The Secret of Psychoanalysis: History Reads Theory Author(s): Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok Reviewed work(s): Source:

Critical Inquiry, Vol. 13, No. 2, The Trial(s) of Psychoanalysis (Winter, 1987), pp. 278286 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343492 . Accessed: 30/12/2012 09:52
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The Secret of Psychoanalysis: History Reads Theory

Nicholas Rand and MariaTorok

All disciplines have their histories in addition to their theories. In general, the history of a set of problems is treated separately from the nature of the problems themselves. The axioms of a given discipline may be the object of external inquiry but are not usually subject to historical examination. In this way, psychoanalysis has been investigated, even challenged, by a variety of other disciplines: biology, linguistics, history, philosophy, literature, and so forth. One may ask whether psychoanalysis can also become its own object, effectively distancing itself from itself. Will historical scrutiny provide criticism from within and thereby alter the nature of psychoanalysis? It has been our observation that the history of the creation of psychoanalysis and of the psychoanalytic movement suggests deficiencies and omissions within psychoanalytic theory. This implies something far beyond the simple idea that no serious examination of theoretical problems can occur without an understanding of their history. Not only the past but the future of psychoanalysis, both as a theory and as a clinical practice, may well depend on the conscious assessment and assimilation of its own history. "The Secret of Psychoanalysis: History Reads Theory" is intended in part as an introduction to Nicolas Abraham's "Notes on the Phantom" which will, in turn, illuminate the theoretical and practical scope of this essay.

CriticalInquiry 13 (Winter 1987) ? 1987 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/87/1302-0012$01.00.

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Critical Inquiry

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A history of Freudian psychoanalysis could be written based on the voices of dissenting insiders, without including schismatics such as Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Wilhelm Stekel, and others who eventually developed independent systems of thought. The detailed interpretation of such rifts is already a consecrated approach to psychoanalytic history. But much remains to be learned from the internal criticism of those who have participated in Freud's movement or have sought sympathetically to understand the birth and progress of Freudian psychoanalysis. Most of the disagreements concern theoretical and clinical issues or the blocked access to documents that are essential to the historical assessment of psychoanalysis. This is Ludwig Marcuse's case as he writes to ErnestJones on 10 October 1957.' Still it is incomprehensible to me why Freud's major correspondence [to Fliess] is not being made available to the public in its entirety so that those who would draw Freud's picture should not be limited to expurgated selections. You will most certainly understand that some people, despite their veneration of your book on Freud, wish to see all the materials.... The desire to arrive at an independent opinion is quite great, at least as far as I am concerned.2 Marcuse is responding here to a letter Jones had written to him on 14 September 1957: I have just been reading with great interest your book on Freud the greater part of which I admire very much for its fascinating exposition and good understanding.... Unfortunately in writing about Freud's personality in the first chapter you have suffered the same fate of the many other approaches to the subject. It seems always to stir some unconscious
1. Ludwig Marcuse is the author of Freud und sein Bild vom Menschen [Freud and his image of man] (Frankfurt, 1956). 2. Marcuse to Ernest Jones, 10 Oct. 1957, Briefe von und an Ludwig Marcuse (Zurich, 1975), pp. 148-49; our translation.

Nicholas Rand, assistant professor of French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is completing a book on the notion of hiding in literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.Maria Torok is the author de (with Nicolas Abraham) of The WolfMan's Magic Word(Le Verbier L'Homme aux loups), recently published in translation. "The Secret of is Psychoanalysis" partof a book-lengthstudyRand and Torok are writing on Freud and psychoanalytictheory.

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conflicts which lead to serious misinterpretations and incorrect hypotheses which only add to the distorted legends of that personality which are so frequent. It even affects the capacity to quote correctly simple facts even when they are perfectly clear in my Biography. You are entirely mistaken in supposing that the family employed me as a censor or that I myself suppressed any material. They gave me carte blanche with the result that reviewers have praised me for the extreme frankness with which I dealt with Freud's intimate life. Where you find data missing in the book you may be sure that they do not exist.... The same applies to the publication of the Fliess correspondence. I have of course read all the unpublished letters. In a few cases I found a couple of sentences of sufficient interest to be worth publishing and Anna Freud promptly did so in the English translation. The rest were entirely uninteresting talks about the weather of a holiday, each other's children, and the date of his resuming work.3 Now that The Complete Lettersof Sigmund Freud to WilhelmFliess are in the public domain, we know that the "couple of sentences of sufficient interest to be worth publishing" have swollen to over one hundred letters, omitted in their entirety from the original English-language edition. The claimed triviality of the omitted passages is refuted in a letter Anna Freud wrote to Jones himself in 1953. The importance of the material to which Anna Freud referred can be appreciated in light of Jeffrey Masson's Assault on Truth, which is partially devoted to Emma Eckstein's case. Masson quotes Anna Freud's letter: Emma Eckstein was an early patient of my father's and there are many letters concerning her in the Fliess correspondence which were left out, since the story would have been incomplete and rather bewildering to the reader.4 What we see here is censorship-a key concept in Freud's early metapsychology and a correlative to the notions of repression and to the primary materials of psychoanalysis. In the superego-applied historical metapsychology that the fabric of psychoanalysis thus inevitably becomes, who, we may ask, assumes the role of censor? The circumstances leading to the "creation of a secret committee for the supervision of the

3. Jones to Marcuse, 14 Sept. 1957, ibid., pp. 144-46. 4. Anna Freud to Jones, 19 Nov. 1953, quoted in Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppressionof the Seduction Theory(New York, 1984), p. 55.

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Critical Inquiry

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development of psychoanalysis" provide an answer.5 In July 1912 Jones proposes to Saindor Ferenczi that an "Old Guard" or secret society of sorts be set up to protect against potential dissensions which might betray the growing body of Freud's basic tenets (such as the primacy of infantile sexuality, the unconscious, and dream interpretation, among others). Quite enthusiastic about an idea that had been conjured up in Jones by "stories of Charlemagne's paladins from boyhood, and many secret societies from literature," Freud responds to Jones' proposal in a letter dated 1 August 1912:6 What took hold of my imagination immediately is your idea of a secret council composed of the best and most trustworthy among our men to take care of the further development of psychoanalysis and defend the cause against personalities and accidents when I am no more ... I know there is a boyish and perhaps romantic element too in this conception, but perhaps it could be adapted to meet the necessities of reality. I will give my fancy free play and leave to you the part of censor. I daresay it would make living and dying easier for me if I knew of such an association existing to watch over my creation. First of all: The committee would have to be strictlysecret in its existence and its actions. It could be composed of you, Ferenczi and [Otto] Rank among whom the idea was generated. [Hanns] Sachs, in whom my confidence is unlimited in spite of the shortness of our acquaintance-and [Karl] Abraham could be called next, but only under the condition of all of you consenting. I had better be left outside of your conditions and pledges: to be sure I will keep the utmost secrecy and be thankful for all you communicate to me. [LW 2:153-54; ellipsis in original] The role of censor Freud bestowed on Jones in 1912 and the censoring the loyal paladin performed in 1957 are contrary to the concept of censorship in psychoanalytic theory. Identified as the agency responsible for the distortion of dream thoughts, censorship can be overcome through interpretation. Even the underlying silence dreams and symptoms symbolize may ultimately be opened to scrutiny. The paladin, on the other hand, must never betray the trust placed in him as a guardian censor: permitting the restoration of any deleted material would constitute a betrayal. In Jones' letter to Marcuse we can see something like a censor's
5. "Bildung eines geheimen Comitees zur Uberwachung der Entwicklung der PA [Psychoanalyse]" (Sigmund Freud to Saindor Ferenczi, 12 Aug. 1912). This unpublished letter is quoted here through the generosity of Judith Dupont. 6. Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols. (New York, 1981), 2:152; all further references to this work, abbreviated LW, will be included in the text.

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credo: first, my being a censor is itself a secret ("You are entirely mistaken in supposing that the family employed me as a censor"); second, whatever is missing does not exist ("When you find data missing .... you may be sure that they do not exist"), or, alternatively, what does exist is entirely trivial ("The rest were entirely uninteresting talks about the weather").7 Freud's apprehensions for the safety of his psychoanalytic system in 1912-13 may seem perfectly reasonable. But historical documents were being suppressed in 1957-a time when, at least in the West, all threats to eradicate the psychoanalytic movement had vanished. How can we explain the discrepancy between the psychoanalytic concept and the historical fact of censorship? In principle, all of psychoanalysis is based on the theoretical and therapeutic objective of detecting the work of censorship in order to overcome it. This is not true in the case of censored documents. Unlike a patient who can overcome the effects of censorship, Marcuse is totally powerless to do so. If the purpose of psychoanalysis is to interpret and dispel all forms of censorship, Jones' censorship of historical documents is inherently contradictory. The paradox of "censorship" in Freudian theory and in the history of the psychoanalytic movement will emerge more clearly if we turn to an early clinical work in which Freud assumes the unusual role of a "censor" who deletes traumas. The case of Emmy von N., the first Freud records in Studies on Hysteria, may be considered the forerunner of the tension between lifting and imposing censorship. Emmy von N. represented Freud's first attempt at applying the hypnotic-cathartic method of treatment he had acquired from Josef Breuer. "On May 1, 1889, I took on the case of a lady of about forty years of age. ... She was a hysteric and could be put into a state of somnambulism with the greatest ease; .. . I decided that I would make use of Breuer's technique of investigation under hypnosis. ... This was my first attempt at handling that therapeutic method."8 Freud does in fact use hypnosis to help his patient recall and describe traumatic events from her past. At the same time, however, the "therapeutic method" he employed shows features that have little, if anything, to do with catharsis' (the abreaction of traumatic affects through talking and outbursts of psychic tension). Contrary to the objectives of catharsis and to the subsequent development of Freudian psychoanalysis-toward the conscious working out of traumas and conflicts in the transferential relationship between patient and analyst-we see in "Frau Emmy von N." the singular workings of a series
7. Censorship of the Freud-Fliess letters often concerns the unstable aspects of early psychoanalytic theory. See Maria Torok, "Unpublished by Freud to Fliess," CriticalInquiry 12 (Winter 1986): 391-98. 8. Josef Breuer and Freud, Studies on Hysteria, ed. and trans. James Strachey (New York, 1982), p. 48; all further references to this work, abbreviated S, will be included in the text.

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Critical Inquiry

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of deletions. The aim of both catharsis and psychoanalysis is to provide therapeutic tools for coming in contact with oneself. And yet, Freud's description of his first case reveals a process of suppression. Under hypnosis I asked her what event in her life had produced the most lasting effect on her and came up most often in her memory. Her husband's death, she said. I got her to describe this event to me in full detail, and this she did with every sign of the I made it impossible for her to see any of deepest emotion.... these melancholy things again, not only by wiping out her memories of them in their p1asticform but by removing her whole recollection of them, as though they had never been present in her mind. [S, pp. 60-61] My therapy consists in wiping away these pictures, so that she is no longer able to see them before her. [S, p. 53] I remembered that she had already mentioned this experience this morning, and, as an experiment, I asked her on what other occasions this "seizing hold" had happened. To my agreeable surprise she made a long pause this time before answering and then asked doubtfully, "My little girl?" She was quite unable to recall the other two occasions. My prohibition-my expunging of her memories -had therefore been effective. [S, pp. 58-59] Freud's procedure of deletion leads to a unique relationship between patient and therapist. When, as much as eighteen months later, I saw Frau Emmy again in a relatively good state of health, she complained that there were a number of most important moments in her life of which she had only the vaguest memory. She regarded this as evidence of a weakening of her memory, and I had to be careful not to tell her the cause of this particular instance of amnesia. [S, p. 61 n.1] Entirely without the consent of the primary party-the patient-and therefore in a way quite different from that implied by a pact of professional secrecy, Freud becomes the sole depository of Emmy von N.'s life and expunged memories. As far as Emmy herself is concerned, she too is far from thinking of professional secrets when the following incident occurs: Another time, when she was feeling in good health, she told me of a visit she had paid to the Roman Catacombs, but could not recall two technical terms; nor could I help her with them. Immediately afterwards I asked her under hypnosis which words she

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had in mind. But she did not know them in hypnosis either. So I said to her: "Don't bother about them any more now, but when you are in the garden to-morrow between five and six in the afternoon-nearer six than five-they will suddenly occur to you." Next evening, while we were talking about something which had no connection with catacombs, she suddenly burst out:"'Crypt', doctor, and 'Columbarium'." [S, p. 98] For Emmy von N. the words "crypt" and "columbarium" refer to Rome. She will never know that in these words she described her therapist as Herr DoktorKrypte,as the place where the burial of her past had secretly occurred. The conclusion that Freud has become Emmy von N.'s crypt or secret reliquary must either represent a metaphorical abuse of language or identify a mystery. And if there is a mystery, it will seem all the more obscure once we uncover a structural analogy between Freud, the secret warden of his patient's deleted memories, and Jones, the secret guardian of those censored documents whose very existence he denied to Marcuse. While it is true that the particular approach taken in Emmy von N.'s case remains without parallel in Freud's clinical writings, the procedure of removal by deletion employed in this case history must be understood as central to psychoanalytic theory. No matter how unimportant the "therapeutic method" of "wiping out" may seem given the treatment's early data, the case of deletion epitomized by "Frau Emmy von N." remains an integral part of the development of psychoanalysis. The secret committee, established to supervise the development of psychoanalysis, is a direct corollary to the secret depository Freud created during Emmy von N.'s therapy. In Emmy's case Freud had performed the twofold action of wiping out her memories and then depositing them in a secret storehouse (that is, in Freud himself). The Committee established some twenty years later represents the creation of a secret enclave within the larger boundaries of a publicly proclaimed psychoanalytic association (founded in 1910). The Committee had to be "strictlysecret in its existence" while at the same time it was called upon to guarantee the existence and coherence of psychoanalysis. It follows that in 1913 psychoanalysis itself becomes a secret as it is withdrawn-under the seal of absolute secrecy pledged by the members of its most powerful body-into the Committee. Rather curiously, but certainly not without reason, the seven rings owned by the members of the Committee allegorize the same structure: On May 25, 1913, Freud celebrated the event [the creation of the Committee] by presenting us each with an antique Greek intaglio from his collection which we then got mounted in a gold ring. Freud himself had long carried such a ring, a Greek-Roman intaglio with the head of Jupiter, and when some seven years later [Max]

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Eitingon was also given one there were the "Seven Rings" of the chapter heading in Sachs' book. [LW 2:154] Each intaglio Freud presented to his paladins was recessed in a ring as the Committee was set within the Association.

The case of Emmy von N., the creation of a secret committee, and the censorship of the Freud-Fliess letters mark a hitherto unnoted thread of continuity in the development of psychoanalysis. The nature of such developments does not fall within the province of psychoanalytic theory as it was known in 1957, the year of Marcuse's exchange with Jones. In light of the secret committee and Freud's early case of deletion, Jones' censorship cannot be construed as merely performing the function of superego in the historical topography of Freud's system of thought. Neither the secret existence of the Committee nor Emmy von N.'s expunged memories can be understood in terms of dynamic repression since they were not subject to a return of the repressed. Furthermore, none of of desire, family romance, the Freud's celebrated concepts-prohibition polarity of instincts and their vicissitudes-can account for the creation and fostering of secrets or for their repercussions within the psychoanalytic movement. The secrets which permeate the history of psychoanalysis will yield up their meaning once we posit the continuous presence of a secret in Freud himself.9 Whatever its content or cause, the structure of this secret must be related to the basic contradiction that separates psychoanalytic theory from its history: that between the construction of clinical and theoretical tools for the recovery of dynamic repression and the creation of areas of absolute silence, a preservative repression that defies all attempts at discovery. Once noted, the contradiction between the theoretical aims and the historical development of psychoanalysis may point toward a moment of contact. An encounter, not a confrontation, between history and theory would offer the possibility of generating internal criticism within psychoanalysis itself. The critique of Freudian psychoanalysis emerges from a consideration of the psychoanalysis and its most fundamental theoretical concerns. The theory itself cannot be considered comprehensive unless it includes the history of its creation and of its dissemination. Consequently, the history of psychoanalysis finds itself in the role of reader and analyst: history reads theory and in so doing forces the latter to modify its framework. The originality of this analysis resides precisely in the methodological
9. See in this connection the afterword, "What Is Occult in Occultism," in Nicolas trans. Nicholas Rand Abraham and Torok, The Wolf Man's Magic Word: A Cryptonymy, (Minneapolis, 1986).

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proposition that the theoretical future of our field of inquiry cannot be divorced from the study and conceptual integration of its history. While future research may produce results different from those presented here, the fact remains that the history of psychoanalysis points to the problem of secret depositories. Strange though this may seem, the concept of the secret is a theoretical and clinical contribution of the history of psychoanalysis. The metapsychological theory of the phantom furnishes, in its turn, the necessary means for detecting the work of secrets that-no matter how faint their marks may be-pervade the entire field of psychoanalysis.

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