Garcia: Dr. Eissler, first let me say that it is a great pleasure to be able to interview you. For the sake of the younger generation of analysts, may I briefly provide a biographical sketch?
Eissler: I would prefer that you didn't, but if you feel it is absolutely necessary…
Garcia: You are Viennese by birth. You studied in Vienna with August Aichhorn and, after the Nazi occupation of Austria, emigrated to Chicago. There, I believe, you continued your psychiatric training and practiced analysis until the war enlisted your services as a neuropsychiatrist. After the war you settled in New York, where you have been ever since. Your contributions have been remarkably wide-ranging, but I will not embarrass you with cataloguing them all here. May I just say that they have included the study of genius and creativity—for example, your books on Leonardo, Hamlet, and Goethe, and your papers on Freud.
Eissler: Well, you promise not to embarrass me, then you go ahead. May we go on with the other matters? You wanted to speak of the Foundation, did you not?
Garcia: Yes, of course, but I'm afraid a bit more background is needed. In the 1951 paper in which you published Freud's letter to Hugo Heller, the Vienna bookseller who had sent a questionnaire asking various people, Freud among them, to name “ten good books,” you essentially laid the foundation and rationale for collecting as much information as possible about Freud in order to study his genius—and in particular, if I remember correctly, to shed light on how the ego can overcome its own limitations, as Freud did in his monumental act of self-analysis.
Eissler: Yes, hence the Sigmund Freud Archives, on whose behalf I collected letters and conducted interviews with those who knew Freud. But of course you know that I am no longer associated with the Archives—that ended in 1984, I believe. On the other hand, the Freud Literary Heritage Foundation has a quite different role.
Garcia: Perhaps you can describe the goals of the Foundation and the reason for its existence.
Eissler: Gladly. Well, you realize, of course, that a great deal of material has been deposited in the Archives at the Library of Congress, principally letters. As this material is—what is the word?—derestricted, made available to the public, a very unfair situation exists for those who do not have the resources to travel to Washington to inspect it: it simply is not accessible. Practically speaking, very few people can avail themselves of the material. Further, when something is cited, how is one to know whether it has been cited appropriately, when it is taken out of context, and so on. It is impossible. Already there have been instances where citations from the derestricted letters in the Archives have given a false impression of Freud's meaning. And there is also the problem of transcribing accurately Freud's very difficult handwriting. In the letters that have been published to date, for example, there are a number of errors. I think it is quite clear that what is so important is to publish scrupulously edited, unabridged versions of the correspondence. Unfortunately, publishers nowadays cannot afford to subsidize the painstaking tasks necessary to produce a reliable manuscript, say of the Brautbriefe. First of all, there are probably only two or three people in the world who have the expertise needed to decipher Freud's handwriting. And then you have the editing.
Garcia: Yes, it is very formidable, and expensive.
Eissler: The Foundation's role is to provide financial support for the best possible editorial preparation of the manuscripts of Freud's correspondence. And let me be quite clear that the Foundation, though different from the Archives, is in no way opposed to the Archives' work, which is basically collecting and preservation. The Foundation's role is to ensure expert editorial preparation of the Freud correspondence.
Garcia: You mentioned the Brautbriefe, which are the letters exchanged between Freud and his fiancè, Martha, during their engagement—some fifteen hundred, I believe, a fairly staggering number.
Eissler: Yes, well we are actively involved in supporting the work of transcription and editing. Mrs. Grubich-Simitis, the editor of Freud's works in German at Fischer Verlag, will be editing the Brautbriefe, and Fischer Verlag has agreed to publish. I assume an English edition would be forthcoming soon after the German has appeared. As you know, a number have been published in the compilation of Freud letters by his son Ernst, and judging from these few, I am sure the complete edition will prove to be quite remarkable, the love letters of a genius in a time of great flux—and the responses of Martha, by the way.
Garcia: And other sets of letters with other correspondents …
Eissler: We have a hand in the preparation of the Freud-Eitingon, Freud-Minna Bernays, Freud-Anna Freud letters as well, but the Brautbriefe is our major project at the moment. Someday, of course, it is our goal to have helped bring about publication of complete sets of all of Freud's letters which, except for safeguards to protect the confidentiality of patients mentioned, would be unabridged and unexpurgated. Did I mention that we are a nonprofit, tax-deductible organization? It should be mentioned.
Garcia: Yes, let me note that you and I, along with Alice B. Colonna of Woodbridge, Connecticut, are trustees of the Foundation, and that we just recently, on October 10, sponsored our second symposium devoted to Freud studies, which was held here in New York. Since you yourself were a speaker, I wonder whether you care to summarize your exceedingly interesting hypothesis regarding Emma Eckstein's hemorrhages.
Eissler: Yes, I believe that after the major hemorrhage, which was due to Fliess's having left gauze in the nasal cavity following his operation, that she probably initiated the nosebleeds herself. After all, very reputable surgeons had inspected the site and found no pathology after the gauze had been removed. Having understood just how Freud had been affected in the first place by her misfortune, these subsequent nosebleeds may have been attempts to gain Freud's love and attention. If I may add something here as well, it is clear from the Fliess letters that Eckstein's treatment and the seduction theory had nothing to do with one another, as others have claimed. But this is probably not the forum to discuss such matters in detail.
Garcia: I wonder if you've had any response to Clifford Yorke's paper claiming, contrary to the commonly held notion, that Freud's influence on Western culture is actually minimal. This seems a very controversial assertion.
Eissler: In the sense that Freud's ideas of a dynamic unconscious and infantile sexuality are taken seriously, I must agree. After all, as Yorke says, very few people read Freud's work, and fewer still take it to heart.
Garcia: I know that during my college years I was told that Freud may have had a few good and important ideas, but that psychoanalysis had essentially been discredited.
Eissler: Yes, very sad. But there is a great deal of lip service to Freud, and, if one considers name-dropping to be a sign of influence, then I suppose Freud is influential. By the way, I should mention that I think Hirschmueller and Schroeter are doing very important historical work on Freud and psychoanalysis, and it is a pity they are not so well known here in the States. Hirschmueller's biography of Breuer is really outstanding, as is his work on Freud's involvement with Meynert, and he will be editing the Freud-Minna Bernays letters, by the way. And Schroeter—he has done some excellent work on the Leonardo question. And he too will be involved, very fortunately, in editing Freud's letters—the Eitingon-Freud correspondence. His work as—how do you call it in English?—subeditor of the German edition of the Freud-Fliess letters is exemplary. His notes are really excellent, far better than the English edition.
Garcia: In what directions do you see Freud research progressing?
Eissler: I couldn't say. Certainly there has been an inordinate amount of misperception and
distortion of Freud. But you know when I say things like this I am accused of a “positive transference.” Yet when someone publishes the most outlandish distortions about Freud, it is said to be objective. It is very difficult to know just how Freud's ideas will survive. I am not optimistic. His ideas really have been much too disturbing for mankind on the whole. But to return to the Foundation: I hope I have made it clear why it is so important to have the letters published and available to all scholars, rather than only to the few who have access to the Archives.
Garcia: Yes, that's very clear.
Eissler: You know, Freud had an almost uncanny ability to perceive things about the mind, a special faculty for seeing what others could not. Think of the Rat-Man case, for example, and his analysis of obsessional mechanisms—truly remarkable. Or even in analysis, his ability to divine the unconscious. I cited the example of Choisy, who consulted Freud for analysis. In just the third session, if I am not mistaken, she told him a dream and from it he concluded that she must have been illegitimate. Imagine! Here he could divine something that was very deeply repressed after only a brief contact with his patient—and Choisy made inquiries and found that Freud had been absolutely correct. Very remarkable. So the observations and ideas in his letters should be studied closely; it would be a very fruitful methodology to investigate the various leads Freud supplies, theoretically, clinically, what have you.
Garcia: I know that you have nearly finished a book dealing with Freud's seduction theory. Would you care to say anything about it?
Eissler: Only that I hope to show why it was impossible for Freud to have held onto such a narrow theory for very long.
Garcia: Yes, well many of us are eager to see the fruits of your research. In closing, do you perhaps have any thoughts about psychoanalytic education?
Eissler: You know that Freud advocated the establishment of a sort of Academy of Psychoanalysis. I would like to see that come about, a center devoted to the teaching of what is essential for analysis to thrive, a combination of studies of medicine and the humanities. It is worth striving for.
Garcia: Indeed. Let me thank you now for your time, and wish you all speed in publishing your work on the seduction theory, which is sure to be a very important contribution, particularly given the distortions promulgated of late in the popular press.
Eissler: Thank you, Dr. Garcia, it has been a pleasure.