Friend Freud

After what seems like some months, have finally finished my first pass through a life of Freud by Ronald Clark, a biographer rather than any kind of shrink, with previous biographies of, for example, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. From this book I get the impression that Clark is interested in scientists and their place in the scheme of things, rather than the science itself. All the personalities involved in the often unseemly and not so scientific - or perhaps more professional or academic - wrangles among the scientists, rather than the wrangles or the science themselves.

Book acquired second hand and as there is no price inside the front cover my money is on the chap who sells books from tables in Epsom market place on bric-à-brac day, a chap who charges a flat rate of £1 for hard backs and from whom I have bought several good books over the last few months.

I don't think that this is the first biography of Freud that I have read, although I cannot remember who the first one was by. I do remember passing up a three volume Freud by Jones, this last being another rather odd bird (see Brenda Maddox. See also January 13th, 2009, in the other place). Regretted it ever since. Should have stumped up the £20 - which presumably seemed far too much at the time.

Apart from being an interesting read generally I was struck by the amount of space given, both in the book and in the wide world more generally, to the question of the extent to which the shape of psycho-analysis was a product of Freud's own personality, quirks and neuroses. The man himself is said to have believed that psycho-analysis was a science with its roots in science; a science which was revealed by scientific method and which was not a product of his own personality - and just to be on the safe side it seems that he destroyed a lot of material about his early life which might have fed those who did not believe him. His followers carried on the good work, carefully sanitising things like letters when they were unable or did not want to suppress publication altogether. My own view is in two parts. First, one can, to some extent have it both ways. Psycho-analysis might indeed be the revealed truth, but it did need someone with Freud's particular talents and background to do the revealing. Second, does it really matter all that much? It is interesting because one is interested in Freud the man, but it is not relevant to a discussion of the truth of otherwise of the truth which he revealed.

But the book may now be a bit dated, having been written over thirty years ago, at a time, it seems, when many primary sources were embargoed  (suppression was temporary rather than definitive. A compromise) and which might be available now. Which might go some way to explaining the rather bad press Freud has been getting recently, with allegations, for example, that some at least of his case histories were substantially touched up to fit in with whatever theory he was pushing at the time. This may all be so, but I remain a true believer. Disregarding some of the tricky details, like the universality of the Oedipus Complex, I believe that the sort of wordy way in which he looked at the brain will come to coexist with the chemical way which dominates - in part because chemicals are cost effective and profit generating - now. Words and chemicals will turn out to interact, with causation going in both directions.

Coincidentally, the end of this read coincides with a rather odd correspondence in the letters' pages of the TLS about the way in which Freud died. Was he killed by a morphine injection? Did the morphine shorten his life? Given the longstanding agreement about this he had with his doctor, does this count as suicide? Is the perjorative word 'suicide' appropriate in these particular circumstances? It all seems a touch unseemly, but I suppose it does nudge along the debate about assisted suicide.

Notwithstanding, the man must have had uncommon inner strength to put up with with 15 years or so of cancer of the mouth, with lots of operations, a prosthesis in what was left of his mouth and lots of pain - and for most of this time carrying on the good work. And smoking his cigars.