September 7, 1909—Speaking extemporaneously in German, tossing unexpected one-liners into the mix, Sigmund Freud delivered the first of five lectures on his revolutionary method for treating mental illness—psychoanalysis—in a country that embraced his pioneering work far more quickly than Europe ever did, but which he could never bring himself to like.
In late August, Freud and disciples Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi had disembarked from the George Washington before traveling to Clark University in Worcester, Mass., where the Austrian physician was set to speak on five consecutive days on “The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis.”
The European group had been invited by Clark president G. Stanley Hall, who, in observance of the institution’s 20th anniversary of becoming the second graduate school in the U.S., had scheduled a mind-boggling agenda of conferences featuring renowned speakers in Clark’s major areas of study: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, child welfare, and international relations.
The picture accompanying this post captures several of the participants. In the front row, from left to right, are Freud, Hall and Jung; in the back row are Abraham A. Brill, one of the earliest psychoanalysts; Ernest Jones, the biographer whom Brenda Maddox would term “Freud’s Wizard” for his role in disseminating the master's ideas in the Anglosphere; and Ferenczi.
After twenty years of patient work, Freud’s theories had still not caught fire to anywhere near the extent that he wanted. The prior year, the “First International Congress of Psychoanalysis” had been held in Salzburg.
Now, you’d think that a new psychological theory heavily reliant on interpreting sexual matters (you can almost see the delighted male faces in attendance: It’s all about sex), coupled with the chance to soak up the sounds of the city that nurtured the likes of Mozart and Schubert, would have brought everyone running to this “First International Conference.” But only 40 people showed up—an okay turnout, but, all things considered, still disappointing.
That’s part of the reason why Freud’s eyes popped when, the prior December, he received the invitation from Hall. To have him speak, the university would award him an honorary degree—the only official honor of this kind that Freud received throughout his life.
The honorary degree didn’t end up being the only inducement the university would offer to lure him over:
* Freud’s speaking honorarium was increased from $400 to $750;
In late August, Freud and disciples Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi had disembarked from the George Washington before traveling to Clark University in Worcester, Mass., where the Austrian physician was set to speak on five consecutive days on “The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis.”
The European group had been invited by Clark president G. Stanley Hall, who, in observance of the institution’s 20th anniversary of becoming the second graduate school in the U.S., had scheduled a mind-boggling agenda of conferences featuring renowned speakers in Clark’s major areas of study: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, child welfare, and international relations.
The picture accompanying this post captures several of the participants. In the front row, from left to right, are Freud, Hall and Jung; in the back row are Abraham A. Brill, one of the earliest psychoanalysts; Ernest Jones, the biographer whom Brenda Maddox would term “Freud’s Wizard” for his role in disseminating the master's ideas in the Anglosphere; and Ferenczi.
After twenty years of patient work, Freud’s theories had still not caught fire to anywhere near the extent that he wanted. The prior year, the “First International Congress of Psychoanalysis” had been held in Salzburg.
Now, you’d think that a new psychological theory heavily reliant on interpreting sexual matters (you can almost see the delighted male faces in attendance: It’s all about sex), coupled with the chance to soak up the sounds of the city that nurtured the likes of Mozart and Schubert, would have brought everyone running to this “First International Conference.” But only 40 people showed up—an okay turnout, but, all things considered, still disappointing.
That’s part of the reason why Freud’s eyes popped when, the prior December, he received the invitation from Hall. To have him speak, the university would award him an honorary degree—the only official honor of this kind that Freud received throughout his life.
The honorary degree didn’t end up being the only inducement the university would offer to lure him over:
* Freud’s speaking honorarium was increased from $400 to $750;
* Hall promoted Freud as the star attraction of the conference; and,
* The school issued, at Freud’s request, a last-minute speaking invitation to Jung as well.
Leon Hoffman’s New York Times op-ed article last week, “Freud’s Adirondack Vacation,” notes one of the interesting oddities of the conference. Despite an hour alone together, the Viennese physician failed to win over pioneering American psychologist-philosopher William James to his ideas on the interpretation of dreams and the power of the unconscious (“They can’t fail to throw light on human nature,” James wrote, “but I confess that he made on me personally the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas.”)
The person that Freud did impress—perhaps more crucially, given that James would be dead within a year anyway and would therefore have little time to propagate the Austrian's ideas—was James Jackson Putnam, a professor of neurology at Harvard. Putnam invited Freud, Jung and Ferenczi to his family camp in the Adirondacks, where, amid the wonders of nature, the American and the Austrian became friends.
Within two years, Putnam would become the first president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, a post from which he proselytized for Freud’s idea that mental illness was not simply a result of “degeneration” of the brain, but that the unconscious could powerfully influence the body.
Freud could not have been more pleased by the reception of his work in the United States, writing:
“In Europe I felt as though I were despised; but over there I found myself received by the foremost men as an equal. As I stepped onto the platform at Worcester to deliver my Five Lectures upon Psychoanalysis it seemed like the realization of some incredible day-dream: psychoanalysis was no longer a product of delusion, it had become a valuable part of reality."
For all his gratitude to Hall and Putnam for spreading his ideas, however, Freud was far more ambivalent about their country: “America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success,” he would observe some years after his only visit to this country.
Maybe some of Freud’s attitude stemmed from a not-especially-healthy source: “What is the use of Americans," he remarked, “if they bring no money?'
At the time of his death in 1939, forced into exile from Austria, watching Europe plunged into another military conflagration, Freud would have been astonished to know that six years hence, the nation he scorned would lead the way in eradicating the mass psychosis of Nazism from the European body politic.
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