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In 1930 Sigmund Freud was given the German Goethe prize in recognition of his merits “as a scientist and as a writer.” Now, thirty-eight years later, an analysis of the literary elements of his scientific writings appears in print. This is somewhat surprising, because Freud is still regarded as a scientist. A study of his literary style is therefore not only interesting but also very important because it tells us something about the man. At the same time, the judgments of his scientific and literary contemporaries add a new perspective to Freud's discoveries.
Some of the fine points of this book will be lost to an English-speaking audience because a large part of Schönau's study deals with Freud's use of quotations, metaphors, analogies, and so on which either defy translation or are intelligible only to a person with a good knowledge of German literature.
When Freud was once asked which one of the German writers had influenced his style, he replied: “My conscious and deliberate model was Lessing.”7 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), a German writer and philosopher, is best known for his play Nathan the Wise, which contains the famous story of the three rings. Lessing fought prejudice and tried to secure liberty of expression. He placed striving for truth above the possession of truth.
When Freud received the Goethe prize, he was supposed to speak about the “inner relationship of the person and the scientist to Goethe.” Instead, he titled his speech “Goethe's Relationship to Psychoanalysis” and tried to show that Goethe had anticipated psychoanalysis. In one instance, instead of speaking about Goethe's anticipation of the unconscious, Freud used the word appreciation of the unconscious—thus revealing his own wishful thinking.
How did Freud evaluate his own writing? He stated on several occasions that he was a scientist and not an artist. He knew that he could describe human problems as a writer, but he never decisively crossed the line between the cool, analytic scie