Sigismund Schlomo Freud—born on May 6th 1856 in Pribor, Moravia and passed away on September 23rd 1939 in London, England—is one of the most respected and at the same time debated physicians in modern medicine. He was one of the earliest founders of Psychoanalysis and his pioneering work in the intricacies of the Unconscious mind still perturbs us all deeply. He was definitely the first man that considered women as human beings with their own particular sexual desires and listened eagerly at what they said.
If you peek briefly at our screen presentation, you will see a depiction by Brouillet of a theatrical class by Jean-Martin Charcot in the Neurology clinical ward of the Pitié-Salpetrière hospital of Paris, where he had showed the power of the techniques of hypnosis to extract information from “hysterical” women that expressed neurological symptoms. Charcot dismissed the sexually-related complaints of women—“la chose genitale”—as not relevant to the therapy. But there was one Austrian physician in the public that, after spending time studying with Charcot, went back to Vienna and teamed up with Joseph Breuer to design the free association and interpretation of dreams. The recall of the early psychological traumas uncovered the origin of clinical neuroses.
In the puritan social atmosphere of early 20th century Vienna, Freud was considered a dangerous, rebel practitioner and he struggled to make a living. Even today he still has many ardent detractors that view him as nothing more than a clinical impostor that has been unfairly idealized by the public. Frederick Crews writes in his book “The making of an illusion” that we must strip Freud of his perennial image as “a lone explorer possessing courageous perseverance, deductive brilliance, tragic insight, and healing power.” He even claimed that Freud had plagiarized the data of Pierre Janet, a French psychologist, in his articles, which is refuted by the fact that Freud gave due credit to his colleague in his early writings about the origin of neuroses.
Keenly trying to disparage him Crews writes about Freud’s experimentation with cocaine, a new drug then, his Victorian views of women and even his purported affair with his sister-in-law. He questions his whining about being a “lone outcast” dismissed because he was a Jew, considering that 20 % of the student body in his medical school class were Jewish, even though only 10% of the city population professed that faith. As a member of the Italian-American community, I understand how Freud wanted to assimilate while at the same time keeping a resilient sense of “not belonging.”
What really flustered me when I was reading this book is that the author claimed that Freud had little contact with patients and that he fabricated his clinical data. In the Library of Congress, we can see Freud’s 1886-1889 patient record book where it shows that he treated almost 500 of them regularly. There is no way that Freud could have learnt so much about women and their ideation without going through the slogging task of actually listening to them. I know. I have been there. In a humble physician’s office like Freud’s inner sanctum.
What really prodded me to write about women’s emotional frustration in my novel “Madame D.C.” and in my 2nd manuscript, is that, after stoically listening to them in my office for years, something has percolated through my brain. In our male-dominated society, that caring predisposition to really listen to them can make you a lot of enemies.
What do you think? Please tell us.
Don’t leave me alone.