Various Observations

In Freud’s Apartment

FREUD AT AGE 70

People often assume that Sigmund Freud lived in a house in Vienna, but this is not so. They get this impression from seeing film clips of him and his relations having a fun afternoon in a garden, which is actually in the rear of an apartment block where Freud’s family occupied a set of small rooms. I visited those rooms in Apartment 11 while in Vienna.

At the time of my visit, the only room restored to its more or less original (how can anything be restored to its original?) is Freud’s waiting room, a small space that must have presented an awkward situation if patients happened to know each other. Apart from that, the rest of Berggasse 19 has been turned into a Freud museum.

On display are photocopies of his letters. I was impressed by Freud’s handwriting: very neat, rigidly perpendicular, tightly crowded together line after line, with neat loops and no ink stains or blobs, no mess. Very anal we might say.

Then there was the film footage, taken in part by his daughter Anna, probably to document the great man’s abode before he and the family had to flee from the Nazis. The film showed the apartment’s contents in detail and included friends and family, Freud himself wandering in the garden, very self-aware of his importance – aware of things coming to an end including, perhaps, his own life.

Characteristically, Freud is posed with one hand on his hip. Another sequence shows Freud in an armchair, his lap covered with a blanket, his furry mutt of a dog, “Tatoun,” at his feet.

I can’t say I learned anything new about the man. But then, it has been difficult for biographers to separate the man from the myth.

Above: Freud’s apartment

Freedom

Our times are not as unique as we might think for there is nothing new in human behavior. In this regard, I have long had an interest in the issue of individual freedom of thought and personal responsibility versus mass-movements. I’ve asked myself why some people are relatively independent and open in thinking while others are closed-minded, often enslaved to ideologies with mass-appeal. In the following, I would like to put into perspective what I’ve learned about free-thinking and its antithesis, ideological servitude.

One of the 20th century’s great thinkers, Erich Fromm, taught us that freedom is not so much a goal as a burden to most people. It has always been so for various reasons. But, key to Fromm’s thought is that many people find freedom too much of a responsibility hence, like children who long to be told what to do, they long be rid of it. The freedom to determine your own course in life, to decide what you believe or aspire to, demands a degree of critical ability which, sadly, many people lack. It also requires rationality, an ability to read, and a willingness to doubt what one is fed as “truth” which, more often than not, merely serves to retain those in power or supports those who seek power over others.

Erich Fromm (sketch)

This is what drives religious and political leaders – the ideological engineers of the soul. They are only too happy to tell people what is “true” or “false,” “haram,” or “kosher;” what to believe and what to reject; who to love and who to hate.

We have seen the results on TV – masses of youngsters waving little red books, chanting ideas they don’t comprehend, rioting and destroying, then marching off to war to be sacrificed by the thousands. We’ve seen others sieg-heiling a leader and, again, marching off to war. It is a pattern that has repeated itself throughout history and probably existed before the written word. So how do we account for this?

On an individual level, followers of mass-movements (or cults), have a certain psychic makeup that lends itself to self-annihilation. That is, individuals who loathe themselves, who feel impotent to direct their own lives, who feel alienated from society, are prime candidates for conversion to a “cause,” even if they don’t understand it. Joining a movement entails professing belief even if one doesn’t understand a word of what one is supposed to believe in. Simply acquiescing to the role of follower satisfies the need to forget oneself, to submerge into a mass to serve a greater good. In this collection of believers, there is an often-trumpeted “equality” that no matter what social class you come from, in the movement everybody has an opportunity to be consequential. The Party has use for you.

This is a reason that many men and women were attracted to Adolf Hitler’s movement: they felt useful in building the Third Reich. They became relevant. They might have been bored, unemployed, without prospects, but in National Socialism they found a purpose and a sense of belonging. The same can be said of any –ism: communism, socialism, fascism, Islamism, or any number of fundamentalist movements.

Mass movements often have an appealing religiosity about them. They employ lots of symbols, use rituals like fire-light parades, and rites of passage, the wearing of uniforms, to encourage a strong sense of solidarity. They refer to a higher power, to a god, or to fate, or a historic process that sanctions whatever program is used to motivate followers. By joining a movement, you discard your detested old self and acquire a new name and rank in an organization, and you are given a task. You get a new identity. You spend a lot of time play-acting: you drill, you practice, you chant, you pray, you march in unison. You are literally remade into a self that can forget the past and look forward to rewards in an idealized future, especially in heaven.

The movement gives you an opportunity to purify yourself, to participate in the cleansing and remaking of society in general for, like the individual, you believe civilization has become corrupt. Its liberal morals, open-mindedness, and individualism will be swept aside in fire and blood for a holistic remaking, in keeping with a model frequently located in the past. Hence Hitler wanted to revive a pre-Christian social order based on obedience to “Germanic” principles, while Islamists want to recreate a caliphate when Islam was at the height of its imperial power. Conveniently, this ideal is in the distant past and thus can be defined any way the leadership wants to. The point is to get back to a “pure” society and an “untainted” self — whatever that is supposed to mean.

However, mass movements need outsiders who contrast with insiders to define who the believers are. In other words, they need scapegoats. For Malaysian fundamentalists, it is the prosperous (read “greedy”) Chinese and the traditional foes, the Christians. Similarly, for Arab (Sunni) Muslims it is the Jews and Shiites, while for Shiites it is Sunnis and Jews. You need an enemy to unite your herd. Behind the hatred of outsiders lie envy, resentment, and ignorance of others. But, according to Eric Hoffer, there is also guilt borne of self-doubt against which violence is the perfect antidote. The believer’s self-contempt is externalized against a weaker “other,” to give the self a sense of meaning and purpose. The results are predictable. You see them on TV: terrorist attacks, open warfare, and ethnic cleansing.

The problem with all of this is that it is neuroses on a grand scale. Gone is the individual sense of inadequacy and present is a mass who shares a common psychological illness. And hence the individual is “normal.” Everyone shares the same delusion so there is no one left to say otherwise.

What’s the moral of all this? Embrace your freedom while you have it; read a lot; have confidence in yourself; don’t submit to leaders, and stay clear of cults, sects, and mass-movements.

Scent of Time