Battle over Freud’s private papers . . . ‘lt’s a scandal’

Press, 21 June 1984, Page 15

Battle over Freud’s private papers . . . ‘lt’s a scandal’

The publication of a new book attacking Sigmund Freud has raised again, this time more insistently, the question of access to Freud’s papers. Many of these papers are in Washington, D.C., but there is also a large, and possibly highly significant, cache in a London bank.

Freud died in London in 1939, a refugee from Nazi Austria. Soon after the Second World War, a distinguished follower of Freud in New York, Dr Kurt Eissler, began to collect Freud material and to conduct interviews with people who had had dealings with him. Dr Eissler set up Sigmund Freud Archives, Inc., in New York City, and beginning in 1951 deposited all the material he collected, which now amounts to some 50,000 items, with the Library of Congress. Access is freely available to some of this material. Others, 20 containers, can be seen only by permission of the donors, which in effect means Dr Eissler. Besides, there are 16 cardboard containers to which access is totally forbidden — and will continue to be forbidden, in the case of some items, until well into the twenty-first century. Then there are the London papers. After Freud died, his unmarried . and much-respected daughter, the late Anna Freud, also a psychoanalyst, continued to live in her father’s house. She left her father’s library and papers undisturbed. To enter the house now, which is shortly to be turned into a museum, is to find oneself back in Vienna at the turn of the century: a fine library, with many of the books annotated by Freud himself, a very valuable collection of artefacts from the ancient world, especially Greece and Egypt. And most electrifying of all is Freud’s couch, covered by a carpet. On top of the carpet are four faded velveteen cushions in sombre colours.

Before Anna Freud died in 1982, a young Sanskrit scholar, born in Chicago, was allowed into this house and this library. Dr Jeffrey Masson had become interested in psychoanalysis when he was a professor in Toronto, had become friendly with Dr Eissler, and had been made Projects Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives. He was trusted implicitly by the inner circle of Freud followers, and by Anna Freud.

In the house, he discovered a thousand unpublished Freud letters,

many of them, according to his account, bearing vitally on the early history of psychoanalysis. These documents, and other Freuditems in the Library of Congress — to which he had privileged access — caused Masson to doubt the whole basis of Freud’s theories, and hence the basis of psychoanalysis itself. When his repudiation of Freud became known to his erstwhile friends and colleagues, he was fired as Projects Director. He then set out to write his book: “Freud: The Assault on Truth.”

The book has been, on the whole, coolly reviewed in Britain, as in the United States. Dr Masson says: “It is perfectly possible I have misunderstood. But the only way to find out is to open up, and let others look.” He is referring not only to the Library of Congress papers, but to those in London. These were put in a London bank after Anna Freud’s death, by the solicitor who is the executor of her estate. But before she died she had turned over both the Freud family house and its contents to the Sigmund Freud Archives in New York. For complicated tax reasons, the Freud papers will stay in England, and not to go to the Library of Congress. It appears that access to them, when the estate is finally cleared up, will be controlled by Dr Eissler. He is described as the secretary of the Sigmund Freud Archives, but in fact is its sole effective member.

The “Los Angeles Times,” a conservative newspaper, wrote an editorial about Freud’s unpublished papers under the headline “Free Sigmund Freud!” “Here is where the professional controversy becomes a matter of public interest,” it said. “Papers that may answer some unanswered questions about Freud, papers that will shed light on .the intentions of the great man whose theories influence the thoughts and lives of millions of men, women, and children are not to be published for many years . . . It is, in a word, a scandal.”

The “New York Times” has referred to the “Watergate of the Psyche.” I telephoned Dr Eissler to ask him to explain his policy, but he did not return my calls. I was told he had become very wary of newspapers since the Masson explosion. His attitude, however, was set out by Janet Malcolm in the “New Yorker” articles that lit the fuse. He argues that restrictions

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are necessary to reassure prospective donors or interviewees, who might otherwise think twice about handing over delicate material or speaking about intimate matters.

The Archives, he has written, are motivated merely “by the desire to have the source material collected and preserved for future biographers and scholars.” Contemporary biographers and scholars, however, feel they are being discriminated against. It might be thought that the word “scandal,” used by the “Los Angeles Times,” is too strong; but the word crops up in Britain, too. Dr Charles Rycroft is one of the most eminent British practitioners in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He says: “I very much doubt whether it (the restricted access) makes the slightest differ-

MICHAEL DAVIE

in London

ence to practitioners, but from the point of view of historians and biographers, it is rather scandalous. It is a sort of mortmain of one generation that restricts the freedom of the one after.” Mr Ronald Clark is the author of a biography of Freud. This was only the second serious biography of Freud; the first was by a Freud disciple, Ernest Jones.

Mr Clark could not see all the documents he wanted to see. “I think it’s a scandalous situation. There it is under hatches until it’s too late for anyone to ask awkward questions. Anna Freud was the leading light in protecting Freud. Dr Eissler has a reputation for not helping anyone. It’s very peculiar. So much stuff has not been made available. One wonders why.” — Copyright, London Observer Service.