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'Let us die in harness' By David Bargal Tags: Freud, Moses, psychoanalysis The Death of Sigmund Freud The Legacy of His Last Days, by Mark Edmundson Bloomsbury, 276 pages, $25.95 Advertisement Mark Edmundson's book is an account of the last 18 months of Sigmund Freud's life. In practice, it focuses on two legacies that Freud (1856-1939), according to Edmundson, bequeathed us in his final days: the way in which he prepared for his death, and the fact that, even as he was grappling with a fatal illness, he continued to write and to treat patients, almost to the very end. Edmundson, a professor of English literature at the University of Virginia, says his original intention was simply to write about Freud's last year. In the course of his work, however, he came to understand more fully that the subjects with which Freud was preoccupied in his final years -- which involved leadership and its style, religion and its place in culture and society, and the desirable image of man in democratic Western society -- yielded important intellectual insights about culture, politics and morality, insights that continued to be relevant to historical events from the latter half of the 20th century to this day. The book describes and considers Freud's two legacies, while drawing on his writings and letters, as well as biographical treatments of him. The backdrop to all this, of course, is the fateful events of early 20th-century Europe, and especially the rise of Nazism, Hitler and a blunt anti-Semitism that expressed itself in extroverted, ritualized ways. In March 1938, the Nazis invaded Austria, and Freud and his family found themselves in mortal danger. Young Austrian SS brutes invaded the Freuds' apartment at 19 Bergasse Street in Vienna, looted their property and confiscated books. Anna Freud reported to the Gestapo offices for questioning in lieu of her father, whose mobility was restricted by his advanced age and his long struggle with cancer of the jaw. If powerful figures had not intervened, the 82-year-old father of psychoanalysis would probably not have survived; even U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt took a personal interest in his fate. Freud at first rejected the idea of emigrating to England, preferring to remain in his Vienna apartment. But the humiliations visited upon Vienna's Jews and the hostility toward psychoanalysis finally changed his mind. As he wrote to his son, "Two prospects seem to keep me going in these grim times: to rejoin you all and to die in freedom." In June 1938, Freud and his family arrived in London, where he remained until his death in September the following year. He was in tremendous pain during this period, and his physical condition deteriorated steadily, yet he continued to see patients for a few hours each day and even kept on writing. For example, he wrote a short, concise essay titled "An Outline of Psychoanalysis." Clearly and succinctly, he presents to the reader his mature views on the theory that he had developed and perfected in his years of clinical work, punctuating them with new reflections and self-analysis. In the essay, Freud described what he had learned about the human drives, the nature of the unconscious, the meaning of dreams, and psychoanalytic technique. At the end of the section on the latter subject, Freud added a profound and prophetic comment. Therapy, he noted, was currently interested in psychological methods, which were the only means available to it; but the future, he believed, might eventually offer the possibility of exerting direct influence on psychic mechanisms by chemical means. Moses' leadership There was another area too, it seems, in which Freud wished at the time to pass on a message drawn from the maturity and profound understanding of a man rich in experience and psychological insight. In writing "Moses and Monotheism," Freud dealt with Moses's leadership and with the role of religion within culture. The book aroused considerable objections even before it appeared, especially in Jewish circles, where it was seen as challenging the history of the Jewish people and one of the shapers and creators of its collective identity, Moses. Edmundson, by contrast, argues that in this book Freud offers a more tolerant message than he had in past on the subject of religion, portraying the Jewish religion as possessing a central importance to the development of Western culture and morality. According to Freud, the case of Moses represents the kind of relationship that should develop between a leader and his constituents in a Western democratic society, one that is rationalist in orientation and intended to nurture mature individuals with an autonomous, internalized system of moral values. This was not the first time that Freud had explored the subject of the relationship between the leader and his followers; from the late 1920s on, he predicted the rise of Hitler's power and influence. In his previous analyses, Freud had presented the leader principally as the libidinal object of his followers, a guiding light to the masses as they stumble through a life plagued by crises, illness and death. The role of such a leader is to channel the frustration and aggression possessed by every individual, and to direct them toward enemies "outside the camp" (Jews filled this latter function throughout history, but any external enemy will do). In fact, as Freud?s insight might be expressed in contemporary terms, the combination of a revered, authoritarian leader with a fundamentalist ideology, fascist or otherwise, cannot but lead to war and to the persecution of individuals and (minority) groups different from those who subscribe to the "ruling religion." However, in "Moses and Monotheism," Freud points to the possibility of developing another kind of leadership. To him, the leadership of Moses is the very embodiment of rationality and self-control that are the consequence of the process of sublimation undergone by each individual. Thanks to these qualities, Moses was able to formulate the Ten Commandments, the moral codex that continues to guide the whole of Western culture today. In contrast to the portrait of religion he had painted 10 years earlier in "The Future of an Illusion," in which he had characterized the religious impulse as an expression of man?s irrational and unconscious needs for safety and confidence, the religion that Moses inculcates, according to the later book, is the very opposite of fundamentalist. It demands of its believers a high level of personal responsibility, it preaches "Love thy neighbor as thyself" and it reminds followers to "rejoice not when thine enemy falleth"; it is humanistic and tolerant, and its values are universal and altruistic. Freud died on September 23, 1939, following an overdose of morphine administered by his doctor, Max Schur. Some 40 years earlier, in a letter he wrote to a friend, Freud had alluded to this moment: "I have one wholly secret entreaty: only no invalidism, no paralysis of one?s powers through bodily misery. Let us die in harness, as king Macbeth says." And indeed, he got his wish. David Bargal is professor emeritus at the School of Social Work at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Bookmark to del.icio.us   A top priority Barack Obama: We will keep Israel's security a priority. Tale of a key Cartoon film on Nakba describes Jews as 'enemies of homeland'.

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