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January 26, 1971. UNPUBLISHED DISCUSSIONS OF SIGMUND FREUD. Richard F. Sterba, M.D.
In his introductory remarks, Dr. Sterba drew a vivid picture of the milieu of the famous Wednesday evening meetings at Freud's home at which a selected group of Viennese analysts met for the purpose of scientific discussions. Between 1928 and 1937, approximately twenty such meetings took place. Dr. Sterba reported on Freud's discussions at four of these meetings.
On December 9, 1928, Theodor Reik reviewed Freud's Future of an Illusion. The major portion of Freud's discussion was devoted to a differentiation of several Weltanschauungen or world views. As he saw it, the scientific Weltanschauungen, although inevitably fragmentary, incomplete, and defective, was nevertheless honest. The mystic view was the most dangerous in that its essence is the high esteem of the irrational. To Freud it was the one real enemy of the future as science was powerless against it. In Sterba's view Freud's attitude with regard to mysticism was greatly influenced by his unhappy experiences with Carl Jung.
At a meeting held either in 1929 or 1930, Wilhelm Reich presented his ideas concerning a Russian experiment in child rearing in which children were to be separated from their parents and raised in special centers. Reich was enthusiastic about this idea because he felt that it would abolish the Oedipus complex, the major inhibiting factor in achieving full orgasm. Freud was sharp in his criticism of Reich both for his overzealous therapeutic ambition and for his single-mindedness in focusing on genital conflicts as the only ones in neuroses.
In March of 1930, the topic of the meeting was Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. Freud was highly critical of his own work, calling the structure of the book dilettante because upon an unusually broad and diffuse foundation a narrow superstructure was erected. He was also critical of the group for not noticing a significant omission in the book, namely