Power, Submission, Freedom and the Creation of Psychoanalysis

Arnold Richards's penetrating and sophisticated analysis of Freud's self-avowed identity as a “Godless Jew” focuses on the persistent creation of a sense of self as a “Man of Science.” Science is the “religion” to which Freud adhered with unremitting tenacity, and, like Moses, and for the Greeks, Zeus, gave birth to a great idea—a heroic campaign—in the pursuit of which was born a child of the intellect—Psychoanalysis.

Richards's analysis centers on the formation of Freud's identity as it concerns itself with his relationship to his father, Jacob Freud, and it's unconscious oedipal matrix. In this account the determining factor in the emergence of Freud's atheistic, tenaciously-held beliefs, is this paternal relationship. The god of the Jews—Jahweh—and his heroic offspring Moses, may be thought of as mythical representations of the father and son. Richards appears to have linked the quintessentially Jewish myth with Freud's discovery of its central impetus—the oedipus complex.

But an integral precursor of the oedipus complex, as Freud and many have further discovered, is the pre-oedipal relation to the mother. Beneath the oedipus complex, as a relatively late-developing mental structure, is the pre-oedipal foundation of the self and identity-building interaction with the mother.

Accordingly, I would like to dwell for a moment on the role of Freud's mother in the formation of his scientific and atheistic identity. As Richards and others point out, Freud seems to have made a bit of a mystery of his relationship with Amalie, although Jones describes her as a lively, youthful woman, and a doting mother to Sigmund (Jones, 1953).

The Moses legend describes the foundation of a nation with a distinctive character (in particular, monotheism): from an undifferentiated mass of degraded slaves to a proud, distinctive and conquering culture. In

particular, it is necessary to acknowledge what preceded the monotheistic cult of the Hebrews. In the multi-lingual collection of tribes in the Near East region and beyond, the polytheistic belief-systems appeared to be the rule. In addition, many of the most revered and powerful gods were female.1 In some of these religions and cults, the male servants of the goddess (priests) engaged in self-castration.2

As a departure from the father-centered interpretation of Freud's atheism, I wish to turn attention to the myth of the gestation and birth of the Greek father-god, Zeus,3 who was saved from death by the deceptive agency of his mother, Rhea. In this myth Cronus was threatened by being overthrown by his children, but Rhea saved them by substituting rocks

as Cronus was preparing to eat them.4 An elaboration of this myth, regarding it as an unconscious fantasy, identifies Zeus as a quintessential male—the father of mankind. He is, then, among his other attributes, both phallic and oedipal. But in this myth, it is the mother who exhibits the courageous defiance (albeit, through the means of deception) to save the product of her femaleness—her children.

Two myths, however, raise some ambiguity about Zeus' hyper-masculine identity. Athena, a major goddess in the Greek pantheon, was, in one version of the myth of her orgin, born from Zeus's forehead—we might say as the product of his intellect.5 In another myth, Zeus completes the gestation of Dionysus by carrying him sewn into his thigh.6 I am calling attention to the male's wish to take for himself the power belonging to the mother.

Male envy and female magic—procreative powers—are perhaps contained in these myths.

These two fragments suggest that heroic or great ideas emerge, narcissistically, from a male's deep, and often renounced identification with his mother.7 A possible inference is that in the mythical (infantile fantasy)

father Zeus “steals” the procreative and gestational power of Hera, for which she is eternally cursed with impulses to revenge this theft, and to destroy the stolen offspring. The revenge may well be enhanced by the gender of the baby (male). In this construction, the wronged, vengeful, and envious woman (mother) becomes an object of danger.8 She exposes herself to the man-to-be, producing in him an erection. And this “dangerous,” involuntary reaction of tumescence, (passively experienced) may be in danger of the penis being violently abolished by the parents (in the primal scene), or, ambiguously, by the generation of a wish in the boy to protect this source of pleasure by activating an active and omnipotent wish to protect this source of pleasure by (omnipotently) sacrificing it to the source of the “problem”—the mother goddess. Perhaps, in the enactment of this protective self-castration he has identified with the power of the woman (mother) to both produce the “magical” erection as well as to remove it. And this may, in turn, refer to the basic sequence, which appears throughout psychosexual development: need—awareness of need—unpleasure—gratification of the need—and the disappearance of the unpleasure. In the magic world of early childhood this fantasied self-castration and identification with the mother represents a transformation of a experience of dangerous need-gratification to an solution.

I am suggesting that perhaps an earlier identification with his mother may be included in the formation of Freud's scientific and atheistic identity. The mother-figure, in unconscious fantasy, contains the power of the origin of “mankind”; and the retention of this “mystery” is an important part of her great power. The woman's body is not only a representation of the threat of rendering a man weak and powerless (an element in the castration-complex), but it also both fosters and inhibits

curiosity, without which gift a person cannot become a scientist. Finding the answer to the problem “Where do I come from?” becomes the paradigmatic question the scientist addresses to Mother Nature. The fear of finding the answer to this secret of the powerful mother and father leads to comforting illusion and delusion—religious belief. One might say that this intimidated individual has intentionally made himself not-knowing. But the solution to this fraught question renders the “self-castrated” researcher powerless against the tantalizing mysteries of Nature.

It must be clear to most liberally educated persons that the religion-atheism polarity is really a life and death battle that Freud was propelled by his character to enter. What is it that produces life, and what causes a living thing to die? Richards appropriately applies the tools of psychobiography to answer the question for Freud's decision to take the side of atheistic science. He calls attention to the prevailing Bildung movement, and more specifically, to the spirit of the Phillippson Bible, containing within it the spirit of the Enlightenment. But on a deeper level, the atheism is a product of an intra-psychic conflict about his relationship to his mild, benign and loving father.

On the other hand, Freud calls attention to his father's judgment of him when, at the age of 6, he urinated (in the chamber pot?) in his parents' bedroom, and his father rendered the judgment: “The boy will come to nothing.”9 So, this may well represent both an act of competitive defiance and, finally, through his father's temporary removal of supportive love, a blow to the boy's narcissistic self-image. In becoming a scientist, Freud may have been attempting (with almost complete success) to carry forward the defiant, self-affirming impulse, a component of his oedipus complex. It may also have produced a text for Freud's family romance fantasy, which, accordingly, would include the idea of God; and a possible elaboration of the resultant fantasy is that one follows the (identificatory) injunction of a monotheistic God: “Be like me—but subordinate!” It is also possible to see this as a defiance of the monotheistic paradigm: “You must not try to be like me—the one and only god!”10

A parallel narrative in Greek mythology is to be found in that part of the Oedipus drama11 where he defies his father, Laius, at the crossroad12 from Corinth to Thebes, only subsequently to marry his mother, Jocasta, and become king of Thebes. The conflict is about precedence, which, to Oedipus' ultimate downfall, he is punished with self-mutilating blindness—he deprives himself of one of the primary tools of scientific inquiry: perception. In the end, Oedipus is left only with “inner” knowledge, for which he is revered in Athens—one might suggest that he becomes capable of self-analysis.13 The scientist is not only firmly tied to intellect, but he or she assumes a dependent position toward perception.

Yet another analogy may be identified in the circumcision ritual. After the foreskin has been removed (through a symbolic castration), the glans-penis is constantly “revealed.” In the uncircumcised this occurs during erection (sexual excitement), and this may represent a self-revelation, a possible reference, symbolically, to self-analysis. In the psychoanalytic situation between the psychoanalyst and the patient, the analyst becomes a transference object for the patient and presides over revelation, thus becoming for the patient an object of desire, and at the same time an object of fear—an object of mistrust (transference resistance).

Returning to the urinary (phallic) function, the act of micturition produces a sense of release from a bodily tension. Lactating mothers apparently experience such a sense of release in the “let-down” feeling. Although not especially convincing, it may be possible to analogize this to the “let-down” experience in micturition. In a successful analysis with real insight, there may also be representations of a sense of maternally-induced release and relief (pleasure), all of which could be linked to a defiance of the prohibitive “law of the father” (superego).

Thus, intellectual autonomy — vital to the scientist — constitutes both a rebellion against and an identification with God (father). But, in addition

to this way of thinking about the experience, the mother also plays a role in facilitating the transition from the tension of not-knowing to the relief of knowing. I believe Richards has made this quite clear, and I have attempted to add the role of the mother, both preoedipally and oedipally, to the evolution of creative independent thinking in Freud and the heroic child of his “gestation”, his grand opus: psychoanalysis.

Further, in the scientist, a free range for the exercise of the “epistemophilic instinct”14 is essential. Permission is granted to know; and pleasure in knowing is thus allowed by the threatening superego (father, God), and facilitated by the mother; but, one should also say, only by modifying the form of the pleasure by the process of sublimation. In order to invoke self-education (research) about God's creation (the world), sublimation is what is permitted under the power of the superego to inhibit pure instinctual pleasure. Sublimation would, then, be considered a compromise-formation.15

The conflict between knowing and not knowing has a long and influential history. Within the Jewish religious culture, Spinoza, under the Zeitgeist of the Enlightenment and the burgeoning scientific revolution of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, may be thought of as representing the “cause” of knowing. He was ultimately excommunicated by the Dutch-Jewish community, a temporary victory of the prevailing forces of not-knowing. This temporary victory of illusion over reality (still actively embattled) was also pursued by the dominant Christian Church.16 Under the influence of the Bildung movement, however, Freud clearly chose the side of knowing and Science. Richards has offered a psychoanalytic understanding of this choice as a product of Freud's ambivalent attitude toward his father. I have added the role of his gratifying mother. Thus, the compromise-formation in Freud's mind resulted in almost total victory for knowing.

It was not only the Bildung movement that could be called forth to account for this compromise. Aspects of temperament, pride (narcissism),

cultural freedom, and a great endowment of intelligence and the “epistemophilic instinct” must be accounted for. Thus, Freud's medical education resulted at first in his becoming a talented microscopist and neurological researcher.17 It is quite clear that the deep gratifications of scientific research impelled him toward the camp of “knowing”. And, according to Jones, he only reluctantly left research for medical practice.18 Psychoanalysis, Freud's unique creation, has since been characterized by the combination of therapeutics (medicine) and theorizing (metapsychology)—perhaps yet another facet of his compromise-formation.

I want to emphasize the idea that these structural developments in Freud's personality had the effect of rendering the instinctual drive forces (libido) into the realm of neutralization, essential for autonomy, and cohesive, organized theoretical thinking.19 This suggests that the atheistic, objectivist attitude in Freud had, to some extent, disengaged itself from the conflict-dominated structure of the universal pre-oedipal and oedipal time of childhood, resulting in the emergence of the “independent man”.