.
- 20.
William Boven, “Alexander der Grosse,” Imago, 8 (1922), 418–439.
- 21.
Hanns Sachs, “Em Traum Bismarcks,” Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyze, 1 (1913), 80–83.
- 22.
Ernest Jones, “The Case of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 8 (1913), 289–301.
- 23.
Some additional studies of leadership by the early figures around Freud include the following: Paul Federn, Zur Psychologie der Revolution (Vienna: Anzengruber-Verlag, 1919); J. C. Flügel, Men and Their Motives: Psychoanalytic Studies (New York: International Universities Press, 1947 (1934)); Eich Fromm, “Politik und Psychoanalyse,” Psychoanalytische Bewegung, 2 (1930), 305–313; the English version of E. Hitschmann’s essays, Great Men: Psychoanalytic Studies (New York: International Universities Press, 1956); Ernest Jones, “Psycho-Analyze Roosevelts,” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, 2 (1912), 675–677; Geza Roheim, “Killing the Divine King,” Man, 15 (1915), 26–28. By the 1920s, and well into the 1930s, it became quite popular to undertake psychoanalytic studies of leaders. This category includes those influenced by Freud but not in direct contact with him, the early Vienna group, or a part of Imago. A few representative authors (this is not a complete listing) include the following: Hill Berkeley, “A Short Study of the Life and Character of Mohammed,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2 (1921), 31–53; F. Chamberlain, The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1921); L. Pierce Clark, Lincoln: A Psycho-Biography (New York, 1933); R. Behrendt, “Das Problem Fuhres und Mosse und die Psychoanalyse,” Psychoanalytische Benegung, 1 (1929), 134–154.
- 24.
S. Freud and C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1966 [1932]).
- 25.
Sigmund Freud, “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, vol. XVIII. (London: Hogarth Press, 1955).
- 26.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, ed. James Strachey, one-volume paperback (New York: Avon Library, 1900), 139.
- 27.
Ibid., 139–154.
- 28.
Ibid., 241–247.
- 29.
Ibid., 298–299.
- 30.
Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: Norton, 1969), 123.
- 31.
Ibid., 102.
- 32.
Sigmund Freud, “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy,” Standard Edition, X (1909), 3–149.
- 33.
Freud and Bullitt, Wilson, xvi.
- 34.
Sigmund Freud, “Totem and Taboo,” Standard Edition, XIII (1913): 9–162.
- 35.
Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, ed. James Strachey, paperback edition (New York: Norton, 1933), 113.
- 36.
Ibid., 114–115.
- 37.
Ibid., 129.
- 38.
Sigmund Freud, “Group Psychology,” Standard Edition, XVIII: 69.
- 39.
Ibid., 77.
- 40.
Ibid., 81.
- 41.
Ibid., 88.
- 42.
Ibid., 92.
- 43.
Ibid., 97.
- 44.
Ibid., 106.
- 45.
Ibid., 108.
- 46.
Ibid., 116.
- 47.
Ibid., 123.
- 48.
Ibid., 123.
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Strozier, C.B., Offer, D. (2011). Freud and His Followers. In: Strozier, C., Offer, D., Abdyli, O. (eds) The Leader. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8387-9_2
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