Volume 26, Number 16 · October 25, 1979
Uncle Oedipus and Ante Bellum
By David Brion Davis
Patricide in the House Divided: A Psychological Interpretation of Lincoln and His Age
by George B. Forgie
Norton, 308 pp., $14.95
In his brilliant analysis of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Carl E. Schorske uncovered a patricidal and deeply anti-political impulse at the very origin of psychoanalysis. The death of a father, Freud said, is 'the most important event, the most poignant loss, of a man's life.' As Schorske probed the implications of this statement as revealed in Freud's dreams, especially the 'Revolutionary Dream' of 1898 (two years after the death of Freud's father), he discovered that Freud had subtly renounced earlier fantasies of political defiance and revolution. Of the dream that Freud termed 'revolutionary,' Schorske wrote, 'patricide replaces politics,' and the resolution of the dream—pointing to his pursuit of fame as a scientific investigator—connects Freud's 'victory over his father with his victory over politics.' For the scenario of the dream moves 'from political encounter, through flight into academia, to the conquest of the father who has replaced Count Thun [the reactionary minister president of Habsburg Austria]. Patricide replaces regicide; psychoanalysis overcomes history. Politics is neutralized by a counterpolitical psychology.'
Review, 3440 words
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