Review - Freud

An Intellectual Biography
by Joel Whitebook
Cambridge University Press, 2017

Joel Whitebook is a practicing psychoanalyst, a teacher and researcher

associated with Columbia University where he directs the Psychoanalytic Studies

Program. His Freud: An Intellectual Biography ‘is a study of the relation

between the unfolding of his thinking and crucial developments in his life history’

(16). The book is a readable, enjoyable and well-documented biography of Freud

that summarizes current scholarship, and makes good use of recently published

archival materials. But, it is also more than that. Whitebook argues that we can

identify two aspects in Freud’s theory. One is what we can call the ‘official

doctrine’, centered in the notion that the ‘Oedipal complex’ and its resolution is

the major event in the development of the child and also marks the limits of the

psychopathological domain assigned to psychoanalysis. The second, or

‘unofficial doctrine’, pays special attention to the pre-Oedipal stage and to the

mother-infant relationship, devaluing to some extent the centrality of the Oedipal

stage. This ‘unofficial doctrine’ is more attuned to contemporary criticism of

Freud’s misogyny and patriarchal views. Hence, by introducing the distinction

between an official and an unofficial doctrine, Whitebook is able to acknowledge

the need to correct Freud’s theories while being able to claim, at the same time,

that such revisions are somewhat present in Freud’s work. To accomplish this,

Whitebook needs to identify those moments of potential insight, which were

either repressed or incorrectly analyzed by Freud, thereby depriving him (and

generations of analysts) of our current ‘state of the art’ psychoanalysis.

According to Whitebook, Freud’s ‘autoanalysis’, the foundational event of

psychoanalysis, left unresolved and unanalyzed a number of important issues,

such as Freud’s difficult relationship with his mother, his ambivalent relationship

to his father, and his tendency to develop strong attachments to powerful male

figures which, as in the case of his one time associates Fliess and Jung, he

ultimately discards. Freud’s personal unresolved issues explain the limitations of

the ‘official doctrine’ (10).

This thesis is further developed in chapter five, which is ‘optional reading’,

targeted to more technical readers. Drawing on the work of Hans Loewald,

Cornelius Castoriadis, Adorno and Horkheimer from the Frankfurt school, and

other congenial authors, Whitebook elaborates his unorthodox reading of Freud.

His exposé is punctuated with instances where Freud himself expressed similar

heretical views. The ‘official theory’, first articulated by Freud in 1895, centers on

the idea of the father as the main representative of the principle of reality, and

that the psychic apparatus works along the lines of a ‘tension-reduction’ model,

whereas pleasure is foremost a decrease in tension. Finally, the ‘official model’

subscribes to an understanding of maturity as a disenchanted vision of reality,

which is the individual’s equivalent to the scientific ethos. This ethos reflects an

attitude of mastery and domination of external and internal nature, which the

official Freud shares without hesitations.

The ‘unofficial theory’, while far from romanticizing the unconscious-instinctual

life, grants the initial identification with the mother and the prohibition represented

by the father a more positive role in the development of the child, and describes

the maturation process as one of integration or coming to terms with the

unconscious (166-167). The paternal figure is no longer characterized exclusively

as the agency that lays down the primordial prohibition, but receives a more

positive description as the force that helps the infant in the process of separating

himself from his symbiotic relationship with the mother (168). Regardless of the

merits of this interpretation, the determination to assign those views to Freud

himself remains the main question marks of this otherwise enthralling biography.

The remaining chapters (one through four and six through twelve) take us from

Galicia to Vienna, from Freud’s early study in the Gymnasium, through medical

school, from his early interest in neurobiology, to his study with Charcot, the first

hesitant steps into psychiatric practice, and the invention of psychoanalysis. In

this familiar territory, Whitebook pays particular attention to examples of Freud’s

behavior, including his formulation of specific hypothesis regarding psychological

development that reveal biases that can be traced back to his own

psychopathology. Finally, the last chapter, ‘Late Freud and the Early Mother’

examines a few episodes in Freud’s late life where he came close to

acknowledge the importance of the early maternal relationship but ultimately

failed to do so. Whitebook examines Freud’s criticism of the idea of an ‘oceanic

feeling’ that according to Romain Rolland is the original source of religion,

Freud’s attempt to re-visit the problem of female psychological development and

sexuality after his mother’s death, the complexities of his Moses and

Monotheism, and finally the discussion about what can be considered a

successful analysis in Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937). In this text

Freud —taking exception to the work of fellow psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi—

expresses the rather pessimistic view that strong impulses prevent the analysand

from fully reaching complete success in his analysis. In the case of women, she

would not be able to abandon the repudiation of femininity, whereas in the case

of man, he will not be able to overcome his fear of passivity and submit to his

analyst. In both cases, Freud conceives this last threshold of resistance as

biological, and not as a particular cultural formation. Whitebook remarks that both

theses pertain to the contemporary struggle against misogyny, and he concludes

that for those who still endorse psychoanalysis, the task is ‘to use the resources

with which the reluctant Patriarch provided us to criticize the patriarchy that he

often seemed to embody’ (454).

Michael Maidan
Bay Harbor Islands, Florida