Category: Georg Groddeck

what freud did for us as human beings

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Allow me in conclusion to say something about Freud. His work, his discoveries of the unconscious, of resistance and transference have been compared to the discoveries made by Copernicus. This may be a useful comparison for scholars. But he did more for us as human beings. He discovered that apart from the human languages of sound and gesture there are hundreds of other languages a thousand times more important and true than the former, means of communication which bring people closer to each other. In the context of world history Freud did something that can only be compared to the work of the founders of religion if we have to make a comparison at all. He taught people new ways of understanding one another, he brought them closer together, he built a thousand bridges across the gap that separates human beings from each other, he gave to those who followed him a newer, deeper, happier, more childlike way of living, a new kind of loving and a new kind of believing. To know is to doubt, to believe is not to doubt. In science Freud forced us to doubt and re­examine everything we thought we knew up to then. In our personal lives he brought us a belief, the belief in loving one another. He increased in us the ability to get to know each other which results spontaneously and inevitably in a greater human love and respect for others, it reduces the compulsion to lie, offers the possibility of a greater freedom of living and reduces anxiety. I am glad I know him. 

Georg Groddeck; ‘Das Es und die Psychoanalyse nebst allgemeinen Ausführungen zum damaligen wie heutigen Kongresswesen’ (The It and Psychoanalysis with general remarks about congress mania then and now), Psychoanalytische Schriften zur Psychosomatik, pp. 161-2.

the study of the unconscious is an affair of all mankind

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Every year the belief — or rather superstition — that psychoanalysis is an affair for doctors, that it is a kind of psychiatric treatment which should be used for the patients’ best, is growing in strength. I consider it a necessary duty to fight against this erroneous belief by lecturing and writing, for if this opinion becomes prevalent — and unfortunately there are many people who defend this position — the world would be deprived of the most precious thing Freud gave it. The study of the unconscious — which is a possible translation of the term psychoanalysis — is an affair of all mankind and its use in medicine is only a small fraction of all that this study consists of. In order to make this clear I chose the four pieces of literature mentioned in the announcement — the Ring of the Nibelungs, Peer Gynt, Faust, and Struwwelpeter — as material for my talks, and in order not to make people think that I was dabbling in aesthetics I called these pieces textbooks. Yet this does not mean that I intend to give a course in psychoanalysis, with the help of these textbooks. Psychoanalysis cannot be taught, for the simple reason that it is innate in all of us, that it is a human ability like seeing or hearing. I rather feel like a bookseller who is asked for his advice about what books to read in order to be informed on this or that subject, a question which is indeed often put to me, because of the interest in psychoanalysis. And I must say that none of the current textbooks will inform you as easily, simply and thoroughly about the nature of psychoanalysis as will these four works of literature.

Georg Groddeck; ‘Der Ring’ (The Ring), Psychoanalytische Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst p. 135.

man’s true profession is to become a human being

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I run a sanatorium which is visited by people who do not find help in other places. Sometimes I am lucky with these difficult cases, sometimes not. I am a pupil of Schweninger, who was, perhaps, the greatest doctor of the last century. Following in his footsteps I suddenly found myself, without knowing it, faced with the necessity of evaluating unconscious processes in the treatment of organic diseases. When a few years later I came upon Freud’s works I had to give up the idea that I was a discoverer myself, not without a struggle. For it became apparent that I had first read about these in a notice in the daily paper Rundschau. The only achievement I can claim for myself with some justification is the introduction of a knowledge of the unconscious into the treatment of all patients, and particularly those patients who suffer from organic illnesses, and that I am as aware as Freud that psychoanalysis is a world-wide affair and only partly a medical affair and that its tie-up with medicine is a disaster. I do not have a title, but there are people who love me and I have insights which make my life harmonious in so far as that is possible at all. I cannot send a prospectus of my small clinic — 15 rooms— where I am assisted by my wife, not only in the household. There is no prospectus. My charges are adjusted to the means of my patients, in the treatment I rely on my head and on my hands and on the view that every patient has his or her own illness and that the person who wants to help them has to practice the saying: nil humanum a me alienum esse puto (I believe that nothing human is strange to me) and also on the exhortation: Children, love one another! I have patients of all kinds; I am not a specialist, but a general practitioner with the knowledge and experience gathered in an active professional life. And I may perhaps be allowed to say that I have not forgotten during my life as a doctor that man’s true profession is to become a human being.

Georg Groddeck; Letter to Professor Hans Vaihinger, May 8, 1930, in Der Mensch und sein Es, pp. 125-6.