THE LIFE HEREAFTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 234, 4 October 1927, Page 19

THE LIFE HEREAFTER.

INTERVIEW WITH FREUD.

iro WISH FOR IXMOBTAUTT.

"SELFISH MOTIVES UNDERLIE AM HUMAN CONDUCT." (By GEORGE' SYLVESTER VIERECK) X (Copyright by «ie "Auckland Star" and the A.N.A.A.) SOEMMERING. September 2. "Seventy years haye taught me to accept life with cheerful humility;" The speaker was Professor Sigmund Freud, the great Austrian explorer of the nether world of the soul. No mortal has come nearer to explaining the secret of human conduct. Our conversation took place at Freud's summer home on the Semmering, a mountain in< the Austrian Alps where fashionable Vienna loves to foregather. The few years intervening since my last visit had multiplied the wrinkles of his forehead. They had intensified his scholastic pallor. His face was drawn as if in pain. His mind was alfrt, his spirit unbroken, his courtesy impeccable as of old, but_ a slight impediment in his speech alarmed me. A malignant affection of the upper jaw had necessitated an operation. Freud now wears a mechanical contrivance to facilitate speech. It embarrasses him more than his visitors. Perhaps the Gods ate Kind. "Perhaps the gods are kind to us," the father of psycho-analysis said, "by making life more disagreeable as we grow older. In the end death seems less intolerable than the manifold burdens we carry." "Does it. not mean something to you that your name will live*" . "Nothing whatever, even if it should live, which is by no means certain. I am far more interested in the fate of my children. I hope their life will not be so hard. I cannot make their life much easier. The war practically wiped out my modest fortune, the sayings of a lifetime. However, I can carry on. My work still gives me pleasure." "Do you believe Jn the persistence of personality after death in any form whatsoever?"

"1 give no thought to the matter. Everything that lives perishes. Why should I survive?"

"Would you like to come hack in some form T Have you no wish for immortality T" ' ,

Frankly, bo. If one recognises the selfish motives which underlie all human conduct, one has not the slightest desire to return. Life moving in a circle would still he the same. The 'wish to prolong life unduly strikes me as aheurd." It grew chilly in the garden, and we continued our conversation in the study. I .saw a pile, of manuscripts on the desk. are you working on?" I asked. "I aiii writing a defence of psychoanalysis as practised by laymen. The doctors want to make analysis except by .licensed physicians illegal. The doctors fight every new truth in the beginning. Afterwards, they try to monopolise it." .

"Do you ever." I asked Professor Freud, "analyse yourself I" "Certainly. The psycho-analyst must constantly analyse himself. By analysing ourselves we are better ■ able to analyse others."

"I sometimes wonder," I said, "if we should not foe happier if we knew less of the processes that shape our thoughts and emotions. We are not made more joyful by discovering that we all harbour in our hearts the savage and the beast."" ' ."What Is your objection to the beasts?" Freud replied. "I prefer the society of Animals infinitely to human society. The savage, like the beast, is cruel, but he lacks the meanness of the civilised man. Meanness is man's revenge upon society for the restraints it imposes.- This vengefulness animates the professional reformer and the busybody. >fan's most disagreeable habits and idiosyncrasies are engendered by his incomplete adjustment to a complicated civilisation. It is the result of the conflict between our instincts and our culture." ' *

Freud observed that in psychoanalysis "wo are only at the "beginning of a new science." "You still place most emphasis on sex?"; I asked. "I reply with the words of Walt Whitman: Tet all were lacking if sex were lacking.'" Shaw, like you, does not wish ,to live for ever, but," I remarked, "unlike yo &.- ® r ®B» rfs «ex »s uninteresting." >«haw, Freud replied, smiling, "does not understand sex. He has not the remotest conception of love: There is no real love affair in any of his plays. He makes a jest of Caesar's love, affair, perhaps the greatest passion in Deliberately, not to say maliciously, he divests Cleopatra of all grandenr degrades her into an insignificent flapper. The reason for Shaw's strange attitude towards love, which robs "his plays of universal appeal in spite of his enormous intellectual equipment, must be sought in his psychology, tn one of ma prefaces Shaw himself emphasises ""ascetic strain in his temperament." ' The conversation turned to the efrect of psycho-analysis upon literature. Tho literature of the English language, I suggested, "is steeped in psycho-analysis. It is hardly possible to open a new novel without finding some reference to it. Dramatists, too; are profoundly indebted to you." i know," Freud replied. "I- appreciate the compliment, but sometimes I am afraid or my own popularity in. England and America. Extensive popularisation leads to superficial acceptance without serious research. People merely repeat the phrases they learn in the jjeatre or in the Presis. They imagine they understand ' psycho-analysis because they can parrot its patter- I prefer the more intense %tudy of psychoanalysis in the .Continental centres."