Many authors quote Freud as saying “If I had my life to live over again I should devote myself to psychical research rather than to psychoanalysis.” I recently discovered that this is not the whole story: Freud did not exactly say this, and it is fruitful to understand what he said in context and to consider the purposes to which he gets quoted.
Returning to the Source Material
The above quotation is frequently cited in texts as follows: “(Sigmund Freud, quoted in Jones, 1957, p. 392).” I was alerted to this by an astute reader of one of my previous blog posts on psychoanalysis and the occult who was not able to locate this quotation in his copy of the Kindle edition of Jones’ biography of Freud, so I got curious and went to locate the source text myself. To be completely honest, I had relied on other authors’ quotation and citation, and had not myself gone back to Jones.
When I pulled the copy of Ernest Jones’s biography of Freud’s off the library shelf, I initially could not find the quotation on page 392 in any of the three volumes. After some time with Google and thumbing through the edition of Jones I had on hand, I eventually figured out the problem and discovered that my edition held the quotation on page 419. Not such a thrilling mystery, but diligence pays off.
At any rate, what I found was Ernest Jones does not quote Freud directly. The quotation in question concerns the testament of Hereward Carrington, an American author and psychic researcher who had written to Freud on three separate occasions, petitioning him to act as co-editor of a journal dedicated to the study of occultism. Freud declined the invitation on all three occasions, and Jones writes, “[After Freud’s refusals,] Carrington…related [to Dr. George Lawton] that in his reply, Freud had stated, ‘If I had my life to live over again I should devote myself to psychical research rather than to psychoanalysis.’”
Carrington had written to Freud in 1921. Eight years later, having heard what Carrington told him, Dr. Lawton wrote to Freud, incredulous that Freud had made such a statement about dedicating his life to psychical research. Jones documents how Freud denied this outright: Freud wrote, “I deplore the fact that you yourself did not read my letter to Carrington. You would have easily convinced yourself that I said nothing to justify his assertion.” So, what gives?
Here it’s helpful to track down the letter in question. Freud’s letter to Carrington, dated July 24, 1921 opens as follows: “I am not one of those who dismiss a priori the study of so-called occult psychic phenomena as unscientific, discreditable or even as dangerous… If I were at the beginning rather than at the end of a scientific career, as I am today, I might possibly choose just this field of research, in spite of all difficulties.” To me, Freud’s actual words communicate an importantly different sentiment than what was attributed to him in Jones’s quotation of Carrington’s recollection.
For reference, the original German (which I hope I have correctly transcribed) of the relevant line is: “Wenn ich zu Beginn einer wissenschaftlichen Laufbahn ständs enstatt wie jetzt um Ende würde ich mir vielleict trotz aller Schwierigkeiten kein anderes Arbeitsgebiet wälen.” My German is pretty rusty, but the English translation I was able to find (from PEP Web’s Classic Books) is definitely closer to the original German than what gets cited in Jones’s biography, and so it seems likely to me that the meaning was not simply lost in translation, but distorted by Carrington’s remembering.
What seems unusual to me is that Ernest Jones leaves Carrington’s quotation as is despite having access to Freud’s letter to Carrington. Jones weighed in on the issue, writing that Freud “was wrong in his denial” to Lawton that he had said what Carrington claimed. But was he?
Again returning to Freud’s letter, we can see that he goes on to say to Carrington that “I cannot rid myself of certain skeptical materialistic prejudices which I would bring with me into the study of the occult,” even if he were not “interested in sharply demarcating psychoanalysis” from the occult. These statements quite clearly indicate a circumspection that contrasts sharply with Carrington’s report, which reads as a kind of breathless and romantic endorsement of psychical research.
What Was Freud Really Saying?
In context, I read Freud as letting Carrington down gently. Expressing apparently personal interest in the phenomena in a counterfactual mode (“If I were at the beginning rather than the end of a scientific career…”) allows Freud to supply Carrington with sympathy while stopping short of providing any direct support. Though I believe that occult phenomena were of some genuine interest to Freud, he harbored various reservations, and his statement to Carrington is far from a wistful statement of a bygone dream.
Perhaps one could make the case that Freud was ultimately supportive but too defensive of the reputation of psychoanalysis to say it directly, but if he truly wished to have been a paranormal researcher in another life, mightn’t he have leapt at the opportunity? It seems far more likely that Carrington instilled a wishful spin into his recollection of Freud’s letter, or that at least that he related it to Lawton so as to make the letter seem more supportive of Carrington’s ego investment in psychical research than it really was.
The foregoing quotation that appears in Jones frequently gets attributed to Freud in ways that suggest he was or might have been an ardent supporter of research into occult and paranormal phenomenon. Ultimately, my conclusion is that not only did Freud not say it, it’s arguably quite misleading. While it is true that Freud had an ambivalent interest in occult phenomena (he wrote a number of short papers on “thought transference” [i.e., telepathy] and the occult significance of dreams), it is important not to overhype his support of magic and occultism.
What does it Matter?
I also question the value of using this quotation to those interested in the occult and the esoteric. What does it matter if Freud was invested in occultism? Doesn’t this amount to a kind of appeal to authority or celebrity endorsement? That’s not necessary, and it certainly would not be helpful to the project of legitimizing research into the occult if it came at the expense of historical and scholarly rigor.
Moreover, why does anyone want to legitimize belief or involvement in esoteric, occult pursuits in the eyes of science? While I think there is value in challenging the stereotypes, mistaken ideas, and stigma against occult and esoteric practitioners that do exist in the academy and beyond, I am not sure it is possible or desirable to shoehorn such ideas into contemporary science. There is a fundamental schism of worldviews here. The scientific materialist worldview works to erase perspective, narrative, and feeling, whereas involvement and participation with a world of spirits necessitates embedded relationality that is fundamentally at odds with materialist reductionism.
I once had a conversation with a luminary in the particular method that I used for my dissertation research. I came to him, embittered that psychologists committed to a natural science approach could not see the problems with their approach. He told me that in his experience, no one ever listens to criticism: the best thing you can do, he told me, is invest your energy in the alternative and people will either see its value or they won’t. In a similar vein, those drawn to occult and esoteric practices may never make a strong enough case to be “taken seriously” by the academy, especially if the academy has been constructed from its very foundation to privilege certain ideas and not others. Why should the gazelle lobby the lion?
Arthur Edward Waite, in his commentary on The Hermit, notes that “the Divine Mysteries secure their own protection from those who are unprepared.” Consider that perhaps the reluctance of occult matters to become seamlessly integrated with scientific inquiry has less to do with a strong enough case being made, and more to do with the nature of the respective phenomena. The most precious temples are often found in secluded places, and not for superficial reasons.