The Naked Mother or, Why Freud did not Write about Railway Accidents

In this paper, I examine Freud's approach to technology from two interrelated perspectives. In the first section of the paper, I discuss what Freud did write about technology: I focus on Freud's comments in Civilization and Its Discontents, and place them in the broader context of his theory of history, which presents a progression from early animist tribes to Freud's own society, which he considered to be scientific. This theory presents technology solely in positive terms, as an instrument that expands human power over nature almost infinitely. The goal of the first part is to underscore a limitation of Freud's way of thinking about human creations, which comes to the fore in his somewhat myopic enthusiasm for technology.

In the second and third sections, I discuss a void in Freud's writings; that is, I address a topic that Freud did not write about when referring to technology. As the title of this essay indicates, I am curious as to why Freud did not refer to railway accidents in his discussion of technology. This implies, of course, that one could and should expect Freud to have written about railway accidents when discussing technology, and that his failure to do so calls for an explanation that goes beyond saying that he did not have the time or occasion to do so. Questioning and interpreting an omission are different from ascribing meaning to an actual utterance. It means pointing the finger at an absence, attributing significance to it, and in so doing recasting it as an ambivalent presence. This transformation necessitates a series of interrelated steps, which have been made in the second section, so as to explain why there is room for a discussion of Freud's silence.

Readers of Psychoanalysis and History may have guessed the identity of the ‘Naked Mother’ referred to in the title. Meant, of course, is Freud's mother whom, according to his own account, he must have seen naked at an