Freud and the World Wars

Sigmund Freud was profoundly affected by World War I and the run-up to World War II. Witnessing the devastation of Europe in 1914-1918 changed the direction of his development of psychoanalytic thought. The experience became much more personal in the 1930s, when Nazi supporters burned his books. Like Otto Loewi, whom we described in a previous post, he was terrorized by the Gestapo within a day of the German takeover of Austria in 1938, and his response was a remarkable outburst of productivity.

The War to End All Wars

At the outbreak of World War I, the 58-year-old Freud appeared to be at the peak of his career, at the head of the growing international psychoanalytic movement. Initially, like many in Austria-Hungary, he was very enthusiastic, but as his sons were drafted into the Hapsburg army and he began to recognize the wholesale destruction that was taking place, he became weary and discouraged. He expressed the widespread disillusionment in his book Thoughts for the Times on War and Death. Especially hard was recognizing the breakdown of the Pax Britannica, which had upheld Western values and provided relative stability for decades (1).

Freud’s disillusion with the war affected his thinking in at least two important ways. Earlier in his career he had been a lecturer in neuropathology and had published on cocaine and on clinical conditions such as aphasia. As he moved into studies of the mind, his 1895 Project for a Scientific Psychology made clear his commitment to determine the physiologic basis of psychological processes (2). His topographical view of the mind, as formulated in the years leading up to World War I, retained some biological underpinnings consistent with this history. Now, rather than focusing primarily on the role of the sexual impulse and its repression in the origin of neuroses, he came to believe that much of human behavior could be explained by the opposition of two powerful forces: "Eros," the drive for love, and "Thanatos," the predilection for aggression and violence. Secondly, he began to move from a viewpoint centering on the individual and the relationship to parents, to a new one involving the role of society in shaping morals and (sometimes unsuccessfully) helping keep aggression under control. He also participated in the post-war review of the apparently harsh manner in which wartime neuroses had been handled, following accusations that Julius Wagner-Jauregg, an eminent psychiatrist and future Nazi supporter, had seemingly inflicted suffering on his patients.

In 1930 Freud published Civilization and its Discontents, in which he dwelt on the drive of individuals toward impulsive behavior including violence, and the ideal role of society in curbing these impulses. Phrased differently, he began to take the view that human unhappiness results not only because of repressed sexuality, but also because of the restraints society normally places on aggressive and destructive instincts (3). He also had the sober realization that sometimes large groups can have the opposite effect on individuals, releasing moral constraints and unleashing the horrors of war.

The Gathering Storm

Freud was struggling with these concepts when once again he began to experience the pathway to war, with the growing political influence and violence of the Nazis. In 1932, Albert Einstein wrote him from Berlin, asking if he thought war was so inherent in human nature that it is inevitable, or whether it can be prevented. In a famous reply, Freud emphasized both the depth to which we have instincts for violence, but also the hope for human culture which can "master our instinctive life." The two followed very different paths after that; shortly after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Einstein fled to England and later the U.S., while Freud chose to stay in Vienna. He had been diagnosed with cancer of the jaw a decade earlier, and was determined to conclude his life in Vienna. By that time Freud was experiencing the growing persecution firsthand. The book burnings that took place beginning in May 1933 were devoted to "un-German" works, of which Freud’s were so high on the list that a special "fire-oath" denouncing "overvaluation of sexual activity" was recited as the books were thrown into the flames.

The day after the German takeover of Austria in March 1938, the 82-year-old Freud’s home was raided by the Gestapo, who took his money, valuables, and passport. Left with little but his sense of humor, he commented at the time, "I never received as much for a house call" (4). Freud’s sons had already left, but his daughter Anna was picked up by the Gestapo, taking with her a bottle containing a lethal dose of Veronal (a barbiturate) in case she were to be tortured. She was later released after protests by two ex-patients, William Bullitt, the American ambassador to France, and Princess Marie Bonaparte, great-granddaughter of Napoleon.

Freud was now committed to exile, but the problem was obtaining permission. Fortunately, help came from several sources. One was once again his princess-patient, who paid the Nazis a considerable amount of money to allow him to go. He is also said to have obtained help from an unlikely source, Anton Sauerwald, a German official who had been appointed to oversee Freud’s possessions and publishing business. Sauerwald was a 40-year-old chemist, and he himself read some of Freud’s works and came to respect him. He sold some of Freud’s possessions to raise money, which he used to pay for favorable action on visas for him and some of his family (5). The story is a complicated one—he was a Nazi whose hobby was bomb-making, and who after the war was charged with war crimes including stealing the family’s assets. A letter from Anna Freud in his support ultimately aided in his release from jail.

On June 4, 1938, Freud was allowed to take the Orient Express to Paris, as a first stop on the way to London. Before he could board, the Gestapo required him to sign a document freeing them from any blame for his treatment. They perhaps did not appreciate his sense of humor when he wrote, "I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone" (5).

Freud's couch in London, 2004

Source: Robert Huffstutter in Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Once in London, Freud continued to be troubled by cancer, and Sauerwald, who had come to visit him, arranged for his Vienna doctor to travel there to perform an operation which Freud thought extended his life by a year. In his remaining time, he was very productive. He saw patients in a room in his new Hampstead home, which was designed to resemble his old office in Vienna, complete with the original couch. During this time he received visits from luminaries such as H.G. Wells, Salvador Dali, and Virginia Woolf. He completed his long-unfinished book Moses and Monotheism, and a synopsis of his lifetime’s work, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, which came out posthumously. When asked how he had managed to do so much in the past year, his reply was, "Thank the Fuhrer" (5). He died three weeks after war was declared in September 1939.

Freudian Psychology Essential Reads

The Birth of Psychoanalysis, and the Erasure of a Life

Failed Resolutions and Broken Promises

Portions of this post were adapted from Trial by Fire: World War II and the Founders of Modern Neuroscience and Psychopharmacology.