Irrational Complications of the Cancer Problem

Fate has Connected psychoanalysis with cancer in a significant way. The following considerations take up the challenge which Freud presented to medicine by his own cancer and by his concept of psychology. The relationship between disease and personal value system is not coincidental. The same genetic tendencies shape the personality structure and the organic disease liability, at least in the case of the chronic illnesses which develop on a constitutional basis.1

The most immediate aspect of the psychological approach to the cancer problem is the relationship between psychological dynamics and biology. Freud2 felt that “in the psychological field the biological factor is really the rock-bottom.” The latter, in his opinion, demanded resignation. For Freud this attitude was exemplified by the anatomical difference between male and female. Faced with this fact, in his opinion, basic human narcissism was inevitably involved in castration fear and penis envy, respectively. The preceding example of Freud's concept of biology and of sex is offered here because it is typical of two prejudices which have become extremely popular among scientists and laymen in the last hundred years: 1) that psychology ends where physical nature begins; 2) that human nature is invariably intent on acquiring power over sexual partners and over the animate and inanimate environment in general. Both prejudices will be found to be intimately involved in the course which the cancer problem has taken.

Freud's analogy between the biological sphere and bedrock reflects accurately enough the concept of nature which prevailed in his lifetime: every living organism was thought of as a rigidly structured mechanism which functions in a manner determined by external stimuli. Since then the ultra-microscope, particularly cinemicrography, has revealed a different picture. The cell, formerly described as the building stone of the organism, appears now as “a systematically organized community of molecular popula