Professor Freud and Psychiatry*

In his answer to Dr. Alfonso Paquet who informed him that he was selected as the recipient of the Goethe Prize, Professor Freud said, “Ich bin durch öffentliche Ehrungen nicht verwöhnt worden und habe mich darum so eingerichtet das ich solche entbehren konnte.” (I have not been spoiled by public honors and I have therefore so adjusted myself that I could dispense with the same.) The master expressed it euphemistically. He might have said: “I have been ridiculed and mocked so long that I have become hardened to it.” Indeed, I am quite sure that these thoughts must have flashed through his mind when he was pleasantly amazed at the great honor bestowed upon him in Germany, in the land where his theories encountered the greatest resistances. That thoughts like these were in his mind I have little doubt, for only shortly before he made these remarks to Dr. Paquet he expressed himself similarly to Georg Fuchs, the author of “Wir Zuchthäusler,” a book on prisons and prison reform. Herr Fuchs called him the standard bearer of cultural Germany, to which Professor Freud answered, “I wish it were so.” “Aber mir scheint ich bin persona ingrata wenn nicht ingratissima beim deutschen Volke-und zwar beim gelehrten ebenso wie beim ungelehrten.” (But, it seems to me that I am personally unacceptable, if not most unacceptable to the German nation—not only to the educated, but also to the uneducated classes.) Indeed, Professor Freud had hitherto not only received no honors, but for many years he had been the subject of the most malicious, or rather the most ridiculous misrepresentations. No wonder he became used and hardened to it.

About a generation ago it had fallen to my lot to become his standard bearer in this country. I have fared no better since then. Yet, it might surprise you when I say that like him, I thrived under this treatment; and when I witness the great honors bestowed here and abroad on my master, a shimmer of whose glorification mu