Review: On the Couch; Writers Analyze Sigmund Freud, edited by Andrew Blauner
A group of 25 writers of fiction, non-fiction, essayists, and therapists, none of whom are blind to his faults, analyse Freud in their own distinctive ways and provide new pathways into thinking about his ideas today
Is Sigmund Freud on the verge of a comeback? A revised standard edition of his complete works was launched earlier this year, aimed at making them more accessible to psychoanalysts and those in related fields. Then, there was Frank Tallis’s Mortal Secrets, a vivid blend of history and biography that places Freud’s life and thought against the backdrop of fin-de-siecle Vienna. Not to mention Freud’s Last Session, a new film which imagines a meeting between Sigmund Freud, played by Anthony Hopkins, and CS Lewis, played by Matthew Goode.
Others like psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips have long popularised Freud’s work with layers of nuance. Today, though, few are entirely uncritical of Freud’s theories. His unreliable approach to case studies as well as his patriarchal attitudes, for example, have come in for a lot of flak. Advances in diagnostic criteria and the medicalisation of mental health have also eroded Freud’s influence.
Even so, much of his thought has permeated our culture. His ideas about the unconscious mind, along with concepts like Freudian slips and the power of repressed memories have influenced the zeitgeist in many ways. As WH Auden famously wrote, Freud is not a person but “a whole climate of opinion”.
In this context, On the Couch, edited by Andrew Blauner, is a noteworthy contribution. Blauner has assembled 25 writers and asked them to analyse Freud in their own distinctive ways. The contributors are a varied lot: writers of fiction, non-fiction, essayists, and therapists. None of them are blind to Freud’s faults; some even touch upon accusations levelled by arch-critics like Frederick Crews and Jeffrey Masson. The point, however, is to provide new pathways into thinking about Freud today.
Most of the essays are, in the American fashion, buttressed by personal experiences. For example, Rick Moody writes of the effect that Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia had on him as a graduate student: “he seemed to care, in some way, about a community I knew and loved well, the losers, the bereft, the outcasts, the failures, those in states of dread and angst.”
Then, David Michaelis writes wryly about his own Oedipus Complex; Peter Kramer discusses how his Freudian leanings served his patients well, even as he “pulled away from the posture of psychoanalysis”; and Sarah Baxter is fascinated by Freud’s words and metaphors. “I do not hate Freud,” she affirms. “Nor do I worship him. I am conflicted, which is a feeling from Freud, who defined the psyche as a field of conflicts.”
Others discuss both Freud’s less-familiar and better-known works. Colm Tóibín uses Reflections on War and Death, written shortly after the outbreak of World War I, to understand “bellicose, patriotic, and unthinking passages” in the correspondence of Thomas Mann, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. In an illuminating essay, André Aciman interprets The Interpretation of Dreams by analysing the World War II interactions between Germany and Britain during Bletchley Park’s code-breaking efforts.
Over the years, many have been drawn to Freud’s literary sensibilities, and the writers here are no exception. Sheila Kohler notes his ability “to create mystery and, at the same time, to give us precise details” in the case studies. David Gordon goes so far as to claim that “the man is a literary genius,” comparing his character to that of Sherlock Holmes.
Both Adam Gopnik and Philip Lopate praise Freud’s essayistic skills. For the former, Freud ought to be remembered the way that essayists hope to be remembered, with a point of view on the world, a series of arresting metaphors, and “for small acts of candour that add up to a larger significant courage”. Lopate, too, is drawn not only to his prose style but “his courage, his curiosity, his willingness to entertain the most unsettling notions”.
Other essays venture further afield, dwelling on days and nights spent in Hampstead’s Freud Museum, formerly Freud’s final home after he left Vienna to escape the Nazis. Casey Schwartz reflects on the legacy of his daughter, Anna Freud, and “the deep love and care she had bestowed on her patients, and, in some sense, on every child, everywhere”. Mark Solms discusses Martha Freud’s personality and her influence on her husband, while Rivka Galchen contributes an entertaining piece on Freud’s dogs, from Wolf, a German Shepherd, to his chow-chows in London.
Can Freud’s psychoanalytic practices be relevant in our digitally-mediated age? In a deeply-felt piece, Sherry Turkle writes that technology demands a return to Freud. “Digital culture threatens our capacity for spontaneous talk,” she says. It also “undermines our ability to understand the value of talk”. A psychoanalytic approach, with its focus on authenticity, attention, and empathy, becomes more valuable at this time.
The last essay, by Siri Hustvedt, is among the most stimulating. Though mental health treatments have evolved significantly since Freud’s time, he understood that what we call “the mind” is embodied and dynamic, and much of what it does is unconscious. In this light, she calls for questioning truisms about those we look upon as medical authorities, mainstream psychologists, and established scientists. What hierarchy and status do they uphold?
It’s a pity that the perspectives here are primarily Western. One would have welcomed views on how Freud’s theories were misapplied to justify colonial practices or, as Edward Said pointed out, to perpetuate Orientalist stereotypes.
In a piece for The Nation, Yale historian Samuel Moyn notes that what has been lost by the decline in psychoanalysis’s relevance is not only Freud’s system of thought, “but the delicate balance he embraced between science and culture, reason and passion, the Enlightenment and its Romantic critics”. This balance is what the essays in On the Couch seek to restore.
Sanjay Sipahimalani is a Mumbai-based writer and reviewer.
