That elegy is cited by no less than four of the contributors to "Freud: Conflict and Culture," a new book of essays edited by social historian Michael S. Roth. And each of the authors focuses in on one particular line: "To us," Auden wrote, "he is no more a person now / but a whole climate of opinion."
It is fitting that Auden's poem turned Freud from a scientist into a transcendent, mythic figure, lifting him from his London grave to the hall of Olympus, where "the household of Impulse mourns...[and] sad is Eros" at his passing. Freud's life work was to take the dark, unknowable realms of human nature and transform them into myths: all men were Oedipus, all life a passionate drama of violence, repression and the quest for release.
Seen in this light, Freud's genius was narrative, and a strong case can be made for seeing his oeuvre as literary: besides making the growth of the child into the journey of Oedipus, he made dreams into complicated metaphors, and neuroses into the symbols of deep inner truths. The fact remains, however, that he is famous as a scientist and a doctor - more specifically as the founder of psychoanalysis, that perpetually controversial method of healing present pains by confronting those from the past.
"Culture and Conflict" is in no way a fawning tribute to its subject. Adolf Grunbaum's "A Century of Progress" points out various ways in which one of Freud's basic proposals - that the very process of discussing past traumas will simultaneously reveal the causes of one's symptoms and heal them - is largely bogus. Another essay, John Forrester's "Portrait of A Dream Reader," probes Freud's magnum opus, "The Interpretation of Dreams," in which the author employs the incredibly suspect methodology of analyzing his own dreams and then using his conclusions as theoretical "proof."
What can't be ignored, however, is the enormous impact Freud's ideas have had, not only on the world of psychology, but on our culture as a whole. Though the themes of psychoanalysis have seen much distillation, if not bastardization, in the process of being assimilated into popular culture (as illustrated in one of the book's best essays, E. Ann Kaplan's "Freud, Film, and Culture"), the Freudian slip, the Oedipal complex and Super-Ego are phrases we use, ideas that are part of (and here we go...) our consciousness.
Though there is much here that will be of interest only to the trivia-hungry or students of analyses, "Conflict and Culture" is an illuminating and readable account of Freud's basic ideas. It also offers a solid account of his life, seen in the context of the work it produced, and it gives deep insight into the paths of progress and storms of criticism that said work has engendered.
(Ben Winters)
- "Freud: Conflict and Culture"
copyright 1998 New City Communications, Inc.