Chapter II. Disunion (1921-1926)

There was something in Freud's attitude to the ‘Committee’ that transcended his cordiality towards its individual members, and it is important to bear it in mind when the following story is being unfolded. Above individual friendships Freud had come to treasure still more the value of his discoveries and all that ensued from them. He had been lucky enough to make them, but that did not necessarily constitute him a great man. It was as if he had been entrusted with a valuable accession to our knowledge, and it was his function above everything else to cherish and to further it, rather as a conscientious hereditary landowner might feel about his estate. Now Freud never expected to live long, so inevitably he was deeply concerned with the transmission of his main function in life, the care of psycho-analysis, to what might—to continue the analogy—be called his heirs. During their voyage to America in 1909 Freud used to relate his dreams to his companions, Jung and Ferenczi, as they did to him, and they told me shortly after that the predominant theme running through them was care and anxiety about the future of his children and of psycho-analysis. These two ideas must have been closely associated, since there is much reason to suppose that in his unconscious his work in psycho-analysis ultimately represented some product of his body, i.e. a child. We were trustees for that child.

It would be a mistake to think that Freud felt any personal dependence on any member of the Committee, even on the one nearest to him, Ferenczi. All traces of such dependence had vanished for good after the break with Fliess. In the nature of things his attitude towards us was more that of a father than of a colleague of our own age. He was interested in our well-being and in our family life, particularly our children, but he had no occasion to enter into our intimacies except in the case of Ferenczi, who constantly demanded personal help in his private difficulties.

It follows from these consid